His thirty-foot wingspan refolded into his back as if it had never been. The demon hunkered down before quickening into a full-bore run, fisting bloodied daggers with upraised arms, blades leading the way.
His forward momentum was awesome, each footfall shaking the ground like aftershocks. Alec crouched, visibly braced for the impact.
“Cain!” the demon bellowed, leaping high and hurtling downward.
He was directly above Alec when he stopped abruptly, momentarily hovering before snapping backward as if retrieved by a rubber band.
The demon’s flight was halted by a brutal collision with something on the walkway. His body slid down, revealing Satan standing rigidly behind him. Claws formed from the Devil’s hands and dug deep into the demon’s torso, arresting the downward slide in a vicious semblance of an embrace.
Eve glanced at the detectives, but they lay unmoving. Were they both dead? Casualties of a war they didn’t know was being waged?
She looked back at Satan and found him staring at her.
“Took you long enough to step in,” she muttered.
Alec backed up in deliberate steps, forcing Eve to clamber to her feet to get out of his way. She was behind him one second, then tossed over Reed’s shoulder the next. “This was your plan?” he bit out.
He shifted her near a body lying prone on the ground.
Montevista. Felled like a cut tree with his eyes open and sightless. The whites swallowed by black.
“Damn it,” she breathed, hating that she’d been right. She grabbed the Mark’s shoulder and rolled him into her lap on his back. She brushed his dark hair back from his forehead and hunched over him protectively, linking her fingers with his and holding his hand to her chest. Alec shifted Sydney over a split-second later.
From their position on the opposite side of the pool, she watched in horror as Satan reaffirmed his dominance.
“You want what’s mine, Asmodeus?” the Devil hissed. His claws rent through the demon’s torso, eliciting screams so agonized tears came to Eve’s eyes. Through the lacerations in his mortal skin, Asmodeus’s true shape could be seen. The monstrous many-limbed body writhed and sizzled within the torn flesh. Smoke poured from the widening cavity and filled the air with the stench of rotten soul.
“It will cost you,” Satan crooned with his lips to the demon’s ear as if they were lovers.
The Prince of Hell threw the decimated body into the swimming pool like rubbish. The water shuddered in response, bubbling red and churning, boiling and hissing steam. A geyser erupted from the center, spewing into the air in a twenty-foot tower.
Eve looked at Satan, who smiled his gorgeous smile. Dressed in black velvet vest and pants, he was classically and elegantly beautiful.
Something flitted across his features. A wince, then widened eyes. He clutched at his chest, hunching over with a groan.
Montevista’s hand tightened on hers with a pained gasp. “Eve.”
She jolted in surprise, then looked down at her friend. Montevista’s powerful body began to shudder. His eyes were his own, no longer black.
“Only way,” he wheezed.
The necklace draped inadvertently over their clasped hands, awakening the Mark in him and freeing him to summon the dagger now impaling his heart.
“No!” Reaching up, Eve caught Reed’s wrist. His gaze moved from Satan and settled on Monte- vista. “Oh shit..
“Take him to the tower. Hurry.”
Reed hefted the Mark into his arms and shifted, disappearing in the blink of an eye.
“Eve,” Satan snarled. His arm snapped out toward the pool, the veins bulging along the rigid muscles.
The earth shuddered and groaned. The water in the center of the pool twisted into rope and arced onto the cement, forming the outline of a man whose endless arms extended in a desperate grasp for Alec.
The Devil’s form flickered, his face contorting with savage rage and frustration. Then he faded completely. There one moment, gone the next.
Eve lunged into the Nix’s path. He caught her, laughing, hauling her across the pool and up against his chest.
“Fuck you,” she bit out, ripping the amulet from her neck and shoving it fist first into his torso. He instantly gained form, materializing into a man as nude as the others had been. Her hand pulled free of the closing flesh, leaving the necklace behind inside him.
346 s. j. DAY
He fell on her, writhing. She drew back her fist and decked him, sending him rearing upward with a violent arching of his back.
“Freeze! Police!”
The Nix clawed wildly into his mortal chest, struggling to excise the necklace.
A gunshot reverberated in the semienclosed space. Followed by another. The Nix jerked with each impact, screaming an inhuman sound as two holes appeared in his torso. Blood spurted onto Eve. He fell to his side, convulsing before shuddering into stillness.
Eve twisted to look behind her.
Detective Ingram kneeled beside his fallen partner with Jones’s gun in hand. As his gaze met hers, his pistol arm fell to his side. A trail of blood marred his temple and the side of his neck.
“Are you okay?” he asked, swaying.
“Detective…”
His eyes rolled back in his head. He slipped into unconsciousness, slumping to the ground before she could reply.
“Holy shit.” Eve rolled painfully to her stomach.
As she regained her feet, the pool continued its roiling boil. She stared at it, unblinking.
When Gadara burst from the depths in a flurry of dirty and tattered wings with Riesgo cradled in his arms, she was too numb to be surprised. The archangel landed on both feet, then fell to one knee. Riesgo lay in his embrace with arms splayed wide and head lolled back, breathing shallowly. The picture they presented—that of wounded angel protecting frail humanity—struck her with a message of faith and benevolence as nothing else in her life had ever done.
“Alec,” she croaked.
He shifted beside her and caught her close.
CHAPTER 21
Eve tried not to look disgruntled as Reed pushed her through the hospital room doorway in a wheelchair.
I feel ridiculous in this thing, she muttered.
You looked ridiculous trying to maneuver on crutches, he retorted, softening the sting of his words with a squeeze of her shoulder. “Good afternoon, Detective.”
Ingram offered a slight wave that jostled the IV tube connected to the back of his hand. The detective’s other arm was in a cast. He looked soul-weary, the pale blue of the hospital gown only emphasizing how wan he was. The other bed in the room was closed off by a curtain, leaving the detective alone with a uniformed female officer who he introduced as his daughter.
“Nice to meet you’ Eve said, extending her hand as Officer Ingram stood. The younger Ingram was trim and fit, with pretty features and dishwater blonde hair cropped super short.
“Are you okay?” the officer asked.
“Yes. I’m fine. Healing nicely, they tell me.”
Eve didn’t really need the wheelchair. The mark had healed the deep gash to her thigh over the last forty-eight hours and only a little redness remained. Still, the subterfuge was necessary since the wound had been nasty enough to take weeks for an Unmarked body to heal.
“You’re a popular guy, Detective.” She gestured at the profusion of flowers and balloons.
“They should be sending these flowers to the funeral home,” Ingram said bitterly.
Reed’s fingers caressed the side of her neck in a silent offer of comfort.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said quietly.
“We all lost.” Ingram sighed heavily. “Jones was a great cop. I was honored to w-work with him.”
Her eyes stung when the detective’s voice broke. “I need to thank you, Detective. You saved my life.”
He flushed. “I was just doing my job.”
“You’re a great cop, too, something I’m profoundly grateful for.” Changing the subject, as she’d
learned to do when her dad became uncomfortable with sentimentality, she asked, “How long will you be in the hospital?”
“I’ll be released tomorrow. Thank God.”
She nodded and managed a smile. “I’m going to check on Father Riesgo now, but I’ll stop back by before I go home.”
Ingram looked at his daughter. “The priest is back?”
“Popped up yesterday,” she confirmed. “Said he decided to walk home.”
“From Anaheim to Huntington Beach?” Ingram was clearly dubious. “What’s he doing in the hospital?”
“Severe dehydration.”
“From the trek home? No, don’t answer.” Ingram heaved out a sigh. “I swear this world is going to hell in a handbasket.”
Reed turned Eve’s wheelchair around and pushed her back out to the hallway. As he steered her in the direction of Riesgo’s room, he murmured, “Well, they’ll be out of your hair now.”
“See? It all worked out.”
“Oh, no, babe. You’re not getting off the hook that easily. Your plan was more fucked up than mine.”
“No way,” she argued, tilting her head back to look up at him. “Everything’s wrapped up perfectly—the mask is contained, the wolf and Nix are finally dead, so are the hellhounds, the police are off my back, and the tengu are eradicated from Olivet Place. I finally feel like I can get started with a clean slate, like every other Mark does.”
“If the way this shit has gone down is your idea of perfect,” he said dryly, “we have a lot to talk about.”
Reed slowed, then turned into a room. There were two beds—one occupied, the other freshly made. The patient in the far bed was sleeping. And he wasn’t Riesgo.
“Wrong room,” Eve said.
Backing up, Reed looked at the number by the door. “No. This is the number they gave us at the desk.”
He hailed a passing nurse and asked, “Do you know which room Miguel Riesgo is in?”
“I believe he was discharged,” she said briskly. “Just a short while ago.”
Eve frowned. “Thank you.”
The nurse moved away.
Reed’s hand settled on her shoulder. “Didn’t you leave a message that you were coming?”
“Yes, this morning.” She reached up to link her fingers with his. “I’m really worried about him.”
Riesgo had looked so broken when he’d returned. Half-dead. She could only hope that his emotional state was better than his physical one. She wouldn’t relax until she saw for herself.
“We’ll track him down when we leave here,” Reed promised, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll make sure he’s okay.”
***
Eve wished it was possible to fade into the woodwork while staring straight into a satellite feed. Alas, there was no way to hide from the many eyes that rested heavily on her.
“How is it that no one recognized what happened to Diego Montevista?” Gabriel asked. “He worked directly with all of you. You saw him every day.”
Five beautiful faces frowned in unison from the massive LCD screen hanging on the wall directly opposite Eve. The feed was divided into six equal sized boxes, with one box left blank because Sarakiel was present at one end of the table. Gadara sat across from her, separated by several feet. Hank, Alec, Reed, Sydney, and Eve rounded out the room’s occupants. A shade had been lowered over the wall of windows, dimming the light from the midmorning sun.
Hank leaned forward and all eyes moved to him. “It appears that Montevista could be left dormant at times and activated at others.”
“But you suspected him, Evangeline?” Remiel asked. Like most of the other archangels, he was dark-haired. Unlike the others, his eyes were almond shaped and his features tinged with a decidedly Asian cast.
Eve cleared her throat. “I didn’t at first, no. But when Hank told me about his experiments with the tengu and I saw how violently it reacted to the mask mixture, I started thinking about Montevista and his resurrection from the hellhound blood. The only other known.. . resurrectees—is that a word?—were the wolf and the Nix, both of whom acted erratically after they came back to life. It seemed reasonable to assume Montevista wouldn’t be the only one unaffected.”
“That is a considerable leap,” Michael said, in a voice that was both deeply seductive and highly terrifying. There was power in that voice. It underlined every word be said with a threat. The fact that he was gorgeous only made him more frightening. “To decide that he was Sammael’s emissary because of the behavior of two lesser demons.”
“I guessed’ she corrected. “And it wasn’t just because the wolf and Nix seemed to have lost all sense of self-preservation after cooking in the masking agent.” She looked at Alec. “Cain became erratic, too. He wasn’t himself. Since all of you have the same setup at your firms that he had—the connection to Marks and Infernals working beneath you—I looked at the differences between his situation and yours.”
“Everything about his situation is unique,” Uriel said.
“Including Montevista,” she finished. “I figured that if he was connected to Sammael by the mask, some of that evil would filter into Cain. It would explain a lot of Cain’s behavior if that was the case.”
“There were other possible explanations for that.” She met the archangel’s gaze directly, understanding that he was referring to the paternity gossip that pained Alec so greatly. “I’m not one to rule anything out. The mask, Cain’s problems, the way Montevista would lose consciousness every time Satan manifested_—there were a lot of considerations involved. But since I didn’t know for sure, I wasn’t going to accuse him outright. It was too dangerous for Montevista. I hoped that if I turned out to be right, Hank could save him somehow.”
“I am concerned,” Remiel said, “at how often you work alone. You have a mentor for a reason. We cannot afford to have these types of large-scale battles waged in public places.”
“And I,” Gadara said dryly, “cannot afford to replace every luxury car that has the misfortune of crossing paths with her.”
“I didn’t have much choice,” Eve protested. “In this case, Montevista was a wild card. I guessed he was involved in some way, so how could I share information with Cain, knowing it might leak to Montevista? If Satan knew we were on to him, what would he do? That was my concern.”
“You should have approached your handler.”
“She did.” Reed leaned forward to set his elbows on the table. “She asked me to touch base with Asmodeus, and when everything blew up, she called me in to keep one eye on Montevista. When he blacked out, it proved her theory. She also kept Ishamel and Hank in the loop. She doesn’t have a savior complex, if that’s what you’re inferring. She knows her limits.”
Don’t piss them off, she protested, knowing he was already taking heat for his deal with Asmodeus.
They’re pissing me off, he shot back.
Raphael rocked back in his office chair. “And Sarakiel made herself a threat with her association with Asmodeus, so you could not turn to her. But you must understand, Ms. Hollis. You are consorting and conspiring with Sammael by your own admission. You say that he deliberately summoned the Nix for you to vanquish before he lost contact with Montevista. His offering to you concerns us, of course.”
Okay, they’re pissing me off, too, Eve groused.
“Is there news of the priest?” Uriel asked.
Gadara leaned forward. There was nothing about his posture or features that bore witness to his ordeal, but it was there in his eyes. Especially when he looked at Alec. “Nothing;’ he replied. “He has not been seen nor heard from since he recovered enough to leave the tower. He has left the church and broken his residential lease. I will find him. It is only a matter of time.”
There was a length of silence as the archangels flipped through copies of the various reports in search of unasked questions. Eve waited for queries about Ima or the necklace, but they didn’t come.
Sydney raised her hand, which raised one of Gadara
’s brows.
“Yes, Ms. Sydney?”
She cleared her throat. “Montevista. . . Did he get in?”
“He committed suicide,” Sarakiel said.
“I know that. What does that mean?” Sydney’s gaze darted across the screen, then shot to Gadara. “Diego did it for us. To save us. To save us all.”
“I testified highly for him, Ms. Sydney’ Gadara murmured.
“As did I’ Alec said.
“That’s it?” She looked at Eve and tears welled. “That’s all?”
“I think we are finished here;’ Michael said. “If we have further questions, we can revisit this discussion.”
Eve quickly found herself in the hallway outside the conference room. Sydney hurried off, her shoulders tight and her posture defensive. Sarakiel, Gadara, and Reed lingered behind, speaking in harsh tones.
Hank was walking up to Eve when Alec appeared beside her. He caught her elbow and asked, “Can it wait, Hank?”
“Certainly.” The occultist smiled. “Good to have you back, Cain.”
Alec grinned. One blink later, Eve found herself standing in the midst of a city at night. The sights, sounds, and smells were foreign and exotic. Her disorientation lasted a moment, then she tugged free of Alec’s grip and smacked him in the arm. “Don’t do that without telling me first!”
He caught her about the waist. “Have you ever been to Cairo before?”
“Cairo,” she repeated. “No, I can’t say I have.”
“There’s a first time for everything.” The glint in his eyes told her he was thinking of a more intimate first time between them. “Are you hungry?”
“When am I not these days?”
“Good.” He held her hand and tugged her out of the shadows. “There’s a great restaurant up the street I’ve been dying to take you to…”
***
Lilith stood in front of the window with her back to him, dressed in white from head to toe—turtleneck, slacks, and high-heeled boots. Her waist-length hair was so pale that it blended in with the rest. As a whole, her sleek alabaster form was a stark contrast to the greens and blues Sammael had determined would showcase her to perfection.