"He was nowhere in the area." Her eyes narrowed. "You still haven't told me why you want it."

"No, but I did tell you it was better that you didn't know."

The pert former Cherub smiled. "And you know I'm not very good at minding my own business. That's why you like me so much."

Samael stared down at the Fallen One. Raziel had remained in Heaven as his informant when he'd left to follow Lucifer, until it had become too dangerous for her. Uniquely un.o.btrusive, she had a way of blending into the background so that others failed to notice her, failed to realize she listened in on conversations meant to be private. It made her useful in the extreme, and she was right. He liked her a great deal for it. He didn't for an instant, however, consider her infallible.

"I'll let you know when I'm ready for the next one," he said. He started down the alley toward the street.

"What if I don't want to help again?"

He looked over his shoulder. Raziel watched him with a cool expression, her spikey-haired head tipped to the side. She was the first to look away.

"Same old Samael." She gave a quick laugh. "Fine. I'll be waiting."

"You let him what?"

Verchiel tried-but failed-to hide a flinch. Mika'el was an imposing figure at the best of times, even when seated, but Mika'el irritated? She took a tiny step away from the temper brewing.

"I let him take on the mortal persona of Jacob Trent," she repeated. "He was right. There was little chance he could follow her movements, let alone antic.i.p.ate them, without being at her side. Her job is too unpredictable."

The Archangel glared at her. "And I wasn't consulted because . . . ?"

"Because you were otherwise occupied at the time, and because, frankly, this was an administrative matter." Verchiel drew herself up. "You cannot be everywhere at once, Mika'el. Not even the One can do that. Nor can you take responsibility for all the decisions that need to be made."

"I'm perfectly willing to leave certain decisions up to others," he growled, "but allowing Aramael to make his presence known to the woman? Allowing him to be with her? You've seen their connection. Surely you see the risk this poses."

"I've also witnessed her rejection of him. She chose Seth, remember?"

"Has the Cleanse made you forget the strength of the soulmate bond? She can choose whomever she likes. It will never negate what was forged in Heaven itself."

"But you have overcome your-" She broke off. "Forgive me. I shouldn't have mentioned it."

Mika'el's jaw hardened. Emerald ice glinted in his eyes. He rose from behind his desk to prowl the room with long, restless strides. "I've learned to control my bond, Highest, not overcome it. Do not mistake the difference. With every beat of my heart, every breath I take, I feel the loss of her presence. The need-not the desire, the need-to seek her out again. To join with her. It takes all I possess to resist. No human, regardless of her bloodline, has that kind of strength."

Verchiel hesitated. He was right. She had forgotten the strength of the bond. And now that he'd reminded her, the decision to allow Aramael to return as Jacob Trent seemed a great deal less clear-cut. "My apologies. I didn't consider the risks."

"Or the consequences." Stopping, Mika'el faced her. "If, by some miracle, Aramael and the Naphil do resist the connection, his very presence in her life might prevent Seth from taking back his powers."

"Do you want me to recall him?"

Rubbing a hand across his eyes, Mika'el sighed. "I don't know what I want you to do. We still need her protected from Samael, and you're right that Aramael cannot do so if he can't follow her." He fell silent. Then he shook his head. "No. Leave him where he is. I'll talk to the Naphil again. Even if she's unwilling to speak to Seth on our behalf, perhaps she'll agree to stay quiet about Aramael."

"And Seth? When will you speak with him?"

Another sigh. "After I speak with the woman," he said. "For all the good it will do."

Chapter 23.

Alex's shoulders had climbed almost to her ears by the time she steered the car onto Cardno Avenue in the upscale Leaside neighborhood. From the moment Aramael slid into the seat beside her, the tension between them had ratcheted upward with every pa.s.sing second, every kilometer, because his silence hadn't stopped her brain from dwelling on the reasons for his presence-or what Seth's reaction would be if he found out.

A headache throbbed in her temples.

She pa.s.sed a lineup of news vehicles, waited for a uniformed officer to move the wooden barrier blocking the street, and pulled up beside the mobile command post. The familiar jolt of adrenaline kicked through her as she switched off the engine-every cop's reaction to facing a crime scene and the ensuing hunt for the perpetrator.

Stepping out of the car, she scanned the street. Not a single person was in sight, despite the mild fall day. No toddlers on tricycles, no nannies with strollers, no one raking the thick, colorful layers of leaves from the lawns. Not so much as a mailman. One might have thought the neighborhood deserted if it weren't for the parted window coverings up and down the block.

On the other side of the car, Aramael slammed his door.

Alex ignored him, tallying the resources on hand. Two ambulances, crews standing to one side as they awaited their cargo; three marked cars and two unmarked; half a dozen uniforms; a forensics team clad in their head-to-toe bunny suits to prevent contaminating the scene; and the requisite yellow tape. Yards of it.

She hunched her shoulders. Even with all she'd seen on the job, she still had trouble wrapping her head around the idea of a stoning. It would be a long time before the neighborhood recovered from this. If it could.

Aiming for the marked motorhome housing the command post, she strode past the ambulance that had blocked her view of the full scene. Her step faltered. She stopped. A single black bag lay stretched out at the edge of the gra.s.s. Two more forensics members stood knee-deep in a gaping hole beside a swing set, sand piled beside them. They plunged their shovels into the ground around a bloodied object.

Long seconds ticked by before she recognized the object as a human head. Horror warred with disbelief until a voice hailed. She tore her gaze from the grisly remains and focused on the command post. Detective Sergeant Mark Bastion stood in the open doorway.

"I see you have your partner back."

"Looks like."

"You don't sound happy about it."

She shrugged. "It puts me back on the street."

And maybe if she said that often enough, she'd start to believe it. Nodding at the scene where Bastion's partner, Timmins, stood to one side scribbling in his notebook, she changed the subject. "So? What do we know?"

"Too much. Not enough." Bastion sighed. "Two victims, both female. Young, but there's too much facial damage to accurately determine ages. We'll have to wait for the autopsy."

"Do we know yet if the second was pregnant?"

Timmins called from across the playground before Bastion could answer. He held a hand out in a thumbs-up sign at odds with his grim expression: a confirmation rather than an indication of something gone right.

The second woman had also been pregnant.

Bastion made the sign of the cross over his chest. "Christ."

Alex squeezed her eyes shut until starbursts went off behind her lids. For the first time in her career, she wondered how much longer she would be able to continue. How much longer she could tolerate bearing witness to atrocities like this.

She fought a rising urge to simply leave. To be somewhere else, where people didn't kill one another in such horrific ways. Where she didn't have to see with her own eyes just how far downhill humanity had slid. Where women didn't die in childbirth three weeks after becoming pregnant, or have their babies ripped out of their bellies, or get brutally murdered simply because they were pregnant.

Somewhere safe.

Except safe didn't exist anymore. It never really had, and it never would again. Not as long as Heaven and h.e.l.l were at war over humanity's very existence.

"We'll canva.s.s a six-block radius," Bastion's voice jolted her back to the present. "There's not many people home this time of day, so I'll have the uniforms set up roadblocks to catch them on their way home later. We'll keep coming back until we've talked to every single household. If someone is away, track them down. I want a list of every woman who is or might be pregnant, and I want their well-being confirmed. In person."

"We should look at churches that serve the area, too," Alex said. "Places of worship."

The forensics duo laid aside their shovels and lifted the second body from its sandy killing ground.

The second very pregnant body.

"Christ," Bastion muttered again. He let out a gust of air. "Nicole is pregnant, you know. Four months. We had the first ultrasound on Monday."

Alex unlocked her teeth. "Congratulations. That's wonderful news."

"Is it?" He turned haggard eyes to her. "Apart from the fact she seems to have avoided this virus thing"-he waved a hand at the playground-"what the h.e.l.l kind of world are we bringing a kid into?"

She had no answer. Could not, for the life of her, give the rea.s.surance he sought. Bastion swallowed audibly.

"You and your partner-Trent, isn't it? You do the initial sweep of the immediate neighborhood," he said. "This street and the one that backs onto the park. The church idea is a good one. We should include cultural centers as well. I'll get more uniforms down here."

You and your partner.

Hugging her coat close, she started toward the car. Stopped. "Bastion? Tell Nicole I said congratulations. It's wonderful news. Really."

The forensics team laid the woman's body on a tarp beside the monkey bars.

Chapter 24.

Seth stepped into the elevator, shifting the groceries he carried to one arm and reaching with the other for the eighth-floor b.u.t.ton. Another man slipped inside as the doors slid closed. Ignoring him, Seth focused instead on his plans for the evening-the next stage in his attempts to fit into Alex's world, to be what she needed him to be.

Tipping his head back, he stared at the buzzing fluorescent light panel in the ceiling and went over the menu for the dinner he'd planned. He'd kept his choices simple: grilled chicken with lemon and rosemary, roasted vegetables with avocado and goat cheese, and a tossed salad, all tied together with a chilled Chardonnay and his determination to make good on his word to try harder. If Alex was going to work these insanely long hours, at least he could make what little time they had together as pleasant as- "I hope she's worth it."

He looked sideways at his elevator companion. "Excuse me?"

A bland, golden gaze met his, then dropped to the grocery bag he clutched. "Whoever that's for. I hope she's worth the effort."

"Not that it's any of your business, but yes. She is." He went back to watching the light flicker. The elevator lurched past another floor.

"Because too many of them come with all kinds of baggage," the stranger continued. "Expectations. As if we could ever care about the things they do."

Seth's breath stilled. We? Carefully, without moving his head, he slanted another glance at his companion. At the gleam of light reflected on his dark, burnished face, the puckered scar at the corner of one eye . . . and, for just an instant, the hint of wing-shaped shadows behind him. Seth scowled.

"I told Mika'el-"

"I'm not with Mika'el." The other man leaned back against the elevator wall. "Just as you're not with them."

Not with Mika'el? If he wasn't with the Archangel, then he was- His uninvited companion smiled. Cold trickled through Seth's gut.

A Fallen One. b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, he was trapped in an elevator with one of his father's minions.

In the time it took to inhale, his awareness of his lack of power skyrocketed from a dull, ill-defined ache to an acute sense of loss. He shifted his stance, standing tall and facing the Fallen One head-on. He curled his free hand into a fist. With or without powers, he wouldn't go down without a fight.

"I'm exactly where I choose to be," he told the intruder.

"Are you?" the Fallen One asked, nodding at the groceries. "You, the son of Lucifer and the Creator herself, this is where you choose to be?"

"I gave that up," Seth said through his teeth.

"And you can choose to have it back again."

The paper of the grocery bag crackled as Seth's grip went tight. His companion raised an eyebrow.

"You look surprised. You didn't know? Oh, my. How very awkward. I was so sure she'd have told you."

The cold solidified. Turned heavy. Don't. Don't ask. You don't want to know. It doesn't matter . . .

But it did matter. Seth's heart twisted. It mattered a great deal.

"Who?" he asked. "Who would have told me?"

The Fallen One eyed him pityingly. "You have to ask?"

No. No, he didn't because she had started to tell him last night.

"You wanted to tell me something."

She had started, and then she had changed her mind.

"It can wait."

She had chosen instead to hide it from him.

"It wasn't important."

To lie to him.

Seth shifted his grip on the grocery bag.