Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy (37 page)

“You’re telling me you know nothing of what happened to the woman.”

“What woman? Oh, you mean, the Naphil who cheated on the Appointed? Who rejected him and subjected him to unspeakable humiliation?”

Seth inhaled sharply and Alex’s gaze swiveled to him. The line of blood across his hostage’s throat had become a trickle. “Don’t listen to him, Seth. That’s not what happened,” she said. “I was raped.”

Lucifer snorted. “Of course she’d say that. She’d say anything to try and save her race. But you know what you saw, Seth. Her with Aramael, his scent still clinging to her bare skin and the sheet in which she wrapped herself. You know what happened.”

Seth’s eyes met Alex’s, renewed acrimony flaring in their depths. His arm tightened across his victim’s chest. The knife shifted in his grasp. Alex swallowed against a tongue three sizes too big for her mouth. More than once she had faced down men who looked the way Seth did now; desperate men on the cusp of making choices they couldn’t take
back. Choices she and her fellow cops hadn’t been able to allow.

The kind of choice Lucifer urged Seth to make now. But this time, with neither weapon nor words, she was helpless to stop it. Or was she? Alex’s breathing came to a rasping halt. She tore her gaze from Seth to stare at the luminescent Lucifer, frantically trying to recall everything he’d said,
how
he’d said it.

“Her with Aramael, his scent still clinging to her bare skin…”

“That’s enough, Light-Bearer,” Michael’s voice grated.

More blue crackles illuminated the air around them all. Lucifer’s doing? Or Michael’s?

“Careful, Archangel,” Lucifer drawled. “You don’t want to start something you can’t finish. Such as carry out the One’s orders to murder her son, for instance.”

“…the sheet in which she wrapped herself…”

At the edge of Alex’s vision, Seth flinched.

Lucifer’s lips curved upward at the corners. “You hadn’t already figured that out for yourself?” he asked his son. He slid thumb and forefinger into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a round, white object that he popped into his mouth. “I wish I could say such naïveté was endearing, but in truth, it galls me. Are you really so trusting, Seth? So willing to allow others in your life to make your decisions for you? To direct your choices?”

As if he was there. As if he saw…

Alex watched Seth’s face darken. Saw him believe Lucifer. Saw his decision begin to form. Behind her, the Archangels shifted. Then the scent of peppermint wafted toward her, enveloped her, all but drove her to her knees.

She knew what the Light-Bearer had done. What he tried to do.

“Lucifer—” Michael began.

“Michael,” said Alex. Or maybe she yelled it, because the Archangel—all the Archangels—looked startled. Then annoyed. Then just plain pissed. Alex fought off the collective will gathering around her, the desire for her to be silent,
and made herself meet the emerald ice of Michael’s gaze. “He was there,” she rasped. “It was
him
.”

Michael’s brow creased, then cleared, and then became thunderous. He rounded on the Light-Bearer and the blue crackles multiplied a thousandfold. “She’s right. That’s the only way you could know how Seth found her.”

“You have me,” Lucifer said. His amethyst eyes found Alex and he smiled a smile that slithered across her skin like a living reptile. “Or to be more precise, I had her.”

Fighting back the tentacles of horror spreading across her mind, Alex tore her gaze from the compelling, awful beauty of God’s former helpmeet. She sought Seth’s eyes and the comprehension that should have followed his father’s admission. Found savagery instead.

“You still thought it was Aramael,” he snarled. “You still chose him over me.”

Alex recoiled from the accusation and the pain it contained. Had Lucifer’s meddling been too much? Could it have pushed a still fragile Seth beyond reach? Her heart twisted.

“Of course she chose him,” Lucifer snapped. “Now would you stop being so fucking spineless and slit his throat already? You’ve made the decision. Now act on it.”

“No!” Alex held out a hand toward Seth. “I thought it was you, Seth. Not Aramael. I chose you.”

He wanted to believe her. It was in his eyes, in the dark, tortured depths of the soul that stared back at her. A soul that wanted to believe, that fought to do so but in the end, remained too fragmented. A soul that simply couldn’t bear the strain.

What remained of the Seth she knew began a slow folding-in on itself.

W
ithout her training, without the edge of years of experience, it might have ended there. With Seth drawing back the man’s head and placing the blade under one ear, with a single knife stroke taking the life of one man and indirectly ending billions of others.

But instead, instinct kicked in and Alex lunged forward, catching hold of Seth’s hand as his grip shifted. She slammed it into the brick wall. Again and again, until the knife dropped from his startled grasp. Scooping it up, she spun out of reach. Then, her own back to the wall, she faced the entire gathering, breast heaving with the adrenaline aftermath, as startled by her actions as anyone there, staring at the knife she held.

“Oh, for the love of Hell,” Lucifer snapped in exasperation. “You stupid, interfering—” He broke off as six pairs of wings snapped wide again. Looking over his shoulder at the wall of Archangels, he heaved a sigh. “Really, Mika’el? You really want to start things now, like this, over a mortal woman? And a Naphil at that?”

“It’s over, Lucifer. I demand forfeiture.”

Lucifer smiled. He chuckled, then laughed aloud, the sound ringing through the alley and stilling the activity still unfolding on the street beyond. Alex’s fingers tightened on the handle of the knife as she caught her breath. Held it. That so didn’t sound good.

“Oh, Archangel,” the Light-Bearer gasped at last, “you really haven’t caught on, have you? I had no idea you could be so slow. I’m so fortunate it was Sam who chose to follow me and not you. I don’t appreciate him nearly enough.” He wiped at his eyes with the back of one hand and chuckled again. “All right, you win. I forfeit. I won’t harm a hair on the head of a single mortal. You have my word.”

Words of concession, delivered in a tone of utter delight. Again, not good.

“We had an agreement,” Michael snarled.

“And I am honoring that agreement. As per the terms, I will leave the mortals alone. The Nephilim, however…” He paused. Smiled the coldest smile Alex had ever seen. “Ah, they’ll be a whole other story, won’t they? Especially now.”

Alex’s fingers grew numb and her gaze flicked to Michael. Found him looking livid. No. Apoplectic. Foreboding slipped through her, its presence like the touch of ice-cold silk. She went rigid as Lucifer’s gaze settled on her belly.

“I did much more than
take
the woman, Mika’el,” he spat. “With her extraordinary Nephilim blood—and it is extraordinary, you know—mixed with mine, the child she carries will be a leader among his kind. A leader of a resurrected race I won’t be quite so inclined to fritter away this time.”

Through a wave of horror, Alex heard Seth’s hissed exhale.

The man he’d held sprawled onto the pavement by Alex’s feet. Casting a wild look at the gathering, he scrambled upright and took off as if pursued by the proverbial hounds of Lucifer’s realm. The alley swallowed his fleeing footsteps. Silence followed, thick and heavy and terrifying.

Alex stared at Heaven’s greatest warrior.
Say something,
she thought to him.
Tell him he’s wrong, that you’ll save us. Tell him—tell
me
this wasn’t all for nothing…

Michael’s face had gone gray. “We will fight you,” he said.

“Knock yourselves out, Archangel. It won’t make a difference. Not anymore. Eighty thousand strong went out among the mortal females last night; we’ve sown enough seed to create the army I wanted. One you can’t touch, that isn’t bound by pacts or agreements or any other restrictions. Hell fights, Heaven fights…” Lucifer shrugged. “Either way, the Nephilim carry on with their task. With my child”—the Light-Bearer strolled to Alex’s side and reached out to slide a hand across her midriff—“leading them.”

Alex recoiled. Her gaze met Michael’s. Held it. The Archangel’s jaw turned to granite and his eyes to chips of emerald ice, but he made no move toward her. No move to stop the Light-Bearer’s touch. Her stomach heaved.

“The best part,” Lucifer continued softly, “is that I have given you what you wanted more than anything else in the universe. I have saved your Creator from herself. Because not even she can stop the Nephilim now. Her mortal children will be wiped out because of her own rules, her own self-imposed limitations. With no Guardians to guide the Nephilim along her path and no allowances for her angels to take a life in her name,
she
will be responsible for wreaking havoc on humanity, not me. And if I can’t be held to blame, she will have no reason to come after me.” The Light-Bearer paused. “Actually, Archangel, if you think about it, you owe me. How very ironic.”

Then, grasping Alex’s chin, Lucifer jerked her face to his. “As for that little plan of yours I interrupted this morning, Naphil, the next time you try it, the accident will be fatal. Try it a third time and many mortals will lose their lives. A fourth, and a city will fall, and so on. You
will
carry my child to term. Do we understand one another?”

Without waiting for a response, he thrust her away, hard
enough to make her stumble and fall against Seth. Arms went around her and tightened for an instant before Seth set her upright and stepped past her.

“Lucifer.” His low growl rumbled through the alley. Above, lightning flared blue in response.

His father, strolling toward the wall of Archangels, stopped and glanced over his shoulder. He raised an eyebrow. “Too little, my darling son,” he said. “And far too late.”

Arms held wide, Lucifer whipped around. Seth jerked backward off his feet, like a puppet on a string, and hit the wall perpendicular to Alex with a grunt. Lucifer’s lip curled and he turned away a second time.

“And that’s what I get for leaving you to be raised by your mother.”

Alex stared at the winded son of the two most powerful beings in the universe. Then at the line of Archangels facing her. All brushed aside without effort, their powers inconsequential in the face of Lucifer’s manipulations. Numbness began to replace the horror in her veins. Mind-deep, soul-deep, core-deep numbness.

Perhaps the idea had been brewing for a while in her subconscious. She didn’t know. Didn’t care. And didn’t dare stop to think about it. She just lifted the knife in a hand that felt as dead as the rest of her and turned away so Seth wouldn’t have to watch.

Lucifer spoke to Michael now, his voice autocratic. Final. “Give my regards to our Creator, Archangel. And tell her the next move is up to her.”

Sliding past the Light-Bearer’s shoulder, Michael’s gaze met Alex’s. It widened the barest fraction, just enough to make Lucifer spin around as she plunged the knife up to its hilt in her belly, aiming low, toward where she knew Lucifer’s monster grew inside her. Blood spurted over her hands an instant before white-hot agony drove her to her knees on the filthy pavement.

Lucifer strode toward her, fury blazing from his eyes, and six Archangels moved as one to come between them.
To hold him at bay while the blood spilled from Alex and pooled on the pavement, draining her life with it, and that of the Nephilim child within her.

Alex’s hands slid from the knife as Lucifer’s luminescence flared again, stretching high over the Archangels’ own. Energy sizzled through the alley once more, dancing along her skin—skin that already felt as if it belonged to someone else as she began to grow smaller inside her own body.

“Touch her and I swear you will
beg
to return to Hell before I am done with you,” Michael grated.

Lucifer snarled an answer, but his words sounded muted, muffled. Alex felt a distant surprise. Shit, this was happening fast. She must have nicked an artery.

She began a slow slump to the side. An arm slid beneath her and cradled her against a warm chest and a strong, steady heartbeat. Looking up into Seth’s sick horror, she tried to smile, but couldn’t seem to find her lips. “I had to,” she whispered. “I couldn’t let him win. Not like this.”

His hold tightened. “Tell me what to do. Tell me how to make this better. I can’t lose you, Alex. I won’t make it alone.”

She fought off an encroaching fog. Shook her head. “You can’t make it better. Not this time.”
It’s okay,
she wanted to add, but her voice had disappeared, too, and the effort of searching for it drained her. Her eyes drifted closed, shutting out the alley and bringing a not-unwelcome darkness. The cold seeped toward her core.

“Open your eyes, Alex, damn it!”

Colder.

“Alex, wait!”

Darker.

“Alex!”

Aramael,
she thought.

Gone.

S
eth stared at the body in his arms, mind empty, chest emptier, world at a standstill.

So this was death.

A simple cessation of life. Of being.

Here…

And then not.

The reality stunned him.

The finality damn near killed him.

Sucking a breath into lungs paralyzed by loss, he lifted his head. He met the bitter sorrow in Mika’el’s eyes, the disgust in his father’s. Anger fanned back to life. With a frighteningly foreign detachment, he moved to lay aside the vessel that had been Alex. A hand closed over his arm.

Seth looked around, into the eyes of the angel he held responsible for all that had just happened. Fury licked along the edges of his loss. His jaw went tight, his body rigid.

Aramael gave him a shake. “Did you hear me? I said she’s not dead, damn it.”

Seth blinked. Scowled. “I felt her go.”

“Her soul is still there, but you’ll have to work fast. Once it leaves, it will be too late. You can’t bring her back after that.” Aramael placed his fingertips on the side of Alex’s throat. “And for the sake of the One herself, whatever you do, don’t save that thing inside her.”