Eve of Chaos (21 page)

Where could he
turn? Uriel was his first choice, but if the archangel suspected that Alec was
a danger to himself or others, he would tell Michael and Gabriel. They would kill
him, Alec had no doubt. But who else had answers? Who would protect him if they
discovered his secret?

There was only
one place he could go where he would be accepted as he was. Whether that was
also the place where he would find answers was something he’d determine when he
got there.

Shifting before
he could change his mind, Alec entered Shamayim—the First Heaven, abode of his
parents. His booted feet hit the dirt with a thud and he took a deep breath to
regain his bearings. The neatly tilled rows stretching out in front of him
caused a pang in his chest. There had been a time when he couldn’t imagine his
life being anything other than that of a farmer.

He wasn’t that
guy anymore.

So a man will
leave his father and mother and be united with his woman...

“Cain!”

Alec turned his
head and found his father at the far end of the field. Adam dug the plow tip
into the dirt and tied the reins of his mule around a handle to keep the beast
in place.

Shifting to a
spot just a few feet away, Alec offered a wary smile and spoke in Hebrew by
habit.
“Shalom,

Abba.”

“Your mother has
been missing you,” Adam said gruffly, pushing his hat back from a sweat-slick
forehead. His dark eyes were assessing, watchful.

Alec resisted the
urge to bristle at the thinly veiled chastisement. “I miss you both, too,” he
replied tersely. “It’s crazy down there. There’s not enough time in the day,
even when the days are endless.”

He’d learned to
include his father in his replies, but Alec resented the fact that Adam
couldn’t say anything remotely supportive or appreciative. Abel had always
accepted their father’s distance without issue, but it ate at Alec. When he’d
been younger and more hotheaded, he would pick fights to ease some of the sting.

“How is
Evangeline?”

The question
startled Alec. He hadn’t been aware that his father knew, nor cared, about the
details of his life. “She’s perfect. I’m the one who’s fucking everything up,
as usual.”

“Something
wrong?”

“What do you
know about the archangels?”

“I know you’re
one now. Who would’ve thought, eh?”

Alec bit back
harsh words. Of course his father wouldn’t expect him to attain such heights.
“Yeah. Would Mom know more about them?”

A fond smile
curved Adam’s mouth. “She’s a woman and a mother, she knows everything. Plus
she took a bigger bite of the apple.”

“Right.” Alec
turned to face the large cottage shielded from the sun by a copse of trees. As
an afterthought before departing, he tossed over his shoulder, “Good seeing
you, Abba.”

“Are you staying
for dinner?”

“I might.
Depends.”

“Not enough time
in the day,” Adam parroted with a mocking tone.

Alec shifted to
the cottage, pausing outside of it. Behind him, the bare field was hot. Here in
the shade, the temperature was ideal. The home had been built like a fairy-tale
cottage, a whimsical request from his mother that his father had spent years
seeing to fruition.

A familiar and
beloved figure filled the top half of the Dutch front door.

“You just going
to stand there gawking?” his mother asked, pulling open the bottom section. She
dried her hands on an apron wrapped around her waist and held her arms out to
him. “You look like shit.”

“While you look
beautiful, Ima.” He stepped into her embrace and pulled her close. His nostrils
filled with her unique scent and some of the vibrating anxiety inside him
calmed.

Withdrawing, he
smiled down at her. The phrase “you haven’t aged a day” applied to both of his
parents. They were arrested in time with the appearance of mortals in their
late forties.

“Don’t jest,”
she chided, examining his features with narrowed eyes. “You look sick. You’re
pale, and the skin around your eyes looks bruised.”

A mirror wasn’t
necessary to confirm her words. He felt wrung out. The fact that it showed was
alarming. He was an archangel, damn it. He should be healthier and more
powerful than he’d ever been in his life.

Her cool hands
brushed over his face, pushing his hair back from his forehead and smoothing
his brow. “You need looking after. It’s been too long since I visited you.”

“I have
questions,” he said grimly.

She nodded.
“Come in and sit.”

Alec followed
her inside. She untied her apron while moving toward the kitchen in the back.
The scent of a cooking meal soothed something inside him. He settled on a sofa
in the family room and watched as his mother grabbed a half-filled pitcher from
the counter. By the time she reached the seating area, two glasses had
materialized on the coffee table in front of him. The darkness within him was
irritated by the offering, which made him feel like a visitor rather than a
member of the household.

Ridiculous, he
knew, but his brain wasn’t running the show.

The interior of
his parents’ home was a mix of primitive and modern. Contemporary sofas rested
on a dirt floor and trendy glass tiles decorated the walls of a kitchen that
boasted a water pump at the sink. Both his
abba
and his
ima
were
blessed with an odd amalgamation of gifts. His mother could chill liquids with a
touch and heat them just as easily. Prey came to them willingly, but they
skinned and filleted their catch by mortal means. God had made their lives
convenient in some ways, while still grounding them in the world they’d known
since Creation.

His mother sat
across from him, her long dark hair pooling on the seat behind her. She was as
lovely as she’d always been, inside and out. Her concern for him was reflected
in her brown eyes and the way she worried her bottom lip with her teeth.

“You should have
come home sooner,” she admonished. “Is there any news about Raguel?”

Alec shook his
head. “Nothing. At this point, Sammael hasn’t even acknowledged that he has
him. Shows how powerful he’s become to keep his minions quiet about something
of such magnitude.”

“He’s always
been powerful. Don’t let mortal gossip cloud your mind. You know better.”

Leaning against
the overstuffed sofa, he looked out the shaded window at the swaying branches
and asked, “Do you know what happened to the other archangels? Sandaiphon,
Jophiel, and the rest?”

His mother
reached for a glass. “No.”

“It was
suggested to me that there are only seven archangels by design.”

“Why? It places
an added burden on all of them.”

“I wonder if
that’s the point,” he murmured. “Like mischievous children, if you keep them
busy, they don’t get into trouble.”

“What kind of
trouble could they get into?” Alec exhaled harshly. “They control
mal‘akhs
and
Marks. If they found a way to work together, think of all they could
accomplish.”

His mother stilled
with her glass to her lips. “Are you talking about a coup against Jehovah?”

“A revolt maybe.
A bid for more power. Added privileges.”

The glass
returned to the table with a sharp click. “You shouldn’t say such things. You
shouldn’t even think them.”

“I should have
faith,” he bit out. “Right?”

Her arms
crossed. “When I heard that you’d been promoted, I assumed you must have found
a deeper communion with God and this advancement was your reward.”

The voices
inside him laughed at the notion and prodded him to say bitterly, “Nothing so
edifying, I’m afraid. I do the dirty work, Ima. That hasn’t changed.”

She sighed. Then
her shoulders went back, a sign of her determination to ignore his faults and
tackle the problems they created. The attitude reminded him so much of Eve that
his jaw tightened.

“So someone made
you an archangel for a price?” Her fingertips strummed silently atop the padded
arm of her wingback chair. “Who?”

“What does it
matter?”

“You are now the
most powerful weapon ever created.” Her dark eyes stared into his. “I want to
know who had the balls to pull that off. And why.”

***

“It’s like a
ghost town around here,” Rosa mumbled around a bite of double-cheeseburger.
“Brentwood is boring.”

Reed set his
soda down and lounged in the restaurant booth they occupied. “Maybe that’s the
way Grimshaw’s Beta is assuming control of the pack, by keeping them tied down
until they adjust.”

“No. It’s
because the population of Infernals in the area has dropped considerably in the
last couple of weeks. They’re all migrating to the southern half of the state.”

Hunting Eve.
Reed reached
out—Babe
?—and was reassured when she nudged him back.

Don’t worry
about me,
she scolded.

Yeah, right. He
returned his attention to his charge. “You did a smokin’ job on this latest
hunt,” he praised. “I think you set a new record for killing a gwyllion.”

“I kicked that
corno
back to Hell and I’m ready to roll.” She smiled. “Wouldn’t mind seeing
Disneyland.”

“Is that why you
wanted to meet with me face-to- face? You want a vacation?”

“I want to be
where the action is.”

Rosa resumed
eating. The burger was almost too big for her to hold. A lovely Venezuelan with
snapping hazel eyes and short, spiky black hair, she’d been in her midtwenties when
she’d been marked about five years ago and her youth stood her in good stead.
She was fast and nimble, with a fiery temper and staunch Catholic faith. Her
father had been abusive to both her and her mother. One day, she’d had enough
and she put a stop to it. Permanently.

He reached for a
french fry, grinning inside at the cause of his unusual hunger. The second
go-round with Eve had taken things between them to a whole nother level. He
wondered if she knew that. If not, he planned to bring her up to speed, pronto.
“There’s plenty of action here.”

“Not right now
there isn’t.”

“You know
something that’s got you fired up,” he said, sensing it through the connection
between them. “Spill it.”

Setting the
burger down, Rosa met his gaze. “If this is the start of Armageddon, I want to
be in the thick of it”

Reed’s brows
rose. “Is that what’s being said? That it’s the end of days?”

Marks gossiped
madly. Some of what they made up was entertaining. Some of it was dangerous.

“It’s obvious.
Satan is breeding hellhounds, Grimshaw was planning a revolt of some sort, and
every Infernal within three hundred miles has a hard-on to kill Cain’s girl.
What the—”

“No.” The denial
was out before he could censor himself.

“No?” Rosa
studied him. “Are you living in a different world than I am?”

Exhaling slowly,
he worked to suppress his jealousy. To call his response “possessive” would be
an understatement. Eve was no longer Cain’s. But for Reed to stake his claim
now would only make things more difficult for her. Many of the other Marks
resented her for the advantages they assumed she gained from Cain’s mentorship.
If they learned that she’d moved on and with whom, those resentments might
intensify, and right now she needed all the help she could get.

“I meant,” he
began, “that what is going on now doesn’t necessarily signify that it’s the
beginning of the end. There are signs that would warn us. For one, the Rapture
has yet to happen.”

“Whatever.” She
shrugged dismissively. “Just send me down there.”

Reed nodded.
“All right.”

“Yes!” Her eyes
lit with both triumph and bloodlust.

“But if I need
you somewhere else, don’t give me a hard time.”

She rolled her
eyes and grabbed her burger. “By the way, Sarakiel is trying to get a hold of
you.”

“I’ll touch
bases with her when we’re done here.”

But he didn’t.

After he watched
Rosa’s Prius pull out of the parking lot and head toward the freeway, he went
to Charleston Estates. The gated community was the home of the Black Diamond
Pack, which had recently suffered the loss of its Alpha, Charles Grimshaw.

It’s Beta—now
Alpha—was Devon Chaney. If Chaney followed precedent, he would be eager to
establish himself as stronger and more powerful than his predecessor. Reed was
counting on that impetus to make his plan work.

A guard station
stood at the entrance and the exit, and a tall stucco fence surrounded the
perimeter. Affluence and privilege were two of the words that came to mind when
one saw the exterior. But beyond the crescent moon emblem embedded in the
circular cobblestone driveway, there was nothing to betray the fact that every
single resident was a werewolf.