Women of the Otherworld 09.5 - Angelic (3 page)

The chill didn’t last—the room was like a sauna, dry heat enveloping me. Dantalian was at home. Not that he had much choice. He’d been walled up here himself, for pissing off
his
lord. The story went that the Lord Glamis responsible for these skeletons had been, like me, the half-demon offspring of a lord demon, in his case, Baal. He’d offered the sacrifice of these men in return for a boon. Baal accepted. But the boon required Dantalian’s powers of transmigration. Dantalian refused, for reasons known only to him and his lord, and ended up walled up with the clansmen, sentenced to remain there for five hundred and fifty-five years.

“Yo, Dantalian!”
I called. “We need to chat.”

A sigh whispered through the room, carried on a current of hot air that tickled the back of my neck. I didn’t bother looking over my shoulder. I wouldn’t see anything. In the living plane, even the lord of transmigration can’t manifest without a body to possess.

“A little respect, perhaps, my lovely demon-angel?” he said, his voice deep and resonant.

“Sorry. Yo,
Uncle
Dantalian. We need to chat.”

He sighed louder. It was
his own
fault. During one of my regular visits, he’d tried to curry favor by pointing out that my father, lord demon Balam, was his older brother, meaning we shared a blood tie. It hadn’t gotten him what he’d wanted. Nice try, though. And now I was never going to let him forget it.

“There’s a problem with your djinn,” I said.

“It’s nice to see you, too. You look well. Still carrying that unfortunate sword, though, I see.”

“Yep, want a closer look?”

I swung the angel sword off my back and sliced it through the air. He only chuckled… from the other side of the room now, out of its reach.

“I’m interrupting my regularly scheduled visits to bring you an important message, Dantalian. I have a problem and, as it turns out, my problem is also your problem.”

I explained the situation.

“I suppose it was only a matter of time before one of my underlings sought to take my place,” he said. “The biggest surprise is that they haven’t tried before now. This is easily handled, though. You’ll simply need to take a message to one of my demons.”

“And hope he’s not the one staging the coup?”

“He isn’t. He’s an excellent soldier with no aspirations to be a general. He knows I’ll reward him for his loyalty when I’m free, and he prefers his recompense to come without any pesky political responsibilities.”

“Where do I find him?”

That, apparently, was going to be a bit of a problem.

Five

The best part about this scheme for getting
myself
fired? Not only was I not shirking my responsibility to stop the djinn, but I was earning a shitload of gratitude from a very powerful demon. I’d still be drawing on this bank after Dantalian was free.

Now if only I could just pop over and deliver the message as quickly as I’d done with Dantalian.
But not surprisingly, demons don’t hang out in the same dimensions as angels. To find
Armaros
—Dantalian’s trusted soldier—I had to go someplace I’d really rather avoid.

I teleported into a desert, hot wind buffeting me, hair whipping my face, sand blasting my eyes.
When I squinted, I could make out the hulking figure of an enormous slavering dog blocking my path.
Cerberus.
Contrary to myth, the guardian beast didn’t have three heads. Like a lot of legends, it’s a fanciful version of the truth. Not three heads, but three dogs—the Cerberi, each facing a different direction, blocking all points of entry to Hell. Well, actually, it’s a library, but
close
enough.

I pulled out my sword. Cerberus One sat, then stretched out, head on his paws, whimpering softly. Two and Three did the same, maintaining position, guarding the west and east.

“Good girls,” I said as I walked up.

I paused to scratch behind One’s massive ears. She made a deep noise in her throat that Trsiel insisted was a growl, but I knew was more of a purr, her big head tilting, giving me better scratch-access. The other two looked over hopefully. I patted them, too. I’m not really a dog person, but it’s wise to befriend the gatekeepers, especially when they have fangs the size of my forearms.

“You gals still going to let me past if I don’t have this?”

I waved my sword. Cerberus One chuffed and grumbled and prodded my hand for more ear-scratching. I took this as a positive sign.

Returning my sword to my back, I headed up the vast marble steps of the Great Library of Alexandria. Yes,
that
Great Library, the one Caesar accidentally torched while burning the Egyptian fleets. Whoops.

As I said, though, in the ghost world, areas are sometimes frozen in periods of time, usually their zenith. So we still had the Great Library, though, as the monster guard dogs might suggest, it’s not open to the public.

I have an uneasy relationship with the Great Library. It really can be my version of Hell—endless
aisles of moldy books
that the Fates banish me to every time I get a new assignment. As a kid, I hated it when teachers told me to go look something up, and I appreciate it even less now. When I want answers, I like to track them down through my network of contacts. The Fates don’t like that, which probably has something to do with the suitability of those contacts.

But books have their place, namely as repositories of arcane spells, and for that, nothing beats the Great Library. I can find more here in an afternoon than I could in years hunting through black-market grimoire shops. The Fates themselves didn’t know all the books these vast halls contained, meaning I often found real dark magic gems.

Within these walls I could also find books on demonology that would lead me to Armaros. That would take hours, days even. Instead, I walked through the special reference collection, past all the marble-topped tables and gray-haired scholars, and slipped into a secret passage to the very special collection, one that contained a single, priceless reference.

The hall was a typical government office corridor, lined with unnamed, locked doors, guaranteed to convince any wanderers that they’d taken a wrong turn. A little farther along, though, and the faint perfume of tropical flowers wafted past on a mist-laden breeze. The burble of running water, growing louder until a waterfall blocked the passage. I kept going. I got soaked—the water was real—but a quick spell dried me off, and I found myself in a grotto filled with flowers and birds and butterflies. Don’t ask me to name any of them—I know only that they were spectacular enough for me to slow down and admire, and it takes a lot to slow me down.

In the center of the grotto, a dark-haired man sat under a tree, poring over a stained book. He didn’t glance up as I approached, simply lifted a hand, waving as if in greeting and I smacked into the invisible magical barrier he erected. He finished his page,
then
glanced over.

“Ah, Eve.
Come in.” Another wave and the barrier vanished. “Here to see Delphia?”

“I am.” I reached into my pocket and took out an amulet.

His gray eyes widened. “Is that—?”

“Uh-huh.”

A grin creased his face and he took the amulet from me gingerly, as if it might shatter on contact. Then he waved me in, gaze fixed on his prize. Suck up to the gatekeepers.
Works every time.

I passed through another waterfall into yet another grotto, this one extending as far as the eye could see, and far too large to actually be contained within a building, even the Great Library. It was an illusion, of course, but indistinguishable from reality. I couldn’t even imagine the amount of magic that would go into this.
The ultimate gilded cage… for the ultimate songbird.

Nymphs frolicked through the glade, splashing in the pools, chasing each other through flowers, and doing what I suppose comes naturally when they catch one another. I stepped over one entwined couple. They didn’t notice. I didn’t blame them.

Nymphs look human. They
are
human, as much as any other supernaturals are, except that nymphs are drop-dead gorgeous, every one of them. In modern society, that’s the only power they have—the ability to stop traffic with a single smile.

I passed a trio engaged in a more cerebral pastime—some ancient board game. They glanced up and
smiled,
giving no sign they’d seen me here before. If they had, they wouldn’t remember it. Nymph ghosts clamor for stints in this paradise, but it comes with a price. While here, they lose their long-term memories and most of their short-term ones. By the time that game ended, they wouldn’t remember who’d won the last. They lived in the moment and for the moment. To me, that’d be hell, but for some, it’s one chance at ultimate happiness, with the added bonus of serving Delphia, better known as the Delphic Oracle.

I found Delphia sitting in a swing, watching a trio of Adonis lookalikes weave
her a
garland of flowers. The flowers were the only thing she wore, and she was as beautiful as any nymph in her garden. When she saw me, she leapt from the swing, startling her suitors as she clapped in delight.

“You’ve come again.
How lovely.”

“You know her?” one of the young men asked, frowning at me.

“Of course.
We met in Sparta, before the Peloponnesian War. Or was it Britannia?” She studied my face. “Perhaps we haven’t met yet? Yes, that’s it. We don’t meet until after the third Great War. If there is one, that is. If there isn’t, we may not meet at all. That would be a shame.”

Memory.
A blessing and a curse.
For Delphia, definitely the latter.
In her head, she holds the memories of all times that have passed and all times to come. Except that, because the future isn’t written, she sees only the times that
could
come.
All of them.
Everything that was, and everything that could be. That’s why the nymphs here must live in the moment—so she can, too, giving
her the
closest thing to peace she can find.

“Was it Britannia?” she asked.
“Or America?
No, neither. It was—”

Delphia stopped as I held up a pearl-like stone. She stared at it,
then
threw her arms around me.

“Eve! How delightful. It’s been too long.”

“Five months.”

“And eight days, ten hours.”

She was right, of course. In myth, the Delphic Oracle spoke in riddles. In reality, she just gets very, very mixed up, with all those memories stuffing her head. To fix that, you need a focus stone. It’s temporary, unfortunately. It also needs to be used sparingly, which is why the Fates make angels spend days digging through the reference stacks instead of just queuing up outside Delphia’s grotto.

To get access to Delphia, angels had to plead their case to the Fates,
then
be given temporary custody of a focus stone and an escort to get past her guard. As for how I got my own focus stone, let’s just say it wasn’t easy. But it did save me countless days of research.

Did I really think the Fates didn’t realize I had a stone and access to Delphia? Of course they did. They just looked the other way… until I got caught by some higher deity, and then they’d claim to have known nothing about it. Yet another game I was sick of playing.

Once Delphia knew who I was, we talked.
Just social chit-chat.
Not my thing, but she liked it, and I wouldn’t begrudge her those few minutes of lucid conversation. Then I told her I needed to find the demon Armaros and she looked deep into her crystal ball brain, dredged up a current location and told me.

“When you find him— Oh!”
She stopped short, blue eyes going wide and blank, her mental gaze turning inward.
“Armaros.
The djinn.
You’re going to…” She blinked, eyes filling with alarm. “Oh. No, Eve. You mustn’t—”