Women of the Otherworld 09.5 - Angelic by Kelley Armstrong Read Free Book Online

skewered on my sword.
     
    “I need a bigger sword,” I said.
     
    Marius grinned. “We’ll have to requisition one for you.”
     
    I glanced behind him. “Is Katsuo with you?”
     
    “Haven’t seen him, but I’m sure we can handle these three.”
     
    The djinn looked human—or close to it. Unlike most demons and demi-demons, they can manifest in the living world. And like most who can manifest, they bore some resemblance to their mythical counterparts, in their case, the genies of Arabian lore.
     
    The djinn were bald and muscular, and wore only billowing pants. Their yellow eyes and copper skin glowed. They were barely five feet tall, but I’m sure to humans who summoned them, they looked much bigger.
     
    Skewering them on my sword didn’t kill them. Stung like a son of a bitch, but that wasn’t what really pissed them off. I don’t know what makes an angel sword glow, but it’s like celestial Krazy Glue for demons. Once they touch it, they aren’t going anywhere, no matter how much they curse and struggle, and believe me, these djinn did plenty of both.
     
    “Want me to take these guys into custody?” Marius asked. “You can wait and see if more show up.”
     
    “First I need to interrogate them and find out exactly what Dantalian was up to.”
     
    Marius shrugged. “I say don’t bother. You’ve done enough. Let the Fates handle interrogation while you head off on your overdue vacation.”
     
    Tempting. Very tempting. But any thought of getting myself fired had faded under the need to finish this job. So I asked him to stay and watch for more djinn, then I thanked Jaime and Jeremy, and hauled my captives off to a dimensional holding cell.
     
    The djinn didn’t want to talk, naturally, but I can be very persuasive, especially when I’ve called in Kris to help me play bad cop/psychotic cop. This was another reason why I’d left Marius guarding the arrivals gate—I don’t mind breaking the rules, but I won’t let an angelic colleague be party to it.
     
    Kris had been right. Dantalian was behind the scheme. The djinn were only foot soldiers, so they knew little about the overall plan, only their small part in it, which was to work overtime responding to all summonings and give the summoner an automatic pass to crazy land.
     
    When the divine powers realized the djinn were breaking their contract, they’d send in the angels, who’d find the problem spreading like eldritch fire. The lord demons would see the angel troops being marched out and they’d get involved—not to muster their own troops, but to stamp out the fire fast.
     
    The battle between good and evil is really a cold war. Each side makes small forays against the other, struggling to keep the power balance tipped a little to their side, both knowing they don’t have the martial supremacy to risk a full-blown attack.
     
    So the lord demons would want a quick resolution to the situation. That’s where, presumably, Armaros would suggest a surefire way to end the conflict. Release Dantalian. After all, he’d served most of his sentence. He’d learned his lesson. Grant him early parole and he’d be eager to prove himself by stopping his djinn. Then, the moment he gave the word, the djinn would fall in line. Problem solved.
     
    I was still finishing the interrogation when Marius popped in. No more djinn had appeared and he was eager to hand these three to the Fates. I let him handle that. I had a more pressing appointment to keep.
     
    * * * *
     
    “Yo, Dantalian!”
     
    I strode through the wall, narrowly avoiding a skeleton. The oath beside me said Kristof hadn’t been so lucky.
     
    “Jaime and I talked about having her do a ‘special broadcast’ here, sensing the spirits and breaking down the wall to put these poor buggers to rest,” I said as we walked into the room. “Great publicity for her, but we didn’t want to take the chance of freeing Dantalian.”
     
    “Oh, I’m sure that wouldn’t happen,”