Eve of Chaos (42 page)

“Fuck you,” she
bit out, ripping the amulet from her neck and shoving it fist first into his
torso. He instantly gained form, materializing into a man as nude as the others
had been. Her hand pulled free of the closing flesh, leaving the necklace
behind inside him.

346 s.
j. DAY

He fell on her,
writhing. She drew back her fist and decked him, sending him rearing upward
with a violent arching of his back.

“Freeze!
Police!”

The Nix clawed
wildly into his mortal chest, struggling to excise the necklace.

A gunshot
reverberated in the semienclosed space. Followed by another. The Nix jerked
with each impact, screaming an inhuman sound as two holes appeared in his
torso. Blood spurted onto Eve. He fell to his side, convulsing before
shuddering into stillness.

Eve twisted to
look behind her.

Detective Ingram
kneeled beside his fallen partner with Jones’s gun in hand. As his gaze met
hers, his pistol arm fell to his side. A trail of blood marred his temple and
the side of his neck.

“Are you okay?”
he asked, swaying.

“Detective…”

His eyes rolled
back in his head. He slipped into unconsciousness, slumping to the ground
before she could reply.

“Holy shit.” Eve
rolled painfully to her stomach.

As she regained
her feet, the pool continued its roiling boil. She stared at it, unblinking.

When Gadara
burst from the depths in a flurry of dirty and tattered wings with Riesgo
cradled in his arms, she was too numb to be surprised. The archangel landed on
both feet, then fell to one knee. Riesgo lay in his embrace with arms splayed
wide and head lolled back, breathing shallowly. The picture they presented—that
of wounded angel protecting frail humanity—struck her with a message of faith
and benevolence as nothing else in her life had ever done.

“Alec,” she
croaked.

He shifted
beside her and caught her close.

Eve tried not to
look disgruntled as Reed pushed her through the hospital room doorway in a
wheelchair.

I feel
ridiculous in this thing,
she
muttered.

You looked
ridiculous trying to maneuver on crutches,
he retorted, softening the sting of his words with a squeeze of her
shoulder. “Good afternoon, Detective.”

Ingram offered a
slight wave that jostled the IV tube connected to the back of his hand. The
detective’s other arm was in a cast. He looked soul-weary, the pale blue of the
hospital gown only emphasizing how wan he was. The other bed in the room was
closed off by a curtain, leaving the detective alone with a uniformed female
officer who he introduced as his daughter.

“Nice to meet
you’ Eve said, extending her hand as Officer Ingram stood. The younger Ingram
was trim and fit, with pretty features and dishwater blonde hair cropped super
short.

“Are you okay?”
the officer asked.

“Yes. I’m fine.
Healing nicely, they tell me.”

Eve didn’t really
need the wheelchair. The mark had healed the deep gash to her thigh over the
last forty-eight hours and only a little redness remained. Still, the
subterfuge was necessary since the wound had been nasty enough to take weeks
for an Unmarked body to heal.

“You’re a
popular guy, Detective.” She gestured at the profusion of flowers and balloons.

“They should be
sending these flowers to the funeral home,” Ingram said bitterly.

Reed’s fingers
caressed the side of her neck in a silent offer of comfort.

“I’m sorry for
your loss,” she said quietly.

“We all lost.”
Ingram sighed heavily. “Jones was a great cop. I was honored to w-work with him.”

Her eyes stung
when the detective’s voice broke. “I need to thank you, Detective. You saved my
life.”

He flushed. “I
was just doing my job.”

“You’re a great
cop, too, something I’m profoundly grateful for.” Changing the subject, as
she’d learned to do when her dad became uncomfortable with sentimentality, she
asked, “How long will you be in the hospital?”

“I’ll be
released tomorrow. Thank God.”

She nodded and
managed a smile. “I’m going to check on Father Riesgo now, but I’ll stop back
by before I go home.”

Ingram looked at
his daughter. “The priest is back?”

“Popped up
yesterday,” she confirmed. “Said he decided to walk home.”

“From Anaheim to
Huntington Beach?” Ingram was clearly dubious. “What’s he doing in the
hospital?”

“Severe
dehydration.”

“From the trek
home? No, don’t answer.” Ingram heaved out a sigh. “I swear this world is going
to hell in a handbasket.”

Reed turned
Eve’s wheelchair around and pushed her back out to the hallway. As he steered
her in the direction of Riesgo’s room, he murmured, “Well, they’ll be out of
your hair now.”

“See? It all
worked out.”

“Oh, no, babe.
You’re not getting off the hook that easily. Your plan was more fucked up than
mine.”

“No way,” she
argued, tilting her head back to look up at him. “Everything’s wrapped up
perfectly—the mask is contained, the wolf and Nix are finally dead, so are the hellhounds,
the police are off my back, and the tengu are eradicated from Olivet Place. I
finally feel like I can get started with a clean slate, like every other Mark
does.”

“If the way this
shit has gone down is your idea of perfect,” he said dryly, “we have a lot to
talk about.”

Reed slowed,
then turned into a room. There were two beds—one occupied, the other freshly
made. The patient in the far bed was sleeping. And he wasn’t Riesgo.

“Wrong room,”
Eve said.

Backing up, Reed
looked at the number by the door. “No. This is the number they gave us at the
desk.”

He hailed a
passing nurse and asked, “Do you know which room Miguel Riesgo is in?”

“I believe he
was discharged,” she said briskly. “Just a short while ago.”

Eve frowned.
“Thank you.”

The nurse moved
away.

Reed’s hand
settled on her shoulder. “Didn’t you leave a message that you were coming?”

“Yes, this
morning.” She reached up to link her fingers with his. “I’m really worried
about him.”

Riesgo had
looked so broken when he’d returned. Half-dead. She could only hope that his
emotional state was better than his physical one. She wouldn’t relax until she
saw for herself.

“We’ll track him
down when we leave here,” Reed promised, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze.
“We’ll make sure he’s okay.”

***

Eve wished it
was possible to fade into the woodwork while staring straight into a satellite
feed. Alas, there was no way to hide from the many eyes that rested heavily on
her.

“How is it that
no one recognized what happened to Diego Montevista?” Gabriel asked. “He worked
directly with all of you. You saw him every day.”

Five beautiful
faces frowned in unison from the massive LCD screen hanging on the wall
directly opposite Eve. The feed was divided into six equal sized boxes, with
one box left blank because Sarakiel was present at one end of the table. Gadara
sat across from her, separated by several feet. Hank, Alec, Reed, Sydney, and
Eve rounded out the room’s occupants. A shade had been lowered over the wall of
windows, dimming the light from the midmorning sun.

Hank leaned
forward and all eyes moved to him. “It appears that Montevista could be left
dormant at times and activated at others.”

“But you
suspected him, Evangeline?” Remiel asked. Like most of the other archangels, he
was dark-haired. Unlike the others, his eyes were almond shaped and his
features tinged with a decidedly Asian cast.

Eve cleared her
throat. “I didn’t at first, no. But when Hank told me about his experiments
with the tengu and I saw how violently it reacted to the mask mixture, I
started thinking about Montevista and his resurrection from the hellhound
blood. The only other known.. .
resurrectees—is
that a word?—were the
wolf and the Nix, both of whom acted erratically after they came back to life.
It seemed reasonable to assume Montevista wouldn’t be the only one unaffected.”

“That is a
considerable leap,” Michael said, in a voice that was both deeply seductive and
highly terrifying. There was power in that voice. It underlined every word be
said with a threat. The fact that he was gorgeous only made him more
frightening. “To decide that he was Sammael’s emissary because of the behavior
of two lesser demons.”

“I
guessed’
she
corrected. “And it wasn’t just because the wolf and Nix seemed to have lost all
sense of self-preservation after cooking in the masking agent.” She looked at
Alec. “Cain became erratic, too. He wasn’t himself. Since all of you have the
same setup at your firms that he had—the connection to Marks and Infernals
working beneath you—I looked at the differences between his situation and
yours.”

“Everything
about his situation is unique,” Uriel said.

“Including
Montevista,” she finished. “I figured that
 
if he was connected to Sammael by the mask,
some of that evil would filter into Cain. It would explain a lot of Cain’s
behavior if that was the case.”

“There were
other possible explanations for that.” She met the archangel’s gaze directly,
understanding that he was referring to the paternity gossip that pained Alec so
greatly. “I’m not one to rule anything out. The mask, Cain’s problems, the way
Montevista would lose consciousness every time Satan manifested_—there were a
lot of considerations involved. But since I didn’t know for sure, I wasn’t
going to accuse him outright. It was too dangerous for Montevista. I hoped that
if I turned out to be right, Hank could save him somehow.”

“I am
concerned,” Remiel said, “at how often you work alone. You have a mentor for a
reason. We cannot afford to have these types of large-scale battles waged in public
places.”

“And I,” Gadara
said dryly, “cannot afford to replace every luxury car that has the misfortune
of crossing paths with her.”

“I didn’t have
much choice,” Eve protested. “In this case, Montevista was a wild card. I
guessed he was involved in some way, so how could I share information with
Cain, knowing it might leak to Montevista? If Satan knew we were on to him,
what would he do? That was my concern.”

“You should have
approached your handler.”

“She did.” Reed
leaned forward to set his elbows on the table. “She asked me to touch base with
Asmodeus, and when everything blew up, she called me in to keep one eye on
Montevista. When he blacked out, it proved her theory. She also kept Ishamel
and Hank in the loop. She doesn’t have a savior complex, if that’s what you’re
inferring. She knows her limits.”

Don’t piss
them off,
she protested, knowing he
was already taking heat for his deal with Asmodeus.

They’re
pissing
me
off,
he shot back.

Raphael rocked
back in his office chair. “And Sarakiel made herself a threat with her
association with Asmodeus, so you could not turn to her. But you must
understand, Ms. Hollis. You are consorting and conspiring with Sammael by your
own admission. You say that he deliberately summoned the Nix for you to
vanquish before he lost contact with Montevista. His offering to you concerns
us, of course.”

Okay, they’re
pissing me off, too,
Eve groused.

“Is there news
of the priest?” Uriel asked.

Gadara leaned
forward. There was nothing about his posture or features that bore witness to
his ordeal, but it was there in his eyes. Especially when he looked at Alec.
“Nothing;’ he replied. “He has not been seen nor heard from since he recovered
enough to leave the tower. He has left the church and broken his residential
lease. I
will
find him. It is only a matter of time.”