Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy (7 page)

Wings only he could see.

His heart skipped a beat. He stared for a long moment before lifting the boy off the table and depositing him on the plank floor. Taking his stethoscope from his ears and slinging it around his neck, he dug finger and thumb into his shirt pocket. The boy’s dark face split into a wide grin, and both he and the butterscotch Michael produced disappeared out the door. Michael reached for the chart, made his notes, and tried to still the quake in his center.

“You are not pleased to see me?” the figure asked. The voice told Michael what the silhouette had not. It was Raphael.

“Pleased doesn’t enter into it, Raphael. Suffice it to say I’m surprised.” Michael leaned against the table. The wood structure gave slightly beneath his weight and he made a mental note to ask Abraham to look at it later, before it
collapsed beneath a patient. “Forty-five hundred years is a long time.”

“It is.” Raphael moved farther into the tent, ebony skin nearly as dark as his silhouette had been, and examined his surroundings with curiosity. “You appear to have found ways to occupy your time, however. What is this place?”

“It’s a clinic. I’m a doctor.”

“A healer?” The Archangel shot him a sharp look.

“Yes.”

“Is that wise?”

“I’m careful.” Very careful. His clinic, in the heart of Africa, held more hope and better health than many others, but no miracles. No angelic interference with mortals that might contravene the cardinal rule. Michael had strayed far enough from the One already; he would not abandon the path completely. He folded his arms across his chest. “But I don’t think you’re here to discuss my Earthly profession.”

“No.” Raphael left his examination of the photo collage on a sheet of plywood leaning against the canvas wall. “No, I’m not. You are being summoned, Mika’el of the Arch-angels.”

It had been the only reason one of the others would come to him, of course. Michael knew that. But knowing didn’t ease the shock of hearing the words.

He watched a beetle make its way across the wooden floor toward the tent wall. Summoned. After four and a half millennia. Long after he’d given up hope of being called back to fulfill his promise; given up hope of ever being a part of Heaven again. Of being part of her. He tried to take a deep breath but found his chest too constricted to accept air.

“Mika’el? Did you hear me?”

“Michael. I am called Michael here. And yes, I heard you.” The beetle reached the wall and disappeared into the crevice at the bottom. Michael raised his gaze to meet Raphael’s. “Am I to know why?”

“The Appointed’s transition has gone wrong.”

“His—” Michael’s very heart seemed to still. “The agreement has been triggered?”

“One of the Powers killed a Fallen One.”

The universe itself seemed to shift beneath Michael. If he hadn’t had the support of the table, he might have toppled over. “Killed? As in dead?”

“As in committed the ultimate sin, yes.”

“Who was the Power?”

“Aramael. His last hunt was for his brother, Caim.”

Michael nodded. “I know of Caim. The seeker of a Nephilim soul.” He frowned suddenly. While he had never intervened, knowing the Powers would take care of matters, he hadn’t been able to escape the part of himself that knew when a Fallen One had become active on Earth. “The serial killer in Toronto last month?”

“Yes. One of the mortals investigating his crimes was of Nephilim descent. Mittron assigned Aramael to act as her Guardian at the same time as he hunted Caim.”

“A Power made to act as a Guardian. I’m sure that was a huge success.”

“It gets worse. The woman was Aramael’s soulmate, and apparently his cleansing was incomplete. He recognized her.”

Michael braced his hands against the table on either side of himself, absorbing the impact of Raphael’s words. A Power, without doubt the most unstable of all angels, had met his soulmate? Known her? In retrospect, Heaven was lucky that all this Aramael had done was kill a Fallen One.

He scowled at Raphael. “How did this Power escape the cleansing? And how the hell did his soulmate end up as a mortal?”

Raphael’s mouth tightened. “Mittron. The fool attempted to trigger Armageddon. He thought the One would invite him to rule beside her in a war.”

“He thought
what
? Wait, you said the Appointed’s transition went wrong. Who was in charge of it?”

Another grimace. “Mittron. From what we can piece together, the Appointed was born into the mortal realm as an adult rather than an infant, without memory of who he is or what he is to do.”

“The Highest was allowed to oversee—after what had already happened?”

A shadow crossed the other Archangel’s face. “Yes. We’re not sure why. The One has not shared her reasons with any but the Dominion Verchiel, who looks as if she carries the weight of the universe on her shoulders but will say nothing.”

“The One has to have told you something.”

Raphael hesitated. Looked away. “She said—” He paused and cleared his throat. “She said Mittron had been undecided about his path, and as long as he remained so, she would honor his potential.”

The words cut into Michael like a blade of cold steel. Precise, deep, just short of lethal. He curled his fingers into his palms against the pain and gritted his teeth. She would keep the undecided with her, but send away the one who remained fiercely, eternally loyal. Send him away, and then dispatch another to speak for her when she needed his help.

“But he has since been punished,” Raphael hastened to add. “He was called to Judgment two days ago and—”

Michael cut him off with the lift of a hand. “And the Power?” he grated.

Raphael took a deep breath and put another few feet of space between them. “Banished. To the mortal realm.”

Fuck.

While Michael generally avoided using the more colorful human vernacular, it was the only word that seemed to sum up all he’d heard, all he felt.

Fuck.

He glowered at the other Archangel. “Let me get this straight. I question a decision and she stops speaking to me for four and a half thousand years and then sends you to collect on the promise I made her. Mittron orchestrates a chain of events that may yet trigger war between Heaven and Hell, but he remains as her administrator until
after
he loses the Appointed; and a Power commits the ultimate sin and is merely banished to the mortal realm instead of being exiled to Limbo. Does that about cover it?”

Mouth twisting, Raphael nodded. “In a word, yes.”

“And the rest of you are okay with this.”

“She is the One, Mika’el.”

Michael groaned and rubbed a hand over his eyes. Yes, that was what it still came down to, wasn’t it? She was the One. The Creator. The others might question her actions, but after the example he’d set all those millennia ago, their reservations would remain unvoiced.

As would his. This time.

Because all those millennia ago, he had also given her his word. Had vowed his undying devotion and allegiance, sworn he would return without question in her time of need, promised he would always remain the Archangel Mika’el—her most powerful warrior.

He lifted his head, straightened his shoulders, and, for the first time since leaving Heaven, unfurled his massive wings. They stretched open, spanning the width of the clinic, a full double-arm’s-length wider than those of his fellow warriors—at once his power, his glory, and his eternal burden.

Flexing the great supporting muscles, he shook out the feathers and stood for a moment, absorbing his own unspoken acceptance of the role he had never thought to play again. Coming to terms with all he would have to become. All he would give up.

Then Michael, once more Mika’el, turned to his messenger. “Where is she?”

“She waits for you in the gardens.”

L
ucifer leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the desk, crossing them at the ankles. He linked his fingers behind his head and regarded Samael narrowly. “You’re certain.”

The former Archangel, standing across from him, shrugged. “Ninety-nine percent.”

“As an adult. In a psychiatric ward.”

“With amnesia,” Samael agreed.

Lucifer twisted his head to stare out the window. He scowled at the gardens intended to be more glorious than those of Heaven, but which had instead become a sad caricature. A perversion of what he’d had to leave behind. His eyes traveled the awkward, aimless curves of a path meant to be graceful; stone walls that had crumbled with decay the moment he created them; trees and shrubs and beds of plants caught in a perpetually failing struggle for life. All mocking his failure to equal the One’s glory.

Jaw going tight, he looked away, back at Sam. “Something must have gone wrong. It makes no sense this would have been deliberate. The risk is too great.”

“For both sides,” Samael pointed out. “He could make his choice any minute, rather than in the years we thought we’d have.”

Lucifer shot him a quelling glare. “If you’re thinking what I think you are, forget it. The Appointed might not have his own Guardian, but you can bet those around him will be watching. Any move against him and we forfeit, remember? Besides, given enough time, mortals are more than capable of turning him against them.”

“Except we don’t have time because he’s an
adult
. A highly unstable one, if I’m understanding the mortal concerns right. He could just as easily choose against us and then everything we’ve been working toward would go to shit.”

“If we try to take him out, the exact same thing happens. That risk is greater than letting him live.” Lucifer shook his head. “I’m not ready for war, Sam. No matter how much training you’ve done or how prepared you think we are, the fact remains we’re outnumbered three to one. We need time to build the Nephilim numbers and every second the Appointed lives is a second in our favor. Leave him alone. That’s an order.”

“That’s it, then. Your solution is to sit around and wait for your son and a handful of half-breeds to decide our future. Damn it, Lucifer, be reasonable. We’d be better off without him at this point. And without that ludicrous—” Samael stopped short as Lucifer’s booted feet crashed to the floor.

“You’ll want to be careful how you finish that,” Lucifer drawled. Strolling around the desk, he towered over his aide. “The agreement originated between her and me and it remains between her and me. Understand?”

Samael clamped his lips together and ruffled his wings. “Frankly?” he shot back. “No, I don’t understand. I never did. We already had a pact with her, one we’d all agreed on. The first strike by either side was to result in war and an end to all this bullshit—and it should have done so when that idiot Power took out his own brother. Outnumbered or not, we could still force her hand and take out most of the human race just as we said we would.”

Whipped into a fine frenzy now, Samael glared at him. Lucifer waited for his aide to finish venting five thousand years worth of pent-up venom. Samael didn’t disappoint.

“But
no
.” The former Archangel drew out the last word in a taunt and Lucifer’s fists tightened. “No, you had to go behind our backs in some fucking slapdash agreement that lets your son have the final say in our future.
Our
future, Lucifer. You remember, the ones who followed you out of Heaven, who believed in you and fought for you?”

Lucifer loosened his jaw enough to query, very quietly, “Are you done?”

Samael drew himself up to his full height, still several inches shorter than Lucifer, and lifted his chin. “Apparently we all are.”

Closing his eyes, Lucifer counted to ten under his breath. Samael had been a thorn in his side ever since he’d shown up on Hell’s doorstep: hot-tempered, driven by a hunger for power, and possessed of serious control issues. As a former Archangel, however, he’d also been the best battle strategist Hell could ask for, and so Lucifer tolerated him. His patience, however, was wearing thin.

Samael cleared his throat and Lucifer held up a hand, increased his count to twenty, and opened his eyes. Without warning, he lashed out, backhanding his aide across the cheek and sending him staggering against the wall. Samael pushed upright again, resentment glowing in his eyes. A reddening handprint took shape on his face.

“What I remember,” Lucifer told him coldly, “is that you chose to follow
me
, Samael, not the other way around. If you’re unhappy with your decision, you’re welcome to leave anytime. If you stay, however, then you would do well to remember your place—and mine. Do you understand?”

Samael said nothing.

Lucifer nodded. “Good. Then understand this, as well. War has never been my primary objective, and I have never pretended otherwise. It isn’t enough to take out
most
of the humans. I want them
all
gone. Every single last one of them. War is inevitable—I know that. But not before I say so. Until
then, you need to behave like the fucking military leader you’re supposed to be, because if we end up fighting on two fronts, we’ll get our collective asses kicked, and you know it.”

Returning to the desk, Lucifer took a peppermint from a dish there and tucked it into his cheek before looking back at a glowering Sam. “Like it or not, Seth’s presence prevents Heaven from moving against us. Watch him, but don’t interfere. If you want to throw yourself onto the swords of your kin once the Nephilim numbers are in place, be my guest, but until then, the agreement—
my
agreement—stands.”

Samael stared at him, his jaw flexing. Then, with an effort Lucifer suspected would cost them both dearly at some point, his aide dipped his head with a deference at odds with the rebellion flowing from him.

“Of course,” Samael said. “Your
Lordship
.”

“V
ANCOUVER! FOR A
holiday? Isn’t that a bit sudden?”

Alex sidestepped her sister and stood in front of the open closet, surveying the contents. She’d never been to the coastal city in October, but expected Vancouver’s autumn weather would be similar to that of most coastlines: changeable at best. She took down a stack of sweaters from the shelf and carried them to the bed.