Thunder rolled again, closer, more menacing, and the hairs on the back of Alex’s neck lifted. She patted her pockets on the chance she’d stashed her mini-flashlight in one of them, but found no familiar metal cylinder. Damn.
She listened. Not a sound. It was probably nothing. An animal, or a kid avoiding curfew, maybe. The possibility their killer had remained in the area this long was almost nil. The guy was far too cautious for that kind of mistake.
But she couldn’t take the chance.
She looked over her shoulder. Besides, this would be the perfect opportunity to show a certain someone the right way to handle going into an alley: as a team. She gave a short, low whistle to get Trent’s attention.
Her partner turned his head and she held a finger to her lips, pointing with her other hand toward the passageway. Trent took his hands from his pockets, his posture straightening as he came alert. He started toward her.
Alex divided her attention between listening for more movement and watching Trent’s approach. When only a few feet separated them, she rested her hand on the grip of her nine-millimeter pistol and stepped into the inkiness, the musty odor of old, damp building foundations rising around her. She stood for a few seconds to let her eyes adjust to the dark, but the brilliant floodlight at the other end continued to blind her.
Trent’s footsteps stopped behind her. Instantly, her entire body tuned to his presence, burying her cop’s instinct under an avalanche of tightened skin, heightened pulse, and quickened breath.
“Shit,” she muttered. So much for sensing anyone else who might be near.
“Detective?” Trent’s voice sounded muffled and oddly flat.
“Quiet for a second,” Alex whispered back. She felt her way along the narrow passage, the brick rough beneath her touch. If she put some distance between her and Trent, maybe—
A shoe scraped against loose stones and then she heard the unmistakable, metallic snick of a switchblade. She flung up her hand, unable to see the attack, but knowing it was coming.
“Knife!” she yelled. White heat seared her forearm. She lunged to the side, grunting as cheek and palms impacted the brick wall. Thrusting upright again, she fought for her bearings against a wash of pain and fumbled for her gun. Struggled to see her invisible assailant, a shadow among shadows.
She heard him grunt and braced herself for another attack, and suddenly felt herself lifted from her feet and flung aside. Her head connected with brick and pain lanced through her skull. She forced herself upright, light exploding in the backs of her eyes, and stared in disbelief—tinged with horror—at the scene unfolding before her.
Fire lit the night. Golden flames, so brilliant they almost blinded her, with Trent at their center. Trent, standing in the mouth of the passageway, with powerful wings spread behind him. Trent, raising his hands, palms forward, his face filled with a terrible wrath.
And then a man’s body sailing backward, like a rag doll fired from an invisible cannon.
Alex’s world went dark.
“VERCHIEL!”
Mittron’s roar reverberated through the great library, silencing the mutterings and whispers that followed Verchiel up the sweeping staircase. Verchiel paused, her foot on the top step, and looked down at the angels clustered in the main hall. They stared back at her, round eyed and openmouthed. From Second Choir Cherubim to Eighth Choir Principalities, each was as stunned as the next by what had just happened in the mortal realm. By what Aramael had done.
Verchiel pressed her lips together and turned her back on the gathering below her. She eyed the long gallery stretching before her and, beyond that, the hallway leading to Mittron’s office. With an uncharacteristic lack of charity, she considered making the Highest wait—and stew—for a few minutes more. After all, she had told him that sending Aramael on this hunt was a bad idea, and she wasn’t above feeling a little smug about being proved right.
“Ver—chi—el!”
Verchiel winced. Another bellow like that and the venerable old library might very well collapse around their ears. She removed her hand from the stair rail and slid it into the folds of her robe with its partner. The important thing, she reminded herself as she started toward the Highest Seraph’s office, was to decide what they would do next, not to indulge in a petty game of “I told you so.” Besides, if she were completely honest, she knew that, regardless of her reservations, not even she could have predicted this outcome.
Mittron paced the hallway outside his office, stopping when he saw her, his amber eyes accusatory. “You felt what happened?” he demanded.
She sighed. “Was there a corner of the universe that didn’t?”
Mittron glared at her. “I do not appreciate flippancy, Dominion.”
She inclined her head in wordless apology and bit back the impulsive, Then perhaps you should have heeded my counsel, that hovered on her lips. After paying so little attention herself to today’s earlier warning signs, she had no room to criticize. She could, and should, have done far more than simply consider the problem as she had.
The Highest’s eyebrows slashed together. “He attacked a human. Turned the power of Heaven itself against one of the very beings the One has charged us to protect. Need I remind you of the consequences if the mortal does not survive?”
Verchiel leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. “No, Highest.”
No angel needed reminding of the consequences should the agreement between Heaven and Hell be broken. They had all witnessed the conflict between the One and Lucifer over the mortals, had seen the love between the universe’s two greatest powers ripped apart by jealousy and betrayal. For four and a half thousand years, they had all tiptoed around the fragile contract that stood between those powers and a war that would decimate humanity.
Mittron’s footsteps passed Verchiel, turned, approached again, and then stopped. She opened her eyes to find him standing before her.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
Not what are we going to do, Verchiel noticed, but you. She tightened her lips. What the Highest lacked in interangelic skills, he more than made up for in his ability to evade responsibility when things didn’t go according to plan. The longer she wasn’t soulmated to him, the more she wondered how she ever could have been.
“We could recall him.”
“You know nothing short of the One’s own voice can end a hunt before it is finished.”
“Does the One know what has happened?”
“As you so aptly observed, the entire universe knows.”
Meaning that the One knew and, for unknown reasons, wished the hunt to continue. Verchiel hoped it also meant the One had far greater insight into the matter than she did, because from where she stood, a decision not to interfere did not bode well. She straightened away from the wall, but couldn’t quite coax her shoulders out of the slump that plagued her these days.
“Then I suppose I will have to speak with him,” she told the Highest. Again.
ARAMAEL HEARD THEM before he saw them. Alex’s voice, curt and inflexible. Another woman’s response, reverberating with exasperation. Both sliced through his thousandth grim review of the evening’s events. The impossibility of what he had done.
A shudder jolted his core. Even as his mind tried to disengage from the memory, his soul could not forget the force of the power he’d released against a mortal. Inconceivable, inexcusable—words could not begin to describe the wrongness of what he had done. His unprecedented, unforgivable loss of control.
Alex’s voice drew nearer, and louder. Aramael glanced across the nearly full waiting room to where Roberts stood at the coin-operated coffee machine. He met the other man’s resigned gaze. With a wry twist of his mouth, Roberts offered his untasted cup of coffee to an elderly man in a wheelchair, then crossed over to join Aramael.
“Sounds like we’re driving her home.”
“But she’s hurt.”
The staff inspector grunted. “You tell her that.”
The
y turned as the doors beside the reception desk swung open and Alex stepped out of the examination area, her face pale and set. She stalked toward them.
Aramael tensed, bracing himself for the worst. He had no idea what Alex had seen in the passageway, and therefore no idea of what to expect from her now. When she’d regained consciousness after only a few seconds—seconds that had felt unnervingly like an eternity—she’d asked only a single, terse question about her attacker. Then, on finding out the man still lived, she had settled into stony silence, her hand clamped over the gaping wound in her left arm, refusing Aramael’s assistance. Refusing to so much as meet his eyes.
Continuing to do so now.
Aramael grimaced. He supposed he could hope her hostility stemmed from the day’s events in general, but he wasn’t that naïve. No, Alex Jarvis had seen more than she should have, and now he needed to find a way to alleviate the harm he had caused.
The additional harm.
A stocky, middle-aged nurse stomped through the doorway behind Alex, clipboard in hand and voice raised in objection. “Detective Jarvis, be reasonable. All we’re suggesting is a few hours of observation.”
Alex’s face darkened. She planted herself in front of Roberts. “Will you please tell this woman I don’t need observation?”
Roberts looked over her head. “How is she?” he asked the nurse.
Alex’s glare turned murderous.
“I’m fine,” she snapped.
“She has a headache—” the nurse began.
“Of course I have a headache. I whacked my head on a goddamn brick wall!”
In spite of himself, Aramael felt the corner of his mouth twitch. He’d barely registered the phenomenon—a Power feeling humor?—when Alex’s gaze flicked to him, intensified, and moved away again. He narrowed his eyes. There had been something ugly in that look. Something more unsettling than having her ignore him.
“—and a mild concussion,” the nurse finished, setting her hands on her hips and returning Alex’s defiant look. “Plus twenty-three stitches in her arm. We want to keep her here for a few hours just to make sure she’s all right.”
“Alex?” Roberts asked.
“No.” Alex crossed her arms, paled, and uncrossed them again, cradling the bandaged one against her.
“You need observation,” the nurse huffed.
Alex’s lips compressed. Pain had etched itself into the tight lines about her mouth and cast a haze over her eyes. Apparently it also brought out her stubborn side.
“I need,” she said through clenched teeth, “to go home.”
The two women glowered at one another. Conversation in the waiting area ceased as the other patients watched the argument unfold in their midst.
“What if someone stays with her?” Aramael asked.
Alex stiffened. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
She directed her words to Roberts, wordlessly rejecting Aramael’s very presence, back to behaving as if he didn’t exist. Aramael’s mouth tightened. Damage control would be challenging.
Roberts looked askance at the nurse. “Would that do? Having someone stay with her?”
“I don’t need—” Alex growled.
The nurse turned her back on Alex and spoke to Roberts. “We’d prefer to keep her here, but I suppose that would do.”
“Alex?” Roberts asked.
Aramael watched Alex wrestle with her loss of independence, her expression running the gamut from denial to grudging acceptance. At last she heaved a sigh.
“Fine. Now can I go?”
“I’ll get the discharge papers ready,” the nurse said. “You’ll have to sign yourself out against our advice.”
“Whatever.”
The nurse stalked back through the doors by the reception desk, her back rigid with disapproval. With the argument resolved, the other patients in the waiting room lost interest and returned to their own business. Alex glared at Roberts.
“I don’t need you to stay with me.”
“I’m not. I have to write up the file on this and submit it to the chief before morning. I’ll call your sister—”
“No!”
A few heads turned their way again. For the first time, Alex seemed to notice that they weren’t alone in the waiting room and lowered her voice. “I don’t want to worry Jennifer. A good night’s sleep—”
“Forget it, Jarvis. I’m not taking any chances, especially after a head injury. You either have someone stay with you at home, for the night, or you stay here. Your choice. And yes, that’s an order.”
“You can’t make me stay—”
“Actually, I can,” Roberts interrupted. “And if I need to, I’ll put a uniform outside your door to prove it.”
“But—”
“I’ll stay with her,” Aramael said. He watched Alex go still. Knew she wanted to refuse his offer but had no other options. Waited for her to reach the same conclusion.
Alex nodded, a single, curt incline of her head, and looked up at him at last.
“Thank you,” she said.
Her eyes did not echo the gratitude.
SIXTEEN
Alex sat in silence as Trent negotiated the corner onto her street and drove through the sleeping neighborhood. They had exchanged neither word nor glance during the twenty-minute ride from the hospital. Roberts had issued directions to Trent before they left and the man had followed them unerringly, leaving her to sit beside him, separated by a few inches that might as well have been an unbreachable chasm.
Leaving her time to relive yet again the moments in the alley; to try to convince herself that her version of events hadn’t happened. Couldn’t have happened. Just as Trent couldn’t have wings, just as those bullets couldn’t have passed through him this afternoon, just as she couldn’t keep having that insane, visceral reaction to him.
Alex ground her teeth together. She was tired of going in these same circles over and over again, trying to rationalize what she’d seen and felt, trying to find—or create—an acceptable explanation. Trying to ignore the whisper of possibility that she was perfectly sane, and there were things in play here that were—
She pressed fingertips between eyebrows, slamming the brakes on her unfinished thought as Trent pulled into the driveway. Fuck, ideas like that made her question her sanity more, not less. She tried to think past the pounding in her skull, to find a way out of the endless loop in which she was trapped.
Maybe she should just pretend that none of it had happened. Maybe she could start fresh in the morning, hoping against hope that her world would have returned to normal, that all of this would be relegated to the status of a bad dream. Maybe that smack on the head had been harder than she realized, and—
Alex paused, contemplating the last idea.
As excuses went, that one might actually work. Any hit hard enough to knock a person out was bound to scramble things somewhat. The explanation didn’t work for the entire day, but right now she’d settle for rationalizing any small portion at all, and the idea did fit with what the others believed had happened in the alley.
Trent slid out of the vehicle.
Lightning, they’d said. A freak bolt that found its way between the buildings to the knife in her assailant’s hand, its energy enough to knock her from her feet. Lightning from the sky, not an invisible blow from a man standing amid golden flames, his face dark with anger, his wings outstretched—
Alex suppressed a shiver. Lightning. Just lightning, and the hospital had assured them her attacker would live. Even if the doctors couldn’t explain why there hadn’t been a mark on him. No hint of a scorch mark, no singed hair. Instead, all the damage had been internal: bruised organs, internal bleeding, massive fluid retention.
All of which he would survive.
The car door opened beside her, making her jump. She stared up at Trent for a moment, then, with a small, tight shake of her head, rejected his assistance and levered herself out of the seat with her good arm. No matter how rational she wanted to
be, she still couldn’t accept his touch.
Couldn’t forget the brush of her fingers against unseen feathers.
She shivered in spite of the night’s mugginess. Crossing the lawn, she made the short climb to the unlit, covered front porch that stretched across the face of her older home. The steady trill of crickets filled the night, unbearably loud to a head that already felt like a hundred strong men with sledgehammers had taken up residence in it. Her arm throbbed ten times worse than her head, and her scraped hands burned like blazes. So did her cheek, for that matter. She hurt in so many places, in fact, that she’d given up keeping track.
And that was just the physical pain.
Alex gritted her teeth. No, she told herself. She would not deal with the other stuff right now. Not tonight. Tonight she had reached every limit she knew she had, and exceeded others she’d never dreamed existed. She’d had enough for one day. Enough voices, enough hallucinations, enough memories.
Enough, in truth, not for a day, but for a lifetime.
Supremely conscious of Trent’s presence behind her, she crossed the porch and turned to hold out her hand for her keys. Trent reached past, unlocked the door, and pushed it open.
For a long moment, Alex stood without moving. She wanted to believe it was independence that kept her from going inside rather than trepidation, but a fine film of sweat on her forehead and the jitter in her gut said otherwise. She did not want to spend hours alone in the house with this man. Didn’t want him imprinting his presence on her home, leaving behind traces of his warmth, his scent.
“I really am fine, Detective Trent. You don’t need to stay.” She bit the inside of her bottom lip. Had he heard the same traitorous quiver in her voice that she had?
If so, he didn’t comment on it. He didn’t say anything, in fact, just stretched his arm into the house and switched on a light, making Alex blink in the sudden brilliance. Then he waited, face devoid of expression, arms crossed. Long seconds ticked by.
Sins of the Angels Page 12
