Women of the Otherworld 09.5 - Angelic Read Free Page A

a ghost, but a residual—an imprinted image.
     
    I cut through the polyester-clad tourist brigade and stepped through the wall, coming eye to eye-socket with a silently screaming skeleton. It never failed. There were only a half-dozen of them along the wall, but I always smacked into one.
     
    In the corner were more bones, piled up and covered in gnaw marks. Old bones, from a Scottish clan walled up in here for pissing off their lord. Still, knowing their souls were long gone didn’t keep a chill from going through me each time I saw them and tried not to picture the story the skeletons told.
     
    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