Linda Poitevin: Sins of the Lost

“You want me to what ?”

The Archangel Mika’el stared at his Creator. For more than a week he had awaited her summons. He’d been prepared to endure her wrath, her bitterness, her disappointment . . . but this?

Nothing could have prepared him for this.

The One gazed back at him with equanimity. “I want you to convince Seth to take back his powers.”

Her words made no more sense the second time around.

“You can’t be serious,” he said, because it wouldn’t do to tell his Creator, “You’re insane.”

Steel formed in the silver depths of her eyes. He held himself rigid against the desire to look away. He’d earned his place as Heaven’s greatest warrior through strength and counsel, not by folding at the first sign of the One’s displeasure. Straightening his shoulders, he met her glare with his own.

“Two weeks ago, your son’s instability damn near cost us the mortal realm,” he said. “We have no reason to think he has changed, so why would you give him his powers back?”

The One sighed. “I’m not giving them back.”

“You just said—”

“I said I want you to convince him to take them back.”

Mika’el’s irritation stilled. As her words sank in, he let his mind sift through to their underlying meaning. To what she wasn’t saying. Understanding glimmered.

“The earthquake,” he said. “In Vancouver.”

The One stared out the window, her gaze unfocused. “When Seth chose the mortal woman over his destiny, the energy he discarded put the entire physical world in flux. I’ve been dealing with the consequences ever since. Earthquakes, storms, tsunamis. They’ve been manageable so far, but if we don’t contain what he released soon, it will destroy the planet. Perhaps the entire universe.”

Mika’el’s blood turned cold. He’d seen the consequences of Seth giving up his power in the first place: buildings reduced to rubble, an already earthquake-prone city made more unstable. If the One was right, they’d removed one threat posed by her son only to have it replaced by this, an entirely new problem. And if her proposed solution was to have Seth take back his powers, it could only be because—

He whirled to face her. “The energy. You can’t control it.”

“I can’t so much as touch it.” Bitterness laced the Creator’s voice. “Every time I reach for it, I make it more unstable. Its very nature makes it reject my presence.”

As much as he’d expected the confirmation, it still stunned him. Still made his universe drop from under his feet. “You’re certain?”

You’re certain that you—the All-powerful, the Creator, Mother of everything—cannot control this? Cannot contain an energy that is—should be—so much less than your own?

Raw honesty gazed back at him, piercing deeper than any steel might have done. “The energy is not mine to hold, Mika’el. It was created by my union with Lucifer. It belongs only to the product of that union. I wish it could be otherwise, but—yes, I’m certain.”

“If he does this, if he takes back his powers, how strong will he be?”

If something goes wrong, if he chooses not to return to Heaven, can you stop him?

“I don’t know.”

Her answer, he knew, encompassed both questions, spoken and unspoken.

He pivoted on his heel and stalked the width of the room in one direction, then the other. “There must be another way.”

“We tried your way.”

The words held no recrimination, only a statement of fact, but they stopped him in his tracks. She was right. He’d created this mess. He’d let himself be ruled again by the arrogance that had separated him from her side all those years before, and in that arrogance, had loosed an unknown, unquantifiable force upon the world when they could least afford it.

When war between Heaven and Hell already threatened humanity with Armageddon.

He cleared his throat. “One—”

The tiny, silver-robed figure by the window held up a hand. “What’s done is done. There is no point in belaboring the issue. I just need you to convince Seth. I’ll hold things together as best I can, but I don’t know how much time I can give you.”

“He will never listen to me.”

“No. But he might listen to the woman.”

The Naphil. Of course. After choosing her over his own destiny, Seth would almost certainly listen to her. Still Mika’el hesitated. He wanted to ask what would happen afterward, if Seth did take back his power. Wanted to know . . . and already did. The measures he’d taken—the risks—none of it had changed her mind.

“You know we’re not ready to lose you,” he said gruffly.

Infinite sadness gazed back at him from silver eyes. “Loss isn’t something you’re ever ready for, my Archangel. It’s something you survive.”

Alexandra Jarvis jolted awake, heart racing, lungs sucking for air. Bathed in sweat, she lay rigid, waiting for reality to replace the nightmare. Again.

As she had every night since Lucifer had raped her.

Then, through the horror she’d begun to think she might never come to terms with, came the touch of a man’s gentle hand. She flinched, fighting back a shudder, and made herself relax.

“Again?” Seth’s deep voice asked quietly.

She nodded. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t see her in the dark; after two weeks, he was as familiar with the nightmare as she was.

He tugged her close. She let him slide an arm beneath her and curled into him, head resting on his chest. She focused on the steady tha-dump of his heartbeat, the rise and fall of his breath. Slowly her fingers uncurled. She matched her own breathing to his. Inhale, exhale, inhale.

His voice rumbled beneath her ear. “It’s not getting any better, Alex.”

She tensed anew, but his arm held firm. “I’m doing my best,” she muttered.

“I know. But I’ve been doing some reading”—his hold tightened against a second attempt to free herself—“and I think maybe you need help with this. I think it might be post–traumatic stress—”

She succeeded in pulling away, scowling down at him in the dark. “I know what it is, Seth, and you’re right. I probably should talk to someone, but who the hell do you suggest? Being raped by Lucifer himself isn’t something I can discuss with just anyone, for chrissakes. We mortals tend to medicate people who spout off about things like that. Especially people with my history.”

And you refuse to talk to me about any of it.

Seth stroked her hair. The faint tension in his hand told her he knew full well the words she’d swallowed back, but once again he avoided the subject. “I know. And I know you’re trying. But you can’t go on like this. We can’t go on like this.”

Like this. Words too small to contain all that lay behind them: the disappointment; the recriminations never stated but always underlying; the hurt she knew she inflicted whenever he reached for her and Lucifer loomed between them yet again. Lucifer in Seth’s form. Lucifer turning her into nothing more than another pawn in the cosmic mockery of a game he played with the One.

Reassurances gathered in her throat but refused to move farther. She couldn’t make herself say what she didn’t believe to be true, couldn’t promise that everything would be all right. Not anymore. Not knowing what she did of Heaven and Hell and the Nephilim and—

On the bedside table, her cell phone shrilled. She extricated herself from Seth’s hold and rolled over to grab it.