Sins of the Warrior (13 page)

“Mr. Lang, you’ve either misread my file or been misinformed,” Alex interrupted. “The only Fallen I’ve had any contact with were trying to kill me. Even if they did have the kind of resources you’re talking about, I wouldn’t have had time to notice. But they don’t, because they don’t need technology, because they’re not aliens, they’re—”

“Oh, for the love of God!” Boileau snapped. “Do you not realize we have a fucking nightmare in the making here?”

Her mouth still open to speak, Alex stared at him. Fury glared at her from behind the wire-framed glasses.

“Don’t you get it, Detective? The entire world is on the brink of utter panic. If we’re to have a hope in hell of maintaining control, we need people focused on a common goal, not some goddamned fairy tale.”

Common…

Her head snapped around to Lang. “What common goal? You can’t mean to try and attack the Fallen!”

The deputy minister shrugged. “Historically speaking, war is the single most powerful unifying event we can tap into. People still want to believe their governments. They
will
believe us if we stay smart and ask them to work together against the aliens.”

“But you can’t win against them. You saw what happened on that video! They’ll wipe out anything—and
anyone
—you send after them.” Alex looked to Staff Inspector Roberts for help, but he stood gray-faced and mute.

“In case it has escaped your notice, Detective”—Boileau waved a hand at the window—”half the bloody world is already at war. You’ve seen the news reports. There have been four military coups in the last week alone. Fatwas have been issued across the Middle East against Christian women of child-bearing age; pregnant women have been rounded up and detained in Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Somalia, North Korea, and a dozen other countries you’ve probably never heard of. China is under martial law. Radical nationalism is at its highest point in Europe since the Nazis were in power. How much more
at war
do you need us to be?”

Alex swallowed. She hadn’t known. Hadn’t watched a news report since Nina had gone missing. Had been so focused—

But that was no excuse, because she should have expected it. Had known it was coming. She and Henderson had discussed this very scenario, the one where humanity would be the author of its own destruction.

She just hadn’t thought it would happen this soon.

Let me at least find Nina first
, she thought.
Let me bury Jen.

“The world needs someone to take charge of this situation before it rips itself apart,” Lang spoke again, “and before those children in Pripyat reach maturity. Have you seen the records of the ones we had a chance to study? Do you know what they’re capable of? Babies that can control their caregivers’ minds, break out of any locked room…if they’re turned against us, if they’re weaponized—” He broke off and shook his head. “God knows what they’ll be capable of once they’re grown.”

She struggled to recover. To find the words to convince him. To stop what would only hasten the deaths of who knew how many.

“Please,” she said. “Whatever you’re planning, don’t. You’ll never get to those children. The Fallen can’t be killed. Not by us.”

“Everything can be killed,” Boileau said. “You just need the right weapon.”

She could do nothing more than gape at the sheer arrogance. Across from her, Lang’s lips drew into a thin, tight line. He shook his head.

“Boileau tried to tell me about you,” he said. Contempt laced his voice. “I didn’t want to believe him, but you really are going to refuse to help, aren’t you?”

Alex’s headache throbbed behind her eyes. She didn’t have the energy to argue anymore.

“Whatever,” she said. She looked to her supervisor again. “Am I done here?”

Roberts tipped his head in the direction of the door, and she started toward it. Christ, she couldn’t get out of here fast enou—

“I can have you detained, Detective,” Boileau called. “I can
make
you help us.”

She stopped. She swiveled, regarded him for a moment, and then, without speaking, calmly elevated the middle finger on each hand. Boileau’s face turned the most interesting shade of scarlet she’d ever seen on a human. Lang scowled. Roberts pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, closed his eyes, and hung his head.

Alex stalked out and slammed the door.

BOILEAU AND LANG LEFT
shortly after her own exit from Roberts’s office. From behind a curtain of hair, Alex watched them wend their way between desks. She didn’t lift her head to meet Boileau’s malevolent glare. She’d already made her point. She did, however, exhale in relief when they reached the door.

The appearance of a black-winged man in their path turned the exhale into a choke.

She came up out of her chair, poised to—what, intervene? She subsided again. Maybe an up-close-and-personal encounter with one of their
aliens
was just what Lang and Boileau needed. Maybe—

Michael stepped aside, and the two men stalked past him, oblivious to the wings he kept hidden from the rest of the world. From everyone but lucky, lucky her.

The emerald gaze met hers. An imperious eyebrow lifted.
Are we done yet?
it asked. Her supervisor’s voice cut her off mid head-shake.

“Jarvis!”

Alex sighed and raised a hand to Michael, flashing thumb and fingers at him twice.
Ten minutes
.

Michael regarded her without expression, then, ignoring her signal to wait outside, stepped into the Homicide office, closed the door, and leaned against the wall. At the desk beside Alex, Abrams frowned, glancing between them. Alex’s jaw went tight.

Stubborn damned Archangel. If she ended up having to field a bunch of questions about who he was and what he was doing here—

“Jarvis!”

“Coming.” Alex collected the papers she needed her supervisor to sign and turned her back on Michael. Roberts closed his office door behind her.

“I’m—” she began.

He cut her off with the lift of a hand. Pushing back his jacket to rest hands on hips, he walked to the window and stared out. Alex swallowed her apology and waited.

“Twenty-four hours,” he said. “That’s how long they’ve given you to look after your sister’s details before you’re expected in Ottawa.”

Her mouth flapped twice before she found her voice. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m deadly serious. And so are they.” Roberts turned, his face haggard, his eyes weary.

Damn her quick temper to Hell. She should have kept her hand signals to herself.

Roberts shook his head. “They would have done the same thing even if you hadn’t given them the finger,” he said, reading her mind. “They’re trying to do their jobs the same way we are.”

She snorted. “I’m pretty sure Armageddon wasn’t part of our job description when we signed on.”

Her supervisor said nothing.

“Fine. We’re all just doing our jobs,” Alex growled. She dropped into one of the chairs before his desk. The sword’s scabbard dug into her spine. “But attacking the Fallen isn’t the answer, Staff, and neither is dragging me off to Ottawa.”

“You saw the video, Alex. You know what they’re capable of. We can’t just sit back and—”

“Doug.” She kept her voice deliberately gentle. She didn’t need to be harsh. Didn’t need to yell. The use of her supervisor’s first name at work, within his office, was enough to stop him in his tracks.

Roberts’s skin grayed. In silence, he pulled his chair out from the desk and lowered himself into it. Then he leaned as far back as it would permit.

“They’re really…” His voice trailed off.

“That invincible?” she finished. “Yes. There’s nothing we can do to get at those children. We’re going to have to wait for them to come to us.”

“And then what?”

I don’t know
.

She shrugged. “Whatever we can, I suppose. There are only eighty thousand of them, so as long as we—”

She broke off, clamping her lips together.
Only
. Did that word even apply when it referred to half-human, half-angel creatures with unknown superpowers and the potential to wipe out the planet?

“We can’t panic,” she finished lamely.

Roberts rested an elbow on the arm of his chair, fist against his mouth, clearly weighing whether he wanted to press for details. Just as clearly deciding he did not.

“I agree with the not panicking,” he said at last. “That’s why I think Lang and Boileau are right about not making it public knowledge.”

“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? There are hundreds of videos posted on the Internet of Seth’s attack here. Half a dozen Archangels were caught in full flight, their wings as clear as day. How do we hide that?”

“We don’t.” He scrubbed a hand over his hair. “But we don’t have to come straight out and admit we’re up against honest-to-god angels, either. The extremists are already crawling out of the woodwork, Alex. Imagine what will happen if we provide official fuel for their fire.”

“Are you saying you think Boileau and Lang are right? We should pretend they’re aliens and start a war against them?”

“Go along with the alien thing, yes. Start another war, no.” Roberts grimaced. “But I don’t think we can prevent it from happening, either. There are too many Langs and Boileaus in the world. You can’t stop them all.”

A chill slithered down Alex’s spine. War was so much bigger than she wanted to wrap her head around right now. She had enough to deal with. Nina, Jen, Bethiel, Michael, Mittron, Emmanuelle…

War was also what Lucifer had wanted humanity to do. What he’d predicted it
would
do. She hunched her shoulders. The sword shifted against her back.

“Whoever they send in against the Fallen will die, Staff. You know that.”

A door slammed. A murmur of voices passed by Robert’s office. Quiet fell. Alex’s gaze strayed to the clock on the wall. It was just past eight. Twenty-seven hours since she’d found—and lost—Nina again, and already so much had happened. Changed.

Irrevocably altered.

“We can’t save everyone.”

Her gaze swiveled back to her staff inspector. “What?”

Bleak brown eyes met hers. “I said, we can’t save everyone. If things are going to get as bad as we think, there will be casualties.”

I know
, she wanted to say, but the words stuck in her throat. She did know. She’d always known. But saying it aloud felt akin to giving up. Admitting defeat. Admitting this was real.

We can’t save everyone. There will be casualties
.

Alex clamped her hands together in her lap. Roberts was right. People were going to die. A lot of people, and they could do nothing to stop it.
She
could do nothing to stop it. The world had moved beyond mere conflict into something greater. Darker.

Armageddon wasn’t just looming anymore. It was here. Now.

She looked up at her supervisor.

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

“What we’ve always done,” her staff inspector said. “Solve murders, hold people who break the law accountable for their actions. Peacekeeping isn’t going to start with Lang or Boileau; it’s going to start with us. We’re the front line in this, Alex, and our front line is here, in this city. You, on the other hand, are a whole other issue.”

Her hand clenched over the papers she held. “I’m not going to Ottawa.”

“And I won’t tell you to. But Boileau was serious about the twenty-four hours. If you’re still here at this time tomorrow, he’ll have you detained.”

“You’re kicking me out?”

Roberts gave an impatient huff. “I’m telling you—for your own good and against every job imperative I have, I might add—to stay away from the office. Go to ground, at least for a few weeks. Boileau’s bound to lose interest sooner or later, especially if they go ahead with whatever they have planned.”

A few weeks. Did the world have that long?

“Staff—”

“Goddamn it, Jarvis, can you just once do what you’re told without arguing? Go home. Bury your sister. Do whatever you have to do for Nina. But stay the hell away from the job.”

Alex glared at her supervisor. He glared back, lines of worry carved around his eyes. She tried to care that he cared, but after seeing that video, an odd emptiness had formed at her center. A hardness. As if the caring had been drained right out of her. Not where Roberts and her colleagues were concerned—or the rest of the world, for that matter. She still cared a great deal about the survival of humanity. But when it came to herself?

She paused her thoughts, turned them inward, and took a long, hard look at her reality. Her cold, eternal, no-matter-how-she-looked-at-it-she-was-screwed reality. So what if Boileau caught up to her? Chances were that Michael would just remove her from his custody anyway, because he wanted her to find Emmanuelle.

Or Bethiel would, because he wanted Mittron.

Or Seth would, because he wanted her.

What was the point of caring when her life didn’t even belong to her anymore?

She stood and slid the papers across the desk toward Roberts. “I need these signed,” she said.

Roberts studied the international intelligence alerts she would send out to Interpol, one for Mittron, no last name, and one for Emmanuelle, last name Batya. Daughter of God, Michael had said it meant when Alex asked. But she didn’t think Roberts needed to know that.

Her supervisor took a pen from the cup on his desk and scrawled his signature across the bottom of each form. Then he put his hand over the documents.

“I’ll enter them into the system myself,” he said. “Go home.”

Alex reached over and tugged the papers from his hold. She met his gaze calmly. “I will,” she said. “In twenty-four hours.”

She’d made it as far as opening the door when his voice stopped her, but not with the reprimand for insubordination she expected.

“Hold on,” he said instead. “What the hell is that under your coat?”

Shit.

She looked over her shoulder. Her supervisor had one elbow on the desk, and his fingertips supported his right temple. Curiosity and wariness warred for top billing in his expression. Wariness won when she didn’t reply.