Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy (32 page)

“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.

A
LEX 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 his mouth that something more had gone wrong. Her heart dropped.

“Seth?” she asked.

“He and Aramael had words. The Appointed has gone missing.”

E
ntering 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
.”

Aramael put a hand toward her and she slammed it away. “Don’t. You’ve done enough damage. Could you not see how fragile he is? Could you not have lied, just this once? For him? For the world?” She blinked back tears of fury and despair. “For
me
?”

“He would have known,” he said softly. “He couldn’t help but sense what I feel for you.” A gentle hand brushed a tear from her cheek. “What we feel for each other.”

Alex waited for the jolt that should have come with his touch, with the words she had longed to hear only a day ago. Instead, she found hollowness where her heart should have been. She tried to replay what he’d said, thinking she might have been too stunned to respond, but instead of her soulmate’s voice, she heard that of the Archangel Michael.

Sometimes the soulmate you’re destined to have isn’t the
best match for you. Sometimes lives are too separate. Too much has happened on each of your individual paths, too many responsibilities get in the way…too many choices are made by one that the other cannot agree with.

Alex shuddered as the truth of the words settled into her soul…along with the truth of the rest of what he’d said.
“Seth needs you, Naphil. More than Aramael ever can or will.
”

Curling her nails into her palms until pain lanced through her hands, she reached deeper than she thought possible for a strength she never knew she had. Beyond anything that might have been and all that could never be, until she reached what simply was. Then, with a quiet finality, she raised her gaze to Heaven’s Power and said, “Felt, Aramael. What I felt. Past tense.”

Shock stared back at her from his eyes, becoming first denial and then raw agony as seconds stretched into an eternity. The soulmate she had denied swallowed. Once, twice, a third time. Then, without word or sound of any kind, he vanished.

After another eternity, Alex turned away from the emptiness left behind him. “Now what?” she asked Michael.

“I want you to remain here, in case Seth comes back.”

“I can leave him a note.”

“It’s best if you stay. He knows where you are.”

He’ll come back if that’s what he wants. If he isn’t damaged too badly already.

Alex glanced out the window at the vast city, the vaster world beyond, where Seth could be anywhere. “Michael, if he thinks—”

“I’ll check back when I can.”

And yet another angel vanished from her world.

“H
E’S LEFT THE
apartment.”

Lucifer raised an eyebrow at Samael. “Already? I wasn’t expecting it to happen quite so fast.”

His aide shrugged a shoulder that still moved crookedly
after their encounter. “Perhaps it was just time for things to work in our favor.”

“That’s what I love about you, Sam. Ever the optimist. We’re sure his watchdog is nowhere near?”

“Positive.”

“What about Mika’el and the others?”

“Very much occupied in looking for him but not even close.”

Lucifer shook his head. “I really didn’t expect him to make it this easy. Far be it from me to spurn such a gift, however.” Strolling past the desk, he took a peppermint from the dish, clapped Samael cheerfully on the shoulder, and headed for the door. “You have my back, Archangel. Remember you’re guarding it with your life.”

S
ETH STARED DOWN
into the dark, swirling waters below the bridge. Traffic flowed behind him in a steady hiss and swish of rubber against wet pavement, oddly calming in its rhythm. He glanced to the right, at the still-lit windows spread across the city, marking tens of thousands of buildings sheltering hundreds of thousands of mortal lives. Mortals who struggled with the same feelings he did, who fought internal wars on a daily basis, wrestling with joy and agony and a hundred other emotions that could, in a heartbeat, turn their lives upside down.

As Aramael’s words had done to him.

“She will always be my soulmate.”

He tightened his fingers around the rail and waited for the twist of pain to subside. Was the Power right? Were he and Alex intrinsically, eternally mated to one another? Was that why she had held Seth at arm’s length with such unflagging steadfastness, because she felt as Aramael did and just didn’t know how to tell him?

But if that were so, if her connection to the Power was still so complete, why would she have intimated desire for Seth? Why would she have hinted she might want a relationship with him if she didn’t think it possible?

He scowled at the city lights and the inhabitants hidden behind them. It was beyond his understanding how they survived turmoil such as this without driving themselves insane. He might be doing them a favor if he chose Lucifer’s path. At least he’d be putting them out of their misery.

Except it wasn’t that easy because he’d also be depriving them of their joy, the utter contentment they felt, as he did, in those brief moments where the universe itself seemed to smile on the complicity between them and the ones they loved. The moments that made everything else fade away into inconsequence.