Sins of the Lost

Aramael thought about how Mika’el had come to him during his exile in the mortal realm and tasked him with the assassination of the One’s son, the Appointed. How he would have carried out the order if it hadn’t been for the interference of Alexandra Jarvis. How close he and Mika’el had skated to the very edge of good.

“Have you ever noticed how the rules for good are more constricting than those for evil?” he growled.

“Have you ever considered those restrictions are what keep us good?” The other Archangel countered. He drew himself up, topping Aramael’s six-foot height by a good four inches. Massive, coal-black wings unfurled and stretched wide. “Remember who you are, Aramael. What you are. Angels are the final line of defense between Hell and Earth, and Archangels the last hope of—” He broke off, his face going bleak.

“Of what?”

“Nothing,” Mika’el said. “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. Just remember we have no more room for mistakes.”

With a great rush of wind, he launched upward, leaving Aramael alone on the boulder-strewn hill. Alone for days, weeks, months—maybe centuries—with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. Thoughts of how he came to be in this place to begin with, memories of Alexandra Jarvis and how he had chosen her over his very purpose . . . and how she had chosen Seth over him.

Thoughts, memories, and that lingering tug of a connection he continued to deny to Mika’el.

Chapter 8

“Shouldn’t you be done for the day?”

Alex looked up from the news report she’d been reading on the computer monitor and met Seth’s dark gaze. The breath hitched in her throat. Arms crossed over his chest and broad shoulders nearly filling the doorway, the man was sheer physical perfection from the top of his black-haired head to the soles of his exquisitely proportioned feet. Despite the exhaustion of her first day back in Homicide, a fragile warmth unfurled in her.

Seth might no longer be of Heaven, but his presence still packed a powerful punch. Time and again since she’d made her choice, moments like this had dispelled any lingering concern that her feelings for him might simply be tied to his divinity or, worse, a misguided sympathy. What she felt for the son of the One and Lucifer was far more than that . . . and far from simple.

The specter of his father complicated it further.

Seth’s expression darkened. He knew she’d thought of Lucifer again. He always knew, sometimes before she did. A familiar, automatic apology rose into her throat. She held it back. After this morning’s discussion— following which she still hadn’t made a move to talk to anyone—her oft-repeated words would just rub salt into an already festering wound.

“I just need another ten minutes or so,” she said. “I’m waiting for Henderson to call me back from Vancouver.”

Seth’s shoulders tensed, so imperceptibly that only a skilled interrogator would have noticed. Not for the first time, Alex wished she could turn off that part of herself, that she could take a person’s words and actions at face value and not always be looking for what they hid from her. Such as Seth’s ongoing displeasure.

“Is it about this morning’s case? I thought you said Roberts gave the file to someone else.”

This morning’s case. File. Words that didn’t begin to encompass the details of the day she’d shared with him over dinner. The immensity of a pregnant woman’s murder, the child missing from her belly, Alex’s hollow certainty about who—or what—might have taken it. Seth’s disinterest in the same.

She snuffed out a flicker of irritation. He was still new to this mortal thing. He hadn’t had a chance to develop a connection to humanity yet, apart from her. He just needed time.

She kept her voice even. “He did give the file to someone else. But if the killer is a Fallen One—”

“Then it won’t matter. There’s nothing you or Henderson can do.”

“I can’t stand by and do nothing, either.”

The phone on the desk rang. Seth stared at it, then turned on his heel and left.

* * *

Alex lifted the receiver on the third ring, when she was certain her voice could be trusted. “Hey, Hugh, thanks for calling me back.”

“It was about bloody time you called me back,” came the unceremonious rejoinder. “When I call you at eight a.m., Jarvis, and again at ten, noon, two, and four, you don’t bloody wait until after nine at night to call me back.”

Refraining—only just—from hanging up on the Vancouver detective who had become her friend, Alex let silence be her answer for a long moment. Then, her voice silky sweet, she inquired, “Done?”

A deep exhale sounded on the other end of the line. She pictured Henderson slumped at his desk, rubbing one hand over his cropped, graying hair.

“I was worried about you,” he said, his voice quieter. “We both were.”

“Both? Hell, don’t tell me you called Riley.” She didn’t care how many good words the Vancouver psychiatrist put in for her with the brass, she still didn’t like her—or her habit of poking at the unseen scars Alex preferred to think of as healed.

“She’s my friend,” Hugh answered her, “so yes, I stay in touch with her, and yes, she’s worried, too.”

“I’m fine, Hugh. I was fine when you called yesterday, I was fine when you called the day before, I was fine when I left Vancouver—”

Henderson snorted.

“—and I’m fine now,” she finished. “Really.”

“Right. You damn near die sticking a knife into your own gut, get buried under a goddamn building, and now you’re living with Lucifer’s son. Of course you’re fine. How could I possibly think otherwise?”

Alex pushed back the images his words conjured. Extracting her nails from her palms wasn’t so easy. “Did Riley put you up to this?”

“I told you, she’s worried about you,” Hugh replied.

“I’m—”

“If you say fine again—”

“Surviving,” Alex said. “I’m surviving. But I have to tell you, conversations like this don’t make it any easier.”

“Well, I guess that answers my next question of whether or not you’re talking to anyone.”

She snorted. “Right. And who do you suggest I talk to? I already have the department shrink watching my every move. If I so much as breathe a hint of what’s going on—”

“You have Seth there. Talk to him.”

Seth, who wanted nothing more than to put his past life behind him and have nothing to do with his parents’ machinations. Who, through no fault of his own, had become another insurmountable barrier in her life—and one of her greatest sources of guilt.

“I don’t want to talk to anyone,” she said, her voice harsh. “I just want to do my goddamn job.”

“Saving humanity from imploding is a little more than doing your job.”

“Is this all you called for? To harass me?”

“You can be awfully stubborn, can’t you?”

“You have no idea.”

“Fine,” he growled. “But just for the record, you’re the one who wanted to talk to me, remember?”

Alex tried to think past the headache forming at the base of her skull. She considered reminding him he’d actually been the one trying to call her all day, but an argument over semantics would take way too much effort. Massaging her neck, she re-focused her thoughts. “Two things. First, Roberts called me in this morning. We had a woman turn up in a parking lot with her belly ripped open and the baby missing.”

Silence. She listened to the faint ringing of a phone at Henderson’s end. Another long exhale.

“We found one in a Dumpster two nights ago,” he said. “Same thing.”