Sins of the Warrior (6 page)

He pretended disinterest. “Is who still where?”

“Mittron. Is he still in Heaven?”

“I don’t know who remains.” Samael shrugged. “And frankly, I don’t care. Do we have a deal or not?”

Bethiel made two more circuits of the room, his steps jolting and uneven, fists inside his pockets tapping against his legs. His expression alternated between clear refusal of the idea and a kind of agonized longing that made Samael want to roll his eyes. He waited for the decision he knew to be inevitable. Sometimes others made it almost too easy for him.

Bethiel stopped. He turned to face Samael. Then he took a deep breath and handed over his soul on the proverbial silver platter.

“Where do I find her?” he asked.

Standing on the heavily salted sidewalk, fresh snowflakes drifting down around her, Alex stared up at the hospital windows glowing in the night. Was Jen sitting at hers now, looking down on her and wondering why she wasn’t coming inside to see her? Would any part of her be aware enough to care, or to even notice Alex’s presence?

Her cell phone trilled. She tugged it from her coat pocket, glanced at the name
Elizabeth Riley
on the display, and sighed. She’d been avoiding calls from Henderson all day. It just figured that he’d sic Riley on her instead. She hesitated. While she still didn’t want to talk to anyone, the calls wouldn’t stop until she did, and the Vancouver psychiatrist seemed the lesser of two evils at the moment. At least she could count on Riley’s acerbic manner to shore up her defenses, whereas she suspected she’d fold up on the spot if she heard Hugh’s gruff concern.

She thumbed the answer icon. “Jarvis,” she said.

Riley’s voice reached across two thousand miles, cool, brisk, professional. “We heard what happened last night. Hugh said you haven’t returned any of his calls. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m on my way home and just stopped by to see Jen first.”

A second of silence slipped by. Alex pictured Riley’s piercing blue eyes behind her wire-framed glasses, the furrow between the graying brows, the compression of the psychiatrist’s lips against the urge to probe further.

Riley cleared her throat. “How is she? Any change?”

Alex’s gaze flicked back up to the rows of blank windows. Did she confess she hadn’t made it inside? That she’d been standing on the sidewalk long enough for her toes to go numb?

“I just got here,” she lied. “I haven’t made it inside yet. But there’s been nothing so far.”

“And Nina?”

An image of her unconscious niece flared to life in Alex’s brain: matted dark hair hanging over the Fallen One’s arm; too-thin arms dangling limply from within the folds of a blanket; face pale and pinched. She tightened her grip on the cell phone and realized her fingers had gone as numb as her toes.

“He had her,” she said, her voice hoarse but steady. “The Fallen One we found. He had her.”

She listened to the hiss of Riley’s breath. Felt the sound slip between her ribs like the blade of a knife. Clamped her lips together.

“And is she…?”

The knife blade in Alex’s ribs twisted. “Yes.”

Riley’s voice lost its professional edge. “I’m so sorry. I’d hoped…”

The psychiatrist trailed off a second time, and Alex locked her knees, remaining upright through sheer force of will. She knew what Riley had hoped. She’d hoped it herself, though she never allowed the thought to fully form until now. Until this moment.

She’d hoped they’d been wrong, that Lucifer hadn’t gotten to her niece after all, that Nina wouldn’t die in less than a week. She’d hoped that recovering Nina would bring Jen back from wherever she had gone, so Alex could once more have a family. She’d hoped…

A snowflake landed on her cheek, ice against ice.

God, how she’d hoped.

“What now?” Riley asked.

Alex stamped frozen feet. “I don’t know. They’ve called off the search. They had no choice. Not after what happened.”

The silence stretched so long this time that she glanced at the display to make sure she hadn’t lost the connection. An ambulance pulled into the emergency bay, lights splashing red through the falling snow. At last Riley cleared her throat.

“And you? Are you calling it off, too?”

Alex tried to curl her fingers into a fist, but they were too stiff to comply. That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? The one that had kept her standing in the cold for more than ten minutes, unable to make her feet carry her into the hospital. She still didn’t have an answer.

Choices
.

“Alex? Are you going to keep looking?”

“I don’t know,” she croaked. She shoved her free hand into her pocket. “I don’t know, Liz. Christ, even if I find her, she’s with a Fallen One. He’s not going to just hand her over to me, and I have no way to take her from him. But I don’t know how I can give up, either.”

“Oh, honey…”

Alex blinked furiously at the tears that threatened. Shit. Now Riley was going to turn all caring and sweet? Maybe taking one of Henderson’s calls would have been better after all. Holding back a telltale sniffle, she swiped a hand under her nose.

“I should go. I haven’t slept since night before last and I’m beat.”

“All right. But you’ll call if you need to talk? And you know I can come—”

“God, no.” Alex winced at the speed and harshness of her response. “I mean, thank you, but I’m fine. Really.”

She heard a muffled snort from the other end of the line. “I know what you meant, Alex. I’m not offended, and the offer stands. I’m here if you need me. Hugh and I both are.”

“Of course. Thank you. Speaking of Hugh—”

“He’s been up to his ass, according to him. I don’t know if you’ve seen the news, but things aren’t good out here. They aren’t good anywhere right now. He said to tell you that’s why he’s been so lenient about you not returning his calls, but I’m supposed to report back to him after I speak with you. I’ll tell him you’re coping, shall I? That should buy you a little time until you hear from him.”

“Yeah. That’d be great. Thanks, Liz, and—” Alex’s voice caught. “Just thanks.”

Ending the call, she looked up again at the hospital where her beautiful, broken sister sat. Grief, ever present beneath her surface, tightened the talons embedded in her throat. She trudged toward the main entrance.

PALMS SLICK WITH SWEAT,
Alex stepped into her sister’s room. She’d visited Jennifer every day for two weeks, and she’d swear the walk down that corridor got longer each time. Knowing Jen had descended into the same blackness that had claimed so many other minds trapped in the ward, the same blackness that had claimed their mother…

God
damn
it, this was just so wrong.

Pausing inside the door, Alex let her gaze travel the familiar utilitarian space: the wheeled bed, neatly made and unoccupied; the functional washroom to the left; the gleaming linoleum floors and pale green walls. And Jen, sitting in the same chair she always did, staring out the same window, her gaze as empty and unfocused as it had been since the night Lucifer took Nina.

Alex closed her eyes and braced herself for their one-sided visit. Two weeks and no change. Not a single word, not a flicker of recognition, nothing. If Jen stayed like this, if her mind didn’t come back from wherever it had retreated…

If I have to continue alone
…

Guilt churned through Alex’s gut, mixing with self-loathing. Christ almighty. Her sister’s mind had broken, and all she could think about was herself? Would it really be any better if Jen
did
come back? Did Alex
want
her sister to return to a reality where Lucifer himself had raped and impregnated her daughter, sentencing the seventeen-year-old girl to death through childbirth? Just so she—Alex—didn’t have to face it alone?

She pushed away from the doorframe.

Face it, Jarvis, you
are
alone. And you’d better get used to that, too
.

Her booted heels thudded hollowly against the gleaming linoleum as she crossed the room. She rested a hand on her sister’s shoulder, gave a gentle squeeze, and brushed a kiss across the pale, cold cheek.

Jen didn’t react.

Thrusting her fists into her coat pockets, Alex perched on the empty chair facing Jen. She swallowed on a throat made of sandpaper.

“Hey, sis. I’m sorry I’m late today. The streets are awful with all this snow. And we had some trouble at work last night.”

Nothing.

“Some of our guys—” Alex’s voice cracked. She swallowed again. “Some of our guys were killed last night. Four of them.”

Not so much as the flicker of an eyelash.

Alex’s fists tightened. Her jaw ached.
Goddamn it, Jen, respond. Do something—anything—to let me know you’re still in there. I can’t do this alone, damn it. I can’t keep looking for Nina by myself, not when I know how it’s going to end
.

Blinking back the blur of tears, she stared out the window.

“I saw her,” she said, and cringed from her own words. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t mention Nina. The doctors had warned her that doing so might drive her sister even further away.

But what if they’re wrong? What if Nina’s name is what Jen needs to hear? What she needs to bring her back?

Alex wavered. Exhaustion and the events of the night piled in on her, fogging her thoughts. She didn’t know what was right anymore. Didn’t know who to trust or what to do. She just knew she needed her sister. Needed to try. She steeled herself.

“Did you hear me, Jen? I said I saw Nina. She’s alive.”

For long seconds, she held her every fiber still, studying her sister’s face, the lines of her body, waiting…and then she slumped back in the chair. Raw agony shot through her every fiber, cramping her muscles, filling her lungs with shards of glass, turning her tears to fire.
God damn
.

Hysteria bubbled in her throat at the whisper of thought.
God
damn? Who the hell was she kidding? God
couldn’t
damn. Hell, God couldn’t do anything anymore, because she no longer even existed. She’d left. Abandoned Heaven, the angels, her so-called beloved mortal children, the entire fucking universe. Up and left it all. And now Nina was out there somewhere, held by a Fallen One, sentenced to a death no one could stop; and Jen was here, like this; and humanity was on its own, facing potential decimation, if not at the hands of the Nephilim army created by Lucifer, then through its own shortcomings. Its own sad, crippling arrogance.

And she—Alex herself—would get to stand by and watch it all. Every disaster. Every war. Every death. Every loss of every person she had ever known or cared for, because thanks to the being she had tried to love, tried to save, she herself could no longer die.

Fuck
.

She took her hands from her pockets and viciously scrubbed away the tears that had spilled over. Then she shoved herself upright, out of the chair. She couldn’t deal with this. Not tonight. She had to get out of here. Now, while she was still capable of driving herself home. Leaning down, she put her arms around Jen, wincing at the frailty of her sister’s too-thin shoulders. Just how much weight had Jen lost since—

She stiffened as fragile arms crept beneath her jacket and around her waist. Her breath jammed in her throat. Holy hell.

“Jen?” she croaked. She closed her eyes against fresh tears and buried her face in her sister’s hair. Astonishment unfurled in her belly, became a swelling of hope. “You heard me? You heard what I said about Nina?”

“Let her go,” Jen whispered, the first words out of her mouth since she’d been found unconscious in her house, the front door demolished, Nina gone.

“I don’t understand.”

“She’s dead, Alex. Let her go.”

“But she’s not dead.” Alex drew back far enough to stare into the familiar doe-skin brown eyes and the clarity in their depths, the first she’d seen there in more than two weeks. Clarity and—Alex’s heart jolted at the defeat there as well.

She shook her head with a ferocity that made her brain hurt. “No. No! She’s alive, Jen. Didn’t you hear me? I saw her. And I’ll find her for you again, I swear.”

“Let her go,” Jen repeated. “Let us both go.”

Alex hugged her again. Tightly. Fiercely. “I can’t do that, Jennifer Abbott. I
won’t
do that. We can get through this. You and me, together. You just need to stay with me. Promise me, Jen. Promise you’ll stay.
Please
.”

Jen’s arms tightened for the space of a frantic breath—long enough for Alex’s fledgling hope to surge—and then they began a slow withdrawal. Alex’s hug turned desperate, clinging. Her sister’s hand snagged on the sidearm at Alex’s waist and, from a long, long way off, Alex felt a snap give. Felt the tug of her pistol leaving its holster.

She reared back. Too late, training kicked in, and her hand instinctively went to cover her weapon, to protect it. Her own shout filled her ears. Jen’s gaze met hers.

The world exploded in a crimson wash of blood.

MIKA’EL STRAIGHTENED UP FROM
the map spread across the round war table. Three breaks in their front line in the last twenty-four hours. Their defense was weakening faster than any of them had predicted. His gaze traveled along the lines of grim-faced Archangels flanking him. Azrael, Uriel, and Zachariel to his left; Raphael and Gabriel to his right. Five Archangels—six including him—to patrol the infinitely long border between Heaven and Hell. To inspire the others to hold fast.

“We can’t keep this up, Mika’el.” Azrael, voicing what every one of them thought. “There just aren’t enough of us.”

“Are you suggesting we give up?” Gabriel snapped.

Azrael’s expression darkened. “I’m
suggesting
the truth. If the other choirs don’t get their act together, we’re going to lose. There are only six of us, Gabriel. We can’t win this war on our own.”

“Enough.” Mika’el shot a fierce look around the table. “We can’t win at all if we start fighting amongst ourselves. No one denies the challenges we face, Azrael; the question is, what do we do about them?”

Azrael shifted his feet and said nothing. Uriel, Zachariel, and Raphael stared down at the map. Gabriel cleared her throat.