Sins of the Warrior (12 page)

“I’m fine, Greg.”

“Balls.” Bastion lowered his voice. “You just lost your sister, for chrissakes, Alex. You’re not
fine
and you sure as hell shouldn’t be here doing
paperwork
. Go home. Call someone. Go get hammered.”

She bit back an invitation for her colleague to mind his own business, reminding herself he meant well. “It’s seven o’clock in the morning,” she pointed out instead, rummaging in her drawer for a pen.

“So add coffee,” Bastion retorted. “Just go.”

Taking a deep breath, Alex prepared to deliver a reassurance about her mental state. Then she noticed the surreptitious slide of Bastion’s gaze toward Roberts’s closed door. The blinds were down.

“He’s in already?”

“Umm…”

Roberts was never in this early, and he only closed the blinds when he wanted something kept private. Alex looked askance at her colleague.

Bastion slumped in his chair. “We hoped you’d stay away,” he muttered. “Roberts was trying to get rid of them for you. At least for a day or two.”

Her gaze flicked back to her supervisor’s office.

“Get rid of who—” The question died on her lips as the blinds opened and she met a familiar bespectacled gaze through the window. Stephane Boileau, aide to Canada’s minister of public security, looked out, surveyed the office, and zeroed in on her. He stared, then lifted a hand, pointed at her, and beckoned. The headache she’d been fighting throbbed anew.

“Oh, hell,” she muttered. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“If you want to make a run for it, I can trip them,” Bastion muttered.

Alex didn’t think he was entirely joking. Everyone in the office knew of Boileau and his campaign to recruit her to his extraterrestrial cause in Ottawa. He’d called every day since the explosion on Parliament Hill, threatening, cajoling, promising, deaf to her increasingly irritated refusals—and to all suggestions that his E.T. theories were wrong. She’d stopped answering his calls three days ago, letting them go through to voice mail instead. But wait. Bastion had said…

She glanced at him. “Them?”

“He brought reinforcements.”

Roberts’s door opened, and their grim-faced staff inspector emerged. He caught Alex’s eye and jerked his head in a
come hither this instant
gesture. Boileau stood in the center of the office behind him, a dark-suited man seated at his side, back turned to Alex.

Shit.

Maybe she should have let Michael come in with her after all. She might need him to hold her back from saying something stupid. Or doing something stupider.

She scowled.

“You think they came down here to escort you personally?” Bastion asked.

“I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“Will you go?”

“Not a chance.”

Bastion grunted something that sounded vaguely approving. Then he reached over to squeeze her arm.

“Abrams was right, you know. We won’t stop looking for her.”

Across the office, Roberts cleared his throat. Alex stood up from her chair. She looked down into Bastion’s compassionate eyes, but words of thanks, entirely inadequate, jammed in her throat. Pressing her lips together, she shook her head and clapped him on the shoulder instead. He gave her fingers a quick press in return.

“Go.” He jerked his head toward their supervisor. “Take care of whatever that is, and then for chrissakes,
go home
.”

“I will,” she promised.

“What was that about?” Roberts asked as she approached.

“Nina.” She saw no reason to hide the truth—at least, not that part of it.

“Ah.” Her supervisor looked as if he might question further, but settled for, “You okay?”

She met his gaze squarely. “Honestly? No. But I’m still upright, so I figure that counts for something.” She scooped back her hair and fished an elastic from her pocket. Her gaze went past him to the door he’d pulled closed. “Can’t say I’m thrilled to see Boileau, however.”

“I wasn’t expecting you in.”

“I have something I need to do.”

Her staff inspector raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t elaborate. She continued twisting her hair into a ponytail. Roberts sighed.

“Well, maybe it’s best that you
are
here,” he muttered. “You should probably see this for yourself.”

See? Not hear?

Alex shot Roberts a quick, sidelong look, but he only stood aside and pushed open the door. After an instant’s hesitation, she stepped into the office.

Stephane Boileau had taken a seat at Roberts’s desk. His fingers paused in their dance across the computer keyboard as she entered, and his wire-framed gaze lifted from the monitor to stare at her. Roberts nudged her forward.

“Detective Jarvis, I believe you know Mr. Boileau from the minister of public security’s office, and this is Mitchell Lang, deputy minister of national defense.”

Lang, a heavier set man than Boileau, stood up from his chair, his hand outstretched. “Detective Jarvis. A pleasure.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t return the sentiment.” Alex ignored his hand, crossing her arms and flicking a cold look at Boileau. “It’s been a long day. Let’s make this as short as possible, shall we? I’ll start us off. I’m not going to Ottawa.”

Boileau pushed back from Roberts’s desk. “You don’t even know what’s happened yet.”

“I don’t care. It won’t change anything. I’m not leaving Toronto, and I’m not chasing down your half-baked alien—”

“Alex.” Roberts’s voice stopped her.

She clamped an imaginary lid on the boil-over of impatience. Reminded herself she still wanted to work in this office. Made it as far as three in her count to ten.

“My apologies,” she growled. “But I have work to do, so whatever it is you have to show me, let’s get it over with.”

Roberts cleared his throat behind her.

“
Please
,” she added, rolling her eyes at him over her shoulder.

A somberness in her supervisor’s expression pulled her up short and sent a trickle of ice water through her belly. She glanced back at the monitor on the desk. Foreboding crawled over her skin. Suddenly, she didn’t think she wanted to see whatever Boileau had to show her. Roberts’s hand settled onto her shoulder, urging her forward.

Behind the desk, Boileau stepped to one side, making room for her in silent invitation.

AS ALEX TOOK UP
a position beside Stephane Boileau, the minister’s aide leaned forward to draw the computer mouse nearer to him. He clicked on an icon in the bottom taskbar and a video image sprang up on the monitor, frozen on a dark, grainy image of trees.

“How familiar are you with the city of Pripyat?” he asked.

“I’ve never been, if that’s what you mean. But I know it’s the Ukrainian city that had to be evacuated when Chernobyl blew.”

Boileau looked surprised. “Very good.”

“I didn’t realize there’d be a test,” she retorted. “Shall I go study, or can we get to the point?”

Deputy Minister Lang moved to stand on her other side, hands in his pockets. He nodded at the screen. “About a week ago, satellite images showed unauthorized activity, but—”

“Define activity.”

He frowned, obviously not a man used to being interrupted.

“People,” he said. “A lot of them. The Ukraine government had been allowing tours into the area for the past few years on a small scale, but those were discontinued recently when radiation levels spiked.”

“Spiked? Why?”

Lang and Boileau exchanged glances.

“We don’t know,” said Lang. “But, for the moment, no one is allowed within five kilometers of the city.”

“Go on.”

Boileau took over. “There were two satellites sending images of the area. We lost contact with both of them before we could take a closer look, so the Ukrainians sent in a drone.”

Alex didn’t think she liked the direction this seemed to be taking.

“The photos came back black,” said Boileau. “No images whatsoever. Not even ghosts. Then the Ukrainian government sent in two fighter jets, but those had to turn around when their onboard computers went haywire. They didn’t get close enough to see anything, either.”

She definitely didn’t like the direction this was taking. She stared at the frozen image on the screen and waited.

Beside her, Lang rocked back onto his heels. Forward onto the balls of his feet. Back again.

“Yesterday, the Ukrainians sent in a ground force to do reconnaissance,” he said quietly. “An elite force. They shared this video with other governments this morning at four a.m. eastern time.”

Roughly three hours ago. They would have had to haul the prime minister out of bed for that. The president of the U.S., too, no doubt. She herself had still been awake, of course, dealing with not one but two angels in her living room, instead of getting drunk as she’d planned. Or grieving the loss of her sister, as any normal human being would have done.

She flapped a hand at Boileau, and he clicked on the video’s play arrow. The image on the computer screen began moving.

At first, Alex saw only trees, seemingly shot with a night-vision camera that was most likely attached to a helmet. Then a shape rose from the ground a few feet ahead of the soldier with the camera, green and ghostly, automatic weapon in hand, face concealed behind a full bio-hazard mask. A smattering of words was exchanged, low and rapid, unintelligible in their foreignness. Another masked green man joined the first. The image turned wobbly as the camera-wearing soldier began to move.

Tree trunks passed by on either side, branches slapping against the lens.

Hushed voices clipped short their words. Twigs snapped underfoot. An owl hooted.

A few hundred feet on, a short, sharp warning came, its tone of delivery recognizable in any language. More words. Shouted this time. Aggressive, challenging. The camera-wearing soldier lunged sideways, and the monitor darkened as a tree blocked the view.

Warning prickled across the back of Alex’s neck.

Then another figure appeared: small, unmoving, devoid of the protective clothing worn by the soldiers…and glowing blue instead of green. Alex blinked. She’d worn night-vision gear on takedowns. She knew how the devices worked, knew that the phosphors glowed green and only green. So what the—

A second blue figure appeared behind the first, this one tall, brighter than the other—and winged. Alex inhaled sharply. The sound of automatic gunfire erupted from the computer speaker, and the monitor turned gray with static.

Then came the first scream…and the next…and the one after that. Screams that went on and on and on, ripped from the throats of some of the world’s most highly trained men, until finally, blessedly, silence descended.

Alex tried to swallow. Her throat refused to cooperate. The screams of the men in the video clip reverberated in her brain.. Boileau reached out and pulled a USB key free of its computer port.

“How many?” Her voice was hoarse.

“Five teams of five men,” said the deputy minister. “Given the outcome, the Ukrainians have requested international support.”

“And you’re telling me this because…?”

“There’s more,” Boileau said. He clicked on the Internet search tab and then began typing. “We’ve seen an unusual rise in travel to Ukraine over the last two days. Upwards of three hundred people have landed at the Boryspil and Gomel airports. On open-return tickets.”

“How does that tie into the video?”

“Fifteen of those people have been detained trying to cross the perimeter into Pripyat. Three of them were Canadians. When we questioned them, they said they were responding to this.”

Another click of the computer mouse. A website popped up on screen: a black background with a bold red header and small yellow print below. Not what one would call a professional design.

Alex scanned the header. “The end is here? There are dozens of sites claiming that right now.”

“Hundreds,” he agreed. “But only this one originates with the New Children of God.”

“New—” Her gaze went back to the screen. New Children of God? She read the header again, then the yellow print beneath it.
Armageddon has begun, but there is hope! A new world order will rise from the ashes, led by the New Children of God, and a chosen few can still be saved. Are you one of them? Can you still find salvation? Eternal life? Email today for details and
—Alex stopped reading.

The travelers to Ukraine.

She closed her eyes against the roll of her stomach. Holy hell. The Fallen were advertising on the Internet for help—and humanity had responded. In all of the eternity she had to look forward to, she would never have seen that one coming.

“We’ve accessed the email records of the fifteen detainees,” Lang said. “They were all in touch with whoever is running the site.”

“And the IP address? Have you been able to track it?”

“We’re still trying. It keeps changing.”

“What exactly do you want from me?”

“The New Children of God,” he said. “Can you confirm they’re the missing children? The ones that disappeared after those bizarre pregnancies?”

“Confirm absolutely? No. But I can add my suspicions to yours.” Strong suspicions. Given the Nephilim children’s superhuman abilities, the abandoned city’s ongoing radioactivity would likely have little to no effect on them. It would be the perfect holding place for Lucifer’s army.

“And the winged alien we saw would be one of their protectors?”

Alien
. Alex bit her lip against comment. She nodded. “Yes.”

“Then we need you to help us get to the children.”

She shot a look at Boileau.

“Deputy Minister Lang has read your file,” the minister’s aide said. “He knows your involvement.”

The government had a file on her?

Of course the government had a file on her.

Crossing her arms, she leaned against the window ledge behind her. “And did you include in your file that I’ve already told you everything I know?”

Lang slid his hands into his pockets again. “Detective Jarvis, these aliens possess technology we’re unfamiliar with—technology that’s capable of knocking out our own. Satellites, cameras, computers. You’ve had the most contact with them. Seen their resources. If you can just describe to us—”