Satan's Sword (Imp Book 2) (31 page)

“I don’t really know what happened,” I confessed. “I’m not even a thousand years old, and we don’t really talk about it. I would have thought all you guys would have been thrilled to be done with us though.”

“The war took a toll on us.” Eloa paused to take a drag on the joint and pass it back. “Our two races may have differences, but a total split like this was painful. Friends, families broken apart, entire choirs fractured. We don’t even know what happened to those we knew before the war. There has been no communication since that point. Are they dead? Do they care anymore? Have they descended so far into evil that we wouldn’t recognize them if we saw them?”

The bartender sat two more vodkas in front of her. She pushed one over to me with a slightly distracted look on her face.

“Some wonder if the things that broke us apart were worth it. You all got exile, but I think we probably got the worse end of the stick. Aaru is not the same. It’s stagnant there. Our evolution has dropped to a crawl.”

“Do you think your Tsith regrets the war, wishes things had gone down differently?” I held my breath. Her answer meant a lot to me.

“Tsith led the charge into battle. He commanded the army, was one of those who advocated holding firm on our morals and values, who insisted that the demons either repent or die. He lost his youngest brother in the war, his favorite.”

Fuck. I remembered him telling me about his youngest brother. The one he’d played in the lightning with, the one he loved the most. Dead. Something tightened up inside me at the thought.

“He was in hand-to-hand combat with the Iblis that final battle of the war. They nearly killed each other. He sliced the Iblis practically in half but not before he’d had his wings torn to shreds, almost cut off.”

I winced. Wings for us are just an appendage. For angels, they are their most vulnerable spot. They seldom display them in corporeal form if they can avoid it.

Eloa shuddered. “You don’t normally survive losing your wings. He still has terrible scars.”

I wasn’t sure if she meant scars on his wings, or other scars. Probably both. My heart sank further. He wouldn’t regret what happened between our races. Not if he was one of the main drivers of the war. He’d lost his brother in the war, had his wings nearly severed. He’d never feel anything but hate for me. He’d never see me as anything more than an abomination, never anything more than a lowly cockroach.

“It’s been two and a half million years and there hasn’t been any attempt at reconciliation?” Gregory might never forgive or forget, but surely the other angels wouldn’t have such wounds.

“There is no Iblis. Right after the exile, the title was lost and no one bears it. Who would we contact? The Iblis is the sole demon who is allowed access into Aaru. The Iblis has a seat on the Ruling Council. The entire treaty was set up to allow some form of contact and mutual cooperation in matters concerning us both, but instead there has been a total split. The seat on the council remains empty, and increasingly there are those that think total separation is best and the seat for the Iblis should be wiped from the treaty.”

I drank the vodka and stared at the bar. I thought of Gregory, his dead brother at his feet, his wings in tatters, meting out fury upon a horned, scaled Iblis. Images of war were normally pleasant, but this one churned my stomach. The whole conversation was making me depressed. And I’d had such a good evening, too. Stupid fucking angel with her stories of the war.

“Well, it’s been nice chatting with you.” I abruptly rose and threw a twenty on the bar. I needed to get away from here, away from her, away from the sick feeling in my middle. She looked at me in surprise. I could feel her eyes on me as I left the bar.

Kelly was waiting for me at the hotel lobby. The polite mask was on her face, but she was clearly furious. The sight cheered me up considerably.

“Baal, we are so glad you are safe.” Her tone didn’t sound glad. “When you did not return after your hunt, we tracked you and were quite concerned when we saw the carnage in the warehouse.”

“I’m good,” I assured her. “Hey do you guys have any Nacho Cheese Doritos? I seriously need some Nacho Cheese Doritos right now.”

The muscle in her jaw twitched. In fact, even her eye twitched a bit at the edge.

“We had an understanding,” she hissed. “One kill. One. You’ve destabilized the power structure of a major drug operation, one that makes us a lot of money. It will be neigh impossible to prop them up before a rival group jumps in. We had control, we had cooperation, and you’ve destroyed all that. One night, and you’ve destroyed a decade’s worth of work.”

Yeah, and I knew her secret, too. Little traitor. Little snake in the grass. Embezzler, siphoning funds from her family’s interests. I admired her, but she was reaching too far, too fast.

“How about Cool Ranch? If you don’t have Nacho Cheese Doritos, then maybe Cool Ranch will do.”

“And that freakish, sick thing you did with the bodies? I had to send in vampires to deal with it. It was too much for my humans to handle. Now other vampires know. They know that I allowed you to get out of control. I’ll be blamed for this whole fiasco.” Her smile was downright frightening at this point. An insane looking grimace on her heart-shaped face.

“It was a work of art,” I said, with a flourish of my hand. “I hope they enjoyed it, appreciated how much of myself I put into it.”

“An
angel
was there. Eloa probably. I have never lost a guest to an angel. The only saving event this evening is that he didn’t catch up with you or you’d be dead and my reputation would be in even greater shambles.”

“Oh, but he did. Or she did,” I corrected myself. “He looked like a pouty Marilyn Monroe. We went out to a bar, drank vodka, and smoked pot.”

Kelly audibly ground her teeth. At least that macabre smile was gone from her face.

“Are you sure you don’t have any Nacho Cheese Doritos?” I asked again. “I think I saw some in one of the vending machines if you don’t.”

Kelly snapped. Fangs shot down so fast that they actually cut her lip.

“I am going to shove Doritos so far up your rear that you’ll be coughing them up for a week,” she shouted, punctuating her words with a finger on my chest. Vampires
were
strong; I could feel her finger actually bruising me.

“I am going to cram Doritos in every hole. I’ll jam them clean up through your sinuses and into your brain. I’ll make
new
holes in your body to stuff them. You screwed me. You totally screwed me.”

At this point, every two-legged being in the lobby had stopped and was staring at Kelly. I noticed Stephen with a smug look on his face. Guess that promotion was looking better for him.

“Sounds like fun,” I said. “Just send the Doritos up to my room and meet me up there. Wyatt might be interested in some Doritos-in-the-ass action, too. I don’t want to leave him out.”

I walked out of the silent lobby and headed straight to my room. Things were probably going to go down real fast from this point forward, and I needed to find Wyatt and tell him the score.

Wyatt was a big lump of covers in the bed as I walked in. I seriously needed to talk to him about his sleeping habits. He slept so soundly that an explosion wasn’t likely to wake him. He was going to get himself killed if he didn’t alter that habit. To help make my point, I ran across the room and launched myself on top of him, finding only a pile of pillows and blankets. Maybe he wouldn’t get himself killed after all. I swung my head upside down over the edge of the bed to look under it, suspecting he might be sleeping there. Thankfully he wasn’t. It looked like no one had cleaned under the bed in months. I’d need to talk to Kelly about this. If Kelly was still alive, that is.

“Sam? It’s about time you got back,” Wyatt’s groggy voice said from the closet. “I got bumped out of the tournament fairly early on. Looks like you had a good night,” he added seeing my blood and gore stained clothing.

“I had such a good night that we are going to need to put our sneak-out plan into action.” I walked over to kiss him.

“Whoa, you really did have a good night. You reek of pot. Was that part of the spoils of war?”

“Nope. So don’t try to hit me up for any. I shared a joint with an angel after killing off most of the management of a local drug empire. There was a bit of a scene downstairs with that Kelly girl, so I strongly suspect they’ll move up my meeting with the master guy and kick us out before daybreak.”

Wyatt looked regretfully around at our clothing. “Ah. Just the essentials in a bag as we planned?”

“Yeah, except I’m going to try and walk out the door as the tall blond. There’s no way Haagenti’s people are going to let me leave this casino, so I’m going to see if I can sneak out.”

Wyatt looked concerned. “Won’t they sense your energy? I thought you guys all recognized each other?”

“I don’t leak,” I told him. “And my physical form is damned near perfect. It’s probably a fifty-fifty chance that they won’t recognize me, but it’s the best I’ve got.”

I grabbed a pair of jeans and a bright red oxford shirt, throwing another pair of jeans and a plain white t-shirt in Wyatt’s small duffle with my license, cash, cell phone, and the box of elf blood. Then I raced for the shower. I wanted to be clean for my meeting. I was towel drying my hair when I heard Wyatt answer the door.

“Ten minutes, Sam,” he hollered, throwing a bag of Doritos in the bathroom door at me. Nacho Cheese.

I ignored the Doritos and put on my clothes, piling the wet hair in a pony tail and forgoing make-up. It’s not like I needed to impress this guy. The whole meeting was just a formality. He says ”Hi,” I hand over elf blood, we make small talk for two minutes, and then off I go, empty handed.

I grabbed my duffle and tossed Wyatt the car keys.

“You need to take good care of my Corvette. No scratches, I don’t even want to see drool on the steering wheel. If I’m not there in one hour, go ahead like we planned.”

He met me at the door and kissed me. It was one of those kisses like someone’s afraid they won’t see you again.

“Stop it,” I told him. “I’m a cockroach and we must have a dozen lives or something. Don’t get all soppy on me, I’ll be there.”

“You better be,” he said, his voice husky. “Otherwise I’m going to drop your car into the Chesapeake Bay. On purpose.”

That was proper motivation. I gave him a quick kiss and followed Mario into the elevator.

Chapter 25

M
ario led me into what appeared to be a long, narrow study. The door where we entered was at one end. At the other was a large, ornate, dark wood desk with an equally ornate chair behind it. The wall behind the desk was bare, no doubt so there was nothing to distract your attention from the man in the chair. A couple of guest seats were angled in front of the desk. To the left, a couch sat with a coffee table in front of it. To the right, a series of built-in bookshelves, filled with books, pictures, and knickknacks. Mario and I were the only ones in the room.

“So what do I call this guy?” I asked Mario. “I’m assuming he has a name. Bob? Phil?”

“You can call him Master,” Mario said definitively.

Yeah, like that was going to happen. I looked around, and was rather surprised when Mario left. He actually left me alone here to wait for this guy? Shouldn’t he be worried that I’d take off with the silver, or go through the desk drawers or something?

It was absolutely silent in the room. I was starting to get bored, so I went and looked over the items on the bookshelf. There was an eclectic mix of books. Some beautiful leather-bound classics. Philosophy, a very old Bible, and an equally old copy of Pilgrim’s Progress. A handful of modern paperbacks and some worn children’s picture books. These books had been read, and I assumed they meant something to their owner.

The pictures were equally intriguing. A beautiful black-and-white of cliffs overlooking the ocean, and one of fields of wheat, bent in the breeze. One of a little boy with dark hair and grey eyes, his mouth turned slightly up at the edges like he found life infinitely amusing. It had to have been Kyle as a child; the resemblance was too striking to have been otherwise. There was only one reason I could think of for a man to have a picture of a little boy in his personal study.
Yes, Kyle is a bad, bad boy
, I thought with amusement.

My host had still not arrived, so I turned my attention to the knickknacks on the shelves. Beautiful woven rush baskets, so tiny they fit on my fingertips like little thimbles, were next to the old Bible. Beside the picture of Kyle was an old wooden top, its string frayed and its paint chipped. I handled a piece of hemp rope with wonder. What significance could it hold for the owner? These were clearly all very personal objects with great meaning. What an intriguing man to have so much of himself out on display like this, even if it was his personal study. Did he needed reminders of his past? Something to anchor him to lost humanity in a very long vampire life? But then, this man was born a vampire. There were no roots of humanity to remember. Perhaps they were to remind him of what he’d never had.

I was just about to turn away when I saw the egg. I’ve seen a lot of eggs in my years. Intricate jeweled ones, sugar ones with little edible scenes inside their hollowed-out shells, and actual bird eggs, warm and colorful. This was the most beautiful egg ever. I caught my breath and picked it up, running my fingers across its surface. It was a kind of metal. I couldn’t tell what, and I probed it with all my might. The surface was covered with little symbols and letters, none of which combined to form any language I was aware of. A metal egg with raised symbols shouldn’t hold this much fascination for me, but it was hard to put it down. I desperately wanted to stick it in my pocket and steal it. It would be kind of obvious walking out of here with a huge bulge in my jeans pocket so I reluctantly put it back on the shelf and sat down on the couch. There was a glass candy dish with what appeared to be bits of beef jerky in it, so I helped myself.

As usual, I had my mouth stuffed full of jerky when my host walked in. I could feel him the moment he opened the door, his power rolling before him like a wave. I jumped up and vaulted the coffee table to shake his hand, swallowing the poorly chewed stuff and choking slightly.