“All right. As soon as the preliminary autopsy confirms what we’re thinking, I’ll pass the file on to Bastion. Are you going home again or straight to the office?”
Her fingers curled into the hair at the nape of her neck. She stared at her supervisor. “Excuse me?”
“I asked if you’re—”
“I heard, but that’s it? That’s all you want to know?”
“It’s all I need.”
Her mouth flapped three times before she found her voice again. “A woman’s baby is ripped—not cut—ripped from her, and you don’t have any questions other than am I going home or straight to the office? What the hell, Staff? You must realize we’re not dealing with a human killer here. You need to know—”
“Stop.”
She did, if only out of sheer surprise.
“I don’t need to know anything, Detective. In fact, the less I know, the better. Because regardless of who—or what—did this, as it stands right now I have no choice but to investigate the homicide as I would any other. And if I’m going to place you back on active duty, I need deniability. Has Detective Jarvis ever mentioned hallucinations to you? No. Has she reported hearing voices? No. Does she appear mentally sound? Yes.”
The buttons of Roberts’s wool peacoat strained under the sudden thrust of his hands into his pockets. “As good a cop as you are, your career is hanging by a thread right now. The rest of the world wants a rational explanation for what’s going on. Our bosses want a rational explanation. So if you go around spouting off about killers who aren’t human, I either have to back you up or shut you down. If I back you up, I get shut down and we’re both finished. Whatever the hell is going on, neither of us will be of any use without a badge behind us. Are you getting this?”
If I back you up. Not when. If.
Because it didn’t come down to whether or not the rest of the world wanted to believe her, but whether or not he did.
The truths she’d wanted to speak gathered in the back of her throat, piling one on top of another until they threatened to cut off her breath. She hadn’t realized until now, until this very moment, how much she needed to share her burden. To tell someone here in Toronto, because Henderson was just too damned far away in Vancouver, about all the things no mortal should have ever known.
The broken pact that had triggered war between Heaven and Hell; a Nephilim army, eighty thousand strong, growing in the bellies of human women; Heaven’s attempt to assassinate the One’s own son when his love for a mortal woman, for Alex, had threatened the existence of humankind.
Archangels. Lost soulmates. Rape at the hands of Lucifer.
She nudged at a pebble near the toe of her shoe. “Can I ask you something?”
Roberts waited.
“If you didn’t want to know, why call me?”
“I called you for confirmation, Detective. Because I do know. Maybe not everything, but enough.” Her supervisor opened his car door. “There’s a meeting this morning. Ten a.m. I expect you there.”
***
Mika’el stared down from the rooftop at the woman in the parking lot below—and at the Archangel watching her from the shadows of a building.
Aramael.
Damn it to Hell and back again.
At first, when he hadn’t found the Naphil at either her apartment or office, he’d been at a loss as to where else to look. With any other human, it would have been a simple matter of contacting his or her Guardian, but those of Nephilim descent had no Guardians, making them essentially untraceable—especially in a city of several million. Then, about to give up and post a watch at the two most obvious locations, he’d sensed Aramael’s presence.
The coincidence had been too great to ignore.
And now he’d confirmed his suspicions. Aramael, newly promoted from exiled Power to Archangel, had lied to him about having severed the connection between him and Alex. Mika’el tipped back his head and stared at the still-dark sky. He should have expected this. He of all angels should have known that one’s soulmate, Naphil or otherwise, could not be so easily dismissed.
His years away had made him careless. It was time—past time—to get his act together. The One needed her son back, and Mika’el needed to know he had a united force of Archangels at the ready.
With a last glance streetward, he stepped back from the roof’s edge and out of the human realm.
He’d start with Aramael.
Chapter 6
Raymond Joly looked up at her from the couch as Alex walked into the coffee room.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” he said, his enormous mustache giving an upward twitch indicative of a grin. “It’s about time you got off your ass and back to work.”
“He said as he lazed on the couch,” she retorted, walking between him and the newscast he’d been watching, headed for the counter. She indicated the television with a lift of her chin. “More good news?”
Joly thumbed the remote control, and the screen went blank. Linking fingers behind his head, he leaned back. “Earthquakes in the Middle East, a massive hurricane that hit more Caribbean countries than I knew existed, flooding in Australia, and a volcanic eruption off the coast of Japan. Oh, and pregnant women lining up by the thousands to demand DNA tests for this virus they still can’t identify. Shall I continue?”
There was more?
“I’m good, thanks,” she told Joly.
“I know this stuff happens all the time, but I swear it’s getting worse,” he muttered. “It’s like somebody hit the self-destruct button on the bloody planet. So I heard Roberts called you in on our thing this morning. What did you think?”
“I thought it looked like someone got killed.”
“You know what I mean.”
She did, but she wasn’t going to answer. Not after that speech from Roberts. She took down a mug from the cupboard and reached for the coffeepot. Joly heaved himself off the couch with a grunt. Joining her at the counter, he held out his own cup, and she poured for them both. Her colleague leaned back against the counter, one ankle crossed over the other, and stared down into his coffee while she stirred cream and sugar into hers. The silence moved beyond a lapse in conversation to being obviously deliberate.
She dropped the spoon into the sink with a clatter. “If you’re waiting for me to—”
“It’s not about the case.”
“What, then?” she asked, settling against the counter beside him.
“Nothing, really.” Joly shrugged. He slurped at the coffee from under his handlebar mustache. “It’s just … Vancouver. What the hell happened out there, Jarvis?”
“You’ve read the report.”
“I have,” he agreed. “I’ve also got a cousin who’s married to one of their emergency response members.”
Hell. Sometimes the thin blue line was a little too thick for comfort.
“He won’t talk about what he saw that night—”
Good.
“—but that Sunday he got up and went to church.”
Alex flashed him a look and found him studying the floor at his feet.
“Garth is—was—the staunchest atheist I’ve ever met in my life,” he said. “Our discussions on the issue of faith rarely end well, at least according to my wife, and now he’s going to church and taking his kids to Sunday school. My cousin is freaked. So I repeat: what the hell happened out there?”
She wondered how he would react if she told him. Just blurted out the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the—
“Your career is hanging by a thread,” Roberts’s voice echoed in her memory.
She scowled at her coffee. Hell, who was she kidding? Even without Robert’s warning, she’d become so adept at keeping secrets at this point that she wasn’t sure she knew how to let them go.
Bastion poked his head into the room. “Meeting’s in two minutes,” he said, then gave Alex a nod. “Good to have you back, Jarvis.”
Alex detached herself from the counter.
“You
haven’t answered me,” Joly said.
She turned when she reached the door. “You know what happened, Joly? Shit happened. A lot of it.”
Joly’s mustache twitched. “What kind of answer is that?”
“The only one you’re getting.”
***
Alex took a place against the wall in the conference room, returning various greetings. She’d wondered how it might be, coming back after all that had gone down, but apart from Joly’s questions …
She watched the subject of her thoughts take a seat beside his partner at the table. Abrams leaned in to ask Joly something, Joly responded, and both men looked across the room at her. She lifted a brow, and they turned away. Right. So Joly wasn’t the only one with questions.
Roberts came into the room and dropped a stack of files on the conference room table. The resounding thud silenced conversation.
“All right, people, listen up. Those of you who have been following the news will know that this pregnancy virus has the nut-jobs crawling out of the woodwork. Attacks on women have more than doubled across the country. The demand for DNA testing—and abortions—has gone beyond the capacity to provide those services. Ob-gyns are canceling appointments and refusing to handle anything but straight-up deliveries. Every emergency ward, medical lab, and private clinic in the city has hired security guards, and we are fielding dozens of calls a day to those locations. This means we are stretched seriously thin.”
Roberts pushed back his suit jacket to rest hands on hips. “As of today, all leave is canceled until further notice. You’ll have your regular time off but nothing more. If you’re looking for overtime, see me after the meeting. You can have as much as you want. If you’re not looking for overtime, you’re about to get more than you bargained for. From this moment forward, you will do the bulk of your paperwork in your cars. You will have your radios on at all times, and if you hear a call for backup in your vicinity, you will respond forthwith. I do not want to see you in this office unless you’re picking something up or dropping it off. Are we clear?”
Heads around the room nodded.
“Good. Now these”—Roberts slapped his hand on the files—“are the sixty-seven files we currently have open. I want them updated before you go home tonight. All of them. If there is nothing new to add and the case has nothing to do with the current state of affairs in our city, put a note on it to that effect and pass it to Detective Jarvis—”
Alex abandoned her study of the wall behind her supervisor. “Me? But—”
“—who will be on desk duty until we find her a partner,” Roberts finished. “Class dismissed. Jarvis, stay.”
The others cleared the room, Joly taking the stack of files with him for distribution except for one their supervisor had set aside. The door closed. Roberts settled into a chair. With a nod, he indicated another, but Alex paced the edge of the room instead, coming to a halt in the far corner.
“Seriously, Staff? Desk duty?”
“My hands are tied where policy is concerned, Detective, especially when my decision to allow you to return at all is under scrutiny.”
“I thought you’d taken care of that.”
“So did I. Bell went to the chief, the little—” Roberts broke off and scrubbed a hand over his short-cropped hair. He sighed. “It’s not ideal, and it’s certainly not my preference, but it’s how it has to be for now. And frankly, it might not be a bad thing to have your eyes on all the files right now.”
He slid the file he’d held back from the pile toward her. “That came in from Alberta’s RCMP this morning.”
Alex stared at it, then stepped out of the corner and walked back to join him. She flipped open the folder and scanned the single page inside. “Militia? In Canada? Seriously?”
“End of the world nutcases,” he corrected. “They’re claiming the pregnancies and the recent rash of natural disasters are a sign of God’s wrath. They’ve barricaded themselves into a compound outside Morinville, north of Edmonton. The news crews are going insane.”
She could just imagine.
“We’ve had three similar reports out of the States,” Roberts added. “Tech crime units across the continent are monitoring dozens of other groups that look to be moving in the same direction. I want you reviewing every file that comes through this office for the same reason.”
Threading her fingers through her hair, Alex stared at the file. She understood the need for consistency, but to be cooped up in the office with all hell breaking loose in the world? She couldn’t do it.
Roberts stood. “I’ll light a fire under staffing and have you back on the street by the end of the week. You have my word.”
One week.
Alex handed the file to her supervisor and watched him leave the conference room. She did a mental calculation. Today was Saturday, so that would make the end of the week the following Friday, six days away.
Just in time for the birth of Lucifer’s army.
Chapter 7
Aramael stared out at the barrens, mile after mile of dry, lifeless soil stretching as far as he could see in every direction. Scowling, he shot a look over his shoulder at Mika’el. “You’re serious. You really want me to stand here and do nothing.”
“No, I want you to keep watch. There’s a difference.”
Aramael snorted. “Forgive me if I fail to see one.”
He surveyed the desolate landscape, featureless but for the stony outcrop on which he and Mika’el stood, the occasional bit of dead scrub brush … and the distant band of Hellfire that marked the edge of Heaven itself.
Raised against the Fallen when the One had created Hell, its flames had burned steadily, powerfully, and without cessation for millennia. Until Aramael, one of Heaven’s own, had murdered his brother and broken the One’s pact with Lucifer. Until the downward spiral into Armageddon itself had been triggered.
The wall of flames flickered, danced, steadied again.
Aramael’s mouth twisted. “How long am I here for?”
“As long as it takes,” Heaven’s greatest warrior returned, his voice and expression implacable.
“Can I have a best guess?”
“A day. A year. A century.”
“A century?” Of sitting out here in the middle of nowhere, far from Alex, waiting for something that might or might not happen? The possibility chafed.
“Perhaps a millennium.” Mika’el flicked him an unreadable look. “We don’t know how fast the Hellfire will break down enough to be breached, or how many of the Fallen will cross when it happens. We can’t afford to leave it unprotected.”
“With all the patrols you have going, I’d hardly call it unprotected,” Aramael muttered, scanning the unwelcoming landscape again.
“I still prefer to have an Archangel keeping watch.”
And as the newest member of the choir, the task fell to him. Great. Aramael shifted under the weight of his armor. “Shouldn’t we be more concerned with the mortal realm? With no barrier to protect it, it seems more likely the Fallen will strike there first.”
“The others can look after Earth.”
“But—”
“And they’re more likely to look after all of it, rather than just one Naphil.”
Aramael shot a startled look at the other warrior. Hell. “How did you—?”
“You really expected otherwise?” Hard green eyes pinned him. “You assured me the connection between you was severed.”
“It was. It is.” His heart cringed at the lie. “I can manage it.”
“By watching her?”
I just want to make certain she’s happy. To see that Seth treats her well, that he cares for her. To reassure myself that I did the right thing in not fighting for her, in letting her go, even though I know I could never have had her.
“Habit,” he said wearily. “It’s just a habit. I’ll break it.”
“And being here will help you do so,” Mika’el retorted, his voice brooking no argument. “Now, any questions befor
e I leave?”
“Many. What are we waiting for? Why not just go after the Fallen and make sure the fight is on our terms rather than theirs?”
A muscle in the other Archangel’s jaw contracted. “The agreement might have fallen, but Heaven’s own rules remain unchanged. The One will not strike the first blow, Aramael. Good may defend, but not offend.”
Aramael thought about how Mika’el had come to him during his exile in the mortal realm and tasked him with the assassination of the One’s son, the Appointed. How he would have carried out the order if it hadn’t been for the interference of Alexandra Jarvis. How close he and Mika’el had skated to the very edge of good.
“Have you ever noticed how the rules for good are more constricting than those for evil?” he growled.
“Have you ever considered those restrictions are what keep us good?” The other Archangel countered. He drew himself up, topping Aramael’s six-foot height by a good four inches. Massive, coal-black wings unfurled and stretched wide. “Remember who you are, Aramael. What you are. Angels are the final line of defense between Hell and Earth, and Archangels the last hope of—” He broke off, his face going bleak.
“Of what?”
“Nothing,” Mika’el said. “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. Just remember we have no more room for mistakes.”
With a great rush of wind, he launched upward, leaving Aramael alone on the boulder-strewn hill. Alone for days, weeks, months—maybe centuries—with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. Thoughts of how he came to be in this place to begin with, memories of Alexandra Jarvis and how he had chosen her over his very purpose … and how she had chosen Seth over him.
Thoughts, memories, and that lingering tug of a connection he continued to deny to Mika’el.
Chapter 8
“Shouldn’t you be done for the day?”
Alex looked up from the news report she’d been reading on the computer monitor and met Seth’s dark gaze. The breath hitched in her throat. Arms crossed over his chest and broad shoulders nearly filling the doorway, the man was sheer physical perfection from the top of his black-haired head to the soles of his exquisitely proportioned feet. Despite the exhaustion of her first day back in Homicide, a fragile warmth unfurled in her.
Sins of the Lost Page 3
