Sins of the Warrior (3 page)

He needed to heal.

For the first time since he had given Alex her immortality, he gathered the full force of his will to him. He focused on the fire that began in his injury and wrapped around the very essence of his being, held its tangle in his mind, stilled its violence. He saw how the loss of Alex had become inextricably ensnared with the physical pain, until he couldn’t tell where one began and the other left off. So much pain. So many threads.

Doubt slithered through him, gnawing with tiny, sharp teeth at the edges of his will. He shoved it away and studied the morass. One of the threads glowed brighter than the others. He took it up, disengaged it, and followed it to the wound in his side, to where the Virtue’s hands continued their work, snipping, cleansing, their every movement tugging at the thread he held. This, then, was the physical pain. He laid it aside and returned his attention to the tangle. Another thread, this one dark, fragile. He lifted it, extricated it from the rest, and followed it down, ever deeper, to the ache in his very core. The place where Alex’s loss resided—unending, all-consuming, threatening to swallow him in his entirety. He inhaled sharply, and the Virtue hesitated.

“Continue,” he ground out between his teeth.

He flinched from the cooling sting of antiseptic and forced his focus back to the tangle, continuing his own work, sifting, sorting, separating one pain from the other. Physical from emotional. Body from soul. While the Virtue taped a fresh bandage into place, he stared into his emptiness, facing the betrayal, trying to come to terms with it, hating the weakness it exposed within him. Then, as the other’s hands withdrew, the solution surfaced, whisper-soft. The one thing that would allow him to let go of what had passed.

Forgiveness
.

The very thought brought a surge of peace. A wave of magnanimousness. Seth squeezed his eyes shut against the relief. Of course. Alex hadn’t meant to hurt him. She hadn’t known the depth of his love for her, or how to adjust to the enormity of the gift he had given her. She hadn’t understood, hadn’t been capable of understanding. But she would be. Once he explained, once she realized the depths of his connection to her, everything would change.
She
would change. Everything would be better.

It would be the way it was supposed to be.

Just like that, the tangle within him eased. He took a deep breath, the first he’d managed since regaining consciousness a week ago. His lungs filled, expanded, pressed against his ribs, and…nothing. The bandage tugged against tender flesh and blood throbbed through inflamed tissue, but the soul-deep agony that had plagued him was gone. His fingers probed the wound beneath its covering, but nothing more than the slightest sensitivity remained, entirely tolerable. His lips tugged into a smile. He’d done it. He’d begun healing. Finally. He seized the Virtue’s wrist, then opened his eyes.

“How long?” he asked.

The Fallen One shrugged narrow shoulders, her indifferent gaze sliding past his. “I’ve told you I can’t predict—”

Seth’s grip tightened, and surprise flitted across her expression.

“Assuming I’ve turned a corner,” he said, “how long?”

The Virtue placed her free hand over the bandage. One eyebrow rose, then dipped again to meet its mate. “You’re right. It seems better.”

“I asked you a question.”

“If you can maintain this? A week until you’re fully healed. Two at the most.”

“What about until I’m able to cross the realms?”

“You should—”

His hand left her wrist and fastened around her throat. “I
said
, how long until I’m able?”

Pale, blue-green eyes widened, and the Virtue swallowed, a ripple of skin and muscle against his hold.

“A few days. Four, maybe five. But—”

He shoved her away, and she stumbled against the fireplace, extending her wings for balance. He tugged his shirt into place.

“Get out,” he said. “And next time, send someone who knows better than to have an opinion.”

“Did you hear me, Detective?”

Alex jolted back to the present. She turned from the window to face her supervisor, Staff Inspector Roberts. “Sorry. I was…”

She didn’t finish. There didn’t seem much point in telling Doug Roberts that her mind was still in the rail yard, that she couldn’t get the image of the four murdered cops out of her brain and would never scrub their deaths from her conscience. He already knew. He just didn’t know how long
never
meant for her.

Her gaze returned to Toronto’s frigid mid-afternoon.

Roberts sighed. “You really should go home, Alex. Have a stiff drink or two, and call Henderson or Dr. Riley or someone. Talk it out.”

It was good advice. Required advice, under the circumstances, except maybe for the drinking part. For a moment, Alex considered the idea. Riley was out of the question, of course. While the Vancouver psychiatrist knew enough about what was going on that she no longer wanted to have Alex committed, she was too astute by far, and Alex couldn’t handle going the feelings route today. Not after last night’s events.

And talking to Hugh Henderson wouldn’t be much better. As the only other person on the planet who knew every impossible, messy detail of humanity’s current plight, the Vancouver detective had been an anchor for Alex on more than one occasion, but she wasn’t ready to reach out to him on this. Not yet. Hugh would have too many questions, want too many details. The whole scenario was still too fresh for Alex. Too sharp. She shook her head.

“I’m good,” she said. “Really. You need me here.”

Her supervisor scowled. “I need you in one piece, too. I can’t afford for you to have a breakdown.”

Alex snorted. “If I haven’t gone off the deep end by now, Staff, I’m not going to.”

Even though a part of her wished she could take exactly that escape route.

“Besides,” she added, “I need to keep looking for Nina.”

“No.”

“Pardon?”

“The search has been called off, Alex. That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

Numbness crept over her, from the top of her head to her toenails. “I don’t understand.”

“I think you do.” Mouth tight and hands on hips, her supervisor met her gaze, his brown eyes sympathetic, sad, and unyielding. “Four cops died tonight, Alex, and one of our best tracking dogs is a quivering mass of jelly. Now that we know this—thing—has Nina, we can’t keep pursuing it. I can’t send more cops up against it. Not knowing what it’s capable of.”

He waved a hand at the window overlooking Homicide’s cramped, temporary quarters, where desks butted up against one another in haphazard disorganization, a stark reminder of the battle between angels and Fallen that had destroyed the top two floors of the building.

The battle between Seth and Aramael.

Her breath hitched.

Roberts didn’t seem to notice.

“We have no weapons against it, no way to stop it, and no way to take Nina from it, even if we do find her,” he continued. “I can’t risk more lives. I
won’t
risk them. Not when Nina is—”

His words dropped into silence. Where he’d stared her down a moment ago, now he wouldn’t meet her gaze. A muscle twitched along his jaw, an indicator of how much his words cost him. She didn’t care. Devastation licked through her, churned with denial, became white-hot fury.

“When Nina is going to die anyway?” she finished harshly.

Roberts paled.

“Damn it, Alex—” He broke off and took a deep breath, making a visible effort at control. “Look, I’m sorry about Nina. You
know
that. But what the fuck am I supposed to do here? I have an entire city coming apart at the seams. Have you
seen
the boards out there?”

He jabbed a thumb at the window between his office and the rest of Homicide, where dry-erase boards flanked the office perimeter. Fifteen of them. She’d counted them on her way in to write her statement at four this morning. Then, as now, she’d cringed from the murders they catalogued, the chaos they represented—and from the burden she’d realized her colleagues had carried while she’d single-mindedly pursued her niece.

Roberts pushed up from his chair. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Really I am. But the decision is made.”

“So now what?” She threw her hands wide. “I’m supposed to give up? Stop looking and leave Nina to die out there on her own? She’s
seventeen
, Staff. She’s just a kid!”

Roberts snatched up the phone and hurled it across the room. It shattered against the wall, scattering fragments of plastic and wired components across the carpeted floor. “Goddamn it, Alex, do you think I don’t know that? Do you think this is
easy?
”

The office door opened and Tim Abrams, another detective, poked his head in. His gaze swept over Alex and their staff inspector, settled on the destroyed phone, and flicked back to Alex. Without a word, he withdrew again.

Alex stood frozen in place. She sensed Roberts wasn’t finished yet, and she waited for his words even as her every muscle, her every cell, screamed denial. He had more to say, but she didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want him speaking the unspeakable things that had been slowly building in him—in all of them—over the last two weeks. Even in herself.

Especially in herself.

She closed her eyes.

“Nina is
gone
,” he said, his voice raw. “Even if you could find her again, even if you could get her away from whatever she’s with, even if you survived trying, you can’t save her.”

Alex’s head jerked from side to side, pulled by the invisible strings of repudiation.
You’re wrong
, she wanted to say.
There’s a way. There has to be a way
.

“She’s my
niece
,” she whispered instead.
She’s Jennifer’s little girl, and she’s all I’ve got
.

“I know.”

Hands settled onto her shoulders and squeezed. Gently, compassionately.

“I know,” her supervisor repeated. “And if she were mine, I’ve no idea what I’d do. But you have no choice, Alex. I can’t give you a choice, because we need you. Here. With your head in the game. Because you’re the only one who has any fucking idea what’s going on in the world right now. You’re all we’ve got.”

Alex bit down on the inside of her bottom lip, using the pain to distract herself. To keep from letting in the quiet panic that underscored Roberts’s words, or from giving in to the tears burning behind her eyes or the gathering rawness in her throat. He was wrong, of course. Not about her being needed, but about her not having a choice. She’d been making choices for weeks now, always for the greater good. Making them, living with them, suffering their consequences.

No, there was always a choice.

The question was whether she was strong enough to make this one.

“Call Henderson,” Roberts said wearily. “Talk to him. Please.”

Alex pulled away and walked out.

RESTING HIS ELBOWS ON
the desk, Mittron pressed fingertips to his temples and massaged the ache forming there. On the far side of the office, Samael paced the length of the peeling, graffitied wall, muttering under his breath. The near-ceaseless din of thousands of children screaming for attention floated in through the broken panes of the room’s only window.

What a Hellhole. The noise, the stench of decay, the complete lack of any creature comforts. Conditions were nothing short of abominable, and beyond unsuitable for Heaven’s former executive administrator.

Mittron pressed harder against the thumping in his skull.
Dear One in
—

Right. He sighed. The One wasn’t
in
Heaven anymore. She wasn’t anywhere. Both she and Lucifer were gone, leaving him to deal with eighty thousand Nephilim brats and a handful of idiots who thought they could run the universe. Not to mention a crazed Principality that was, without doubt, stalking him even as he sat here. His heart gave an uncomfortable thud at the thought.

He’d been expecting Bethiel on his doorstep every moment of every day for the last two weeks. Ever since he’d told Samael how to open the gates of Limbo, knowing the Principality he’d unjustly imprisoned there was among the Fallen loosed upon the universe…

Mittron shuddered, his brain caught in the incessant loop that had him jumping at shadows, imagining the rustle of wings behind him, anticipating the bite of a sword through his flesh at every turn. Bethiel, free to come after him. Free to carry out the roared threat that had reached Mittron’s ears over and above the clang of Heavenly metal intended to imprison the Principality forever.

“
By all that is holy and righteous, Seraph, I swear I will find you if it takes me all of eternity!
”

Mahogany-dark hands slammed, open-palmed, onto the desktop before him. Mittron jolted in his chair, swallowing—just barely—an involuntary and undignified shriek of terror. He stared past his fingers at Samael, looming over him.

“Are you even listening to me?” the Archangel demanded.

Mittron linked his hands together and lowered them to the desk. He took a long, deep breath, gluing together his nerves. “Of course I’m listening. Seth refuses to take up the reins and now you want to dump him.”

Samael glared at him, his gaze narrowing. Seeming to decide Mittron wasn’t being entirely flippant, he stood tall and stalked the room’s perimeter again.

“Well, he’s of no bloody use to me if he’s going to moon over the Naphil the way his father did over the One. Hell needs a ruler, not a spineless, weak-kneed—” Samael shoved a chair out of his way. It hit a wall and splintered.

Mittron winced. He wished the Archangel had cooled off after his meeting with Seth before coming here. Too little existed in the way of usable furniture in this godforsaken place to begin with. He couldn’t afford to lose any of it to tantrums. Samael kicked aside a chair leg and rung.

“Bloody Heaven,” he snarled, whirling to face Mittron. His outstretched wings smashed a new hole in the rotted ceiling. “It’s not like I’m asking him to actually fight in the war. I’m not even asking him to take over the strategy. All he has to do—”

“All he has to do,” Mittron interrupted, “is play by your rules.”