Sins of the Angels (32 page)

Learned, absorbed, and then sat in silence for a long, long time after he finished.

Footsteps approached on the wooden floor and stopped in front of her. “Well?”

She stared at his feet, humanly clad in leather dress shoes, and then lifted her gaze and flinched from a glimpse of fiery golden wings. “What kind of angel are you?”

“Not the nice kind. I'm a Power, an angel of the Sixth Choir. And a hunter of the Fallen Ones.”

“So the serial killer is—?”

“One of those who followed Lucifer. Yes.”

A buzzing started in her ears. One of Lucifer's followers. A Fallen Angel. Stalking her. Stalking Jen and Nina. Alex fought down the urge to hyperventilate and drew on the shreds of her training. Being a cop might not help if she came up against Caim, but it could at least keep her thinking. Maybe keep her and Jen and Nina away from him long enough for Aramael to do his job.

She frowned. “Wait a minute. If you're an angel, can't you just do some kind of miracle thing and find him?”

“I wish it worked like that, but I can only sense him in his demonic form, the one he becomes when he attacks a mortal.”

“Demonic—” The buzz in Alex's head became louder. Shit. “What about the rest of the time? Can he look like whoever he wants?”

Trent—no, Aramael, he'd called himself. Would she ever get used to that? Aramael flexed his hands at his sides. “He can make you think he looks like someone else, but his true form is the one you saw tonight,” he said. “Caim is my brother, Alex. My twin.”

The dining room door swung inward and Alex jumped in her seat, then stared at her sister. Jen's gaze darted from her to Aramael and back. “Alex? Nina—”

“She's with my colleague,” Aramael said brusquely.

Discontent fluttered across Jen's brow.

“She's fine, Jen.” Alex forced the reassurance through stiff lips. “We're just discussing the situation.”

“Did Nina say something? Have you called someone?” Again Jen's eyes did the darting thing. “You haven't, have you? Why not? What's going on, Alex? Has Nina—Oh, God—” Her grip went rigid around the edge of the door. “Did she hurt someone?”

“No!” Rousing herself from her own shock-induced stasis, Alex went to her sister's side, pried her hand loose, and led her to the chair she'd just vacated. “Nina could never hurt someone, Jen. You know that.”

Brown eyes, wide with shock, met hers. Jen nodded. “Of course. I do know that. It's just—” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “There's so much blood. Where did it all come from?”

Alex crouched down on one knee. “We think she may have witnessed something, sweetie. Something pretty awful. That's why she's not talking.”

Her sister's head bobbed. “Shock will do that,” she agreed. “We've covered that in class. But she'll get better.”

Alex bit her lip, seeing more than a little shock in Jen's own face at the moment. Not wanting to add to it. Remembering Martin James.

Jen's fingers dug like claws into her arm. “She will get better, won't she, Alex? We can get her help—”

Alex looked to Aramael for an answer, but found only a reflection of her own misgivings. Her heart lurched. He looked haggard, she thought. She hadn't known angels could look haggard. Not that she'd known angels at all until now. And still didn't—at least, not as well as she needed to if she was going to protect her family.

Rising from beside her sister, she leaned back against the windowsill, her hands braced on either side of her, and returned to where she and Aramael had left off. “He's really your brother? Couldn't they have sent someone else after him? You're not the only one who does this, are you?”

“No. There are others. Seventeen in all.”

“Then why send you—Wait—
seventeen
? That's it? How many angels did you say fell?”

“Alex, what the hell—?” Jen broke off.

Aramael answered as if Jen hadn't spoken. “A third of the host. A hundred thousand, give or take.”

Alex thought of the destruction wrought by Caim in the last few days and swallowed. “You're telling me only seventeen of you stand between humanity and a hundred thousand demons?”

“All of Heaven stands between you. But with the agreement between Lucifer and the One, only seventeen of us have been necessary to . . . keep the peace, I suppose you could say.”

Jen almost fell off her chair.
“Lucifer?”

Alex ignored her sister. “You're kidding me. You're only here for the ones who break some pact? What about the others? They just get to walk around freely, indistinguishable from the rest of us?” She shuddered at the thought. Her cop habit of seeing nearly everyone she met as a potential criminal had been bad enough; she didn't know what she'd do with the possibility that any one of them could also be a Fallen Angel. “Doing what, exactly?”

“Whatever they can within the limits. They attempt to influence the choices mortals make, and Guardians try to counter that influence.”

“That's it. That's just how it is. Angels and demons playing tug-of-war with human beings. I thought God—the One—was supposed to be all-powerful.”

Aramael leaned his weight against the table and shook his head. “That's not the point.”

“Then what is the fucking point?” she demanded. “People are dying because of these monsters and—”

“They're not all like Caim.”

“For chrissake, you just told me they're trying to wipe out humanity!”

“Only with your permission.”

Alex shook her head to clear it. “What?”

“The One gave mortals free will, Alex. Each of you has the ability to choose, to determine your own path. Both good and evil have always existed in your lives, only you can decide which to follow.”

“That is such a complete cop-out it's not even funny. Can your One destroy these demons or not?”

“Demons?” squeaked Jen.

Alex sent her sister a quick look. Angels, demons—how the hell was she going to explain any of this? Especially given their mother's delusions?

Irritation crept into Aramael's voice. “I'm not here to debate theology with you. All I can tell you is that the One is ultimate good and does not destroy.”

“Right. And droughts, volcanoes, wars, earthquakes—what would you call those if not wholesale destruction?”

“Mortals choose where and how to live. The One does not impose that on you.”

“No, she just lets demons walk among us and sends you to kill the ones who step too far out of line.”

“To hunt the ones who step out of line, yes.”

Jennifer rose from her chair and, giving Aramael a wide berth, edged to Alex's side and put a hand on her arm. “Alex, for God's sake, what is going on?” she hissed. “What the hell are you talking about? Angels? Demons? This is insane!”

“Not now, Jen. Please.” Alex shrugged off her sister's touch. Aramael's last correction hadn't sounded like semantics. “Hunt. Not kill.”

“I am an instrument of the One. If I were to destroy in her name it would alter the balance of the universe in ways I don't think any of us would care to explore. But rest assured Caim will be exiled to a place far removed from the mortal realm.”

“So that's it? After all that monster has done, he gets to live?” She paced in front of the window. “Damn it to hell, you saw what he did in that mission. What he did to those people—to Christine and Father McIntyre. How many more does he have to kill before you do more than exile him?”

“That isn't my decision to make. My job is to stop Caim from interfering in your realm. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Then why haven't you?”

Aramael angled his body away from her, every line shouting tension. Misery. “There are complications.”

From the kitchen came the sound of a teakettle's whistle building to a scream. It ended abruptly as someone lifted it from the stove. Seth, probably. Seth, whose words rang again in Alex's memory:
You are the problem, Alexandra Jarvis. Not the solution.

Her. Aramael meant her. She was the complication. Because of the Naphil thing Caim had called her? No. If Aramael had been sent to protect her, he would have known about that beforehand.

Aramael's gaze grazed hers and sudden comprehension snaked through her belly, became more. Became aware. Became connected. To an angel. Alex felt the blood drain from her face and then surge back again, hot and prickly and . . . complicated.

A hand touched her arm and she looked down at it, then back up at her sister. Borderline hysteria and a million questions stared at her, along with the steel-clad control that had seen Jen through so many crises in her life. So many crises in Alex's life.

Jen straightened her shoulders. “I'm trying really, really hard not to panic right now, Alexandra. Whatever's going on, I know this isn't the time to explain it, but you're scaring the hell out of me and I just need to know if Nina is going to be all right.”

Aramael shifted his stance, his suit rustling into Alex's silence. A silence that marked, profoundly, her inability to answer her sister's plea. The kitchen door swung open to Alex's right and a fourth presence entered the room.

Alex slipped an arm around her sister's waist and hugged her sibling fiercely. “I'll do everything I can,” she promised into her sister's hair. “Everything.”

Then Seth was there, tugging Jen from her arms and steering her toward the kitchen. Alex met his eyes, glittering and aloof, over her sister's head.

“I'll watch them both,” he told her. “You need to finish here.” He looked at Aramael. “Soon,” he added, and pushed through the swinging door.

The instant the door swung closed behind Seth and Jen, every nerve in Alex's body fine-tuned itself to the man who remained across from her, separated only by the width of the table.
No, not the man,
she reminded herself,
the angel. An angel who, no matter how attuned you are to him, to his scent, to his very existence, will remain an angel. So whatever you're thinking, don't.

“Alex.”

Aramael said her name in a deep, rich tone that made her want to crawl out of her own skin because the sensations it triggered were almost too much to bear. A tone that demanded she look at him. She felt the energy surge between them and her heart slowed into long, heavy beats, sending heated blood to parts of her she didn't think she had ever known. Aramael stalked toward her, his eyes fastened on hers with an inhuman intensity.

He stopped, mere inches away, and cleared his throat. His voice remained husky. “You and I—we can never be.”

Alex tried to ignore his nearness. His heat. She didn't pretend not to understand. “Then why are we?”

“A mistake.”

Alex shook her head. No. Something this big, this true, could never be a mistake. “I don't believe that.”

Naked pain flared in eyes that had turned the color of long-cold ashes. “I'm an angel, damn it. You shouldn't even know me.”

“But I do.”

Long seconds ticked by. A muscle flexed in his jaw. “I can't feel this way about you,” he muttered at last. Embers glowed among the ashes now. “I
can't
,” he snarled. “Don't you understand? You have become the most important thing in my existence, and I am crippled by your very presence. Caim remains free because I cannot track him, cannot feel him. Because all I can feel is you.”

Aramael raked both his hands through his hair, making a visible effort to restrain himself. “I am a Power, Alex. A hunter. It's not just who I am, it's
what
I am. There is no room in my existence for anything else.”

Anger hit, hot and sudden and tangled in Alex's belly. “Then why the hell put me through this? Why tell me about you, about everything, when you knew you couldn't—when you knew I felt—” She struggled for words. Struggled not to strike out at him in her fury. Her loss. “Why?” she asked simply.

Frustration rolled off Aramael in waves, pushing her away. Then her angel reached out to her and brushed back the hair from her face with a gentleness that laid bare her soul.

“Because as much as I cannot feel this way, Alexandra Jarvis,” he whispered, “neither can I stop myself from doing so.”

Time, and Alex's heart, stood still. For what seemed an eternity, she felt nothing but Aramael's hand against her cheek. His truth. And then, with a ferocity that stole her capacity to breathe, elation exploded through her entire being and the universe narrowed until it encompassed just the two of them. Until she herself became nothing more than the heat of his body, the whisper of his breath against her face, the longing that flooded her veins.

Need ached in her every fiber.

Agony stared back at her from Aramael's eyes.

“Do you see?” His voice was hoarse. “This is what I cannot have. Not while Caim remains free. If I let myself give in to this, if I lose myself in you—”

He didn't finish. Didn't need to. Alex tried to shut out the specters raised by his words, but a memory of the mission murder scene rose in her mind, more effective than a deluge of ice water.

The heat in her veins subsided.

Her heart slowed.