Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy (3 page)

And then he thought about
her
.

Alexandra Jarvis.
The name surged upward in his mind, dragging with it the dark morass he’d been avoiding for days. The doubts. The desires. Seth’s palms went damp and sweat beaded on his forehead. Doubts and desires so new to him,
so foreign, that he had kept them carefully tucked away as the time of his transition crept ever closer, afraid to examine them for fear he might be tempted to do the very thing that brought him to Mittron’s door now.

He thought back to when he’d stood in Alex’s living room, witness to her pain at losing her soulmate. He remembered how he’d wanted to reach out and comfort her. To hold her. To know her as Aramael had, only better.

If he followed the path set for him by his parents, he would never have that chance. Never even see her again unless…

Unless.

His fist tightened on the roll of papers he held. Two sheets of parchment: one in the handwriting and language of a Principality—a list of dates and events that would condemn the Highest Seraph to eternal Limbo; the other a note in his own handwriting that would absolve Mittron from responsibility.
If
he complied with Seth’s request. Given the evidence against him, Mittron would almost certainly see the benefit of the latter.

Which brought Seth back to his own choice, within his grasp but still unmade.

Lifting his head, he stared at the dark oak grain of the door. The responsibility that had been his from infancy sat like a mantle of lead across his shoulders. If he walked away, he would give up everything. His parentage, his immortality, his destiny, his power…

Everything but a handful of years with a mortal woman soulmated to another, yet irrevocably his.

Desire uncoiled in his belly. Ever since Alex’s hand had first closed over his arm in a silent plea for help, ever since that first, undeniable frisson of awareness had flared between them, he had been consumed by her. Had known that, ultimately, she belonged to him. Known it, fought it, and now…

Now he would forfeit his destiny to prove it.

Separating the papers, Seth rolled each individually and tucked them inside his sleeves.

Accusation in one, absolution in the other.

He raised his hand and knocked at Mittron’s door.

T
HE GREENHOUSE DOOR
opened and the One looked up from tamping the soil around the roots of a newly transplanted geranium. “Verchiel. Thank you for coming.”

The Dominion inclined her head, tucking her hands into the folds of her robe. “I was already on my way when Kaziel gave me your message. I thought you might want an update.”

“You read my mind.” Setting the pot aside, the One brushed soil from her fingertips. “And? Is everything ready?”

“It is. The transition will take place as scheduled tomorrow.” Verchiel’s voice trailed off into hesitance.

“But?” The One raised an eyebrow.

Verchiel shook her head. “It’s nothing, One. It really isn’t my place—”

“Look at me.”

Pale blue eyes met hers in response to the command, misery shadowing their depths, underscored by doubt. The One shook her head and sighed.

“You think too much, Dominion.”

“I know. But Mittron, One? I know we have no proof, but—”

“And do we not have faith, either?”

Verchiel whitened, and the One curled hands into fists where they rested on the potting bench. For a breath of an instant, she thought about telling the Dominion what she knew, what she planned, what she had no choice but to do. The depth of her aloneness sat like a vast, infinite pit at her center, and suddenly—desperately—she wanted to share her burden with another. To admit she was undeserving of the faith she demanded; that she sensed an indecision in her own son that jeopardized her agreement with Lucifer and the very existence of humanity. That she had failed yet again to see what was before her, and would now forfeit her own son’s life in a desperate attempt to remedy that failure.

For a breath of an instant, she wanted to confess all that and more, and then, because she was the One, she made herself voice a reassurance she did not feel. “Everything has a purpose, Verchiel. A reason.”

“Even what Mittron has done? What he might still do?”

“Even that.”

Verchiel stood by her for another moment, her doubt so loud in the silence it needed no voice. Then, without a word, the Dominion reached out and covered the One’s fisted hand with her own, squeezed gently, and departed.

“Y
OU’VE LOST YOUR
mind.” Mittron stared at the Appointed.

Seth halted his pacing by the window and scowled back at him. “Just answer the question. Can you do it or not?”

“It isn’t a question of ability. I simply won’t go against the One’s wishes like that.”

“Oh, spare me.” Seth gave a short, humorless bark of laughter. “We both know you’re way past caring about the One’s wishes, Seraph. You started this whole mess, remember? Don’t insult my intelligence.”

Mittron’s breath snagged in his throat. He didn’t pretend not to understand the Appointed, but neither did he intend to admit anything. For three weeks, he had lived with the razor-edged threat of discovery hanging over him, wondering how much Seth had figured out, how much he might have taken to his mother. Only when there had been no repercussions had he begun to relax, but never to the point of his original careless arrogance.

He wasn’t interested in returning to that state of crippling anxiety again.

No matter how intriguing he found Seth’s request.

Or how much he would like to see his own plans resurrected.

He shook his head. “Be that as it may, I am not entirely without instinct for self-preservation. Verchiel has only just stopped dogging my every step. I dare not—” he halted as
Seth tugged at the sleeve of his black tunic and produced a rolled paper. A very old paper.

Suddenly, vividly, Mittron remembered where he had last seen the Appointed. Seated in the Archives, surrounded by the records through which he searched. Had Seth found something? A shiver slid through Mittron’s chest. Impossible. He had gone through every single file in the archive himself; had made sure there was nothing
to
find. The Appointed was bluffing.

But Seth’s casual stroll across the room said otherwise.

The yellowed parchment dropped from Seth’s hand onto the desk. A film of perspiration cooled Mittron’s forehead. He swallowed.

“It’s all there,” the Appointed said. His words were as harsh as they were precise, the syllables dropping like gravel onto metal, one chunk of granite at a time. “Your deceit. Your manipulations. Bethiel recorded everything.”

Mittron reached with trembling fingers to pick up the paper. Spidery handwriting peeked out from the top edge. The air hissed from his lungs.

It couldn’t be. He’d been so careful. So certain.

“I know how you failed to cleanse Aramael properly,” Seth continued. “How you plotted for him to know his soulmate when he met her, how you arranged for a Nephilim descendant to be that soulmate. I know all of it.”

Mittron’s tongue darted out to moisten desert-dry lips. Outside the office door, footsteps and voices approached. He waited until they receded, fading into silence, and then, hands less than steady, unrolled the parchment.

The words of his long-gone accuser leapt off the page. The facts with which the Principality Bethiel had once confronted him, proving accurate all that Seth had said. Laying the groundwork for connections to be made, conclusions to be drawn, Mittron’s treachery to be known.

He half dropped, half flung the roll across the desk and laced his fingers in his lap, squeezing until his knuckles protested.

“Where did you find it?”

It.
Such a tiny word for something so monumental.

“Among Bethiel’s personal effects. The ones put into storage after his exile to Limbo.”

So the Appointed knew about that, too.

Seth settled onto a corner of the desk. “Tell me, how many others have there been,
Highest
? How many angels have you sacrificed in the name of your grand scheme? I know of Aramael, of course, and now Bethiel, but how many more? Two? Four? A dozen?”

“It was a long time ago,” Mittron said, despising the tremor in his voice. Detesting the arrogance of the being who triggered it. “It means nothing.”

“Doesn’t it?” The Appointed reached out and set the roll spinning. “I think you’re wrong. I think it might be considered evidence of treason. Especially when one considers the fortuitousness of Caim’s escape from Limbo. The only escape to ever occur and it just happened to be a Fallen One exiled because of his propensity for murder, who just happened to be the twin brother of the Power
you
sent to hunt him. In the city where that Power’s soulmate—a soulmate you engineered—just happened to work as a homicide detective.” Seth
tsk
ed softly. “That’s an awful lot of coincidence, don’t you think?”

The scroll revolved lazily on the desktop. Slowed. Stopped.

“I don’t know why you did it,” Seth continued, “and personally, I don’t care. But she will. All she has to do is look into your soul, and she will know everything. And when she sees what is in here—”

Mittron jumped as a hand reached down to flick the parchment roll toward him. He swallowed. “What do you want?”

“I told you what I want.”

Pushing back from the desk, Mittron rose and went to stare out the window Seth had vacated. He needed time to think, to figure out what lay behind the Appointed’s request. Was it a test of loyalty? Had Seth already showed the One the evidence, and now she placed temptation in his path to
see what he might do? For an instant, blind panic obliterated coherence. Then reason asserted itself. No, if the One knew what was in that parchment, Mittron would not be having this conversation with Seth—would never converse with another soul again.

Which meant Seth was serious. He wanted to defy the One’s wishes. Mittron’s heart rate quickened. Despite his earlier intentions, he wavered. If he agreed to the Appointed’s proposal, Seth would become a willing participant in plans he had thought abandoned. Plans that might be resurrected, that might unleash all kinds of new potential.

But even if he wanted to do what Seth asked,
could
he?

Removing the Appointed’s powers, taking his immortality…it would require enormous energy and skill well beyond the normal purview of Heaven’s executive administrator. He would have to tap into Heaven itself, working fast enough to complete the transition before anyone realized what he did. The risks were enormous.

So were the possibilities.

A thrill of excitement whispered through him. If he managed to pull it off, if he
did
transition Seth to true mortality, it would change everything. The agreement between Lucifer and the One would be null and void, and things might yet play out the way he had planned, might yet bear the fruit he had desired for so many years.

“An adult,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Fully mortal. Without power.”

“Are you capable?”

Mittron looked over his shoulder. “I’m capable. If you’re certain.”

“Then we have an understanding.”

“I’ll require a letter claiming the responsibility as your own.”

Seth withdrew a second parchment from a sleeve and set it on the desk beside the other.

Mittron stared at it. “And Bethiel’s notes?” he asked. “They remain unrevealed?”

In response, the first paper’s edges curled, blackened, and caught fire. The evidence of Mittron’s transgressions drifted away in the breeze from the open window.

“For eternity,” the Appointed agreed. “Shall we get started?”

Brushing a bit of lint from his robes and lingering doubt from his mind, Mittron returned to the desk. He tucked Seth’s letter into a bookshelf. “I’m ready when you are.”

The Appointed nodded and then frowned. “Before we begin, I’m curious about something. When you tried to stop me from searching the Archives, you spoke about secrets. About something being kept from me.”

Mittron went still.
Emmanuelle.
“I remember.”

“Is it something I need to know before I do this?”

Mittron eyed the One’s son. Would knowing he wasn’t an only child change the Appointed’s mind about what he’d decided to do? Chances were good that Seth might simply acknowledge the information and then carry on with his plans. But there was also a possibility his conscience would kick in, sending him in search of his own replacement and perpetuating this Heavenly farce the One insisted on playing out. Mittron made himself smile. “No,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

Seth wavered for a moment. Mittron saw the brief internal struggle he waged with himself, the hesitation—and then the dark head dipped once in agreement. The One’s son had accepted his words.

He had made his choice.

“W
ell?”

Dr. Elizabeth Riley looked up from her notes and ran a sharp gaze over the man on the other side of the counter at the nurses’ station. Weariness lined his face and, while he had shaved and his shirt looked clean and pressed, she recognized the rumpled suit from the day before.

“You didn’t go home,” she accused, ignoring his question.

Detective Hugh Henderson shrugged. “It’s been a busy week.”

“You need to sleep.”

Hugh sighed. “For your information,
Mom
, I got four hours on the cot in the back office.” He jerked his head toward the corridor. “How is she?”

Elizabeth pursed her lips. “She’s a mess, is how she is. Which is what you’ll be if you don’t go home soon.”

A heavy gray brow lifted. “Is that your professional shrink opinion? About her, not me.”

She favored him with a glare and then peered through her glasses at the chart, scanning the neat, precise handwriting that made her a favorite among nurses: Melanie Chiu,
age twenty-two, in the mid- to late stage of pregnancy despite her claim she had been a virgin until two weeks before. Suffering from an obvious psychotic break, unable or unwilling to detail actual sexual history.

“She’s complaining of abdominal and pelvic pain, but they’re still waiting for an ultrasound,” she told Hugh. “Based on the initial exam, they estimate she’s between five and six months along. There’s obviously been a severe emotional trauma, but until she’s more coherent, I can’t tell you what it was. I’ve sedated her for the moment, and I’m hoping she’ll be calmer when she wakes.”