Exodus (Imp Series Book 8) (32 page)

“So what’s our plan? I’m assuming you’re still in charge of the Grigori. You’ll make sure the elves and angels don’t mess up with the humans, and I’ll go back to punishing the non-creditworthy and not-managing whatever is going on in Hel.”

Gabriel looked around, his mouth set in a grim line. “If the rebels don’t repent…I don’t know.”

I turned back to Gregory. “What did you intend to do when you were going to be the one pushing the eject button? I’d assumed they’d go through that stupid reinstatement program, but now…”

He raised his eyebrows. “Either they’d repent or they’d be sent to Hel just like before. I certainly didn’t intend to leave them strolling around among the humans.”

Oh, that jerk. Not once did he tell me he was going to add to the population of Hel by tens of thousands. One angel would be an interesting toy to the demons, this many would upset the balance of power. And in my opinion, upsetting the balance of power in Hel was just as bad as upsetting it here among the humans.

“How about you just kill them? That was Hammer’s idea, and I’m starting to believe he had it right. Just go around stabbing all the rebels. Then you and the other angels can live here peacefully and they won’t be running around mucking things up in Hel.”

Although it was getting a bit crowded here too. Seven billion humans, hundreds of thousands of elves and now angels too? Where the fuck were we going to put them all? Food and clean water supply was enough of a problem now. Guess I better help out with those GMO things. Either that or invite some plague demons over to bring the population down to a more sustainable level.

“No, we’re not going to slaughter them, to execute them where they lay,” Gregory said. “We sent rebellious angels to Hel last time. We can do it again.”

Oh no. This was not getting dumped in my lap. No way.

“That was a treaty,” I argued. “You just didn’t flush them all down the pipes to Hel, you fought and killed plenty of them until you reached the point of negotiation.”

“No, we fought until we had the upper hand. We exiled them from Aaru, then we negotiated the treaty. If it makes you feel any better, we can negotiate a treaty with these angels before we consign them to Hel, just as we did after the last war.”

Yep, totally dumped in my lap. Hel. Humans with shitty FICO scores. Nephilim and werewolves. Elves. And now a whole host of rebel angels. It was more than one little imp could take, even an imp with a big sword.

I
rounded up the rest of my demon army and took them to Hel, returning back to find Nyalla, Boomer and Little Red waiting for me.

“We found your elves.” My girl seemed especially smug.

“Awesome! Where are they?”

“In the pool. Well some of them are in the pool. Others are helping repair the guest house. I was hoping things went well in Aaru and we could get them to Elf Island, but just in case I figured I’d bring them here.”

I gaped. Finding the elves was impressive. Transporting them here out from under the nose of their captors was a miracle, especially for a young woman who had a quite understandable fear of elves.

“What happened? How did you manage to find them?”

Nyalla waved a hand. “We don’t have time for that story. The High Lords have got pockets of places where they’ve basically taken over. I found our elves in Crystal City in the Pentagon basement.”

The Pentagon
basement
? If the elves were able to stash a group in that bastion of national security, then they’d clearly made inroads within the political system I’d been unaware of. Suddenly the dude in Iceland running for political office seemed like small potatoes.

“Sam, these High Lords have positioned themselves as governmental advisors in six major countries,” Nyalla continued. “They’re waiting for the word from their angel counterparts, then they’re taking over.”

“Word for what?” I asked.

“That the rebels have taken Aaru. The rebels are to win, then signal the elves to take over. They’ll leave the elves here to do whatever they want with the humans and lock themselves in Aaru.”

Yeah, I’d heard that scenario before, but this was the first time I put the two puzzle pieces together. The elves were waiting for their signal—a signal that would never come because the rebels had lost.

Or would it? If they thought they’d lost the war and been locked out of Aaru, not realizing all the other angels were in the same predicament, they might still want the elves to take over. They couldn’t take the fight to Aaru anymore, so they might as well bring the other angels down here, and what better way to do that than green light the elven takeover. They knew how seriously my angel took his Grigori duties. Elves Gone Wild would be just the thing to bring him out of Aaru and down here where he’d be a target.

Except he already
was
down here. And the mess I’d made with the angels’ homeland gave me the perfect opportunity to take down the High Lords and set the stage for a peaceful elven and human coexistence.

“Six countries? And when do they expect this elf to give them the signal?”

Nyalla nodded. “Six. And they are waiting for the go-ahead right now.”

Right now in angel-time meant they’d probably wait no more than another twenty-four hours before they realized something was wrong. I needed to act fast if I wanted to bring these elven bastards into the open and out of hiding. And I needed help. I couldn’t be in six countries at once, and I wasn’t sure how much assistance Gregory and his brothers could provide after what they’d just gone through. I was a bit pissed that I’d returned my demon army and dismissed them. Those guys, especially Hammer, could do some real damage against the High Lords. They knew elves, and I got the feeling they’d be just as happy kicking elven ass as angel ass.

But in addition to any angelic help I could scare up, I did have my very resourceful girl and roughly forty-three elven butchers, bakers and candlestick makers.

I ran upstairs to find Lysile once again in my bedroom. This time in addition to Telly, she had three other elves with her. They’d unrolled a huge piece of paper on my bed and were using sharpies to draw what appeared to be battle plans.

My first thought was that I was probably going to have random black sharpie marks all over my bedspread. I’d paid a fucking lot of money for that too. Maybe I could pretend it was an abstract print, or a Rorschach inkblot test. Because at night, in bed, I’d like to make sure I hadn’t suddenly become a psychopath or something. Well more of a psychopath than I currently was.

“Is that…is that a plan of attack?” Because my second thought behind the irritation over possible indelible stains on my comforter were that basket weavers and fishmongers shouldn’t know how to draw up battle plans.

“Yes.” Lysile gave me a sheepish grin. “I served with the elven scouts when I was young, but my archery skills are subpar at best. During the war, I got dragged in to run messages, because what I lack in shooting, I more than make up for in speed.”

So not a fighter, but she’d learned enough during the war to know basic battle strategy—which was more than I knew. And she was plucky, brave, willing to face down a bunch of vampires rather than use her considerable speed and run away, because she couldn’t leave an injured elf behind. This was the kinda elf I wanted fighting with me, regardless of her lack of archery skills. Fuck, I couldn’t swing a sword worth a damn, yet I still managed to get things done.

Which gave me another idea. But first, I needed to see what we were up against.

“Is that the Potomac River?” I pointed to a squiggly line with what looked like buildings on either side.”

Lysile nodded. “The High Lords each have a major country they’ve gained influence in. Once the angels give the word, they are to seize control and move in. Already key high elves are positioned in human households across this area and this.”

“How do you know this?” I asked, incredulous again that basket weavers and fishmongers could gain this sort of intel.

She grinned. “I used to be a messenger, so I know how to intercept. And like I said, I’m fast.”

Yes, I was liking this elf woman more and more. “So let me guess, the U.S. is the first to fall?”

“Of course.” Lysile raised an eyebrow. “They spend a fortune on their military. If the U.S. is in the control of a High Lord, the others will quickly follow. And if they don’t, well the world’s biggest military presence is ready to step in and assist the humans to see things differently.”

“Guessing again here, but I’m assuming Lliam Thi is the High Lord in charge of the U.S.?”

She nodded. “He wouldn’t have it any other way.”

I leaned over the map. “So what’s your plan here?”

“We wait. When the angels give the word, Lliam Thi will make the announcement from a position of power. He’ll be surrounded by a group of high elves to support him, while the others quietly take over the key human households. That’s when we grab him. We’re elves. We’ll be considered allies, part of his guard. And then we assassinate him.”

It was a pretty damned good plan aside from a few loopholes. Not that I was a particularly good judge of strategy. Once again I thought that Dar picked a really fucking bad time to become a parent.

“You all don’t look like military. How do you plan to blend in with these guards? And who among you has the skills needed to sneak up past the real guards and manage to stick a knife in Lliam Thi?”

She bit her lip. “We’d planned to take out a few of the guards before taking their place. From what we saw in Crystal City, the elves are wearing typical human clothing to help them blend in until we take over. Some of them have even cut their hair and used an illusion spell to make their ears look like human ears.”

That was a pretty big commitment on an elf’s part if they cut their hair. Those fuckers were worse than Samson when it came to regular trims, let alone allowing their locks to be shorn in the current human fashion.

“The guards will kill you before you can reach Lliam Thi,” I mused. “We need a better way, although I still like the idea of as many of you as possible up there with him.

“We need the gun of shot,” Telly commented. “The balls of death. That farmer killed two of us from thirty feet away. Only arrows or fireballs would have had a better range.”

Balls of death. I bit back a laugh at that one.

“Well we can hardly haul shotguns up on a stage,” I told him. “And someone else would have to help you load them. Although come to think of it, the shell casings are plastic, and most shotguns have wood or a poly stock. As long as you didn’t grab the barrel…”

Guns. Of course. The elves would never think to search for human weapons. They’d expect the humans not to resist. They’d completely discount human weaponry. Their hubris would be their downfall.

“I’ve got an idea of my own. Come on.”

I led my little troupe of elves down my driveway and to Wyatt’s house where I found him relaxing on the porch with a beer, typing away on his cell phone.

“Sam! And…elves.” He seemed genuinely glad to see me—well until he caught sight of the rest of my party. “I’m not keeping them in my house. I told you—”

“No not that.” I waved his protests away. “I need to borrow some guns. Pistols. Preferably the ceramic or plastic kind because elves seem to have a problem with our metals here.”

He sighed. “You’d need to load the bullets and the magazines. Is some aluminum okay, or do you need total ceramic? I’ve got two that are designed to go past metal detectors, although an X-ray will show they’re pistols unless you completely break them down into small components when sending them through.”

That’s one of the things I loved about Wyatt. When it came to weaponry, he was so fucking helpful. And he never even asked why I was arming the elves.

“What are they planning on shooting? Groundhogs? Your neighbors? That dragon that’s been snatching McKinsey’s cows?”

Or not. I weighted the risks of telling Wyatt we were planning the assassination of a High Lord with lying to him once more and explaining that the groundhogs had once again gotten out of hand in my pasture.

I’d clearly changed a lot in the last few years because I opted for honesty. I’d lost Wyatt as a boyfriend. I didn’t want to lose him as a friend. And I got the feeling that if the lies kept stacking up, I would.

“The High Lords are poised to take over within the next twenty-four hours. We need to take out their leader—Lliam Thi. And the only ones who can probably get close enough to do it are other elves.”

Wyatt scowled. “After what they did, stealing my sister from her crib and imprisoning her as a slave for eighteen years, I’m all in favor of killing these guys. But guns aren’t going to cut it. If this guy is taking over in DC, he’ll be making his announcement on the steps of the Capitol Building, or the White House press room, or, if he’s really paranoid, at one of the air force bases. Any scanner will see the pistols. And the secret service is trained enough to spot components of a disassembled gun. You’re better off fireballing the guy.”

“These elves don’t have a ton of offensive skills, and I’m sure Lliam Thi will have powerful elves magically guarding him from that sort of attack. It needs to be a human weapon. They’re so arrogant, they won’t think of being taken out by humans or their ‘magic.’”

Wyatt’s lip curled with disgust. “This guy is taking over the wrong country. We have more weapons per capita than anyone else in the world. And we have that whole culture of rebellion and cowboy justice. Every redneck in the mid-Atlantic will be at his doorway within hours, unloading on him. The idea of an elf taking over the U.S. is ridiculous. He’ll be dead before nightfall. Just wait it out.”

“And how many humans will die in that process?” I demanded. “The elves will take hostages, and they have weapons of their own that humans aren’t familiar with. There will be a huge loss of life, then the rednecks will go hunker down to protect their homes and the elves will move forward. Divide and conquer. Individual humans with an arsenal might hold out for months or years, but eventually they’ll fall. We need to take this guy down now. To minimize loss of life. And to strike before he becomes fully aware of what humans and human weaponry can do and compensates.”