Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy (11 page)

“You don’t know—” Alex frowned. What the hell was that supposed to mean? An idea whispered through her mind with diaphanous fragility, dissolving before she could grasp it. She shrugged irritably, certain she was missing something obvious. “Never mind. We have to get you back to your room before someone notices you’re gone.”

Crossing the room to the door, she peered into the hallway. No one. So no alarm had been raised yet, thank God. She could just imagine Riley’s reaction to finding Seth missing from his room. One more explanation Alex wouldn’t be able to provide. Turning, she found Seth standing at her elbow. She jumped. “Shit—you have to stop sneaking up on me like that!”

“I don’t know shit.”

“Yeah. I noticed.” Alex ran a hand through her hair. How would she get him past the security guard and the electronically locked door to his ward? And how the
hell
had he gotten out in the first place?

“I don’t know Seth Benjamin.”

Seth’s voice had risen and he moved closer to her. Alex took an involuntary step back. Even without that presence she remembered about him, he was still an imposing figure.

“I know. But I’m sure it will come back to you,” she soothed, “and I’ll try to help you remember whatever I can. You just need to give it time—”

His eyes snapped black fire and he scowled at her. “I don’t know sneaking. I don’t know need. I don’t know remember!”

Alex went still. The idea returned and settled in her brain. “You don’t know language,” she whispered. “It isn’t that you won’t talk—you just don’t know how. Shit.”

Seth glowered. “I don’t know—”

“Yes, yes,” she interrupted. “You don’t know shit. But I do—and I can help. I don’t know how yet, but I’ll figure out something. I promise.” She glanced out into the hallway again. “Now, however, we really need to get you back to your room.”

“I know room.”

The relief in Seth’s voice sounded so heartfelt, Alex couldn’t help but smile.

“Good. How are you on go and stay?”

Ten minutes later, feeling as if she’d just been through a basic dog-obedience lesson, Alex joined Seth by the door, where she’d sent him on a
go
command and then convinced him to stay.

“Right. So do you think we have this straight now?” she asked. “You go to your room and stay there.”

“I go. I room. I stay.”

She opened her mouth to correct the grammar, then closed it again. Time enough for that later. “Close enough.”

“You come.”

She shook her head. “Not right now. Later.”

Seth looked doubtful. Alex gave his arm a little squeeze, knowing
later
had no meaning for him, trying to impart reassurance all the same.

“You go now. I’ll come later,” she said.

Dark eyes looked into hers, still barren of the angel she had known, but no longer entirely hollow. “Promise?” he asked.

“You know promise?”

“I know promise.”

“Then yes. I promise.”

He smiled. Trust—although he wouldn’t know the word—settled across his expression.

“I go now.”

And he did.

Alex stared at the emptiness vacated by Seth. She’d been so focused on the language issue she’d forgotten the whole angelic thing. Forgotten she dealt with an otherworldliness she still hadn’t quite come to terms with. Lifting a hand to push back her hair, she stared at its tremble and tucked it into her jeans pocket instead. Hell. An angel without a memory who still retained his powers. That couldn’t be good.

She wondered what other talents Seth might have discovered
beyond his Houdini act. What other talents he even possessed. Her scars prickled. Could he still heal? Still bring people back from the brink of death? A host of potential conflicts raced through her mind at the possibility. If he should display his talents to others—

Hell.

Alex headed for the file cabinet. One crisis at a time, she told herself. Communication first, then worry about the rest. She tugged Riley’s keys from the lock, no longer caring what observations the psychiatrist might have made. Not after what she’d just figured out for herself.

Heaven’s contingency plan was screwed unless she could find a way to fix him.

S
ETH WATCHED FROM
his window as Alexandra Jarvis walked to the waiting vehicle and got in. He touched his throat, tracing lines like those he’d seen on her.
Pain.
He frowned at the sensation—at the idea it contained which he couldn’t quite grasp. The vehicle below began to move away.

He curled his fingers into his palms, discomfort fluttering in his belly. He wanted to go with her but held himself still. While he didn’t fully understand the
later
she had spoken of, he did know her promise to return. And, though he couldn’t have said how, he did know her. Knew her touch, knew her eyes, knew the feeling—named or not—that had surged in his breast when he met her gaze.

Which was more than he could say about anything he’d seen or experienced since he’d opened his eyes and stared at Dr. Riley for the first time.

The car carrying Alexandra Jarvis disappeared around a corner and Seth moved his hand from his throat and placed it against the grated window. He also knew the energy he’d found waiting inside him when Alex had left his room, the energy that let him think himself to her side. Stretching his mind ever so slightly, he tested it again. Metal and glass dissolved beneath his touch to let in the fresh, salt-tinged
breeze. The discomfort at his center gave way to another feeling—again unnamed, but this time simply right.

Breathing deeply, Seth settled in to wait.

“D
R. RILEY?”

Tearing her gaze from Melanie Chiu’s draped form on the steel table, Elizabeth took in the grim expression of Aaron Warner, the obstetrician who had joined her. A pallor underlay his skin and he still wore bloodied scrubs.

“What happened?” she asked, tipping her head toward the table.

“Beats the hell out of me,” Warner muttered. He shook his head, staring past her at Chiu’s covered body. “I’ve never seen anything like it. A week ago the ultrasound said she was only six months along, but that baby was as fully developed as any I’ve ever delivered. And it came so damned fast—”

His voice trailed off into silence, broken only by the sound of a trolley passing by in the corridor outside. Warner swallowed.

“It ripped her apart from the inside,” he finished hoarsely. “It broke her pelvis, for God’s sake. She bled out before we could mop up enough to see what to clamp. We just couldn’t move fast enough.”

“And the baby?”

“A girl. She’s fine. Perfect. Tested ten on both Apgars.” Scraping off the cap he still wore, Warner tossed it onto a pile of soiled linens in the corner, then placed his hands on his hips. He scowled at the bed. “What the hell was this, Dr. Riley?”

Elizabeth crossed her arms against a sudden chill. “I wish I could tell you. Ever since Melanie was admitted, she insisted she didn’t have sex until the second of September. That’s three weeks ago yesterday.”

Warner flicked her an impatient look. “That’s impossible.”

“I know.” She sighed. “There had to have been some kind of trauma she was hiding; something she blocked out.”

“You still thinking rape? Maybe someone gave her GHB.”

“Maybe, but it’s unlikely. If it was Rohypnol, she would have remembered flashes by now, at least of the events leading up to the rape. There’s also the possibility of incest. Whatever it was, chances are we’ll never know. Not now. Do you know if anyone has called Child Services about the baby?”

Warner nodded. “Pediatric wants to keep her for a few days of observation, but someone is coming to start the paperwork tomorrow. Did you want to speak to them?”

“What’s the point? With Melanie gone, I can’t offer them anything.” Elizabeth stepped out of the way of a maintenance worker wheeling a bucket and mop into the room. “But if her family ever shows up, make sure someone calls me.”

A
LEX SET HER
suitcase on the desk and surveyed the hotel room, from dingy walls to dingier carpets to questionable-looking bed linens. It sure as hell wasn’t the Ritz, but she’d chosen it for its proximity to the hospital, not its level of luxury. Besides, she’d stayed in far worse when working undercover.

She pulled open the curtains and looked out through a window in need of washing. A narrow parking lot separated her from the solid brick wall of the neighboring building. Lovely. Good thing she wasn’t here for the scenery any more than she was for the luxury.

Leaving the curtains open, Alex tugged the cell phone from her waist and glanced at its display. It was already six o’clock, which made it nine in Toronto. She should give Jen a call, she supposed, to let her know she’d arrived safely and see how Nina was doing. She should, but she really didn’t want to face her sister’s questions about Seth and what she planned to do. Because the truth was, she hadn’t the faintest idea. Knowing Seth had lost his capacity for language was one thing; figuring out how to fix it was quite another. Alex
set the cell phone beside her unopened suitcase and scrubbed both hands over her face.

Even if he could speak, there was still the little matter of his memory—or more specifically, the lack thereof. What would it matter if she could communicate with him if she didn’t know what the hell to tell him? Heaven’s contingency plan, he’d called himself once before, but a plan for what? What exactly was he here to do?

God, what she wouldn’t give for a little divine intervention right about now. Swallowing against the tightness building in her throat, she pressed her lips together and unzipped the suitcase. No. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t go there. She
couldn’t
go there. Not when the memories were still so fresh. Not when they made her want to curl up into a ball and cease to function.

And sure as hell not when the fate of the world might hinge on figuring out what to do about Seth.

Abandoning the suitcase and scooping up her phone, she headed for the door. Food, she decided. Food, and then sleep, and then a plan.

Saving the world would just have to wait.

E
lizabeth traveled through the hospital corridors on autopilot, her mind churning at the events surrounding Melanie Chiu’s death. And that baby.

A shudder rippled through her. The infant had already been removed from the room when she arrived, but she’d gone to the nursery after she’d left delivery. A healthy girl, perfect in every way except one: her apparent age. Elizabeth would have sworn on her own life the baby was at least two weeks old instead of mere hours.

But that was as impossible as the story that had existed only in Melanie Chiu’s head. Tucking back a strand of hair, Elizabeth wished she had pushed Chiu harder, insisted the young woman delve deeper for the truth. But hindsight was always twenty-twenty, and it was too late for should-haves. Whatever trauma Chiu had hidden from Elizabeth—hidden from herself—they would never know.

Pushing into her office, Elizabeth tightened her lips at the arbitrary fragility of the human psyche, at how completely a mind could protect itself from memories it couldn’t handle. It never ceased to amaze her how some people could
suffer the most horrific of events and emerge relatively unscathed, while others folded like a house of cards. And then there were those like John Doe, whose mind had folded in on itself with a totality she had never encountered. An absoluteness that challenged not just her, but the dozen or more colleagues with whom she’d consulted.

With a clinical curiosity, she wondered for a moment where Detective Jarvis sat on the spectrum, and then shook her head. She had enough patients on her hands without looking for extras—Alex Jarvis was already under competent care and didn’t need her help. Doe, on the other hand…

Reaching her desk, she looked down at the name she’d scrawled across the pad of paper. Seth Benjamin. A clue to Doe’s identity, and the beginning of a whole new set of questions. Questions such as how he and Detective Jarvis were connected; why Jarvis downplayed that connection after flying three thousand miles to see him; and what other secrets the detective hid, not just from Elizabeth, but from her own doctor. Her fellow cops. Scowling at the way her thoughts kept coming back around to the Toronto detective, Elizabeth settled into the chair and lifted the phone’s receiver. Hugh Henderson answered on the first ring.

“It’s me,” she announced. “Chiu had her baby. And I have a name for John Doe.”

Henderson heaved an exaggerated sigh. “You really aren’t going to deal with Daniels on the Doe thing, are you?”

“No.”

“Hold on.” Papers rustled across the line and then Hugh said, “Fine. Start with Doe. What do you have?”

“The detective from Toronto flew in this afternoon. She identified him as Seth Benjamin.”

A pause, and then, “That’s it? No date of birth?”

“Just a name.”

Hugh grunted. “I’ll pass it on to Daniels, but he probably won’t find much. What else did she tell you?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing? Does she know him or not?”

“She says she only knows his name.”

“But you think she knows more.”

“A lot more. He recognized her. Called her by name.”

“I thought he didn’t speak. That he had that aphrodisia or whatever you called it.”

“Aphasia. And he did. Until he saw her. Her name is the first and only thing he’s said.”

Hugh sighed. “Hell. All right, tell me where she’s staying and I’ll have a talk with her in the morning. She may be more willing to speak to a colleague.”

Elizabeth snorted. “I doubt it, but be my guest.”

“And Chiu? You said she had the baby? How is it?
What
is it, boy or girl?”

“Girl. Nine pounds, five ounces.”

“Ouch. That had to hurt. Chiu is what, ninety-eight pounds soaking wet? Is she all right?”

Elizabeth leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. “She’s dead. The attending obstetrician said the birth was so fast they didn’t stand a chance. The delivery room was like something out of a horror movie.”

Hugh went quiet on the other end of the line. Then, softly, he said, “Shit. Poor kid. And the baby?”