Linda Poitevin: Sins of the Lost

Roberts stood. “I’ll light a fire under staffing and have you back on the street by the end of the week. You have my word.”

One week.

Alex handed the file to her supervisor and watched him leave the conference room. She did a mental calculation. Today was Saturday, so that would make the end of the week the following Friday, six days away.

Just in time for the birth of Lucifer’s army.

Aramael stared out at the barrens, mile after mile of dry, lifeless soil stretching as far as he could see in every direction. Scowling, he shot a look over his shoulder at Mika’el. “You’re serious. You really want me to stand here and do nothing.”

“No, I want you to keep watch. There’s a difference.”

Aramael snorted. “Forgive me if I fail to see one.”

He surveyed the desolate landscape, featureless but for the stony outcrop on which he and Mika’el stood, the occasional bit of dead scrub brush . . . and the distant band of Hellfire that marked the edge of Heaven itself.

Raised against the Fallen when the One had created Hell, its flames had burned steadily, powerfully, and without cessation for millennia. Until Aramael, one of Heaven’s own, had murdered his brother and broken the One’s pact with Lucifer. Until the downward spiral into Armageddon itself had been triggered.

The wall of flames flickered, danced, steadied again.

Aramael’s mouth twisted. “How long am I here for?”

“As long as it takes,” Heaven’s greatest warrior returned, his voice and expression implacable.

“Can I have a best guess?”

“A day. A year. A century.”

“A century?” Of sitting out here in the middle of nowhere, far from Alex, waiting for something that might or might not happen? The possibility chafed.

“Perhaps a millennium.” Mika’el flicked him an unreadable look. “We don’t know how fast the Hellfire will break down enough to be breached, or how many of the Fallen will cross when it happens. We can’t afford to leave it unprotected.”

“With all the patrols you have going, I’d hardly call it unprotected,” Aramael muttered, scanning the unwelcoming landscape again.

“I still prefer to have an Archangel keeping watch.”

And as the newest member of the choir, the task fell to him. Great. Aramael shifted under the weight of his armor. “Shouldn’t we be more concerned with the mortal realm? With no barrier to protect it, it seems more likely the Fallen will strike there first.”

“The others can look after Earth.”

“But—”

“And they’re more likely to look after all of it, rather than just one Naphil.”

Aramael shot a startled look at the other warrior. Hell. “How did you—?”

“You really expected otherwise?” Hard green eyes pinned him. “You assured me the connection between you was severed.”

“It was. It is.” His heart cringed at the lie. “I can manage it.”

“By watching her?”

I just want to make certain she’s happy. To see that Seth treats her well, that he cares for her. To reassure myself that I did the right thing in not fighting for her, in letting her go, even though I know I could never have had her.

“Habit,” he said wearily. “It’s just a habit. I’ll break it.”

“And being here will help you do so,” Mika’el retorted, his voice brooking no argument. “Now, any questions before I leave?”

“Many. What are we waiting for? Why not just go after the Fallen and make sure the fight is on our terms rather than theirs?”

A muscle in the other Archangel’s jaw contracted. “The agreement might have fallen, but Heaven’s own rules remain unchanged. The One will not strike the first blow, Aramael. Good may de fend, but not of fend.”

Aramael thought about how Mika’el had come to him during his exile in the mortal realm and tasked him with the assassination of the One’s son, the Appointed. How he would have carried out the order if it hadn’t been for the interference of Alexandra Jarvis. How close he and Mika’el had skated to the very edge of good .

“Have you ever noticed how the rules for good are more constricting than those for evil?” he growled.

“Have you ever considered those restrictions are what keep us good?” The other Archangel countered. He drew himself up, topping Aramael’s six-foot height by a good four inches. Massive, coal-black wings unfurled and stretched wide. “Remember who you are, Aramael. What you are. Angels are the final line of defense between Hell and Earth, and Archangels the last hope of—” He broke off, his face going bleak.

“Of what?”

“Nothing,” Mika’el said. “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. Just remember we have no more room for mistakes.”

With a great rush of wind, he launched upward, leaving Aramael alone on the boulder-strewn hill. Alone for days, weeks, months—maybe centuries—with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. Thoughts of how he came to be in this place to begin with, memories of Alexandra Jarvis and how he had chosen her over his very purpose . . . and how she had chosen Seth over him.

Thoughts, memories, and that lingering tug of a connection he continued to deny to Mika’el.

“Shouldn’t you be done for the day?”

Alex looked up from the news report she’d been reading on the computer monitor and met Seth’s dark gaze. The breath hitched in her throat. Arms crossed over his chest and broad shoulders nearly filling the doorway, the man was sheer physical perfection from the top of his black-haired head to the soles of his exquisitely proportioned feet. Despite the exhaustion of her first day back in Homicide, a fragile warmth unfurled in her.

Seth might no longer be of Heaven, but his presence still packed a powerful punch. Time and again since she’d made her choice, moments like this had dispelled any lingering concern that her feelings for him might simply be tied to his divinity or, worse, a misguided sympathy. What she felt for the son of the One and Lucifer was far more than that . . . and far from simple.

The specter of his father complicated it further.

Seth’s expression darkened. He knew she’d thought of Lucifer again. He always knew, sometimes before she did. A familiar, automatic apology rose into her throat. She held it back. After this morning’s discussion—following which she still hadn’t made a move to talk to anyone—her oft-repeated words would just rub salt into an already festering wound.

“I just need another ten minutes or so,” she said. “I’m waiting for Henderson to call me back from Vancouver.”

Seth’s shoulders tensed, so imperceptibly that only a skilled interrogator would have noticed. Not for the first time, Alex wished she could turn off that part of herself, that she could take a person’s words and actions at face value and not always be looking for what they hid from her. Such as Seth’s ongoing displeasure.

“Is it about this morning’s case? I thought you said Roberts gave the file to someone else.”

This morning’s case. File . Words that didn’t begin to encompass the details of the day she’d shared with him over dinner. The immensity of a pregnant woman’s murder, the child missing from her belly, Alex’s hollow certainty about who—or what—might have taken it. Seth’s disinterest in the same.

She snuffed out a flicker of irritation. He was still new to this mortal thing. He hadn’t had a chance to develop a connection to humanity yet, apart from her. He just needed time.

She kept her voice even. “He did give the file to someone else. But if the killer is a Fallen One—”