Elven Blood (Imp Book 3)

  Elven Blood

  Debra Dunbar

  Copyright © 2013, All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Published by Anessa Books, Bethesda, MD

  Acknowledgements

  To Dr. Hadley Tremaine (1939–2001), Chairman of the Department of English, Hood College, Frederick, Maryland, who taught me that there is great treasure to be found in what others consign to Hell.

  Special thanks to Mount Olivet Cemetery and Keeney and Basford Funeral Home for their friendly and enthusiastic help in my research for this book.

  1

  I heaved the decapitated demon head through the gate to Hel and turned to look at the guardian. The way her shoulders slumped and she kicked at the floor, gave me the impression she was not happy to be supervising.

  “Third one this week,” I told her, as if she didn’t know.

  I had a bounty on my head, but the demons Haagenti was sending after me were the dregs of the hierarchy, desperate beings looking to get lucky and boost their fame by taking me down. Idiots. I kept killing them and tossing their heads through the gate that connected the realm of the humans with Hel. I wasn’t sure if the powerful demon, Haagenti, was more pissed at the fact that I’d shielded my foster brother, Dar, from his wrath this fall, or that I’d kept the Iblis sword instead of turning it over to him.

  Not that I really wanted the thing. I was stuck with it, and all the paperwork and responsibility that seemed to come with holding the empty title of leader of the demons. Iblis. Ha–Satan. The Devil. No one had held that title since our split with the angels two and a half million years ago. Why had this sword, this artifact that came with the title, chosen me? I was nothing but an imp. I wasn’t qualified to be the Iblis.

  “Can you do lunch?” the guardian asked, checking her cell phone for the time. “Or we can try on shoes at Nordstrom’s. They have these amazing suede pumps. Royal–blue.”

  I glared at her. Gate guardians were tasked with ensuring demons stayed in Hel, keeping us from darting through and messing with the humans, starting wars, spawning plagues, stealing souls. High level demons could evade the guardians, but not the rubbish I’d been killing the past few months. Maybe one or two Low in a decade or so could evade her grasp, but not dozens in a month. I had a sneaky suspicion the bitch had been letting them through.

  “I don’t want to take you away from your duties,” I said. “Clearly you’re swamped with all these crappy demons making it through the gate and overwhelming you.”

  She grinned, confirming my suspicions. I wondered if she was acting solo, yanking my chain, or if it was her boss, Gregory, playing some game. That angel scared me. And turned me on. But mostly scared me.

  “Maybe next time,” she said as I turned to leave the posh mall that had sprung up over the ages around the gate in Columbia, Maryland.

  Thoughts filled my head on the drive down I–70. My life revolved around killing the demons that Haagenti kept sending my way. It had become part of my daily routine. Wake up, brush teeth, go to the gym, kill a demon, stuff its head in my car then drive to Columbia and send it back to Hel. How long was this going to go on? When would Haagenti give up and leave me alone? I had a bad feeling the answer was “never”.

  It was putting a serious cramp in my lifestyle. And my relationship. Wyatt was my human boyfriend, my neighbor, my best friend. I’d had to cancel plans and move dinner reservations in order to deal with these stupid demons that showed up all hours of the day and night and tried to kill me. What happened to the cushy routine I had as Samantha Martin? I wanted to go back to it, back to my pre–Iblis life—the one where I’d hang out with my friends, eat hot wings, have sex with Wyatt and then let the air out of all the car tires on Market Street. Those were the days.

  There seemed no end in sight. Haagenti would continue to send people to kill me, and I’d spend millennia fighting them off until my luck ran out and one managed to take me out. I knew I’d eventually have to face him. I’d lose. Haagenti was a good ten levels above me, with far more power and clout. He had an enormous household and practically owned a major section of Hel. If I went back to face him, he’d defeat me and drag me off for centuries of torture, “punishment” for my defiance. Haagenti was pretty creative when it came to torture, and by the time he finished with me, every human I ever cared about would be long dead. Wyatt would be long dead. I’d never see him again.

  As I turned down the long road to my house, gunshots rang out. I hit the accelerator and squealed into Wyatt’s driveway. My heart pounded as my mind raced through all the possibilities, none of them good. I cursed under my breath. I should have waited to take that last demon’s head to the gate, just to make sure there weren’t any more. Lately they’d only shown up one at a time, usually a day or two apart, but I ought to never have assumed the pattern would continue. If another demon had appeared while I was gone and attacked Wyatt, he’d be in real trouble. These Lows might be pretty weak, but Wyatt was only a human and would be easy to kill.

  I ran in to find Wyatt standing over a mangled heap of flesh. Blood. Everywhere. Wyatt’s eyes met mine and I felt the room spin. Relief that he wasn’t the mangled heap of flesh on the floor collided head on with fear that the demon may have seriously injured him.

  “Got him,” he told me with satisfaction before he slid to sit on the floor. It was hard to tell what blood was his and what belonged to the demon. The relief disappeared, and adrenaline nearly drowned me in a rush.

  “Where are you hurt?” I asked, feeling a sharp stab of panic. Humans were fragile and I lived in constant fear that Wyatt was going to die before his time. Human life expectancies were brief enough as it was.

  “He raked my leg pretty good,” Wyatt said. His voice was breathy and light. His hands shook as he tried to take off his belt to tie a makeshift tourniquet.

  “Let me,” I told him.

  It looked deep. Three lacerations across his thigh. I tightened the belt and he applied pressure with a dishtowel that had been conveniently lying on the floor. Wyatt shook his head and mumbled something, sliding further onto the blood–slick floor. Blood. He was losing too much blood, and I wasn’t sure how quickly an ambulance could get here, out in the country. Making a snap decision, I dove my spirit self, my personal energy into his leg and repaired the blood vessels. It would stop the bleeding, and give us enough time for the human doctors to fix the rest.

  “We need to get you to the hospital for stitches,” I told him. He was breathing better, but his eyes were unfocused. I knew he was going in to shock, that I should go get a blanket or something.

  Wyatt shook his head. “Can’t. Cops will show up. They’ll think I got knifed or something. You do it.”

  No way. I could fix myself, could probably do a decent job fixing another demon or a hybrid, but humans and other beings didn’t allow much room for error. I’d had some spectacular fails in the past. Things went horribly wrong right away, or they went horribly wrong in weeks or months. He knew this. He knew better than to ask this of me.

  “No Wyatt. I won’t,” I told him as I stood up and searched the room in vain for something to use as a blanket. It was bad enough that I’d done the blood vessel repair. That had been an emergency, and I hoped the doctors at the hospital could check, and re–do anything I’d fucked up.

  “You have to,” he insisted weakly. “Heal me.”

  Demons don’t heal. They fix. It’s a different process with very different results. I couldn’t heal Wyatt, but I knew someone who had that skill. I had him on angelic speed dial. Gregory. He wasn’t normally very cooperative and he pa
rticularly disliked Wyatt, but I’d been reading his stupid reports and papers for months now. I figured he owed me a favor. Besides, the worst he could do was say “no”. I was pretty much out of options, and as much as I dreaded this, it was my only real choice. Reluctantly, I reached into the red purple of his spirit that ran like a network of fibers throughout my being and pulled, feeling rather foolish as I summoned the angel forth. He appeared instantly, less than an inch from me, practically smashing my nose into his chest.

  All the other angel’s I’d met had been somewhat androgynous, but not Gregory. He was well over six feet and build like an Olympic weightlifter. His face was unequivocally masculine with sharp cheekbones and black eyes. Coppery curls dropped across his forehead.

  Demons and angels are beings of spirit, and physical forms, including gender, can be altered at will. Yes, I really liked this attractive male shape he’d chosen, but much more than the physical attracted me. He was so very old. Older than the planet I stood on, older than the sun that graced its sky. His power overwhelmed his corporeal self and poured from him, burning me like the heat from a hot oven. He was amazing, awe–inspiring, and when his spirit self reached out beyond the flesh to caress mine, I could think of nothing but him. I stepped back, trying to put some distance between us, and he grabbed my arm.

  “You wanted me?” Gregory asked, although it seemed more of a statement than a question. His voice was deep and seductive, the word ‘want’ full of innuendo. Yes, I did want him. And that scared me because I kind of hated him too.

  “Wyatt is hurt and can’t turn to the human doctors for help. Can you please heal him? As a favor to me?”

  Gregory looked amused. “No. Fix your own toy.”

  “I can’t. I’ll make it worse. It will only take you a second. Come on, please?” Fuck. I was begging an angel to heal my human boyfriend. Was I even a demon anymore?

  “Sam, you. You do it.” Wyatt muttered. His color was starting to come back and his voice seemed stronger.

  “The human has spoken.” Gregory shrugged then turned and walked over to the dining room table laden with piles of stuff.

  I knelt down and picked up Wyatt’s hand. It wasn’t cold. He wasn’t bleeding anymore. And most of the blood on the floor did appear to be the demon’s. He’d probably only lost a pint or two before I’d stopped the bleeding. I’d get him some water, grab a blanket from the bedroom and drive him in. At this point, he just needed a whole lot of stitches.

  “Wyatt, be reasonable.” I begged him. “I’m not good at this. We’ll make something up at the hospital. You’re not hurt as bad as we thought. Let the human doctors stitch you up.”

  “You need to work on these things, little cockroach,” Gregory said, picking up a half empty bag of chips and peering inside. “Healing, fighting, controlling the elements. You will need to be much more powerful if you’re going to survive more than a year as the Iblis”

  “You’re letting these demons through on purpose. How does it help me to be a more powerful Iblis lopping heads off these puny worms?” I motioned angrily at the dead demon on the floor.

  Gregory dug a chip out of the bag and frowned at it. “You need to smash the one who sends these worms to kill you. That is what you must accomplish. Deal with this demon who threatens you; establish your authority.”

  Haagenti. I shuddered thinking of the likely outcome of that confrontation. He’d be the one doing the smashing, and I’d be spending a few centuries dipped in acid or pulled apart limb by limb.

  “It’s your fault Wyatt is hurt,” I protested, shaking off the disturbing thoughts of my torture. “Innocents are being injured and could be killed because you want me to learn a lesson? What kind of angel are you?”

  “A greater good always requires sacrifice,” he said, rubbing the chip between his fingers. “And to be quite honest, I really wouldn’t mind if your toy died. He holds you back from redemption, and his soul is lost anyway.”

  “Sam, just fix me,” Wyatt interjected. “I trust you. You can do it.”

  Redemption? What was he talking about? I felt cold at the thought of redemption. And at the thought of fixing Wyatt. I’d never successfully fixed a human before. I watched Gregory for a moment, wondering what bargain I could strike that would tempt him. The angel took a bite of the chip and made a face.

  “What is this orange stuff?” Gregory said, dropping the half eaten chip back into the bag and scrutinizing the powdery spice on his fingers.

  Did he just eat something? Eating and drinking were infractions of angelic purity standards. I’d seen several angels violate it, so it must be a minor infraction, but never Gregory. He was a stickler for the rules.

  “Umm, it’s a spice.” I took the bag from his hand and read the ingredients. “Old Bay. It’s common in the Maryland area. Humans put it on crabs and other shellfish mostly, but I’ve seen it on burgers, chips, fries, lots of things.”

  “Sam, I’m injured here and you’re discussing snack foods. Get over here and fix me,” Wyatt ordered. Well, that didn’t sound too injured to me. Evidently the shock of the sudden blood loss was wearing off.

  I went back to him and checked the wound. Three gashes. The skin was split wide, but they didn’t go all the way through to the bone. It didn’t seem as if there were any nerves damaged. Muscle and skin repair, then check the blood vessels I’d fixed on the fly. It shouldn’t be hard, but this wasn’t a strong skill of mine. I looked up at Wyatt in dismay. I didn’t want to do this.

  “Now, Sam,” he insisted, his voice firm in spite of his pallor.

  I knelt down beside him, put my hands on his leg, and sent in tendrils of my spirit self. Wyatt gasped as I carefully explored the wound. There. Skin, blood vessels, torn muscle, but no nerve damage. I could do this. He groaned softly at the caress of my energy inside him. He wouldn’t enjoy it as much once I started fixing things, but right now my energy was lighting off all sorts of pleasant nerve endings throughout his body.

  “Feels incredible when she does that, doesn’t it?” the angel asked, his voice smooth as silk.

  Wyatt jerked and I felt my energy rip along his cells. Fuck! I tried to align my energy tendrils with his movements, so I wouldn’t tear him to bits.

  “Hold still,” I told him tersely. “I almost killed you.”

  “Sam, have you done this with him too?” Wyatt asked, his euphoria turning to anger.

  “It’s even better when you do it back to her,” Gregory said. “Oh, but you can’t do that can you? You can’t return the favor. Because you’re a human.”

  “Sam?”

  “He’s just fucking with you Wyatt. Don’t pay any attention to him. And hold still.”

  “I believe she said it was ‘epic’ when we did it.” The angel smiled slightly, as if at a fond memory.

  “Sam, answer me right now!”

  I had done this with Gregory. More actually. Our entire spirit selves hurtling together outside corporeal form, joining in a flash of light. It was epic. It wasn’t anything like the physical sex that Wyatt and I had. That was awesome too, just different. I was pretty sure Wyatt wouldn’t see the difference. Plus Gregory was an asshole. I loved Wyatt.

  “I did not have sexual intercourse with that angel,” I lied. Sort of lied. It wasn’t really sex, by the textbook human definition anyway.

  “I didn’t say sexual intercourse, Sam,” Wyatt said sternly. “I asked if you did this. Put yourself into him, joined with him beyond the physical self.”

  Damn. Wyatt knew me too well.

  “Absolutely not. Never.” I lied again.

  Gregory made a disapproving tsk tsk noise and dumped the contents of the chip bag on the table to examine further.

  “Sam, you’re lying,” Wyatt thundered.

  “Yes. Yes she is,” Gregory agreed.

  “Wyatt, he is trying to get you worked up. Just hold still, so I don’t kill you. We’ll talk about this later. In private. Please, sweetie?” I begged him.

  Wyatt took a deep br
eath. “Ok. But we will discuss this.”

  Again I edged the tendrils of myself deeper, to re–check the wounded area and ensure there was nothing beyond what I originally sensed I needed to fix. Slowly, I repaired muscles, skin and checked my previous work on the blood vessels. Wyatt stiffened and clenched his teeth, but couldn’t help vocalizing his pain. I knew it hurt to fix him this slowly, but I was trying to be as thorough as possible.

  “Will you at least check this for me, make sure I’ve done it right?” I asked Gregory when I’d completed and pulled my energy back. Wyatt panted with glazed eyes, still sprawled on the floor.

  “No. You’ll find out soon enough, won’t you?” the angel said cheerfully.

  Asshole. I looked down at Wyatt and thought of all that could go wrong, imagined all the horrible ways he could die because of my attempts to fix his wounds. Fear of his mortality mixed with feelings of love for him. I don’t know what I’d do without Wyatt. He was a part of me, he was everything to me. . ..

  “Oh all right! ” The angel slammed his fist on the empty chip bag and glared at me. “Fine. But not because I like him or care about him in any way. I’m doing this as a personal favor to you.”

  I stared at him in surprise. Where had that come from? Why had he changed his mind, and why was he so pissed at me about it? I moved aside as he approached Wyatt.

  “Sam, I don’t want him to touch me,” Wyatt snapped.

  Great. The one being that actually could heal Wyatt, that could ensure any mistakes I made were corrected, and Wyatt didn’t want him to do it. Gregory paused and waited for my verdict, eyebrow raised.

  “Wyatt, this is important. You didn’t want to go to the hospital? Fine. But I need you to let him check my work.”

  Wyatt frowned at Gregory. “I’ll only allow this as a personal favor to you, Sam,” he said, echoing the angel’s words.

  Gregory knelt down, his physical form blurring slightly with an intense glow. Placing his hands on Wyatt’s leg, he murmured a word. There was an explosion of light. Spots swam before me as I saw the angel rise and walk back toward the table.