“Don’t,” she said.
“You don’t know what I was going to say.”
“Yes, I do. And I don’t want your sympathy.”
“It might help to talk. The soulmate connection is—”
“Do you want my help finding Emmanuelle or not?”
He looked down at the blond head beside his shoulder. She glared out at the increasingly restless crowd.
“My way,” she reminded him. “Or not at all.”
Mika’el’s mouth twisted. Perhaps he was wrong. If any human mind could withstand immortality, it would be Alex’s. For her sake, however, he almost hoped it wouldn’t, not when retaining her sanity meant eternal awareness. It would be better by far if she descended into the place her sister had gone. Either that or—
Something struck his cheek, startling him back to his surroundings. The crowd was pressing in on the police line, the shouts of many drowning out the bullhorns. A handful of projectiles clattered against the riot shields: bottles and rocks; bricks such as the one at Mika’el’s feet. Mika’el put a hand out to Alex, his wings beginning to unfurl, but she shook him off and, grim-faced, moved to intercept a demonstrator doing an end run around the riot line.
Even as she and another officer brought the man to the ground, utter chaos erupted around them. In a matter of seconds, tear gas and cries of panic filled the air. Some of the protesters tried to run away, but the crush of others behind them pushed them into the police shields, bringing them within range of clubs wielded by those forced to defend themselves against sheer numbers. Mika’el watched as men and women alike went down beneath the trample of feet. The police line was forced back…one step, two…ten.
“Michael!”
He looked to Alex, met her fury, her plea. He hesitated. Mayhem surrounded him. For six thousand years, he had lived among mortals; had watched their civilizations rise and fall, borne witness to their failings and atrocities, their compassion and potential. Never once in all that time had he done anything to influence them or alter their course, because free will—the free will given to them by the One herself—had been sacrosanct. He had given up Heaven itself for it when the One had faltered in her own belief and stripped it from her angels.
Now that she was gone—especially with her gone—it was his job to continue believing in it, to uphold it. He had to, because it had never been Heaven’s purpose to rescue humanity. Because mortals had to take responsibility for their own actions, their own future…
Never more so than now, when Heaven’s own future had become uncertain.
“Damn it, Michael,” Alex yelled over her shoulder as the police line broke entirely, “for once in your existence, do something!”
Verchiel would be livid.
Rightfully so.
But it would solve his Alex problem—and it might also be just what humanity needed.
Mika’el spread his massive wings wide, knocking those within their span to the ground. Drawing his sword, he launched himself upward. The gust from his wings cleared the noxious gases from the air and flattened dozens of demonstrators. He stared down at their confusion, and then, with a final, deep breath, he took the last irreversible step of letting himself be seen as he was—an Archangel of Heaven, fully clad in the battle armor he summoned to him, revealed in all his terrible glory.
“Enough!” he roared.
CHAPTER 27
Holy Hell.
Alex gaped upward as Michael’s powerful wings moved to keep him aloft. He was clad in armor as black as his feathers, and his sword flashed blue spears of light over the heads of the throng. As if someone had hit a switch, utter stillness dropped over all present. No one moved. No one made a sound. Sirens wailed in the distance, backup for the beleaguered police officers staring up in open-mouthed shock, some with clubs still raised, others straddling demonstrators they’d pinned to the snow-covered ground. Two dozen feet above the crowd, Michael’s eyes met hers, his expression bleak. Inexpressibly sad.
Then his face went hard and he turned his attention to the gathering.
“Enough,” he repeated, his voice ringing through the hush. “In the name of the Creator herself, stop. The war you need to fight is coming, but it’s not here, it’s not now, and it certainly isn’t with one another.”
Alex tore her gaze from the Archangel. Leaving the uniformed cop to manage the demonstrator they’d brought down, she clambered to her feet and looked around at the upturned faces. The doubt, the hope, the reverence…the deep, disbelieving suspicion. She caught her breath.
“Do something,” she’d told Michael, but surely to Heaven she hadn’t meant this. Pitch in, give us a hand, hold that guy down—or that one—or that one.
But reveal himself? Show the world who he was—what he was—against every tenet he was supposed to uphold? She watched cell phones appear in upstretched hands, snapping pictures, taking videos, recording the entire impossible event to share with the world. Her heart missed a beat and then plunged. In mere seconds, Michael would be seen by every government, every religious faction, every nutcase who had access to the Internet. The reactions playing out here would be magnified by a billion times, and Lang and Boileau and Roberts would be proved right.
She stared up at Michael again. Stop. Don’t say anything more. Just stop.
As if he’d heard her, Michael shook his head, his expression turning weary.
“War is coming,” he repeated. “In the name of the Creator herself, go home. Look to your families, your communities, your own souls. There is greater strength in your connection to one another than you know. Find it. Hold onto it. Have faith in it. For your own sakes, let that be your salvation rather than your ruin.”
He lowered his sword, then slid it into its scabbard. A twitch of his wingtips took him to the air over Alex, another dropped him to the ground beside her. The stunned silence of the crowd gave way to whispers, then a murmur that grew in volume, punctuated by shouted questions.
“Who the hell are you?”
“What are you?”
Michael’s emerald gaze met her own as the crowd pressed in on them, hands outstretched. “We have to leave,” he said.
“What have you done?” she whispered.
She pushed away the hands grasping for Michael’s wings. His armor. His hair. The questions growing louder. “Will you save us?”
“Now,” Michael said. He gave her no time to protest, drawing her into his arms and folding his wings around her. Then, just as it had once before in a Vancouver alley, his body turned molten, flowed into hers, and tore her away from the world around them in a rush of heat and vibration.
CHAPTER 28
HOLDING THE TREMBLE IN her hand at bay through sheer willpower, Alex took the glass of Scotch from Michael and knocked it back in a single gulp. She slid the empty glass across the table toward him, fire coursing down her throat. He refilled it without comment, and she tried again to dial Roberts. Still no answer, most likely because he was just plain avoiding her. Shit. She could just imagine the chaos Michael’s little stunt had created. How in hell would she be able to go back to work now? Could she go back?
Michael slid the glass back to her. She drained it a second time, then set it down with exaggerated care. Only then did she raise her gaze to his and break the silence that had sat between them since he had hauled her by angelic force from the riot.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” she snarled. “All those people…the exposure…how could you?”
“You wanted me to do something.”
“But not that. Christ, not that.” She stood up from her kitchen table, toppling the chair to the floor with a crash. She raked a hand through her hair. Much as she hadn’t wanted to admit it, she’d known all along that Boileau and Roberts were right. Humanity wasn’t ready for things like angels and demons and war between a very real Heaven and Hell. Religious factions would be all over this. Worldwide, thanks to the goddamn Internet.
Humanity’s troubles had just multiplied by a
factor she didn’t even want to contemplate.
“What did you expect?” Michael growled. “A wave of a magic wand to make everyone all loving and peaceful? The world doesn’t work that way, Alex. I don’t work that way. I’m an Archangel, not a bloody fairy godmother.”
She rubbed both hands over her face, then crossed her arms. “I know what you are. Hell, the whole world knows what you are after that performance.”
“Good.”
“Good?” She gaped at him. “How can that be good?”
“Because what I said today will have reached at least some people. Resonated with them. If they spread the word, if they reach others like them, they might be able to effect change.”
“Enough to save the world?” Alex snorted. “You’re not that naive.”
“Neither are you. I’m not trying to save the world. I’m trying to inspire a handful of mortals to save themselves, because that’s the best we can hope for. I’ve told you all along that human survival hangs in the balance.”
Alex sagged against the wall. His words buried themselves like a fist in her gut. Her mouth flapped. She made herself snap it shut, swallow, breathe. Wished she’d bought two bottles of Scotch on their way back to the apartment instead of one.
“Yes,” she said. “But I’m not sure I believed. There are so many of us. What you’re suggesting—it doesn’t seem possible.”
Still seated, Michael rested his forearms on his knees and stared down at his linked fingers. “Did Aramael ever tell you how I abandoned Heaven?”
Alex blinked at the sudden change in topic and stared down at the bowed head. She waited, certain he neither sought nor needed an answer from her.
“The One and I didn’t agree on the Cleanse,” he continued. “I refused to give up my free will or…Well. That part doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that I left Heaven for a period of time, and lived here on Earth, among humans.”
“For how long?”
“Five thousand years, give or take. Long enough to see the rise and fall of civilizations that lasted a great deal longer than the current one has.” Michael looked up again, his eyes tired, sad. “Sheer numbers don’t give you immunity, Alex, they just give you a higher death count.”
“We can’t save everyone,” Roberts’s words echoed in her memory. “There will be casualties.”
But Michael wasn’t talking about casualties, was he? He was talking about more. Much more. About Armageddon in its truest, harshest, most biblical sense. Alex swallowed, and through sheer willpower, unlocked her throat enough for a single question. “So by survival, you mean…?”
“I mean, I’m hoping enough of you live to start over again.”
“But that would only take…”
“A few thousand. Yes.”
*
Returning to the office was like walking an endless gauntlet.
Tight-lipped, Alex strode along the hallway, booted heels on tile echoing in the silence that followed her, that spread before her, that surrounded her. Conversations stopped and people crowded into doorways, pressing against one another in an effort to catch a glimpse of her. And still not a single eye turned in Michael’s direction. She scowled at him.
“You’re the one who created this mess,” she muttered. “The least you can do is take some of the flack for it.”
“Let them see me for what I am again, you mean?” He looked grim. “You wouldn’t want that to happen.”
“If it meant they’d stop staring at me, I would.”
She reached for the knob on the door leading into Homicide. Michael’s hand on her arm stopped her.
“For creatures who are supposed to be self-sufficient, humans are remarkably needy,” he said. “They’re also lazy. If they could see me, if they knew the power I possess, how do you think they would respond?”
Alex glanced past his shoulder to the clusters of people lining the corridor. Saw in their eyes the hope, the fear, the distrust—and that was just what was directed at her.
She sighed. “Honestly? Half of them would want to destroy you.”
“And the other half would expect me to rescue them.”
“So that’s it, then? You show yourself once and then disappear again?”
“We’ve had this discussion.”
Yes, they had. And she still had the headache to prove it. Alex shoved open the door and stalked into Homicide. Utter stillness descended over the office, as if someone had hit the pause button on a recording. Her step hitched for an instant, and then, with Michael at her back, she walked past stone-faced colleagues and support staff, headed for Staff Inspector Roberts’s door. No one spoke a word as she passed. No one moved.
She knocked at Roberts’s door. Long seconds went by before he raised his head from his work. His gaze met hers through the window on the door. At last he lifted a hand and beckoned her inside. She shook her head at Michael when he would have followed. “No. I want to speak to him on my own.”
She pushed into her supervisor’s office, closed the door, and waited in silence for Roberts to look up again from his paperwork. He threw down his pen and spread his hands wide.
“I have no words,” he said. “None.”
Neither did she.
“You know the entire thing was caught on video.”
She closed her eyes.
“A man with wings, hovering twenty feet in the air, holding a sword, delivering what can only be described as a warning. And then, when he’s finished, he swoops down to where you’re standing—you, a visibly identifiable police officer—wraps you in his wings, and the two of you disappear. How in the hell am I supposed to spin this, Alex?”
“You can’t,” she said. “I know you thought it best to keep the angel element quiet. For the record, I agreed with you after I thought it through. But—”
“But he”—Roberts waved at the television in the corner—”didn’t.”
Alex glanced at the screen, frozen on an image of Michael descending toward her, his black wings outstretched and expression fierce. She shivered and turned back to her supervisor. “No. He didn’t.”
Leaning back in his chair, he linked his fingers behind his head, stared at her, and muttered, “Fuck.”
Alex indicated one of the visitors’ chairs with a tilt of her head, and Roberts gave her a whatever shrug. She sat, leaning forward to balance elbows on knees, the sword ever-present against her spine. “What does the brass say?”
“You’re on paid leave until they decide what to do with you.”
She’d expected as much, but she still felt compelled to argue the decision. “I can be more help here than sitting on my ass at home.”
“This video isn’t like the one from the Parliament explosion, Detective. Your face is crystal clear and being shown worldwide. You cannot effectively do your job when you have that kind of recognition. We’ve already had thousands of calls asking about the police officer who was taken by the angel. If you’re seen on the street, you’ll be mobbed.” Roberts scowled. “And if you’re here in the office, Boileau will have you handcuffed and escorted to either Ottawa or jail, neither of which I want to see happen.”
Alex contemplated her folded fingers. So that was it. Thirteen years on the job, and just like that, she was done. The emptiness inside her grew a little bigger. Roberts sighed.
“Look, I know this is hard. Keep a low profile for a couple of weeks, and then we’ll see how things stand, all right? I’ll try to get Boileau to climb down off his high horse in the meantime, and maybe…maybe you can still find Nina.”
She lifted her gaze to his. Tightened her lips in a pretend smile. Pushed to her feet. “Sure,” she said. “Maybe I’ll do that.”
Roberts stood up from his chair. “I’ll work on him,” he said. “Boileau, I mean. I’ll do what I can.”
She nodded. “Of course.”
Silence fell, awkward and heavy with things left unsaid. Things like goodbye and it’s been nice knowing you. Because they both knew how much could happen in
two weeks. Alex roused herself to leave. She stopped halfway to the door.
“One thing, Staff. The two names I entered into the Interpol database. If anything comes through on either of them, particularly the female, I need to know. ASAP.”
Interest flared in her supervisor’s expression. A glimmer of hope.
“She can help?”
Alex hesitated. Michael wasn’t looking for Emmanuelle on behalf of humankind, and he’d said nothing about her helping the mortal world if they did find her. But if she took over as Heaven’s leader, if she could help the angels win the war against Hell—against Seth—then surely the world could only benefit.
Surely.
Before she could voice what she only half-believed, the cell phone at her waist vibrated. She unclipped it, saw Henderson’s name on the display, and thumbed the answer button. “I’m fine,” she told her Vancouver counterpart.
“Oh, I have no doubt of that,” Henderson’s voice drawled in her ear. “You look quite hale in all those videos I’ve been watching. Michael looks good, too. A little on the moody side, maybe, but otherwise fine.”
Alex choked back a snort of laughter. Trust Henderson to make light of the situation. “I’m in a meeting right now,” she said. “Can I call you back?”
“Having your butt suspended?”
“Put on paid leave. How did you know?”
“It makes sense from their perspective. Everyone will be scared shitless to work with you, and even if they weren’t, with the kind of notoriety you just gained, you’d be more hindrance than help.”
She glanced toward the windows overlooking the main office. The blinds were open, and Raymond Joly’s grim gaze met and held hers. Then, with unmistakable deliberation, he turned his back on her. A new, small ache took up residence beneath Alex’s breastbone.
“I suppose you’re right.”
“None of that matters, however, because I think we’ve found her, Alex. I think we’ve found Emmanuelle.”
Alex sucked in a sharp breath, automatically seeking Michael. She found him leaning against the edge of her desk in the center of the office. Their gazes met. Locked. Then, reading something in her expression, he strode toward her.
Sins of the Warrior Page 13
