Sins of the Lost

He grimaced at the diminutive, crimson-robed female in the arched entry of the rose garden where he’d taken refuge. “You’re very astute.”

Verchiel, Highest Seraph and executive administrator of Heaven, shrugged. “I’ve had my share of practice at reading angels,” she said. A reference, no doubt, to her past position as handler of the volatile Powers— particularly Aramael. “My point—”

Mika’el waved her silent. “Your point is that you want to know what the One told me yesterday.”

“She holds you responsible, doesn’t she? But she knew—”

“She knew I would task Aramael with Seth’s assassination,” Mika’el cut in. “All that happened after—the Nephilim army, permitting Lucifer to manipulate me, my plan to strike the first blow and plunge Heaven into war again—all of that I kept from her.”

“We kept it from her because if we’d told her—”

“Then she would have stopped Lucifer the only way she could, and we would have lost her.”

“Surely she cannot blame you for trying to protect her.”

He played idly with the whetstone in his hand, moving it between his fingers. “She can if she prefers not to be protected.”

Silence met his words, broken by the faintest whisper of a breeze passing through the stone-walled garden, the lazy drone of a bumblebee, the call of a distant bird, Verchiel’s swallow.

“She wants to end herself?” the Highest asked at last. “You must be mistaken.”

“Not end,” he said. “Alter. She wants to go back to what she was before she divided herself into so many pieces—or at least closer to that state. She’s worn out, Verchiel. Weary of the struggle between her and Lucifer, of trying to maintain balance in the universe, of being the All to so many souls. She’s given so much of herself that there’s nothing left. She tried to tell me before, but I didn’t want to listen. And now my actions might have made it impossible.”

Leaving his sword on the bench, he stood and paced the gravel path. “If we—if I hadn’t interfered,” his voice was harsh in his own ears, “she could have done what she wanted to do all along. She could have eliminated Lucifer as a threat and left us to deal only with the Fallen. We would still have faced a difficult battle, but we would have prevailed. We would have saved humanity.”

Verchiel’s head moved in convulsive denial. “Without the One? How will we live without her?”

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.