He seized her arm and pulled her unceremoniously from the booth. Too astounded to object, Alex found herself towed out of the restaurant, across the sidewalk, and into the middle of the street. Trent stopped there, in the center of four lanes of city traffic traveling in two different directions, and tilted his head as though listening.
Or sensing.
Car horns blared around them and Alex started, tugging without success at Trent’s grasp on her arm. A part of her noted that, for once, his touch was just that. A touch. With no hallucinogenic effect whatsoever. Which made her theory about imagining the prior incidents all that much stronger—and her mental state that much more questionable. Shoving away the misgivings inherent in the thought, she pushed back a dripping lock of hair. It was raining, she realized. Hard.
“Damn it, Trent—”
“There.” He whirled to face down the street, oblivious to the rain and Alex’s attempts to free herself. “He’s there.”
Thunder cracked overhead. The rain came harder.
Trent advanced down the center line of the street, silent, watchful, towing her behind him toward the heart of Chinatown. Alex shivered with a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. He was serious, she thought. The man was serious—and seriously nuts.
They stopped across the street from an Asian grocery store, its front sidewalk cluttered with an array of produce on makeshift tables and stacked high with empty cardboard boxes. A narrow passageway stretched between the store and neighboring building, shadowed beneath the afternoon’s clouds.
Alex shot a look at Trent and found him focused on the passage. One hundred percent focused. She fought off another shiver. Nuts, she thought again. Right off his rocker. Maybe now Roberts will listen. A cab swerved around them, horn blaring.
But what if he was right?
Against all reason, her free hand settled on her gun.
“You’re sure he’s in there?” she whispered.
Trent looked down at her as if he’d forgotten her existence and was surprised to find her still there. Without replying, he pulled her through a break in the traffic and thrust her into the midst of the boxes in front of the grocery.
“Wait here,” he ordered.
“Are you kidding me?” Alex scrambled out of the sodden cardboard. “I’m not letting you go in there alone.” No matter how much I don’t like you. “I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
Trent’s growl was so fierce it startled her into a step back. Seeming to take this as submission, he nodded his satisfaction. “Good. Now, whatever happens, do not come in after me. Do you understand?”
“No, I do not—”
Trent took hold of her shoulders and shook her. “Do you understand?”
A frisson of real fear crawled across Alex’s shoulders. She wanted to deny him, to tell him to go straight to hell, but something in his face, in the urgency of his grip, held her back. Something she didn’t want to identify.
She looked at the passageway again and the fear solidified, settling in her gut. She didn’t understand. Didn’t think she wanted to. But she nodded anyway, and in an instant, Trent released her and disappeared down the passage. She stared after him, the heat of his touch lingering on her skin, unsure whether she should be more shocked at his behavior or hers.
A sudden tap sounded beside her and she spun to face the store window, gun in hand, thumb reaching for the safety. A wide-eyed storekeeper stared back at her through the rivulets running down the plate glass, raising his hands above his head along with the phone he held. Heart pounding, Alex lowered her weapon and flashed the badge clipped to the inside pocket of her blazer. The storekeeper backed away from the window, looking unconvinced, hands still in the air.
Alex drew together the tattered remnants of adrenaline-ravaged nerves and peered around the corner of the store, down the passageway. Nothing moved in the rain-blurred depths. The blood in her veins chilled. Nutcase or not, there was no way Trent should have gone in there alone. No way she should have let him.
So much for keeping him out of trouble.
“Fucking hell,” she muttered. She shifted her grip on her gun, clambered over the collapsed boxes, and stepped into the stale, sour gloom.
Chapter Nine
Aramael emerged from the passageway into a wider alley, perpendicular to the first. He paused to get his bearings. Close. So very close. But where? The sound of muffled scuffling reached him from far down the laneway. He turned and waited, and then he felt him. Caim, in a niche between two buildings, hidden from the world. Too caught up in his task to be aware of his hunter.
He started forward again, stalking his quarry with silent focus, oblivious to the rain, his surroundings, the mortal whose life slowly drained onto the dank earth at his brother’s feet. With each step, the rage unfurled a little more in his belly, hot and bitter, mixed with the betrayal he had carried for almost five thousand years, ever since his brother had chosen Lucifer’s path. He shrugged away the pain and stopped.
“Caim,” he said.
The creature his brother had become froze but didn’t turn. Instead, it stared down at what remained of the human life in its withered, clawed hands. Then it shook its head and let the corpse slump to the ground.
“It wasn’t the right one,” Caim murmured, his voice guttural, twisted by the same hatred and bitterness that had changed his physical form. Underlined by an infinite sadness.
Aramael spread his feet wider. Readied himself. “You know why I’m here.”
Caim nodded. “I wondered if they’d send you. It can’t be pleasant, hunting your own brother. Again.”
Fresh pain uncoiled in Aramael’s chest. He made himself detach from it, noting instead the blood that soaked the arm and shoulder of his brother’s otherwise pristine white shirt, a garment revoltingly out of place on the skin-clad skeleton who wore it. “If you’d stayed where you belonged, hunting you again wouldn’t be necessary.”
“Have you any idea what it is like in that prison?” Caim’s voice was clearer now as the bloodlust faded from his veins. He began shifting form again and turned to face Aramael, the front of his shirt and jeans dark with crimson, his face still half-foreign but becoming eerily familiar. His wings, faded and ragged with neglect, rustled behind him. “The emptiness—no sound, no touch, nothing but your own thoughts. Nothing. An eternity without so much as a whisper.” His eyes darkened to the color of obsidian. Became distant. Empty. “It is beyond endurance.”
Aramael suspected the truth in his brother’s words. He had dragged a hundred Fallen Angels into Limbo and the few seconds he’d spent there each time had seemed endless in their nonbeing. He couldn’t begin to imagine spending the rest of his existence there. That was why it had been so awful to abandon his twin to it the first time. Why he recoiled from doing so again.
“You cannot send me back,” Caim said. “I cannot survive there.”
Aramael pushed away the unwanted compassion that twisted in his heart. “Damn you, Caim,” he growled. “You knew the consequences if you followed him. You knew what would happen if you interfered with the mortals. You made a choice.”
“As did you,” Caim retorted bitterly. “I wanted to return. I begged her forgiveness. But you—you chose to betray me.”
Aramael’s nostrils flared. “I chose to speak the truth, to remain loyal to the One. Your soul was not pure. You knew it and I could feel it. I could not lie for you.”
“Then have mercy, Brother. You can choose differently this time—you can spare me.”
“I cannot.”
“You can.”
Suddenly Aramael understood what his brother asked. He recoiled from the idea—and from the question that whispered through him in response. Could he?
Caim dropped to his knees, bottomless misery staring through his eyes. “Kill me,” he whispered. “Please.”
“No.”
The single harsh word hung in the air between them, ripped from Aramael’s soul. An angel’s d
uty to the One. A brother’s denial. Aramael grappled for mastery over a seething mass of conflicting emotions. It was time to finish this. To return Caim to his prison and end the struggle between them. To end the struggle within his own breast.
He flexed his wings and readied the power in his core. Rain dripped from the roof of the building beside them and puddled on the ground, murky red near his brother’s feet. The universe stilled with expectation. Hope faded from Caim’s expression.
“Trent? Are you okay?”
Aramael heard Alex’s words behind him in the same instant he felt the shift in his brother’s focus, felt Caim zero in on the mortal presence that joined them. Felt him desire it. His reaction came blindly, from a place inside him he had never known. He whirled and grabbed Alex’s shoulders and pushed her back, extending his wings to hide her from Caim. He felt her startled, soft warmth beneath his hands, then his own primal response. For a fraction of a second, all thought of his purpose slid away.
Instantly, he realized his mistake. Knew before he put Alex from him and turned back to Caim that the space his brother had occupied would be empty. That he had let the impossible happen. The unpardonable.
Because of a Naphil.
***
Alex staggered under the assault on body and senses. Flashes of impressions burned into her brain: the merest glimpse of a hazy form through the pelting rain; massive wings aflame with golden fire; Trent’s fingers digging into her arms, their touch burning, going beyond the mere physical.
Her mother’s face.
But even as Alex swallowed the sudden bile of memories, Trent snarled something and released her. He turned away, his form still blocking her view. She didn’t ask him to repeat his words.
Instead, she stared at his smooth, suit-clad back. She rubbed her arms where they had gone cold in the absence of his touch, trying to remember how to breathe, to forget what she thought she’d seen. Trying to put the feel of his hands out of her mind.
She realized she still held her gun and fumbled it back into its holster. Then she saw the bloody rivulets of water trickling past her feet and traced them to their source. Her reason for following Trent into the alley crashed over her.
Fuck. He’d been right. There was another one.
Alex started toward the crumpled, shredded body by the wall, tugging the cell phone from her belt. Trent’s hand snagged her arm, held her tight. No heat this time. Only purpose.
“We have to go.”
Alex’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”
“We have to go. Now.”
“We’re cops, Trent. We don’t leave a crime scene.” She tugged at his grasp, but he didn’t let go. “What if she’s still alive?”
“She isn’t. There’s nothing you can do here, but if we leave now, while the trail is fresh, we might still find him.”
“Find—you saw him?” Her free hand pushed aside her jacket, drew her gun again as she searched the alley for another presence. She tried to recall details of the figure she thought she’d glimpsed: clothing, hair color, height—
But she envisioned fiery wings instead.
Shit.
“He’s gone,” Trent said.
She flipped open her cell phone and dialed 911. “Well, if you saw him, he can’t have gone far. We might still find him if we get enough cars in the area—”
Alex broke off as Trent’s grasp tightened. She stared into eyes gone flat and frighteningly cold.
“You’d better hope to Heaven you don’t, Alex Jarvis. Because you don’t stand a chance against him. Not you, and not your entire police force.”
Alex’s mouth opened, but she couldn’t find her voice. And even if she’d had a voice, surely there were no words with which to respond. Long seconds passed. A trickle of rain dripped from the end of her nose.
“Hello? Hello! You’ve reached nine-one-one. What is your emergency? Hello?”
The insistent female voice in Alex’s ear penetrated at the same time two officers burst from the passageway behind her. Alex whirled. Chaos ensued.
Guns drawn, the uniforms screamed at her to drop the weapon and put up her hands. A marked car hurtled into the far end of the alley. Red and blue streaks shattered the gloom. A siren died mid-wail. Behind Alex, footsteps scuffed. Trent. Her heart stalled, and a warning formed in her throat. “Don’t—"
Two shots cut her off, their reports echoing off the brick walls. Alex jerked at the sound, instinctively bracing for pain. Nothing. Ice water washed through her gut as the gunshots faded into silence. Nothing. Not even a whisper of sound from behind her to signal another’s presence.
Trent.
She threw her arms wide, away from her body. Away from misinterpretation.
Where the hell is Trent?
“We’re cops!” she yelled. “Jesus Christ, hold your fire! We’re fucking cops!”
The uniform shouted back, his words running together, mingling with the pounding in her ears. Alex couldn’t understand him, but his intent was clear. She dropped to her knees in a puddle. Two shots fired at point-blank range, two cops upset well beyond the ordinary.
Sweet Jesus, they’ve shot Trent.
Her heart clawed its way out of her chest and into her throat.
She strained to hear her downed partner. A moan, a gasp, anything. The police car skidded to a halt somewhere to the left. Car doors opened. Continued bellows from the uniformed officer hammered at her ears. Still no sound from behind her.
They fucking shot Trent.
Alex felt her control slip. She tightened her grip on it, met and held the uniform’s gaze, forced herself to speak past the rawness burning in her chest where her heart was no more. “I’m with Homicide. My badge is on my belt. It’s right there—you can see it.”
Point-blank, two shots. Why the hell isn’t the other cop moving? Trent needs help. They have to stop the bleeding, call for help—
The uniform facing her ignored her words. “I said down! On your stomach, hands out!”
A new voice joined the fray. “Back off, Kenney—she’s Homicide!”
Footsteps approached from the side and hands raised Alex to her feet. She stumbled, caught herself, shoved away the help. Water trickled down her shins and into her shoes. Her mind parted company with her body and watched from a distance as she turned to look down on the unimaginable awfulness of a fallen partner. She stared at mud-spattered shoes. Raised her eyes up a suit-clad length. Met Trent’s wary, but still very much alive, gaze.
Deep in her brain, disbelief spawned a small, ominous bubble of hysteria.
Chapter Ten
Caim gripped the sink jutting from the wall and tried to still his shaking. His heart pounded in his ears, drowning out the rest of the world. He raised his gaze to his reflection, to the fear in his eyes.
The abject, primal terror that came from his very center.
His hands tightened around the porcelain, and shame churned in his belly and rose to burn in his throat. He had begged. Prostrated himself before the brother who had betrayed him, and begged.
Like a coward.
Like a sniveling, spineless, pathetic coward.
He hadn’t even tried to argue his side, hadn’t once tried to reason with Aramael, to convince him that the killings meant nothing, that they were only a way to get home again, nothing more. That if he could just return to Heaven, all this would end.
No matter that Aramael hadn’t understood the first time, that he’d spurned Caim’s arguments, Caim should have at least had the backbone to try again.
But no. Faced with imminent capture, he had begged instead. Not for another chance, but for death. For anything but Limbo. Caim quivered at the thought, cringed at his weakness. The sink began to give way beneath his hands, and he willed himself to relax, to remember reason. Things were different now. He was wiser, more cautious, and fully capable of evading his brother if he stayed in control. He knew how Powers hunted—he’d been one of them for long enough, before he’d fallen—and he’d learned mu
ch control since his last encounter with Aramael. He could still do this. He could still find the soul he needed to be able to return.
But not here. No matter how many assurances his benefactor had given him that a Naphil lived in this hunting ground, and no matter how confident he felt in his control, it wasn’t worth the risk. He wouldn’t take the chance of coming that close to capture again—or to feeling that edge of terror. Another quiver rippled through him. If it hadn’t been for the mortal woman’s interruption just now—
Caim’s mind ground to a standstill.
Seized on its last thought.
Aramael had been interrupted by a mortal. He had allowed himself to be distracted by—Caim paused, working furiously to recall the details of his narrow escape. No. His hunter hadn’t just been distracted. Aramael had turned to shelter the woman. To protect her.
From Caim.
He watched his reflection’s expression change and his eyes widen with dawning comprehension. They’d sent a Power to protect a mortal.
They could have only one reason for doing so.
Nephilim.
The woman was Nephilim. A descendant of the Grigori. A tainted soul that would not go on to be reabsorbed into the One’s life force as other mortals were, but would instead be drawn back to its roots in Heaven before it was discarded, cast aside as its ancestors had been. But not before it took Caim with it.
Elation sang through him. He’d done it. He’d found one. He locked his knees against an ancient desire to kneel in gratitude. No. That kind of obeisance had belonged to the One who spurned him, not the benefactor who had made it clear he wanted only Caim’s success. Success Caim could now almost assure him.
But wait. It couldn’t be that easy. Something was wrong. Caim held himself still and made his thoughts go quiet. A Power protecting the descendant of a Grigori? It would never happen. Too much hatred existed between the two lines of angels. He remembered how painful the Grigori betrayal had been to all of them, and how much he, too, had hated the Tenth Choir back when he’d stood beside Aramael rather than in opposition to him.
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