Exodus (Imp Series Book 8) (22 page)

Juan winced. I hoped reparations could include them doing my reports for me. And maybe giving me some passes to the nightclub. I’d had a blast last time I’d come with Wyatt, but hadn’t been invited back. It all made me feel slighted. As if the vampires didn’t like me or something.

“We didn’t actually kill two,” Juan said. “This one is obviously dead, although as I mentioned before we have some of him left if you’d like to take that. The other one is…still alive. Sort of.”

Sort of alive. I’d take that.

“So? Let me see her. If she’s sort-of enough alive, then I’ll take her and your promise not to harm the other elves and we’ll call it even.”

Juan thought for a second, then nodded. The female vampire grumbled under her breath and went to a back room. When she returned, she was dragging a bloody hunk of flesh across the floor. It had long blond hair that had been undone from its intricate braids and was matted with dirt and blood. The vampire tossed the elf body down in front of me. I was completely shocked when she looked up at me, her eyes wild with fear.

“What did you do to her?” I could see what they’d done, but I wanted to hear them say it.

“Drank. All of us. At once.” The female vampire smirked. “We wanted to save her for later, kind of like an endless buffet. I wonder how long she would have lasted?”

No long by my reckoning. The elf was covered with bites, a few of them partially healed. Evidently the mass vampire attack had overcome her ability to heal her wounds fully. What did elves do to spur their healing? Eat? Sleep? Probably get the fuck away from vampires.

“So fifty elves at your house are off limits,” Juan mused. “What about other elves. There have been rumors…and you can’t very well claim them all. If there’s an elf roaming by our club and there’s no demon mark on him or her, then we’re saying that’s our elf.”

Fair enough. The elves who planned on migrating here and enslaving humans better know that there was another race of beings they needed to watch out for.

“Next time we’ll be prepared,” Lysile spat out. “Next time we’ll have weapons and spells ready. Next time it will be
your
decapitated heads on our floor.”

The vampires snarled and I stepped between them, my arms outstretched. “Whoa, whoa. You all can reenact the Hatfields and the McCoys later. Right now I’m taking this elf with me, and I have your word the elves on my property will be safe.”

Juan nodded and after a few moments the female vampire did also. “Mark them,” he warned. “Otherwise I can’t guarantee my vampires will hold back.”

I wasn’t marking forty four—now forty three—elves, but I agreed. It would be just one more incentive for the elves to stay put. Metal boxes of death, and now fast, fanged vampires. I walked forward and helped Lysile up.

“Swyllia. Bring him too.” She gasped.

No fucking way. I was not teleporting a head, with or without the body, home. Yuck. And even if I did, Boomer would just eat it.

“He’s dead. The same with the four hit by trucks on the highway and the two who died from the shotgun wounds. This isn’t Hel. Stop thinking you know what the fuck you’re doing and listen. Otherwise the rest of you are going to wind up dead as well

Not necessarily a bad thing. I gripped her arm, wincing at the torn clothing and bloody bite marks all over her. And then I teleported us home.

I
overshot the kitchen by a few feet and wound up just inside the dining area, which pissed me off. I didn’t want Telly’s mom bleeding on my hardwood floors. Tile was so much easier to clean up, although blood in the grout was a pain in the ass.

Lysile groaned and slid from my hand to the floor. I grabbed a knife out of the block and started to cut her clothing off her, appalled at the number and depth of bites.

“Sam? Oh Lady above, what happened to her?”

It was Nyalla. I spun around, torn between my need to keep this elf woman alive and my excitement at seeing my girl again.

“You’re back!” Excitement won over. What can I say? I’m an imp. “I thought you were mad at me.”

I wasn’t sure how long she’d be gone. I wasn’t sure even after the elves left if she’d return. I didn’t fully understand it, but evidently my being forced into having the elves here was seen as a betrayal of her.

“No I’m not mad.” She smiled sheepishly. “I’m scared. The elves…I keep thinking they’re going to grab me and take me back to Hel, that I’ll never see you again, that this life was just a short reprieve from an eternity as a slave. Having them here scares me. Bob was bad enough, but forty-four others? I…I just can’t.”

I grabbed her and hugged her, ignoring the bloody elf on the floor as well as the huge butcher knife in my hand. “Oh, Nyalla. They will never take you back. I swear on all the souls I used to Own that the elves will never have you again. You’re mine, and I protect what’s mine. Any elf that lays a hand on you will die. That I guarantee.”

I felt her nod against my shoulder then pull away. “I’m going to try to stay here. I’ve faced a lot of fears in the last few years. This is just one more fear that I need to face.”

Wonderful. “How about facing them now.” I gestured to the elf on the floor. “The vampires got her. They killed one of her companions, and I think damn near drained her dry. She’s not healing.”

Nyalla took the knife from my hand and walked over, kneeling down next to the woman. I wasn’t positive of her intentions at first and got worried that I might have to explain to Telly how his mom survived a vampire attack only to be killed by a human with a knife. Then she started to cut the shreds of clothing from Lysile, gently tugging at strips where the dried blood had glued them to the wounds.

“Some water, Sam?”

I poured water in a jug and grabbed a roll of paper towels, and went to work. The woman moaned and her eyes flickered, but she stayed unconscious as we cleaned her up.

Lysile was a mess. I’d seen pit-fighting dogs that looked better. Each bite had a huge swollen bruised area around it, as if the vampires hadn’t been particularly careful when feeding from her. She was pale—too pale.

“I think the shows on television would be recommending an IV with a few pints of blood and some antibiotics,” Nyalla commented.

I didn’t have an IV or blood, or antibiotics. “She needs an angel.”

I was an angel. Correction, I was a fairly shitty angel. But along with the black feathery wings came the ability to heal. Not as well as Gregory, but probably better than the human doctors. It’s not like we could take her to the hospital. As much as the elves might hate the thought of me healing them, I was probably Lysile’s only choice besides death at this point.

The times Gregory had healed me, he’d kissed me, so that was my procedure. Whatever. It worked, and it freaked out my patients—especially when I added some tongue into the mix.

It didn’t freak out this elf. She was so far gone that the experience was like kissing a cold, long-dead corpse. I poured my energy into her, feeling her body shift and her skin warm. By the time I was done, I was exhausted, and the elf was still unconscious.

“Sam, we can’t have her sleep outside like this.” Nyalla’s voice had a hint of a tremble to it, and I knew how difficult it had been for her to say such a thing.

“Where do you want to put her?” I wasn’t about to propose somewhere. It was better to let Nyalla decide what level of elf-contact she was comfortable with.

She bit her lip, wiping her hands on her pants. “My room. I’ll take the couch until she’s better.”

She’d better be fully healed in the next few days, because I wanted this elf on the speed train to Elf Island with the rest of them. No way was I putting up with yet another long-term guest. Bob was enough of a bother, and he was sleeping in the stables right now.

“My room,” I told Nyalla. “I’ll be the one taking the couch. Do you think you can help me get her up there?”

She bobbed her head and between us we managed to carry Lysile up the stairs and into my bed. Once downstairs, I realized our dilemma. “You know her son is out there camping, worried sick that she’s dead. He’ll want to see her. It’s possible that the other elves will want to see her too.”

Nyalla took a deep breath. “One at a time. Only one in the house at a time.”

I hugged her. Because that was one more elf than she’d been able to tolerate a few days ago.

W
hat do you mean it’s not ready yet?” I was at the end of my rope with these elves. It’s not like
I
could put together a shielded island with Grigori tutors and the means for sustaining life on my own, let alone in a few days. But Gregory…I’d expected him to pull this rabbit out of a hat with no effort at all, and I was frustrated that it wasn’t happening as fast as I’d wanted.

“It’s almost ready, Cockroach. I don’t want to take these elves there and not have adequate food and shelter for them. The goal isn’t to throw them into a primitive world, but to teach them to live among the humans. That means modern communication systems, the ability for monetary transfers like in banks and ATMs, commerce using human money, and human means of conveyance.”

“They’ll burn up in a car,” I warned.

“Not all cars. Ones with carbon fiber, or aluminum, or carefully shielded steel are fine. They’ll need to learn how to recognize and avoid certain metals too. Things like parking meters or certain tools are going to be a problem.”

No shit. “When? When, Asshole? Because I’ve got the county breathing down my neck, giving me citations for gatherings over twenty people without proper permitting, and a zoning violation for running a campground illegally. And if that’s not enough, I caught a vampire sneaking around yesterday. I called Juan, but he insists the vamp isn’t one of his. We lost one elf to those fanged motherfuckers already. I don’t want to lose any more. And I don’t want a war on my property when the elves start to fight back.”

“How is Lysile?” Gregory nodded toward the stairway. The elf woman had slept for nearly fourteen hours and was now eating like a bear coming out of hibernation. She still had marks that I wasn’t sure would ever fully heal, but at least she was warm again with a pink tint to her skin that hadn’t been there the night before.

“She’s better. But the county zoning—”

“If anyone can wiggle out of zoning and permitting regulations, it’s you,” Gregory interrupted. “You’ve done it for years with your rental properties, and you’ve been pretty successful at avoiding citations at the Ruling Council level too. You’ll do fine.”

Right. I had managed to avoid the worst fines with my rental properties, although some asshole at the state level was still trying to fine me hundreds of dollars for non-compliance with lead testing and registration bullshit. Fuck him. And fuck his laws too.

“As I remember, avoiding citations from the Ruling Council wasn’t one of my strong points. I spent quite a lot of time naked and restrained in Aaru,” I reminded him.

He smirked. “Not nearly enough.”

Yeah, having him by me was one of the perks of my jail time in Aaru. And the last few incarceration periods, we’d passed the time by having lots of sex. Angel sex, since I had no body during my punishment, but still sex.

I’d miss that. As much as I complained about wanting to have physical sex with him, I’d grown to love the angel equivalent. Yes, we could do it here, but one of us needed to keep a toe-hold in the physical world in order to not die. And sex was far more fun when both parties could perform with abandon, without worries about shredding our spirit selves into nothingness.

“Back to the elves—when is this island going to be ready?”

Gregory sighed. “Give me two more days.”

I grumbled. I didn’t have two more days. Thankfully now that Nyalla had brought Boomer back, I had two hybrids to patrol the perimeters of my property. Neither my hellhound nor Diablo were fond of vampires, it seems. And Little Red seemed to like the elves well enough to defend them—although I’d needed to specify that defense was to be only against the vampires and not the county officials or the neighbors—both of whom were prowling around my property today and taking pictures.

I wondered if it was against my zoning to have a dragon? I
was
zoned agricultural, after all.

“Okay. Just hurry the fuck up.”

Gregory smiled and tugged at a strand of my hair. “As fast as an archangel can work, my dear. And how is my demon army coming along?”

“About as fast as your island,” I grumbled. Actually, I had no idea. I’d tried to communicate with my household a few times, but the Lows seemed unable to properly work the communication mirrors and all I got was a series of shouts, yells, and a noise that sounded like they were rubbing body parts against the mirror. Blech. I’d need to go back and see if any of them were able to scare up a decent army in the last day. And check on how my dwarven weapons were coming along.

“Excellent!” Gregory clapped his hands together, my sarcasm going right over his head. “How many legions should I expect? I suppose you’ve chosen mainly war demons? Although a dozen or so imps would be a useful cadre. No sloth demons, I hope.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him I might have a dozen Lows, a couple Imps, and a war demon or two if any of them were available. Legions? I didn’t even know how many demons that was supposed to be.

“Yes. Probably four legions at least. I kept away from Ancients thinking they’d just be trouble and kept to greed and war demons as well as those skilled in the sin of pride. Bragging rights, you know.”

I could never lie to Gregory. His dark eyes stared into mine. “So five? I’m guessing you’ll be bringing five Lows.”

“Maybe a dozen,” I admitted. “I have hopes though. I’m going to head back to Hel today and see what my household has managed to pull together. The good news is that even if we’re fighting with Lows, they will be well-appointed Lows. I made a deal with a dwarven smith and we’ll have some decent weapons that should be able to hold up to the weird non-corporeal conditions of Aaru.”

“Dwarven steel,” Gregory mused. “Wonderful idea, Cockroach. I’m proud of you. The angels won’t expect that at all. It will definitely give us an advantage.”