Sins of the Warrior (8 page)

Her body, at least
.

Seth stared at the door Samael had closed behind him, clenching and unclenching his fists, swallowing against a bellow of fury and pain and bewilderment. A tentative knock sounded—the Virtue attempting to return and finish nurse duty, no doubt, and he snarled at him to fuck off. Footsteps scurried away. Silence descended.

Fear slithered into his chest, wrapped around his throat, tried to become panic. He was alone again. Alone with the ghost of his father and his own memories, feeling himself bleed to death in his very core. Seth gripped the hair on either side of his head and pressed fists against his skull.
Damn
it, what was happening? This slow unraveling of his very sanity, this relentless ache within him. Even as his physical wounds healed, even as he heard and on some level agreed with Samael’s lectures on becoming a leader, Seth felt himself coming apart. Felt the hollow in his core growing.

He couldn’t lead. Not like this.

Alex.

It all came down to Alex. To the driving, all-consuming need to find her. To hold her and know her and
be
with her.

And if Samael didn’t get that, then Seth would find someone who did.

ROBERTS’S HAND APPEARED IN
front of Alex’s face, a steaming mug of coffee in its grasp. She blinked, then extended an arm from within the folds of the blanket someone had given her.

“Thank you.”

Her supervisor grunted. He walked around the plain metal table and lowered himself into the chair opposite. “Joanne’s almost done typing your statement. It should only be another few minutes.”

Alex nodded and returned to staring out the window beside her. Seconds ticked by, measured by the rhythmic drumming of Roberts’s fingers on the tabletop.

Eyes burning, her gaze flicked to the wall of white boards lining Homicide. She should have stayed. Should have kept working on the files. If she hadn’t gone to the hospital tonight, hadn’t told Jen about seeing Nina—

The echo of a gunshot reverberated through her skull, making her jump. Hot coffee sloshed onto her hand. Across the table, Roberts made to rise, but she shook her head at him and used a corner of the blanket to swipe at the spill. Then she made herself sip the coffee, gagging at its sickly sweetness.

“You’re in shock,” Roberts said. “You need the sugar. Drink.”

Funny how he said that as if she cared. As if she should, too. She thought about putting the mug down, but fighting with Roberts about it would require too much energy. She sat back and took another mouthful. Swallowed. Her gaze trailed back to the boards again.

So many dead. So many hurting.

Roberts cleared his throat. “So. You ready to talk about the…other stuff?”

“Can we do this tomorrow?” Her throat ached from unshed tears. Unspoken grief. Bottomless, infinite despair.

“He had wings, Alex.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “I know.”

“And he asked for your help.”

More like demanded it, but whatever
.

“Who was he?” Roberts’s voice gentled, but it didn’t lose its edge of insistence. He wasn’t going to let this go.

“Michael,” she whispered. “He was the Archangel Michael.”

Silence. The audible sound of Roberts opening and closing his mouth. Clearing his throat.

“I thought it might be,” he said at last.

Alex didn’t think for an instant he was as calm as his tone tried to suggest. The interview room door opened and heels, the sturdy, sensible ones preferred by Roberts’s assistant, clacked into the room.

“Your statement, Staff Inspector.”

“Thank you, Joanne.”

Papers shuffled in an exchange of hands.

Joanne’s gentle touch descended on Alex’s shoulder. “You okay, sweetheart?”

Looking up into the warm, motherly compassion of a woman who normally epitomized brusque professionalism, Alex nearly came undone on the spot. She gripped the mug, holding fast to the remnants of a toughness she wished she could abandon, but didn’t dare. First, because it had become such a habit that she didn’t know how to let it go anymore; and second, because she suspected it might be all that held her together. All that prevented her from following her sister’s descent into the madness she herself had once wished for. A madness that turned out not to be the escape she’d imagined after all.

Unable to summon a smile, she instead unlocked one hand from its hold on the coffee cup and gave Joanne’s capable fingers a reassuring squeeze.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I’m just going to sign this, and then I’m going home to sleep. Thank you for coming in tonight to do this.”

“Pfft.” Joanne waved away her words. “It was nothing. We’re a team here. We look out for one another. Which is why I’m sure the staff inspector will make sure someone drives you home when you’re ready.”

Roberts’s mouth twitched at the thinly veiled command. “Of course.”

Sturdy heels clacked away. The interview room door closed again, shutting out the ringing of a phone and the mumble of voices belonging to people Alex couldn’t see. People who had given up sleep and returned to work because of her sloppiness. Her stupidity.

Abrams, she thought. And maybe Bastien. Joly would still be at home. Had anyone called to tell him about this latest incident? Not that it mattered. He would find out soon enough.

Her supervisor slid the statement across the table to her. Alex uncurled from the chair and leaned forward to set the mug on the table. With cramped fingers, she accepted the pen and put its tip to the signature line.

“You should read it over,” Roberts said.

Her fingers tightened. Relive again, in black and white this time, the part she had played in Jen’s suicide? She scrawled her name, set the pen across the paper, and sat back, tucking the tremble of her hands into the blanket folds. “That’s it? I can go now?”

“We haven’t—”

She stood, letting the blanket fall to the floor. “Tomorrow. I promise.”

Roberts stared at her, conflict in his brown eyes. Then he sighed. “I’ll get Abrams to run you home.”

IT WAS THREE A.M.
when Alex locked the apartment door and leaned her forehead against its cold, unyielding metal. Silence loomed behind her. Not the comforting silence of coming home, but the kind that pressed in, squeezing the air from her lungs, making her smaller, trying to push her into the floor. She sagged beneath its weight.

Tick. Tick. Tick
.

The wall clock in the living room marked the passage of seconds. The bundle of keys in her hand bit into her palm.

Tick. Tick. Tick
.

Through the windows overlooking the street came the wail of a siren and the strident klaxon of a fire truck’s horn.

Tick, tick, tick
.

The keys dropped from Alex’s hand. She pressed her palms over her ears, but the everyday noises continued to intrude. The clatter and whirr of the refrigerator motor in the kitchen; a truck rumbling by on the street. Overwhelmingly familiar sounds incurred by a life she was no longer sure she wanted to live…

And one she couldn’t escape.

Nostrils flaring, she turned from the thought to face the emptiness. The light from the ceiling fixture above her gave up halfway into the living room, leaving the corners in deep, impenetrable shadow. A liquid chill slid down her spine.

Anyone could be in one of those corners.

Stop it. Seth is gone. He’s not coming back
.

No one is coming back
.

She stooped to snatch up the keys she’d dropped.

Tick, tick, tick
.

BANG
.

The crack of a gunshot dropped her to the floor. She scrabbled for her gun, instinctively, automatically. Fingers connected with an empty holster. Her heart stopped. Then she remembered. Her eyes closed.

Fuck.

There was no gun, just as there was no one hiding in the apartment. She was alone, and the shot hadn’t been real. It had been the sound of Jennifer dying all over again, imprinted on Alex’s brain, on her every fiber, for eternity.

Beautiful, clever, funny, gentle Jen.

Dead.

Alex lurched upright and bolted for the toilet.

A few minutes later, she lifted her head from the sink and stared her reflection’s hollow eyes in the mirror. Water dripped from her chin and trickled down her neck, wetting the t-shirt someone had given her to replace the blouse covered in blood and bits of Jen’s brains. Beside her, the toilet gurgled as it emptied, then refilled. She turned off the tap, swiped a hand towel over her face, and dropped it onto the counter. Then she headed for the Scotch.

Bottle and glass in hand, she shoved aside the jumble of blankets on the couch where she’d taken to sleeping since Seth’s departure, poured a generous three fingers of amber liquid into the glass, and tossed it back in a single swallow. The liquor burned its way down her throat and into her belly. She waited a moment to make sure it wouldn’t go the way of Roberts’s oversweetened coffee, then sloshed more into the glass and set the bottle on the table. She leaned back.

A hard lump dug into her tailbone, and she probed the cushions behind her. Her hand closed over the barrel of her spare pistol. She’d forgotten to lock it away before leaving the apartment. Damn, but she was getting sloppy.

She pulled out the gun and stared at it. Then she tossed it onto the table beside the bottle, snorting at her naiveté. She could sleep with an entire arsenal, and it wouldn’t do her one iota of good if Seth decided to come for her.

Her gaze rested on the pistol. Cold curiosity whispered through her. Tilting the glass, she turned her wrist outward and traced a fingertip over the forearm that had been laid open in the fight for Aramael’s life and her freedom.

No trace of injury marred the skin, but what did that prove? The room had been filled with the energy of angels. Maybe that’s what had healed her. Maybe Michael had been wrong and Seth had failed. Maybe she could still—

“Trust me,” a deep male voice drawled, “it won’t work.”

Alex froze. In an instant, her every cop instinct leaped to life. She tuned into the presence looming behind her, gauging his distance from her. Her own distance from the weapon she’d just set on the table.

Her chances of reaching it before her visitor did.

“I said it won’t work,” the voice repeated, punctuated by the rustle of feathers.

Alex’s hope died.

An angel. Or a Fallen One. Either way, she didn’t stand a chance of moving fast enough, and even if she did, the gun would be useless against him. Her fingers tightened on her glass. With her free hand, she reached to switch on the lamp at her side. Then she looked over her shoulder to the figure beside the window. Tall and brooding, with tattered gray wings rising above him, their dishevelment marking him as Fallen.

Alex could think of only one reason for him to be here.

She waited for the fear to kick in. The terror at having her worst nightmare come true. This was it. Seth had found her. He’d sent someone to bring her back to him. He intended to claim her as he’d promised.

But as the wall clock behind the Fallen One ticked off the seconds, only a flat, cold calm settled over her. This might be it, but damned if she couldn’t summon so much as a whisper of hysteria. Too much had happened in the last day. The uniforms, Nina, Jen. She had nothing left. No reaction. No energy to care.

She studied her uninvited guest, meeting his gaze with an assessing one of her own. Well. If she couldn’t escape him, and she wasn’t going to fold in on herself, only one option remained. She raised her glass.

“Drink?” she inquired.

The Fallen One crossed his arms and rested a shoulder against the window frame. He surveyed her with a mix of annoyance and interest. “That’s it? An angel appears to you, and all you do is offer him a drink?”

She moved the glass in a half-hearted wave of dismissal. “Sorry if my lack of shrieking offends you. It’s been a week from Hell, and I seem to be fresh out of hysterics.”

Her visitor scowled, and she swallowed a snort. Had she really just apologized to a Fallen One? And referred to her week as one from Hell?
Maybe you’re losing it after all, Jarvis. Christ, maybe you’ve already lost it
.

She pinched the bridge of her nose. Too bad immortality couldn’t make her immune to headaches.

“Do you not want to know why I’m here?” Irritation threaded the Fallen’s voice.

“I’m pretty sure I already do.” She downed her drink and reached for the bottle. She looked askance at her guest.

“No,” he said. “Thank you.”

She sloshed more liquid into her glass, then slipped the boots from her feet and leaned back again. Time to get down to it. She closed her eyes, inhaled, exhaled.

“So,” she said. “I was right to think he’d come after me.”

“You
knew
Samael would send for you?”

Samael? Alex cracked open one eye, a ripple of interest disturbing her calm. “Who the Hell is Samael?”

“He
was
Lucifer’s right hand.” The angel shrugged. “Presumably he’s now Seth’s.”

That made her open the other eye. She studied him, noting again the air of neglect. The shabbiness. “You don’t know?”

“I’m not from Hell.”

“Well, you’re certainly not from Heaven.”

Disheveled wings gave an irritated shake. “And you’re an expert on angels and Fallen, are you?”

She ran fingers through her hair. They snagged on a dried bit of something, and with a shudder, she dropped her hand to her lap. Damn, she needed a shower. She scowled at the Fallen One. “Wherever you’re from and whoever sent you doesn’t matter, does it? You’re still here to take me to Seth.”

Genuine surprise flickered in the zircon-blue eyes. “What in all of Creation would Seth want with a Naph—”

He broke off. Stared. Then he rubbed the back of one hand along his jaw. Slowly. Thoughtfully. “I’ll be damned. You’re
that
Naphil? The one who struck down the Appointed with an Archangel’s sword?”

He hadn’t known? Then why was he here? Why had this Samael sent him?

“I asked you a question.” The Fallen’s gaze took on a dangerous glint.