Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy (12 page)

“Alive.” Elizabeth hesitated, loath to say more, as if by not disclosing details, they wouldn’t be true. But Hugh knew her too well.

“And?” he prodded.

“The baby was full term.”

“Didn’t the ultrasound last week put it at six months?”

“It did.” Elizabeth closed her eyes and massaged at a spot just above the bridge of her nose. “The technician must have screwed up. It happens.”

And it had to have happened this time, because as Warner had said, the alternative was simply impossible.

The silence at the other end of the phone drew out so long that Elizabeth opened her eyes again. Frowned. “Hugh? Are you still there? Did you hear what I said?”

“I’m here. And yes, I heard.” His voice had gone low and gruff, as if he didn’t want to be overheard at his end. “Liz—”

That damned nickname again. Elizabeth scowled. She really was going to have to break him of that. Before she could frame her usual objection, however, Hugh knocked all thought of nicknames from her head.

“Liz, Chiu might not be the only one.”

W
ORD WAS DEFINITELY
getting around.

Aramael eyed the three Fallen Ones forming a semicircle around him and then sized up his surroundings. With a twelve-foot-high chain-link fence at his back, a deserted warehouse parking lot stretching beyond his stalkers, and not another soul in sight, his chances of escape looked bleak. Weariness crept over him. Three of them, one of him. Bloody Hell. If his last few demises had been painful, this one was shaping up to be downright brutal.

His predators drew nearer. Aramael tensed, curling his hands into fists. He’d tried a variety of responses to these attacks, and had learned death came fastest when he fought hardest. His ego took less of a beating when he resisted, too. He launched himself at the nearest Fallen One, his fist connecting with a cheek. A foot merged with his rib cage in retaliation, driving out any satisfaction.

Aramael landed on his knees with a grunt. He staggered upright, but another blow in the small of his back sent him down again. They didn’t give him another opportunity to rise.

Knowing any attempt at self-protection would only prolong matters, Aramael resisted the urge to curl into a ball. He tried to determine where each of his attackers stood, not because he could do anything to them, but because it distracted him from his bones splintering, his body turning to pulp. The now-familiar red haze began to descend and he braced for the unpleasant sensation of death.

A gust of wind drove grit into his mouth. Shouts came. Cries of pain that weren’t his. And then…nothing. Nothing but the sound of his own harsh breathing in his ears. His
own blood rushing through his veins and dripping onto the pavement.

He waited for the blows to resume. Then, when they didn’t, for his body to begin its inevitable healing. Bones knit together, internal organs stopped bleeding, ruptured vessels repaired themselves. The haze receded. Aramael cracked open his eyelids and stared at his enemies, scattered on the pavement around him. He frowned.
What the hell—?

When enough of his pieces had moved back to where they belonged, he pushed himself gingerly into a sitting position, surveyed the Fallen Ones, and then raised his gaze to a form perched atop the fence. His jaw went slack. Cold fingers of fear—true fear—wrapped around his belly.

Dropping to the ground, the Archangel stalked toward him, silent, watchful, grim. Aramael climbed to his feet and, heart thundering, eyed the warrior. Disbelief shocked through him.

Over his entire existence, he’d rarely had more than a glimpse of any of the reclusive Archangels—other than when Raphael and Uriel had thrown him out of Heaven—but he didn’t remember seeing this one at all. If he wasn’t mistaken…

The Archangel stopped a few feet away and folded his glossy black wings against his back. Aramael drew tall.

“I won’t go without a fight,” he snarled. “I don’t care who ordered it.”

The Archangel raised an eyebrow. “I’ve seen you fight,” he responded. “Forgive me if I’m not that concerned.”

Aramael glared at him. The Archangel was right. He couldn’t even best a Fallen One and he wanted to stand up to one of Heaven’s enforcers? Even at the peak of his angelic strength as a Power, he’d been no match for an Archangel.

Especially if this Archangel was who Aramael thought he was.

“So is this how it ends? She changes her mind and, just like that, I’m exiled to Limbo?”

“If that were her wish, then yes. That would be exactly how it would end.”

Aramael wiped at the blood trickling from his nose. Details about the newcomer began to filter through.
Wings folded.
Archangels only folded their wings when they were relaxed.
Expression bland.
No Heavenly fire glowed in the green gaze regarding him with such—disdain? Aramael bridled anew and drew himself to his full height.

“You have issues with me, Black One?” he challenged.

The Archangel’s wings unfurled ever so slightly at the slur. A reference not to the color of his wings, but to the black souls his kind were said to possess. Souls burned by Hellfire itself when they forced Lucifer across the barrier between Heaven and Hell, into the realm the One had allowed him. An unsubstantiated rumor, but one that nonetheless enjoyed widespread belief among angelkind.

“Watch yourself, Power,” the Archangel drawled. “I may not exile you to Limbo, but I’d be quite happy to let these three at you again.” He furled his wings. “And to answer your question, any issues I might have are irrelevant.”

“Then suppose you tell me what is relevant.”

“My task. And yours.”

Aramael frowned. “Task?”

“Your Creator needs you, Aramael of the Powers.” The Archangel smiled tightly. “And judging by the company you keep, you need me.”

A
lex paused, coffee cup halfway to her mouth, as a man slid into the restaurant booth opposite her. Showing none of her surprise at the intrusion, she ran a cop’s gaze over him. Early forties; closely shorn dark hair salted with gray; an off-the-rack suit sitting across his shoulders in a way that hinted at regular exercise. She raised an eyebrow at the sunglasses hiding his eyes.

“Vancouver PD, I presume?” She took the sip of coffee he had interrupted, and then set the cup on the table beside the remains of her breakfast.

Her uninvited companion’s lips curved upward. But only slightly. “You sound like you were expecting me.”

“Not really. But I’m not surprised Riley sicced you on me.”

The man hadn’t removed his sunglasses yet, and Alex steeled herself against a surge of annoyance at the intimidation tactic.

“How did you know where to look for me?” Pretending idleness, she flipped the page of the newspaper she’d been scanning.

“You needed breakfast. On a cop’s salary, you wouldn’t be going anywhere fancy. This is the closest place to your hotel.”

Not bad.

“Hugh Henderson,” he added. “Detective, Sex Crimes. Aren’t you going to ask why I’m here?”

“I’m guessing Riley hopes you can get more information out of me than she did.” Alex sighed and rested her chin in one hand. “And that you ran Seth’s name and came up dry.”

The sunglasses reflected her own gaze back to her. After a long moment, Henderson slipped them off and tucked them into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Light glinted off the plain gold band he wore on his left ring finger. Hazel eyes regarded her coolly.

“You knew we wouldn’t get anything.”

Alex nodded.

“So that’s not really his name, then.”

Alex moved her hand up to rub a temple. How to phrase this so she didn’t dig her current hole any deeper? And so Henderson didn’t accompany her back to the airport and put her on the next flight home?

“It’s the name I know him by,” she hedged.

Henderson’s gaze narrowed and several long seconds passed. “Twenty-eight years,” he said finally.

“Pardon?”

“That’s how long I’ve been a cop. Twenty-eight years.” He paused as a waitress approached with a coffeepot and refilled Alex’s cup, waving her off when she reached for his. When they were alone again, he looked up with a knock-off-the-bullshit expression. “I know evasiveness when I see it, Detective, and I don’t give a rat’s ass if you’re here unofficially or not. I don’t appreciate having a colleague try to snow me.”

Adjusting her estimate of his age a few years upward, Alex looked out the window at the pedestrians on the sidewalk. A child in a yellow raincoat gave her a shy smile and wave as he trotted past the restaurant at his mother’s side. She watched the bright spot of color until parent and
offspring disappeared from sight. A hard lump settled in her throat.

If she couldn’t help Seth after all, if he couldn’t stop the coming war, what would happen to humanity? What would happen to Nina, already so fragile, and all the yellow-raincoated children of the world?

She swallowed the lump.

“Thirteen years,” she said, returning her gaze to Henderson. “That’s how long
I’ve
been a cop. I don’t snow colleagues.”

Henderson toyed with a spoon on the table before him. “But you still won’t give me answers.”

“I can’t.”

“There’s a difference between can’t and won’t, Detective Jarvis.”

Alex held his gaze without blinking. “I know the difference, Detective Henderson.”

A flush of color rose from beneath Henderson’s collar. Alex heaved an inward groan. Great. That was all she needed to do, piss off a cop in his own jurisdiction when she had no real business being here in the first place—no business she could discuss, anyway. She leaned her elbows on the table and threaded her hands into her hair, imagining herself in Henderson’s shoes and knowing she’d react in exactly the same way. She had to give the man something. Some tidbit to appease him.

Henderson cleared his throat. Alex held up one hand to forestall him, leaning her head sideways into the other.

“You know about the serial killer we had in Toronto last month.”

A blink acknowledged the sudden change in subject.

“Seth—Mr. Benjamin was—” Alex hesitated, framing her words with utmost care.
A tidbit, not a five-course meal.
“He was instrumental in the solving of the case.”

Henderson waited and Alex had to grit her teeth to keep herself quiet. She decided she preferred being on the business end of that particular interrogation tactic. More seconds
passed. A tiny glint of humor moved across Henderson’s gaze, an acknowledgement of the stalemate.

“Instrumental how?” he asked.

She had to force the words out. “I can’t say.”

The flush returned and crept upward, staining Henderson’s jawline. “Is there anything you
can
say, Detective Jarvis?”

“Mr. Benjamin didn’t want his involvement widely known. He gave us no information about himself and we were in no position to force the issue.”

“And I can confirm this by talking to—?” The Vancouver detective’s voice was tight.

Alex recalled Roberts’s offer when he’d shown her Seth’s photo—
call me. I’ll do what I can
—and hoped to hell he’d meant it.

“My supervisor.” She sighed. “Staff Inspector Doug Roberts.”

A
RAMAEL INSPECTED HIS
image in the mirror and then tossed the damp, crumpled paper towel into the garbage can. He hadn’t been able to wash away all the traces of his latest beating, but at least his appearance wouldn’t draw too much attention anymore. Especially not in this place.

He dodged the door as a man pushed into the bathroom and staggered toward the row of urinals along one wall. With a grimace, Aramael stepped into the narrow corridor, trying not to breathe too deeply of the stench of beer and misery oozing from the walls. A throb of music from the strip club overhead accompanied him back to the shabby basement bar.

His gaze traveled the half dozen patrons lining the stools along the counter, each seeking refuge from the world in varying states of inebriation. It was no wonder the Archangel had chosen this place. Most of these mortals had already turned from their Guardians, making it unlikely that a Fallen One would wander in to disturb the tête-à-tête he had
requested. A tête-à-tête he’d made clear he wanted kept secret.

Aramael’s gaze settled on a set of wing tips jutting over the top of the booth at the far end of the room. Threading his way past a battered pool table and the clients seated at the bar, he slid into the seat opposite the Archangel. Not a single head turned to mark his presence.

The Archangel surveyed him, toying with one of the glasses on the table. “Not much better, but you’ll do. We’ll have to see about getting you a clean set of clothes. That’s Scotch, by the way.” He nodded at the glass in front of Aramael. “You looked like you needed it.”

Aramael ignored the drink. “
We
aren’t doing a bloody thing until
you
tell me what the hell is going on. And who you are.”

“You know who I am.”

“No.” Aramael paused. “But I suspect.”

“My name is Mika’el.”

So it
was
him. Mika’el. Legend among his own kind, the most powerful of all the Archangels, rumored to have defied the cleansing of free will among the Heavenly host and to have been banished to the mortal realm for his insub-ordination.

Aramael stared at the angel on the other side of the booth, wondering what the sentence had done to him, contemplating the eternity he himself would endure here. A sliver of dread pierced his heart. Even if he did manage to find Alex, and even if he were to reestablish what had been taken from them, and even if she lived an extraordinarily long life, at some point she would be gone and he would find himself just like Mika’el, living a life of eternal solitude.

He backed away from the abyss behind the thought. He didn’t need to go there. Not yet. Picking up the drink, he swirled the amber liquid in one direction, then the other. “The stories were true, then.”

“That would depend on the stories.”

“You defied the One and were banished to Earth.”

Mika’el snorted. “Wrong on both counts. I didn’t defy her, and I left of my own accord.”