“Or what that damned Seraph is hoping we’ll do,” Seth muttered darkly.
The possibility had crossed Aramael’s mind as well, but at this point, he saw no choice. Not when Verchiel had disappeared from their situation and the One herself seemed to be paying no attention.
“Fine.” Seth heaved a sigh. “I’ll do it, but only to the point where she’s safe to move. And this one you get to claim responsibility for, Power.”
ENOUGH.
The word filled the One, weighing her down with its intent. Its truth.
The door clicked shut behind the Dominion Verchiel and the One let the stiffness slide from her spine. She leaned her forehead against the cool wood of the bookcase by which she stood. Enough, she thought again.
Enough struggling to maintain an impossible balance. Enough tiptoeing about in the world of her own creation as if everything might crumble if she so much as breathed the wrong way. Enough of this infernal dance between her and the one who had once sat at her side.
More than enough, if her own angels had begun to turn against her. Betrayal sat bitter on her tongue, alongside disgust at her own blindness. She could see it so clearly now, how Mittron had angled for this for four thousand years, how he had taken advantage of her distraction.
Or had she just let him do so?
She closed her eyes against the second, even less palatable truth. The truth that said she had been blind only to what she had not wanted to see. Known that Mittron attempted to catapult Heaven and Hell into the final war. Known, and failed to heed. Chose even now to ignore what was so obvious. But why? Why would she have not wanted to see one of her own trying to cause what she herself had worked so hard to prevent?
A third truth whispered through her, underpinning the first two and twisting her very core of being into a knot of denial. The One tried to push away the thought, to bury it again, but it pushed back, demanding acknowledgement, refusing to retreat.
Waiting patiently.
Implacably.
Until the One raised her head and opened her eyes and faced it without flinching. Until she recognized it, accepted it, and gave it the voice she had withheld for so many millennia.
“Because I am tired,” she whispered, and felt a single tear slide down her cheek.
THIRTY-THREE
Alex dabbed the water from her face with a tea towel and struggled to steady her heartbeat. Her every fiber tuned in to the presence behind her, to the gray eyes following her every move. She kept her gaze fixed on the sink, refusing to allow it to rise to the darkened window and the reflection she knew she would find there.
With Seth using that strange influence of his to run interference with the nurses, they’d managed to get Nina out of the hospital and home to Alex’s living room. She was settled on the couch now, with Jen beside her and Seth standing watch over both of them, leaving only Alex and Aramael in the kitchen.
Alex, Aramael, and the conversation they’d begun at Jen’s.
A conversation that loomed between them, demanding closure.
Alex crushed the tea towel in her hand and stared into the bottom of the sink. She didn’t need to see Aramael to know how he would look, leaning against the kitchen doorpost with his arms crossed over his chest, jacket and tie discarded, snowy shirt open at the neck. Wings folded behind him.
She closed her eyes and tried to ignore her bounding pulse, to listen for sounds from the living room where she had left Jen and Seth with a physically healed but still mentally absent Nina. Measured footsteps crossed the kitchen floor.
Alex gripped the edge of the sink so hard that little needles of pain shot through the injury she had almost forgotten. The footsteps stopped. So did her breathing.
“Are you all right?” Aramael asked.
Hysteria burbled up in her throat. She couldn’t have spoken past it if she’d wanted to. Sparks lit the backs of her eyelids. Behind her, she felt the heat of his body, inches from her own.
“I’m sorry you were pulled into all this. It should never have happened this way.”
Alex swallowed. “You want to know something funny?”
“What?”
“My whole life I’ve worried I’d inherit my mother’s schizophrenia. Now I realize it would have been easier if I had, because insanity would make one hell of a lot more sense than any of this does.”
He exhaled a long, slow breath that stirred her hair, and only sheer determination kept her upright. Kept her from leaning back into an angel’s embrace. She opened her eyes and stared at their shared reflection. At the raw pain reflected in the lines around Aramael’s mouth and the gaze that met hers.
Outside, thunder rumbled ominously. Restlessness joined the shadows in Aramael’s eyes. “I have to go,” he said.
Alex folded her arms over her belly. “He’s going to come after us, isn’t he? Even with Seth here.”
A tattered flash of lightning lit the night.
“Perhaps. We don’t know for sure.”
Thunder rolled past again. Alex thought about all the storms that had coincided with the bodies and wondered if she’d been right about a connection. She decided it didn’t matter. Not anymore. “Can Seth really stop him?”
“He can slow him down until I get here.”
“And you’re sure you’ll feel him? If he does come here, I mean?”
Gray eyes met hers again, savage with promise. “Even if I don’t feel him, I will feel you. I will always feel you.”
But will you feel me in time?
She bit down on her lip, holding back the question, knowing he could give no guarantees. Knowing they had no choice but to take the risk. She and Jen and Nina might become sitting ducks without him here, but Caim wouldn’t stop killing until Aramael went after him. Three lives weighed against countless others. No guarantees. No choice.
In the window, Alex watched Aramael turn and walk away. He made it to the middle of the kitchen before she stopped him.
“Aramael.” His name felt foreign on her tongue, and she realized with a jolt that it was the first time she had spoken it aloud. “What about after?” she asked, giving voice to the question that had plagued her since their conversation in Jen’s dining room.
“After?”
She stared at the wings framing his broad back, mouth parchment dry. She should stop, she thought. Before she got in any deeper. Before either of them did. She should just let it go.
But she couldn’t.
She turned from the counter. “After you catch Caim,” she whispered.
Had any being ever moved more slowly? By the time he faced her, she had lived a thousand lives, died a thousand deaths. And loved him a thousand times over.
“I don’t know.” His mouth twisted. “No, that’s not true. I do know, but I don’t want to think about it.”
It was the answer she had expected, of course, but it still sliced into her heart and left her bleeding inside, quietly, invisibly, mortally. “Damn it,” she whispered. “This is so not right.”
Aramael’s wings flexed, but he said nothing. Alex felt the few feet separating them grow to a chasm and sudden anguish gripped her. She couldn’t let him leave like this. Not with that distance between them; not when she might never have another chance to breach that gap.
“I need to tell you something before you go,” she said. She gripped the counter behind her and dredged up the last bit of strength she possessed. Sucked in a scant lungful of air. “I—”
She got no further. Aramael suddenly stood in front of her, a single finger pressed against her lips. “Don’t,” he said. “Please.” He rested his forehead against hers. “If you say it, I don’t think I’ll be able to leave.”
Then stay, her heart whispered.
As if he’d heard, Aramael’s hand moved, feathering across her jaw to her throat, tightening around the back of her neck. Alex breathed in his scent and felt his heat envelop her; felt yearning stir in her belly. She waited, not daring to move. Aramael’s harsh exhale exploded again
st her lips.
“By all that is holy, Alex, I cannot—” He stopped and raised his head to stare down at her, and primal need burned in his eyes. “Bloody Hell,” he grated.
Then he crushed her against the counter, his powerful length pressed against her every inch. His lips found hers, fierce with hunger. The ache in her belly turned molten and, in a single beat of his heart against hers, ignited into wildfire that spread to her every fiber. Need became a demand for more. A demand for everything.
Her hands twisted into his hair with the desperation of all the times she had held herself back from reaching out to him. The desperation of knowing that, no matter how much she might hope, there would be no after. Her mouth opened to his, felt his tongue slide against hers, tangle with it, possess it. His hands slid from her shoulders, spanned her rib cage, splayed against her lower back, fitted her to him so closely that, for a moment, they might have been one. One body, one mind, one soul—angel and mortal, destined to mate for eternity.
Alex’s whole being sang with completion.
And then he was gone.
She stumbled at the loss, caught herself before she fell, sagged against the counter. Little by little, the heat in her veins cooled, changed to ice crystals that settled in her core beside the agony that had become her new companion. She sank to the floor, her back against the cupboards, forehead resting on bent knees. On the wall, the clock ticked with cold impartiality, counting the passing seconds, and then the minutes.
OUTSIDE THE WINDOW, Caim scowled as his brother embraced the Naphil. Bitterness filled his mouth and trickled down to his gut. So. He’d been right about everything. About Aramael, the woman, their relationship, and all the possibilities that relationship held for him. He had everything he needed to make his revenge complete. So why the hell did he feel this weariness instead of elation?
He watched the two figures merge and remembered how it had felt to be a part of that passion, that completion. What it had felt like to lose it, to have it torn from him. He reminded himself it had been Aramael who had testified against him, Aramael who had ultimately denied him his return and made certain he would live with the memory of his loss for all eternity.
But still doubt tasted flat on his tongue. He risked so much, killing the Naphil in the presence of his brother. He would have a far greater chance of success if he took her while Aramael was gone. Distracted. Did he really need to take this to the next level? Could he not be satisfied just knowing the pain he would inflict on his brother, his hunter?
He watched Aramael pull back from the woman, saw him disappear from the kitchen, felt the price he paid to do so. Vicious satisfaction permeated Caim. Gave him his answer. Folding his wings against his back, he withdrew into the shadows.
Did he want Aramael to suffer as he had? Yes.
Did he want to bear witness to that suffering? A hundred thousand times, yes.
ALEX STOOD IN the doorway, surveying the occupants in the living room. Her niece, asleep under a blanket on the couch; Jen curled up likewise in a chair nearby; Seth, arms folded and face brooding, standing guard at the window.
He looked around at her entrance, his face enigmatic. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “He—Aramael is gone.”
“I know. I felt him go.” His jaw tightened. “I suspect the whole damned universe felt it.”
Alex frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The two of you—” Seth paused. “Suffice it to say you generate considerable energy together.”
Heat scorched her cheeks. Did he know—had he felt—? Shit. She went across to Nina and straightened the already smooth blanket over her niece’s shoulders. “How is she?”
“Physically she’s fine. She’ll still need recovery time, but there will be no complications.”
“Thank you for that. I know you weren’t suppose to, but thank you.”
Again the muscle in Seth’s jaw moved. “I don’t know that I did you any favors. Or her. She may not recover from seeing Caim the way she did, and if she does, she’ll never be the same.”
“But she won’t try to kill herself again.”
“No. I was able to do that much for her. The rest will be up to her.”
“Then I mean it. Thank you.”
A faint smile curved his lips. “You’re welcome.”
Alex left Nina and Jen and joined him at the window, leaning a shoulder against the opposite frame. She stared out at the dark lawn. “Can I ask you a question?”
“You can ask, but I reserve the right not to answer.”
“Caim called me Naphil. What is that?”
“Aramael didn’t tell you?”
“We had a lot to cover, what with the whole existence of angels and demons and all,” she said dryly. “We didn’t quite manage to get to this.”
“I see.”
She sensed his hesitation. “If I am what he said, I think I should know.”
“And I think you should be careful what you ask for.” Seth replied. “But in this case, you may be right.” He rested his shoulder against the wall. “The One assigned a choir of angels, the Grigori, to watch over the mortals during their evolution. Unfortunately, with Lucifer’s encouragement, they did more than just watch. Much more. They shared knowledge humans weren’t ready for, mentally or morally. Knowledge that led to wars, poverty, every decay human history holds. And they mated with humans; begetting offspring called Nephilim—half angel, half human.”
“Half—” The enormity of the idea choked off her words. Seth continued as if she’d said nothing. “The One would have nothing to do with them and, without Guardians, most didn’t survive the first generation. The few who did, however, went on to procreate and their descendants walk this realm even today. Caim believes that one of their souls, with its divine roots, might pass through Heaven—however briefly—upon the death of its vessel, and that he might be able to accompany it there. To return.”
Alex would have liked to swear, but no words seemed strong enough. She grappled with her new awareness of herself, decided she wasn’t quite ready to go there just yet, and settled for another question. “Would it work?”
“We don’t know for certain, but it’s possible.”
“Are there others who want to return?”
“Yes.”
“So if he succeeds, others might try the same thing.”
“Yes.”
“Shit,” she said. All those victims. She left the window and crossed—stumbled—to the fireplace. Leaning both hands on the mantel, she stared into the previous winter’s cold ashes. She really should clean those out and call a chimney sweep before autumn set in again.
Steady, Jarvis. Don’t lose it now.
She turned back to Seth. “But if he knew about me, then why would he kill all those other people? Why not just come after me?”
“That’s one of the things I’ve been trying to figure out.” Seth turned his back to the window and sat against the ledge. “The best I can come up with is revenge. Caim changed his mind shortly after following Lucifer and petitioned for forgiveness. The One rejected his plea when Aramael testified against him. I think he recognizes Aramael’s feelings for you and wants to see him suffer the same loss he did. The loss of a soulmate.”
Soulmate.
Only when the room swam before her did Alex realize she’d stopped breathing. She inhaled quickly. Coughed. Groped for the chair by the fireplace and sank into it. Stared at Seth.
He sighed. “Let me guess. You didn’t get that far, either.”
She shook her head. Silently marveled that one could go so numb that they couldn’t feel their own movement anymore. Couldn’t even feel their limbs. “I didn’t—I never—I didn’t know angels had soulmates.”
She hadn’t given much credence to the notion where humans were concerned, either, but that was another matter.
“They don’t. At least, not anymore. Lucifer’s fall wreaked havoc among those who remained loyal, especially when it came to battli
ng their loved ones. The One’s solution was to cleanse all recognition of soulmates from her angels.”
“Wasn’t that a little harsh?”
Seth regarded her without expression. “Feeling what you do for Aramael, would you be able to fight him? To destroy him?”
Alex’s brain wouldn’t even let her go there on speculation. “Point taken,” she said softly. “So none of you can love?”
Seth hesitated, and then turned to the window again. “Not the kind of love you’re speaking of, no.”
“Then what happened? How is Aramael different?”
“That, Alexandra Jarvis, would be the mystery.”
On the couch, Nina stirred and murmured. Alex watched her settle again, and then glanced at Jen, noting the lines of worry that creased her sister’s brow even in repose.
She turned back to Seth. “A minute ago you said something about Guardians—did you mean Guardian angels? They’re real, too?”
“For most people, yes. But not for you.” His looked toward the couch and chair. “Or for them.”
“This One of yours really takes her grudges seriously, doesn’t she?”
“A Guardian doesn’t guarantee a trouble-free existence. Nephilim descendants make their own choices, their own decisions, just as anyone else does. Free will comes at a price for all mortals.”
Nina moved again on the couch and Alex looked over to find the girl’s eyes open and staring in their direction. She shivered at the emptiness that occupied the blue depths. Free will might come at a price for all mortals, but what higher price for those like her niece and sister?
Or her?
WHERE THE BLOODY Hell was Caim?
Aramael turned left at a corner and picked up his pace. Nothing. He felt nothing. Because he hadn’t yet put enough distance between him and Alex? Or because his brother was lying low, biding his time? Perhaps watching Alex even now, as Aramael stalked the streets in search of him.
Disquiet crawled over his skin. It went against every fiber of his being to leave Alex’s side like this. To turn her into bait. Because no matter how he tried to convince himself otherwise, that was what he’d done. Because he knew—bloody Hell, they all knew—it was the only way to draw Caim out. He had to leave her, to get far enough away that Caim would go after her, and hope to Heaven he’d get there in time to stop his brother. But no matter how many times Aramael told himself she’d be safe with Seth, that the Appointed would be on high alert, no amount of reassurance made it easier to entrust her life—and his very soul—to the care of another.
Sins of the Angels Page 26
