Powerful arms encircled her, lifted her from her feet, and swung her around. No. Damn it, no! Not now. Not this close. She shoved at a solid chest, twisted in the iron grip, fought with every ounce of strength she possessed.
Feathers brushed her cheek.
“Alex, it’s me,” a familiar voice spoke over her head, and hands gripped her arms, shaking her. “Stop fighting.”
She did, if only out of sheer surprise. “Aramael? You have your wings back. Thank God! Seth—the Archangels—you have to help me get in there.”
Arms still pinned to her sides, she indicated the alley with her chin, but Aramael’s only response was to tighten his grip. The hope that had surged in her hesitated, then shriveled as she raised her gaze to his. ERT members formed a ring around them, weapons poised, voices bellowing instructions. Caught up in stony gray eyes, Alex barely registered their existence.
“You goddamn son of a bitch!” She pulled free of Aramael’s hands and raised her own to shove at his chest. She might as well have tried to move the squat brownstone beside them. Breast heaving, she blinked back tears of frustration. Fury at knowing that, after all she’d done, all she’d been through, she had failed. Failed Seth, failed the human race, failed herself.
“I’m sorry,” Aramael said.
“Are you?” she demanded bitterly. One of the ERT members reached for her arm and she shook him off with a vicious, “Back off!” before rounding on Aramael again. “Are you really? You’re getting what you wanted, remember? Seth is about to die. You should be thrilled.”
“I never wanted this.”
“Because you wanted to do the honors yourself?”
Aramael flinched and his nostrils flared. “This isn’t about me, Alex. I did what I had to do because that’s who I am. What I am. You know that.”
“And what about Seth?” she snarled. “Was that something you had to do, too? Tear him apart inside so he would doubt me and believe the Fallen One’s lies? All of this is still new to him. He doesn’t understand. Doesn’t know yet that I care for him.” She ignored the flash of pain across Aramael’s features and pressed on. “You did this to him, Aramael. You owe him another chance.”
She glanced past the ERT members surrounding them, past Henderson in furious discussion with the team supervisor, down the alley. What was happening? Had the angels taken him yet? Would she see them go as she had seen them arrive, as a silent, massive shadow passing across her world? Would she feel him go? Her breath rasped in her throat.
She looked up at her soulmate.
Ice crystals had formed in his eyes. “You don’t know what you ask.”
“I’m asking you to help me. To trust me.” Alex reached up and cupped his face in her hands. “I couldn’t save you, Aramael. Let me try to save Seth. Let him love me so he can do what he’s supposed to.”
Aramael stared over her head into the alley, his conflict a palpable, surging energy that enveloped them both. Behind her, the argument between Henderson and the ERT supervisor escalated; around them, heavily armed cops shifted. Agonizing seconds dragged past.
At last her soulmate looked down at her again and took her hands from his face. “You’re damned lucky I still have my free will,” he grated, “or this wouldn’t even be an option.”
He raised a hand. Momentary alarm surged through Alex, along with memories of another time he had raised his hand to a human, a time when his wings had come alive with golden flames and a terrible wrath had darkened his features. But the ERT members standing between them and the alley simply staggered backward as if pushed by an enormous gust of wind. No flames. No bodies sailing through the air. Only a half dozen cops pummeled into reverse, trying to regain their balance without dropping their weapons.
Gray eyes met hers again, just for an instant. “I’ll hold them off,” he said. “Go.”
Go to Seth.
Alex turned and ran.
FORTY-FIVE
She found them beneath a single light mounted high on the brick wall that formed the end of the blind alley. Black wings—six pairs of them—formed a barrier beyond which she couldn’t see a thing, and the kind of silence reigned where a person truly could have heard a pin drop. Her heart plummeted. Was she too late? Had they already…?
One of the Archangels shifted and the wall of feathers parted. Through them, she saw Seth, his back to the graffiti-covered wall and face twisted with emotions Alex didn’t think he had even begun to understand. Ugly intent glittered in his black eyes, and, in his hold, dangled the reason the Archangels hadn’t yet struck him down—a quivering, terrified man with a knife at his throat. A knife held by Seth.
“Wait!” Alex lunged through the gap in the blockade and planted herself between the Archangels and Seth. Arms spread wide, she sought and found Michael’s face among the others and, ignoring his fury, directed her entreaty to him. “I can talk to him. I can make him understand.”
Behind her, Seth grated, “I already understand.”
Low, violent energy pushed at Alex’s back. She staggered under its force and looked back at him, at the knife in his hand pressed against the man’s skin, drawing a bead of blood. At his malice. Her heart shivered but she made herself meet his gaze and hold it without wavering. “It doesn’t have to be like this. It wasn’t what you thought. Aramael never touched me in the way you think.”
“You lie,” he snarled. “I saw you. I saw him.”
The bead of blood became a line.
“Alex.” Michael’s voice was cold, commanding, compelling.
It took all the willpower Alex would ever possess to ignore it and continue speaking to Seth. “No. That wasn’t him. It was—” She swallowed hard.
“Alex,” Michael said again.
She lost it. “Shut. Up.” She rounded on him. “Just shut up, Michael. You’ve done enough. More than enough. You and your creator and fucking Lucifer. Seth and Aramael and I are not pawns in some goddamn cosmic chess game!”
“Actually,” drawled a new voice, “you are.”
Lucifer.
She knew it without looking. Knew from the way six pairs of wings shot open to their full span. The way the energy radiating from Seth was suddenly swallowed by something greater. Something lethal, crackling in the air and tingling along her skin. Her insides went liquid.
Lucifer, six Heavenly warriors, a divine being in a position to annihilate humankind—and her, caught between them all. If it weren’t for the death sentence she already carried in her belly, Alex might have at last turned tail and run. But even then—to where? If the human race faced either annihilation on one hand or Armageddon on the other, there would be no safe place on the planet. Perhaps not in the universe.
So she did the only thing she could. She held her ground, continued to shield Seth and his hostage from the Archangels, hoped for a miracle, and tried very, very hard not to flinch from reality. Or from the tiny blue flicker of energy that snapped near her cheek.
“Lucifer.” Michael grated the name with such fury in his voice that the walls of the alley trembled, sending a fine shower of dust across the pool of light in which they stood.
“Mika’el. Don’t let me interrupt. Please. I believe you were about to forfeit the agreement?”
Lucifer’s footsteps signaled his approach and Alex held rigid against the raw desire to simply fold to the ground. Michael’s breath hissed out, sending dust motes skidding away from him. “I do nothing more here than end your treachery, Light-Bearer.”
As tall and luminescent as Alex remembered, Lucifer stopped at the edge of her peripheral vision. “What treachery would that be, Archangel?” His voice went cold. Hard. “Given you’re here to murder my son, what treachery have I committed that could possibly equal that?”
“You’re telling me you know nothing of what happened to the woman.”
“What woman? Oh, you mean, the Naphil who cheated on the Appointed? Who rejected him and subjected him to unspeakable humiliation?”
Seth inhaled sharply and
Alex’s gaze swiveled to him. The line of blood across his hostage’s throat had become a trickle. “Don’t listen to him, Seth. That’s not what happened,” she said. “I was raped.”
Lucifer snorted. “Of course she’d say that. She’d say anything to try and save her race. But you know what you saw, Seth. Her with Aramael, his scent still clinging to her bare skin and the sheet in which she wrapped herself. You know what happened.”
Seth’s eyes met Alex’s, renewed acrimony flaring in their depths. His arm tightened across his victim’s chest. The knife shifted in his grasp. Alex swallowed against a tongue three sizes too big for her mouth. More than once she had faced down men who looked the way Seth did now; desperate men on the cusp of making choices they couldn’t take back. Choices she and her fellow cops hadn’t been able to allow.
The kind of choice Lucifer urged Seth to make now. But this time, with neither weapon nor words, she was helpless to stop it. Or was she? Alex’s breathing came to a rasping halt. She tore her gaze from Seth to stare at the luminescent Lucifer, frantically trying to recall everything he’d said, how he’d said it.
“Her with Aramael, his scent still clinging to her bare skin…”
“That’s enough, Light-Bearer,” Michael’s voice grated.
More blue crackles illuminated the air around them all. Lucifer’s doing? Or Michael’s?
“Careful, Archangel,” Lucifer drawled. “You don’t want to start something you can’t finish. Such as carry out the One’s orders to murder her son, for instance.”
“…the sheet in which she wrapped herself…”
At the edge of Alex’s vision, Seth flinched.
Lucifer’s lips curved upward at the corners. “You hadn’t already figured that out for yourself?” he asked his son. He slid thumb and forefinger into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a round, white object that he popped into his mouth. “I wish I could say such naïveté was endearing, but in truth, it galls me. Are you really so trusting, Seth? So willing to allow others in your life to make your decisions for you? To direct your choices?”
As if he was there. As if he saw…
Alex watched Seth’s face darken. Saw him believe Lucifer. Saw his decision begin to form. Behind her, the Archangels shifted. Then the scent of peppermint wafted toward her, enveloped her, all but drove her to her knees.
She knew what the Light-Bearer had done. What he tried to do.
“Lucifer—” Michael began.
“Michael,” said Alex. Or maybe she yelled it, because the Archangel—all the Archangels—looked startled. Then annoyed. Then just plain pissed. Alex fought off the collective will gathering around her, the desire for her to be silent, and made herself meet the emerald ice of Michael’s gaze. “He was there,” she rasped. “It was him.”
Michael’s brow creased, then cleared, and then became thunderous. He rounded on the Light-Bearer and the blue crackles multiplied a thousandfold. “She’s right. That’s the only way you could know how Seth found her.”
“You have me,” Lucifer said. His amethyst eyes found Alex and he smiled a smile that slithered across her skin like a living reptile. “Or to be more precise, I had her.”
Fighting back the tentacles of horror spreading across her mind, Alex tore her gaze from the compelling, awful beauty of God’s former helpmeet. She sought Seth’s eyes and the comprehension that should have followed his father’s admission. Found savagery instead.
“You still thought it was Aramael,” he snarled. “You still chose him over me.”
Alex recoiled from the accusation and the pain it contained. Had Lucifer’s meddling been too much? Could it have pushed a still fragile Seth beyond reach? Her heart twisted.
“Of course she chose him,” Lucifer snapped. “Now would you stop being so fucking spineless and slit his throat already? You’ve made the decision. Now act on it.”
“No!” Alex held out a hand toward Seth. “I thought it was you, Seth. Not Aramael. I chose you.”
He wanted to believe her. It was in his eyes, in the dark, tortured depths of the soul that stared back at her. A soul that wanted to believe, that fought to do so but in the end, remained too fragmented. A soul that simply couldn’t bear the strain.
What remained of the Seth she knew began a slow folding-in on itself.
FORTY-SIX
Without her training, without the edge of years of experience, it might have ended there. With Seth drawing back the man’s head and placing the blade under one ear, with a single knife stroke taking the life of one man and indirectly ending billions of others.
But instead, instinct kicked in and Alex lunged forward, catching hold of Seth’s hand as his grip shifted. She slammed it into the brick wall. Again and again, until the knife dropped from his startled grasp. Scooping it up, she spun out of reach. Then, her own back to the wall, she faced the entire gathering, breast heaving with the adrenaline aftermath, as startled by her actions as anyone there, staring at the knife she held.
“Oh, for the love of Hell,” Lucifer snapped in exasperation. “You stupid, interfering—” He broke off as six pairs of wings snapped wide again. Looking over his shoulder at the wall of Archangels, he heaved a sigh. “Really, Mika’el? You really want to start things now, like this, over a mortal woman? And a Naphil at that?”
“It’s over, Lucifer. I demand forfeiture.”
Lucifer smiled. He chuckled, then laughed aloud, the sound ringing through the alley and stilling the activity still unfolding on the street beyond. Alex’s fingers tightened on the handle of the knife as she caught her breath. Held it. That so didn’t sound good.
“Oh, Archangel,” the Light-Bearer gasped at last, “you really haven’t caught on, have you? I had no idea you could be so slow. I’m so fortunate it was Sam who chose to follow me and not you. I don’t appreciate him nearly enough.” He wiped at his eyes with the back of one hand and chuckled again. “All right, you win. I forfeit. I won’t harm a hair on the head of a single mortal. You have my word.”
Words of concession, delivered in a tone of utter delight. Again, not good.
“We had an agreement,” Michael snarled.
“And I am honoring that agreement. As per the terms, I will leave the mortals alone. The Nephilim, however…” He paused. Smiled the coldest smile Alex had ever seen. “Ah, they’ll be a whole other story, won’t they? Especially now.”
Alex’s fingers grew numb and her gaze flicked to Michael. Found him looking livid. No. Apoplectic. Foreboding slipped through her, its presence like the touch of ice-cold silk. She went rigid as Lucifer’s gaze settled on her belly.
“I did much more than take the woman, Mika’el,” he spat. “With her extraordinary Nephilim blood—and it is extraordinary, you know—mixed with mine, the child she carries will be a leader among his kind. A leader of a resurrected race I won’t be quite so inclined to fritter away this time.”
Through a wave of horror, Alex heard Seth’s hissed exhale.
The man he’d held sprawled onto the pavement by Alex’s feet. Casting a wild look at the gathering, he scrambled upright and took off as if pursued by the proverbial hounds of Lucifer’s realm. The alley swallowed his fleeing footsteps. Silence followed, thick and heavy and terrifying.
Alex stared at Heaven’s greatest warrior. Say something, she thought to him. Tell him he’s wrong, that you’ll save us. Tell him—tell me this wasn’t all for nothing…
Michael’s face had gone gray. “We will fight you,” he said.
“Knock yourselves out, Archangel. It won’t make a difference. Not anymore. Eighty thousand strong went out among the mortal females last night; we’ve sown enough seed to create the army I wanted. One you can’t touch, that isn’t bound by pacts or agreements or any other restrictions. Hell fights, Heaven fights…” Lucifer shrugged. “Either way, the Nephilim carry on with their task. With my child”—the Light-Bearer strolled to Alex’s side and reached out to slide a hand across her midriff—“leading them.”
; Alex recoiled. Her gaze met Michael’s. Held it. The Archangel’s jaw turned to granite and his eyes to chips of emerald ice, but he made no move toward her. No move to stop the Light-Bearer’s touch. Her stomach heaved.
“The best part,” Lucifer continued softly, “is that I have given you what you wanted more than anything else in the universe. I have saved your Creator from herself. Because not even she can stop the Nephilim now. Her mortal children will be wiped out because of her own rules, her own self-imposed limitations. With no Guardians to guide the Nephilim along her path and no allowances for her angels to take a life in her name, she will be responsible for wreaking havoc on humanity, not me. And if I can’t be held to blame, she will have no reason to come after me.” The Light-Bearer paused. “Actually, Archangel, if you think about it, you owe me. How very ironic.”
Then, grasping Alex’s chin, Lucifer jerked her face to his. “As for that little plan of yours I interrupted this morning, Naphil, the next time you try it, the accident will be fatal. Try it a third time and many mortals will lose their lives. A fourth, and a city will fall, and so on. You will carry my child to term. Do we understand one another?”
Without waiting for a response, he thrust her away, hard enough to make her stumble and fall against Seth. Arms went around her and tightened for an instant before Seth set her upright and stepped past her.
“Lucifer.” His low growl rumbled through the alley. Above, lightning flared blue in response.
His father, strolling toward the wall of Archangels, stopped and glanced over his shoulder. He raised an eyebrow. “Too little, my darling son,” he said. “And far too late.”
Arms held wide, Lucifer whipped around. Seth jerked backward off his feet, like a puppet on a string, and hit the wall perpendicular to Alex with a grunt. Lucifer’s lip curled and he turned away a second time.
Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy Page 29
