Sins of the Angels (10 page)

Fuck. He'd been right. There was another one.

Alex started toward the crumpled, shredded body by the wall, tugging the cell phone from her belt. Trent's hand snagged her arm, held her tight. No heat this time. Only purpose.

“We have to go.”

Alex's jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”

“We have to go. Now.”

“We're cops, Trent, we don't leave a crime scene.” She tugged at his grasp, but he didn't let go. “What if she's still alive?”

“She isn't. There's nothing you can do here, but if we leave now, while the trail is fresh, we might still find him.”

“Find—you saw him?” Her free hand pushed aside her jacket, drew her gun again as she searched the alley for another presence. Tried to recall details of the figure she thought she'd glimpsed: clothing, hair color, height—

Envisioned fiery wings instead.

“He's gone,” Trent said.

She flipped open her cell phone and dialed 911. “Well, if you saw him, he can't have gone far. We might still find him if we get enough cars in the area—”

Alex broke off as Trent's grasp tightened. She stared into eyes gone flat and frighteningly cold.

“You'd better hope to Heaven that you don't, Alex Jarvis. Because you don't stand a chance against him. Not you, and not your entire police force.”

Alex's mouth opened, but she couldn't find her voice. And even if she'd had a voice, surely there were no words with which to respond. Long seconds passed. A trickle of rain dripped from the end of her nose.

The insistent female voice in Alex's ear penetrated at the same time two officers burst from the passageway behind her. Alex whirled.

Chaos ensued.

Guns drawn, the uniforms screamed at her to drop the weapon and put up her hands. A marked car hurtled into the far end of the alley. Red and blue streaks shattered the gloom. A siren died mid-wail.

Behind Alex, footsteps scuffed. Trent. Her heart stalled and a warning formed in her throat.
“Don't—”

Two shots cut her off, their reports echoing off the brick walls. Alex jerked at the sound, instinctively bracing for pain. Nothing. Ice water washed through her gut as the gunshots faded into silence.
Nothing.
Not even a whisper of sound from behind her to signal another's presence.

She threw her arms wide, away from her body. Away from misinterpretation.

“We're cops!” she yelled. “Jesus Christ, hold your fire! We're fucking cops!”

The uniform shouted back, his words running together, mingling with the pounding in her ears. Alex couldn't understand him, but his intent was clear. She dropped to her knees in a puddle. Two shots fired at point-blank range, two cops upset well beyond the ordinary.

Her heart clawed its way out of her chest into her throat.

She strained to hear her downed partner. A moan, a gasp, anything. The police car skidded to a halt somewhere to the left. Car doors opened. Continued bellows from the uniformed officer hammered at her ears. Still no sound from behind her.

Alex felt her control slip. She tightened her grip on it, met and held the uniform's gaze, forced herself to speak past the rawness burning in her chest where her heart was no more. “I'm with Homicide. My badge is on my belt. It's right there—you can see it.”

The uniform facing her ignored her words. “I said down! On your stomach, hands out!”

A new voice joined the fray. “Back off, Kenney—she's Homicide!”

Footsteps approached from the side, and hands raised Alex to her feet. She stumbled, caught herself, shoved away the help. Water trickled down her shins and into her shoes. Her mind parted company with her body and watched from a distance as she turned to look down on the unimaginable awfulness of a fallen partner. She stared at mud-spattered shoes. Raised her eyes up a suit-clad length. Met Trent's wary, but still very much alive, gaze.

Deep in her brain, disbelief spawned a small, ominous bubble of hysteria.

Caim gripped the sink jutting from the wall and tried to still his shaking. His heart pounded in his ears, drowning out the rest of the world. He raised his gaze to his reflection, to the fear in his eyes.

The abject, primal terror that came from his very center.

His hands tightened around the porcelain and shame churned in his belly and rose to burn in his throat. He had begged. Prostrated himself before the brother who had betrayed him, and begged.

Like a coward.

Like a sniveling, spineless, pathetic coward.

He hadn't even
tried
to argue his side, hadn't once tried to reason with Aramael, to convince him that the killings were nothing, that they were only a way to get home again, nothing more. That if he could just return to Heaven, all this would end.

No matter that Aramael hadn't understood the first time, that he'd spurned Caim's arguments, Caim should have at least had the backbone to try again.

But no. Faced with imminent capture, he had begged instead. Not for another chance, but for death. For anything but Limbo. Caim quivered at the thought, cringed at his weakness. He felt the sink begin to give way beneath his hands and willed himself to relax, to remember reason. Things were different now. He was wiser, more cautious, and fully capable of evading his brother if he stayed in control. He knew how Powers hunted—he'd been one of them for long enough, before he'd fallen—and he'd learned much control since his last encounter with Aramael. He could still do this, still find the soul he needed to be able to return.

But not here. No matter how many assurances his benefactor had given him that a Naphil lived in this hunting ground, and no matter how confident he felt in his control, it wasn't worth the risk. He wouldn't take the chance of coming that close to capture again—or to feeling that edge of terror. Another quiver rippled through him. If it hadn't been for the mortal woman's interruption just now—

Caim's mind ground to a standstill.

Seized on its last thought.

Aramael had been interrupted by a mortal. He had allowed himself to be distracted by—Caim paused, working furiously to recall the details of his narrow escape. No. His hunter hadn't just been distracted. Aramael had turned to shelter the woman. To protect her.

From Caim.

He watched his reflection's expression change, lighten with dawning comprehension. They'd sent a Power to protect a mortal.

They could have only one reason for doing so.

The woman was Nephilim. Descendant of the Grigori. A tainted soul that would not go on to be reabsorbed into the One's life force as other mortals were, but would be drawn back to its roots in Heaven before it was discarded, cast aside as its ancestors had been. But not before it took Caim with it.

Elation sang through him. He'd done it. He'd found one. He locked his knees against an ancient desire to kneel in gratitude. No. That kind of obeisance had belonged to the One who spurned him, not the benefactor who had made it clear he wanted only Caim's success. Success Caim could now almost assure him.

But wait. It couldn't be that easy. Something was wrong. Caim held himself still and made his thoughts go quiet. A Power protecting the descendant of a Grigori? It would never happen. Too much hatred existed between the two lines of angels. He remembered how painful the Grigori betrayal had been to all of them, and how much he, too, had hated the Tenth Choir when he'd stood beside Aramael rather than in opposition to him.

No, Aramael would never protect a Naphil. He might use her as bait, perhaps, but he would never protect her.

Yet he'd done exactly that.

Caim wrestled the urge to rip the sink from its moorings and throw it through a wall. He glared at his reflection. Damnation, was she Nephilim or wasn't she? Aramael would have no reason to protect her either way, so why had he? Why had he let himself be distracted, chosen a mortal over his prey, let Caim escape?

Caim groaned. He knew he should just let it go, move on, find a new hunting ground, continue his search. Should, but wouldn't. Not when it meant turning his back on a near certainty to continue a random, perhaps fruitless quest.

He set his jaw. It wouldn't be easy. He would have to be patient. Cunning. He couldn't risk another confrontation with his brother, so he'd have to find a way to separate Aramael from his charge. The risk would still be enormous, but worth it.

He'd watch them, he decided. See how close the Power stayed to the woman, try to figure out why he protected her in the first place and how difficult it might be to distract him, to pull his attention from her long enough to strike.

Caim stripped off his soiled shirt and let it fall over the corpse of its owner, still splayed across the bathroom floor where he'd left it three days ago. He eyed the mangled human whose life he'd appropriated. He'd have to do something with it soon. He could prevent mortals from seeing or smelling it as long as he was here, but he couldn't guard the thing around the clock, and now that he'd decided to stay, its discovery would be hellishly inconvenient.

He bent to his ablutions. So many details. So many ways he could yet fail. He thought of the woman sheltered in his brother's wings and smiled into his soapy hands.

Such a good reason to persevere.

 

“
OKAY, LET'S GO
over this one more time,” Roberts said wearily. His tone warned Alex he held on to his patience by a thread. He stopped pacing the perimeter of the mud puddle in front of the car and faced her. “You come down the alley after Trent. You think you see someone standing by the wall, but whoever it is disappears without a trace and you don't get a good enough look for a description. Have I got that right?”

Alex shifted her weight on the car hood where she sat. She wrapped her hands around the Styrofoam cup of coffee someone had given her and tried to ignore the soaked knees of her pants. Tried harder not to think about the blood that had mingled with the water in the puddle. Or the other time in her life when she'd knelt in a pool of blood.

She felt the Styrofoam begin to buckle and eased her grip. “Yeah. That's about right.”

“Trent didn't see anyone.”

Alex scowled. “What the hell does that mean? You think I'm seeing things?”

“It means I think the stress is getting to all of us,” Roberts replied carefully, “and that you have good reason to be more stressed than anyone.”

Cold settled in Alex's gut. Not once in thirteen years had anyone intimated that her past might interfere with her ability to do her job, and now her supervisor questioned whether it might have turned her into a hysterical eyewitness? She couldn't even come up with a response, let alone speak through teeth clenched so tight they made her head ache.

She glared across the alley to where Trent stood, watching the scene from the exact place he'd been when she'd looked ten minutes ago. Looking as angry as he had ten minutes ago, too. The ice in her belly began to spread. She'd been fine up until this morning, she thought. Right up until Jacob Trent had entered her life with golden wings and electrical charges and a presence that reached into her center and twisted her very reality.

He thought
he
had a reason to be angry?

She realized Roberts still watched her, concern etched into the lines between his brows. She slid off the car and tossed her cup, coffee and all, into a Dumpster. Then she met his gaze with a stony one of her own.

“Fine,” she said. “Maybe it was a trick of the light. Or the shadows. Or my fucking imagination. It was raining, it was cloudy, I saw whatever it was from the corner of my eye for a split second, and then all hell broke loose. I'm sorry I even mentioned it.”

Roberts's lips thinned. Then he shook his head. “Look, let's just forget it, all right? Like I said, we're all under stress.”

Alex bit the inside of her cheek to keep further comment to herself. She changed the subject. “How's the kid doing?”

“The rookie? He's pretty shaken up, but he'll survive. His trainer is apoplectic, however.”

Alex would be, too, if her partner had been that quick to fire. Or if he'd missed at that range.

Two shots, both buried harmlessly in the wall behind Trent, wide of their mark. If she hadn't seen it with her own eyes, she wouldn't have believed it. She hugged her arms around herself.

Still wasn't sure she did.

“Remedial firearms training?” she hazarded.

“Oh, yeah.”

They fell silent for a moment, watching the latest victim being zipped into a body bag and then loaded onto a gurney.

Roberts cleared his throat. “Whether you saw him or not, Alex, we came close this time. Any closer and we'd have had him.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Roberts looked down at her. “He's getting cocky. Killing in broad daylight in an alley off a busy street—if he keeps up like that, we
will
get him.”

Alex's palms turned clammy. She remembered Trent's flat, cold expression; his colder words:
“You'd better hope to Heaven that you don't, Alex Jarvis. Because you don't stand a chance against him. Not you, and not your entire police force.”