Sins of the Warrior (33 page)

She put her hand over Scorpion’s against her cheek. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I’m not what you think, Scorpion.”

“You’re like them. The ones with the wings. We know that.” He shrugged again. “We don’t need to know more.”

She shook her head. “No. I’m…”

More? Less? Different? How in Hell did she explain what she was when she didn’t know herself?

“Hey.”

Scorpion’s gruff voice drew her attention back to him again.

“You’re what you choose to be,” he said. “Remember? We all are. That’s what you told each of us when we found you. You don’t want to be an angel, then don’t. We have your back no matter what you decide. The power of choice, Emmanuelle. It was the gift you gave us, and now you need to remember it’s your gift, too.”

She opened her mouth to respond, to tell him she knew that, but then she stopped.

“
Choices have consequences, Emmanuelle
,” Mika’el’s voice came back to her from five thousand years before. “
Are you sure this one is how you wish to define yourself?
”

She hadn’t understood then. Not like she did now.

If she’d stayed, she might have seen Mittron’s machinations.

Might have stopped him.

Might have influenced her brother or been the strength her mother needed to stop Lucifer.

Might have prevented a mortal woman from suffering the agonies Alexandra Jarvis had been through.

She might have done so, so much.

She turned her head to gaze out across the treetops and the ocean and the sky that grew lighter with each passing moment. She pushed her sight outward, to the slumbering town nearby, the city beyond that. There was a whole realm sprawling beneath the sky. A realm of intricate, finely balanced glory, filled with the children of her mother’s creation. Children like Wookie and Jez and Scorpion and all the others Emmanuelle had known and cared for over her years among them.

Children who hovered on the brink of extinction because of choices. Hers. Her parents’. Mika’el’s. Their own.

Choices.

Consequences.

Crushing responsibility.

This was what Mika’el had understood.

What her mother had lived with.

The faint scent of roses filtered in on the breeze. Then the French door banged open and Bethiel stood framed in the opening.

“The human news,” he said. “You need to see it.”

Before Emmanuelle could react, another presence appeared, this one in a whirl of black wings and a gust of wind that knocked the mountain-like Scorpion clean off his feet and rattled the windows in their frames. Emmanuelle stared at the armor-clad female Archangel.

“Gabriel?”

The red-headed warrior turned. A fierce, sapphire-blue gaze raked over Emmanuelle, then rose to meet hers, becoming bleak, cold, barren.

“The Fallen have brought the war to Earth,” Gabriel said. “We’re out of time.”

MIKA’EL STARED OUT THE
French doors at the tiny yard beyond. The flowers were gone at this time of year, but the streetlight just beyond the fence still showed the beds to be tidy and well tended. The One would have liked this Elizabeth Riley who gardened here. She’d had a special place in her heart for all those who had shared her love of growing things, of caring for life.

Of preserving it rather than plotting to destroy it.

His mouth tightened and he swung away from the doors. The television in the corner beckoned. It was a poor way to get the information he wanted, but short of leaving Alex to go back to Heaven—or sending out a beacon to nearby Guardians that might be traced by others—it was all he had. With a grimace, he waved a hand, and the television flickered to life. Tanks and armored vehicles rumbled across the screen.

“…as overwhelmed U.N. troops left the country, marking the fifth retreat in the last week,” said the voice of the female newscaster. “The U.N. has already abandoned similar peacekeeping efforts in South Sudan, Mali, Darfur, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and officials announced today that it will pull out of its remaining eleven operations by the end of next week. With unrest continuing to mount across the world, troops will return to their own countries to aid in efforts to minimize the escalating chaos.”

The video disappeared, replaced by the somber newscaster. “The death toll continues to mount in the wake of the retreat, with an estimated thirteen thousand civilians killed in missile attacks by Hezbollah.”

The camera angle changed. The newscaster’s gaze followed it. “In other news, there are reports from Moscow, the U.K., and South Korea today of more winged aliens. Governments continue to claim these so-called appearances are little more than a well-executed hoax, but a number of home videos have surfaced of the aliens seeming to destroy entire buildings as they fight among themselves. We’ll be back with that story—and the video footage—in a moment.”

An advertisement took over the television screen, its music and pitch for some kind of alcoholic beverage blasting into the living room. Mika’el felt Alex stir in the bed down the hall. He waved his hand, and the television went blank and silent.

Winged aliens. Angels. Here, visible, with buildings falling in the wake of their battles. He waited, expecting shock to settle in, but he could summon nothing more than fatigue. Resignation.

So the war had come to Earth at last. Even if Emmanuelle decided to side with Heaven, it might very well be too late for humani—

A guttural wail echoed through the condo, filled with despair, and Michael’s heart stopped.

Alex
.

Alex woke in a bed, the sheets cool against her naked skin, the darkened room speaking to night. The lights of a passing vehicle slid across the ceiling, illuminating enough for her to recognize Elizabeth Riley’s bedroom. She was back in the condo, but how—? And what and where and when—?

Something had happened. She knew that. Felt it in the hollowness of her heart, the clench of her belly. Something had happened, but the harder she tried to recall what, the more ephemeral became the memories. The shadows of memories. She squeezed her eyes closed and pushed against the barrier she sensed in her mind. It stayed solid, unmoved by her increasing desperation to remember.

She scowled. It was no use. Something might have happened, but some
one
didn’t want her to remember it. And she knew only one someone capable of that kind of interference. Someone who should damned well know better than to screw with her brain. She pushed aside the covers to slip from the bed, then paused.

Outside, a motorcycle slowed for the stop sign at the corner, its distinctive, throaty rumble marking it as a Harley-Davidson. A memory struggled to the surface of Alex’s brain but sank again before she could grasp it. The Harley’s motor revved. An image flared in her mind.

Bikes lined up outside a bar.

The motor gunned. More images flashed.

A woman—Emmanuelle—flying backward into a mirror behind a bar. Shattered glass. Splintered tables. Seth. Michael.

The Harley roared away, shattering the neighborhood’s quiet—and with it, whatever barrier had been placed between Alex and what had come before. In one tumbling, tumultuous, devastating rush, she remembered. Remembered it all.

Emmanuelle pulling her from the wreckage of the bar. The injured bikers. Michael’s armor fused to his body. Emmanuelle tearing it away from him. His roar of agony. The arrival of Bethiel on the beach.

Nina.

Oh God. Nina
.

Alex sucked for air. It slid down her throat like razor blades, slicing her open from the inside. Agony swept in its wake, and she whimpered. Nina was gone. Dead before she’d been found. Dead alone in childbirth, beyond Alex’s reach.

Alex had failed her. Failed the last person she’d loved. The last of her family. She curled into a ball, her knees drawn up to protect her chest, her heart. Fingers threaded themselves into her hair. Tangled. Tightened. Pulled. Physical pain warred with mental agony. Carefully built compartment walls cracked. Crumbled. Alex’s whimper became a moan.

Nina. Jen. Aramael. All gone—because of her.

Seth loosed on the world—because of her.

The existence of humanity itself hanging in the balance—because of her.

Immortality
.

The last thought slammed into her brain with the force of a locomotive, stopping the flood of thoughts and images in their tracks. For an instant, a heartbeat, her mind ceased to function at all.

Then—finally, blessedly—she felt the threads of sanity begin to unravel. Stood on the edge of a precipice, staring into the abyss she instinctively knew had swallowed Jen, and before her, their mother. Stood, stared, and willed her mind to plunge over the edge, into the darkness that waited. The nothingness.

The madness that would be so much less mad than her reality could ever be.

From a long way away came a low, keening wail, filling her ears, pushing her closer and closer to oblivion.

And then the strong arms that had lifted her from Nina’s side at the beach picked her up from the bed, sheet and all, and cradled her with a tenderness and compassion she didn’t want, didn’t deserve…couldn’t bear.

The wail became one of protest and loss and anguish. She fought the arms, but they held tighter, refusing to let go. Refusing to let her splinter into the fragments she wanted to become. Refusing to give her up to the grief that raged at her core and tried to swallow her from the inside out.

Until only the grief and the arms existed at all, locked in a battle for her very soul, and a warrior’s compassion became her entire world.

“Where is Mika’el?”

Emmanuelle pulled Scorpion to his feet, ignoring his look of surprise at the ease with which she tugged his two hundred and thirty-plus pounds upright. Still reeling from Gabriel’s news, she didn’t immediately turn back to answer the Archangel’s question. Gabriel’s gauntleted hand dropped onto her shoulder.

“I asked where Mika’el—”

Emmanuelle swung around, grasping Gabriel’s wrist and holding it away from her. “You forget to whom you speak, Archangel.”

“I know exactly to whom I speak,” Gabriel corrected. “You left, Emmanuelle, and you didn’t come back. Your mother—”

“My mother”—Emmanuelle’s hand tightened, bending the gauntlet’s metal beneath her fingers—”is not the issue here.”

Gabriel’s sapphire eyes flashed, and for a moment, Emmanuelle didn’t think the Archangel would back down. What would Emmanuelle do then? Fight her? Jaw aching with the effort, Emmanuelle made herself release the other’s wrist. She turned away, trying to pull her thoughts together, ignoring the pulse of fury directed between her shoulder blades as she might an annoying mosquito. Gabriel’s anger faltered.

As it should.

Emmanuelle gave an inward wince. Damn. Her escalation to godlike expectations hadn’t taken long, had it?

She pointed at Bethiel, still standing in the open doorway. “You. Can you find Mika’el?”

“I should be the one—” Gabriel began.

Emmanuelle cut her off without so much as glancing at her. “Forget it. You’re staying to tell me what’s going on.” She raised an eyebrow at Bethiel. “Well?”

The former Principality looked like he might raise an objection of his own, then he shrugged. “I think I know where he might be.”

“Good. Find him, and bring him back here. The woman, too,” she added as an afterthought.

Bethiel hesitated. Then, sketching what could only be termed a sardonic salute, he disappeared. Emmanuelle turned her attention to Scorpion. He had remained stoutly at her side, but the convulsive movement of his Adam’s apple belied the belligerent look he leveled at Gabriel.

“Wait inside with the others,” she told him. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Scorpion’s scowl deepened, and Emmanuelle touched his arm.

“Go,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

Like Bethiel, he hesitated an instant more, then stomped across the deck to the house, his heavy footsteps echoing through the otherwise quiet dawn. Emmanuelle waited until the door closed behind him, then she drew a deep breath and faced Gabriel. The Archangel stood with feet planted wide and gauntleted hands resting on armored hips.

“You left us,” she snarled. “And you didn’t come back. Not even when your mother—when the One—” She broke off and spread her arms wide, the metal of her gloves glinting in the early morning light. “You had to have felt it happen, Emmanuelle. You had to have known.”

“I felt a shift,” Emmanuelle admitted. “But that was all.”

“And you couldn’t open yourself up for thirty seconds to at least see what was going on?”

“I was done with Heaven, Gabriel. Done with my parents and their endless battles. I didn’t
want
to know what had happened.”

“You selfish, pretentious—” The Archangel bit off whatever she’d been about to say, her teeth snapping closed. She stalked to the other end of the deck, as far from Emmanuelle as the railing would allow. There, she braced her hands against the wood and let her head sag. So many emotions churned from her that Emmanuelle couldn’t even begin to sort through them.

She was too out of practice.

She’d been gone too long.

She’d forgotten too much.

Panic licked at her. What was she thinking? She couldn’t step into the void left by her mother. She knew nothing about overseeing the likes of Heaven, nothing about leading a fight against Hell, and nothing about caring for two entire realms. There was no way she could do this.

Scorpion’s offer sidled into her mind. “
We forget the whole thing. Put it behind us. We rest up here today, get on the bikes tomorrow, and hit the road. Simple as that
.”

Scorpion.

Jezebel.

Wookie.

All the others.

All of humanity.

“
Choices have consequences
.”

The deck bucked beneath her feet as a rumble rolled through the Earth. Gabriel straightened and spun around. Emmanuelle met her alarm, her resignation, her weariness.

Her own heart plummeted.

“Seth,” she said.

The red-haired Archangel lifted her chin, her sapphire eyes flashing a challenge.