Linda Poitevin - Sins of the Lost

“Jarvis.”

“I need you at a scene.”

Surprise made her fumble the phone. “Staff?”

“Does anyone else call you at three a.m. to attend a murder scene?” Staff Inspector Roberts growled.

Well, yes. Usually dispatch. She kept the observation to herself and reminded him instead, “I’m not cleared for active duty.”

Beside her, Seth switched on the lamp. She squinted against the glare.

“You are now. I’ll text you the address. You have twenty minutes to get your ass down here. Pick up coffee on your way.”

“Wait—”

The phone went dead. Alex stared at it, trying to gather her muddled thoughts and sort through her myriad unanswered questions. How many victims? Why call her? Was everyone else tied up on other cases? She thought back to the mass murder wrought by Caim and shuddered. Please don’t let it be another like that . . .

Setting the phone down, she turned to find Seth propped up on one arm, his black eyes watchful.

“My supervisor wants me at a scene.”

“Did he say what it is?” Seth’s voice took on the hint of a growl, the way it did whenever they spoke of her job.

“Beyond a homicide? No.” Slipping out of bed, Alex stripped off her pajama bottoms and reached for the panties and slacks she’d hung on the back of the door in anticipation of her meeting with Roberts later that day. A meeting that was supposed to determine whether or not she could return to investigative duties.

She assumed it was canceled now.

“But you think it has to do with them ,” Seth persisted.

Them. Angels, Fallen Ones, Heaven, Hell . . .

His parents.

A whole other world paralleling her own, controlling it, threatening its very existence. Her fingers clamped onto the duvet. No. Michael had told her she was done with all that. He’d assured her the worst she would face would come from her own world, from humanity’s knee-jerk reaction to its own fear. Which, given what she’d come to expect of her fellow mortals, would be bad enough.

Still . . .

She shook off the creeping tentacles of doubt and continued dressing. “I’m sure it’s just an ordinary homicide,” she said. “Not that any homicide is ordinary, but—” She broke off. Sighed. “You know what I mean.”

“But what if it’s not? What if it is them? I want to come with you.”

“We’ve been over this.” She slipped into her blouse and then dropped onto the edge of the bed, reaching to stroke the hair, dark as his eyes, back from Seth’s forehead. “This is my job. It’s what I’m trained to do. Even if it is them, there’s nothing—”

She stopped, but not before Seth’s eyes hardened into obsidian.

“Nothing I can do?” he finished.

She bit back her denial. They both knew that’s what she’d been about to say. Just as they both knew it was the truth.

Silence stretched between them, thick with arguments already had and words scrupulously avoided. They’d been over this same territory at least once a day since their return from Vancouver a week ago, their ongoing disagreement adding to the tensions between them.

Seth was right. They couldn’t continue like this. She couldn’t continue like this.

She curled her fingers around his. “I know this is hard,” she said. “I’ll try to find someone I can talk to, all right? Just . . . give me time. I’ll get past this.”

Seth turned his hand palm up and linked his fingers with hers. For a long moment she let his love, his strength, seep into her. Then she rose, dropped a kiss on his lips, and left.

Aramael drew back from the rooftop edge as the door of the apartment building across the street opened. A woman stepped into the night, blond hair glinting briefly in the glow of the light above the door. A tiny thread of awareness tugged deep inside him. Alexandra.

He didn’t need to see her features to be certain. He just . . . knew. The way he knew when she slept or woke. Or when she moved from one room to another in the apartment she shared with Seth Benjamin.

The thread inside him drew tight.

All things he wasn’t supposed to know anymore because he wasn’t supposed to care. He’d assured Mika’el that he didn’t, that any connection between him and Alex had been severed.

But here he was. Day after day, night after night, using his patrols of the earthly realm as an excuse to stay near, to check on her. To torture himself with the tiny, too intimate glimpses into her life without him. The life she’d chosen with another.

At first he’d told himself he only wanted to be sure she was all right. That she suffered no ill effects from her run-in with the second most powerful being in the universe. On his third night standing in this same spot, however, he’d given up the pretense. For him, the soulmate connection remained. He knew now that it always would.

Mika’el would be furious if he found out.

So would Alex.

Flexing the massive black wings at his back, he wondered briefly if he would ever become accustomed to their weight, so much greater than that of the Power’s wings he’d once worn. Then he launched himself into the air above the city.

Seth watched Alex’s car roll out of the apartment parking lot and onto the night-emptied street eight stories below. Letting the curtain settle back across the window, he turned to face the apartment. Just him, the furniture, and who knew how many hours before her return. He flicked a glance in the direction of a soft tick, tick, tick.

Him, the furniture, and that damnable wall clock, ever so helpfully keeping count of those hours.

He lowered himself onto the sofa, elbows resting on knees, and traced a thumb across his bottom lip. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. None of it. Not after what they’d been through together, not after he’d brought her back from the brink of death—twice—and sure as Hell not after they’d chosen each other the way they had.

He’d given up all he had been, all he’d been destined to do. For her. For mortality.

For this.

He surveyed the room, lit by a single floor lamp standing alone in one corner. A rental property, it exuded not a hint of the woman he loved. Alex claimed she hadn’t had time to deal with rebuilding after Aramael and Caim’s battle had burned her former home to the ground, but Seth knew better. He saw in the hardness of her eyes there was more to it. She might not have said so—might not have admitted it to herself—but the real reason she hadn’t rebuilt was because she didn’t see the point.

And he couldn’t argue with her.

Not with what he knew was coming.

It was bad enough that Lucifer and the One insisted on going to war, a war that would inevitably spill over into the mortal realm. But if Lucifer had been telling the truth about the eighty thousand Nephilim his followers had bred. . .

Closing his eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose. The human race didn’t stand a chance. It was just a matter of time until every mortal soul on the planet was wiped out, including Alex—and now that he’d given up his immortality, him.

Which was why none of this was how it was supposed to be. Alex trying to stem an unstoppable tide, him staring at a featureless beige wall, both apart for hours at a stretch instead of spending their time together, away from all of this. Away from her job, the constant threats, the relentless insanity gripping the universe. None of which he could do a bloody thing about.

Dissatisfaction gave a sinuous roll in his belly. Perhaps he’d been too quick to—

He opened his eyes, cutting his thoughts short. No. His former powers had no bearing here. He’d given them up because he didn’t want them, damn it. Because he’d wanted no more part in the endless battle between his parents. He’d chosen Alex over all of that. Had chosen . . . he stared at the featureless room again.