Exodus (Imp Series Book 8) (15 page)

“You always carry a shotgun when harvesting soy?” I asked.

He glared at me. “Yeah. Usually it’s loaded with double-zero buckshot to take out the groundhogs digging up my fields. I’d planned on a bit of dove hunting tonight, so I had birdshot with me instead.”

“So they rolled around, then ran away?” Gregory asked, turning the man’s attention back to him.

“Yeah, except for the two who dropped dead.” He twisted his shirt, brow furrowed as he shot a quick glance at Gregory. “Am I going to hell for that? I mean, how was I supposed to know that birdshot would kill them? Normally it just stings and works its way out of your skin in a few days. Never killed anybody that I’ve heard of. Can I repent? Donate to the Renaissance Fair? I really don’t want to go to hell.”

“No one does,” Gregory said darkly.

I was mildly offended and poked him in the ribs to let him know. I didn’t disparage Aaru. Well, I did, but not to his face as much as I used to. Hel was pretty cool. Not as much fun as it was here, but a close second.

“Where did the other elves go?” The angel asked.

“A few headed back for the highway. Others ran toward the woods over there. I figured they must have their car parked off Mackintosh Road past that tree line.”

“So you shot them, then you called the authorities?” Gregory was really fixated on this calling the authorities thing.

“No, I called my insurance agent.”

Made sense to me, and the angel seemed mollified by the thought of the farmer calling an “agent” even if it wasn’t the sort of agent he was thinking of.

“Think you can work your mojo on the morgue so I can grab the other dead elves?” I asked Gregory. If two dead and blistered elves were a deterrent to immigration, imagine how effective four squashed ones would be?

“Let the humans take care of the remains. We need to find the ones in the woods before more die and word spreads that these aren’t humans dressed up in costumes,” he replied.

“Can you put in a good word for me with the man upstairs,” the farmer asked Gregory, clasping his hands together earnestly. “I didn’t mean to hurt those reenactor guys. I don’t cuss. I go to church…sometimes.”

“Man upstairs?” Gregory looked over toward the farmhouse in confusion. “You’ve been very helpful. I can do that for you. I’ll be sure to tell him of your minimally good deeds.”

I choked back a laugh. Was Gregory lying? Or maybe he really did have a connection with a deity? Either way the angel’s words seemed to satisfy the farmer who thanked Gregory profusely and bowed repeatedly as we walked away.

“He said the trees,” I reminded Gregory as his path began to diverge from mine. “Over there. The elves.”

“I have to tell the man upstairs that the farmer occasionally attends a place of worship,” Gregory told me. “I vowed. Angels don’t break their vows. This will just take a moment.”

“What are you talking about?” Sometimes Gregory’s thought process mystified me.

“Evidently there is a human male residing in the upper part of that house.” The angel pointed toward the white structure, his voice patient. “The farmer is very concerned this man know of his occasional good deeds, and feels I am best suited to deliver that message.”

I stared at him. And then I laughed. “He doesn’t mean some guy in the upper part of his house, he means his god. You’re an angel. You’re supposed to have influence with the deity he worships. He wants you to ensure he goes to a good afterlife once he dies—one with harps and clouds and shit like that.”

“I’ve just vowed to assist that man in attaining a higher vibration level so he ascends after his death?” Gregory looked horrified.

“Yeah. Kinda. Don’t worry about it. Once he’s dead it won’t matter.”

“I vowed,” Gregory insisted.

“Okay then. Guess the farmer is now your pet project.” Better Gregory than me. “Stop by every week or so and meditate with him, help him end world hunger and learn to astral project and stuff like that. It will be fun. Think of it as community service.”

The last was a dig at Gregory’s insistence that I didn’t do my part to raise credit scores of those who were FICO challenged. I felt my threats and punishments were incentive enough to improve debt to income ratios, but the angel believed I should be hosting educational seminars on how to balance checkbooks or something.

Like I had time for that crap. There were brownies and unicorns all over the east coast, drop bears at the South Pole, and mermaids in the Great Lakes, not to mention whatever shit was flying around the Pacific Northwest. Add to that the elven invasion, which was poised to be a whole lots less entertaining than the British Invasion of the ’60s, and Gabe popping in every week to bitch about the state of affairs in war-torn Aaru. I had no time. No time for horseback riding. No time for sunbathing by the pool. Definitely no time for putting together a fifty slide PowerPoint on budgeting and frugal spending.

“I wonder what his credit score looks like?” Gregory drawled. “How much did that combine cost? Bet he might be behind a few payments.”

Oh no. I refused to take on
his
project. There were enough deadbeats in the world without me harassing every person who’d missed a due date. “Schedule your new friend for next Tuesday and let’s go get these elves.”

Gregory smirked, but led the way without further argument. And with a short mile-long walk and a harrowing journey through briars and a thickest patch of poison ivy I’d ever seen, we found them. They were huddled under the trees, trying to pry inch-deep birdshot out of their skin with twigs and arrow tips, moaning and crying like they were dying. Truthfully, none of them looked all too well, with gray flesh dotting the edge of their bloody wounds. I picked up one of the tiny pellets, rolling it around between my thumb and index finger. Steel birdshot. Automobiles. These guys were really going to struggle living here among the humans, and that thought brought me great satisfaction.

“I’m so glad you’re safe,” Gregory announced. Liar. He’d told me earlier it would have been easier if the entire lot of them had been flattened by a tractor-trailer. Seems nothing makes an angel grumpier than taking on the spiritual care of a farmer and tromping through poison ivy. “We’ve waited for millions of years for the elves to rejoin us and assist us in raising the vibration patterns of the humans. Welcome, welcome.”

The elves didn’t look too excited to see him. They’d paused their skin-digging activities to stare at Gregory in absolute horror. A few looked around furtively, as if they were searching for an escape route. There was no escaping an angel, especially this angel. I know. I’d tried before.

“We’re not going back,” one protested. He was less bloody than his friends. No doubt he’d hid behind them when the farmer unloaded the shotgun. “We’re not going back to Hel.”

No, they weren’t. I stared at my phone, incredulous. The message was from Bob telling me that the French elves I’d sent to Hel just yesterday had reappeared and were taking it upon themselves to instruct plein air artists in Bergues. Fuckers were like mice. Catch and release clearly wasn’t working. Not that I thought it would be a long-term plan, but I’d hoped to have more than a twenty-four hour reprieve.

Gregory’s elven rehabilitation facility wasn’t ready. He refused to let me kill them. What the fuck was I going to do with these guys? And while I was pondering that very thing, Gregory was trying to frighten them with his “angel up your ass” speech. I had my doubts as to its effectiveness.

“Of course you’re not going back to Hel! After appropriate cultural and language training, we’ll put you to work with designated angel monitors in human medical and pharmaceutical industries as well as farming and diplomatic endeavors.”

“Or you can go back to Hel
and stay there
,” I added. They’d be right back, but maybe they’d eventually get the idea, especially if they got shot at and run over each time.

“And we angels fully understand if you choose to remain in Hel,” Gregory added, his voice smooth. “Things here have changed dramatically over the last few million years, and you may not feel you have the right skills or proper degree of determination to assist in human evolution. Individually the humans show great promise, but when grouped together they tend toward somewhat demonic behavior.”

“They’re sort of Demons Light,” I chimed in. “They even have their own potent magic, as you’ve just experienced. This isn’t a project for the faint of heart. I recommend you consider staying in Hel.”

“Although the offer to return to Hel will only be made once. If we discover that you’ve ventured here a second time, you’ll need to go to the island for training and occupational therapy.”

That was Gregory trying to resolve the revolving-doorway-to-Hel problem. Not that I believed the sneaky bastards were going to stay on the island, even with angelic hall monitors and special barriers in place.

The elves stared at the angel, then turned to each other.

“I can’t go back to Hel,” a woman spoke up. She was covered in bloody red dots, her left arm swollen the size of a bread loaf with a grayish tint to the flesh. “I have to migrate. Going back would mean I would be landless, kingdomless—an outcast. Going back means failure, starvation, death.”

“None of us are powerful enough to continue the environmental controls,” another, this one male, said. “You’ve seen what’s happening to the areas given to the humans. Those places are all reverting to the natural landscape of Hel. That’s fine for demons, but elves can’t survive in that environment. With the high-elves, the Lords and Ladies gone, we’ll be no better off than the humans or the demon Lows.”

“We were promised special consideration,” an older one chimed in. “We pave the way for life in Nirvana and we’d be granted land, holdings and servants—more than we’d normally get in Hel at our level.”

“Who,” Gregory demanded. “Who promised you?”

The elves squirmed, looking at each other, at the ground, at the sky, anywhere but Gregory. Finally one answered.

“An angel.”

I couldn’t wrap my mind around that one. An angel had dealt with a demon intermediary to make an arrangement with the elves before, but I’d always thought that a one in a million event. Angels generally didn’t come into contact with demons, and they certainly didn’t go to Hel.

Well, except for the one I’d thrown there. Wait… “Did the High Lords speak with the angel directly? Or was there a demon or human go-between?”

“Cockroach, angels don’t go to Hel—”

I cut Gregory off with a wave of my hand, knowing he’d forgotten about the one I’d tossed through the gate at Columbia. Heck, I’d forgotten about him too. Honestly I’d assumed he would have died within a few days of showing up in the land of the demons, but what did I know? Clever bastard may have talked his way into something.

“Through a demon intermediary,” the elf admitted. “None of us have ever seen him, although we were told the High Lords had met with him in person.”

Which meant the High Lords had already crossed the gates at least once to meet with this angel. I frowned. According to Bob, these first groups were scouting parties to test the waters and find the ideal spot for the elves to start their world-domination efforts. I doubted the High Lords would have come over without first making sure it was safe—even if they would only be here for a brief meeting. Which meant this whole thing might be further along than I’d thought.

“Scouts,” I told Gregory. “Remember solitary elves we encountered months ago? They were the ones checking the place out. These guys really are first wave settlers, no matter how ill prepared.”

“Of course.” The one elf straightened his shoulders. “We would never be so barbaric as to send groups of elves here without adequate preparation. We were given information and instructions prior to leaving.”

Bob’s informant hadn’t passed that detail along. So either these elves got their marching orders right before coming through the gateway, or the informant was holding back on us.

Or Bob was the elven equivalent of a double agent. I narrowed my eyes, vowing to keep a closer watch on that elf. Or half-elf.

“What were your instructions?” Gregory asked.

The female elf gulped, casting a quick glance at the angel before returning to her examination of a nearby rock. “There was supposed to be someone here to meet us. He didn’t show and when the metal boxes on wheels killed two of our party, we decided it was too dangerous to wait.”

“We’re supposed to avoid angels and demons,” a younger male spoke up. “Make friends with the humans. We were supposed to approach them in an air of friendship and offer assistance. Help them by using our magic, but try to avoid flashy displays.”

Humble. Helpful. Great. The angels were going to lap this up. Gregory was right. They’d be handing over the humans within a fortnight if the elves took this stance. I didn’t doubt these individuals’ motives, but clearly the instructions they’d been given were lacking—and carefully orchestrated to serve a different purpose than a humanitarian one.

“Help? You fireballed that farmer’s combine. Do you know how much those things cost?” I hadn’t either until a few moments ago. “Probably close to two year’s earnings. Destruction of property isn’t helping.”

The female elf glared. “We saw a monstrous magical beast in the field devouring the crops. We sought to protect the farmer’s field, not damage his property.”

“Well you did damage his property and you could have done a lot worse,” I snapped back. “He was beside that combine. If you had succeeded in setting it on fire or exploding it, you would have killed the human. Killed him. That’s a two hundred page report, you know. I’m not in charge of elves. You’d be filling that fucking report out on your own, because I sure as hell wouldn’t—”

“Cockroach.” Gregory laid a hand on my arm. “These elves meant well, and they are badly injured.”

“We are.” The female choked back tears as she spoke. “Nobody told us the humans had magic missiles that result in injuries from which we can’t heal. We’ll be scarred. Six died.”

I suddenly felt sorry for these elves. Yeah, me, feeling sorry for
elves
.

Gregory reached out to the woman, and with a golden glow, her wounds disappeared, creamy unmarred skin where the necrotic flesh had previously been. “Cockroach, we can’t send these elves back to Hel and we can’t let them wander around here among the humans, ignorant of combines and speeding vehicles. You’ll have to keep them at your house.”