Mittron waved an impatient hand. “Don’t be ridiculous. Every mortal has a Guardian.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Fine. Then every mortal has the opportunity to have a Guardian. If this one has rejected his, that’s his choice. He is of no concern to us.”
“That’s what I thought at first, but I thought it prudent to make certain and—well, she is of concern. Great concern.”
The Highest Seraph frowned. He tilted back in the chair, and a shadow fell across his face, darkening the gold of his gaze to amber. “She is Nephilim.”
“She is descended from their line, yes.”
“That does complicate matters.”
“Yes.”
“What do you suggest we do?”
Verchiel shook her head, no closer to a solution now than she had been when she’d first heard the news herself. Uninvited, she crossed the study and settled into one of the enormous wing chairs opposite him.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“How far back are her roots?”
“We’re not sure. We’re attempting to trace her, but it will take time. Even if the lineage is faint, however—”
Mittron nodded even as Verchiel let her words die away. “There may still be a risk,” he agreed.
“Yes.”
Mittron levered himself out of his chair and paced to the window overlooking the gardens. His hands, linked behind his back, kept up a rhythmic tapping against his crimson robe. Out in the corridor, the murmur of voices approached, another door opened and closed, and the voices disappeared.
“What about assigning a Guardian to her?” he asked, his voice thoughtful.
Verchiel shook her head. She’d already considered and dismissed the possibility. “Even if we could get one to agree to watch over a Naphil, no Guardian would stand a chance against a Fallen Angel, especially not one as determined as Caim.”
Mittron looked over his shoulder at her. “Not that kind of Guardian.”
“What other kind of Guardian is there?”
“A Power.”
“A Power? One of my Powers? With all due respect, Mittron, there is no way a hunter would agree to act—”
“Not just any Power,” Mittron interrupted. “Aramael.”
Verchiel couldn’t help it. She snorted. “You can’t be serious.”
Mittron turned from the window, his eyes like chips of yellow ice, and Verchiel’s insides shriveled. She paused to formulate her objection with as much care as she could. She needed to be clear about the impossibility of Mittron’s suggestion. She had allowed him to sway her once before where Aramael and Caim were concerned, and could not do so again. And not just for Aramael’s sake.
“Hunting Caim very nearly destroyed him the first time,” she said. “We cannot ask him again.”
“He is a Power, Verchiel. The hunt is his purpose. He’ll recover.”
“There must be some other way.”
“Name one angel in all of Heaven who would risk a confrontation with a Fallen One to protect a Naphil, no matter how faint the lineage.”
Verchiel fell silent. The Highest knew she could name no such an angel, because none existed. Not one of Heaven’s ranks had any love for the Nephilim, and Verchiel doubted she could find one who might feel even a stirring of pity for the race. The One herself had turned her back on the bloodline, a constant reminder of Lucifer’s downfall, denying them the guidance of the Guardians who watched over other mortals. She’d left them to survive—or in most cases, not—on their own.
But this...this was different, and both Verchiel and the Highest knew it. Where this particular Naphil was concerned, surviving Caim was essential. For all their sakes. Verchiel felt herself waver. She rested her elbow on the chair’s arm, fingertips pressed to her lips. Tried, and failed, to think of an alternative.
“It will consume him,” she said at last.
“Caim already consumes him, which is why we will ask him. The moment you mention Caim’s name, Aramael will do anything necessary to complete the hunt, even if it means protecting one of the Nephilim.” Mittron left the window and returned to his desk. Apparently having decided the matter was closed, he lowered himself into the chair and picked up his pen. “See to it. And keep me informed.”
Despite the obvious dismissal, Verchiel hesitated. The Highest’s logic made a certain kind of sense, but sending Aramael after Caim for a second time felt wrong. Very wrong. He was already the most volatile of all the Powers, barely acquiescing to any standard of control at the best of times. How much worse would he be after this?
The Highest Seraph lifted his head and looked at her. “You have a problem, Dominion?”
She did, but could think of no way to voice her elusive misgivings. At least, none that Mittron would take seriously. She rose from her chair.
“No, Highest. No problem.”
Mittron’s voice stopped her again at the door. “Verchiel.”
She looked back.
“We will keep this matter between us.” He put pen to paper and began to write. “There is no need to alarm the others.”
***
Mittron laid aside his pen as the door snapped shut behind the Dominion. Leaning back, he rested his head against the chair, closed his eyes, and willed the tension from his shoulders. He was becoming so very tired of Verchiel’s resistance. Every other angel under his authority obeyed without question, without comment. But not Verchiel. Never Verchiel.
Perhaps it was because of their former soulmate status, when, out of respect, he had treated her more as an equal. A mistake he’d realized too late and had paid for ever since. The Cleanse had been intended to provide a clean slate between them, between all the angels, but it hadn’t been as effective in every respect. Not as he would have liked.
Not for the first time, he considered placing the Dominion elsewhere, where they wouldn’t be in such constant contact with one another. Also not for the first time, he discarded the idea. She was too valuable as a handler of the Powers, particularly where Aramael was concerned, and particularly now.
Mittron sighed, straightened, and reached again for his pen.
No, he’d keep her in place for the moment. As long as she followed orders, however grudgingly, it would be best that way. If she didn’t—well, former soulmate or not, he was able to discipline an uncooperative angel. More than able.
Chapter Two
Alex studied the minutiae of the scene in great detail. The lay of the alley, the distance between the body and the walls on either side, the pebbles and puddles and sodden bits of garbage strewn in all directions. At last, when she’d examined everything Forensics had already tagged, she admitted to herself that she avoided the inevitable. The admission wasn’t easy. In six years of homicide detail, she’d seen just about everything there was to see, and had witnessed far worse than what they dealt with now. But this one...this one unnerved her. As had the three before it.
Her mouth twisted as she glared balefully at the tarp-covered corpse from a few feet away. She knew why slashings bothered her, of course. She didn’t need a shrink to tell her what she’d seen twenty-three years ago had left its mark. But she’d made a point of dealing with that. Made herself learn how to shut off the memories and disregard the initial horror that threatened to swamp her whenever she viewed such a victim. She’d had no choice—not if she wanted to stay in this career. And she did.
But this case, where they’d already had so many victims so close together, and there was no sign that the killer would let up...
Alex put the brakes on her thoughts and reached into her pocket for a pair of latex gloves. No. She could do this. It was just another victim. Nothing more. She stepped across a puddle to the tarp. Taking a deep breath, she pulled on the gloves. Latex snapped into place around each wrist. She exhaled. Braced herself. Crouched beside the tarp. Every time she had a case like this, the memories threatened. Most of the time, she could hold them back. She lifted a corner of the plastic sheeting.
Unbidden images slammed into her brain, vivid, horrifying, resisting all attempts to push them away. She squeezed her eyes closed to shut out the corpse at her feet. The images continued. A kitchen floor, slick with blood. A knife. A body. One like this, with its skin laid open and—Alex took a shuddering breath and gritted her teeth. With a monumental effort, she summoned her mental door—huge, thick, impenetrable—and made her mind force it shut again on the unwanted images. The memories. The past.
Seconds crept by. Slowly, the nausea receded. At last, her grasp on her stomach’s contents still precarious at best, Alex opened her eyes again, careful to focus beyond the victim. She wiped her sleeve across her forehead, removing moisture that couldn’t all be blamed on the alley’s stifling air. Footsteps approached from behind and mud-spattered black shoes entered her peripheral vision. They stopped at the edge of a murky red puddle.
Alex looked up to find fellow detective Raymond Joly standing beside her. “Christ,” she said softly, “Do you ever get used to seeing this, do you think?”
“Some say they do.” Joly shrugged, his face hidden in shadow as he viewed the remains. “I think they’re kidding themselves.”
Alex tasted a faint metallic tang and realized she’d bitten her lip hard enough to draw blood. She wiped away the droplet. Then, aware of Joly’s presence at her side, she made herself to do her job and lift the tarp clear of the lifeless, wrecked young woman on the pavement. A single, bloody gash ran from ear to ear across the throat, and other slices across the torso—in groups of four, equidistant from one another—had gone through clothing, skin, and muscle alike, exposing pale bone and now-bloodless organs.
Roberts had been right. This was no ordinary murder—if murder could ever be ordinary. And it was exactly like the three before it. Alex chewed at the inside of her cheek as she studied the young woman’s waxen features and the way she had been posed on the pavement, arms outstretched perpendicular to the body, legs together, feet crossed at the ankles.
Simple death did not satisfy whoever had done this, whoever had done the same to the others. There was more here than mere disregard for human life, more than a desire to kill. This was...Alex paused in her thoughts, searching for the right word. Obscene. Depraved. Another word whispered through her mind, and she shuddered.
Evil. It was evil.
She dropped the tarp and pushed to her feet. Then, to cover her discomposure, she flipped open her notebook and put pen to paper.
Joly plucked the pen from her. “Go home.”
“Excuse me?” Alex looked up in surprise.
Six inches shorter than she was, but with an enormous handlebar mustache that somehow made up for his lack of stature, Joly waved his cell phone under her nose. “Roberts called and said that if you were still here, I was to kick your ass for him.” He stuck the cell phone back into its holster on his belt. “He also said to tell you this is a limited-time offer. The task force meets at eleven.”
Alex glanced at her watch. That gave her six hours including travel time, first to home and then to the office. Given the fact she lived a good forty minutes from work—without traffic—the allotment wasn’t nearly as generous as it first seemed. “Lucky me,” she muttered.
“Take it,” Joly advised, handing back her pen. “If this lunatic keeps up this pace, none of us will be going home again for a while.”
Recognizing the truth of his words, and cringing at the thought of the catnaps she faced on the lumpy sofa in the office break room, Alex slid the pen into her pocket and closed the notebook cover. “Do we have enough people for the canvass?”
“We’ll manage. We’re not exactly tripping over witnesses around here at this hour.” With the unspoken respect they all gave the dead, Joly stepped around the tarp-covered body and strolled away to join his partner, tossing a last disheartening comment over his shoulder. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, Jarvis, but you won’t miss a thing. This is one I’ll guarantee we won’t solve today.”
***
“No.” Aramael didn’t turn around to deliver his refusal. Didn’t care that nothing had been asked yet. He’d sensed the approach long before a presence filled his doorway, and knew it was Verchiel who stood there. Just as he knew why she had come. They needed him for another hunt, but he wouldn’t do it. Not so soon after the last.
“Warmest greetings to you, too,” Verchiel said dryly. “May I come in?”
Aramael selected a slim volume from the shelf in front of him. Poetry? The flowery verses might be just what he needed to soothe his battered soul. Or they might drive him over the edge into outright rebellion. Kill or cure, so to speak—and perhaps not the best choice in his current frame of mind. He slid the book back into place. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Verchiel join him, her pale silver hair glowing against the rich purple of her gown. He continued to ignore her.
“This is rude even for you,” she commented at last, mild reproof in her voice.
Aramael reminded himself that she was only the messenger, and that snarling at her would serve no purpose other than to alienate one of the few angels with whom he shared any kind of civility. Gritting his teeth, he looked down and sideways at her. “You’re right. I am being rude. But I’m still not doing it.”
“You don’t even know why I’m here.”
“There is only one reason a Dominion visits a Power, Verchiel. Why any of the others would visit us, either, if they bothered at all.” Aramael ran his finger down the title on the spine of a massive volume, paused, and moved on. Too heavy—in the literary, as well as the literal, sense. “So, yes, I do know why you’re here.”
Verchiel fell silent for a moment, then admitted, “I’d never thought of it quite like that. I suppose it is rather obvious.”
“Rather.”
“You’re right, of course.”
“Of course. And I’ve told you, I’m not doing it. I’ve only just come back from the last hunt. Find someone else.”
“There is no one else.”
Aramael met the other angel’s serene, pale blue gaze for a moment before he turned away. “Ezrael is in the garden. Send him.”
“There’s more to it this time. Mittron wants you to go.”
Aramael caught back an unangelic curse and pulled a book from the shelf. “I’m tired, Verchiel. Do you understand? I’m tired, and I’m empty, and I’ve just finished four consecutive hunts. I’m not doing it. Send Ezrael.”
“There’s a woman—”
“A what?” He pushed the book back into place without glancing at its title and eyed her narrowly. “What does a mortal have to do with this?”
“She—well, she—” Verchiel floundered, avoiding his eyes. Her hands fluttered in a way that reminded him of a trapped bird. Any hint of serenity had vanished. “She’s important to us,” she finished.
“And?”
“We think the Fallen One might attack her.”
He wasn’t sure if he found it more unsettling or annoying that she seemed to have lost her capacity to give him a straight answer. “And?”
“We’d like you to watch over her.”
That was straight enough. But incomprehensible nonetheless. He stared at her.
“You want me to what?”
“To look out for her. Make sure that the Fallen One doesn’t reach her—”
“I’m not a Guardian.”
“I know.” Verchiel’s hands fluttered faster. “We know. And we don’t expect you to protect her in any other way, just to keep...” Her voice trailed off.
“I am not a Guardian,” he repeated. He turned his back on her and glared at the row of books, but their titles had become a meaningless jumble of letters.
“We know that.”
“Then you shouldn’t be asking.”
Verchiel muttered something that sounded like “I know that, too,” but when Aramael glanced over his shoulder, she had closed her eyes and begun massaging her temple. He regarded h
er, toying with the idea of asking her to repeat herself. He decided to let it go because whatever she may or may not have said had no bearing on a conversation he preferred not to be having in the first place. A conversation he now considered finished. He turned his attention to the bookshelf once more.
She didn’t leave.
Long seconds crawled by.
Aramael’s impatience surged and he rounded on the Dominion. “I don’t know why this woman is so important to you, and I won’t even pretend to care. But I do know that I will not be sent on another hunt right now. Especially one where I have to act—without explanation, I might add—as a Guardian! Now, if you don’t mind—”
“She’s Nephilim.”
Aramael almost choked on the rest of his outburst as it backed up in his throat. He stared at the Dominion. “She’s what?”
“Nephilim. The bloodline is very faint at this point, of course, but—”
He held up a hand, cutting off her words, and narrowed his eyes. “You want me to act as Guardian to a Grigori descendant.”
The Dominion’s hands retreated back into the folds of her robe. She nodded.
Aramael turned and paced the room’s perimeter. His mind raced. Nephilim. The very name tasted bitter on his tongue, as it would on the tongues of all those who remained loyal to the One. He spun around at the door and retraced his steps, then paused at the window, bracing a hand on either side of the frame. He staring through the glass without seeing.
Nephilim. Seed of the original Fallen Angels, the Grigori, who were cast from Heaven for interference with the mortals they were to watch over. Who remained a reminder of all that had been lost in the ensuing exodus from Heaven, and of the enduring, irreconcilable split that remained between angelkind.
And now Mittron wanted one of those reminders protected from one of the Fallen? An ugly suspicion crawled up Aramael’s spine. His belly clenched. His fists followed suit. He knew of only one former angel who might target a Naphil and raise the concern of Heaven’s administrator, the highest of the Seraphim.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” he asked.
He willed Verchiel to confirm his guess without speaking the name. If she didn’t say it, if he wasn’t named, maybe Aramael might still escape. Deny the hunt. Retain his soul.
Sins of the Angels: A Supernatural Thriller (Grigori Legacy Book 1) Page 2