Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy (15 page)

He’d seen.

Alex slanted a glance toward the cot and winced. The bolts that had secured the bed to the floor now lay free of their moorings, scattered across the tile. First the window grate, and then Seth’s disappearing act, and now this.

Not good. Not good at all.

A hundred possible outcomes to the situation raced through her mind, all of them ending with Seth, of unknown and possibly uncontrollable powers, going up against a curious and frightened system. Not just
not good
, but downright dangerous.

She had to get him out of here. But how?

And to where?

She spun back to Seth, the seeds of a vague, desperate plan beginning to form. “Wait,” she said in a low voice, looking pointedly toward the window and knowing she had about three seconds to get this across to him. “Watch. When you see me, come.”

“Come?” he echoed, taking a tentative step toward her.

“Not now,” Alex hissed. She looked back at a visibly irritated Riley. “Later. Watch now,” she pointed toward the window, making sure her gesture was hidden from the others. “Be patient. Come later.”

“Detective,”
Riley grated.

Alex stared into Seth’s eyes, willing him to understand. “Come later,” she repeated. “When you see me out there.”

“Detective Jarvis,” the psychiatrist snapped, “either come with me now or I call security.”

“Coming,” Alex said. “I’m coming.”

D
ancing out of Mika’el’s reach, Aramael watched the Archangel swipe blood from a split lip. It marked the second blow he’d landed in this session; the second Mika’el had failed to block. And the Archangel had not yet touched him. Hard satisfaction burned in Aramael’s chest.

Mika’el regarded him with a mixture of ruefulness and approval. “You have learned well, Grasshopper.”

Grasshopper?

Mika’el waved away the question before Aramael could ask it. “Never mind. Human thing. It just means I think my job here is done.”

Aramael lowered his fists. “Done? You’re not taking me to Seth?”

“If you’re capable of slipping past an Archangel’s guard, you’re ready to take on a few cocky Fallen Ones.” Mika’el stepped past him and picked up a towel from the floor by the wall. “I told you I had better things to do than babysit you.”

“I don’t need a babysitter. But when I find Seth—”

The Archangel shot him a narrow look. “I cannot help you with Seth, Power. You must know that.”

“I knew you expected me to—” Aramael paused. Gritted his teeth. “I know I must kill Seth, but you said—”

“I said I would give what help I could. This was it.”

A flush of anger started at Aramael’s toes and spiraled upward. He supposed a part of him had suspected as much, but he hadn’t wanted to ask. And would have preferred not to know.

He wrestled with his reaction. It made sense, of course. While Mika’el may have been absent for four and a half millennia, his connections to Heaven were still strong. Traceable. The Archangel couldn’t be seen to have anything to do with what needed to be done. The alternative, however, stank.

“So that’s it, then. I’ve become the sacrificial lamb.”

“It may not go that way.”

“Fuck you, Mika’el,” Aramael snarled. “That’s exactly how it will go. These little tricks you taught me”—he waved at their informal fighting ring—“may work on the Fallen Ones, but they won’t even slow down the Appointed. Seth has his powers. I only have one shot at this, which means I’ll have to wait until he is fully engaged in wiping out my own immortality before I can move against his. My chances of surviving this are infinitesimal. You know it.”

He struggled with his breathing, facing at last what he hadn’t dared think about when the Archangel had first assigned this task. What he had tried so hard to ignore ever since. At his center, the core of loss he carried, the place that marked where he had once held Alex, became a gaping hole.

If he didn’t survive this, if he died—and he almost certainly would—he would never have the chance to know her again. Never know if what he thought he remembered had been real. If it could have been revived.

He would never know if faith could restore love.

“You know what you’re thinking isn’t possible,” Mika’el said.

Aramael shot him a filthy look. “What, now you’re a mind reader?”

“I recognize the symptoms. You’re not the only one to lose a soulmate.”

“I didn’t
lose
her. She was taken from me.”

Mika’el’s gaze narrowed. “Just how much of her do you remember?”

Aramael looked away. “Enough to know what I no longer have.”

“You never had her in the first place,” the Archangel pointed out. “And you never can. She is a mortal, Aramael, and you are and always will be an angel of the Sixth Choir. A Power. What happened between you has already caused unparalleled damage. The cardinal rule banning interaction between angels and mortals is there for a reason.”

“Fuck the cardinal rule. Heaven threw me out, remember? The rules don’t apply to me anymore. Especially once I’ve done what you ask.”

“Assuming you survive, the rules do apply,” the Archangel corrected. “If you choose otherwise, you choose to fall.”

“This, coming from the angel who has asked me to assassinate the Appointed.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it? If I go through with this, Mika’el, I’ll compromise my own soul. I’m pretty sure that will result in my fall.”

“And what if it does?” Mika’el stood tall, aloof, every inch one of Heaven’s warriors. “What if you do have to sacrifice yourself in order to stop Armageddon and save humanity? Will you deny your Creator, Power? Turn your back on her and her children?”

“Like you did?” Aramael shot back.

Before the last word had fully left his lips, he found himself against the wall, feet dangling, with Mika’el’s hand wrapped around his throat. The Archangel’s black wings spread wide. Aramael saw each individual feather, sensed the power pulsing through them. He swung at the Archangel defiantly. Missed. And with new insight, understood he had only landed those blows against the other angel because
Mika’el had let him. He might be able to fight off a Fallen One, but with or without powers, he could never hope to take on one of Heaven’s warriors.

“You know
nothing
!” Mika’el spat. “I have given my life to her a hundred thousand times over. I begged her to let me—” He broke off and his fingers tightened, digging into Aramael’s larynx.

Aramael’s lungs screamed for air and the world began to fog over. Then, as suddenly as the Archangel had seized him, he let go. Aramael slumped to the floor, blood rushing to his head, gasping for breath. Slowly his vision cleared and he sat up. Mika’el stood on the opposite side of the room, looking down onto the street from the window, his wings once more folded against his back, his shoulders sagging.

Silence reigned for a long moment, broken only by the rasp of air through Aramael’s throat. The Archangel turned to him, his gaze flat. His voice flatter. “Your Creator needs you, Aramael of the Powers. Once you have completed your task, should you survive, then your choices are your own. Be ready to leave at midnight. I’ll take you as far as I can.”

In a rush of feathers, Mika’el was gone. Aramael stared at the empty space left behind, the Archangel’s parting words lingering in the air. Then he pushed to his feet.

Mika’el had begged the One to let him—what?

“I
T’S TUCKER,” SAID
a voice when Henderson answered his cell phone. “From Homicide. You know that girl you were looking for? Katherine Gray? We have her.”

“Have her?” Henderson echoed. “As in—?”

“She’s been identified as the Jane Doe who hit the pavement two nights ago. The coroner hasn’t signed off on anything yet, but it looks like suicide. Twenty stories down, headfirst.”

Tucker’s voice droned on, but the rest of his words disappeared inside the sudden buzzing in Henderson’s head as he dropped into his chair.
Suicide.
He stared at Gray’s driver’s license photo on his desk, and the birth date jumped out
at him. His stomach twisted. She would have been twenty-seven next month. Five years younger than—the twist in his stomach became a heave and he gritted his teeth. Another needless death that he could have prevented.
Should
have prevented.

“Henderson? You still there?”

“Yeah.” Hugh swallowed a mouthful of bile and wiped a palm over his clammy forehead. “Yeah. I’m here. The coroner is sure about the ID?”

“Dental records are a match.”

Fuck.
His hand moved over his cropped head. God almighty, he hated this job sometimes. He rubbed his jaw, digging deep for the cop in him, needing it to process the news. He found only memories. Recriminations. Night-mares.

Suicide.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Right,” he said. “Thanks for letting me know. Make sure I get a copy of the report, will you?”

“Sure thing.”

“Wait. What about the baby? She was pregnant.”

“Like I said”—Tucker’s voice went grim—“twenty stories. It’ll be in the report.”

Hugh stared at the phone long after he hung up. Another mother and child dead because of him. Because he hadn’t paid enough attention, hadn’t seen the warning signs. Not even Liz could argue his responsibility this time.

His gaze moved to a stack of messages one of the admin assistants had placed on his desk. The name on the top slip of yellow jumped out at him. Father Marcus, St. Benedict’s Parish. The assistant no longer scrawled the word
again
across the top of the message, but it was still there. Unseen. Accusatory. Father Marcus had called every month for the last ten years, ever since Laura and Mitchell had died.

Unable to bring himself to speak to the man who represented the Church that had abandoned him and his family when they needed it most, Hugh had never called back.

He reached for the message, crumpled it, and then
hesitated. Smoothing it out, he stared at the X through the box marked
urgent
. A last-ditch effort to gain his attention? He toyed with the paper. Tapped it against the desktop. Then, jaw going tight, dropped it into the trash can.

Urgent or not, he still wasn’t ready to go there.

R
ILEY HAD MISSED
her true calling, Alex decided as she sat in the psychiatrist’s office, waiting for the doctor to wind down. The woman would have made a great cop with her lecture punctuated by
overstepping your bounds
,
out of your jurisdiction
, and various other references to turf and territory.

Alex endured the ordeal with as much patience as she could muster, her attention straying to the shelves behind Riley’s head and then to the seconds ticking by on the watch strapped to her wrist. How long would Seth wait?
Would
he wait? What if he turned up here, now, out of the blue? How the hell would she explain that to Riley?

Realizing her leg jittered up and down under her sweaty palm, she made herself take a deep breath and focus on stilling it. Christ, how long was this going to take?

“—understand?” Riley finished, her brows arching sharply upward and her eyes cold as she peered over the glasses perched on her nose.

Shit. Understand what?

“Of course,” she said. “You’re absolutely right about everything, Dr. Riley, and I apologize for having overstepped the way I did. I never meant to cause trouble.”

Riley glowered. “And?”

“And—?” Wasn’t that enough?

“And you’ll tell me everything you know about Seth Benjamin. No more secrets.”

Alex’s face went still. She glanced again at her watch. Ten minutes since she’d left Seth: she sure as hell hoped he had the gist of
patient
. She looked up at Riley again, searching for words—no, for sheer inspiration. But before she
could open her mouth, the doctor rose from behind the desk, her face a closed, hard mask.

“Get out,” Riley ordered.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve been a psychiatrist for thirty years, Detective Jarvis. I know when someone is preparing to lie to me and I am sick to death of your evasiveness. Get out. We’re done.”

Argument didn’t even cross Alex’s mind. As she raced for the elevator, however, she couldn’t help but reflect on the track record she seemed to be establishing where shrinks were concerned. First Bell had thrown her out of his office, and now Riley. It was almost enough to give an angel-seeing, demon-surviving cop a complex. If she’d cared.

Ten minutes later, she pulled the rental car to a stop in a no-parking zone alongside a fence thick with ivy and peered through the leaves at the hospital. Her heart sank. So many windows, all so far away. No way would she be able to spot Seth at one of them, and with that damned fence in the way, he couldn’t see her or the vehicle, either.

Resting an elbow on the steering wheel, she threaded her fingers through her hair. What the hell was she supposed to do now? For a second, she contemplated climbing the fence, perching atop it, and waving to get Seth’s attention. A brief second, because the next image that came to mind was one of her trying to convince the local constabulary she really hadn’t gone off the deep end.

Despite what Riley and Bell might otherwise tell them.

She dropped her head back against the headrest and stared at the ceiling.
Think, damn it, Jarvis. There must be some way—

“I come now?” a deep voice inquired from beside her.

“A
re you okay?” Liz Riley asked. “I can clear my schedule if you need to talk.”

Hugh rubbed a hand over his eyes. The vague tension touched off by the conversation he’d had with Detective Jarvis’s boss had escalated into a full-fledged headache with the news of Katherine Gray’s suicide. Opening his top desk drawer, he rummaged inside for the acetaminophen he kept there.

“I’m fine,” he answered Liz. “Generally pissed at myself, but fine.”

“Then what are the pain killers for?”

He pulled the receiver from his ear for a second and gave it a sour look. Then he tucked it back into the crook of his neck and opened the pill bottle—a two-handed job because of the childproof lid. “What are you, psychic?”