Kingdom of Lies (Imp Series Book 7) (8 page)

And saw a face staring up at me—a drowned white face with blank staring eyes and parted lips. As I watched, the skin stretched and twisted, the mouth opening into a psychotic grin. Then I blinked, and it was gone.

Rather than run screaming from the room, I leaned forward, curious. Demons experienced far more terrifying sights while growing up in Hel than a ghostly, drowned figure in an eerie, black pool. My initial impulse was to stick my hand in, but I wasn’t that reckless. Instead, I looked around for a surrogate, ripping what looked to be a metal curtain rod from the wall.

“Hey! Come back!” Shouting didn’t cause the apparition to reappear, and neither did smacking the surface of the liquid with the curtain rod. Adjusting my grip, I stabbed into the pool then lowered the rod until I was holding just a few inches at the end. I still wasn’t touching bottom, so the pool had to be more than twelve feet deep.

The rod was coated with a slick, oily substance when I pulled it out and sat it on the ground. Nothing smoked or began disintegrating, but I still didn’t think sticking any of my body parts in was a good idea. So next went the bedding.

I sloshed the sheets and blankets around the pool like I was doing a form of primitive laundry. They slowly sank. Putting some muscles to work, I pushed the dresser over and dumped it in. It too sank, although more quickly than the bedding. The water remained a consistent level, making me think that either the pool was far bigger than this six-foot area of my room, or there was something magical about it.

Bedside tables followed the dresser, along with candles, boxes, light fixtures, and decorative artwork. The pool remained dark and still. No ghostly face or figure reappeared. I began to wonder if what I’d seen had been my imagination or some sort of hallucination, but I’m not that creative, and I hadn’t tripped acid in several decades.

The only thing left in the room was the bed—the giant, demon-sized bed. It had been made out of heavy wood and a sturdy metal frame. I broke quite a sweat shoving it to the water. One corner tipped in, the bed slid forward, and stuck. A ten-foot-wide bed didn’t seem to go easily into a six-foot-wide pool of water. Standing back, my curtain rod in hand, I watched to see what happened.

Nothing. Now I felt rather foolish about destroying Zalanes’ guest room and half submerging his bed. And I had nothing to sleep on since I’d tossed all the sheets and blankets into the water. Judging it to be a few more hours until daylight, I propped myself against a wall and tried to get a bit more sleep.

My eyes were about to close when the bed shuddered, collapsing with a hideous crack. The pool sucked it in like a wet spaghetti noodle then instantly returned to its flat, black surface. Not even a burp.

I thought the whole thing was cool as shit, but Zalanes didn’t. His four eyes bulged as he came into the empty bedroom and saw me sitting on the floor holding a curtain rod.

“What the fuck happened?”

I pointed the rod toward the pool of water. “It ate your bedroom.”

He glared. With all four eyes. “I was hoping it would eat you.”

“Imps. They’re what’s for dinner?” I stood and stretched, tossing the curtain rod into the pool with the rest of the fixtures. “What’s in there, anyway?”

“A melusine. I brought her from Aerie thinking I could make a fortune selling hybrids, but she eats every demon that tries to mate with her.”

Aerie? How the fuck had he managed to get to Aerie, let alone get back? The world of the non-elf fae didn’t have the gateways to Hel like the human realm did.

“How did you get to and from Aerie?” I eyed Zalanes with a newfound respect. Maybe I wasn’t the only non-ancient in Hel that could create gateways.

“Orias has some piece of fabric he stole from an angel that opens gateways. Is that not cool as shit?”

What. The. Fuck. “Orias? The Orias from school?” He was a war demon—a really shitty war demon. And he wasn’t much older than me. “How did Orias kill an angel?”

Zalanes shrugged. “You killed an angel. Evidently it isn’t such a big deal.”

Insult aside, it was a big deal. I killed an angel by blowing myself up and damn near died in the process. I doubted Orias used my method, or that he had an ancient archangel willing to swoop in and save his ass at the last moment.

“Orias killed an angel and stole an ancient artifact.” I was repeating myself, because I couldn’t wrap my brain around this whole thing. “He’s here? In Hel? With the Veil?”

“No, you idiot,” Zalanes scoffed. “He’s over with the humans. And Aerie isn’t the only place he’s gone to. That fabric thing rocks. It’s better than a chicken wand.”

No, it wasn’t. I thought about the manticore that most definitely was not from Aerie, and the melusine in the pool. Gregory was going to have a fit that Orias was running around opening passageways left and right. “Can you get word to him? Ask him to contact me?” I searched my brain for a good reason. “That melusine is pretty damned cool. I’ll pay double if he can get one for me.”

“Sure. I get a finder’s fee, though.” Zalanes walked over and peered into the dark surface. I noticed he was careful to keep his distance. “Hope all that furniture doesn’t kill her. Cost me a lot to get her here to Hel, and the thing wasn’t easy to catch. Luckily it had eaten a few sylphs, and their sisters were happy to give me a hand.”

Damn. I had a whole new respect for Zalanes.

“How’d you get to Eresh without getting shot out of the sky?” the demon asked, still eyeing the pool. “There’s a price on your head. I thought about turning you over last night, but I hate those pointy-eared motherfuckers worse than I hate you.”

“Came up along the Styx. And flew really high.” I cuffed the imp on one of his shoulders, nearly knocking him into the pool. “Plus, I knew you wouldn’t sell me out. Not for the lousy bounty they’re paying.”

He snorted, backing up a few steps. “Some nirvana shit. Stupid elves. From what I hear, they won’t be our problem for much longer. They’re on the move.”

“On the move to where?” Not that I would cry a river of tears if the elves left Hel, but they did have their uses.

He shrugged, turning away from the pool and back toward the door. “Aerie? Although they hate those faeries more than they hate demons. I doubt they’d want to live on Jotunheim with those giants constantly trying to smash their heads in. Maybe since they can’t bring humans here anymore, they’re going to the supermarket itself.”

Well, that was a chilling thought, although improbable. “Right. With the angels providing loving guidance every second of their lives?”

Zalanes closed two of his eyes in a weird wink. “Shit if I know. Maybe they just got a travel bug.” He looked around the bare room. “Now get out of here before I decide to toss you in after my furniture.”

He was kidding. Maybe. I scurried out the door and to the steps, just in case.

“And you owe me a favor,” the demon shouted up after me.

T
he sunrise had painted stripes of pink and lavender across the clouds, one moon still visible as it drifted low on the horizon. I grabbed some fried bitey fish from a street-side stand for breakfast then ran like hell because I hadn’t paid for them.

The Noodles liked to hang out in the center of the city in establishments similar to human bars. They had great hearing and gathered all sorts of gossip while there. Plus they could earn extra money by telling stories, or singing epic tales. One was doing that very thing as I walked into Spanky’s. Coinage flew across the room, bouncing off the demon’s leathery skin and to the floor as patrons shouted for her to ‘shut the fuck up’. A Low darted about at her feet, scooping the coins into a bag. I stayed out of projectile range and watched. When the bard felt she’d earned enough, she ended the song with a flourish and a bow, retreating to a far table.

I grabbed a couple of full mugs from a waiter, this time actually paying for them, and made my way over to her.

“I’m Az.” I plopped one mug in front of her and sat, nudging the Low aside with my foot.

“Terrelle.”

She took a drink. I did the same, forcing my face to remain bland as I swallowed. Turpentine tasted better than this swill.

“I’m looking for an elf.” I went on to recite my description of Swifty as she sipped her drink. Huge furry ears unfurled from the sides of her head and neck, spreading outward like rippled brown velvet.

“Elves don’t like to stay with demons.” Sip.

“Yeah, but this elf got kicked out of his kingdom because he had business dealings with a free sorcerer. I was told he was in Eresh.”

Sip. “Someone lied.”

Damn it all. “Then who can I speak to who
won’t
lie?”

She smiled, enigmatic and mysterious as her ears folded back down. “Me.”

Demons lie, but Noodles lied a whole lot less than the rest of us. They had to. Their currency was information, and that currency would be worthless if it couldn’t be relied upon.

“I’d like to discover where the elf has been, any pertinent information about his comings, goings, and associations, and where he is currently located. I’d also be very interested to know if he sold any items while he was here.”

Sip. Blink. “I can do that.”

And now for the big question. “What will this information cost?”

“Something of little value. Something that will be of no consequence for you to give me.”

I fought to keep from grinding my teeth and tried to look fascinated. She took her time, finished her drink, and stroked long fingers along the edge of her folded ears.

“Admittance and membership into your household, along with assurances of physical, mental, and emotional safety from the other household members.”

I tried to wrap my brain around that one. Yeah, I got the ‘safety from other members’ thing. That was standard when you weren’t sure exactly where in the hierarchy of a household you’d fall. It was that she wanted to be in my household at all that was perplexing. I had a reputation for getting a significant percentage of my demons killed. And, Iblis title or not, I was still just an imp.

“Why me?” Sometimes the blunt approach was the best avenue.

“Safe passage through the gates and diplomatic immunity to live among the humans.” She leaned forward, practically vibrating with excitement. “They have
libraries
. And that Internet thing? Everything you’d ever want to know at the touch of a finger.”

Made sense, she was a Noodle after all. I thought for a second of introducing her to Wyatt, but he’d been rather anti-demon after his return from Chicago. Besides, Noodles may be the geeks of Hel, but they weren’t shy about casually dissecting another being just to see how they were put together. A demon with her nose stuck in a book was still a demon.

“Please tell me you can manifest into a convincing human form.” Otherwise the only library she was going to see was the one in my home.

Terrelle shivered, her shape blurring before settling into that of a human. Nice. The ears became a mass of long brown curls, her skin pale with a rosy tint. The nose was a shade too long for beauty, the mouth a bit too thin, her eyes a clear, bright, dark blue. Slap some glasses on her and throw the hair up into a bun, and she’d be perfect for a naughty librarian fantasy.

“Done.”

She smiled, returning to her demon form. “The elf Swiftethian was in Eresh up until a week ago. He stayed with one of my brethren before finding a demon to assist him in crossing the angel gates into the human realm.”

“Wait.” My brain whirred. “Why didn’t he use one of the elven gates?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Because he was exiled. He no longer has access to those gates, and trying to sneak through would cost him his life.”

Damn. Those elves take their exile seriously. “So why not go through the angel gates solo? Elves can activate them, and the gate guardians won’t harm them. The angels made those gates for the elves to use. There’s no reason he couldn’t walk right on through.”

Her nose joined the eyebrow. I was beginning to think this demon didn’t have proper respect for her new head of household. “Swiftethian did not want the angels to know of his presence on the other side of the gates. The demon was to activate the gate and distract the gate guardian while the elf went through. That way there would be no energy signature showing an elf opened the gate, and he wouldn’t be seen entering.”

An elf running around among the humans. I gave him two days before he got hit by a bus or stabbed in a dark alley.

“Did he sell anything while he was in Hel?”

“Three gems to a demon named Rash and a carnivorous plant to Beeliz.”

Gems. My heart thudded with anticipation. If one of those gems was
the
gem, my task would soon be complete. “Where is Rash? And do you know where Swifty was going once he crossed the gates?”

“The elf crossed through the Seattle gate. I don’t know where he was headed, but I’m assuming since he chose that gate, it was close to his destination.”

And I was assuming that an elf running around the streets of Seattle would cause enough notice that I could easily track him.

“As for Rash, he lives in the underground. He’s a night dweller.”

Ugh. Underground really wasn’t my thing.

“Do you know anything about the gems he bought from the elf?” I wasn’t sure whether I was hoping one was Gareth’s or not. My desire to check this project off my to-do list warred with my reluctance to prowl around the tunnels beneath the city.

“I was not close enough to hear a full descriptions of the gems. I know they were enchanted with some magical spell. One was red—a ruby or garnet perhaps. One may have been purple.”

I took a deep breath. Enchanted, and purple was similar to what an alexandrite would be. I’d need to check it out. “Can you get me specific information on how and where to contact this Rash demon?”

“Yes.” She stood. “Meet me back here at sunset, and I will have all the knowledge you require.”

I doubted that, but I did have faith this demon would greatly reduce the time I needed to spend underground. “Thank you. As soon as I get this project taken care of, I’ll be returning to the human world. I’ll bring you with me so I can make everyone aware of your status and show you around.”