Sins of the Lost

Caim’s battle had burned her former home to the ground, but Seth knew better. He saw in the hardness of her eyes there was more to it. She might not have said so—might not have admitted it to herself—but the real reason she hadn’t rebuilt was because she didn’t see the point.

And he couldn’t argue with her.

Not with what he knew was coming.

It was bad enough that Lucifer and the One insisted on going to war, a war that would inevitably spill over into the mortal realm. But if Lucifer had been telling the truth about the eighty thousand Nephilim his followers had bred. . .

Closing his eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose. The human race didn’t stand a chance. It was just a matter of time until every mortal soul on the planet was wiped out, including Alex—and now that he’d given up his immortality, him.

Which was why none of this was how it was supposed to be. Alex trying to stem an unstoppable tide, him staring at a featureless beige wall, both apart for hours at a stretch instead of spending their time together, away from all of this. Away from her job, the constant threats, the relentless insanity gripping the universe. None of which he could do a bloody thing about.

Dissatisfaction gave a sinuous roll in his belly. Perhaps he’d been too quick to—

He opened his eyes, cutting his thoughts short. No. His former powers had no bearing here. He’d given them up because he didn’t want them, damn it. Because he’d wanted no more part in the endless battle between his parents. He’d chosen Alex over all of that. Had chosen . . . he stared at the featureless room again.

He’d chosen this. Of his own free will.

It was time he made the best of it.

Chapter 3

“Two sugars, no cream.” Alex handed one of the disposable coffee cups to the tall, overcoated man standing beneath a streetlamp.

Doug Roberts, staff inspector for Homicide Section, took the cup from her with a grunt of thanks. His assessing gaze swept over her from head to toe, then traveled back up to meet hers. “You look sane enough.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Voice of Doom has been trying to convince me otherwise for the past week.”

She raised a brow. “Bell?”

“The highly qualified Doctor Bell,” Roberts corrected. “In whose esteemed opinion, you’re ready for the loony bin.”

“What the hell is with that guy? Why is he so determined to trash my career?”

“It’s more about his own career. And his ego. He’s pissed that I’m allowing you back to work based on the judgment of an unknown psychiatrist on the other side of the country.”

“A psych—you mean Elizabeth Riley? Wait a minute. She contacted you, and you still made me suffer through a week of meetings with Bell?”

“I contacted her,” Roberts corrected, “and yes. CYA, Detective.”

Cover your ass.

Alex thought back over the excruciating hours of verbal sparring she’d endured as the department shrink tried and failed to elicit details about things she would never—could never—tell him. To her mind, Roberts’s ass could go straight to hell for making her go through that.

That, however, was an opinion best kept to herself. She surveyed the parking lot. With the question of her sanity out of the way, it was time to get down to business—and to her first murder scene since their serial killer more than two months before. A killer that had turned her entire reality upside down when she’d learned he was a Fallen Angel. She hunched her shoulders and gripped her coffee a little tighter.

A handful of personnel dismantled the powerful floodlights used to light the scene. Roberts had called her in late on this one. Odd. She shot him a sideways glance.

“So what do we have?”

“A goddamn mess.”

Noting the thin line of his mouth, she raised a brow. “Can we be a little more specific?”

Roberts pointed toward an ambulance across the lot. “In the body bag. Female, Caucasian, twenty to twenty-five years of age.”

“And?”

“She was pregnant. The baby is . . . gone.”

Gone. An innocuous enough word, if it hadn’t been for Roberts’s slight hesitation before speaking it. Gone. Gone how? Gone as in she’d given birth and the baby was missing? Gone as in the baby had died with its mother?

Or gone as in this was the reason Roberts had called her?

As in Seth was right and this had to do with them.

Tossing her still full cup into a nearby Dumpster, she took a deep breath. “Right. Let’s have a look.”

Roberts’s hand on her arm stopped her before she’d taken more than a step. “It’s bad, Alex.”

“I’m—” The word fine died on her lips. Had those haggard lines always been around his eyes? That gray tinge under his skin? She stared at him, then nodded once in acknowledgment of the warning.

Roberts released his grip.

Alex walked toward the ambulance, passing the mobile command post, a forensic technician packing up equipment, two others winding up extension cords and shutting down generators. She tried to steel herself for what she knew was coming, but what had once been an automatic defense felt rusty from disuse. Whatever awaited her, it was going to be rough.

With Roberts at her side, she reached the ambulance and waited for the coroner to unzip the body bag strapped to a gurney.

Heavy-duty black plastic parted to expose a young woman’s face, its unnatural pallor speaking to massive blood loss. Silently, grimly, the coroner pulled open the rest of the bag. Alex’s gaze traveled down the body. Settled on the raw, gaping hole where the abdomen should have been. Where a baby would have been.

If it hadn’t been ripped out of its mother.

Not cut.

Ripped.

Brutally, viciously torn.

Alex’s stomach heaved.

Chapter 4

“You cannot avoid me forever, Mika’el.”

The careful neutrality of Verchiel’s voice made the words all the more accusatory. Mika’el paused in the task of honing the sword laid across his lap. He stared down at the gleaming metal, its edge now beyond lethal. It hadn’t needed sharpening, but the rhythmic act of sliding stone over metal had been calming. Mindless. Requiring no conscious thought as long as he continued.

Given a choice, he would have continued for eternity.

He laid the broadsword beside him on the garden bench. Then he leaned back and stretched his arms wide along the backrest. “I’m not avoiding you, Highest.”

“Fine. Then you can’t avoid yourself forever.”