Kingdom of Lies (Imp Series Book 7) (17 page)

“I’d hurt her.” The pained look on Gregory’s face wasn’t fooling me. He was up to something. “We need to lead her to the gate with the dead demon. If we toss the body in, she’ll follow.”

I opened my mouth to complain about how a dead elf deserved to be returned to his kin for proper mourning and burial, but a dead demon was bait. Then I realized no one would mourn a dead demon, and this human body wasn’t his true form anyway, it was just a created vessel to house his spirit-self. Not the same thing at all.

And none of that helped the fact that I needed to get close enough to the corpse to identify it without being clawed to death.

“I’ve got an idea.” Terrelle handed me something that looked like a collapsible pointer for presentations—the old fashioned kind, before laser pointers ruled the world. “It’s a selfie stick.”

Great. I could take a wide-angle shot of myself being mauled by a harpy then post it on all my favorite social media sites.

“Here.” She expanded it. I was amazed to see it extended nearly five feet. “It’s the super-selfie version. You can snap a pic of the dead guy without getting close enough to freak out the harpy. Between the pair of us, we might be able to identify him visually.”

I pursed my lips, considering the idea. Demons were notorious for having hundreds of physical forms. It was a long shot, pun intended, but one I’d prefer before death-by-harpy.

Strapping my phone to the end of the stick, I turned it to camera mode then realized the fatal flaw. “How the fuck am I supposed to push the button to take the picture? I don’t have five-foot long arms.”

Well, I could probably make my arms five feet long, but then I wouldn’t need the selfie-stick. And I’d probably trip over them trying to run away from the harpy.

Terrelle took the phone from me. “Set it to auto. I’ve set it to go off every second until you stop it. It’s going to eat up your memory like a motherfucker, so you better hurry.”

She’d learned all this in one day. I was more than impressed. I clicked the photo button, extended the stick, and watched the angels herd the harpy until she was as far away as I figured she’d ever be from the body. Then I ran.

Click, click, click. I kept a wary eye on the harpy as I circled the body, trying to get the best shot I could. Wondering where the dude’s head was among all the gore, I tore my gaze from bird-woman and looked down.

“Damn it all to fucking hell; he’s face-down!” I heard the squawk of the harpy, the shouts of the angels. Stabbing at the body with my selfie-stick, I tried to turn him over. The cheap thing bent in half, and I got congealed blood all over my phone.

“Fuck!” I tossed the thing aside and threw myself onto the body. The harpy exploded into shrill, angry screams. My hands squished into cold flesh that had been pecked and torn to the consistency of shredded potatoes. Just as I managed to grab enough firm bone and muscle to flip the damned thing over, teeth pierced my shoulder, and claws ripped along my back. Curses poured from me, partially due to the monster tearing into my body, and partially because the front half of this demon bore a strong resemblance to the back. No face. Nothing but shreds of flesh, bone, sinew and hair all churned together into a gory mess.

“Get your ass over here and help before I kill her,” I shouted. I swung one arm wildly behind me, smacking it into the angry bird-woman while I tried to read the demon’s energy with my other hand. I’d been yelling at Gregory, but Terrelle must have thought I was shouting at her, because she appeared in the corner of my vision, standing as far back as possible as she beat at the harpy with a branch.

Blood streamed down my sides. My shoulder burned from the harpy’s saliva. Poison, I thought as she shook her head like a bulldog, ripping a chunk from my shoulder. Bitch. I could fix the flesh, but this was one of my favorite t-shirts. With a sharp jab of my elbow, I connected with the woman’s chest. She squawked then snapped at my arm.

There. I had it. Launching myself forward, I rolled away from the harpy, grabbing my phone and the broken selfie stick as I went. Terrelle ran, me hot on her heels as soon as I’d gotten to my feet. There was no need. The harpy stood guard over her prey, snapping at the angels trying to drive her away.

“Nice work, Cockroach.”

He was laughing. Bastard. I stuck out my tongue at him and disconnected my phone, wiping the blood on my torn t-shirt.

“Sorry about your stick.” I turned to Terrelle and saw her looking at me with owlishly huge eyes. I doubted she was that horror struck over the selfie-stick and could only assume the close call with a harpy had terrified her. As I’d said, Noodles weren’t really much in the way of a fighting-class demon.

“You okay?” I asked her. “That bitch of a vulture didn’t bite you, did she?” Hopefully she’d be able to neutralize the poison, and as a member of my household, she needn’t fear using her energy for the purposes of fixing wounds. And if she wasn’t able to, I could practice my shitty healing skills on her. It might not be the prettiest job in the world, but she’d live.

“No, she didn’t bite me.” The demon swallowed. “That was him... err, her. Pouchain.”

My jaw dropped open, and I stared. “How could you tell? That thing didn’t look much like anything beyond badly made hamburger.”

She blinked, her mouth turning up in a trembling smile. “I jabbed him with the branch and got enough flesh to read the energy signature. I’ve... I know him. I mean, I’ve worked with him before and we... .” Her gaze shot downward, as if the grass were particularly fascinating.

I got it. She and Pouchain had history. The type of history that she knew it was him just from the DNA of his favored human form and a faint remnant of his energy. Enough said.

“We can’t use his body as bait,” I whispered to Gregory, well aware the harpy had already taken a considerable amount of flesh from the demon.

“No, it’s okay.” Terrelle’s smile wavered again, but her eyes were steady as they met mine. “He’s gone. It’s just a body. Little different than the trees and bushes around us when it comes to basic molecules. Let’s get this thing home before it goes through two or three human townships, or worse, starts spawning.”

Shit. That would really suck. I didn’t know much about harpy reproductive methods or capacity, but whatever they were, it wouldn’t end well for the humans.

“Can you sense the gate?” I wondered how accurate Terrelle would be. She might be someone useful to pair with an angel in closing the gates. She couldn’t fight worth shit, but with the right angel, she’d be safe.

She looked around, crinkling her nose. “Maybe two miles northeast? It’s faint, so I could be wrong.”

It was better than what I had, which was a big, fat nada. “Rock, paper, scissors for who gets to drag the dead body to the gate?”

As you can imagine, Lady Luck deserted me in my hour of need, and rock did indeed beat scissors. I eyed the harpy, her fury ratcheted up a hundred fold after being driven from her prey. Two miles. It would be faster for me to reveal my wings and fly there while dangling the shredded corpse, but I didn’t want those sensitive appendages out and about with a pissed-off, sharp-clawed harpy chasing me. No, I’d need to do a grab and dash. This was going to hurt like fuck, and I’d be dropping body parts like breadcrumbs along the path from the state of the body.

Wait. Breadcrumbs. What a fucking brilliant idea.

“I’m going to run in and grab the main part of the body. Terrelle, can you snatch up any major pieces that drop and keep close? Actually, you lead the way to the gate while I follow right behind you and drop bits of the body along the way.”

Her eyebrows shot up. Gregory made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a muffled cough. Whatever. Asshole. If he wanted to stay back and watch the show, he didn’t get to criticize my methods. Or laugh at them.

Terrelle grumbled that she shouldn’t have to do this because rock beat scissors, but she bent down into a sprinter’s stance anyway.

“One, two, three, go!”

Terrelle took off on three and then paused. I ran past, but her hesitation cost us. The harpy’s attention had abruptly turned away from the angels and zeroed in on us. The other demon and I reached the body simultaneously, each digging hands into the soft, cool mess in an attempt to scoop as much of it up as possible. I grabbed the torso, still somewhat attached to spine, ribs and hip. Terrelle managed a leg, scooping slimy innards into a pouch made from the bottom of her shirt.

“Damn it all!” That bird was back, chewing on my newly healed shoulder and pulling my hair with a claw. I kicked the dead demon’s head aside then ran while she paused for her snack.

Terrelle had run for it the moment the harpy had attacked me. I shouted for her to slow down, worried that if we got too far ahead of our pursuer, she’d lose interest and go kill some other poor dude. I shouldn’t have worried. Yeah, it took the harpy a while to crunch through all the bony goodness, but once done, she was after us like a shot.

I tossed body parts behind me, moving as fast as I could to keep up with Terrelle. She was also losing some of her stash, more to the difficulty of running with guts carried in the front part of her shirt. I heard the snap of the harpy picking up bits and eating as she chased us, heard the heavy thump of her clawed feet and the rush of her wings. I could only assume she was flying after us, because I was hauling ass and she didn’t look all that good at running any distance on those spindly legs. The thought made me even gladder that I’d been dropping tidbits for her along the way. She was turning this into a fast-food experience, but she still had to slow down for each piece I dropped.

I could feel the gate ahead. Hopefully it was the right one, but at this point, I didn’t really care. All I wanted was to get this fucking thing out of here, wash all the blood and guts off, and put on clean clothing.

Terrelle sprinted, her long legs getting her to the gate a hundred yards ahead of me. She flung the remaining contents of her shirt-pouch through the glowing rift that extended from the ground to nearly twenty feet in the air. I hoped the harpy would fly ahead to go after Terrelle’s stash, but I don’t have that sort of luck. The damned thing stayed with me, ignoring the chunk of flesh I dropped to latch its claws onto my shoulders.

Wings beat against my back, and my feet lifted from the ground. If this bitch thought she was going to fly off with another snack, she better think again. I let her pull me about twenty feet up, and my own wings burst into being. They were fifty feet across, so I didn’t have quite enough room to do what I wanted with them fully extended. Still, this was one of the many times that confirmed bigger was most definitely better.

We had a minor midair tussle as she screamed and tried to remain on top, and again, rock beat scissors. I flipped over then dropped, using our combined weight and the glorious effect of gravity to smash back-first onto the ground with the harpy beneath me.

She squawked then gasped, her eyes big in an ugly face as I rolled off her and stood. Grabbing one wing, I dragged her toward the gate, still holding a mangled leg and what I assumed was the dead demon’s spine in my other hand. Once she caught her breath enough to try to squirm free in earnest, I extended the leg toward her. She clamped down tight, and I let go of her wing to grip the other end of the leg with both hands and haul her toward the gate with all my strength.

By the time we reached the rift, the harpy was flailing about, scratching me with the claws at the end of her wings. She was beginning to win the tug of war when Terrelle and the two angels joined in, giving her a mighty push through the gate.

The only clean hand among us reached forward to close the gateway. Gregory, looking very satisfied with himself, was spotless compared to the rest of us. Even the other angels were blood spattered and dirty. My angel was fresh as a daisy.

And that kind of pissed me off, until he spoke.

“I love watching you work, Cockroach.”

It was his sexy voice. My glare went to something more like a pout. “My house or yours, baby?” I was hoping he’d say mine, because I really hated his house. Aaru was a vacuum of sensory deprivation and full of angels who would like nothing better than to blast me into little tiny bits.

He gathered me in his arms, blood spatter and all, and rested his chin on the top of my head. “Yours. As soon as we take care of the brownies and unicorns.”

So, my house next year sometime. Well, at least that was motivation for me to get my ass in gear.

“I know it’s not supposed to be a priority, but the gate is here, and the body wasn’t too far from it, so Pouchaine had to have been attacked close by. Assuming he was still with Swiftethian at the time, then the elf has to be nearby.”

I texted Nyalla. Out of all of us, she’d be the best at predicting elf behavior.
Elf alone in PA w no English. Where would he run/hide
?

WWSD—what would Swifty do? The phone buzzed her reply, and I looked down at the text.

“Nyalla says he probably headed for the nearest wooded area to hole up. He’d feel reasonably safe there until he figured out what to do next.”

Gregory nodded. “We can take some time to search. Since we’re here, we might as well.”

My angel went to speak to the other two angels, while I pulled up Google Maps on my phone and hit the satellite imagery, looking for a decent-size forest nearby. Two stood out as suitable elven hiding places within several miles of the gate. “Which one do you want?” I asked Terrelle. I figured it would be best if we went solo to search for the guy. I had no idea how this elf, or any elf, would react around an angel. Besides, Swifty had come here with a demon guide. Having a demon searching for him probably wouldn’t be as threatening as an angel, or a demon hanging out with an angel.

“I’ll take that one.” Terrelle pointed at my screen then looked up, getting her bearings. “But what if Pouchaine stole the gem and the harpy swallowed it when she was eating him?”

Leave it to another demon to think of the worst-case scenario. We’d just sent that harpy through a gateway to who-knows-where. I’d never find her to get it back and satisfy my debt to Gareth.