Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy Read online

  “Then ask for someone else. You need to talk to someone, Alex. I wish it could be me, but—” Jen broke off and looked away, her lips tight and her eyes suspiciously shiny.

  “Hey.” Alex reached out and clasped her sister’s shoulders. “Would you stop? You have enough to worry about with Nina. I’m a big girl. Let me deal with my own issues, will you?”

  “But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You’re not dealing with them. You’re pretending they’re not there.”

  Alex let her arms drop and curled her fingers over the edge of the table on either side of her. Knuckles aching, she stared at the light switch on the wall.

  “If you can’t work with this Dr. Bell,” Jen continued, “ask him to refer you. Or let me give you some names. You need to keep looking until you find someone you’re comfortable with. Someone who can help.”

  Alex almost laughed at the idea any human being could help her deal with the kind of evil she had faced, the kind of evil that might be unleashed on the world. Except it wasn’t funny, and it wasn’t going to happen. She didn’t care what Jen or Bell or anyone said. Even if she could talk about the secrets she had come to know, she wouldn’t. Because when it came right down to it, she didn’t want to relive it. Didn’t want to think about it. Not any of it.

  Not about Aramael, lost to her forever; not about Caim or a broken pact between Heaven and Hell; not about Heaven’s contingency plan or the Apocalypse waiting for humanity if that plan failed.

  She slid off the table. “Look, Jen, I know you want to help, and I appreciate it. Really I do. But as much as you don’t want to talk about it, neither do I. Can we please just leave it at that?”

  Jen stalked the length of the conference room. “No, Alex, we can’t just leave it at that, because you can’t continue like this. You’re stretched so thin right now I’m afraid you’ll fly apart if someone sneezes too close. And I can’t help!”

  “Is that what’s bugging you? That you can’t fix me again?”

  “I never fixed you in the first place,” Jen muttered.

  “Because it was never your responsibility. What Mom did—what Mom was—” Alex swallowed and pressed on. “What happened was horrific, Jen, but it’s over. Done. We both survived. It’s time to stop trying to compensate for something that happened twenty-three years ago and wasn’t your fault to begin with.”

  A tear slid down Jennifer’s cheek.

  Alex sighed. She went to Jen and hugged her, crossed arms and all. “You’re not responsible,” she said softly.

  “I know. I just don’t know what I’ll do if you—I can’t lose you, Alex.”

  Alex leaned her forehead against her sister’s. “You won’t lose me. I’m not Mom and I’m not that easy to get rid of.”

  Jen sniffed. “Promise?”

  Perhaps some lies weren’t all bad.

  “Promise. Now I really do have to get back to work before I lose my desk under the mess. How about I come by for dinner on Saturday? I’ll bring a movie and ice cream.”

  LEVERING HIMSELF OFF the filthy pavement, Aramael swiped the back of his hand across his bottom lip and spat out a mouthful of blood. He forced his spine straight against a spark of pain and glared at the Fallen One perched on the fire escape above him. He really needed to stop taking back-alley shortcuts.

  His attacker grinned back. “I didn’t believe it when they told me you were here,” he said. “Thought I’d see for myself.”

  Aramael spat again. A weapon would be nice right now—something to compensate for the things he could no longer do—but he didn’t dare look away from his enemy long enough to find one. Even without using their supernatural powers, Fallen Ones moved way faster than he did in his new reality. They hit harder, too.

  “You’ve seen,” he retorted. “Now you can go.”

  The Fallen One uncoiled, stretched, and dropped lightly to the ground beside him. He linked his fingers and cracked his knuckles. “I don’t think so, Power. Your kind has caused a great deal of suffering among us. It seems only fair one of you should pay for some of it.”

  Aramael scowled at the leather-clad figure. Bloody Hell, he was getting tired of this. The discovery of his presence had been inevitable, of course; he’d known he would become a target at some point. One of their nemeses, stripped of his angelic powers and cast from Heaven—what Fallen One wouldn’t want a shot at that? But word had spread, the attacks came with increasing frequency, and Aramael’s plans disintegrated further with each.

  His path had seemed so clear at first. Find Alexandra Jarvis, the soulmate from whom Mittron had taken such care to separate him, and rekindle the connection between them. If Mittron were right about Alex once inspiring Aramael to abilities beyond what he should have had, perhaps she might do so again. Perhaps he might, through her, stretch beyond his current capacity and find a way to stop Mittron. To stop Armageddon.

  With the Fallen Ones dogging his every step, however, it would take him an entire mortal lifetime just to reach Alex—and by then, with his memory of her fading a little more with each rise and fall of the sun, there might be nothing left to salvage. Nothing he could do.

  He eyed his present tormentor, now circling just out of arm’s reach. Despite what the Fallen One may have heard about Aramael’s vulnerability, thousands of years of caution apparently died hard. Aramael was, after all, one of the select few angels capable of imprisoning Fallen Ones in Limbo. Or had been one of those angels until Mittron orchestrated his downfall.

  Now, however, he was wingless, powerless, reduced to the same physical strength as a mortal, and sentenced to an eternity of having the crap kicked out of him by his former prey. And, worse, to watching from the sidelines as Heaven and Hell went to war.

  Gritting his teeth, he rolled his shoulders to ease the tension building in them. It wasn’t in his nature to lie down and play dead, so he’d fight back as best he could. He might even land a few hits of his own. But if the three previous encounters were anything to go by, he didn’t expect to remain standing for long.

  The Fallen One stepped in with a jab; Aramael blocked him and struck a glancing blow on his shoulder—a blow that, even to him, felt feeble. The Fallen One smirked.

  A feral cat, scrounging through a pile of garbage, slunk out of sight behind a row of battered cans. Aramael braced himself. His enemy could take him down in a heartbeat, but it wouldn’t happen that way. There would be pain involved first. A lot of pain.

  The Fallen One’s knuckles connected with his cheekbone and a starburst exploded behind his eyes. Reeling back, he staggered and shook his head, trying to locate his aggressor through flashes of light. Another hit, this one to the gut. He grunted and doubled over, staying on his feet through sheer willpower. He would not fall this easily. A fist drove into his kidney and agony sheared through him, obliterating his resolve. His lungs sucked for air as all sense of his enemy’s whereabouts disappeared. Dropping to his hands and knees, he waited for the next blows. They came quickly. Kicks, now, from which no amount of curling up could protect him.

  Lying in the alley’s grunge, he endured the punishment. Grimly, resolutely, and with growing bitterness. He might not be able to stop Mittron, but if it took him the rest of his existence, the Highest Seraph would somehow answer for this. For the pain and humiliation; for the loss of what Armael had so briefly found with Alexandra Jarvis; for the treason that had brought it all to bear.

  A booted foot crashed into Aramael’s skull, sending a wash of red across his vision. Awareness receded down a darkening tunnel. Sound faded. Sensation died away.

  Deep inside, the life spark of the weakened vessel he had become snuffed out yet again.

  TWO

  This was it.

  Time to decide.

  Seth leaned his forehead against the cool oak door of the office of Heaven’s executive administrator. The Highest Seraph didn’t expect him until tomorrow. He could still leave and no one would ever know he’d been here. What he considered doing. He clenched his fist
. Felt the same clench in his gut. One way or the other, he had to decide; if he was going to do this, he had to do it now.

  The quiet confidence of his mother’s words came back to him. You will do everything you must, my son. I have never doubted that. He’d been so certain she was right. His love for her had overwhelmed him—as had the desire to fulfill his destiny.

  And then he thought about her.

  Alexandra Jarvis. The name surged upward in his mind, dragging with it the dark morass he’d been avoiding for days. The doubts. The desires. Seth’s palms went damp and sweat beaded on his forehead. Doubts and desires so new to him, so foreign, that he had kept them carefully tucked away as the time of his transition crept ever closer, afraid to examine them for fear he might be tempted to do the very thing that brought him to Mittron’s door now.

  He thought back to when he’d stood in Alex’s living room, witness to her pain at losing her soulmate. He remembered how he’d wanted to reach out and comfort her. To hold her. To know her as Aramael had, only better.

  If he followed the path set for him by his parents, he would never have that chance. Never even see her again unless…

  Unless.

  His fist tightened on the roll of papers he held. Two sheets of parchment: one in the handwriting and language of a Principality—a list of dates and events that would condemn the Highest Seraph to eternal Limbo; the other a note in his own handwriting that would absolve Mittron from responsibility. If he complied with Seth’s request. Given the evidence against him, Mittron would almost certainly see the benefit of the latter.

  Which brought Seth back to his own choice, within his grasp but still unmade.

  Lifting his head, he stared at the dark oak grain of the door. The responsibility that had been his from infancy sat like a mantle of lead across his shoulders. If he walked away, he would give up everything. His parentage, his immortality, his destiny, his power…

  Everything but a handful of years with a mortal woman soulmated to another, yet irrevocably his.

  Desire uncoiled in his belly. Ever since Alex’s hand had first closed over his arm in a silent plea for help, ever since that first, undeniable frisson of awareness had flared between them, he had been consumed by her. Had known that, ultimately, she belonged to him. Known it, fought it, and now…

  Now he would forfeit his destiny to prove it.

  Separating the papers, Seth rolled each individually and tucked them inside his sleeves.

  Accusation in one, absolution in the other.

  He raised his hand and knocked at Mittron’s door.

  THE GREENHOUSE DOOR opened and the One looked up from tamping the soil around the roots of a newly transplanted geranium. “Verchiel. Thank you for coming.”

  The Dominion inclined her head, tucking her hands into the folds of her robe. “I was already on my way when Kaziel gave me your message. I thought you might want an update.”

  “You read my mind.” Setting the pot aside, the One brushed soil from her fingertips. “And? Is everything ready?”

  “It is. The transition will take place as scheduled tomorrow.” Verchiel’s voice trailed off into hesitance.

  “But?” The One raised an eyebrow.

  Verchiel shook her head. “It’s nothing, One. It really isn’t my place—”

  “Look at me.”

  Pale blue eyes met hers in response to the command, misery shadowing their depths, underscored by doubt. The One shook her head and sighed.

  “You think too much, Dominion.”

  “I know. But Mittron, One? I know we have no proof, but—”

  “And do we not have faith, either?”

  Verchiel whitened, and the One curled hands into fists where they rested on the potting bench. For a breath of an instant, she thought about telling the Dominion what she knew, what she planned, what she had no choice but to do. The depth of her aloneness sat like a vast, infinite pit at her center, and suddenly—desperately—she wanted to share her burden with another. To admit she was undeserving of the faith she demanded; that she sensed an indecision in her own son that jeopardized her agreement with Lucifer and the very existence of humanity. That she had failed yet again to see what was before her, and would now forfeit her own son’s life in a desperate attempt to remedy that failure.

  For a breath of an instant, she wanted to confess all that and more, and then, because she was the One, she made herself voice a reassurance she did not feel. “Everything has a purpose, Verchiel. A reason.”

  “Even what Mittron has done? What he might still do?”

  “Even that.”

  Verchiel stood by her for another moment, her doubt so loud in the silence it needed no voice. Then, without a word, the Dominion reached out and covered the One’s fisted hand with her own, squeezed gently, and departed.

  “YOU’VE LOST YOUR mind.” Mittron stared at the Appointed.

  Seth halted his pacing by the window and scowled back at him. “Just answer the question. Can you do it or not?”

  “It isn’t a question of ability. I simply won’t go against the One’s wishes like that.”

  “Oh, spare me.” Seth gave a short, humorless bark of laughter. “We both know you’re way past caring about the One’s wishes, Seraph. You started this whole mess, remember? Don’t insult my intelligence.”

  Mittron’s breath snagged in his throat. He didn’t pretend not to understand the Appointed, but neither did he intend to admit anything. For three weeks, he had lived with the razor-edged threat of discovery hanging over him, wondering how much Seth had figured out, how much he might have taken to his mother. Only when there had been no repercussions had he begun to relax, but never to the point of his original careless arrogance.

  He wasn’t interested in returning to that state of crippling anxiety again.

  No matter how intriguing he found Seth’s request.

  Or how much he would like to see his own plans resurrected.

  He shook his head. “Be that as it may, I am not entirely without instinct for self-preservation. Verchiel has only just stopped dogging my every step. I dare not—” he halted as Seth tugged at the sleeve of his black tunic and produced a rolled paper. A very old paper.

  Suddenly, vividly, Mittron remembered where he had last seen the Appointed. Seated in the Archives, surrounded by the records through which he searched. Had Seth found something? A shiver slid through Mittron’s chest. Impossible. He had gone through every single file in the archive himself; had made sure there was nothing to find. The Appointed was bluffing.

  But Seth’s casual stroll across the room said otherwise.

  The yellowed parchment dropped from Seth’s hand onto the desk. A film of perspiration cooled Mittron’s forehead. He swallowed.

  “It’s all there,” the Appointed said. His words were as harsh as they were precise, the syllables dropping like gravel onto metal, one chunk of granite at a time. “Your deceit. Your manipulations. Bethiel recorded everything.”

  Mittron reached with trembling fingers to pick up the paper. Spidery handwriting peeked out from the top edge. The air hissed from his lungs.

  It couldn’t be. He’d been so careful. So certain.

  “I know how you failed to cleanse Aramael properly,” Seth continued. “How you plotted for him to know his soulmate when he met her, how you arranged for a Nephilim descendant to be that soulmate. I know all of it.”

  Mittron’s tongue darted out to moisten desert-dry lips. Outside the office door, footsteps and voices approached. He waited until they receded, fading into silence, and then, hands less than steady, unrolled the parchment.

  The words of his long-gone accuser leapt off the page. The facts with which the Principality Bethiel had once confronted him, proving accurate all that Seth had said. Laying the groundwork for connections to be made, conclusions to be drawn, Mittron’s treachery to be known.

  He half dropped, half flung the roll across the desk and laced his fingers in his lap, squeezing until his knuckles pr
otested.

  “Where did you find it?”

  It. Such a tiny word for something so monumental.

  “Among Bethiel’s personal effects. The ones put into storage after his exile to Limbo.”

  So the Appointed knew about that, too.

  Seth settled onto a corner of the desk. “Tell me, how many others have there been, Highest? How many angels have you sacrificed in the name of your grand scheme? I know of Aramael, of course, and now Bethiel, but how many more? Two? Four? A dozen?”

  “It was a long time ago,” Mittron said, despising the tremor in his voice. Detesting the arrogance of the being who triggered it. “It means nothing.”

  “Doesn’t it?” The Appointed reached out and set the roll spinning. “I think you’re wrong. I think it might be considered evidence of treason. Especially when one considers the fortuitousness of Caim’s escape from Limbo. The only escape to ever occur and it just happened to be a Fallen One exiled because of his propensity for murder, who just happened to be the twin brother of the Power you sent to hunt him. In the city where that Power’s soulmate—a soulmate you engineered—just happened to work as a homicide detective.” Seth tsked softly. “That’s an awful lot of coincidence, don’t you think?”

  The scroll revolved lazily on the desktop. Slowed. Stopped.

  “I don’t know why you did it,” Seth continued, “and personally, I don’t care. But she will. All she has to do is look into your soul, and she will know everything. And when she sees what is in here—”

  Mittron jumped as a hand reached down to flick the parchment roll toward him. He swallowed. “What do you want?”

  “I told you what I want.”

  Pushing back from the desk, Mittron rose and went to stare out the window Seth had vacated. He needed time to think, to figure out what lay behind the Appointed’s request. Was it a test of loyalty? Had Seth already showed the One the evidence, and now she placed temptation in his path to see what he might do? For an instant, blind panic obliterated coherence. Then reason asserted itself. No, if the One knew what was in that parchment, Mittron would not be having this conversation with Seth—would never converse with another soul again.