“No!” Rousing herself from her own shock-induced stasis, Alex went to her sister’s side, pried her hand loose, and led her to the chair she’d just vacated. “Nina could never hurt someone, Jen. You know that.”
Brown eyes, wide with shock, met hers. Jen nodded. “Of course. I do know that. It’s just—” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “There’s so much blood. Where did it all come from?”
Alex crouched down on one knee. “We think she may have witnessed something, sweetie. Something pretty awful. That’s why she’s not talking.”
Her sister’s head bobbed. “Shock will do that,” she agreed. “We’ve covered that in class. But she’ll get better.”
Alex bit her lip, seeing more than a little shock in Jen’s own face at the moment. Not wanting to add to it. Remembering Martin James.
Jen’s fingers dug like claws into her arm. “She will get better, won’t she, Alex? We can get her help—”
Alex looked to Aramael for an answer, but found only a reflection of her own misgivings. Her heart lurched. He looked haggard, she thought. She hadn’t known angels could look haggard. Not that she’d known angels at all until now. And still didn’t—at least, not as well as she needed to if she was going to protect her family.
Rising from beside her sister, she leaned back against the windowsill, her hands braced on either side of her, and returned to where she and Aramael had left off. “He’s really your brother? Couldn’t they have sent someone else after him? You’re not the only one who does this, are you?”
“No. There are others. Seventeen in all.”
“Then why send you—Wait—seventeen? That’s it? How many angels did you say fell?”
“Alex, what the hell—?” Jen broke off.
Aramael answered as if Jen hadn’t spoken. “A third of the host. A hundred thousand, give or take.”
Alex thought of the destruction wrought by Caim in the last few days and swallowed. “You’re telling me only seventeen of you stand between humanity and a hundred thousand demons?”
A hundred thousand Caims?
“All of Heaven stands between you. But with the agreement between Lucifer and the One, only seventeen of us have been necessary to … keep the peace, I suppose you could say.”
Jen almost fell off her chair. “Lucifer?”
Alex ignored her sister. “You’re kidding me. You’re only here for the ones who break some pact? What about the others? They just get to walk around freely, indistinguishable from the rest of us?” She shuddered at the thought. Her cop habit of seeing nearly everyone she met as a potential criminal had been bad enough; she didn’t know what she’d do with the possibility that any one of them could also be a Fallen Angel. “Doing what, exactly?”
“Whatever they can within the limits. They attempt to influence the choices mortals make, and Guardians try to counter that influence.”
“That’s it. That’s just how it is. Angels and demons playing tug-of-war with human beings. I thought God—the One—was supposed to be all-powerful.”
Aramael leaned his weight against the table and shook his head. “That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the fucking point?” she demanded. “People are dying because of these monsters and—”
“They’re not all like Caim.”
“For chrissake, you just told me they’re trying to wipe out humanity!”
“Only with your permission.”
Alex shook her head to clear it. “What?”
“The One gave mortals free will, Alex. Each of you has the ability to choose, to determine your own path. Both good and evil have always existed in your lives, only you can decide which to follow.”
“That is such a complete cop-out it’s not even funny. Can your One destroy these demons or not?”
“Demons?” squeaked Jen.
Alex sent her sister a quick look. Angels, demons—how the hell was she going to explain any of this? Especially given their mother’s delusions?
Irritation crept into Aramael’s voice. “I’m not here to debate theology with you. All I can tell you is that the One is ultimate good and does not destroy.”
“Right. And droughts, volcanoes, wars, earthquakes—what would you call those if not wholesale destruction?”
“Mortals choose where and how to live. The One does not impose that on you.”
“No, she just lets demons walk among us and sends you to kill the ones who step too far out of line.”
“To hunt the ones who step out of line, yes.”
Jennifer rose from her chair and, giving Aramael a wide berth, edged to Alex’s side and put a hand on her arm. “Alex, for God’s sake, what is going on?” she hissed. “What the hell are you talking about? Angels? Demons? This is insane!”
“Not now, Jen. Please.” Alex shrugged off her sister’s touch. Aramael’s last correction hadn’t sounded like semantics. “Hunt. Not kill.”
“I am an instrument of the One. If I were to destroy in her name it would alter the balance of the universe in ways I don’t think any of us would care to explore. But rest assured Caim will be exiled to a place far removed from the mortal realm.”
“So that’s it? After all that monster has done, he gets to live?” She paced in front of the window. “Damn it to hell, you saw what he did in that mission. What he did to those people—to Christine and Father McIntyre. How many more does he have to kill before you do more than exile him?”
“That isn’t my decision to make. My job is to stop Caim from interfering in your realm. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
Aramael angled his body away from her, every line shouting tension. Misery. “There are complications.”
From the kitchen came the sound of a teakettle’s whistle building to a scream. It ended abruptly as someone lifted it from the stove. Seth, probably. Seth, whose words rang again in Alex’s memory: You are the problem, Alexandra Jarvis. Not the solution.
Her. Aramael meant her. She was the complication. Because of the Naphil thing Caim had called her? No. If Aramael had been sent to protect her, he would have known about that beforehand.
Aramael’s gaze grazed hers and sudden comprehension snaked through her belly, became more. Became aware. Became connected. To an angel. Alex felt the blood drain from her face and then surge back again, hot and prickly and … complicated.
A hand touched her arm and she looked down at it, then back up at her sister. Borderline hysteria and a million questions stared at her, along with the steel-clad control that had seen Jen through so many crises in her life. So many crises in Alex’s life.
Jen straightened her shoulders. “I’m trying really, really hard not to panic right now, Alexandra. Whatever’s going on, I know this isn’t the time to explain it, but you’re scaring the hell out of me and I just need to know if Nina is going to be all right.”
Aramael shifted his stance, his suit rustling into Alex’s silence. A silence that marked, profoundly, her inability to answer her sister’s plea. The kitchen door swung open to Alex’s right and a fourth presence entered the room.
Alex slipped an arm around her sister’s waist and hugged her sibling fiercely. “I’ll do everything I can,” she promised into her sister’s hair. “Everything.”
Then Seth was there, tugging Jen from her arms and steering her toward the kitchen. Alex met his eyes, glittering and aloof, over her sister’s head.
“I’ll watch them both,” he told her. “You need to finish here.” He looked at Aramael. “Soon,” he added, and pushed through the swinging door.
THIRTY-ONE
The instant the door swung closed behind Seth and Jen, every nerve in Alex’s body fine-tuned itself to the man who remained across from her, separated only by the width of the table. No, not the man, she reminded herself, the angel. An angel who, no matter how attuned you are to him, to his scent, to his very existence, will remain an angel. So whatever you’re thinking, don’t.
“Alex.�
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Aramael said her name in a deep, rich tone that made her want to crawl out of her own skin because the sensations it triggered were almost too much to bear. A tone that demanded she look at him. She felt the energy surge between them and her heart slowed into long, heavy beats, sending heated blood to parts of her she didn’t think she had ever known. Aramael stalked toward her, his eyes fastened on hers with an inhuman intensity.
He stopped, mere inches away, and cleared his throat. His voice remained husky. “You and I—we can never be.”
Alex tried to ignore his nearness. His heat. She didn’t pretend not to understand. “Then why are we?”
“A mistake.”
Alex shook her head. No. Something this big, this true, could never be a mistake. “I don’t believe that.”
Naked pain flared in eyes that had turned the color of long-cold ashes. “I’m an angel, damn it. You shouldn’t even know me.”
“But I do.”
Long seconds ticked by. A muscle flexed in his jaw. “I can’t feel this way about you,” he muttered at last. Embers glowed among the ashes now. “I can’t,” he snarled. “Don’t you understand? You have become the most important thing in my existence, and I am crippled by your very presence. Caim remains free because I cannot track him, cannot feel him. Because all I can feel is you.”
Aramael raked both his hands through his hair, making a visible effort to restrain himself. “I am a Power, Alex. A hunter. It’s not just who I am, it’s what I am. There is no room in my existence for anything else.”
Anger hit, hot and sudden and tangled in Alex’s belly. “Then why the hell put me through this? Why tell me about you, about everything, when you knew you couldn’t—when you knew I felt—” She struggled for words. Struggled not to strike out at him in her fury. Her loss. “Why?” she asked simply.
Frustration rolled off Aramael in waves, pushing her away. Then her angel reached out to her and brushed back the hair from her face with a gentleness that laid bare her soul.
“Because as much as I cannot feel this way, Alexandra Jarvis,” he whispered, “neither can I stop myself from doing so.”
Time, and Alex’s heart, stood still. For what seemed an eternity, she felt nothing but Aramael’s hand against her cheek. His truth. And then, with a ferocity that stole her capacity to breathe, elation exploded through her entire being and the universe narrowed until it encompassed just the two of them. Until she herself became nothing more than the heat of his body, the whisper of his breath against her face, the longing that flooded her veins.
Need ached in her every fiber.
Agony stared back at her from Aramael’s eyes.
“Do you see?” His voice was hoarse. “This is what I cannot have. Not while Caim remains free. If I let myself give in to this, if I lose myself in you—”
He didn’t finish. Didn’t need to. Alex tried to shut out the specters raised by his words, but a memory of the mission murder scene rose in her mind, more effective than a deluge of ice water.
All those bodies. Christine. Father McIntyre.
The heat in her veins subsided.
The killer still roaming the city. A demon loose among mortals.
Her heart slowed.
Nina.
She clenched her fists and buried the last of her need in a quiet, private place within her. Aramael was right. His priority—their priority—had to be stopping Caim. She stepped away from his touch, ignoring the way it followed her until she moved beyond his reach, clinging to his words: Not while Caim remains free. Words that left open the faintest possibility of after.
After Caim was captured.
After this nightmare had ended.
She drew herself up to speak, but the sound of shattering glass crashed between them. Jen’s scream followed.
“Nina—no!”
Even before Alex shoved past Aramael into the living room, she knew what she’d find, knew the emptiness she’d seen in Nina wasn’t the only thing that had paralleled Martin James. But expectation did nothing to dim the reality of a jagged hole gaping in the living room window, punctuated at its edges by great slivers of razor-sharp glass. Did nothing to lessen the horror of seeing Nina, her bloodied hands hanging at her sides, slowly crumple to the floor, a shard of glass protruding from her belly.
The contents of Alex’s stomach rose into her throat and her hands started to shake. Dear God, no.
“She’s still alive,” Aramael said in her ear. “But she needs help.”
As if to confirm his words, Nina raised her head and looked toward Alex, her eyes calm but puzzled. “Auntie Alex?” she whispered.
Alex started forward again. Nina wasn’t just alive; she was cognizant, too. She looked to a struggling Jen, held back by Seth from running to her daughter’s side and worsening Nina’s injuries. Or injuring herself.
Skirting the fragments of glass that had flown into the room instead of exploding outward with the lamp and remainder of the window, Alex snapped over her shoulder, “Call nine-one-one. Tell them we’ll need the paramedics and the fire department. Then find a blanket—something warm but not too heavy.”
Jen struggled against Seth and Alex didn’t think she’d obey—wasn’t even sure she’d heard. But her sister nodded. “Nine-one-one,” she whispered. “And a blanket.”
“Good girl,” Alex said. “Go.”
She turned to her niece. Felt her stomach clench at the sight of the blood-slicked shard protruding from Nina’s stomach. Trying to recall her first-aid training, Alex crouched and brushed back the hair from the girl’s face. “Ssh,” she whispered as Nina tried to sit. “Stay still, sweetie. Help is coming.”
Nina went quiet and Alex swallowed as she looked into blue eyes once more emptied of all expression. Not again. She grappled briefly with despair and then pulled her thoughts to heel as she assessed the damage to Nina, calculating that at least three inches of glass protruded from her niece’s belly. She had no idea how many more inches were buried inside her. Hopelessness threatened.
A hand closed over her shoulder and she looked up at Aramael. “You can’t—?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t have that power.”
“What about Seth?”
Silence.
Hope sputtered out. “I see. No interference, right?”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
No interference, not even to save a life. That just fucking figured. She stroked Nina’s dark hair, fear mingling with fury and the bile of betrayal. She remembered the day she’d knelt in the pool of blood at her father’s side and prayed for his life. There had been no angels with her that day and so, she supposed, no possibility she might be heard. But for God to allow two angels to stand by Alex now and forbid them to intervene while they watched life drain from Nina?
Benevolent being, my ass, you coldhearted bitch.
A blanket appeared in her peripheral vision, trembling violently. She reached to take it from her sister’s hand, standing as she did so. She gave Jen a quick hug and then pulled back to look into the tear-streaked face. “Sit with her,” she directed. “Keep her calm and don’t let her move too much.”
“Shouldn’t we take out the glass? Do something?”
“The glass may be slowing the bleeding. If we move it and there’s an artery involved—” Alex stopped as Jen swayed on her feet. Too much information. “Let’s let the paramedics have a look first,” she finished.
A siren wailed its approach. Jennifer nodded and folded herself up to sit beside her daughter, taking over where Alex had left off. Alex spread the blanket over her niece, hoping it would stave off some of the shock. Outside the gaping window, she saw a fire truck lurch to a halt beside the little crowd of neighbors gathered on the sidewalk.
Help had arrived. Thank God.
No. Thank humanity. Because apparently God, or the One, or whatever the hell Aramael wanted to call her, didn’t want to get involved.
THE ONE STOOD for a long time after Verc
hiel’s words had faded into silence, unmoving, giving no indication she had heard any of it. No indication she cared. Verchiel bit her bottom lip to keep from demanding a response. Twisting her hands into the folds of her robe, she waited.
“You’re certain,” the One said at last. She turned from her surveillance of the gardens and forests spread below the balcony. For the second time since coming into her presence, Verchiel had to suppress a start of shock at the Creator’s appearance, at the weariness in the faded silver eyes. When had the One become so old, so worn? Had the decline been so gradual that none of them had noticed, or had they just not wanted to see it?
Not dared to see it?
“No,” said Verchiel with the honesty that was—or should have been—innate to all angels. “I have no proof yet, only suspicion.”
“Suspicion strong enough to bring to me.”
“Yes.”
“And to involve the Appointed in your concerns.” Verchiel swallowed. “You know about that?”
Sorrow shafted through silver eyes. “Have I been so very remiss that none of you think I pay attention anymore?” The One shook her head. “Yes, Verchiel, I know you asked Seth for his help. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice the absence of the Appointed?”
Without waiting for an answer—one Verchiel wasn’t sure she would want to give in the first place—the Creator paced the length of the balcony railing and back. She made three such trips before pausing to regard Verchiel again. “Have you told anyone else?”
“Just the Power. I thought it best he be aware.”
The One made another trek along the railing, stopping this time at the far end.
Verchiel waited for as long as patience held out and then cleared her throat softly. “Do you know what you’re going to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? But—”
“You’ve said yourself that you have no proof, Verchiel. There’s a chance you may be wrong. Until I have evidence to the contrary, I must honor Mittron’s potential as I do that of any other of my creations. And if you’re right, then choices have already been made that I cannot change.”
Sins of the Angels Page 24
