Sins of the Warrior (17 page)

She pushed into her supervisor’s office, closed the door, and waited in silence for Roberts to look up again from his paperwork. He threw down his pen and spread his hands wide.

“I have no words,” he said. “None.”

Neither did she.

“You know the entire thing was caught on video.”

She closed her eyes.

“A man with wings, hovering twenty feet in the air, holding a sword, delivering what can only be described as a warning. And then, when he’s finished, he swoops down to where you’re standing—you, a visibly identifiable police officer—wraps you in his wings, and the two of you disappear. How in the
hell
am I supposed to spin this, Alex?”

“You can’t,” she said. “I know you thought it best to keep the angel element quiet. For the record, I agreed with you after I thought it through. But—”

“But he”—Roberts waved at the television in the corner—”didn’t.”

Alex glanced at the screen, frozen on an image of Michael descending toward her, his black wings outstretched and expression fierce. She shivered and turned back to her supervisor. “No. He didn’t.”

Leaning back in his chair, he linked his fingers behind his head, stared at her, and muttered, “Fuck.”

Alex indicated one of the visitors’ chairs with a tilt of her head, and Roberts gave her a
whatever
shrug. She sat, leaning forward to balance elbows on knees, the sword ever-present against her spine. “What does the brass say?”

“You’re on paid leave until they decide what to do with you.”

She’d expected as much, but she still felt compelled to argue the decision. “I can be more help here than sitting on my ass at home.”

“This video isn’t like the one from the Parliament explosion, Detective. Your face is crystal clear and being shown worldwide. You cannot effectively do your job when you have that kind of recognition. We’ve already had thousands of calls asking about the police officer who was taken by the angel. If you’re seen on the street, you’ll be mobbed.” Roberts scowled. “And if you’re here in the office, Boileau will have you handcuffed and escorted to either Ottawa or jail, neither of which I want to see happen.”

Alex contemplated her folded fingers. So that was it. Thirteen years on the job, and just like that, she was done. The emptiness inside her grew a little bigger. Roberts sighed.

“Look, I know this is hard. Keep a low profile for a couple of weeks, and then we’ll see how things stand, all right? I’ll try to get Boileau to climb down off his high horse in the meantime, and maybe…maybe you can still find Nina.”

She lifted her gaze to his. Tightened her lips in a pretend smile. Pushed to her feet. “Sure,” she said. “Maybe I’ll do that.”

Roberts stood up from his chair. “I’ll work on him,” he said. “Boileau, I mean. I’ll do what I can.”

She nodded. “Of course.”

Silence fell, awkward and heavy with things left unsaid. Things like
goodbye
and
it’s been nice knowing you
. Because they both knew how much could happen in two weeks. Alex roused herself to leave. She stopped halfway to the door.

“One thing, Staff. The two names I entered into the Interpol database. If anything comes through on either of them, particularly the female, I need to know. ASAP.”

Interest flared in her supervisor’s expression. A glimmer of hope.

“She can help?”

Alex hesitated. Michael wasn’t looking for Emmanuelle on behalf of humankind, and he’d said nothing about her helping the mortal world if they did find her. But if she took over as Heaven’s leader, if she could help the angels win the war against Hell—against Seth—then surely the world could only benefit.

Surely.

Before she could voice what she only half-believed, the cell phone at her waist vibrated. She unclipped it, saw Henderson’s name on the display, and thumbed the answer button. “I’m fine,” she told her Vancouver counterpart.

“Oh, I have no doubt of that,” Henderson’s voice drawled in her ear. “You look quite hale in all those videos I’ve been watching. Michael looks good, too. A little on the moody side, maybe, but otherwise fine.”

Alex choked back a snort of laughter. Trust Henderson to make light of the situation. “I’m in a meeting right now,” she said. “Can I call you back?”

“Having your butt suspended?”

“Put on paid leave. How did you know?”

“It makes sense from their perspective. Everyone will be scared shitless to work with you, and even if they weren’t, with the kind of notoriety you just gained, you’d be more hindrance than help.”

She glanced toward the windows overlooking the main office. The blinds were open, and Raymond Joly’s grim gaze met and held hers. Then, with unmistakable deliberation, he turned his back on her. A new, small ache took up residence beneath Alex’s breastbone.

“I suppose you’re right.”

“None of that matters, however, because I think we’ve found her, Alex. I think we’ve found Emmanuelle.”

Alex sucked in a sharp breath, automatically seeking Michael. She found him leaning against the edge of her desk in the center of the office. Their gazes met. Locked. Then, reading something in her expression, he strode toward her.

“Did you hear me?” Henderson asked. “I said, I think we’ve found Emmanuelle.”

Roberts’s door crashed open, and Michael plucked the cell phone from her fingers. Alex surrendered it without argument, Henderson’s words ringing in her ears, drowning out whatever Michael said to him now.
We’ve found her…we’ve found Emmanuelle.

Words of satisfaction. Of hope.

For everyone but Alex.

She held onto the chair’s armrests with aching fingers. If Hugh was right, if Emmanuelle had been found, it was over. Heaven would no longer need her. Michael would have no reason to continue protecting her. She would be on her own again, with no one to stop Seth from coming for her. Taking her. Binding her to him for all eternity…

In Hell itself.

She struggled for air, trying to remember how to breathe, as cold, quiet terror unfurled in her chest. She’d thought she could handle this. Thought she would be ready when the time came, that she had come to terms with the idea. She’d been wrong.

She’d been wrong, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

A hand settled on her shoulder and she jumped. Then, slowly, she turned her gaze up to meet the farewell waiting for her in Michael’s emerald eyes.

“I DON’T UNDERSTAND.” ALEX
stared at Michael, unable to process what he’d just told her. What did he mean, go with him? Go where?

Somewhere in the background, she was aware of Roberts watching in dumbfounded silence. Of other faces gathering on the other side of the window.

Michael gave her an impatient shake, fingers digging into her shoulders. “What’s not to understand? I need you to come with me to Vancouver, Alex. To speak with Emmanuelle.”

“But I thought—once we found her, I thought I was done. I thought—”
I thought you were going to leave me
. She couldn’t make herself say the words.

Silence. Then Michael’s fingers brushed back the hair from her face and tipped her chin up. Impatience gentled to compassion in his green gaze.

“It’s not time yet,” his voice was gruff. “I still need your help, so I get to protect you for a while longer.”

Relief and gratitude collided in Alex’s chest.
Get to protect you
. Not just
I can
, but
I get to
. Her chin wobbled. Fiercely, she blinked back tears. She would
not
lose it. Not here, not in the office with everyone watching.

Hell, not at all, if she didn’t want to go over the edge permanently. She sucked in a steadying breath.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Emmanuelle and I…” Michael trailed off, glancing at Staff Inspector Roberts. “How much does he know?”

“More than he thinks,” Alex said. “And more than he’d like to.”

Michael extended a hand to her. “May I?”

Frowning, she placed her hand in his. The office around her shifted, shimmered, and dissolved into an indistinct mass. A nothingness made of somethings she couldn’t quite grasp, possibilities that moved further out of reach when she tried to see them. A tremor of disquiet slid down her spine. She pulled back instinctively, but Michael held fast.

“Don’t let go,” he warned.

Alex stared at the blur around them. The hairs along her arms stood on end. “Or?”

“You’ll disintegrate.”

Her fingers gave an involuntary twitch and his grip tightened.

“I’m serious, Alex. I’ve made your energy vibrate faster than that of the world around you. Not quite the level of my own, but close. If I lose physical contact with you, the results will be catastrophic.”

She sucked in a quick breath. She wondered what the definition of
catastrophic
might be, but decided she’d rather not know. “Is this…?”

“Heaven? No. I can’t increase your energy to that frequency. You wouldn’t survive, even with your immortality. This is…between.”

Between. The word fell into the stillness around them, swallowed. Alex shivered. No, this nothingness couldn’t be Heaven. Hell, maybe, but not Heaven.

“Limbo, actually,” Michael said, as if he’d heard her thoughts. “Or at least, near to where Limbo used to be.”

Lovely.

Trying not to cling too hard to the hand holding hers, Alex straightened her shoulders and firmed her jaw.
Between
, near where Limbo used to be, wasn’t somewhere she cared to remain for long.

“You wanted to tell me about Emmanuelle,” she said.

Michael’s face took on a granite-like quality above her. For several heartbeats, he said nothing, staring over her head. Then he sighed. “Emmanuelle was—is—my soulmate. We didn’t part on good terms.”

Her hand twitched in his again, and her mind twisted in on itself, trying to follow two disparate lines of thought at the same time. The Archangel Michael—Heaven’s greatest warrior, fierce and focused and possibly the only thing holding together the angelic forces right now—had a soulmate? Had once loved someone?

And what the hell did he mean, they hadn’t parted on good terms? How not good? Was this why Emmanuelle kept company with mortals who had turned their backs on Heaven?

Alex held up her free hand, as much to stop her runaway brain as to ward off anything Michael might say. She scowled at him. First things first.

“Define
not good
.”

Michael’s hard gaze met hers. “Emmanuelle saw no end to the dispute between her parents. No end to the war. She foresaw their destruction of one another, and rather than stay to watch their decline, she left. I accused her of running away. She accused me of choosing my loyalty to the One over our connection. We haven’t spoken since.”

Alex’s jaw went slack. A terrifying sense of déjà vu gripped her chest and made it hard to breathe. “You mean the woman…angel…being”—she waved her free hand impatiently—”whatever the hell she is—”

“As the daughter of the One, she is a god in her own right.”

“What
ever
,” she snapped. “It doesn’t change the fact she ran away from her responsibility just like Seth did, and now you’re proposing she take over Heaven and lead the angels against him in war. How in bloody fucking
hell
is that supposed to work?”

“I don’t know,” Michael snarled back. He made a visible effort at control and the fingers crushing hers eased their grip. “I don’t know. But when I say she’s our only hope, I mean it. Without her, we’re done. We have nothing else.”

Alex dropped her gaze to the hand holding hers. That grip, the strength of his fingers, the warmth of his skin, was all she had in this place. The only concrete thing in the nothingness of
between
. The only thing holding her in existence. She would disintegrate if he lost his hold on her, he’d said. Her hand went limp in his. She would disintegrate, dissolve, disappear to where none of this would be her concern, none of it would matter…

To where Seth could never find her and she would never have to face an eternity of all the losses she had suffered.

You’ve done enough
, her inner voice whispered.
Done enough, given enough, lost enough. If you stay, you can’t win. You can’t beat Seth. You can’t trust Bethiel to kill you if you don’t find Mittron. This might be—
will
be—your only chance
.

She began a slow pull away from Michael’s touch. Then, with freedom a heartbeat away, when only their fingertips still touched, her feet settled back onto the carpeted floor of her staff inspector’s office and Roberts’s harsh voice intruded.

“Detective, I asked you a question. Who the hell is Emmanuelle?”

“I’m sorry.”

Alex continued throwing clothes into the duffle bag on her bed. She didn’t respond to the Archangel behind her. Couldn’t, because her throat was too full of the pain of unshed tears to allow room for words. Wouldn’t, because she was just too angry.

“I know what you wanted to do,” Michael pressed. “And I’m sorry I couldn’t allow it.”

She should have moved faster. Then he wouldn’t have guessed her intention. Wouldn’t have been able to take her out of the place between in time to stop her. She blinked hard. Damn him to hell for not letting her go when she had the chance—probably her only chance—to escape.

“If I didn’t need you—”

She whirled and threw a balled-up sweater at him. “Fuck you!” she snarled. “And
fuck
what you need. Do you realize what you’ve done to me? Do you have any idea what my life will be like for all of eternity?
Eternity
, Michael. I will lose every single person I have ever loved or cared for, I will live forever with those losses, and Seth—
Seth
, Michael—will force me into Hell with him. He will force me to be at his side and in his bed, and I won’t be able to do a goddamn thing to stop him.
Nothing
.”

Michael closed his eyes on an emotion she couldn’t read. A muscle flickered in front of his ear. For a heartbeat—a single, tremulous, daring to hope heartbeat—Alex wondered if she might have made him understand. If he might reconsider. If he might—