Exodus (Imp Series Book 8) (11 page)

Which made me think this elf might be of use after all. He might not be able to start fires with a point of his finger, but he was smart, and knew how to toe the line to stay reasonably close to my good side. Besides, if I wanted a fire, Little Red was right under my dining room table.

“This is Bob.” I waved a hand toward the elf.

“He’s a half-elf.”

Bob winced at Gregory’s observation. Evidently elves
and
angels could detect the human portion.

“Yes. And Bob has volunteered to be my spy. He has contacts in Hel that will alert him when groups are transporting and where they’re going to. I go snatch up the elves and take them back to Hel. Tada! No more elves.”

Gregory folded his arms across his chest and raised his eyebrows. “You do realize that they’ll just keep coming back. Do you expect to spend the rest of your life catching elves and transporting them back to Hel?”

Everyone kept telling me this. “I don’t have a better idea. It’s not like you’d let me kill them, so the round-up-and-deport plan is the one I’m going with. Anyway, Bob is from Klee and in return for his help, he asks that the Klee elves be allowed to live here among the humans, co-exist peacefully.”

“No.”

Well, that was definitive. “Just the Klee elves. It’s not like I’m wanting all three hundred thousand. Klee is only five thousand elves max. They’ll blend in with the humans. No one will notice.”

Gregory sighed. “Someone will eventually notice, and then the other angels will find out. No. We can’t allow elves to live here. We can hide the presence of one or two, explain it away as a few who’d left Hel on their own. We won’t be able to hide an entire Kingdom of them.”

I shot a quick glance at Bob. “Okay, but Klee elves sometimes marry and have children with the humans in Hel. Their children have a right to be here. And their children’s children as well. And so on.”

The angel looked to my ceiling. I held my breath waiting for him to counter my argument.

“Okay.”

“Huh?” I couldn’t have heard that right.

“I agree, Cockroach. And that pains me as much as it pained you to agree with me earlier. If they are part human, than they have a right to be here. How I’m going to eventually explain that to the other angels, I don’t know, but they should have the opportunity to live among the humans if they choose.”

Bob and I both exhaled.

“But—” Gregory waved a stern finger in my face “—how are these half-elves going to co-exist among the humans? Give me some examples of how you intend to integrate them? Do they understand the languages and laws? Do they have abilities that will translate into careers here?”

I had no fucking idea. And how was this once again
my
problem?

Bob shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “We do know some human languages. The Klee have had gateways in areas that have brought us exposure to six different dialects. Elves have a gift for this sort of thing and we’ll easily learn. Plus we’ve been told that humans don’t know every language on their planet either. They know one or two and rely on magical devices and others’ knowledge to assist them in communicating.”

Gregory nodded, shifting his focus to the half-elf. “And jobs? Do you know how to buy a bus ticket? What to do if a man points a gun at you? What a gun even looks like?”

“We’ve heard many tales of human culture and life, but there will be a learning curve on our part.” Bob wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead.

The angel shook his head. “There has to be more. We can’t just place a few hundred half-elves here and expect them to get by with the small bit of knowledge and skills they have.”

“I agree.” Shit, this was beginning to be a thing. “Identification, backgrounds—all that will need to be coordinated. They’ll need some funding to get them started. Preliminary housing, job training, someone to teach them how to work the toaster.”

We all silently contemplated the enormity of the task before us. As if we didn’t already have enough shit on our plate.

“What’s a toaster?” Bob asked.

T
hey’re coming!”

I practically jumped out of my physical form at Bob’s words. The elf moved silently, and I hadn’t even heard him come into the house.

Shaking off the sleep and pulling myself upright from the couch where I’d been napping, I noticed that my Fallen, Nils, was right behind the elf. Then I looked frantically around for Nyalla, remembering after a moment that she’d gone out with friends.

“Where?” Monosyllabic replies were about all I could manage right now. Ugh, I hated being abruptly woken up.

Bob rattled off a string of numbers that meant nothing to me. I looked from him to Nils helplessly.

“Coordinates,” the angel announced, heading toward my laptop. With a few taps of a finger, he’d blown through my password and had pulled up something on the browser. “Coordinates to a place in Iceland, to be exact.”

Damn. Just when I was really enjoying my nap too. I made my way over to where the two were huddled over my computer, wishing that one of them would go make a pot of coffee, or at the very least get me a beer.

Iceland. First stop in the elven exodus.

Bob squinted at the map Nils had pulled up on my laptop. “Yep, that’s the spot, although I don’t understand why forest elves would want to go to a place of ice.”

I shrugged, feeling more awake. Glaciers and volcanic geo-thermal activity in the same place? Sounded pretty awesome to me. “I’m sure there are forests somewhere. Can’t all be ice and naturally created hot-tubs.”

“It’s not.” Nils pulled up a few pictures, and I leaned close, elbowing Bob out of the way.

“A mountainous lava desert,” I exclaimed. “Half the island is When Lava and Glaciers Collide. Why am I not living there?”

Nils scrolled down farther on the page. “Looks like about twenty percent is pasture for grazing. There used to be a lot of forests, and from what this article says they’re trying to reestablish them.”

I shot Bob a questioning look. “Do you think the elves are working off an old map? Like a twelve hundred year old map, and they think the forests are still there?”

“Maybe. Although if the climate and terrain is right, we can accelerate growth and reforest within a decade, maybe less. This might be ideal, actually. This way the elves can pick which trees they want without having to take down much of the existing growth.” Bob sighed. “It’s not a simple matter taking down trees. Each one has a soul. Each one is a sacrifice that must be removed with ceremony. It’s important that our sacred forests not be tainted with murder.”

I snorted. It was still murder, if you considered chopping down a tree to be murder. We demons weren’t overly concerned with killing anything—sentient or not—so I was probably not in a position to be sympathetic to the elves angst over tree removal.

“Pull up the map again so I can see exactly where I’m supposed to go.”

Nils complied and I eyed the dot that would put me smack in the middle of a national park. “Satellite image?” I asked. It paid to have an idea of what things looked like, otherwise I tended to be somewhat disoriented upon arrival. Besides, it was nice to know if I was going to materialize in the middle of a busy street or a lake.

Nope. This should be easy-peasy. With any luck, I’d be back on the couch napping in fifteen, tops.

“Got it. Now, out of the house in case Nyalla gets back,” I ordered the two. I watched them file out, then transported myself. It was better to do this alone. I didn’t want to blow Bob’s cover, and I’d hardly need Nils or anyone else to round up a handful of elves and send them back to Hel.

As soon as I arrived, I realized the error of my thinking. There were six elves, all still dressed in their traditional attire. They appeared to be enjoying a noontime meal with a group of tourists who were whispering in hushed tones and taking pictures with their cell phones. The elves were chatting amongst themselves, looking rather smug about the situation.

“All right. Vacation’s over. Time to go back to Hel,” I announced, clapping my hands.

They jumped to their feet, bread, cheese and little plastic cups of wine flying. The humans spun about, their comments becoming louder as they began taking pictures of me. Normally I’m not sought after for impromptu photo shoots, but this particular time I had my wings out.

The elves scattered. I chased them—well tried to chase them. It was hard to get away from the tourist paparazzi who were saying something that sounded like they planned on gargling dogs. One tried to hand me a sandwich—which I took. I might be on a mission to catch these elves, but I wasn’t about to turn down a sweet ham and Swiss on rye.

After quite a bit of running around, I managed to grab the elves one at a time, locking them in one of the tourist’s cars and watching with amusement as they tried to escape. Idiots. I was about to attempt to teleport the whole lot—car and all—to Hel when the police showed up. Normally I would have ignored them but they were pointing pepper spray at me and I was trying to be a kinder and gentler Angel of Chaos.

“Elves.” I pointed to the car where several of said beings had their faces smashed against the glass. They were yelling something but the car was remarkably sound proof. Six elves in a car was a lot, especially those tiny European-style cars. The elves began to beat their fists against the dash and windows and the vehicle rocked back and forth. I kind of hoped it would tip over.

“The Hidden,” one of the officers corrected me in perfect English. “Why are you keeping them in that car?”

I was pretty sure something about “elf” had gotten lost in translation. “They’ll kill you,” I announced dramatically. “Or at the very least enslave you and eat all of your ham and Swiss on rye.”

“They’re peaceful unless you’ve disrupted their homes, and even then I’ve never heard of a case where one killed somebody.”

Huh? There must be a language issue here, or some other sort of misunderstanding. He was acting like elves running around their parkland was a normal occurrence.

“Elves.” I spelled it out for him just to make sure he got what I was saying. “Elves. They’re not nice. They want to take over and enslave you. I’m just going to take these guys back to Hel. Don’t mace me, okay?”

He scowled. “No, that’s not ‘okay.’ Why are you harassing them? And what gives you the right to take them away?” He eyed my wings as if he suspected they might be fake.

I flapped them, extending them so the officers could admire their giant, black-feathered glory. “I’m an angel.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t seem very angelic.”

Well, of course not. “I’m an Angel of Chaos. It’s a type of angel, so technically I
am
an angel.”

Another car pulled up, skidding to a stop. The officer closest to me narrowed his eyes. “I don’t care what sort of angel you are, you’re not taking our Hidden. They won’t harm us if we respect their land. And a few sandwiches are no real sacrifice when it comes to keeping a good relationship with the Hidden.”

A man ran toward us, his suit jacket flapping open. “Stop,” he announced breathlessly. “You can’t take them away. London has a dragon, and now we have a community of Hidden willing to live in the open and interact with us. It will be excellent for tourism.”

“No, it will not. And they’re not Hidden, they’re elves.”

The man squinted at the closest one. “They’re rather tall for elves. Hidden are human sized. Elves are only about half of a meter.”

Where the fuck had he seen miniaturized elves? Admittedly they tended to average about six inches shorter than modern humans, but eighteen inches tall? Had they gotten hit with a shrink ray or something?

“Well Hidden or elves, they don’t belong here. They need to go back to Hel.”

Eventually I needed to find a better solution. Throwing these elves back to Hel would only delay the inevitable. And catching six was a whole lot easier than it would be catching thousands at once.

“Norway has ogres and trolls. It’s not fair that they get these elves too!” the man protested bitterly.

Oh for fuck’s sake. “We took care of those ogres and trolls in Norway. Besides, they weren’t a tourist attraction. They smelled bad and ate their livestock. Some poor guy still has a Volvo stuck twenty feet up in a tree where one of the trolls threw it. And the damage to the bridges was horrific. You can’t compare elves to trolls.”

“Well then let Norway have three and we’ll keep the other three.”

This whole conversation had derailed, and I had no idea how a discussion about me taking elves away and his officers not dousing me with pepper spray had turned to tourism and a completely different country. “What does Norway have to do with any of this?”

“You said you wanted to return them to Hel. They belong here. They came here and chose us. We have a long history of respect toward the Hidden and all the fae. We’re very careful not to disturb their homes. This is the perfect place for them.”

“Yeah until they enslave you all and take your houses and property.”

He made a pfft noise. “They will do no such thing.”

“Oh yes they will. Seriously. One came over to the U.S., broke into someone’s house and held the family hostage. When the police came he showed them a fake deed and swore the house was his and that the humans had somehow transferred with the property like the lawnmower and dishwasher. That dude is still in jail.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “That’s because Americans don’t know how to treat the Hidden like we do. They probably blasted his rock-home to make way for a highway, then shot at him with all their guns. We wouldn’t do such things. And we would never presume to lock one up in jail.”

“You would if he started living in your house and told your wife she needed to sleep in the garage from now on.”

He hesitated at that. “Elves live under rocks, not in houses.”

I was getting frustrated, arguing with these folks. “
These
elves live in houses. In forests. They’ll pick out the best spot, super-grow a bunch of trees, bring over all their friends. Next thing you know they’re knocking down
your
houses to make way for their elven highways and shooting at you with all of their arrows and fireballs. Trust me, these are some arrogant, selfish motherfuckers. You don’t want them here. If you really want a tourist attraction, I’ve got a little red dragon, just like the one in London only smaller. With all the mountains and volcanic shit, this place would be perfect for him. If you want, I’ll bring him right over. He can stay for six months. No charge. Just thank me when the tourist money starts rolling in.”