Satan's Sword (Imp Book 2) (16 page)

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Demons don’t like to take too much damage over here because fixing it sends out an energy signature that alerts angels of their presence. He’ll weigh the risks of taking huge damage and being dusted by an angel against the enjoyment of taking you apart and decide it’s not worth it. But you can’t just threaten. You’ve got to show that you are able and willing to carry it out by shooting him first.”

Wyatt nodded. “What else do I need to know?”

“We’ll talk more about plans and scenarios this week before we go,” I told him. “The good news for me is that Haagenti’s goons won’t be going for my death unless they feel they are in mortal danger, so the key is to avoid capture and annihilate them quickly before they decide they need to kill or be killed.”

“So are we partners?” Wyatt smiled.

He was going to get killed. He was a cute, smart, gutsy human with weapons, and he was going to get killed.

“Partners,” I affirmed.

Wyatt walked over and kissed me thoroughly, wrapping his hands around my waist and pulling me against him. “Weren’t you going to apologize to me in a very special way for making me gorge myself on chicken wings? I’m ready for that apology now.”

I apologized for a good hour. It was the best apology I’d ever delivered, if I may say so myself. Wyatt seemed to think so, too.

Chapter 13

H
ere I was, once again, wandering Columbia Mall. Dar had not had an easy time returning home after our encounter and begged me to help him get through the gate this trip so he could deliver a bribe for the vampires. It seems Haagenti hadn’t originally been thorough in his research, and vampire custom required a gift be given in exchange for handing over the artifact. I wasn’t convinced the lack of gift was the reason they’d been running me all over the place, but was intrigued to see what Haagenti’s idea of a suitable present would be. Dar was to deliver this gift to me, I was to take it up to Atlantic City, attend a meeting with some bigwig vampire, exchange the bribe/gift for the artifact they supposedly didn’t want and were eager to unload, then return home and await pick-up from either Dar or one of Haagenti’s minions.

I was contemplating refusing to allow Haagenti to use Dar to pick up the sword. It would be great fun to have Haagenti tear around at the last moment trying to find a courier willing to cross the lines for him, one that he could trust not to snag the sword and run for the hills. He’d probably also want to find one sufficiently high enough up to smack me around a bit while over here. He was furious that I’d protected Dar from him, and absolutely livid that I kept insisting he direct all his communication through my Steward. That was the sort of thing for those below, and Haagenti was far above me in the hierarchy. Normal protocol would have him delivering messages via his flunkies straight to me, not him personally dealing with my Steward.

Although my Steward was enjoying all the drama, he’d warned me that I was in for a bad time of it as soon as I returned. He strongly advised I immediately take Ahriman up on his offer in the breeding petition, not only to protect myself and my household, but to further put Haagenti’s nose out of joint. I’d thought with satisfaction of Ahriman’s petition, defaced with the dark ink and an angel’s vehement opinion. I’d just have to endure Haagenti’s wrath upon my return because I didn’t plan on accepting Ahriman’s offer. Of course, I didn’t tell my Steward that. It’s always good to keep an alternative on the back burner, just in case things get desperate.

I’d parked in the deck this trip and meandered my way around the mall enjoying some shopping time while Dar anxiously cooled his heels. After adding a few items to my shopping stash, I finally found the gate. It was in the shoe section of Nordstrom’s. I checked out the fall boots and pumps while I looked for the gate guardian. The shoe section was always packed, so it wasn’t easy to pick her out. I was thinking of trying on an awesome pair of royal blue leather platform pumps when I spotted her.

Instead of the gaudily dressed old lady, this time she was a twenty something professional with a nicely tailored grey pants suit and white tank top. As I walked toward her, she swiveled, identifying my race, and honed in for the kill. Checking herself before she’d taken two steps, she paused and frowned in exasperation, then continued to walk toward me at a more leisurely pace, looking me over, top to bottom.

“Go ahead.” She waved toward the gate. “I have no idea if this was supposed to be a onetime thing or not. Typical with these high ups. They give me vague instructions, and I am never sure exactly what they mean. I’m just going to assume you have an eternal pass at this gate to come and go as you please. No more worms though. Just you.”

“I’m not going through.” I showed her the shopping bags. “I’m picking up a few things, and thought I’d stop and see if you wanted lunch.”

She looked at me as if I were insane.

“You stopped by while shopping to ask me to lunch?”

“You do get a lunch break, don’t you? I know your boss is a total slave-driving asshole, but I assume you still get occasional breaks. If not, then you need to think about organizing. There really should be a gate guardian’s union. I’ll bet the Teamsters would fold you guys into their group. Their roles are getting kind of light lately.”

“You want
me
to go to lunch with
you
? Accompany you somewhere and join you in consuming food?”

“Sweet and sour pork?” I had a feeling that might be the magic word. Or magic set of words.

The guardian looked hungrily at me. Actually, she looked like a junkie about to score. Glancing around, she nodded.

“Okay, but I can’t be long.”

I followed her out of the Nordstrom entrance and into the mall, weaving around the racks of shirts and pants. Once into the mall, I moved up to walk abreast so we could chat.

“Do you always assume female forms?” I asked her as we walked through the mall toward the food court at the opposite end. “I’ve never seen you as a man.”

“Trust me,” she replied. “It is so much easier to be female when guarding a gate in a shopping mall. If you’re a male and the gate is in the little girls’ clothing section, or lingerie, or worse, by the kiddy carousel, then mall security is busting you before noon. They all think you’re some kind of pedophile. Heck, even if the gate is in the men’s section, they think you’re a pervert looking to score. It’s so much easier as a female. Females buy stuff for everyone in their family, boyfriends, brothers, kids. Women can spend all day at a mall and no one will suspect them of anything illegal or immoral. No one thinks you’re going to snatch their kid, or peep at them trying on jeans if you’re a female.”

“Makes sense.”

“Yeah, well I had to learn it the hard way. Angels don’t pay any attention to these kinds of subtle details, so we go into these assignments blind and have to stumble around until we learn enough to do our job. The whole time, the Ruling Council reps are down our throats, threatening us every time something goes wrong or a demon gets through. We don’t get to train our replacements either. They switch us around on gates or yank us home and slap a new guardian in here to make the same mistakes all over again.”

“Have you said anything to your boss about this?” I felt sorry for her. No wonder we managed to pop back and forth with relative ease. Fucking management disaster.

“Yeah, my boss is such a warm, benevolent, caring type,” she replied, her voice sarcastic. “He’s part of the Ruling Council. He doesn’t give two cents about my difficulties. I’m just supposed to do my job perfectly, and if I can’t, that’s my fault.”

“He is an arrogant asshole.” I might be obsessed with the guy, but I did recognize his failings.

We walked all the way through the mall to the food court, and stepped up to the vendor selling thick, goopy messes of American-style Chinese food. I got a couple egg rolls and ordered the sweet and sour pork for the guardian. The guy behind the counter frowned at my companion.

“No. I’m not giving you extra sauce. I’m not giving you sweet and sour pork either. You can have fried rice.”

The guardian looked like she were about to vault the counter and perform a smack-down on the guy. I’ve been here over forty years though and I know how to handle these kinds of things. Taking out a fifty, I tossed it at him.

“Give us our order and three sauces and you can keep the fifty as a tip. She’s with me.”

The guy shoved the fifty in his pocket and promptly served up the food as the guardian danced in glee. It was rather disconcerting to see a professional business woman hopping around like that.

We sat down and the gate guardian proceeded to slurp sauce from one of the pint sized soup containers the guy had put it in. The stuff looked disgusting. It was that semi-gelatinous red stuff that is all to do with sweet and nothing to do with sour. Yuck. Sweet and sour sauce was so much better in China where it was brown and actually sour. Now that was something I missed. I hadn’t been in China in over fifty years.

“Gregory tried to fix the brand mark,” I mentioned casually. I really wanted her opinion on it.

She looked confused for a moment. “Oh you mean my boss? His name’s not really Gregory.” She continued to slurp the red sauce, ignoring the chicken nugget looking bits of pork that were supposed to accompany it. “Grigori is what he’s in charge of. He runs the cleanup operation; he’s in charge of the Watchers.”

“What is the Grigori?”

She paused a moment, wiping the red from around her mouth and licking it off of her fingers before stuffing her face into the container again. I reached for a pork nugget and she smacked my hand, flashing her pointy teeth at me. Okay then.

“The original Grigori, the Watchers, were composed mostly of the Tenth Choir of Angels. They were to deliver the gifts of Aaru to the humans so they could begin their evolution toward perfection.”

Tenth Choir? The angels had nine orders, also known as Choirs just as we had nine orders or Circles. When was there ever a tenth one?

“The elves had evolved in accordance with their gifts. We’d considered vampires, but it was decided that they were not worthy. The angels thought that humans would achieve more and be more pure than even the elves were.

I stifled a laugh. The elves were far from pure.

“Of course, you demons disagreed and hadn’t wanted the humans to have the gifts of Aaru. That disagreement plus your vulgar insistence on experiencing a corporeal form to every degree fueled the war. You demons wallow like pigs in the physical, reveling in every filthy nuance of it. You claim
that
is the way toward enlightenment.”

She shuddered in disgust even as she reveled in the filthy delights of her sauce.

“After the war with the demons ended and you were banished from Aaru, the plan went forward to deliver the gifts to the humans. Two high angels were sent along to supervise the Tenth Choir. One was a Seraph. A
Seraph
,” she told me as if I should share in appreciation of this fact that one from the highest order was supervising the event.

She started in on the second container of sauce, glancing around and leaning in as if to impart juicy gossip.

“In order to exist here, we must all assume a corporeal form, but the longer we are flesh, the more we are subject to temptation and sin. Back then, everyone assumed the angels were too strong to fall.”

Her face disappeared for a moment into the container, only to emerge with thick red sauce smeared around her mouth and nose. I think she was getting drunk on the stuff. Her eyes were not focusing well and she was being pretty free with information.

“Disaster.” She slurped a mouthful from the container. “The Watchers were corrupted by the flesh. They revealed secrets of Aaru far beyond what they should have, driving human evolution at a greater speed than they can handle. Plus they took human sexual partners and produced hybrid offspring – the Nephilim.”

She looked disgusted. As if she had room to condemn with her gluttonous consumption of sweet and sour sauce. Then she leaned in even further, looking around as if we might be overheard by someone who cared.

“It went unnoticed for a very long time because the two high ones had also fallen into ways of the flesh. Once all this came to light, the situation had disintegrated to the point that the Ruling Council had the Angels of Vengeance step in.”

She started on the third container after running her tongue around the inside of the second to ensure it was squeaky clean.

“The biggest problem was that the knowledge given to the humans could not be recalled. They are ruined. Maybe they never should have been offered gifts from Aaru at all. Their spirit is too much imbedded in their flesh, and they cannot be expected to rise above it. We should have left them as animals. It’s too late now to do anything about that, so I personally think we should just destroy them all and start over.”

That was pretty harsh. They were the ones who fucked it all up after all. Maybe there should be a clean sweep in Aaru instead. Assholes.

“So where does your boss come in?”

“He is in charge of those who are here trying to correct the problem. The second Grigori. So basically, he is the head Grigori. They watch the evolution of the humans. They normally don’t interfere, but if the humans get too far off their proper evolutionary path, he and the Watchers will wipe them all out.“

I felt chilled. No one should have that kind of authority. Who was he, or this stupid Ruling Council, to judge an entire race of beings? I really wanted to continue this conversation, but her eyes were so unfocused that if she didn’t weigh in on my brand soon, she wouldn’t be able to even see it.

I slid my arm out of my jacket and showed her the tattoo. She looked at it closely and dissolved in laughter. I thought red stuff might come out her nose.

“Oh, that must irritate him so much, that pious, high and mighty, judgmental snob. To have bound himself to a demon. What a total disaster. Such irony.” She smacked her forehead on the table, laughing.

What? He wasn’t the one with the tattoo. What did she mean? She must be totally drunk off gooey sauce and not thinking clearly.