With This Ring: Imp Series, Book 11 Page 6

  “Our biggest points of discussion today need to be lost revenue, trade, and immigration.” He was waving that finger again. It was beginning to annoy me.

  “So what do you want? Lay it on the table because the hamburgers are probably going to be here soon, and I’m not going to want to discuss this shit when there’s food to be eaten.”

  He roared out a laugh and slapped the table. “I like you. You know that? I like you. So here’s the deal, Iblis. We want first rights to the licenses to any technology coming out of New Hell.”

  “Sure.” That would probably be nothing. Like demons were going to be creating new cell phones or something. Idiot.

  “We also want first rights to any food products for sale at three percent of current wholesale market value.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  “And no further humans can leave New Hell into the United States without appropriate immigration documentation.”

  “Whoa, whoa. We’re not going to be responsible for humans trying to leave,” I told him. “If you don’t want them coming over here, then it’s your problem, not ours—I mean, not New Hell’s.”

  He nodded. “We’ll take appropriate measures, although I’m going to announce that New Hell is paying for them.”

  “We’re not paying for anything.” Where the fuck were these damned burgers?

  “I know that. You know that. No one else needs to know that.” He chuckled. “Lastly, we would like to send certain humans into New Hell—those we feel might be better suited to that sort of government style.”

  I wasn’t fucking born yesterday. “Convicts? You’re going to use New Hell as a giant prison?”

  He waved a hand, not meeting my eyes. “Weeeell, that’s a rather harsh way of putting it. I just believe that convicted murderers, rapists, and other dangerous people would be better off there.”

  Hadn’t Nyalla said incarceration cost eighty thousand dollars per inmate? Or was it forty thousand? I knew it was a fuckton of money, either way.

  “We’ll take your criminals, but you need to pay for each one that you’re shoving into New Hell.”

  “How much?”

  Damn, this guy was desperate. “Two hundred grand per person.”

  He made a choking noise. “Per year?”

  “Nope. Flat fee.” I watched him as he did the math. “That’s saving you and your taxpayers big time. Anyone sentenced more than five years? Huge savings. And I assume you’ll only be sending lifers and death penalty people our way?”

  “Yes.” He frowned. One of the men loitering around the room stepped forward and murmured something to him. “Okay. Deal.”

  I stood and shook his hand just as Jones walked back in, a dozen bags in his hands. The delicious aroma of beef and fries wafted through the air. This wasn’t so bad. I was getting lunch and booze. New Hell was going to make money on this convict thing. We’d totally black-market tech and sell produce around the trade agreements I’d just made, and I’d just worked out some sweet immigration deals for demons while sticking it to the angels.

  The whole thing was a win-win.

  Chapter 6

  I walked in on Lux and Samael sitting on my kitchen floor playing quarters, only with rings instead of coins. For a moment I stood, transfixed by the beauty of the original Satan. He was so breathtaking with his tanned skin, white-blond hair, and incredibly perfect physical form which, of course, was absolutely naked. Just as I was counting rippled abs that led to a truly impressive cock, the fallen angel bounced a ring off the floor. It chimed when it hit the wood, then made a splosh sound as it landed right into the plastic cup. Beer foamed up around it.

  “Yay!” Lux raised his little fists in the air, then grabbed the cup and downed the contents. A beer-foam mustache framed his upper lip as he slammed the cup down.

  Samael waved a finger and the cup refilled. Lux pulled the ring from his mouth and bounced it on the floor, landing it squarely in the fallen angel’s cup.

  “Nice! I’m impressed by your quick mastery of this game,” Samael said.

  Lux belched. I swear the house shook from the vibration. I sat down beside him and picked up one of the empty beer cans.

  “Natural Light? Are you fucking kidding me? If you’re going to get my kid drunk playing quarters, at least use a decent brew—maybe a local brewpub IPA.”

  Samael made a gagging noise. “Pretentious shit. This is real beer. This is the stuff humans were making thousands of years ago so they didn’t die because they drank water that every boar, deer, and wolf from a hundred miles around had shit in. This was what they drank so they could work all day and not be falling down drunk. This”—he held up the can—”this is real beer.”

  I snorted. “It’s got corn syrup in it. Unless natives on this continent were making beer a thousand years ago, then this isn’t what your peasants were drinking.”

  Not that I had room to talk. I’d drunk my fair share of light American beers with both corn and rice fermentation sugars.

  “Natural Light is the elixir of the gods,” Samael declared.

  “Of the gods!” Lux lifted the red cup in the air then went to drink. I snatched it from his hands before he could take a sip and downed the whole thing.

  Then I belched. Lux clapped his hands and cheered.

  “Been to New Hell yet?” I asked Samael as I filled the cup and placed it back on the floor.

  “A few times. Nice place. Course I’m not one to set down roots anywhere.”

  Of course not. “What have you been up to today, besides playing drinking games with your uncle?” I asked Lux.

  “Rings,” the little angel told me. “I taked back ten after I go to two galaxies then Uranus with Da.”

  Uranus. Hahaha.

  “That’s awesome.” I ruffled his golden curls. “The easy pile, right? You didn’t have any problems?”

  The little angel gave me two thumbs up. “No problems. Sneak in. Sneak out. Just like you say.”

  “Bravo!” I grabbed a couple of cans and popped the tops, handing one to Lux. We clinked them and each took a sip.

  “Should I take back more?” Lux asked.

  I hesitated. This was the easy pile. There was no risk for him to do these by himself. The kid had managed to steal all these rings without any issue, he certainly could return some of them without incident. And less rings under my living room carpet would be a good thing.

  “I’ve got a few things to do today,” I told him. “Why don’t you wait. I want to be nearby in case you need me.”

  “I’ll go with him,” Samael said, bouncing a ring into the other cup.

  I gave the fallen angel some serious side-eye, not sure what had suddenly prompted his offer of assistance. He’d always been fond of Lux, but that fondness didn’t seem to extend beyond the occasional visit or the delivery of a strange gift—like the goat out in the pasture with the horses, or the hot sauce of the month subscription. He was that whacky uncle, here one day and gone the next, but not the sort to offer to actually help when help was needed.

  None of that mattered though, because I was taking him up on this before he changed his mind.

  “Deal,” I said, realizing I sounded a lot like the president. I’d wanted to take Lux with me to see Dar so he could hang with Karrae, so I’d push that off for tomorrow, and try to squeeze something else in today.

  Fuck. When did I become so industrious? I looked down at the hideous ring on my finger and turned the band so the gray stones were more centered. I really hated all this work, but the sooner I got all shit done, the sooner I could get back to relaxing in my house and spending time with those I loved.

  I’d get through this. The meetings with national leaders. The updates on Hel and New Hell. The fucking rings. Amber’s equally fucking wedding. Yelling at the neighbors about all the dead shit out front of my house.

  But there was the epic bachelorette party. Then my bachelorette party. And my wedding, which would be a huge fun party.

  “You coming to
the wedding?” I asked Samael as I twisted the ring around my finger.

  “Amber and Irix? I’m not sure. I mean, I didn’t get an invitation, which makes me particularly inclined to attend, but then again I’m not fond of churches, and weddings are boring as fucking hell.”

  “No, I mean my wedding.”

  Samael was mid-swallow on a beer when I’d said that. He made a horrible gurgling noise, and beer came out of both his mouth and nose. After a few minutes of coughing with Lux helpfully pounding him on the back, he managed to catch his breath.

  “You…Michael…” he gasped.

  “What? Is it so shocking that your eldest brother would decide to go through a human commitment ritual with me?”

  “It’s that my eldest brother would go through a commitment ritual with anyone. He’s older than the fucking sun and he’s never done more than some recreational joining with an angel here or there.”

  “You had to have known this was serious. I mean, I’m an imp for fuck’s sake. The Archangel Michael starts fucking an imp, you know he’s gone over to the dark side.”

  Samael laughed. “That’s true. If he’s fucking an imp and helping raise her adopted angel, then he’s in it for the long haul.”

  He better be in it for the long haul, or I was going to shred his wings. Or maybe chain him in my basement with an elven collar on him so he’d never escape me, serial killer style. No way my asshole angel was ever walking away from me. Ever.

  “I want you at the wedding. Seriously. You’re whacky Uncle Samael to Lux. You pop in and out of my house all the time. I consider you sort-of a friend, sort-of a brother-in-law already. I mean, look what I’m marrying into here. I’m going to have to put up with Gabe for the rest of my fucking life. Uri and Rafi are pretty cool, but they’re still Angels of Order. I need you bro. I totally need you.”

  “I’ll think about it.” He scowled, but I could tell he was flattered. Samael’s sin was pride, and I knew how to stoke that fire.

  “You can be my Maid of Honor,” I told him. “You’d look incredible in an ugly turquoise dress. We’re getting married in Vegas. There will be blackjack, drugs, booze, and hookers. It’s gonna be awesome. Elvis is officiating.”

  Samael’s eyebrows shot up. “You’ve got a necromancer who can bring him back?”

  “Nah.” I waved a hand. “But there are plenty of Elvis impersonators. I want you there. And I’m sure your brother wants you there, if he only had the guts to admit it.”

  “Who’s his best man?”

  There was a tinge of bitterness in Samael’s voice that made my chest hurt.

  “I don’t know. We haven’t really sat down and planned much or even thought of dates.” I resisted the urge to reach out to him, instinctively knowing that Samael wouldn’t appreciate my sympathy over his sibling issues.

  We drank beer in quiet for a while. Even Lux was silent. Finally Samael sighed, draining the his beer and tossing the can into the trash.

  “Okay. I’ll be your Maid of Honor. But the dress needs to be really ugly and I want one of those corsages on my wrist like girls wore to high school dances back in the ’80s.”

  I did a fist pump then leaned over to hug the fallen angel. “Perfect! Lux, you hang with Uncle Samael for the rest of today. Return as many rings as you can. I’ll order dinner, then I need to run out. I’ll be back late, but I’ll check in on you if you’re asleep. Okay?”

  Lux gave me a wide grin. “Okay. Love you.”

  Again, my insides twisted into a heap. “I love you, too.”

  * * *

  I left Samael and Lux playing quarters, and headed out to work.

  First stop was my neighbor’s house where I argued with them about the dead shit on my porch. They swore on every relative they’d ever known that they weren’t poisoning rats and other animals and sending them my way. In fact, they were claiming they’d become vegan and didn’t even wear leather anymore, let alone set out poison. After listening to them lecture me about the evils of horse and goat captivity, and how Boomer would be better off turned loose in the wild, I finally left.

  Boomer loose in the wild would be a fucking nightmare. No cemetery would be safe. He’d be digging up and eating corpses the night after their interment. And Diablo? Nobody wanted a demon horse terrorizing the neighborhood. The horses were all happy, eating grass and hay, lounging in my pasture and occasionally being ridden. And the goat too, although I hadn’t figured out how to ride it yet.

  But if my neighbors weren’t poisoning these animals, then who was? It certainly wasn’t Wyatt. He ignored any insects or wildlife that came into his house, too occupied with gaming and his internet security business to bother with pest control. Hell, his fridge still had that door that nearly fell off every time someone opened it. But Wyatt and those asshole neighbors were the only ones within half a mile of my house. No poisoned animal would be able to travel that sort of distance to die on my front porch.

  Maybe it wasn’t poison. Magic? A curse? I thought about what I’d learned of elven magic and the human offshoot. A curse seemed reasonable. There was a list longer than my driveway of those who might be pissed off enough to curse me, but dead animals? That seemed a bit lame for a curse. In my experience, curses tended to be things like wasting disease, daily vehicular breakdowns, incurable diarrhea—that sort of thing. Not dying animals on the porch.

  On my way back, I stopped by my guest house to see if the Lows had any idea about what might be causing my dead animal issue. They seemed surprised, and went on to suggest all sorts of things, including that I might be attracting dead things because of my titular role as leader of Hel.

  I was the Iblis, not the fucking grim reaper.

  Deciding the dead animal problem was a mystery which had hopefully ended since I hadn’t seen any more since this morning, I decided to forget about it and head off for an errand that wasn’t on my to-do list.

  The sun was setting in Ireland, but it had stopped raining, and even with the gray cloudy skies I could see a hell of a lot more than I could last night. The fields were a vibrant green, the mud from last night’s downpour lined the shoulders of the two-lane road. The bodies of the angels had been removed instead of just hidden from view, and there, smack in the middle of a cow pasture was a wild gate—the wild gate. It was the same wild gate Gregory had closed last night.

  The rain had washed away prints, but I could see from the churned-up mud and grass that a struggle had definitely taken place. I was no expert, but as I walked around to the various spots where the dead angels had been, I began to suspect something. It wasn’t one monster that had killed these angels, it was a several. And that was a good thing because the thought of one monster powerful enough to kill ten angels was disturbing. Four, five, or ten monsters? That was a whole lot less scary. Although that meant there could possibly be four, five, or ten things roaming around Ireland right now.

  Walking over to the gate I reached out and touched its energy, confirming that it was the same gate we’d closed last night. If I’d been with any other angel, I would have suspected they’d screwed up, but Gregory didn’t screw up. This gate had been completely closed, then reopened—which made me think it wasn’t actually one of the wild gates that were randomly popping up here and there around the world.

  Gregory had said he’d send his enforcers to look for whatever might have come through the gate and stayed, but if the gate kept reopening, then we were going to have a problem with shit coming and even going. But if the oldest of the archangels couldn’t close this thing, who could?

  As an experiment, I tossed a clod of dirt through. Nothing came back out, so I took a deep breath, pulled my spirit-self away from my arm, and shoved the limb through the gate. The other side felt cold, and when I pulled my arm back, I saw it was pale with frostbite. Recreating the limb, I left my spirit-self in the cells and tried again. Although my flesh seemed ill equipped for whatever was on the other side, my spirit-self wasn’t affected, so I decided to do something incredi
bly stupid and shove my head through to take a look around.

  It was so cold that my breath frosted in the air and my inhalation stung my lungs, but the other side of this gate was unexpectedly full of color and light. I reached out with my spirit-self and touched a wall of ice and glass. It was like someone had taken a mirrored funhouse and stuck it at the South Pole. Reluctant to do more than just stick my head and arm through, I looked around and saw nothing but glass and ice. Whatever had come through and killed the angels, it was nowhere to be seen.

  Pulling back, I recreated my frozen flesh, glad to be in the relative warmth of Ireland once more. There were no hideous creatures on the other side waiting to rip my head off. Whatever had come through before was probably unlikely to come through again. Other than the occasional cow wandering into the gate and dying of frostbite on the other side, I couldn’t see any immediate danger. It had to have been a complete fluke what had happened to those angels—and that was a relief.

  What the fuck should I do about this stupid gate, though? If cows started vanishing, some farmer was going to check, and then people would start vanishing too. Maybe I could surround the thing with orange cones and caution tape as if it were a sinkhole? Although that might just make the humans more curious to examine what was beyond the tape.

  No, I’d need to let Gregory know the gate had reopened and we needed a different solution—perhaps some sort of force field around it like he’d done with the gates to Hel so people and animals wouldn’t accidently stumble through.

  Jamming a few sticks in the ground to mark the spot for Gregory, I sent a text to him outlining the problem, then headed off to what I hoped would be my last errand for the day.

  * * *

  Hel hadn’t changed much since I’d been a young demon. The swamps were the same, the arid deserts were the same. The only things that had changed were in the places that had once been the Elven kingdoms. They’d been lush forests when I was young, but with the elven exodus, their lands had been slowly changing. Deciduous trees were wilting and drying away. Half a mile into the former elven territories the land was quickly reverting to desert. There were still elves in Hel, but they weren’t the elves who were skilled in environmental management. They were the left behind ones, the ones who’d been deemed not critical to the plans to take over the human lands. I felt for them, but they still had choices. They could remain here and live in the environment that Hel provided, or they could walk through the gates and deal with what the humans demanded—and the angels demanded.