Sins of the Warrior (11 page)

As he would have done at one time. Before Limbo twisted him up inside so that he barely recognized himself anymore. Bethiel passed a shaking hand across his brow. Three thousand years of plotting Mittron’s downfall warred with an almost, but not quite, lost loyalty to Heaven. To the One who was no more. To the warrior who fought on in her name.

Mika’el was right that events had grown beyond simple revenge. On a higher level of himself, Bethiel knew that. He even wanted to be a part of it: to do as the Archangel asked, and help in the search for Emmanuelle, the fight against the Fallen, the fight to save humanity. He wanted it badly.

But not entirely.

Because one way or another, the orchestrator of this whole fucking mess still had to pay.

And Bethiel still intended to make him.

“LET ME MAKE SURE
I have this straight,” Alex said. “In five thousand years, all of Heaven hasn’t been able to find Emmanuelle, but you think I can. How?”

They sat at the dining room table, she and Michael, the stench of spilled Scotch wafting between them. Michael leaned forward in his chair, elbows resting on knees, fingers clasped.

“Verchiel—Heaven’s executive administrator—has pointed out to me that you have connections we don’t,” he said. “Humanity’s technology can take a search global, and you’re our fastest way to access that capacity.”

Heaven had an executive administrator? Why did that not surprise her? No wonder human bureaucracy was so entrenched.

“But you have a whole network of Guardians. Surely they’d be more effective than our technology.”

“Normally, yes.”

Alex raised an eyebrow at his reticence. “But not in this instance?”

“Not if she isn’t in the company of humans who have Guardians, no.”

Not in the company of
…the breath whooshed from Alex. “But the only humans who don’t have Guardians are the descendants of the Nephilim,” she said slowly. “Like me. Either that or they’ve—”

“Turned their backs on their Guardians,” Michael finished. “Yes.”

Alex’s back stiffened, and she narrowed her eyes. “Criminals turn their backs on their Guardians, Michael. People who have made really, really bad decisions in their lives. Repeatedly.”

“Yes.”

The wall clock ticked into the long silence that followed. Just past four a.m. A mere eight hours since Jen had died. An hour since Bethiel’s appearance in Alex’s apartment. A half hour since Michael nearly sliced off her head. Balefully, she eyed the remains of the Scotch bottle littering the living room floor.

“You’re serious,” she said, determined to focus on one crisis at a time. “You really mean to put her in charge.”

“I can’t
put
her anywhere,” Michael replied, “any more than I can force Seth to stay where he is right now. All I can do is ask her, and hope she agrees.”

“And if she does? How can you possibly think this will go well? She’s hanging out with mortals who have turned their backs on anything to do with Heaven, Michael. On morality itself. Does that not tell you anything?”

A muscle flickered at the side of Michael’s jaw. “It tells me she doesn’t want to be found.”

Alex threw her arms wide. “And
that
should tell you something, too.”

“It does.” Emerald eyes scowled at her. “It tells me I need your help to find her.”

She stared at him for a moment, then shoved back her chair and stood. Hands on hips, she paced the floor, everything cop in her bristling with warning. Was Heaven that desperate? Had it really come down to pitting brother in Hell against sister who might very well belong in the same place? She glanced over her shoulder at the whiteness of Michael’s knuckles, the rigidity of the wings at his back.

“You’re certain about this.”

“I’m certain we have no choice but to try.”

She stopped at the living room window. Outside, snow fell heavily into the city night, shrouding the cars parked below, muting the street lights. Heaven losing to Hell, a Nephilim army poised on the fringes of humanity, Seth waiting to reclaim her. She blew out a long, slow breath. What more could go wrong…right? She swung to face Michael, still at the table.

“And you’re sure she’s here? There’s no chance she might be—?”

“Dead? No. That we would have known.”

The flat note in his voice piqued her curiosity, but he didn’t give her a chance to pursue it.

“Well?” he asked. “Is Verchiel right? Can you help us find her?”

His earlier words hung in the air between them, both a promise and a threat. “
Bethiel can’t protect you, but I can
.”

She thought about refusing. Thought about telling him what he could do with his offer. Then she thought about Jen’s daughter, still somewhere out there on the winter streets.

“
Let her go
,” Jen’s voice whispered in her ear.

Never
, Alex responded. She straightened her shoulders.

“Right. What do we have to go on?” she asked. “It’s not likely she’ll be using her own name.”

“She will,” Michael said. “It’s her only connection to our realm, and she’ll have had no reason to change it.”

“Apart from not wanting to be found.”

“Only humans have the means to track her through a name, and she’ll have had no reason to expect us to work with you.”

“No reason to expect such interference, you mean?” Alex inquired tartly.

Michael regarded her without answer. She sighed.

“Fine. We have a name and a description. It’s not much, but it’s a start. I’ll get my coat.”

“What about sleep?”

Standing up from the table, she pointed at the smashed bottle in the living room.

“Can’t,” she said, attempting to convey humor with a twist of her mouth. Suspecting she failed. “I’ve run out of sleeping potion.”

Emerald eyes narrowed. Glittered. “That’s how you’ve been getting to sleep? For how long?”

Heat crept into her cheeks, and she turned away. “None of your—”

“How long, Alex?” Michael’s hand closed over her arm, his hold as gentle as it was unbreakable.

Alex stared down at his fingers, then raised her gaze to his. “Since that night,” she said.

“Dreams?”

“You have no idea.”

“That”—he pointed at the broken remnants of the Scotch bottle—”isn’t the answer.”

“Why? Because it isn’t healthy?” She gave a hard laugh and pulled away. “The way I understand it, that’s no longer a problem.”

“I can help,” said Michael.

She started down the hallway to the closet. “Can you undo what’s happened?”

“No, but—”

“Can you take away the memories?”

Silence.

“No,” he said at last. “I’m sorry, but too much has happened.”

“Then no, you can’t help.”

“I can—”

“Let it go, Michael.” Taking her coat from its hanger, she turned to face him. “If you want my help finding Emmanuelle, then you need to let me do it my way, because I’m only just barely holding it together anymore, and I’m not sure how much longer I can keep doing so.”

He regarded her, the impact of his gaze traveling all the way into the depths of her soul. Then he nodded. “All right. Your way. Except for one thing. We need to work from somewhere other than Toronto.”

“No.”

“You’re too much of a targ—”

“I said
no
.”

“If it’s because of your niece—”

“It’s not just about Nina. I have colleagues here. Friends. They need everybody they can get on the job. I won’t leave them.”

“You’re just one person, Alex. Your presence here won’t make a difference.”

“I’m not leaving.”

His mouth drawn tight, Michael shook his head. “You are hands down the most stubborn human I’ve ever met,” he growled. “And that’s not a compliment.”

Before she could think of a response, he held out his right hand to her, and a familiar sword materialized in his grasp. Alex recoiled, shaking her head.

“I told you—”

“I know what you told me. And now I’m telling you. You’re the one who insists on staying where you’re most at risk. If more than one Fallen One comes for you, if anything happens and I can’t be at your side every second of every day—”

“No.” Alex waited for the knife in her chest to stop twisting. She closed her eyes again, but the image of Aramael’s sword had burned itself into her brain. The memory of its feel into her palm. The sword of an Archangel. She’d held the weapon once before. Used it to stop Seth from killing her soulmate, but she’d been too late. Aramael had died anyway. There on the floor of the destroyed washroom, his blood mingling with Seth’s in the water flooding across the tiles…

Michael took her hand in one of his. His thumb prised open her fist. He laid the sword in her palm, curled her fingers around its scabbard, held them there. “We need your help, Alex. And for that, we need you here, on Earth. Take the sword. Keep it with you. Please.”

The sword tingled in her grasp, and faint electricity arced through her arm. Of their own accord, her fingers tightened, holding on with all their strength to the remnants of the connection she’d once had with her soulmate.

Aramael
, her heart whispered. And then it wept.

ALEX’S CELL PHONE VIBRATED
at her waist as she and Michael stepped into the elevator in the parking garage below the building housing Homicide’s office. She answered it without looking to see who called. She didn’t care, because talking to anyone was better than the continued interminable silence between her and her self-appointed bodyguard.

“Jarvis,” she said. She jabbed the button for the ninth floor.

“I heard about Jen.” Hugh Henderson’s gruff voice held bottomless compassion.

Alex waited a second for the vibration it set off in her to go away. It stayed. She sighed.

“I was going to call you this morning,” she said. “When I got to the office.”

Startled silence. The door slid closed.

“You’re going to work? Is that wise?”

She flicked a look at Michael, his wings folded awkwardly to fit into the elevator. “Necessary.”

“Alex, you just lost your—”

“Are you sitting down?”

A pause, and then the squeak of a chair came over the connection. “I am now.”

“Michael is here.” Green eyes sparked fire at her. She turned her back on them. “And so is someone named Bethiel.”

“Um…”

“Seth wants me back, Hugh.”

Silence—so long Alex thought the call had been dropped.

“Hugh?”

“Here,” her Vancouver colleague said. “I’m here. And I’m coming out there. Today.”

Yes, please
.

“No.” Alex closed her eyes against the wave of wanting to be held. Needing a friend. “Thank you, but no. There’s nothing you can do for me, and I already have protection.”

“This Bethiel character, or Michael?”

“Michael.”

“Shit. I was afraid of that. Why? He doesn’t do anything unless there’s something in it for him. What does he want?”

The elevator chimed their arrival on the ninth floor, and the doors slid open. Two uniforms stood waiting to get on. Alex sidestepped them and started down the hallway.

“I just got into the office,” she told Henderson. “I’ll call you later and fill you in, but in the meantime, I’ll be sending two BOLOs out to Interpol this morning. Keep an eye out for them and make sure they get circulated?”

The chances that either Mittron or Emmanuelle might turn up in Vancouver were astronomically small at best, but it never hurt to ask.

“Of course,” Hugh said. “Anything else? You sure you don’t want me out there?”

Alex paused beside the door to Homicide. She examined the compartmentalization that had taken place in her brain, a trick she’d learned when she was nine and had come home from school to find her father dead on the kitchen floor and her mother dying in the hallway outside the dining room where their family had once shared their meals.

Jen was there now, too. In the same compartment as their parents. The same place as the rest of Alex’s pain.

Alex’s fingers tightened on the cell phone. She breathed in. Closed her mental door. Breathed out.

“I’m sure,” she told Henderson. She ended the call and pointed at the coffee room across the hall. “Wait there,” she told Michael.

When Michael looked like he might argue, she added, “Some of the people from the hosp—from last night might be here. They’ll recognize you.”

“I’ll make sure they don’t.” He reached past her for the doorknob to Homicide.

Alex put her hand out, but drew back before it touched his. She’d had enough of touching angels in her lifetime.

“I’d still have to explain you,” she said, “and I’d rather not. It’s easier if you wait here.”

“And I’d rather remain near you.”

“Damn it, Michael—”

An unintelligible growl rumbled from his chest. “Fine. You have the picture of Emmanuelle I gave you? And the sword?”

She shifted against the chafe of the harness he’d crafted for her. Aramael’s sword nestled between her shoulder blades along the length of her spine. Michael had assured her it wasn’t visible beneath her coat, but she wasn’t convinced. Not when it made her walk like she had a stick up her—

“Yes to the first question, and you saw me put it on at the car to the second,” she reminded him. “Though I still don’t know what good it will do, because I have no idea how to use it in a fight.”

“If you weren’t so stubborn about remaining on the job here, I could teach you.”

She opened her mouth, came up dry, and contented herself with a malevolent glare over her shoulder as she pushed into the office and closed the door in his face.

Greg Bastion looked up and sideways at her as she sidled past his desk to her own. He frowned. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

She reached to remove her coat, remembered the sword, and thought better of it. She perched on the edge of her chair, ramrod straight. The sword’s hilt pressed between her shoulder blades. “Why not? Am I suspended?”

“No, but you should still be at home.”

“I have paperwork.” She switched on her computer.

Bastion stared at her as if she’d sprouted a second head. “Please tell me that’s shock talking.”