by S. J. Day
“I’m a creative thinker. I like to explore all the possibilities.”
“Okay, then.” His arms crossed. “How about the possibility that God sent you to that church for a reason? And maybe that reason was to discover that Infernals were masking themselves. After all, you went there before the invitation ever had a chance to be put into play.”
Her nose wrinkled. “What kind of facts are involved in that theory?”
“The spiritual kind.”
Alec sat on the bed and reached for his socks. He shifted, pulling the wet towel out from under his ass and tossing it into the corner under the sink.
“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to put wet towels on the bed?” she asked wryly. Her gaze lowered. “Or the floor?”
“It’s a guy thing.”
“I don’t think so. It’s an Alec thing.”
His dark eyes sparkled with laughter. “You’ve never had a boyfriend leave his towels lying around?”
“No.”
“Bullshit.”
She laughed. “I’m serious.”
“You have obviously never lived with a man.”
“With parents like mine? Are you kidding?” Eve shook her head. “My dad is the quiet type, but he has old-fashioned values. And my mom is a fan of Dr. Laura. Shacking up before marriage is a big no-no in my family.”
Smiling, he stood and held out a hand to help her up. She accepted, then turned to put the Bible in the bag with their purchases. She was taking it with her to pass the time and the last thing she needed was for a motel employee to think she was stealing it.
Alec closed the blackout curtains and went to the door. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“What do you mean they are gone?” Raguel barked, glaring across his desk at Ms. Bowes.
“I’m s-sorry.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I said that incorrectly, sir. They ditched the Jeep at a strip mall. A nearby rental car agency recognized their photos, so we know they aren’t on foot.”
“Of course they are not on foot! They went to Upland. They just wanted privacy while getting there.” Which infuriated Raguel to no end. They could not be allowed to become a self-contained unit. “Abel knows where they are.”
“He hasn’t checked in since the herald.”
Raguel sent an order through the celestial lines of communication that existed between the archangels and the mal’akhs beneath them. He was met with silence. “Get him on his cell phone.”
“I’ve tried. It goes directly to voicemail.”
Raguel stood and stepped out from behind his desk. The secretary backed up warily.
He told himself the three—Cain, Abel, and Eve—couldn’t be working together. There was too much enmity between the two brothers. But what would explain how they all fell off the radar at the same time? What could they be thinking . . . planning? He couldn’t afford to lose control of their trinity. He needed them to achieve his aims.
For the space of several heartbeats, Raguel considered using his gifts to find them. But in the end, he resisted the prod of impatience. He had enough transgressions to pay for and there were other ways to gather the information he needed. Although Abel was presently ignoring him—an aberrance of behavior that increased Raguel’s alarm—the other handlers would not.
“I will send Mariel after Abel,” he said, running a hand over his short, coarse hair. He had sprinkled it with gray about five years past, to simulate mortal aging.
“Yes, sir.”
Ms. Bowes left the room in a rush, and Raguel moved to the window. He took in the view of the Las Vegas Strip below. Sin City. A hotbed of iniquity. And he was trapped here in this world, living a life that wasn’t his, working to save the souls of man because God held them in such esteem. They were so small and weak, yet He adored them and considered them His greatest creation. Because of them, He waged a hidden war against the Fallen One, a conflict so deep beneath mortal consciousness that no ripples marred the glassy surface. The Lord would never bring the matter to a head. Devotion was more powerful when it came from faith and not from absolute proof.
So Raguel helped the situation along on his own. Step by step. Carefully planning and maneuvering. The sooner the arrival of Armageddon, the better. He was certain the Lord would appreciate the tapestry, once it was fully threaded. It was, after all, an incredibly clever scheme.
Cain and Abel had set the chain of events in motion by fighting to the death over a woman. It was only fitting that they should bring about the end of days in the same fashion.
The moon was hidden by the canopy of tree leaves above him, but Reed’s enhanced sight had no trouble seeing in the darkness. He moved through the Kentucky forest like a wraith, swift and silent.
His veins still throbbed from the force of Takeo’s herald, sent hours ago. Takeo meant “warrior” in Japanese, a fitting moniker. He had been a perfect Mark, his training as a yakuza assassin had stood him in good stead. Reed missed him already and knew he would miss him for years to come. None of the other Marks on his team had been as skilled in killing tommyknockers—malevolent faeries with a fondness for mines. Which was why Reed was so shocked by his death. The assignment he had given Takeo should have been a simple one: vanquish a troublesome tommyknocker.
A twig snapped to his right and Reed paused. The forest was deathly quiet aside from that one noise, a sure sign that nature had been seriously disturbed.
“Abel,” a familiar female voice greeted.
“Mariel. What are you doing here?”
The mal’akh appeared from behind a nearby tree. Although the night robbed the color from everything, he knew her hair was red and her eyes green. She wore a floral dress, jean jacket, and cowboy boots, as well as an oppressive air of melancholy.
“Raguel sent me after you, most likely as punishment for losing two Marks today.”
“I’m sorry.”
“As am I.” She pivoted and gestured to the right. “This way.”
Reed followed her to the edge of a clearing. She paused there and he drew abreast of her. A chill swept down his spine that had nothing to do with the temperature.
The clearing was not a natural feature. De cades-old trees had been felled and pressed into the ground, deep enough to create a flat surface. The night breeze blew, whistling eerily through the limbs and boughs, fluttering through tissue that clung to stems and errant grass. Tissue bearing the colorful markings of irezumi—“hand-poked” Japanese tattoos.
“Dear God,” he breathed, recoiling. “Is that skin?”
Blinking, Reed engaged the nictitating membranes that enhanced his night vision. The silver and black of the moonlit vista changed into living color.
Blood red. Everywhere. On every leaf and blade, on every inch of bark, all the way to the sky. As if Takeo had exploded from the inside out, splattering his body from the earth to the heavens.
“What happened h-here?” He cleared his throat. “What did this?”
As if in answer, an owl cooed its sorrow. A wolf howled in torment and was quickly joined by several of its pack. As the forest denizens sobbed their tales of the night’s events, a cacophony of grief rose to the heavens. It hammered at Reed from all sides and nearly brought him to his knees.
Mariel’s hand reached for his. She squeezed gently. “I don’t know.”
The din ceased as quickly as it had begun. A weighted sense of expectation replaced the mourning. They wanted to know who would save them from the fate they’d witnessed that night. They listened avidly, unmoving and barely breathing.
“One of my charges and her mentor were killed this way today,” she said. “I felt the herald and I went to them immediately. Immediately. But it was already past the time when I could have done anything to help them. The mentor was already dead. It was as if they waited too long to call me—”
“Or the Infernal struck too harshly and quickly.”
She pivoted to face him. “The same happened to you.”
“Barely.” Her green eyes were wide, haunted, and shining with tears. “It was a monstrous beast; easily several feet in height. Flesh, not fur. Massive shoulders and thighs. It crawled inside my Mark . . . disappeared in her. She c-could not c-contain it.”
“Mariel—”
“The slaying happened so fast. I barely saw it, didn’t even smell it. I was so numb . . .” She gave a shaky exhalation. “I stared Sammael in the eyes once and I wasn’t as scared.”
No scent.
Reed closed his eyes and reached out to his charges, one by one. They touched him briefly, consecutively, assuring him of their safety. All save one.
Eve, he called.
Like the fluttering of a moth’s wings, he felt her. Barely there, too green and untrained, too distant from her own soul to know how to reach out with it. What he felt most keenly was the silence where Takeo used to be. It was deafening.
“I need to make my report,” he said softly.
Mariel nodded. “I’ll wait for you.”
“I have a favor to ask of you instead.” Reed leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I need you to go to California . . .”
“Can I get out and stretch?” Eve asked.
Alec looked away from the masonry. He saw the dashboard clock and winced. Almost midnight. As usually happened during a hunt, he’d lost track of time.
Despite the lateness of the hour, the masonry yard was far from quiet. Trucks moved in and out. The perimeter was surrounded by a stonework fence topped with wrought iron. Through the bars, Alec watched bags of what appeared to be cement off-loaded, while various stonework pieces—fountains, statues, and benches—were loaded onto flatbeds and driven away.
Aside from the odd time, there didn’t appear to be anything suspicious on the surface. But then again, when it came to Infernals, it was what you didn’t see that was the most dangerous. There was also the added difficulty of searching through a facility that was never asleep.
“You must be bored out of your mind,” he murmured.
Eve’s smile was sheepish. “I’m sorry. I feel like I should be doing something or helping you in some way.”
“Just having you here is enough.” He reached out to her, catching her hand and lifting it to his lips.
Her fingers tightened on his. “I brought reading material, but I didn’t think about the fact that there wouldn’t be any light.”
“I can help with that.”
“Oh?” Her smile widened.
Alec caressed her cheek with his fingertips. “Close your eyes.”
She followed his instructions. She waited with an air of expectation that reminded him of their first night together. He’d blindfolded her for a time, teasing her with feather-light touches and whisper-soft kisses until she quivered all over.
As he had back then, Alec drew out the moment, making her wait until she trembled in her seat, allowing the tension to build until it nearly steamed the windows.
“Alec?” she queried breathlessly.
Unable to resist, Alec closed the space between their two seats and pressed his lips to hers. A soft gasp of surprise escaped her and he took the invitation to deepen the contact. Tilting his head, he fitted his mouth to hers. Their breaths became one, mingling.
Eve surged into him with a soft sound of need, her fingers pushing into his hair and holding him close. She gave as good as she got, her lips slanting across his, her tongue stroking deep and rhythmically until his cock ached with the need to pull her over his lap and slip inside her. The mark on his arm began to burn.
Trouble was coming.
He tore his mouth away. “Do your eyelids feel heavy?”
“You have no idea,” she husked.
“Roll your eyes behind your lids.”
“They’re rolled back in my head.” She nibbled along his jaw line. “My toes are curled, too.”
A laugh escaped him. “Open your eyes slowly.”
He pulled back enough to watch her. She blinked, then her head turned back and forth. “Holy strawberries, Batman.” Her tone was awed. “I can see in the dark.”
“Part of the Change you went through adjusted the nictitating membrane in your eyes. Rather than being useless, they now enable you to hunt with greater precision.”
“This is really freaking cool,” she said, surveying the world around her.
In the periphery of Alec’s vision, a light went out.
“Perfect timing, too,” she murmured.
His head turned to Gehenna Masonry and found that the exterior lights had been turned off. He glanced at the clock. Midnight.
“Hey.” Eve’s voice had lowered. “See that guy padlocking the front gate? Isn’t that your assignment? That kid we followed from the 7-Eleven?”
Alec didn’t have to confirm the identification visually. The throbbing of his mark and the subsequent pumping of adrenaline through his system told him everything he needed to know. “Yes, that’s him.”
The young man finished his task, then set off walking down the street with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket—a jacket that bore the Gehenna Masonry logo of a gargoyle on the back.
“He works there,” Eve noted.
“Yep.”
“There is no such thing as coincidence.”
“Right.”
“So now what? Do you want to go after him?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
He stroked the backs of her fingers. “Because he’s a wolf. Killing wolves is a messy business. It has to be done in a way that doesn’t incite the wrath of his pack. Survival of the fittest is something they understand and respect. A silver-coated bullet to the back of the head isn’t.”
“You don’t have a gun. You’re playing it safe because of me.”
Alec didn’t deny the accusation, because it was true. Eve was going through a trial by fire and he saw no benefit in making it worse. She didn’t need any more death today. What she needed was a victory, however small.
“One thing at a time,” he said instead. “Let’s deal with the masonry first. Once we’re certain the yard is cleared, we can hop the fence and take a look around.”
“Breaking and entering?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Great.” Her tone was dry and resigned.
Alec reached over and patted her thigh. “This is just a reconnaissance mission, angel. We get in, look around, and get out. No problem.”
“Things haven’t worked out that well for me so far.”
“The only constant is change,” he said, tossing her a reassuring smile. “The tide will turn eventually.”
A frown marred the space between her brows and her head cocked to the side as if she was considering something. “The tide, huh?”
She bent over and dug into the bag between her feet. “I wish I’d picked up bottled water instead of some of this other crap I snagged.”
“You must be hungry, too.”
“Ravenous.” Eve straightened with a bag of beef jerky in one hand and something else that she stuck in the pocket of her pants.
“After this, I’ll take you to Denny’s.”
She winked at him. “You big spender, you.”
Alec laughed and exited the car. The masonry was dark and quiet. Rounding the front end of the Focus, he opened the passenger door for Eve and stole a kiss the moment she straightened.
“What was that for?” she asked, eyes bright in the moonlight.
“For being so good about all of this.” He didn’t explain that he felt the weight of guilt heavily. If he hadn’t intervened and requested to mentor her, she might have been assigned a nonfield position. In fact, she most likely would have been, considering she wasn’t prone to violent acts. It was his determination to protect her that had put her in danger to begin with.
“Hold that thought.” Her nose wr
inkled. “I might royally screw things up in a minute.”
He shut the door and caught her elbow. “Come on. Let’s prove you wrong.”
They walked up the road some distance, then crossed the street to the side the masonry was on. The area was industrial and therefore quiet as a cemetery at night. They passed a tow yard guarded by two Dobermans. The canines whimpered softly from a seated position, but made no other noise.
“Some guard dogs,” Eve scoffed.
We’re very good.
She stumbled. Alec helped her regain her footing. Wide-eyed, she stared at the animals.
“Yes,” Alec confirmed. “You heard right.”
“They talked.”
I talked. The bigger dog’s head tilted. My mate is offended by your insult.
Eve blinked, apparently too stunned to say anything. Then she found her voice, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
You should train her, Cain.
“I’m trying,” Alec replied. “Have you seen anything suspicious going on at the masonry up the road?”
No. They don’t come down this way, and we can’t see past the auto body shop from here.
“Okay. Thanks.”
Alec urged Eve to keep walking.
“Be careful,” she said to the dogs, thinking of the motel clerk’s gossip.
You, too.
She faced forward, looking more than a little bit stunned. “Okay . . . I’m Dr. Doolittle.”
“You’re more animal than human now,” he explained.
They reached the far edge of the masonry property. Looking through the bars, Alec studied the building and the surrounding displays and empty driveways. “I’ll hop over first.”
“Go for it.”
“See you on the flip side,” he said. Then he climbed over.
Eve tried not to be creeped out by the masonry yard, but it was difficult. She had warned Alec that she was a big chicken, but he didn’t seem to believe her. Or perhaps he forgot she told him that. Either way, he was progressing through the outside displays with ease and she was jumping out of her skin at every turn.
So many of the marble statues were classical reproductions with their eyes turned heavenward and torment on their alabaster features. Gargoyles with leering maws played hide-and-seek among benches and bubbling fountains. The sound of water chilled her blood and exacerbated her feeling of dread. She was a Pisces and she was now afraid of water. Her hand went into her jeans pocket.