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.
With a last glance streetward, he stepped back from the roof’s edge and out of the human realm.
He’d start with Aramael.
Chapter 6
Raymond Joly looked up at her from the couch as Alex walked into the coffee room.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” he said, his enormous mustache giving an upward twitch indicative of a grin. “It’s about time you got off your ass and back to work.”
“He said as he lazed on the couch,” she retorted, walking between him and the newscast he’d been watching, headed for the counter. She indicated the television with a lift of her chin. “More good news?”
Joly thumbed the remote control, and the screen went blank. Linking fingers behind his head, he leaned back. “Earthquakes in the Middle East, a massive hurricane that hit more Caribbean countries than I knew existed, flooding in Australia, and a volcanic eruption off the coast of Japan. Oh, and pregnant women lining up by the thousands to demand DNA tests for this virus they still can’t identify. Shall I continue?”
There was more?
“I’m good, thanks,” she told Joly.
“I know this stuff happens all the time, but I swear it’s getting worse,” he muttered. “It’s like somebody hit the self-destruct button on the bloody planet. So I heard Roberts called you in on our thing this morning. What did you think?”
“I thought it looked like someone got killed.”
“You know what I mean.”
She did, but she wasn’t going to answer. Not after that speech from Roberts. She took down a mug from the cupboard and reached for the coffeepot. Joly heaved himself off the couch with a grunt. Joining her at the counter, he held out his own cup, and she poured for them both. Her colleague leaned back against the counter, one ankle crossed over the other, and stared down into his coffee while she stirred cream and sugar into hers. The silence moved beyond a lapse in conversation to being obviously deliberate.
She dropped the spoon into the sink with a clatter. “If you’re waiting for me to—”
“It’s not about the case.”
“What, then?” she asked, settling against the counter beside him.
“Nothing, really.” Joly shrugged. He slurped at the coffee from under his handlebar mustache. “It’s just . . . Vancouver. What the hell happened out there, Jarvis?”
“You’ve read the report.”
“I have,” he agreed. “I’ve also got a cousin who’s married to one of their emergency response members.”
Hell. Sometimes the thin blue line was a little too thick for comfort.
“He won’t talk about what he saw that night—”
“—but that Sunday he got up and went to church.”
Alex flashed him a look and found him studying the floor at his feet.
“Garth is—was—the staunchest atheist I’ve ever met in my life,” he said. “Our discussions on the issue of faith rarely end well, at least according to my wife, and now he’s going to church and taking his kids to Sunday school. My cousin is freaked. So I repeat: what the hell happened out there?”
She wondered how he would react if she told him. Just blurted out the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the—
She scowled at her coffee. Hell, who was she kidding? Even without Robert’s warning, she’d become so adept at keeping secrets at this point that she wasn’t sure she knew how to let them go.
Bastion poked his head into the room. “Meeting’s in two minutes,” he said, then gave Alex a nod. “Good to have you back, Jarvis.”
Alex detached herself from the counter.
“You haven’t answered me,” Joly said.
She turned when she reached the door. “You know what happened, Joly? Shit happened. A lot of it.”
Joly’s mustache twitched. “What kind of answer is that?”
“The only one you’re getting.”
Alex took a place against the wall in the conference room, returning various greetings. She’d wondered how it might be, coming back after all that had gone down, but apart from Joly’s questions . . .
She watched the subject of her thoughts take a seat beside his partner at the table. Abrams leaned in to ask Joly something, Joly responded, and both men looked across the room at her. She lifted a brow, and they turned away. Right. So Joly wasn’t the only one with questions.
Roberts came into the room and dropped a stack of files on the conference room table. The resounding thud silenced conversation.
“All right, people, listen up. Those of you who have been following the news will know that this pregnancy virus has the nut-jobs crawling out of the woodwork. Attacks on women have more than doubled across the country. The demand for DNA testing—and abortions—has gone beyond the capacity to provide those services.
