Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy (26 page)

And she’d called him a son of a bitch.

Damn, Jarvis. Way to choose those battles.

“The car is over here,” she said, leading the way.

Ten minutes later she pulled over to the curb, a block away from the intersection that marked ground zero for Vancouver’s skid row. Before she’d even switched off the engine, she understood what Henderson had tried to tell her. She’d heard of Downtown Eastside, of course, had even watched the documentaries put together by the Vancouver Police Department’s self-named Odd Squad, the beat cops who walked the area every day.

But nothing could have prepared her for the reality.

Or for the shock of realizing that a naïve and uninitiated Seth would have no understanding of this as an example of humanity.

In grim silence, Alex reached into the backseat for the jacket Henderson had given her. Angelic sidekick aside, she had no intention of going unarmed into those streets. Unwrapping the gun, a thirty-eight—no holster and too big to carry in a pocket—she leaned forward to tuck it into the back of her waistband. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was there if she needed it.

She looked at the angel seated beside her, his face still, his eyes missing nothing of the street before them. “Ready?”

They got out of the car and Alex pushed the lock button on the key fob as she joined him on the sidewalk.

“We have a lot of territory to cover,” she said, tucking the keys into her jeans’ pocket. “Are you able to sense him in any way?”

“If I could, I wouldn’t need you.”

Deciding arrogance must be an angelic trait, Alex swallowed her preferred retort with difficulty. She gave her companion a tight smile. “Then I suggest we set a search pattern and try to stick with it.”

“Agreed.” He pointed into the alley beside them. “We’ll start there.”

With a sigh, she followed him across the sidewalk and into a darkness so absolute it swallowed them whole. She paused to let her eyes adjust, then had to jog to catch up with
the angel, who hadn’t broken stride and seemed oblivious to both the dark and the detritus through which they moved.

Making herself match the angel’s pace, she followed a few feet behind him, scanning doorways and makeshift living quarters tucked into the shelter of Dumpsters, catching glimpses of the people who lived in their shadows, broken and lost in ways she couldn’t begin to fathom.

Not a single gaze lifted to hers.

Alex stuffed her hands into her pockets, then took them out again and flexed them at her sides. If she needed to reach for her weapon, she didn’t want to get hung up on the way to it. Henderson had been right. She’d worked cases in the worst neighborhoods Toronto had to offer, but this—this outdid them all. She picked up the pace and caught up to the angel. If Seth were down here somewhere, seeing this, and anything happened to push him into making the choice of which Aramael and her surly companion warned…

Suffice it to say she needed to get him the hell out.

“Are you all right?”

She glanced at the angel in surprise, hearing that note of compassion again. “Fine. Just a little taken aback by all this.”

“And worried about Seth seeing it.”

“Yes.”

At the end of the alley they headed left down the street toward another hole in the light, past teenage girls selling themselves to feed needs they couldn’t escape, past men and women of every age sprawled on the sidewalk in drug-induced stupors. Alex’s nails dug into her palms.

The next alley was wider, lit well enough to see the used hypodermics and condoms littering the broken, filthy pavement—and the deathly pallor of a man propped in a doorway. The angel stopped beside him for a moment, staring down, then turned away.

Alex hesitated. “Wait. I think he may have OD’d.”

“He did.” The angel took her arm and steered her away.

She tugged free. Turned back. “Are you sure he’s—”

“Yes.”

Damn. Shoulders slumping, she reached for her cell phone. “I’ll call in a report.”

“There’s no time. He will be found in the morning and we need to find Seth
now
.”

Still she hesitated. Leaving anyone like this, homeless or otherwise, was just wrong.

“Naphil.” The angel waited until she looked at him. He shook his head. “Nothing can be done here. Leave him. I’ll have the Guardians see to it that a patrol comes through here at first light.”

Again that compassion, so out of place in a being that exuded such a harsh authority. But he was right. Casting a final glance at the prone figure, Alex fell into step beside him. “May I ask you something?”

“You may, but it doesn’t guarantee an answer.”

“Why do you call me Naphil like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like the word leaves a bad taste in your mouth.”

“I didn’t realize I did so. I’m sorry I offended you.”

“That’s not an answer.”

They passed a woman sitting on a concrete step, her arm tied off and blood trickling from where a needle still pierced a vein. She didn’t look up. Alex’s gaze lingered on her. She’d never seen so much misery in one place. How, in today’s world, could human beings be allowed to fall through the cracks of society like this? How the hell did the beat cops deal with it day in and day out, knowing that, in most cases, their help would be too little and far too late?

And we call ourselves civilized.

“How much do you know of your kind?” the angel responded to her question.

She shot him a hard look. They neared the end of the alley now, and his features were clear in the increased light. Calm, expressionless, devoid of the distaste she’d read into his words.

“I’m not a
kind
of anything. I’m as human as anyone else on the planet, and I’d never even heard of the Nephilim before—” Her voice hitched a little as she caught back words
all too bound up in memories.
Before I met Aramael. Before Caim held me and made me call for my soulmate from a place of pain I hadn’t even known existed.
“Before all this,” she finished.

“At this point I suppose you may be right, although your line will always carry the taint of their blood.”

“Thanks so much.”

He shrugged. “It’s a simple fact, Naph—”

“Alex,” she said. “Just call me Alex.”

“Defender of man,” he murmured.

“What?”

“That’s what Alexandra means. Oddly appropriate, don’t you think?”

Alex had no idea how to respond. The street opened before them, a dozen feet away.

“I am Mika’el,” the angel continued. “Michael, if you prefer.”

Alex’s foot caught on a chunk of broken pavement. A strong hand closed around her arm, preventing her from sprawling headfirst in the filth.

She stared at his hand. Swallowed. Looked up—way up—to the angel. “Michael as in—the Archangel Michael?”

He nodded.

Seriously? Alex pushed back a strand of hair. Her knowledge of angel lore was limited at best, and she wasn’t even sure how much of the lore was accurate to begin with, but wasn’t Michael supposed to be—

“The most powerful warrior in Heaven, yes.”

Alex took a step back and nearly fell over the same chunk of pavement. She righted herself and knocked away his helping hand. “Please tell me you can’t read my mind,” she growled.

“Only your face,” he said. “Based on my knowledge of humanity’s legends about me, your look of panic made your thoughts transparent enough.”

An explanation somehow lacking in the reassurance she’d wanted. Turning, Alex led the way onto the sidewalk and toward the next alley.

“So which do you prefer, Mika’el or Michael?” she asked the Archangel she’d called a son of a bitch only a short while before.

He considered the question as if surprised she’d asked. “Michael,” he said at last. “I prefer Michael.”

“And are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Heaven’s most powerful warrior.”

She didn’t know what was more telling, his prolonged silence or the harsh “yes” that followed, but his antipathy toward the label could not have been more obvious. Nor could the unspoken warning not to question further have been more clear.

They traversed the next alley without speaking. It occurred to her that Michael hadn’t answered her question about his distaste for the Nephilim, but in the face of her increasing edginess, it didn’t seem important enough to pursue. Where the hell was Seth? What if he wasn’t even down here, and they wasted their time? Twice she pulled her cell phone from the clip at her waist and flipped it open to be sure she had service and hadn’t missed a call from Henderson. Nothing.

Then, halfway down the block to yet another alley, the phone rang. Alex had it open and against her ear before its second trill. “You found him?”

“No sign yet, sorry,” came Henderson’s voice. “I’m just checking on you.”

“Oh, hell. I forgot to call you.”

Henderson waited, then said dryly, “Apology accepted. Where are you right now?”

Alex squinted, searching for a street sign. “Hastings. A little west of Abbott. You?”

“Heading your way from Main. You still have our friend with you?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Then I’ll talk to you again in a half hour. When
you
call
me
.”

The call went dead and Alex met her companion’s questioning look. “Henderson,” she said. “Checking in.”

Michael nodded.

The cell phone rang again.

“Now I have him,” said Henderson.

“W
hat do you mean she’s not human?” Elizabeth Riley asked, staring at Melanie Chiu’s baby. The three-day-old girl sat in a playpen, unsupported, and waved a rattle at her gleefully, two pearly white nubs visible on her bottom gum. Uneasiness trickled down Elizabeth’s spine, but she stubbornly thrust it away. “What the hell is she, if not human?”

Dr. Gilbert, the on-call pediatrician, thumbed through several pages of a chart as if searching for an answer. Then she flipped the chart closed and handed it to Elizabeth with a sigh.

“See for yourself,” she offered. “She’s half human, but we’ve never seen anything like the other half of the DNA. The lab is going crazy trying to identify it. A lot of labs are.”

Elizabeth shot her a sharp look. “A lot of labs?”

“Around the globe.” Gilbert toyed with the ponytail draped over one shoulder. “All the babies born from the accelerated pregnancies are testing with the same type of DNA and we haven’t been able to find anything that remotely matches it. We thought at first it was just a mutation, perhaps
caused by something viral, but it’s more than that. It’s completely foreign. Some governments are isolating the babies for study, which means our information pool could dry up in a hurry. I’m already getting the brush-off from certain quarters.”

“You can’t be serious. That sounds like something out of a science fiction movie.”

“A bad one,” Gilbert agreed. “Especially when you add in the rumors of aliens. UFO sightings have quadrupled in the last week.”

“Wonderful,” Elizabeth muttered. “If we keep this up, we
will
have mass hysteria on our hands.” She gave Chiu’s baby a final once-over and then turned away. “Let me know if they figure out what’s going on, will you?”

Out in the corridor, she took her cell phone from her pocket and dialed Hugh’s number, waiting while the call went straight to voice mail. The tone sounded and she spoke, her message terse. “Half the Chiu baby’s DNA has never been seen before. I’m still not buying your theory, but—oh, hell, just call me when you get this, will you?”

She hung up, closed her eyes, and leaned against the wall letting the sounds of the maternity ward wash over her. Newborn wails, a woman’s laugh, the squeak of rubber shoes down the linoleum hallway. Then, gathering her resolve, she marched toward the elevator and her office. While Gilbert might be getting the brush-off, Elizabeth had a good twenty years on the pediatrician and wasn’t above using her seniority to get what she wanted. And what she wanted right now was answers. She didn’t care if she had to call in every favor ever owed to her, she was getting to the bottom of this.

V
ERCHIEL PAUSED AT
the greenhouse door, braced herself, and then pushed inside. The One looked up from trimming a bonsai tree, her expression of welcome fading as Verchiel approached.

“More good news, I see.”

“Apologies, One, but I thought you should know this.”

The One’s hands stilled in their task for a second, and then she continued pruning.

“Seth?” she asked quietly.

“No. He’s still missing. It’s the Nephilim children. The mortals have identified them as not fully human and have begun studying them.”

“At their level of science, that is to be expected.”

“Some governments have involved themselves in the studies.”

Snip. Snip. Snip.

“Are any of the children old enough to have shown their abilities yet?”

“Not yet.”

“But it is only a matter of time.” The One stepped back to study her handiwork, her head tipped to one side. “Only a matter of time before they realize what the Nephilim are capable of and begin to think of them as potential weapons. Before they try to turn those weapons against one another.”

“That’s what we’re afraid of.”

The silver head nodded. “Thank you, Verchiel. You were right to come to me.”

Verchiel hesitated for a moment and then, realizing she had been dismissed, inclined her head and departed. A few steps away from the greenhouse, the sound of shattering glass made her duck to one side as the One’s pruning shears sailed past to land in the shrubbery. Verchiel stared after them for a long time before she transferred her gaze to the gaping hole in the greenhouse’s formerly pristine side.

Witnessed the hunched shoulders of the figure within.

And felt the edges of Heaven itself unravel a little bit more.

H
ENDERSON HAD HIM.
They
had him.

Alex’s heart leapt into her throat. “Has he seen you?” she demanded.

“No. He’s talking with someone. Male, tall, blond. Looks like they’re arguing.”

“Where are you? Is it faster for us on foot or should we go back to the—” Alex jumped as the phone was plucked from her fingers. She opened her mouth to object, but Michael held up an imperious hand and she subsided, listening to his instructions in confusion.