“Nope.”
Aramael’s hands curled into fists. He pulled them from the counter and stuffed them into his pockets. “But you’ve just said he’s here—”
She shook her head. “I said you were right about the name. But he’s not here.”
Oh, for the love of—
He unlocked his jaw to ask in as neutral a voice as he could manage around his increasing annoyance, “Do you know where he is?”
“Gone,” said a new voice. “And you haven’t answered the question. Who are you?”
Aramael looked down at a woman who had come from behind him. Middle-aged by human standards, she had an air of authority about her despite her casual dress. Sharp blue eyes returned his study, traveling over him from head to toe and back again, and then narrowing on his face.
“Just a—” He broke off as her face tightened. As if by some unspoken signal, the burly guard moved to the woman’s side and Aramael felt the other guard’s presence loom to his right. He hesitated, reviewing his options. While he might overpower the two guards and make his escape as easily as he breathed, his chances of getting back in to see Seth would be markedly lower if he did—and the disturbance would draw the exact attention he wanted to avoid. On the other hand, the woman obviously knew Seth, and if she couldn’t connect him with the Appointed, she might at least give him information he could use. Time, he reminded himself dourly, being of such an essence.
From the dregs of his former existence, he pulled a name. “Jacob Trent,” he said. And then, hoping to inspire confidence, he added, “I’m a detective with the Toronto police.”
The woman scowled. “Are you serious? What, she knew I’d turf her out on her ass and so she sent you? Well, you can tell her I said—”
“She?”
“Alexandra Jarvis, of course. I know you’re working with her.”
“Alex is here?”
The woman went quiet, a dozen questions milling in her eyes. In his shock, Aramael could decipher none of them. Nor could he summon even the flimsiest of arguments when she lifted her chin.
“I think you’d better come with me,” she said.
He thought so, too.
TWENTY-THREE
Alex opened her eyes to find Seth standing over her, silhouetted against the faint light coming in the window behind him. Jolting awake, she struggled upright against the pillows and then stilled. Pillows? Last thing she remembered, she’d been sitting in the chair, watching television with Seth and trying to answer his many, many questions. She pushed back her hair. Outside the hotel window, the afternoon she’d left behind had become dusk, accounting for the deep shadows in the room.
She cleared the sleep from her throat. “How long was I out?”
“About four hours,” his voice rumbled in reply. “Not long enough if the required eight hours per twenty-four is correct.”
A smile tugged at her lips. Along with reacquiring more or less full language skills at an unnerving rate over the last thirty-six hours, Seth seemed to have accumulated a fair bit of trivia. “It’s correct, but I’m sure I’ll survive. I’ve made do with less.”
“Because you’re a cop.”
Alex remembered the conversation that had followed on the heels of the Law & Order episode they’d been watching; remembered, too, Seth’s concern when the discussion had turned to the dangers of her job, and from there to the topic of mortality. The exchange had exhausted her with its complications. She suspected she’d gone to sleep out of sheer self-defense. Which reminded her…
“You put me to bed.”
The shadowy Seth nodded and Alex resisted the impulse to switch on the bedside lamp. She didn’t want to see what was going on in those black eyes right now.
“Thank you,” she said instead.
“You’re welcome.”
Silence fell, awkward and too big for the room. Alex cleared her throat again. “You must be getting hungry.”
“I am, but not for food.”
Alex’s heart took up residence in her throat. “Excuse me?”
“Relax,” Seth drawled. “I’m in no position to pursue a relationship with you at the moment.”
That did it. Alex rolled over and vaulted from the bed on the other side, knocking a lamp over in her frantic search for a switch. As she stooped to retrieve it from the floor, all the lights in the room illuminated at once, freezing her in place. She closed her eyes, stopped counting at thirty, and stood up again, setting the lamp back on the night table.
“Something I said?” Seth asked. He’d changed into the clothes she’d bought for him and pulled his hair back into a familiar ponytail. He looked just like the old Seth. The supremely attractive old Seth.
“No. Yes.” Alex pulled her sleep-fuzzed brain together. She should have bought him something other than what she remembered seeing him in. Something other than the black that so enhanced his imposing stature, making it seem like he filled half the hotel room. Her mouth twisted. His memory might not have come back yet, but that presence of his—the one she’d had no business noticing in the first place and certainly had no business remembering now—had. In spades.
“Kind of,” she allowed in response to his question. “It’s just—we had a similar conversation once.”
Seth’s gaze sharpened. “This attraction between us isn’t new, then.”
Alex balled her hands into fists. He’d been a hell of a lot easier to manage without the language skills, damn it. “No. It’s not.”
“But something kept us apart.”
Alex took a moment to formulate a response, straightening her shirt and tucking it back into her pants. She slanted a covert look at Seth, noting the astuteness she remembered had also returned to the dark gaze. Which meant he wasn’t going to let her get away with anything less than the truth.
Hell.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Who am I, Alex?”
“I don’t know.”
Black eyes narrowed. “You’re lying.”
Alex sighed. “No. I’m prevaricating.” Combing her fingers through her tousled hair in an effort to restore it to order, she met his gaze squarely. Openly. “I really don’t know who you are, Seth. All I have is what little you told me when we met the first time, and a whole lot of supposition I’ve come up with on my own, the accuracy of which is highly suspect, I’m sure.”
“I need to know.”
“I agree. But not yet.”
Frustration marred the dark brow. “Why not?”
“You need more information first. Context for what I—”
Someone banged at the door and Alex froze, words and all. Her eyes flicked to the bedside clock. Shit. It was too late in the day for housekeeping, and that was no polite knock—which meant it had to be either Henderson or Riley, neither of whom would be a good thing.
Catching Seth’s gaze, Alex put a finger to her lips and he nodded his understanding. Thank God for education by television. She waited while he moved silently around the corner, out of sight of the door, and then scanned the room to be sure nothing of his presence would be visible. Their unwanted visitor hammered again.
Alex peered through the peephole and scowled as her suspicions were confirmed. Riley. She took a deep breath, mustering herself for the inevitable verbal battle with the psychiatrist, and pulled open the door. Whatever she might have said died in her throat when a second figure thrust aside the doctor and stared down at her with cold gray eyes in a face she thought she’d never see again.
Her heart stalled in mid-beat. “Aramael?”
HUGH LISTENED TO the voice mail message left by Liz Riley three times before enough of it filtered through Father Marcus’s words to make sense. Even then, it kept jumbling up with what the priest had told him, so that Liz’s voice seemed to fade in and out of Marcus’s in his head.
“Hugh, it’s me,” her message began.
“Documents exist. Scrolls,” Marcus’s voice echoed.
“There’s been a new development,” sai
d Liz.
“No one outside the Church knows of them. Most in the Church don’t know.”
“Someone came looking for Seth Benjamin at the hospital—he claims he’s a police officer.”
“They tell a story of women becoming pregnant and giving birth within a matter of weeks…”
“He says he’s from Toronto…”
“The children grew at phenomenal rates and developed inhuman powers…”
“And claims he knows Alex.”
“Hugh, the scrolls claim these children were the product of angels lying with women…”
“We’re heading to her hotel now. Detective Trent—that’s his name—thinks she’s hiding Seth.”
“They were the Nephilim…”
“I need you to call me when you get this message—or better yet, just meet us there.”
“And the Church thinks it’s happening again.”
“End of message,” the automated female voice informed him. “To listen to this message again, press one. To save this message for a period of seven days, press nine. To delete it—”
Hugh disconnected. He stared out the windshield of his sedan at the evening street, alive with vehicles and people. A familiar world that had, in the space of a short conversation with a man he hadn’t seen in more than ten years, become a place he no longer recognized.
Angels lying with women.
A place that made even less sense than it had before.
Angels.
His jaw went tight. Reaching beneath his seat, he pulled out the dashboard cherry light, switched it on, and steered into the traffic. Alex’s hotel was halfway across the downtown center. With luck, he’d be there before Liz made it out of the elevator.
“ARAMAEL,” ALEX SAID again. Her tongue felt thick and heavy in her mouth, as if it didn’t belong. None of her felt like it belonged, in fact, because none of this could be happening. She dug her fingers into the unforgiving door frame until they ached, but not even they felt real.
Aramael of the Sixth Choir of angels, Power, hunter of Fallen Ones, cast from Heaven for killing his brother to save her, standing now before her in a seedy hotel in downtown Vancouver. Alex stared at him, hungry for the details that had already begun to fade in her mind. His height, his powerful build, the aura of strength and raw magnetism she remembered from their first meeting.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I wasn’t looking for you.”
Alex’s entire being flinched from the denial. From its implications. Aramael’s gaze met hers, cold and flat, shutting her out with an absoluteness that cut to her core.
She’d been shot once, in her sixth year on the job, at a domestic dispute turned ugly. Her vest had saved her from death but not from the bullet’s impact, which she’d decided at the time felt rather like being kicked in the chest by a horse—agonizing, paralyzing, stunning. She realized now it had felt more like this. Like looking on the other half of her very essence and seeing him gaze back without concern. Without emotion. Without any of the recognition that had once flared between them.
At the far end of the corridor, the stairwell door closed with a distinctive metal clang. Alex dragged her gaze from Aramael and looked toward the sound, but no one emerged to intrude on a reunion she had never dared let herself think about. One that sure as hell wouldn’t have gone like this if she had.
She swallowed, twice, and willed her lungs to function again. “I see,” she said. “Then why are you here?”
Aramael stepped closer, staring past her into the hotel room. His scent, warm and spicy and—heavenly, for want of a better word—wrapped around her. Fighting not to close her eyes and fall into him, Alex gritted her teeth and turned her spine rigid against need.
Aramael looked past her, through her, nodding toward the hotel room. “I’m here for him.”
Pulling the door against her side, she blocked his view. Aramael’s gaze returned, shadowed with a darkness, a turmoil, she had almost forgotten.
Had wanted to forget.
Her cop’s instincts bristled to life. Something was wrong. Very wrong. She took a firmer grip on the door. “Who?” she asked.
Aramael shook his head. “Don’t. Neither of us need sink to a level of playing games.”
“Fine. Then why are you here for him?”
“So you do have him,” Riley interjected. “I knew it.”
The psychiatrist tried to push past Aramael, but he held out an arm, blocking her path.
“This isn’t mortal business,” he said.
Riley opened her mouth to object, stopped, and looked at Alex, the faint beginnings of uncertainty shining from behind her wire frames.
Alex forced her gaze back to the remoteness in Aramael’s eyes. “Answer me,” she said. “Why do you want to see Seth?”
“It isn’t mortal business,” he repeated.
Riley took a second step back, and then a third.
Alex lifted her chin. “I’m not just any mortal,” she reminded him. “Not after all that’s happened.”
His expression turned impossibly colder. “Yes,” he said. “You are. Now let me pass.”
Fighting off the paralysis of sheer, soul-deep agony, Alex shook her head. “Not unless you tell me what’s going on.”
“I can’t.”
“Bullshit.” Slamming the hotel room door shut, Alex scowled and crossed her arms. “The evasive routine doesn’t work with me, remember? It never has and never will. Either tell me what’s going on or leave. Your choice.”
Aramael stared at her. “You can’t stop me.”
“Maybe not,” said a new voice, “but I can.”
Alex was certain all three of them—she, Aramael, Riley—looked down the corridor in perfect unison. Any other time, she might have found that amusing, but right now, as she stared at the gun in Hugh Henderson’s hands, she failed to see much humor in any of this.
“Liz, move away from him and come here,” Henderson ordered, jerking his head to the side. Riley did as directed, her face a study in utter confusion. When she was within arm’s length, Henderson reached out to tuck her behind him. He raised an eyebrow at Alex. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but—”
Henderson released Riley’s arm and held up his hand. “Am I understanding this right? Do you have Seth in your room?”
Oh, for the love of—Alex sighed. How much more complicated could things get? She glowered at Aramael, nodded defeat at Henderson. “Yes. He’s here.”
“Okay. We’ll deal with that later. Right now I need you to move over here with me.” Waggling his fingers at her, Henderson scowled at Aramael. “And I need you not to move,” he added. “In fact, I’d strongly suggest you don’t even breathe.”
“Detective Henderson,” Alex began.
“Don’t.” Henderson shook his head. “Not so much as a word, Jarvis. I’m sick to death of the whole cloak-and-dagger thing you have going. I want answers and, with or without your cooperation, I plan to get them. Now get your ass over here before I decide to arrest you, too.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“We’ve found him.”
Lucifer looked up to find Samael standing in the doorway, wings outspread in obvious excitement. “That was quick.”
“And unexpected.” Coming into the office, Sam glanced back as his wings knocked into the door frame. He tucked them into place against his shoulders. “You remember the Power who broke the pact?”
Once again, Lucifer set aside the journal he had been working on. He popped a peppermint into his mouth. “Caim’s twin. Yes. What about him?”
“You knew he was cast out into the mortal realm without his powers? Some of the ranks have been toying with him, exacting a certain—revenge for what they perceive to be his sins against their colleagues.”
“I care about this why?”
“Patience, oh Mighty One.” Samael grinned, obviously enjoying himself. “I’m getting to that.”
Lucifer gl
owered at the overt use of the nickname he knew was murmured behind his back. “You’re pushing your luck, Archangel,” he warned.
Samael waved a dismissive hand. “Whatever. Just listen. Qemuel was the latest to go after the Power. He was following him, waiting for his opportunity to strike, when the Power went to a hotel to meet a woman.”
Whatever? Lucifer’s fingers curled around the pen he’d begun to wish was Samael’s neck. “That might make the Power a potential recruit,” he acknowledged tightly. “But I still don’t see—”
“She’s the Nephilim Caim tried to kill.”
Sam’s smile took on a whole new level of satisfaction. Lucifer waited, sensing more to come. His aide didn’t disappoint.
“And she has Seth.”
The pen in Lucifer’s hand snapped in two, sending a spray of ink across the desk. A stain spread over the page he’d been writing. It couldn’t be. The consequences were too great; she wouldn’t dare move against him that way. Wouldn’t risk—
“You know what this means.”
Lucifer fought down a sour rush of sickness and held up discolored fingers for silence. There had to be another explanation. She was the One, the Creator, the single constant in the whole of the universe. A fine film of sweat broke out along his forehead. She wouldn’t break her word like that. Couldn’t. Not when her word was all he had left. Not when he counted on that word to give him the time he needed to finally rid himself of that plague she called her children.
He raised his gaze to Samael’s gleeful face. The expectation behind it. “That’s it? That’s all we have?”
Samael’s smile faded. “We have an angel in direct contact with the Appointed,” he said. “One of Heaven’s own, interfering with your son. Violating the terms of the agreement.”
“Did Qemuel see them together? The Power and the Appointed?”
“Not exactly, but—”
“Then how do we know the Power was there for him and not for the woman?”
Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy Page 16
