“Not everything went the way he’d planned. The woman wounded the Appointed.”
Raphael’s golden eyes narrowed.
“The Naphil? With what?”
“Aramael’s sword.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Neither is summoning me across two realms.”
“What the Hell is going on with her?”
“I’m not sure. Her Naphil blood, the soulmate connection to Aramael, being brought back from the verge of death—or a little past it—twice by Seth.” Mika’el rolled his shoulders wearily. “A combination of everything, perhaps. Go. Take Aramael. Tell Azrael what has happened. I’ll clean up here and foll—”
A dozen heavily armed mortals poured through the shattered office door and brought weapons to bear on them. Shouted instructions followed, all muddled together and ringing with fear and tension.
“On your knees! Now!”
“You holding the guy—put him down!”
“Hold your hands away from you where I can see them!”
And on it went.
Mika’el closed his eyes. He and Raphael had to leave: Raphael to transport Aramael’s body; Mika’el to locate the remaining Archangels and deal with the Fallen. They didn’t have time for this—or to oversee another memory-wipe by the Guardians.
The mortal shouts continued.
Mika’el saw the question in Raphael’s eyes and knew the other agreed. They had only one way out of this, but while it might be too late to pretend Heaven had any secrets remaining, it was still damned difficult to flaunt themselves.
Difficult but, at this point, necessary. He nodded. Standing tall and straight despite his burden, Raphael instantly unfurled his massive black wings to their fullest and shot upward—
Into nothingness.
A slow, collective lowering of weapons and stunned silence followed, broken by a murmured and heartfelt, “Holy Mother of God.”
Mika’el studied them, one by one. He had spent six millennia on Earth, long enough to know humans better than any other angel did. Long enough that, though he could not save them, his heart ached at knowing what they faced. Their lives would never be the same after today. Not ever.
“Your colleague is in the washroom,” he told them. “She’s unharmed.”
And then, opening his own wings, he followed the other warrior.
Chapter 89
Alex sat on the narrow platform at the rear of a paramedic bus, apart from the hive of activity even in the midst of it. Yellow wooden barricades held back a throng of onlookers. A group of officials stood off to one side in earnest discussion. Dozens of emergency personnel moved from one place to another, tending the wounded, checking the building, their feet crunching through piles of tempered-glass pebbles from dozens of disintegrated windows.
Her colleagues were clustered together, as far from her as the emergency vehicles and barricades would allow.
Cold from the hard steel seeped into her.
She burrowed deeper into the blanket’s folds. Her eyes burned from holding them open too long, hardly daring to blink, because every time she did, she saw it again. Aramael sprawled amid the black feathers of his wings. Dead. For her. Because of her. The image burned into her brain for eternity, because that’s how long she would live without him. With this loss and all the others to follow.
Forever and ever, amen.
Hell.
The platform beneath her gave a little, and a second blanket settled around her shoulders. She looked over to find Joly at her side, Abrams and Bastion standing beside him. Bastion held out a paper cup, steam curling up from the hole in its plastic lid.
“Probably not what you could use right now,” he said gruffly, “but it’s warm.”
Her thank you wouldn’t emerge, but she accepted the cup and managed a nod. Bastion reached across Joly to pat her shoulder. The three of them joined her in staring at the scene.
“The others?” she asked after a while.
Joly cleared his throat. “They’ll come around. You’re one of us, Jarvis. We watch out for our own.”
Except maybe she wasn’t one of theirs anymore. Not after what Seth had done.
“Those things that came out of the window up there,” said Abrams. “The ones with the …”
“Wings,” she supplied, when it was apparent he wouldn’t—couldn’t—finish.
“Yeah. Those. They looked like …”
“Angels.”
His skin tone took on the same gray as the November afternoon. He exchanged looks with Joly and Bastion—or tried to, but they were wholly focused on the pavement at their feet. “That’s insane,” he muttered.
She neither confirmed nor denied the conclusion.
After a moment, he scuffed at the street. “Jesus Christ Almighty.”
There seemed no point in contradicting him on that. More silence ensued, and then a new set of legs entered her field of vision. She looked up at Roberts. Someone had loaned him a firefighter’s coat, but despite the day’s chill, he hadn’t closed it to hide the dark brown streak of dried blood marring the shirt and tie beneath. Seth’s blood, acquired when Roberts had enveloped her in a wordless hug on the washroom floor.
He stared pointedly at her companions.
“Give us a minute?”
With more awkward pats on her shoulder, Joly, Abrams, and Bastion wandered back to join the others. Alex felt her supervisor studying her.
“You all right?” he asked.
Damn. Was she going to tear up every time someone asked her that? She nodded and tugged the blankets closer.
“There’s an awful lot of blood on you for someone who has no injuries, Alex.”
Hers, Aramael’s, Seth’s. But they’d found only her at the scene.
“You want to talk about what happened?”
“Nope.”
Roberts sighed. “I’m going to have someone take you home. Is there any chance Trent … ?”
Her tears overflowed, sending hot trickles down her cheeks. Clamping her lips together, she shook her head. Quickly, fiercely. Roberts’s hand settled onto her shoulder and squeezed.
“I’ll get Joly to drive you, and I’ll have Dr. Riley meet you there. No argument.”
The latter as her head snapped up in objection.
Her supervisor shook his head, compassion and concern clouding his eyes. “There is no goddamn way I’m leaving you alone, Jarvis. Not tonight. Which reminds me—” He held out his hand. “I need your service weapon.”
She stared at his open palm. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him he didn’t have to worry, that even if she did eat her gun, it wouldn’t kill her.
That nothing could.
Not anymore.
Instead, she reached to her hip, unholstered the weapon she’d retrieved from the washroom floor, and held it out to him. “I wouldn’t, you know.”
Roberts pocketed the gun without comment and turned to go.
“Staff.”
He looked back.
“Not Joly,” she said. “Make it a uniform.”
Someone I don’t know. Someone I don’t have to talk to.
He regarded her for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll let you know where our new quarters are,” he said. “Take a few days off, then—”
“Monday,” she said. “I’ll see you Monday.”
***
Alex let herself into the apartment and dropped the keys on the table. She didn’t lock the door—partly because she knew Riley was coming, and partly because she didn’t care. Because it didn’t matter.
She turned to stare at the home she had shared with Seth. The hallway stretched before her, empty and accusatory, still resonant with the anger from the last time they’d stood in it together. She flinched, reliving again the slam of the door as he’d left. Her breath stabbed beneath her ribs. So much accusation and betrayal—so many dead because of it.
How in hell could she have been so wrong?
She leaned against the wall. A thousand little detai
ls crowded in on her. A thousand misgivings that she’d ignored, dismissed, convinced herself weren’t real or important. She’d been so determined to love him, so set on saving him as he had twice saved her, and now …
Now she’d lost it all, everything that ever mattered to her, and because of Seth’s gift to her, she would live forever with those losses. Jen, Nina, Aramael.
Her legs slowly buckled beneath her. Beneath a past, a present, and a future that had become too heavy to bear. She slid down the wall until the floor prevented her from sinking any farther. Wrapped arms around knees. Held on tight as the first tear fell. A second followed, then a third—and then the dam inside her gave way to an anguish that enveloped her, sucked her under, closed over her soul.
From a long way off came the sound of knocking and Elizabeth Riley’s voice calling her name. A part of her tried to respond, but the rest of her wouldn’t cooperate. Couldn’t through the spasms racking her body. Then a door opened, footsteps approached, and gentle hands lifted her chin. Soothing murmurs washed over her, then something sharp jabbed into her arm.
Too late, Alex tried to pull back, to reassure Riley that she was okay. Still sane. Wasn’t she?
She slid beneath the surface.
Chapter 90
Alex stared at the pale light creeping around the edges of the window blind. Outside, a truck rumbled by, a distant siren wailed, a plane droned overhead, a car alarm shrieked a summons to which no one paid attention. The sounds of a city stirring to life on a Sunday morning.
Inside, the rhythmic inhale and exhale of her own breathing, the faint tick of the clock in the living room. The sounds of an empty apartment bereft of all life but hers. No Seth. No Jen. No Nina. Everyone important to her, everyone she had ever cared about … taken. And the one soul who might have heeded her call for help?
Also gone.
She turned her mind inward, found her center, whispered his name. Aramael. But her soulmate didn’t hear her. Didn’t come to her. Never would again.
Curling into a ball, she bunched the covers beneath her chin and waited for tears. They didn’t come either. She closed her eyes. Without hysterics to distract herself, it was time to focus on the realities. Realities such as the three weeks Nina had before she would die giving birth to Lucifer’s Naphil bastard. The same length of time Alex would have to find her so she didn’t die alone. Fuck.
Alex bit down on a scream of pure fury. Tempting as it was to give voice to the frustration building inside her, it would not help to have the neighbors calling 911 on her behalf. She tossed back the covers and swung her legs out of bed. On the bedside table, her cell phone rang. She reached for it, thumbed the answer button, and put it to her ear.
“Jarvis,” she croaked. Lord, was that her?
“You sound like you’ve had a rough couple of days or something,” Henderson said.
At the sound of his voice, the tears she hadn’t been able to find a moment before flooded her eyes. She blinked them back furiously, shrugging a shrug he couldn’t see, and cleared her throat. “Nah. Same old, same old. Nothing exciting ever happens around here, I swear.”
Her Vancouver colleague gave a soft snort. “You are so full of shit, my friend. How are you?”
Remembering his aversion to her usual fine, she hazarded, “Alive?”
“I’d rather you said that with a little more conviction.”
“And I’d rather I felt it with a little more conviction.”
The reply earned her a chuckle. She smiled a little in return and blinked away the rest of the tears. It was good to hear a friendly voice. “Seriously, Hugh, I’m okay.”
“Want to fill me in?”
“How much do you know?” She lay back against the pillow and tucked her feet under the duvet.
“I’ve seen the news footage from Parliament Hill, Riley filled me in on your sister and your niece, and I know that Seth came after you. You can go from there.”
“Seth took back his powers. Turned out it wasn’t such a good thing for us after all. Or for me. He wanted company in his new abode. Ara—” She choked on the name and tried again, her voice husky, “Aramael tried to stop him.”
Henderson was quiet. “Tried?” he asked at last.
She squeezed her eyes closed. Put her forearm across them. Curled her hand into a fist so tight that her fingernails bit into the palm. “He’s gone.”
“Ah, hell. Alex, I’m so sorry.”
She had to work to find her voice. “Yeah. Me, too.”
“So how—?”
“Michael. He and the other Archangels—” She broke off. Opening her eyes, she peered at the sleeve of her pajamas—wait, how did she get into her pajamas? She mentally shoved aside the distraction and scowled. How had Michael known that Aramael needed help? That she …
“Call,” Aramael’s voice whispered in her memory. “Call Mika’el.”
She scrambled into a sitting position. Stared at herself in the full-length mirror hanging on the opposite wall. Holy hell. She’d called Heaven’s greatest warrior. And he’d heard her. Was that even possible?
“Jarvis? You there?” Henderson asked.
The bedroom door opened to her left. Instinctively, she cowered, the events of the day before still alive and well in her memory. Elizabeth Riley held up both hands in a gesture meant to calm and reassure. Because it was Riley, it didn’t have the desired effect.
“I’m here,” she told Henderson. Her heart hammering, she swung her legs out of bed for a second time. “And apparently so is Riley. Can I call you back in a while?”
“Ten minutes. You can call me back in ten minutes, or I’m getting on a plane and coming out there myself.”
She didn’t bother pointing out that the flight would take him the better part of the day. “Ten minutes,” she agreed.
Dropping the phone onto the covers beside her, she met Riley’s bright blue, too observant gaze. At least the psychiatrist’s presence explained the pajamas. Alex shoved aside the usual prickle of antagonism and mustered a smile.
“You didn’t have to stay the night.”
Riley shrugged. “I promised your supervisor I would. Did you sleep all right? I only gave you a mild sedative. I wasn’t sure it would be enough.”
“It was,” Alex assured her.
“Good. I’ve made coffee if you’re interested.”
“Very.”
The psychiatrist disappeared from the doorway, presumably headed for the kitchen. Alex frowned. That was it? No other questions? No probing her psyche to ascertain her level of sanity after yesterday? She scooped up the cell phone and padded after Riley. If the promise of coffee hadn’t been enough of a draw to get her out of bed, curiosity would have been.
Chapter 91
Riley turned from the counter as Alex entered, handed her a mug, and watched in silence as she added cream and sugar. Alex lifted an eyebrow.
“None for you?”
“I prefer tea. I couldn’t find any, so I’ll get some at the hospital.”
The sip of coffee Alex had taken turned tasteless. She forced it down just to get rid of it. The hospital. Jen. She stared into her cup at the brown-paper-bag colored liquid.
“Is there any change?”
“They’ve removed the restraints, but other than that, no. I’m sorry. She’s moving up to the psych ward this morning. I’m going to stop in and check on her, then I have a meeting with your chief and Dr. Bell before I catch my flight back to Vancouver.”
Alex set her mug on the counter, wondering what Riley would think if she poured herself a Scotch instead. She studied the petite woman. Which of those topics did she want to take on first: hospital, meeting, or flight out? Riley forestalled her.
“You don’t need me here, Alex. After what’s happened in the last few days, the very fact that you’re upright and not curled into a ball in the corner proves it. I plan to tell your chief exactly that—and I’ll probably tell your department shrink to go screw himself.”
Alex’s jaw
dropped. “You—I—that’s it? No questions, no trying to get me to talk?”
“Do you want to talk?”
“Not particularly.”
“I wouldn’t either, if I were you,” Riley said. “So. I guess that’s it, then. I’ll make sure the hospital has your contact information. They’ll notify you of any change in your sister’s condition, so unless you hear from them …”
Alex set her mug on the counter with an unsteady hand, finishing Riley’s sentence in her head. Unless she heard from the hospital, she didn’t need to go to the place that had housed her mother on so many occasions—the place that had now claimed her sister. She folded her arms across her belly.
“Thank you.”
“Will you return to work?”
She nodded. “That and look for Nina.”
Riley hesitated. “Part of me would like to ask what’s coming,” she said. “What we should expect. The rest of me thinks I’m better off not knowing.”
“I couldn’t tell you if you did want to know, because I have no idea.”
“None?”
“Apart from a feeling that the rest of you is right? None.”
Riley nodded. “In that case, I should go. I’ve left my card on the hall table for you in case you change your mind about talking. My cell phone number is on the back so you can call anytime. And if you don’t call me, at least stay in touch with Hugh and let him know how you’re doing. Please.”
Alex gave a soft laugh. “I don’t imagine he’ll give me much choice.”
“Good point.”
Then, before Alex realized her intent, the psychiatrist wrapped her in a quick, hard hug. “Look after yourself, Alex,” she whispered. “Stay strong.”
Stay sane.
She’d reached the door at the end of the hallway before Alex found her voice.
“Elizabeth.”
Riley looked over her shoulder.
“Tell Bell I said ditto.”
A smile. “I’ll do that.”
The door closed, the click of its latch near deafening in the silence left behind. Alex stood for long minutes without moving. The emptiness of the apartment closed in on her. Pressed down. Squeezed the air from her lungs, the life from her heart.
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