Sins of the Angels

by Linda Poitevin

  Trent’s presence loomed at her back and she wavered, feeling the draw of his strength, the promise of his protection. No, she told herself fiercely. You’ve made it this far, no way will you fall apart now.

  She looked away from the bloodbathed walls toward the center of the room and the rows of neatly arranged, stilloccupied chairs. Her jaw went slack. Resolve cracked, crumbled, began to dissolve. Horror attained a whole new definition.

  The bodies. Dear God, so many, many bodies.

  She didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see the defilement of human life, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She scanned the victims, pausing on each as a distant part of her mind counted, catalogued, recorded.

  One, a fresh-faced young man in a courier’s uniform; two, a thirtyish black woman in a business suit …

  … seven, a vaguely familiar girl with tattooed arm sleeves and a half dozen facial piercings …

  … twelve, an unkempt middle-aged man, his skin color obscured under layers of street living …

  … twenty-one, an elderly Asian man; twenty-two, a young woman with a swollen, pregnant belly.

  Twenty-two victims. All sitting in chairs lined up to face the front of the room, throats gaping, eyes blank. Lifeless. Without so much as a rumpled shirt or skewed chair to indicate a struggle.

  Alex tried to swallow but couldn’t get past the lump in her throat. Her eyes burned hot and dry in their sockets as she stared at the rows of dead. Sweet Jesus, how could they have just sat there, waiting their turn at death? Why hadn’t they fought back? How in God’s name had the killer made them sit and watch and—

  “Jarvis.” Roberts’s voice echoed in the unnatural stillness of the room, jarring her out of her horror, and at the same time further into it.

  Alex looked toward the front of the room where her supervisor stood on a raised platform, beckoning her forward. With Trent following as her own shadow would, she walked toward Roberts. Halfway there, she saw it.

  A crucifix, mounted on the wall behind a flimsy wooden dais. Upside down. The body on it not of plastic or wood or plaster, but of bone and tendon and shreds of putrid flesh—recognizable as human only by its general shape. Alex tried to halt her steps, but the awfulness drew her forward even as it repelled her. She stopped at the edge of the platform and stared up at the atrocity, gagging anew at the reek. At the idea of a mind capable of this kind of malevolence.

  A mind that had targeted her.

  She tried to draw a steadying breath, but couldn’t. Couldn’t breathe at all. Panic stirred in her chest, trickled lower, turned her belly to liquid, became the stirrings of terror. Then Trent’s hand pressed into her back, warm and solid and strong, and she focused everything she was on the touch, taking his strength into her as her own, letting him become the glue that kept her together, that kept her from spinning away into oblivion, right here, right now.

  Alex stared past her supervisor. It would be so easy to give in to the collapse that hovered, to give herself the excuse she needed to walk away from all this. Roberts wouldn’t even be able to say she hadn’t warned him.

  But even as she considered the possibility, her staff inspector cleared his throat, drawing her gaze back to meet his, and ice streaked down her spine at the bleakness there. It spread to claim her limbs as Roberts looked toward his feet, even before she followed his gaze.

  Even before she saw Christine Delaney’s carefully posed body and looked into her dull, dead eyes.

  CAIM PACED THE sidewalk behind the gathered gawkers with tight steps. How much longer would they remain in there? Surely the hunt would drive out Aramael soon. Caim snarled softly. This wasn’t what he’d had in mind. The three minutes the Naphil and Aramael had spent on the sidewalk before entering the mission had told him nothing. The woman had barely acknowledged his brother, and the Power had remained well away from her. Caim needed more, much more, if he wanted to confirm his suspicions.

  Because if he was right …

  If he was right, it changed everything. If Aramael had feelings for the woman, then it became more than Caim finding a Naphil and a back door into Heaven. It became perfect justice. Retribution against the brother who had betrayed him. Taken away his freedom. Spurned him.

  Caim balled his hands into fists. He willed Aramael’s reappearance, but the mission’s front door remained occupied only by the uniformed cop guarding it.

  Fuck. All that trouble, all that effort, for this? A spot on the sidelines, watching the mortals’ clumsy, bungling efforts to catch a killer they couldn’t even begin to conceive of?

  He’d have been better off going after that mewling female. The one who’d entered the mission as he’d finished the slaughter and then fled before he could turn his attention to her. Not that the girl was any threat to him. She might be physically unharmed, but her mind would have sustained serious damage when she’d looked on him and what he did. There was nothing like stumbling on life’s darker realities to screw with the fragile mortal brain.

  Still, he didn’t like loose ends any more than he cared for idleness, and this was the second time someone had seen and escaped him. Maybe he should just track her down and—he scowled. No. He had to stay disciplined. Focused. Had to follow through on what he’d started. He would remain here, be patient. Aramael and the woman would emerge at some point, and he would be waiting, watching, learning.

  Just as he’d promised the Naphil.

  ALEX STARED PAST the beat cop Roberts was talking to, unable to look away from the bloodied place of worship. Snippets of conversation washed over her, meaningless in the face of the atrocity with which they dealt.

  “… truly dedicated to the street …” the beat cop’s hushed voice murmured. “… saw him just yesterday …”

  Behind her she heard the Forensics team lower the cross with the putrid body to the floor. Most likely Father William’s remains, identified by the cross he wore around his neck, engraved with his name and the date of his ordination. An autopsy would be needed to confirm the identity for the record, of course, but Alex knew it was him. Knew it deep down, in her cop’s gut. Which raised the question of whom, exactly, Christine Delaney had been dating—and how he’d made himself look enough like Father William to fool a cop who saw him nearly every day.

  A muttered prayer reached Alex’s ears. She blocked it out and studied the pregnant victim in the front row of chairs. The woman looked to be about six months along. No wedding ring. Maybe there wouldn’t be anyone to notify about the loss of both a wife and a child in the same awful day.

  “… don’t understand how he could look like this now …”

  Over the beat cop’s shoulder, she saw Trent at the back of the room, pacing, his face drawn into lines of rage and torture, his body taut. Alex’s insides shifted. She so didn’t want to have to do this next part, but it was time. She’d run out of options.

  She looked again at the victims lined up in the chairs and closed her eyes. Drew strength from some nether region of her mind she’d never before visited. Never had to visit. Then, with a mumbled aside to Roberts and the beat cop, she skirted the chairs and the bloody floor beneath them and headed toward Trent.

  Her partner spoke first, before she’d even reached his side, his voice harsh. “He’s taunting me.”

  Alex tripped over a floodlight cord. Righted herself. Paused a few feet away and twisted her hands into her jacket pockets. “The others think there’s more than one killer.”

  “But you know better.”

  It was a statement, not a question. Alex steeled herself. This was why she’d come over here. “Yes. I know better.”

  Satisfaction flared in his expression.

  “Now I want to know what you’re going to do about it,” she added.

  The look of torture returned to his face. “I don’t know.”

  “Can you feel him?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Trust me. That part you don’t want to know.”

  Ale
x pressed her lips together against an automatic objection. She looked away from him. He was right. She should keep her questions pertinent, focused on the case. Like a good cop. Like a cop who believed they could actually catch the killer.

  “We know he’s made himself look like Father William. Maybe if we put out a description—” Her voice trailed off.

  “And if you find him, what then? You’ll arrest him?”

  The grisly scene in which they stood pressed in on Alex. She felt Delaney’s accusatory eyes boring into her back along with those of twenty-two witnesses to the fraud detective’s death and Father William’s desecration. No, she thought. None of them would be able to stop the monster who had done this. The monster who was after her.

  Again Trent seemed to tap into her thoughts. “You’re not responsible for what happened here,” he said quietly.

  Alex’s throat tightened. “Aren’t I? Del—Christine told me about the priest. I should have said something then. Should have realized—”

  “You didn’t make her ignore her Guardian,” Trent interrupted. “She chose to do so. And you didn’t fail in your purpose. I did.”

  Guardian? Purpose? Alex felt the beginnings of a desire to hyperventilate. She looked over at Roberts. She’d give anything to return to his side and have this be a normal case where she could do the job the way she was supposed to. Where she could gather evidence and follow leads, and face a dozen killers instead of one who had somehow held twenty-two people in place while he murdered them one at a time; who had kept them from caring about what happened in front of them, or from seeing it at all. Or worse, had let them remain cognizant of every horrific moment.

  Alex rested her hands on her hips and chewed at her bottom lip. There had to be some way of catching this son of a bitch. “Maybe if you tell me how this psychic thing of yours works, I can help.”

  “Psychic thing?” One of Trent’s eyebrows ascended.

  “Your connection to the killer. Is it stronger when you’re somewhere quiet? If you meditate?”

  Trent’s other eyebrow joined the first. “Meditate?”

  “I’m just trying to help, damn it.”

  “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “Why not? Why can’t you at least let me try? Why—?”

  “Because,” a new voice interrupted. “You are the problem, Alexandra Jarvis. Not the solution.”

  Alex saw a murderous glint in Trent’s eyes even as she recognized the voice. She turned her head and fixed hostile eyes on Seth Benjamin. “You again.”

  “Despite your earlier efforts to be rid of me, yes.” Benjamin’s gaze moved past her to Trent. “Your presence is requested. I’ll stay with her until you return.”

  Trent’s dark brows had become one. “The way you did last night? If he’d known where to find her—”

  “He didn’t. And you have my word that I won’t let her out of my sight this time.” Benjamin’s confidence made Alex lift her chin. He smiled at the gesture. “Not even if I have to tie her down,” he added, as much for her benefit, she was sure, as for Trent’s. “Verchiel waits for you. I think you’ll want to hear what she has to say.”

  Alex saw Trent waver, then dip his head in agreement. “Wait,” she said. “You can’t leave now. I need—we need you.” She felt a flush climb into her cheeks at her slip. A flare in Trent’s eyes told her he’d noticed, but he answered without inflection.

  “I won’t be long. A few minutes at most. Promise me you’ll stay with Seth.”

  Alex shot the other man a look of dislike. Something about Trent’s former partner—if that was who he really was—set her teeth on edge. “I’ll be fine,” she told Trent, turning her back on the man lounging against the wall. “With all these people around, how could—?”

  Trent grasped her shoulders and whirled her to face the bloodied room. “Enough,” he snarled in her ear. “You cannot keep pretending you don’t see what is before you, Alex. Damn it, open your eyes and look!”

  She closed them instead. She didn’t need to look. Didn’t need to see any of it again to know he was right. To let what she had toyed with intellectually settle into her core, her center. To make the ultimate admission to herself that this wasn’t just any killer. It wasn’t even human. It was monstrous and obscenely powerful and evil beyond comprehension.

  And it was bigger than her—bigger than all of the cops in this room put together.

  And it had decided to come after her.

  And the only thing standing in its way was the man holding her. The man whose heat burned against her back, whose strength once again folded itself around her and made her want to lean into it. Become one with it.

  Alex opened her eyes. She could feel Seth Benjamin’s disapproval and knew that he knew her thoughts. She lifted her chin in defiance and turned to Trent, schooling herself not step into the arms that had returned to his sides as she asked the question burning uppermost in her mind, “How am I the problem?”

  “What?”

  “He”—she shot Seth a look of dislike—“said I’m the problem, not the solution. How am I the problem?”

  Trent’s own glance in Benjamin’s direction held much more than simple dislike. “He didn’t mean it—”

  Without thinking, Alex put her hand up to her partner’s mouth to stop his words. She pulled back even as she brushed against him, but not before the sensation of his lips burned into her skin. Not before shocked heat flared in gray depths and found an answer in her belly.

  She swallowed.

  Detached her tongue from the roof of her mouth.

  Scrabbled together the remains of reason.

  “He did mean it,” she croaked. “Now I want to know what he meant.”

  Trent shook his head. “I can’t explain.”

  “Then I can’t promise.”

  “Damn it, Alex—”

  “Tell me.”

  War waged across his features. “You ask the impossible.”

  “So do you.”

  Benjamin cleared his throat behind her. “You should get going, Jacob,” he said. His emphasis on Trent’s name seemed to be a message of some kind, for it made Trent stand taller and glare at him in defiance.

  “She needs to know.”

  “It is forbidden.”

  Alex rounded on the other man. “Shut up,” she snapped, and felt immense satisfaction at his surprise. “You don’t get to waltz into my life and turn it upside down without explanation. No one does. You want my cooperation, I want answers. It’s that simple.”

  Benjamin studied her for a long moment in silence, probing, measuring, thoughtful. Then he looked at Trent again. “Think of the consequences.”

  “What if she refuses cooperation and he gets to her?” Trent responded, his voice gruff.

  Benjamin shrugged. “Touché.” He quirked an eyebrow at Alex. “You’re certain about this, Alexandra Jarvis?”

  Alex shored up her crumbling resolve and wiped her palms against her jacket. Roberts called her name. A part of her, desperate to finish the conversation before she lost her nerve, wanted to ignore her supervisor’s summons, but a second bellow made her respond with a wave of acknowledgment.

  She looked up at Trent. “I have to see what he wants.”

  “But you’ll stay with Seth.”

  “You’ll explain later?”

  “You have my word.”

  She swallowed at the fierce promise in his eyes. “Then you have mine, too.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Hollow as she knew it to be, Alex found a certain comfort in going through the motions of an investigation. Seth Benjamin’s presence, however, was another matter.

  Every note she scribbled, every scrap of evidence she stooped to examine, his black eyes never left her. It was downright unnerving, not to mention irritating.

  Even more annoying was the way none of the others questioned his being there. They didn’t even seem to notice him. It was as if he didn’t occupy actual space against the wall near the raised dais.
As if he existed only in her head, except she didn’t believe that anymore. Not after all she had seen and couldn’t deny. Not after that phone call.

  Alex tightened her grip on her pen. Crouched beside the pregnant woman, she looked toward the front of the room and saw one of the Forensics team edge between Benjamin and the platform. A little hiss of relief escaped her. So others did see him. That was good, because despite her recently formed opinion that she hadn’t completely lost it, it was nice to have proof.

  With gloved hands, she opened the woman’s handbag and tugged the wallet from the jumbled contents, and then stood and flipped it open. The woman’s photo stared back at her from the exposed driver’s license. Elizabeth Anthony, born August 17, 1990.

  August 17.

  Alex glanced at the date on her digital watch and felt her throat tighten. Shit. She stood and looked down at the woman, taking in the carefully made-up face and tidy hair, now sprayed with blood, and the swollen belly that had become a grave rather than a haven for the unborn child within.

  “Happy birthday, Elizabeth Anthony,” she whispered.

  Roberts joined her. “You doing all right?” he asked.

  Alex handed him the wallet, her finger hooked over it to point at the date on the license. Roberts’s face went a shade grayer than it had already been.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  Alex jotted the woman’s name and address into her notebook and stooped to retrieve the handbag from the floor. She dropped the wallet into it, slid everything into an evidence bag, and sealed the bag.

  Roberts cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking about what we talked about earlier. This one’s pretty big, so if you’d rather sit it out …” His voice trailed off.

  Hope flared in her, then sputtered out. Why couldn’t Roberts have seen it this way before the killer had placed a personal call to her? Before Delaney went missing? Before Alex had seen this mayhem and slotted away the memories with all her others? She took a marker from her pocket and held it in a grip that numbed her fingers. It was too late to back out now. Hell, if she were to believe Trent, it had been too late for her all along.