Setting down the cup again, she forced her gaze back up to the angel. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was uncalled for. I’m just—”
“Frustrated?” the angel supplied, and she blinked. Had that been a note of compassion in his voice?
“Angry.” Terrified, too, but she was damned if she’d admit it. She linked cold fingers together. “Why do you need help finding Seth? Why can’t you find him yourself?”
The angel’s gaze sliced to Henderson and then back. “Everything?” he clarified. “Including what Aramael told you?”
“All of it.”
Looking irritated but resigned, the angel motioned for Henderson to make room. The other detective slid as far away as the bench would allow. Folding his wings against his shoulders, the angel sat beside him. Henderson didn’t appear to notice the brush of feathers against his side.
“Unfortunately, we lost our connection to Seth when his transition went wrong,” the angel said. “We’ve been relying on the Guardians of those who come into contact with him to track his movements since then, but after you took him from the hospital, we didn’t even have that. We should have been able to pick up on his trail again once he left your care, but no one has seen him. We’re hoping that means he’s gone to a place where humans have renounced their Guardians.”
Henderson cleared his throat and joined the conversation. “Hoping?”
The angel slanted a look in his direction. “The alternative would be far worse.”
Alex considered asking, then filed the idea under the too-much-information heading, shook her head to warn off Henderson, and followed the obvious thread. “What human would renounce a guardian angel?”
“One whose choices have led to him or her losing all hope. In this instance, many of them, probably living in a community. As a police officer, you would know where such a place might be.”
Alex exchanged glances with Henderson, who nodded.
“It’s a big city,” he murmured. “I can think of a few places that might qualify.”
She looked back to the angel. “I’m still not helping you.”
“Not even when you are partly to blame for the mess?”
Alex’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”
“Aramael told you your relationship could never happen.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
The angel’s eyes had become chips of green ice. “He killed Caim for you.”
Alex’s face flamed. For a split second, she simply stared at the angel, too stunned to breathe, let alone speak. Then she found her tongue. “You’re blaming me for Heaven’s screwup? You son of a bitch.”
“I told you, I need your help.”
“And what, you thought you could guilt me into it? Go to hell.”
“You don’t know what’s at stake—”
“I know I’m not helping you kill Seth Benjamin,” she snarled and, ignoring Henderson’s choke and another kick, she slid out of the seat, only to come up short against a broad, immovable chest. “Get out of my way.”
Dark anger seethed in the green eyes, but before the angel could respond, Henderson scrambled out from behind the table and tugged her away.
“Are you fucking out of your mind?” he hissed. “If this guy is what you say he is—”
“Oh, he’s what I say he is, all right. A goddamn—”
Henderson’s free hand clamped over her mouth and, startled, Alex transferred her gaze to him. Steady eyes regarded her. “Done?” he asked.
Alex scowled at him and then slumped, nodding. Henderson removed his hand.
“Good. Now. Speaking honestly, what are the chances he’s right about Seth being a danger to us?”
Alex eyed him belligerently. “You’re taking things awfully well, you know.” Far better than she had when she’d tumbled into her own alternate reality. Better than she was now, for that matter.
“Blame it on my Catholic upbringing,” Henderson retorted. “Now answer my question.”
She huffed. “I don’t know. But without him, we’re screwed.”
“You really think we can sway him in our favor?”
“I think it’s worth a shot.”
Henderson held her gaze for another second before he nodded. “She’ll do it,” he said to the angel. “She’ll help. So will I.”
“I never said—”
“On one condition,” the Vancouver detective added, his voice raised over hers.
Alex gaped at him. The angel raised an eyebrow.
“You give her twenty-four hours with Benjamin and then re-evaluate the situation before you make a decision.”
The angel looked from Alex to Henderson and then back, annoyance giving way to defeat. “Done,” he said, his gaze holding hers. “But you will honor my decision.”
Alex opened her mouth to give her own opinion of the deal. She snapped it shut again when Henderson’s fingers dug into her arm. No matter how much she hated it, he was right. She stared at the floor.
“Done,” Henderson told the angel. “And I know where to start looking.”
“AND THAT, OH esteemed son, is the full story.” Lucifer sat on the bus stop bench, his arms spread wide along its back and legs stretched before him. “Everything you always wanted to know about the human race and then some. Are you impressed?”
Seth stopped pacing to lean against a telephone pole. “Far from it,” he said. “But that was your intention, wasn’t it?”
Lucifer smiled. “You catch on fast.”
Seth said nothing, mulling over all his self-proclaimed father had told him, weighing it against what he had already learned on his own in the short time he’d been here on Earth.
A realm, Lucifer would have him believe, far removed from his own.
A car pulled up to the curb a few dozen feet away and a woman detached herself from a wall to saunter over to the open window. No, not a woman—a girl. No more than a child, really, aged by makeup and the life she led. He could feel her suffering from here, the craving that wracked her wasted body. She got into the car and he watched it pull away again.
“She’ll be dead before the year is out,” Lucifer observed. “Another shining example of humanity’s potential.”
Seth shot him a narrow look. “You don’t like them much,” he said. “Why?”
“You need more reason than this?” Lucifer waved a hand at the street.
Following the gesture, Seth took in the nighttime vignette lit by streetlamps and neon signs, headlights and the splash of police car dome lights. Yawning black holes punctuated the garish brightness, alley mouths gaping between buildings, leading to places darker than the night itself. And everywhere, people. In cars, on foot; sitting or standing in doorways; sprawled on the sidewalk or street where they had fallen. People who were drunk, high, insane—or preying on those who were.
The very air reeked with their despair.
With their decay.
Again that feeling, as yet unnamed, washed over Seth. A shudder followed in its wake.
“Revulsion,” Lucifer said, watching him.
“What?”
“That’s what you’re feeling. Revulsion. Disgust. Repugnance. Humans have many words for it, but they all mean the same thing.” Lucifer gazed out over the street again, his expression distant. Cold. “They all mean this. The definition of humanity’s reaction to their own failure.”
“But not all humans are like this.”
“Aren’t they? Those who are tucked up in their homes with their tidy little lives, pretending all is right with a world that crumbles around them—are they really any different? You’ve seen the news. This isn’t just here, it’s everywhere. In every city, every country, every single corner of this pathetic world,” Lucifer bit out the words. “It isn’t new, either. I’ve lost count of how many times history has repeated itself. Civilization after civilization creates this putrefaction in its center. Creates it, ignores it, tries and fails to purge it through violence or a hundred other means, and
is eventually swallowed by it. All because they are so damned arrogant, so certain they cannot fail.”
Seth tried to fit Alex into the picture painted by Lucifer but couldn’t. Down the street, a police car and an ambulance pulled up beside a man writhing and shrieking on the street, a victim of drug-induced demons. He remembered the newscasts, with workers digging out those buried in the rubble of an earthquake, doctors tending the people of a country devastated by illness.
“You’re wrong,” he said, watching the paramedics. “There are some who work to better their world, to help.”
Lucifer gave a soft, humorless chuckle. “There have always been some like that,” he agreed. “A handful of do-gooders trying to stem the flow of futility. Look how well they’re doing. Wars have become greater, weapons more destructive, cities like this more rotten than at any other time in human history. The very planet is threatened by the actions of the masses. Do you really think a paltry few can make a difference?”
“Perhaps they can’t,” Seth said with what he considered perfect reasonableness, “but who are we to say they don’t deserve the chance?”
Purple eyes riveted on his. Narrowed. Turned to ice. “Bloody fucking Heaven,” Lucifer spat. “You’ve fallen in love with the woman.”
THIRTY-ONE
Snagging the set of car keys sailing through the air toward her, Alex scowled at Henderson as he strolled in the wake of his missile. About bloody time he got back. She’d been cooling her heels on the sidewalk for what, ten minutes? She’d understood his need to make a few arrangements, but this was ridiculous. Henderson forestalled complaint.
“We’re good to go,” he said. “I’ve put out Benjamin’s description with an order not to approach him under any circumstances. If anyone spots him, they’ll call me.”
“And you’ll call me.”
“I’ll call you,” he agreed. He nodded toward the angel pacing the sidewalk a short distance away. “You going to be okay with him?”
“I’ll be fine.” She heard the edge in her voice and reined in her irritation. The Vancouver detective was doing his best, and a few more minutes wouldn’t make a difference.
Unless it meant missing Seth by that length of time.
Henderson nodded. “All right. The keys are to my vehicle.” He pointed to his blue sedan, parked up the block. “There’s a GPS in it, already set to get you to Cambie and Hastings. Park west of Cambie and walk along Hastings from there—the place is like a rabbit warren with all its alleys, so it’s best to go on foot. I’ll pick up another unmarked car—I have a ride back to the office waiting for me—and then I’ll head down to Main and walk up from there. This is for you.”
He held out what looked like a jacket, bundled up.
Alex shook her head. “Thanks, but once I start moving, I’ll be warm enough with what I have.”
Henderson reached for her hand and stuffed the bundle into it; Alex’s fingers closed over something hard within the folds. She raised an eyebrow.
“That’s my spare. Don’t you dare get out of the car without it.”
It was on the tip of Alex’s tongue to remind him of whose company she’d be traveling in, but instead she accepted the bundle—both because it was easier to do so and because it might, in the long run, prove wise to be carrying.
“You check in with me every half hour,” Henderson reminded her of his earlier instructions. “And if anything looks remotely like it’s going south, you get the hell out. Immediately. Understood?”
“Thirteen years on the job,” she reminded him. “I’ve seen my share of shit, Henderson.”
“Maybe. But you’re not in uniform and you haven’t seen Downtown Eastside at night.” He poked a finger into her shoulder. “Every half hour or I send in the cavalry. Clear?”
Without waiting for an answer, he stomped down the sidewalk. Instantly, the angel was at Alex’s side.
“Now can we go?”
Alex looked up at him. For the first time, she realized he was taller than Aramael, though not quite as broad-shouldered. Even lacking her former soulmate’s breadth, however, he had an air of authority about him, a power in the way he moved and spoke, that left her with no illusions as to which of them ruled over the other.
And she’d called him a son of a bitch.
Damn, Jarvis. Way to choose those battles.
“The car is over here,” she said, leading the way.
Ten minutes later she pulled over to the curb, a block away from the intersection that marked ground zero for Vancouver’s skid row. Before she’d even switched off the engine, she understood what Henderson had tried to tell her. She’d heard of Downtown Eastside, of course, had even watched the documentaries put together by the Vancouver Police Department’s self-named Odd Squad, the beat cops who walked the area every day.
But nothing could have prepared her for the reality.
Or for the shock of realizing that a naïve and uninitiated Seth would have no understanding of this as an example of humanity.
In grim silence, Alex reached into the backseat for the jacket Henderson had given her. Angelic sidekick aside, she had no intention of going unarmed into those streets. Unwrapping the gun, a thirty-eight—no holster and too big to carry in a pocket—she leaned forward to tuck it into the back of her waistband. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was there if she needed it.
She looked at the angel seated beside her, his face still, his eyes missing nothing of the street before them. “Ready?”
They got out of the car and Alex pushed the lock button on the key fob as she joined him on the sidewalk.
“We have a lot of territory to cover,” she said, tucking the keys into her jeans’ pocket. “Are you able to sense him in any way?”
“If I could, I wouldn’t need you.”
Deciding arrogance must be an angelic trait, Alex swallowed her preferred retort with difficulty. She gave her companion a tight smile. “Then I suggest we set a search pattern and try to stick with it.”
“Agreed.” He pointed into the alley beside them. “We’ll start there.”
With a sigh, she followed him across the sidewalk and into a darkness so absolute it swallowed them whole. She paused to let her eyes adjust, then had to jog to catch up with the angel, who hadn’t broken stride and seemed oblivious to both the dark and the detritus through which they moved.
Making herself match the angel’s pace, she followed a few feet behind him, scanning doorways and makeshift living quarters tucked into the shelter of Dumpsters, catching glimpses of the people who lived in their shadows, broken and lost in ways she couldn’t begin to fathom.
Not a single gaze lifted to hers.
Alex stuffed her hands into her pockets, then took them out again and flexed them at her sides. If she needed to reach for her weapon, she didn’t want to get hung up on the way to it. Henderson had been right. She’d worked cases in the worst neighborhoods Toronto had to offer, but this—this outdid them all. She picked up the pace and caught up to the angel. If Seth were down here somewhere, seeing this, and anything happened to push him into making the choice of which Aramael and her surly companion warned…
Suffice it to say she needed to get him the hell out.
“Are you all right?”
She glanced at the angel in surprise, hearing that note of compassion again. “Fine. Just a little taken aback by all this.”
“And worried about Seth seeing it.”
“Yes.”
At the end of the alley they headed left down the street toward another hole in the light, past teenage girls selling themselves to feed needs they couldn’t escape, past men and women of every age sprawled on the sidewalk in drug-induced stupors. Alex’s nails dug into her palms.
The next alley was wider, lit well enough to see the used hypodermics and condoms littering the broken, filthy pavement—and the deathly pallor of a man propped in a doorway. The angel stopped beside him for a moment, staring down, then turned away.
Alex hesitated. �
��Wait. I think he may have OD’d.”
“He did.” The angel took her arm and steered her away.
She tugged free. Turned back. “Are you sure he’s—”
“Yes.”
Damn. Shoulders slumping, she reached for her cell phone. “I’ll call in a report.”
“There’s no time. He will be found in the morning and we need to find Seth now.”
Still she hesitated. Leaving anyone like this, homeless or otherwise, was just wrong.
“Naphil.” The angel waited until she looked at him. He shook his head. “Nothing can be done here. Leave him. I’ll have the Guardians see to it that a patrol comes through here at first light.”
Again that compassion, so out of place in a being that exuded such a harsh authority. But he was right. Casting a final glance at the prone figure, Alex fell into step beside him. “May I ask you something?”
“You may, but it doesn’t guarantee an answer.”
“Why do you call me Naphil like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like the word leaves a bad taste in your mouth.”
“I didn’t realize I did so. I’m sorry I offended you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
They passed a woman sitting on a concrete step, her arm tied off and blood trickling from where a needle still pierced a vein. She didn’t look up. Alex’s gaze lingered on her. She’d never seen so much misery in one place. How, in today’s world, could human beings be allowed to fall through the cracks of society like this? How the hell did the beat cops deal with it day in and day out, knowing that, in most cases, their help would be too little and far too late?
And we call ourselves civilized.
“How much do you know of your kind?” the angel responded to her question.
She shot him a hard look. They neared the end of the alley now, and his features were clear in the increased light. Calm, expressionless, devoid of the distaste she’d read into his words.
Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy Page 20
