Damned, too, if he would allow his upstart aide to usurp the conflict begun in the name of that love. As powerful as Samael was, as much responsibility as Lucifer had been willing to let him take on, only one of them was truly in charge—and the former Archangel could not be allowed to forget it.
Lucifer swiveled. “Apology accepted, but I want you to remember what I said the other day because I meant every word of it. Until I say otherwise, the agreement stands and no one lifts a finger against my son.”
He strolled across the room to stand before his aide, face mere inches away. A flush spread across Sam’s cheekbones and his eyes slid away to stare at a point beyond Lucifer’s shoulder. Lucifer grasped the Archangel’s face in one hand, fingers digging into mahogany-dark flesh, and forced the golden gaze back to meet his.
“If you do anything to interfere, anything at all to cross me, make no mistake, Samael. I will crush you.”
TWENTY
Alex stood by the nurse’s counter in the emergency ward, fingers drumming out her agitation against the polished surface. Catching an annoyed glare from a doctor at the far end, she pulled her lips tight in apology and slid both hands into her pockets. A dozen feet away, the exchange between Henderson and Riley continued unabated.
Alex grimaced again. Riley’s eyebrows had damn near disappeared into her hairline when Alex had entered the ER at Henderson’s side. The shrink hadn’t even acknowledged her presence. Had simply taken the Vancouver detective’s arm, drawn him aside, and without lowering her voice, demanded, “What the hell is she doing here?”
Glancing at the clock above the counter, Alex felt her nerves wind a little tighter. She’d already been here ten minutes. Was Seth still watching television? Was he getting restless yet, wondering where she was? Would he go looking for her if she—
“Detective.”
Riley’s cold voice jolted her back to the present. She looked down into the hostile blue eyes and tried not to think about how easily this woman could sink her entire career. One phone call from Riley to Alex’s own department shrink, and Alex would spend the rest of her working life writing traffic tickets. If she were lucky enough to keep her job at all. Her fingers curled inside her pockets.
Just tread lightly, Jarvis.
“Follow me.” Riley led the way down the corridor, the ever-present Birkenstocks slapping against her heels.
An unhappy-looking Henderson fell into step behind her and Alex flashed him a quick look. “Well? Is this one like the others?”
“Not on the surface.”
Alex frowned. “Can you be a little more specific?”
“We’ve had two prior victims. One claimed she had been raped by someone posing as her boyfriend, the other that she had no recollection at all of even having sex. This one—” Henderson nodded his head toward the door beside which Riley had stopped to wait for them, scowling. “This one was brutalized.”
Alex stopped walking. Hell, she’d left Seth alone for nothing. “So it’s not related, then.”
“There’s more.” Henderson stopped beside the psychiatrist and looked back at her. “She and her boyfriend had taken a vow of abstinence. Boyfriend showed up at her door last night and started getting pushy. She resisted, he insisted. One thing led to another and he raped her.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t see the connection—”
“She claims that, about halfway through the attack, he changed.”
Cold trickled down Alex’s spine as Riley’s scowl deepened to a glower. “Changed how?”
Henderson’s mouth went tight and he stared at the floor for so long without answering that Riley cleared her throat and spoke instead.
“She claims he changed into someone else, Detective Jarvis. A stranger. With wings. She says he was an angel.”
“SO.” HENDERSON SNAPPED his notebook closed and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. “I’m ready to hear that idea you had.”
Alex stared down at the girl in the hospital bed. Beyond what Riley had already told them on their arrival, they’d gleaned little else from the traumatized victim. Now that the sedatives had kicked in, they wouldn’t get anything more, either. Which left them with Jenna Murphy’s fantastical claims, a pregnancy test that had come back positive after a rape that had occurred only a few hours before, and more questions than answers.
Oh, yes, and an increasingly hostile Riley, who maintained the pregnancy test proved nothing and argued that Jenna had probably lied about her virginity and been pregnant already.
Alex wished the shrink could have been right. She would have given anything, in fact, not to know otherwise. She breathed carefully, the air icy in her chest. But she did know. What was happening, what the pregnancies were, what Lucifer was doing. She knew, and couldn’t begin to describe her horror.
A new race of Nephilim.
The first salvo in a war between Heaven and Hell.
Henderson waited, facing her across Jenna Murphy’s bed, Riley at his shoulder. Without looking up, Alex felt the shrink’s assessing stare. If she and Henderson had been alone, if the psychiatrist hadn’t been there, Alex might have told him. He needed to know what was happening, what was coming. Everyone needed to know.
But Riley was there, and unlikely to leave if asked, and if Alex started spouting off about certain legends and myths being true but not quite as everyone imagined—about Heaven and Hell being real and on the verge of wiping out the human race—she had no doubt she’d find herself on the next plane back to Toronto, leaving Seth on his own, with no one to run interference for him while he figured out who he was. What he was. What he had to do to stop the Apocalypse.
Alex’s heart stuttered to a halt under the sudden, massive weight of realization. I’m all he has. I’m the only one in the world who knows about him.
“Detective?” A thread of steel wove through Henderson’s voice.
She sucked in a ragged breath. She had to get back to the hotel. Had to make Seth understand, make him remember. Because if anything happened before then, if anything happened to her…
She pushed back hair still damp from the rain. “It’s nothing,” she told Henderson. “Sorry to get your hopes up, but I was wrong.”
“Alex, does any of this have to do with—” Henderson broke off, glancing sideways at Riley. Indecision crossed his face and then his jaw flexed. “It’s not just coincidence, is it?”
“What’s not?”
“The pregnancies. Your serial killer. Benjamin. It’s all connected somehow, isn’t it?”
Despite Riley’s presence, if Henderson had looked at Alex, if he’d met her gaze for even an instant, she might have caved. Might have believed him capable of accepting her words, even if he didn’t understand them. But the way he stared fixedly down at the girl in the bed, the way his body had gone rigid and his fingers clenched around the pen he held—everything about him spoke of denial.
Looking away from the other detective, Alex met Riley’s gaze one last time. Without another word, she left the examination room and headed for the exit, trying to focus on what she could do to help Seth remember, and not dwell on the fact that she had no idea what he needed to remember. That she knew nothing beyond what he had told her in parting a short month—and an entire lifetime—ago.
Heaven’s contingency plan, he’d said. But a plan for what? And even if she knew, even if he remembered…
All those babies.
A whole new race of Nephilim.
What if it was already too late?
HUGH STARED AT the space vacated by Alex Jarvis for long seconds, debating whether to go after her. Whether he wanted to. By the time Liz cleared her throat beside him, claiming his attention, the Toronto detective had been gone long enough to make the decision moot—and his relief palpable.
Because if he were honest, he was so not ready to hear Jarvis’s idea. Not yet.
He looked down at Liz, who stood with arms folded over Murphy’s chart, and raised an eyebrow, inclining his head toward the door. No
dding, Liz detached herself from the wall, hung the chart at the foot of the bed, and led the way into the corridor.
“Well?” he asked as the door closed behind them. “What do you think?”
Liz snorted. “You’ve got to be kidding. You want me to venture a professional opinion on this?” She waved at the room they’d just left. “Not a chance.”
“I’ll settle for an unprofessional one.”
“Fine. Every single one of those girls was—is delusional. Except they’re not.” Liz poked a strand of hair back into the coil at her nape and scowled at him. “Their stories are obviously invented. Except they’re not. And the pregnancies are impossible. Except—”
Hugh held up a hand. “I get the picture.” He rubbed a hand over the end-of-day stubble along his jaw. “Has anybody figured out how the hell it’s happening?”
“Theories range from environmental causes to superbugs to the next step in evolution—and the religious extremists have a whole other take on things. But the truth? We have no idea.” Liz went quiet for a moment, and then asked, “Do you really think she knows something?”
“Who, Jarvis?”
“No, the Tooth Fairy,” Liz snapped. “Of course, Jarvis.”
“Yes, I think she knows something.”
“Then why didn’t you go after her?”
“Because I’m not sure I want to know what it is.”
Liz was silent for a moment as an orderly pushed a man in a wheelchair past them, chatting about an upcoming hockey game. A doctor coming from the opposite direction deftly sidestepped the chair without looking up from the clipboard she carried, and continued on her path.
“We need to know.”
Hands in pockets, Hugh scuffed his toe against the gleaming linoleum floor. “Do you believe in God?”
The psychiatrist blinked behind her wire frames, but her expression remained neutral as she allowed the abrupt change of subject. “I believe some people need to believe in a higher power,” she allowed. “For comfort, for security, for direction—for a multitude of reasons. And I believe it’s normal to seek that ideal when faced with an unknown, such as we are right now.”
A smile curved Hugh’s lips. “Very diplomatic, but it doesn’t answer my question. Do you believe?”
“I’ve never seen the point. But that doesn’t diminish what you’re obviously going through right now.”
“I spoke to Jarvis’s supervisor in Toronto.”
Irritation crept into Liz’s voice. “You can be a difficult man to converse with sometimes, Hugh Henderson. What does Jarvis’s supervisor have to do with this?”
“He told me things. About Seth.” Hugh leaned back against the wall as an orderly rolled a gurney past them. “Things a part of me would prefer not to be true. The same part that doesn’t want to go after Jarvis right now.”
“Like what?”
Hugh extracted a hand from a pocket and scratched again at his jaw. “Benjamin saved Jarvis’s life.”
“From the serial killer. Yes, I know.”
“Do you know about the fire, too? About how he sent her out of an inferno and stayed behind in the flames—only to turn up on your porch a month later without so much as a scorch mark?”
Liz stared over her glasses at him, eyebrows tugging together. “I should think it obvious he found another way out.”
“Just like he found another way out of a secure room?”
“I’m not sure what you’re suggesting.”
Hugh detached himself from the wall. “Nothing,” he said, because he wasn’t suggesting anything, really. Couldn’t bring himself to do so. He shook his head and said again, “Nothing. Just pointing out another in a long line of fucking impossibilities.”
Blue eyes examined him as they might an interesting specimen. Or a patient. Then Liz shook her head and muttered, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“Excuse me?”
The psychiatrist pressed her lips together, tapped a toe against the gleaming floor, and then straightened her spine with a snap Hugh was surprised wasn’t audible. “There’s something you should see,” she announced. “Come with me.”
She took him up several floors in the elevator, into the heart of the hospital. Hugh glanced at the sign on the ward doors as she pushed through, ever-present sandals slapping against her feet in the evening quiet.
“Maternity?”
Liz’s lips tightened again. “Wait.”
She strode ahead of him to the glassed-in nursery and slowed her steps, peering into the room filled with bassinets and squalling infants. As they neared the end of the window, she stopped and lifted a hand.
“There.” She pointed.
“There what?”
“Third bassinet from the left, front row.”
Hugh looked at the chubby baby, identified as a girl by the tag on the foot of her bassinet, and felt an involuntary tug at the corner of his mouth. A less pleasant tug at his heart. He gave himself a second and then cleared his throat. “She’s cute,” he said as the black-haired baby returned his interest and waved a rattle in his direction. “But isn’t she a little old to be in here?”
“How old do you think she is?”
Hugh clenched his hands in his pockets. “Is there a purpose to this?”
“I know this is difficult for you, but humor me. Please.”
Difficult? She had no idea.
Hugh studied the baby in the bassinet, now waving her arms and kicking at her blanket with enthusiasm. He thought back to Mitchell at this stage, remembering how he’d loved listening to his son’s squeals and gurgles, how he’d loved holding him, breathing in the baby-sweet scent, watching the awe and wonder unfold at every new discovery.
Remembering how he’d come home to the awful silence one day. The stillness of both mother and child.
A touch on Hugh’s sleeve jolted him from the past. He swallowed, holding himself rigid against the tremor running through him. All this time and it still felt like yesterday. His nostrils flared with his inhale.
“Six months,” he grated. “She’s six months old.”
The same age Mitchell had been when he’d died.
Liz said nothing.
Glancing down, Hugh raised an eyebrow. Liz Riley, hard-assed shrink, gnawing on her lip like she hadn’t eaten in a week? He caught her arm, made her face him. “All right, what’s going on? Why did you bring me here? And what’s with the baby?”
Liz folded her arms across herself and hunched her shoulders, appearing to deflate before his eyes. With a final nibble at her bottom lip, she said, “She’s Melanie Chiu’s daughter, Hugh. She’s less than three days old.”
Hugh wondered if the message from Father Marcus was still in the trash can by his desk.
TWENTY-ONE
“So this is it.” Aramael stared out at the moonlit waters. The Strait of Juan de Fuca stretched between where he stood on the coast of Washington State and where he would find Seth. Where he would kill and probably be killed in a bid to save the mortal race—and a woman on the other side of the continent whom he would never see again. Squinting through the dark, he shot a disgusted look at Mika’el, who had returned long enough to start him on his journey. “This is your plan. You want me to swim that.”
“It’s either that or cross-country. Water is the shorter route, and time is of the essence.”
“If time is of such import, take me through the border—I’m sure you could sway a guard or two. Oh, wait, I forgot,” Aramael drawled. “That might draw attention to your presence and Heaven can’t get its hands dirty.”
It was for that same reason they’d just traveled twenty-four nonstop hours by car. Superior physical ability or not, every joint in Aramael’s body made its opinion known with regard to that journey, but he’d rather face another like it than swim the distance Mika’el asked of him.
“At least let me take the car and try getting through on my own.”
The Archangel shook his head. “You’d never succeed. Travel be
tween the mortal countries is difficult enough these days even with proper documentation. Try going through border control without it and you’ll find your ass in jail faster than you can blink—and that would just be the beginning of your nightmare.”
It seemed Mika’el had a negative answer for everything. He also had a point. Even if Aramael were able to escape a mortal prison, the ensuing hunt for him would make getting to the Appointed more complicated than he cared to think about. And more time-consuming than they could afford.
“What about once I’m on the other side? I’ll be getting out of the water in a densely populated city, with no mortal identification of any kind. How do I keep from getting my ass tossed into jail there?”
“Stay on course and you’ll get out of the water on Vancouver Island,” Mika’el corrected. “It’s closer and you’ll be able to land near a small community. You’ll have a better chance of remaining undiscovered there while you get your bearings.”
“And then I get to Vancouver how?”
“Be creative.”
Aramael grunted. Scowled. “I’m still going to end up in a densely populated city with no identification.”
Mika’el heaved an exasperated sigh and returned his scowl. “Then I suggest you don’t draw attention to yourself until you get to Seth.”
Aramael’s mouth twisted. Get to Seth. Now there was a fucking understatement for what he’d been asked to do. He sighed. “That’s your advice. That’s the best you can do. Swim and don’t draw attention to myself. Can I at least have a boat?”
Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy Page 14
