Mika’el stopped to watch a honeybee buried in the pale pink folds of a rose, its buzzing at a frenzied pitch. The internal chaos he’d held at bay by endlessly sharpening his sword, by refusing to think, had begun swirling inside him again. How would they live without the One? He had no idea, but she had made it clear they had no choice. Their time with her had run out. It was up to him to lead the way.
But not to lie.
“We don’t,” he answered Verchiel. He met her shock with the grim implacability that had carried him through six millennia of alienation from his Creator. “We learn to survive. One day at a time.”
Another silence fell, this one filled not with shock but with their shared, fathomless anguish. Not even the birds intruded. After what felt like an aeon but could only have been a few moments, Verchiel softly cleared her throat.
“You said your actions might have made it impossible. Because of the Nephilim?”
His eyes closed. Involuntarily, briefly. He made himself open them. He wouldn’t hide from the Highest. Wouldn’t keep secrets. Not anymore.
“Them—and Seth.”
“Seth? But he gave up his immortality, his power . . . what threat can he possibly—?” Verchiel broke off as a shudder, barely perceptible, rippled through the ground beneath their feet. She stared down, then lifted startled, questioning eyes to Mika’el’s.
“That kind of threat,” he said, rising to his feet and replacing his sword in its scabbard at his waist. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a mess to clean up before Lucifer realizes what’s happened and finds a way to use it to his own advantage—if he hasn’t already.”
Chapter 5
A swirl of dust and litter lifted from the street and traveled toward the parking lot, bringing with it the exhaust fumes from the early morning traffic. From behind Alex came the solid thunk of the ambulance doors closing, then the steady footfall of Roberts’s approach. He stopped at the edge of her vision and cleared his throat.
“Well? Is it what I think it is?”
That depends, a part of her—one that still believed in keeping secrets—wanted to hedge. A greater part of her knew there was no point. Not with Roberts. With someone else, perhaps, but not Roberts. He’d seen too much, guessed at too much, and he needed to know. He deserved to know.
“If you’re asking whether I think this is related to our serial killer, the answer is yes.”
“Our killer died two months ago.”
Almost taking her out in the process, despite her Heavenly soulmate’s best efforts. The scars across her throat prickled with memories. “Yes.”
“So there’s another one?”
More than one. More than you can imagine.
“It looks that way.”
Massaging the back of her neck with fingers made icy by the November wind, she struggled to find the words she needed to tell her supervisor that the bizarre pregnancies happening worldwide had nothing to do with the virus being postulated by the medical community—or the bioterrorism theories rampant in the media.
She tried to remember what she’d told Hugh Henderson when it had become impossible to put off the Vancouver detective any longer. How she’d explained that Heaven and Hell were real, and Armageddon itself was about to unfold. But Roberts forestalled her, his tone brisk.
“All right. As soon as the preliminary autopsy confirms what we’re thinking, I’ll pass the file on to Bastion. Are you going home again or straight to the office?”
Her fingers curled into the hair at the nape of her neck. She stared at her supervisor. “Excuse me?”
“I asked if you’re—”
“I heard, but that’s it? That’s all you want to know?”
“It’s all I need.”
Her mouth flapped three times before she found her voice again. “A woman’s baby is ripped—not cut—ripped from her, and you don’t have any questions other than am I going home or straight to the office? What the hell, Staff? You must realize we’re not dealing with a human killer here. You need to know—”
“Stop.”
She did, if only out of sheer surprise.
“I don’t need to know anything, Detective. In fact, the less I know, the better. Because regardless of who—or what—did this, as it stands right now I have no choice but to investigate the homicide as I would any other. And if I’m going to place you back on active duty, I need deniability. Has Detective Jarvis ever mentioned hallucinations to you? No. Has she reported hearing voices? No. Does she appear mentally sound? Yes.”
The buttons of Roberts’s wool peacoat strained under the sudden thrust of his hands into his pockets. “As good a cop as you are, your career is hanging by a thread right now. The rest of the world wants a rational explanation for what’s going on. Our bosses want a rational explanation. So if you go around spouting off about killers who aren’t human, I either have to back you up or shut you down. If I back you up, I get shut down and we’re both finished. Whatever the hell is going on, neither of us will be of any use without a badge behind us. Are you getting this?”
If I back you up. Not when. If.
Because it didn’t come down to whether or not the rest of the world wanted to believe her, but whether or not he did.
The truths she’d wanted to speak gathered in the back of her throat, piling one on top of another until they threatened to cut off her breath. She hadn’t realized until now, until this very moment, how much she needed to share her burden. To tell someone here in Toronto, because Henderson was just too damned far away in Vancouver, about all the things no mortal should have ever known.
The broken pact that had triggered war between Heaven and Hell; a Nephilim army, eighty thousand strong, growing in the bellies of human women; Heaven’s attempt to assassinate the One’s own son when his love for a mortal woman, for Alex, had threatened the existence of humankind.
Archangels. Lost soulmates. Rape at the hands of Lucifer.
She nudged at a pebble near the toe of her shoe. “Can I ask you something?”
Roberts waited.
“If you didn’t want to know, why call me?”
“I called you for confirmation, Detective. Because I do know. Maybe not everything, but enough.” Her supervisor opened his car door. “There’s a meeting this morning. Ten a.m. I expect you there.”
Mika’el stared down from the rooftop at the woman in the parking lot below—and at the Archangel watching her from the shadows of a building.
Aramael.
Damn it to Hell and back again.
At first, when he hadn’t found the Naphil at either her apartment or office, he’d been at a loss as to where else to look. With any other human, it would have been a simple matter of contacting his or her Guardian, but those of Nephilim descent had no Guardians, making them essentially untraceable—especially in a city of several million. Then, about to give up and post a watch at the two most obvious locations, he’d sensed Aramael’s presence.
The coincidence had been too great to ignore.
And now he’d confirmed his suspicions. Aramael, newly promoted from exiled Power to Archangel, had lied to him about having severed the connection between him and Alex. Mika’el tipped back his head and stared at the still-dark sky. He should have expected this. He of all angels should have known that one’s soulmate, Naphil or otherwise, could not be so easily dismissed.
His years away had made him careless. It was time—past time—to get his act together. The One needed her son back, and Mika’el needed to know he had a united force of Archangels at the ready.