“Why did they want Anaria?” Though Preston’s psychic scent burned with curiosity and mild frustration, he didn’t ask why they feared Irena might tear Caelum apart.
A diplomatic man, Alejandro thought.
“She studied with Lucifer and created the nephilim,” Michael said. “She has extensive knowledge of the symbols and their magic. And so Belial’s demons believe she can tell them how to have children, as well.”
Taylor held up her hands and looked at Irena. “Okay, wait. So you’re saying: Rael falls for some lucky girl . . . and then kills his wife to get her out of the way. And he gets pissed when Irena says she’ll kill Anaria, because Anaria might show him how to have little demon babies with the lucky girl. Is that what I’m hearing?”
“I’ve only said that Belial’s demons wanted Anaria alive, despite the prophecy.” Irena’s eyes glowed with amusement. “I am trying to consider details. You are the one who put them together.”
“So I did.” Taylor dragged her hands through her tangled red hair. She turned and studied the frozen image on the screen, as if trying to see past the human face Rael wore. “And I can’t buy it. I mean, where is this woman?”
“It’s a stretch,” Lilith agreed. “Pure speculation.”
“Yes.” Michael nodded at the screen. “We’ll pursue the question of the woman later. For now, let’s go on.”
Alejandro watched the remaining questions, his body tensing through each one. On the recording, Taylor danced closer to the one they wanted to hear, and he couldn’t shake the sudden, heavy feeling of impending disaster.
“You obviously didn’t hire someone to kill her, risking exposure in the process.”
“No, detective. I didn’t.”
“Lie,” Castleford said.
A breathless silence hovered over the room. Alejandro absorbed it, his stomach twisting.
With a feral smile, Irena pushed away from the wall. “That is it, then.”
She strode to the door. Alejandro recognized her gliding, effortless step. Irena was on the hunt. She meant to slay Rael now.
Lilith shot to her feet. “Irena—”
“Lilith,” Michael said sharply. “No.”
Alejandro didn’t wait to hear what either had to say. He caught up to Irena as she left the room.
“You have come to talk me out of it.” Her accusation echoed in the narrow hall. “Don’t try. He killed a human.”
“I don’t want to stop you.”
She cast him a hard glance. “You lie.”
“I won’t stop you. But I ask that you wait.”
Her mouth twisted in a sneer. Her pace increased, and she formed her wings.
His patience snapped. He caught her wrist, twisted, and slammed her face-first into the wall. He shoved his body against her, her wings tight against his chest.
He snarled into her ear,
“Wait.”
Between them, Irena’s fingers clamped around his wrist, mirroring his hold on hers. Aside from that small movement, she stood still, her cheek flat against the wall. Her eyes shone bright green.
She could kill him without turning around, he knew. She could break him a thousand ways. But she didn’t move.
“You deliberately push me,” he realized. “Why?”
“Because you can take it,” she snapped. Before he could feel the pleasure of that compliment, her lashes swept down, hiding the glow of her eyes. “And I wanted to see what you will fight for.”
His hand tightened on her wrist. “I do
not
fight for Rael.” His voice and his fingers bit into her, but he couldn’t make himself ease back. This was her opinion of him? “A woman is still dead, Irena. Rael pulled the strings but he didn’t pull the trigger, and if you slay him now, we may never know who did.”
Her vicious smile appeared again. “I’ll make him tell.” “And if he does not? Then her killer is never punished.”
“Our purpose isn’t to police humans, or to help humans punish each other.”
“Not our purpose. But when demons have destroyed human lives, helping to pick them back up should be our
duty
.”
She didn’t respond, and he prayed she was taking his argument in and giving it due consideration.
In a softer tone, he continued, “That is not the only reason I ask you to wait. Rael must be slain . . . but SI must keep
Thomas Stafford
alive. I need time to prepare for that, Irena. It has to be done carefully.”
Her brow creased as she puzzled through his words. He felt the moment she understood. Visceral rejection ripped through her psychic scent. She tore her wrist from his grip.
Alejandro stepped back. He had his reasons solidly outlined, but he couldn’t voice them past the tightness in his throat. God, how he’d hoped she would accept his decision. She’d been pleased to hear about Bradshaw’s role at the FBI. But she obviously didn’t feel the same about his intention to replace Rael.
She turned, pressing her back to the wall. Her wings created a soft frame of feathers around her rigid form. Her eyes glittered.
“That deception will be no different to the people you would serve than Rael’s deception is now, Olek.”
He
saw that it was different. But he knew that every argument he made, Irena would call splitting hairs.
“So be it,” he said. “It must be done.”
Anger stabbed through her psychic scent. She closed her eyes, averted her face.
He waited, feeling as if his heart was clenched in her fist. It squeezed tighter when she pushed away from the wall. Without looking at him, she strode down the hall toward the exit.
“Irena—”
“I’ll wait, Olek. Go do what you must.”
Her agreement didn’t ease the ache in his chest. He watched until she turned the corner, then listened until he could no longer hear her quiet footsteps.
He drew a deep breath, then returned to the conference room. Michael nodded once, indicating that he’d heard Alejandro’s plan to take Rael’s position—and was giving his approval.
The Doyen must have already signed the exchange to Lilith and Hugh. Alejandro couldn’t read Castleford’s face; Lilith regarded him with a bemused expression.
“We should have done this two years ago,” she said.
It was too much. He had Michael’s approval and Lilith’s, when he could not have Irena’s. He could not remain here without breaking.
“If we are finished, I have duties to attend to in Argentina.”
Duties that required Alejandro’s swords to draw blood. He had never looked forward to it more.
“We are.” Lilith glanced at Taylor. “Except you. You’re staying until Savi comes?”
Taylor nodded. “We’ll let you and Cordoba know if we find anything on Margaret Wren.”
At the moment, Alejandro didn’t care if Wren had enslaved Rael with a bargain and had arranged Julia Stafford’s murder herself.
He bowed stiffly and left.
CHAPTER 14
Taylor didn’t smoke often—just often enough that a collection of ash had gathered in the one of the empty flowerpots that lined the small balcony of the second-level apartment she and her mother shared. And just often enough that she knew how slowly to open the sliding door so that it wouldn’t squeal and wake up her mother—who’d come out, see her lighting up, and give her a look. The daughter of a nurse should know better.
Did
know better. But sometimes didn’t care.
She drank a lot more often.
Tonight, she did both.
She didn’t have a view, except for her mom’s flowerpots—mostly empty for the winter—and the contemporary stylings of a brick wall about three feet from the rail. She glanced down, into the tiny space between houses. Though gates blocked each end of the gap, a vampire could sneak through there, and easily leap up. No vampire was there now. Just garbage cans, a red plastic wagon tipped on its side, and what looked like a beheaded Cabbage Patch Doll.
Fun. The kid living in the house next door was probably someone she’d meet again, in about twenty years. Then again, maybe not. Sometimes they started out bad, and ended up okay.
She took a sip of her red wine—a glass a day kept vampires and heart disease away, so tonight she was having four. She looked up at the dark sky. Just clouds, and a few wires. She didn’t see a Guardian. Somewhere out there, a novice was probably practicing his stalking skills.
Unless they weren’t. Maybe they were like the tree in the forest. If she didn’t see them, were they there? If they were, she didn’t need to raise her voice.
Quietly, she said, “If you’re here, you might as well come have a drink with me.”
She waited. No wings in the sky. No one hopping over the gates in a single bound. Figured. She turned to stab out her cigarette. She hadn’t really expected—
Oh, shit.
A large hand came out, covered her wine before she sloshed the contents all over his white linen tunic.
She really should have stopped at just one glass. She blinked up at Michael.
She hadn’t expected anyone—but she really hadn’t expected
him
. Not the Doyen. And he was the last one she’d have wanted here. Irena might give off mob enforcer vibes, but Michael was the one who scared the crap out of her. Part of it was that he seemed to try to appear nonthreatening, like some kind of guru, but underneath that tunic were ropes of muscle and the chest of a gladiator. Did he think he could
hide
that? And his bare feet—they were fine, as feet went—but the point was, he obviously didn’t have to go all out with the steel-toed boots or even the soft leather stockings that Irena wore. His bare feet screamed:
I could rip apart a demon and I’m not even wearing shoes.
God knew what he could do to humans. And he definitely wasn’t one. All the right parts were in all the right places, but he was built like he was solid stone. And he was perfect. Not beautiful in the way Savi’s partner was, but more like someone had taken Taylor’s idea of masculine perfection and put it in an untouchable, unfeeling form. Like a cosmic joke—except that she wasn’t important enough to bother playing it on.
He released her wine. She couldn’t decide whether to stop now or just throw it all back in one gulp. It wasn’t as if the damage hadn’t already been done.
Enough damage that she told him so. “I’ve had a little too much to drink.”
“Is that why you offered to share it?”
His voice made her shiver. Or it was just the cold. “Yes. I sure as hell wouldn’t have asked you here sober.”
“I know.”
Of course he did. He could probably see right into her head. She forced her head back into work. “Savi got the information on Wren—some of it. Butlers make a hell of a salary, apparently. And Wren is making transfers. Big ones.” She took another sip. What the hell. “But the CIA stuff? It’s not on any computer. There’s a list of records, but not the records themselves.”
Michael nodded. “I will get them.”
“Do I want to know how?”
“No.” He studied her wine, her cigarette, as if looking for the reason behind them. And he nailed it in one. “Khavi visited you.”
“That she did.” With a big smile, she pushed her cigarette out, gestured for him to follow her inside the apartment.
She liked it, mostly. Clean, well-built, nothing fancy. She couldn’t imagine what he thought. She’d seen the paintings of Caelum, including his temple—a huge, Parthenon-like structure of shining marble. A whole freaking temple to himself, with columns and statues, and room enough to fit ten of her apartments inside. Maybe twenty.
Welcome to my digs, Doyen. Behold the luxury that can be had on a cop’s salary, a widow’s pension, and a brother’s medical bills.
She didn’t have to open Jason’s bedroom door—it was never closed. The night-light gleamed off the rails of the hospital bed, the equipment beneath, his eyes. They were open; she hated it when they were open. When they were closed, she could still pretend that when they opened, he’d wake up.
She felt Michael in the doorway beside her. “Can you heal him?”
“No.”
Her chest seemed to fold in on itself. She hadn’t even admitted to herself how much she’d hoped his answer would be different.
“Would you if you could?”
“Yes.”
She turned, walked back out to the balcony. She could do tears. Tears were quiet. But if she got louder, she didn’t want her mom to hear, and wake up, and have that burden, too.
Michael said nothing. He stood quietly beside her, his arms folded over his chest.
After a few minutes, she wiped her cheeks. “After Savi was transformed last year, I tried to get rid of her. Stopped talking to her, e-mailing her. But she was such a stubborn little . . .” Taylor shook her head. “She shows up at the station. Somehow, she’d found out about Jason, and she tried to heal him with her blood—a transfusion.” She swallowed hard. “My mom doesn’t know.”
Taylor wouldn’t give her hope, just to take it away. They’d gone through that too many times already. A small change in his status. A noise that would sound like a word.
And always, it ended up as nothing.
“Transformation would not work, either. There is too much damage.”
“We figured that, and didn’t try.” She stared at the brick wall. “It was just a stupid, stupid accident. He was on his bike. Hit a pothole. His helmet didn’t do what it was supposed to do.”
“I’m sorry.”
She thought he might mean it. But she didn’t want to look at his face and see stone. “Thank you.” A deep breath seemed to clean her out. “I’ve accepted it, mostly. It’s been eight years.”
“Khavi did not help.”
That was the understatement of the year. She lifted her glass to him, finished it off, and said, “So, that’s the painful story of my brother. I hear you’ve got one about your sister. Anaria. What kind of name is that?”
“It is demon, for
sun
. There isn’t one in Hell.”
“Where does the light come from, then?”
“Pain.”
Jesus. That sounded like a joke, except she thought he wasn’t kidding. Was he?