Exodus (Imp Series Book 8) (23 page)

Probably not enough of an advantage to outweigh the fact that I might be fighting with Lows. Maybe we could armor them somehow?

“Even if I have a dozen Lows, I’m not sure how I’m going to transport them to Aaru,” I confessed. “I really struggled to haul those elves to Hel. I ended up making several trips because I couldn’t manage more than three at a time.”

“Why can’t you?”

What did he mean? “I don’t know why, I just can’t. I tried to take the six elves in Iceland along with the car I’d stuffed them in and nothing happened. In France when I tried to take six at once, nothing happened. The best I could do was three.”

The angel’s eyebrows scrunched together. “It shouldn’t matter how many you’re taking. One, one hundred, one thousand. Technically speaking, you’re opening a small, temporary gateway. The effort is in opening the gateway to teleport, not actually moving the individuals through it.”

“I tried. It didn’t work. And I’m not looking forward to transporting a bunch of Lows to Aaru three at a time.”

“This is all in your head, Cockroach. It shouldn’t matter.”

I was getting frustrated with this discussion. “It does matter. I tried. I can’t.”

“You can.”

I smacked my coffee cup on the counter. “Then show me how, or tell me the secret, because I’m not able to do it.”

Gregory sighed. “You transported your little dragon, didn’t you?”

“Yes—”

“And he weighs about the equivalent of ten to fifteen elves. How do you explain your ability to easily transport a two thousand pound dragon, but not a dozen elves, or six elves in a small sedan?”

“I don’t know. It’s quantity, not weight or size. I just can’t do it.” His words made me think, though. Little Red weighed about the same as a car. Gregory was right. There honestly wasn’t any reason why I shouldn’t be able to transport multiple demons, or elves. Was it all in my head as he’d suggested?

The angel took my arm and led me outside past the pool patio and to the strip of grass in front of my stables. “There. Take them to Hel and then bring them back.”

I stared at the ground where he was pointing. It was a pile of disturbed dirt with a swarm of ants dragging twigs and leaves toward their home.

“Eww. I’m not touching them.” I really wasn’t fond of ants. They were fast and tickly and even though these were of the harmless common variety, I couldn’t help but think of the agressive fire ants.

Gregory rolled his eyes. “You’re a Cockroach, but you won’t touch ants?”

It didn’t make sense. But yes, I didn’t want to touch the ants.

“Fine.” He threw up his hands. “Don’t touch them. Just take them to Hel and back. No need to have any of them in contact with your skin.”

I didn’t see where he was going with this, but I did it, popping briefly into Patchine then back.

“How many ants did you transport?” Gregory asked.

I looked down at the ground where the little black specks were weaving around drunkenly and stumbling onto their sides. “Umm, thirty? Fifty? It’s hard to count them when they’re running around like that.”

“Thirty-six. And you didn’t even touch them. See? It’s not the quantity, and it’s not weight.”

“Yes, but…people.” I shrugged. “Okay. I don’t get it. I can teleport thirty-six ants. I can teleport a two thousand pound baby dragon. I can’t teleport a dozen elves.”

“Yes you can.” Gregory marched across my pasture toward the grouping of tents. The elves stopped what they were doing and gathered round, staring at the angel with big eyes. “Take six of them to Hel.”

The elves shrieked and wailed.

“And bring them back.” Gregory waved a reassuring hand. “She’s going to bring you back. This is just practice.”

I don’t think the elves were all that thrilled about being my test subjects. A few of them slowly edged backward and around the sides of tents, trying to hide. I started out in my comfort zone, transporting three with me to Hel and back. They were dizzy and pale when we reappeared in my pasture, but none the worse for our trip.

Four. It was difficult. I had to concentrate, to feel each one of them inside my mind as I brought them with me through the gateway. When we returned, I was also dizzy and pale, feeling like I was going to barf in the grass.

“I can’t do it,” I told Gregory. I
wanted
to do it—really, I did. If I could manage this, I was one step closer to sending others to locations without me, or bringing them to me from a specific point. And I was one step closer to creating a gateway—more than a temporary one, anyway.

“You can,” Gregory insisted. “You grouped the ants together when you sent them. You weren’t thinking of them as individuals, but rather as a group. You need to do that with these elves. That should help you to overcome this obstacle.”

A lightbulb went off. He was right. When I teleported Little Red, I didn’t think of how big he was, but of him as an individual. I’d been transporting individuals, and with that method, there was only so many I could hold in my mind. But a group… I hadn’t even known how many ants I’d brought to and from Hel. I’d just grabbed them as a group.

I closed my eyes to concentrate and envisioned the dozen elves in front of me as one unit. When I opened my eyes, the red sands of Hel stretched before me, the city of Patchine in the distance.

“Take us back,” one of the elves whispered. They were huddled together, looking at me as if they expected me to abandon them here in the heat of Hel.

When we arrived back, I counted just to make sure and was relieved to find out that I’d managed a dozen elves without accidently leaving any of them behind in Hel. And I wasn’t puking in the grass either.

“Nicely done, Cockroach.”

I basked in the warm glow of Gregory’s approval. But moving a dozen elves was not quite the same as moving an army of demons. I’d need to get them to Aaru, and then be able to extract them possibly without them grouped together or even knowing exactly where some of them were.

And I expected to have more than a dozen. I crossed my fingers, and hoped that my Lows had come through and managed to get a decent number of reasonably skilled demons for my army, otherwise this new skill was going to go to waste.

W
hat have you got for me?”

My Lows stood at attention, occasionally elbowing each other.

“Three greed demons,” Pustule announced. “But they want to know what’s in it for them. Do the angels have treasure or riches they can steal when they’re up there? Because otherwise you’ll need to pay them.”

Ugh. I hated greed demons. “No payment for this mission, but tell them they can keep whatever they take off the angels they kill.”

Little did they realize that the angels would be incorporeal, and unlikely to have anything that actually
could
be stolen. Oh well.

“I’ve got three imps, but they may not show up,” Barf chimed in. “Depends on what they’re doing at the particular time that you need them. The battle sounded fun to them, but you know that imps don’t have the greatest of attention spans.”

Understatement of the year. “Anyone else?”

“Thirty Lows,” Squeal said. “They’re pretty good at sneaking around, and some of them can spit acid. When I told them you’d have dwarven-made swords or knives for those who fought, they were ready to go.”

“Five warmongers,” Snip said. “They’re totally in on this. You say the word and they’re there. Anything to say they killed an angel. And they all wanted to know if they could cut off the wings and bring them back.”

I winced at the thought. Damn, that would hurt like fuck. “Only if the angels are dead.” There was no way I would wish a live de-winging on even my worst enemy. Well, maybe my worst enemy, but not the run-of-the-mill enemies.

“I’ve got two Ancients,” Whistle added.

Everyone erupted into a deafening series of slurs on Whistle’s parentage, punching him and kicking him.

“We’re not supposed to get Ancients, fucking idiot,” Snip told him, throwing a well-placed punch into the Low’s long nose.

Whistle squealed, covering his head with all four hands. “But they’re powerful. I figured they’d be more better at killing angels than any other demons. Besides, I didn’t really talk to the Ancients, just the heads of their households.”

Great. This was turning into even more of a cluster fuck than I’d originally thought. “What exactly did they say, Whistle?”

The Low stared up at me, blood dripping from his nose. “That if this was legit, if you really did have your wings and could gate into Aaru, then the Ancients would want in on this. If not, then they were going to hunt you down and kill you for disturbing them.”

Days like this I was regretting my generosity in allowing so many Lows into my household. Whistle meant well, but he’d just put me between the proverbial rock and a hard place. If I backed out with these Ancients, I’d have three powerful demons gunning for me. If I followed through, then Gregory and his brothers would need to turn around and oust three demons after fighting a whole host of angels.

“Did you tell them we’re not staying? That this is a go in, kill some angels, then get the fuck back to Hel excursion?”

Whistle nodded. “Yes, but they laughed and said that maybe the time was right to start up the war again. That maybe this could be just the first in a series of forays designed to take back their homeland.”

This was exactly why I didn’t want the Ancients to know about this, and certainly didn’t want to include them. I wasn’t sure what to do at this point, but I knew I couldn’t lead these three into Aaru. Guess I was going to have to deal with the death threats. Again. Damn I was getting tired of this.

“Okay. Where is my army? I’ll need them in a central place. Can’t exactly go racing around Hel to assemble my forty-one demon army when I need to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.”

Forty-one. I wondered how many legions that was.

“The greed demons, the Lows and the warmongers are all at your house in Dis,” Snip told me. “The imps said they’ll check in there twice a day, otherwise you can contact them through their households.”

That wasn’t too bad. The majority would be at hand, and tracking down three imps wouldn’t be a big deal.

“The Ancients are at their houses,” Whistle told me. “They said your place at Dis was a hovel.”

Pretty harsh words given that both my houses had once belonged to the Ancient demon Ahriman. I doubt they would have called his homes hovels to his face while he was alive. Jerks. Not like I wanted them along on this trip anyway.

“Great. Let’s go meet my army.”

I left Patchine and made the trek to Dis on foot. It was a several hour journey, but it gave me time to think and also gave my Lows a chance to come along if they wanted. Not surprisingly, Snip was the only one who followed me out of town. Surprisingly, he was oddly silent during our journey.

Forty-one. After Gregory’s lessons I was reasonably sure I could transport that many demons to Aaru without exhausting myself too much. Unfortunately, I doubted such a small group would make much of a dent in the outcome of a war among the angels. The best I could hope would be for shock value. If the angels were stunned at our arrival, maybe it would give Gregory and his brothers the chance to get the upper hand. And hopefully they could gain that upper hand before my small army all got themselves killed.

And then there was the fact that I’d ordered two hundred weapons from the dwarves. That was roughly five weapons per demon. Hopefully they all had forms with multiple arms and hands to utilize all these weapons, or I would have just bought a bunch of expensive toys for my Lows to play with.

“Mistress?” Snip whispered.

“Yeah,” I whispered back. I had no idea why the silence was necessary. We were out in the middle of nowhere. But some demons did have exceptional hearing, and I wasn’t sure how sensitive the information Snip was about to impart would be.

“I wasn’t able to find this Samael, the one who held the Iblis sword before you.”

It had been a long shot, but worth an effort. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you tried your best.”

“I’ll keep looking,” Snip vowed. “None of the households I spoke with remembered what happened to him after the war. Some say he died before we came to Hel. Others remember him being here, but that he quickly went into seclusion. Others believe he may have changed his form and identity and is one of the more active Ancients. Although no one seems to have any clear idea on which Ancient he is likely to be.”

“It’s okay. We’ll eventually find some information on him.” Of that I was pretty sure. Although the information might be imparted right before one of those three Ancients took my head off.

I knew the first theory wasn’t valid. If Samael had died in the war, then Gregory would have known it. He was positive his brother had been exiled with the rest of the Angels of Chaos—so positive that he’d pushed to have the gates created. Once this side of those gates, Samael’s life, or death, was anyone’s guess. Only the Ancients would have a clue, and even most of them might not know. It was a search for a needle in an Elven forest, but if I could find out what happened to Gregory’s brother, it would be worth the effort.

And if I could reunite them… That was too much for even me to hope for. But still, I did have hope.

“I worry about these three Ancients of Whistle’s, Mistress,” Snip confided.

I did too. “It’s okay. I took down Haagenti. I killed Ahriman. I’ll talk with these Ancients and explain the mistake, that it was all a misunderstanding. And if they persist, well I’ll just have to kill them too.”

Bold words, but I couldn’t have the little guy worrying about me. Of all my Lows, Snip was my favorite.

We strode through the gates of Dis, crumbling stone buildings marking the edges of the city. These were the slums, the homes of those without households. They shared the hovels, sometimes over a hundred packed into the various rooms. Anything owned was quickly stolen. Any food needed to be consumed immediately or a demon risked being killed over a crust of bread. This was where most of my household had come from, and where they’d return to if something ever happened to me. I was the only one who took in Lows. Well, the only one who took them in and didn’t intend to kill them within a week or so. Still, these ruins teemed with demons small and large. I couldn’t save them all.