Seth chuckled outright. “You do know how odd that sounds, don’t you? Given that I’d be much better equipped to deal with a Fallen One than you would be?”
“I know, but—”
“I’ve no interest in speaking with Lucifer again even if he does try to reach me, Alex. I promise. Besides, they assigned your soulmate to be my watchdog, remember?”
Alex stilled at the underlying edge to Seth’s voice, but when his expression remained relaxed—bland, even—she decided she had imagined it.
“Go,” he said again. “I’ll be fine.”
Silently she put on her coat and gathered her things. Keys, gloves, wallet. She considered going into Henderson’s room for the spare weapon he’d shown her stored there, but decided there was no point. The priest scenario was going to play out in one of two ways. Either Father Marcus would be just fine—the more likely finding—or she would walk in on another scene like the church in Toronto.
A crucifix, mounted on the wall behind a flimsy wooden dais. Upside down. The body on it not of plastic or wood or plaster, but of bone and tendon and shreds of putrid flesh—recognizable as human only by its general shape.
Alex gritted her teeth. Either way, a gun wouldn’t help, and certainly wouldn’t be worth the risk of having to explain why she carried one off duty and out of her jurisdiction if she happened to be caught with it. Hand on the doorknob, she looked over her shoulder at Seth and met his steady black gaze. His words ran through her mind again: “Then you do want me.”
She couldn’t keep running away from him. Or from herself.
“I’ll be as fast as I can,” she said. “Then…”
“Then?”
“We need to talk.”
ARAMAEL STRAIGHTENED FROM his leaning post against the ventilator housing on the rooftop and stared at the apartment across the street. The two presences he’d been monitoring had divided, moving floors apart, the distance between them continuing to grow. What the hell?
He moved to the edge of the gravel roof. He could still sense Seth in the apartment, but Alex—his gaze flicked to the street. Far below, a door opened and a woman emerged onto the sidewalk, heading toward a parking lot. Alex was leaving. Alone. Without Seth.
And Lucifer knew about her.
Tension coiled through Aramael. The thread of connection he’d tried to dismiss earlier returned, back as if it had never been gone. He closed his eyes as Alex got into a vehicle, started it, and pulled onto the street. The thread began to draw taut, pitting desire against duty once more.
Fucking Hell, would he never be rid of Mittron’s curse? Every time he thought himself cured of his soulmate, every time he was sure he had his feelings under control—feelings he should never have had in the first place—his soul betrayed him yet again.
Gritting his teeth, he fought the urge to abandon the Appointed and follow Alex. The thread stretched tighter, thinner. Grimly he rode out the certainty he would be ripped in two, clinging to the knowledge that he had survived walking away from her once and could do so again. He had no choice, because giving in to this just wasn’t an option. It had never been an option, and it was damned well about time he came to grips with the knowledge.
The car carrying Alex disappeared around a corner. The strings around Aramael’s soul stretched beyond agony, reached breaking point, and snapped at last. Breath returned. He waited, making sure the connection was really gone—again—and then turned back toward his post, only to come up short in stunned surprise.
“Seth? How the Hell did you get here?”
Arms crossed, the Appointed scowled at him. “More to the point, what the hell were you so focused on that you didn’t notice?”
THIRTY-EIGHT
“It’s a match.”
Elizabeth looked up as the pediatrician, Dr. Gilbert, marched into her office and flopped into the chair across the desk from her.
“It’s not an exact match, of course,” Gilbert continued, “but the same genetic makeup is there, and—”
“Wait.” Elizabeth held up a hand to stop the flow of words. “I assume you’re talking about the Chiu baby’s DNA, but you’ve lost me. A match to what?”
“The DNA results the coroner in Toronto sent out.” Gilbert raised an eyebrow and prompted, “From the serial killer case they had a month ago? It isn’t exact, but it’s close enough to tell us it came from the same kind of…being.”
Coroner? Serial killer? Elizabeth brushed the questions aside in favor of the one making her eyebrow arch the highest. “Being?”
Gilbert rested an elbow on the arm of the chair, her knuckles against her mouth, and stared at her. Then, moving her hand to play with the stethoscope hung around her neck, she said, “The Toronto DNA came from a claw, Dr. Riley.”
Elizabeth gaped at the pediatrician, certain she couldn’t have heard right. Gilbert grimaced.
“Yeah, that was my reaction, too. But the coroner there was adamant that’s what it is.”
“A claw. As in from an animal?”
“Not one that’s in any database, no. Or one that normally roams the streets of Toronto, either, I’m guessing.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“Also my reaction. And the coroner’s. He was shocked as hell to get the police request.” Gilbert seemed to recognize Elizabeth’s confusion and elaborated, “Detective Henderson of the Vancouver PD called the coroner this morning. The coroner faxed him the results, he forwarded them to our lab, and the tech called me an hour ago. I just spent the last half hour on the phone with the coroner confirming everything.”
“Hugh Henderson?”
“Someone you know?”
“He’s handling Melanie Chiu’s file.”
“Well, he’s going to love this. Toronto has three more babies just like ours. The coroner just finished the autopsy on the mother of the last one, born yesterday. After Henderson requested the DNA from the case, the coroner had the children’s hospital there compare the babies’ DNA with the same claw. He got the same results we did. We’re in the process now of forwarding the comparisons to all the other labs looking into this.”
A cold, hard knot settled into the middle of Elizabeth’s chest, right where her heart resided. Hugh had found the proof she’d demanded. Concrete evidence that made it impossible for her to keep looking the other way.
Gilbert cleared her throat. “There’s one more thing. We don’t have results, yet, but we’ve taken a DNA sample from an amnio on the rape victim brought in the other night.”
“You did an amnio on her? She consented?”
“Child services came in with a court order.”
“Child—?” Elizabeth gaped at the younger doctor. “You’ve got to be kidding me. What kind of idiot judge would sign an order like that?”
Gilbert’s fingers curled around the stethoscope. “I’m guessing the same kind that would sign an order letting them take the Chiu baby away from her grandparents this morning.”
ARAMAEL WATCHED SETH stroll toward the edge of the roof and look out across the night-lit city. The sound of an aircraft passing overhead mingled with the ceaseless, muted traffic rhythms from below, filling the silence stretching between them. Aramael waited.
“Well?” the Appointed asked over one shoulder. “You haven’t answered my question. What were you so focused on that you couldn’t sense me?”
“And I’m not going to answer you, either. Under the terms of the agreement, I’m not even supposed to speak to you.”
“Fuck the agreement.”
“You already tried.” The words slipped out before Aramael could think better of them and Seth’s gaze sharpened.
Darkened.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. It means nothing.” Damnation. Mika’el would have his head for this.
“It means something, or you wouldn’t have said it.” Seth turned away from the city to face him again. “Either you tell me or I go in search of Lucifer and ask him. Your choice.”
Aramae
l’s jaw flexed. Seth’s memory might still be missing, but his personality had certainly returned in force, complete with the arrogance Aramael remembered. The air of superiority that expected others to fall in with his wishes, and that told Aramael he meant every word of the threat he’d just uttered.
He sighed. “You know about the transition, how it was supposed to go. How it failed.”
“Go on.”
“You made it fail.”
“Excuse me?” Seth scowled. “Why would I do that?”
“Because of Alex. You tried to give up your destiny and transition as a mortal adult so you could be with her. Unfortunately, the Highest Seraph didn’t have the capacity either of you believed he did and so we find ourselves here.”
Seth stared at him. “I tried to give up who I was for her?”
“More what you were, but yes. You did.”
“Does she know this?”
“I have no idea.”
The Appointed paced slowly along the edge of the roof, one arm crossed over his chest, the other hand lifted to rub thumb across bottom lip. “I need to tell her,” he said softly. “This will change everything.”
Alarm made Aramael’s center still. “It changes nothing, Appointed,” he disagreed. “You still need to make a choice. It would be better if Alex didn’t know.”
Seth flashed him a vicious look. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Isn’t it? I’ve felt you, you know.” Hands clenched at his sides now, Seth stalked toward him with measured, deliberate steps. “I’ve felt your desire for her, Power. Your connection to her. I know how you hate seeing me with her, how it twists you up inside.”
For an instant—an agonizing, frozen-forever-in-time instant—Aramael stood again in Alex’s kitchen, her body pressed to his, her lips crushed against his with a hunger that matched his own and demanded his surrender. Remembered need shuddered through him. With an effort that threatened to rip the heart from his body, he stepped out of the memories and back into reality. Into his standoff with the Appointed.
“She is my soulmate, Seth,” he said simply. “She will always be my soulmate. I can’t change that, and I can’t help what I feel for her.”
Seth stopped before him and a subtle energy crackled between them, making the air sharp and alive. “Then maybe you should try harder,” he suggested, his voice cold. Eyes colder. “Because you cannot have her, Aramael. Now or ever. Act like my Guardian to your heart’s content, but stay the fuck away from Alex. Understand?”
Without waiting for a reply, the Appointed was gone. For several long seconds, Aramael scowled at the space Seth no longer occupied, trying to extricate reason from the tangled mass of resentment and fury. Trying to remind himself he was here to watch over the Appointed, not take him out as he’d first been assigned.
Pulling his mind into himself, he centered it and reached to connect again with Seth’s presence in the apartment across the street. It wasn’t there. He tried again. Nothing. The apartment was empty. Aramael cast his awareness in an ever-widening circle. Several blocks; the entire city center; the populated coastline; as far away as his abilities would allow. Still nothing.
Shock, icy with foreboding, settled into Aramael’s core and he stared out across the sparkling lights of the city. Bloody fucking Hell.
He’d lost the Appointed.
Again.
ALEX ROSE FROM her chair as a robed, middle-aged man detached from the post-Mass stragglers and came toward her. With an effort, she returned his warm, welcoming smile with a tight one of her own. She’d been waiting for almost forty-five minutes and her patience threshold was headed rapidly downhill.
“Father Marcus?” she asked.
“Father Sebastian, actually.”
“Is Father Marcus here?”
“I’m afraid not. Is there something I can help you with?”
“Do you know where I can find him?”
“The mid-Atlantic, I would think.” The priest smiled again but there was no corresponding crinkle at the corners of his eyes this time. “He was called to Rome. He left this morning.”
Tension crept across Alex’s shoulders. The cop in her didn’t like phony smiles. Her narrowed gaze swept over Father Sebastian, noting the careful stillness in his face, the tightly clasped hands. Was he who he said he was, or—? She thought of how Caim had once fooled her and, almost involuntarily, looked past the priest into the church’s belly to where a crucifix was suspended on the wall behind the altar. Only the standard figure hung there, reassuringly carved of inanimate material.
She expelled the breath she’d held and went back to studying the priest. He looked human enough, but it was damned unnerving to know that she would never be certain. Never be able to tell. With anyone.
Shrugging off the disquiet crawling over her skin, she said, “That was fast. He didn’t mention anything last night.”
Father Sebastian’s hands tightened a little more. “You saw him last night?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Of course not. Just—who did you say you are again?”
He was a man protecting a secret, she decided, but most likely on human orders rather than supernatural ones. She shook her head. “No one. It’s not important.”
Pushing through a group still clustered by the door, she stepped outside. Eyes closed, she stood for a moment and let the oppressive weight of the building slide from her. Her shoulders slowly moved away from her ears and back into their normal position. It had been twenty-three years since her last church visit and anything less than double that would be too soon for her next.
Sighing, she opened her eyes again. Henderson, leaning against the car she’d parked curbside, lifted a laconic hand. Alex paused mid-step, then continued down the stairs.
“I thought you were too busy to come.”
“I was. I am. Liz called me.”
“About—?”
“In a minute. I take it Marcus is alive and well?”
“And on a plane to Rome, I’m told.”
Henderson blinked. “Rome. Do we know why?”
“No, but if we were to guess that certain parties are trying to limit the potential of a news leak, I think we’d be right.” Alex rubbed at the back of her neck. Her shoulders might have returned to a normal height, but they’d left her stiff as hell. “It’s a good thing, I suppose.”
“And probably too late.”
Her hand stilled. “Riley’s call?”
“You were right. We have a DNA match to the claw. Chiu’s baby, Murphy’s fetus, three others in Toronto.”
“How’s Riley?”
“Pissed as all hell.”
Alex frowned. “Because we have solid evidence?”
“Because Child Services has taken Chiu’s baby here and all three in Toronto. I’m assuming other governments are doing the same.”
It took a moment to absorb the impact of the news. Another to consider the implications. “You think someone knows the Church’s secret.”
“I think it’s a good possibility.” Henderson slumped against the car. “And even if they don’t, they’ll figure it out soon enough. Hell, I know these kids aren’t entirely human, but they’re still babies. Can you imagine what they’ll be put through?”
Alex stared out at the street, watching the traffic without seeing it. “We’re a determined bunch, aren’t we?”
“Excuse me?”
“If there’s a way to prove Lucifer right about us, we’ll find it.”
Henderson grunted. “It makes you wonder why he—sorry, she—bothers with us.”
“Because like all good mothers, she loves her children,” a deep voice said behind Alex. “All of us. In spite of our faults.”
She whirled, staggered, and came up short against a broad chest. Strong, tanned hands gripped her arms. Steadied her. Michael. She knew even before she looked up into the emerald gaze. Just as she knew when she saw the fine tension around hi
s mouth that something more had gone wrong. Her heart dropped.
“Seth?” she asked.
“He and Aramael had words. The Appointed has gone missing.”
THIRTY-NINE
Entering the apartment, Alex threw her keys onto the hall table and stalked across the room to Aramael. Her granite-jawed soulmate’s eyes turned bleak as they met hers. Her step didn’t slow.
“What the hell did you say to him?” she snarled.
“Nothing he hadn’t already guessed,” he said, his voice quiet. Even. Holding a calm he didn’t deserve.
Alex fought the impulse to slug him, shake him, do something to break that implacable detachment. “Specifics, damn it,” she said through her teeth.
Aramael’s mouth went tight.
A few feet away, Michael cleared his throat. “The Appointed has guessed at Aramael’s continued feelings for you.”
God damn. There was that horse kick in the chest again. Dropping her gaze, Alex swallowed and waited for the shock of pain to subside so she could breathe. So he’d lied to her. He did still feel something, and she was finding out now? Like this? When she had already begun, in spite of her best intentions, to care for another? When she couldn’t even take the time to decide what the revelation might mean to her?
If it meant anything at all…
Lifting her chin, she stared at Aramael. “Exact words,” she said, her voice harsh against her own eardrums. “What did you tell him?”
The gray eyes closed for a moment and then opened onto a pain Alex had never seen before. “I told him that you will always be my soulmate,” he said, quiet truth in both voice and words. “And that I can change neither that nor the way I feel about you.”
She thought of how she had put off talking to Seth, how she had avoided involvement with him. While she’d meant what she’d told him at the time, about not daring to become entangled with him after all that had happened with Aramael, she’d intended to change that. But he didn’t know, and now, after hearing such a declaration from the angel he considered his rival, she could only imagine what he thought of her excuses.
“Naphil—” Michael began.
“Alex!” she shouted. “My goddamn name is Alex.”
Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy Page 25