by Jenn Stark
Slipping out from beneath the comforter and wrapping it around her, Maria padded across the thick carpet and checked the main room of the suite. No Warrick. She turned toward the chair. Sure enough, the chair had been moved slightly, at least judging by the indentations in the carpet.
Biting her lip, Maria sat in the large chair, curling her feet up beneath her as she rested her head against the comforter-cushioned fabric. Warrick had sat here, watching her for, what—how long? Hours, anyway. She’d probably passed out while Warrick was still in the shower, and, being Warrick, he’d decided that the enormous couch wasn’t big enough to serve as her bed. She glanced to the small table beside the chair and saw something else. Her slender gold chain, with its small golden cross. Perfect and pristine.
She picked it up, settling it once more around her neck and resetting the clasp. “Idiot,” she whispered, another line of tears trickling down her cheek.
But where had Warrick gone? She didn’t know anything about him, not really. His cover story was nowhere near the truth, and hadn’t he said he’d be sent back “beyond the veil,” whatever the hell that meant, now that his summons was done? Though judging from the number of demons she’d seen in Morpheus, she didn’t see how his summons could ever be done. What could possibly keep him on earth other than the eternal churn of demons behaving badly?
She had no idea. She had no idea about anything anymore. She merely felt…bereft.
It took another hour, but eventually, Maria uncurled from the chair, drifted through the motions of getting cleaned up in the obscenely large bathroom, then wandered back into the main part of the hotel suite. The bag Finn had brought Warrick’s weapons in still lay on the floor behind the small dining table, and her jeans and shirt were still piled on the counter, along with her boots and a small, crisp stack of hundred dollar bills. Enough to get her home, she thought. Warrick thinking of everything, except for what mattered most.
Maria sighed. It made more sense to wear the casual clothing instead of her party dress, she supposed, though she had no interest in discarding that. She’d already lost one set of clothes to this job.
This job.
She blew out a long breath as she returned to the bedroom for her dress and boots. She needed to go back to her apartment in Compton, clean out whatever she was going to clean out, and leave the rent payment on the kitchen counter. She should go by Lucy’s to say goodbye too, but—not yet, she thought. Not yet. They’d ask about Warrick, where he’d gone, and she had nothing to tell them. In fact, maybe she should stay away from the neighborhood in Compton altogether for a while. Her rent wasn’t due until January. Christmas was coming. No one would question her getting out of town.
Christmas. It was only a couple of weeks away now. She should go down to Santa Ana, stay with her aunt, like she did every year. Together they’d go to Long Beach, visit the ocean where they’d spread Cara’s ashes all those years ago, the bright and laughing girl forever able to play in the sea. And after that…
After that, she simply didn’t know.
Maria dumped her clothes on the table and snatched up her high-end jeans and T-shirt, dressing as she moved around the hotel suite for a final recon. They’d brought very little in; they’d take even less out. Her gun had been bagged the night before by the cops, and she had no idea what Warrick had done with his knives and throwing stars. The other, smaller weapons were still tucked in her pocket, and of course, she had her party clutch from the night before.
She squinted to the sitting area, located the purse, and dumped out her phone. No calls, no messages. Burner phone, but still. It was a burner phone that at least Warrick and Finn knew about. One of them could have reached her. She checked the caller ID, saw only her outbound calls to Stan. There was no point in calling him again—he wouldn’t know where Warrick had disappeared to, and he wouldn’t be happy she’d lost him.
Maria tucked her phone in her back pocket, then trotted back up the few steps to the front of the suite and picked up Finn’s plastic bag. Not exactly an overnighter, but it looked close enough to a shopping store bag that she could probably pass for a tourist. She smoothed the bag out, rolling her eyes at the image of the brightly lit Eiffel Tower, fireworks going off in the background, behind the big, happy balloon. Leave it to Finn to find the most ridiculous bag possible. She slid her clothes and party purse into it and left the room.
Maria made it out the front doors of the hotel without anyone bothering her, though both the hotel registration clerks and the concierge seemed to be giving her the side-eye. She glanced at herself in one of the hotel’s plate glass windows—she looked the same as she ever did. Better clothes, admittedly, but otherwise the same.
She reached the corner and turned, then turned again, unsure where to go. She should get an Uber back up to Sylmar, but she wasn’t ready to face her real life again. She believed Stan—she wouldn’t be able to continue undercover work, but the idea of returning to her job as a straightforward beat cop… What would that be like? Everything she’d ever hoped and dreamed about was tied up in avenging her cousin’s death. Now…
Maria glanced up, then squinted as she made out the distinctive spire down the street, instantly recognizing the silhouette. Her lips twisted. A Catholic church, of all things to catch her attention.
Well…it couldn’t hurt.
She jogged the short distance up the boulevard and turned down North Las Palmas Avenue, turning once more onto Sunset. The church loomed high, more elaborate than she would have expected for downtown LA. There was something about the city that had always seemed so secular to her, but here was this church, right in the center of everything.
Maria climbed the short flight of stairs to get to the main cathedral doors, then tried them. To her surprise, they opened easily. She slipped inside the building and through the ornate vestibule, pushing open a side door into the main part of the church, and walked a short way down a narrow aisle. She stopped then, taking a moment to appreciate the building’s serene beauty. Large windows lined the walls, casting bright sunlight down on the rows of pews. The altar stood atop another set of stairs and behind an honest to God communion rail. She didn’t think they made such things anymore, but the church looked like it had been built more than a hundred years ago, and it was so beautiful, the current parish family probably didn’t want to do anything to modernize the aesthetic. Some things were meant to be renewed, while some things were meant to be old…even in Los Angeles.
Maria’s gaze drifted to the huge stained glass windows, their brilliantly glowing images catching the morning light. Saints and angels, penitents and true believers. She thought again of Warrick, fighting, bleeding, pierced and broken, all to protect his latest summoner in a millennia of service to pay for his crimes. Would he ever stop paying?
“Good morning.” The voice was rich and welcoming, and Maria turned to see a man approaching her with a broad smile. His eyes were a deep brown, almost as dark as his skin, and he wore a simple clerical collared black shirt and black pants. In his hands, he carried a well-worn book, undoubtedly a Bible. “Our next mass isn’t until this evening, but you are welcome to pray in seclusion if you would like. Or, if you have any questions…if there is anything I can help you with, it would be my gift to do so.”
His kind smile proved to be Maria’s undoing, and she tightened her hold on her plastic shopping bag, as if it was the only thing of solace left in the world.
“Can demons be forgiven of their sins?” she blurted.
The question was out before she could stop it, and the priest’s eyes flew wide, his brows climbing his broad forehead. Maria lifted a hand to her mouth as she felt herself flush with embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I truly am. I—I don’t know why I asked that.”
“No apologies are necessary for a question that comes from the heart,” the priest said, recovering with easy grace. He half turned as if to gesture her forward, deeper into the church, then seemed to reconsider, squaring himself to
Maria. “I sense you’re not comfortable in a house of God. Do you know why?”
“I’m not…” Maria glanced around, then sighed. “I guess I haven’t been here for a while. Not here here, but—”
He smiled. “I understand. And when did you stop visiting God in His house? You were young?”
“Ten,” she said. The priest made a soft sound of distress, and she rushed on, wanting to do better by her aunt. “I mean, I still went to church, every week. But…God and I sort of stopped talking then.” Saying the words out loud almost made her want to cry. “My mom had died, then my cousin died. I had a hard time forgiving God for all that.”
“As any child would.” The priest nodded. “As any man or woman would either. When death parts us from those we hold most closely, it’s we who feel ripped from our moorings, not the children who return to Him. You speak of a demon, but it’s the same for any creation of the Father. We yearn to journey home. If we travel too far away from that home, we forget the way. But though we may have forgotten, that doesn’t mean the way has stopped existing. The path remains for those with the courage to walk it. Ever and always.”
He smiled at her, his eyes filled with kindness. “So to answer your question, yes. God can do anything, even forgive a demon his sins. Of course He can.”
Maria found she couldn’t do anything but nod back at him, ridiculous tears once more building behind her eyes. Watching her keenly, the priest smiled at her again.
“You are a child of God too,” he said, his words so quiet, she didn’t know if he was saying them aloud or if they were merely ringing in her head. “One who walks in His light, scattering that light wherever you go. As such, you are blessed. And anyone you love is equally blessed. The Father would have it no other way. You must believe that, and you must only believe that.” He gestured to Maria’s neck. “The cross you wear. Do you know its significance?”
She frowned. “It’s a cross. It means, I don’t know, God loves us.”
“A Celtic cross, more aptly—given the circle behind the crossed bars. The Irish were quite fond of that design. Even before they knew of the Christian God, they used that circle as one of their earliest representations of divinity. But though your cross is simple, I can sense its power. It’s been profoundly blessed.”
Maria pinned her gaze on him. “Do you know—do you know by who?”
The priest smiled benevolently. “Does it matter? Or does it only matter that you bless it—by the fact that you’re wearing it now. Wearing it and imbuing it with your faith. That has always been the greatest strength of God’s children, after all…our faith.” He reached out and tapped her bag. “The answers you seek are closer than you know, dear child.”
With that, he turned and walked away, and Maria turned as well, blindly moving back down the aisle, her eyes now clouded with tears she could no more understand than she could stop. When she reached the front steps of the church, she angrily brushed those tears away, sucking in long, gasping breaths as she felt the sun on her face once more, the breeze lifting her hair.
As her sight cleared, Maria looked down at her bag with its cheerful burst of fireworks beyond the Eiffel Tower and its soaring hot air balloon.
And then, finally, she noticed the scrawling script beneath in the archway of the Tower, meant to look like the building itself…
Paris Las Vegas.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, buddy, take it easy.”
Finn’s voice barely penetrated Warrick’s fog. He bent over, lungs heaving as he gasped for air. They were running in the late hours of the morning, on a trail that ran through the mountains and down to the Colorado River, deep within the Lake Mead nature preserve. They’d reached the part of the trail that was too steep to climb for most runners, but Warrick wasn’t most runners.
Now he stared at the river, watching it cascade through cuts in the rock it had forged over tens of thousands of years. Finally, something in this world that had been here longer than he had… something that, unlike him, could stay.
Finn heaved himself up beside him, following Warrick’s gaze toward the river while trying hard not to look at him directly, Warrick noticed. Finn was no fool.
Well, not entirely a fool. “You’re way too messed up, my brother.”
“It’s not worth talking about,” Warrick snapped. He’d watched the human sleep for hours, the ache in his chest not abating. That hadn’t happened before either, like so much else afflicting him. But the job was done, and when the summons came from the Syx for him to return to Las Vegas, he’d accepted it, steeling himself for their scrutiny.
To his surprise, they hadn’t noticed his fractured mental state. They’d been too busy losing their minds over his body.
And that was fair enough. Warrick simply wasn’t recovering the way he typically did after a fight. He was healing, yes—but more slowly, and with far more pain. As if his body had forgotten the way back home. He’d stared at himself in the oversized mirrors of their temporary domain in one of the casino hotels on the Vegas Strip, noting every scar, every gash and rent. That was also different, he decided. The scars on his demonic form. He didn’t mind them, exactly, except…
He gritted his teeth. Except the scars reminded him of Maria. What she’d seen. What she’d loathed in him.
He’d slept for nearly a day—something else that had never happened before—and then he’d raced out of the hotel like a man possessed, desperate to breathe, to burst free of the trap of his own skin. It itched and burned, his bones seeming to shift beneath the weight of an expectation he couldn’t fully understand. Only in the harsh, hot sun and fragrant trees of the preserve had he found the solace he craved…and he’d pounded down every trail he could find.
Finn had fallen into step with him before he left the casino, Stefan and Hugh following at a more careful distance. Gregori and Raum had remained at the casino to run interference if needed. They all knew something was wrong with Warrick, and they were the Syx. They would fight for him, suffer for him, or suffer with him, if it came to that. They would also die for him, if such a release was allowed.
It wasn’t.
And neither was it allowed that the Syx could remain on this earth longer than the archangel suffered it. Suffering being the operative term here.
Warrick drew in a shallow breath, and Finn looked at him sharply. “You know, it’d help if you dialed back the glamour. I can’t see what I can’t see.”
Warrick hung his head. “I can’t. I don’t seem to have full control over my glamour right now. It’s not as easy to shift back and forth.” He’d realized that when he’d been on his knees in the Morpheus’s VIP section, his body ravaged from the attacks of Serena and Holkeri. He’d managed to reinforce his glamour once his energy wasn’t diverted to attacking the demons with all his strength, but for the first time since he’d taken on this form at the breaking of the world, it had been challenging to make the shift. He’d tried going back and forth two or three more times once he’d returned to Vegas, and it still wasn’t a smooth transition. “I don’t know if it’s because I’m healing more slowly.”
“What was in that barb that Serena jabbed you with? You have any clue? Because if she had it, others could too. That would suck.”
Warrick shrugged. “No idea, but I will say it’s nothing I want to encounter again.”
Finn pursed his lips. “We could…I don’t know. Test your blood? Make some sort of antidote?” Even as he considered the idea, though, he shook his head. “Blood heals first, then the body. Whatever she dumped inside you, if it didn’t kill you…”
“Then it’s already gone. So I don’t think that’s it.” Warrick blew out a long breath, looking at the surrounding trees, the steep, striated canyon, the river far below. “I think being too long on this plane is the issue. It’s fine as long as we’re strong. But in the past, we healed in our own bolt-holes, held in stasis until we were called again. We didn’t stick around here.”
“Well, of the two, I vote for the longer h
ealing time and better views.”
Warrick smiled, knowing Finn was only trying to cheer him up. It was what Finn did.
“But think about it,” Warrick continued. “Earth was a different environment before the first war. With the flooding of the world, Atlantis disappeared beneath the ocean’s surface and the skies were rent. All that humans could do, all that the gods could do—changed. Then with the setting of the veil, the atmosphere thickened, weighing everything down. No one lived as long, ran as far, was built as strong. Humans dwindled in size for all that they grew smarter, until the tide turned once more and they gained mass and height. Our own brothers could not hide so well for those many years.”
“The Fallen.” Finn’s lips twisted. “You think they’re still out there, living—what, in the shadows? They’re way too big to do that, too noticeable.”
Warrick shrugged. “They have to be. If demons could survive this long, surely the Fallen could too.”
Finn scowled. “Fantastic.” Unlike the rest of the enforcers, Finn had not been judged by God for his sins but by his own brethren. Judged and condemned in the cataclysm that broke the world, horrified by his descent into the demon realm, but also—also unlike the rest of them—shocked by it. Were Finn to be faced with one of the Fallen today…pure, pristine, whose eyes had not seen all he’d seen, whose hands had not been bathed in the blood of his own accursed kind…Warrick was pretty sure how that would go.
It wouldn’t be pretty.
“Where to now, my brother?” Finn asked, his voice sounding a touch bleaker now, as if he too had gone down the path of Warrick’s thoughts, had stood on the edge of that abyss.
Warrick cursed himself. As leader of the Syx, it was his job to keep his men strong. To do that, he needed to be stronger, himself. He shouldn’t let Finn dwell on all that could not be changed, not when so much of their existence was out of their control.
He stood. “Now, we need to find our vehicle again.” He frowned, turning to scan the trees. “Which might be a problem. You remember where we left it?”