Sins of the Lost

in tight-lipped silence.

“Lucifer is gone,” he said.

“So what? In case you hadn’t noticed, the damage is already done. Eighty thousand women are dead, the babies they carried have disappeared, and he impregnated my niece.” Her voice wobbled on the last bit. She lifted her chin to continue. “Whether he’s here or not doesn’t matter anymore because he already accomplished everything he set out to do.”

“The One is gone, too.”

“Again,” she said harshly, “so what?”

Pure fury flared in the emerald gaze holding hers. For a moment, she quailed. Then she stood taller. Grew angrier.

“Damn it, look around you, Michael. Look at the mess we’re in—at the mess she left us in. Seth has stepped into his father’s shoes, you’re at war with Hell, Aramael is dead, and I’m going to live for goddamn forever. Where, in all of that, is my reason to care about the being who’s responsible?”

“The fault wasn’t only hers. We all made mistakes.”

“Yes, and now the world gets to live with those mistakes. I get to live with them.”

For a long moment, Michael said nothing. Then he held something out to her that she hadn’t noticed him holding. “It was Aramael’s,” he said. “I had the armory make it over for you so it would be easier for you to handle.”

Alex stared at the sword in its hardened leather scabbard. Remembered the feel of it slicing through Seth’s flesh, biting into his bone. Crimson washed across her vision. She blinked it away.

“I don’t want it.”

“He would have wanted—”

“I said I don’t want it.” She raised weary eyes to his. “I don’t want anything of his, or yours, or any other part of Heaven, Michael. I’m done. I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to know what is happening in your world or with the fight between you and Hell. I don’t want anything to do with any of you.”

He continued to hold out the weapon. “If the Fallen come after you, it could save your life.”

“You assume I want it saved,” she said quietly. Pushing past the sword, past him, past his wings, she resumed her climb up the stairs.

Michael’s voice followed as she reached the top of the flight and turned another corner. “Free will is a messy thing, Alex. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Not until she stood on the ninth floor landing did it register that, for only the second time ever, he had called her Alex and not Naphil. She hesitated then, and despite her better judgment, looked down over the railing to where she had left him four floors below.

The stairwell was empty.

Heaven’s greatest warrior was gone.

Alex pulled open the door and stepped into Homicide.

It was time to find Nina.

Keep reading for an excerpt from Linda Poitevin’s SINS OF THE ANGELS Available now from Ace

Prologue

It was done. There could be no turning back.

Caim stared down at the destruction he’d wrought and held back a shudder. They would come after him, of course, as they had the first time. They couldn’t allow him to succeed. Couldn’t risk him finding a way back and opening a door to the others. They would send someone to hunt him, try to imprison him in that place again. His breath snared in his chest and for a moment the awfulness of the idea made him quail inside, made his mind go blank. An eternity of that awful, mind-hollowing emptiness, that nothingness. His belly clenched at the thought. It was a miracle he had escaped, and whatever happened, he couldn’t go back. Could never go back.

He focused his thoughts, made himself calm. He could do this. He could find the right one and return to where he belonged; it was just a matter of time. A matter of numbers. Caim gazed at the corpse by his feet. It was also a matter of being more careful than this. He crouched and touched a withered fingertip to the crimson that welled from the gash in the mortal’s chest. He rubbed the viscous fluid between thumb and forefinger and studied his work, displeased at the lack of control he saw there. The haste.

He scowled at the frisson of remembered, wanton pleasure that even now edged down his spine, making his heart miss a beat. He so disliked that side of himself, the part that thrilled at the destruction. He had never wanted this, had tried so hard not to give in to what she had claimed to see. He wished he’d had another choice; that she’d given him another choice.

But whether he was here by choice or not, he would do well to maintain better control. If one of her hunters had been near just now, his search would have been over before it began. He’d been so caught up in his task, he wouldn’t have felt an approach until it was too late.

No, to stay ahead of her, ahead of the hunter she sent for him, Caim needed to rein himself in, to contain the blood-lust that clouded his mind. To be disciplined. He lifted his head and breathed in the alley musk, scented with rain and death. He needed to be faster, too. Finding one of the few he could use among the billions that existed now—the task seemed nothing short of monumental.

He wiped his bloody, clawed fingers on the corpse’s clothing, and then, on impulse, reached over and spread the corpse’s arms straight out, perpendicular to the body, and crossed the ankles over one another.

Pushing to his feet, he surveyed his handiwork with bitter satisfaction. Perfect. Even if she never saw it herself, she would know of his contempt, know what he thought of the esteem in which her children still held her.

He drew a breath deep into his lungs and stretched his wings over his head, letting his body begin to fill out again, taking on flesh and warmth. He reveled in the fierce pleasure of his own aliveness; the pull of wet cotton against his skin; the remains of the fierce summer rain dripping from his hair; the thick, sullen night air, unrelieved by the storm that had proclaimed his return. The sheer gratification of feeling.

Then, folding his wings against his back and casting a last, dispassionate glance at the remains on the pavement, he turned and started down the alley toward the street. His mind moved beyond the kill to other matters. Matters such as finding a place to stay. Somewhere to hide, where a hunter wouldn’t think to look for him.

Caim emerged from the alley onto the sidewalk and looked up the deserted pavement to his left, then his right. Somewhere—

He paused. Stared across the street. Smiled.

Somewhere . . . interesting.

One

That was the thing about a murder scene, Alexandra Jarvis reflected. It would be difficult to drive past one and later claim that you couldn’t find the right place. No matter how much you wanted to.

She wheeled her sedan into the space behind a Toronto Police Service car angled across the sidewalk. Alternating blue and red spilled from the cruiser’s bar lights, splashing against the squat brick building beside it and announcing the hive of activity in the dank alley beyond. Powerful floodlights, brought in to combat the