Sins of the Angels: A Supernatural Thriller (Grigori Legacy Book 1) Read online

  SINS OF THE ANGELS

  The Grigori Legacy Book One

  Lydia M. Hawke

  Michem Publishing, Canada

  Published by Michem Publishing,

  Canada

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the sole product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  SINS OF THE ANGELS

  December 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Michem Publishing

  Cover design by Kanaxa

  Interior design by Draft2Digital

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  Purchase only authorized editions. For information or to obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at [email protected].

  ISBN: 9781999498016

  MICHEM PUBLISHING

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Sins of the Angels (Grigori Legacy, #1)

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Acknowledgements

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  Prologue

  It was done.

  There could be no turning back.

  Caim stared down at the destruction he’d wrought and held back a shudder. They would come after him, of course, as they had the first time. They couldn’t allow him to succeed. Couldn’t risk him finding a way back and opening a door to the others. They would send someone to hunt him, try to imprison him in that place again.

  His breath snared in his chest and for a moment the awfulness of the idea made him quail inside, made his mind go blank. An eternity of mind-hollowing emptiness, of nothingness. His belly clenched at the thought. That he had escaped at all was a miracle. Whatever happened, he couldn’t go back. He could never go back.

  He curled his hands into fists at his sides and made himself focus on now, not then. Not what if. Because he could do this. He could do what the other, his visitor, had told him was possible. He could find the right one who would open the door to where he belonged, who would let him go home again. It was just a matter of time.

  A matter of numbers.

  Caim looked again at the corpse by his feet. But he would have to be more careful if he wanted to succeed. This one had been...messy. He crouched and touched a withered fingertip to the crimson that welled from the gash in the mortal’s chest. He rubbed the viscous fluid between thumb and forefinger and studied his work, displeased at the lack of control he saw there. The haste.

  He scowled at the frisson of remembered, wanton pleasure that even now edged down his spine, making his heart miss a beat. Fucking Heaven, he disliked that side of himself, the part that thrilled at the destruction. He had never wanted this, had tried so hard not to give in to what she had claimed to see. He wished he’d had another choice; that she’d given him another choice.

  But whether he was here by choice or not, he would do well to maintain better control. If one of her hunters had been near just now, his search would have been over before it began. He’d been so caught up in his task, he wouldn’t have felt an approach until it was too late.

  No, to stay ahead of her, ahead of the hunter she sent for him, he needed to rein himself in, to contain the bloodlust that clouded his mind. To be disciplined. Caim lifted his head and breathed in the alley musk, scented with rain and death. He needed to be faster, too. Finding one of the few he could use among the billions that existed now—the task seemed nothing short of monumental.

  He wiped bloody claws on the corpse’s clothing, and then, on impulse, reached over and spread the corpse’s arms straight out, perpendicular to the body, and crossed the ankles over one another.

  Pushing to his feet, he surveyed his handiwork with twisted satisfaction. Perfect. Even if she never saw it herself, she would know of his contempt, know what he thought of the esteem in which her children still held her.

  He drew a breath deep into his lungs and stretched his wings over his head, letting his body fill out again, taking on flesh and warmth. He reveled in the fierce pleasure of his own aliveness. The pull of wet cotton against his skin; the remains of the summer rain dripping from his hair; the thick, sullen night air, unrelieved by the storm that had proclaimed his return. The sheer gratification of feeling. He cast a last, dispassionate glance at the remains on the pavement, folded his wings against his back, and started down the alley toward the street. His mind moved beyond the kill to other matters such as finding a place to stay. Somewhere he could hide, where a hunter wouldn’t think to look for him.

  Caim emerged from the alley onto the sidewalk and looked up the deserted pavement to his left, then his right. Somewhere—

  He paused, staring across the street. He grinned. Then he laughed.

  Somewhere...interesting.

  Chapter One

  That was the thing about a murder scene, Alexandra Jarvis reflected. It would be difficult to drive past one and later claim that you couldn’t find the right place. No matter how much you wanted to.

  She wheeled her sedan into the space behind a Toronto Police Service car angled across the sidewalk. Alternating blue and red spilled from the cruiser’s bar lights, splashing against the squat brick building beside it and announcing the hive of activity in the dank alley beyond. Powerful floodlights, brought in to combat the predawn hours, backlit the scene, and yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the alley’s mouth.

  And just in case Alex needed further confirmation she’d found the right place, a mob of media looked to be in a feeding frenzy street-side of a wooden police barricade, microphones and cameras thrust into the faces of the two impassive, uniformed officers holding them at bay. One of the uniforms glanced over as she killed her engine, acknowledging her arrival with a nod.

  Alex took a gulp of lukewarm, oversugared coffee and balled up her fast-food breakfast wrapper. She’d bought the meal on her way home as a combined supp
er and bedtime snack, knowing her refrigerator to be woefully empty. The nearest she could figure, it was the first food she’d had in almost twenty hours, and she hadn’t made it past the first bite before she’d been called to this, another murder. She’d eaten it on her way over, even knowing what she would face when she got here. Working Homicide had that effect on you after a while.

  She stuffed the wrapper into the empty paper bag, drained the remainder of her coffee, and dropped the cup in with the wrapper. Then she slid out of the air-conditioned vehicle.

  The early August humidity slammed into her like a fist, oozing from the very pores of the city. Alex grimaced. After a storm like the one that had raged from midnight until almost three, knocking out power to most of the city’s core for the better part of an hour, surely they’d earned at least a brief respite from the sauna-like weather.

  She fished in her blazer pocket for a hair elastic, checked that her police shield was still clipped to her waistband, and scraped back her shoulder-length blonde hair as she kneed shut the car door and started toward the alley.

  The media piranhas, scenting new prey, engulfed her.

  “Detective, can you tell us what—?”

  “Can you describe—?”

  “Is this death related—?”

  The questions flew at her, fast and furious, each becoming lost in another. Alex elbowed her way through the throng and shouldered past a television camera, wrapping the elastic around her fistful of hair. If any of them knew how many coffees and how little sleep she operated on, they wouldn’t be so eager to get this close.

  She patted her pockets in an automatic inventory. Pen, notebook, gloves...Lord, but her partner had picked a fine time to retire and take up fly-fishing. Davis was a hundred times more diplomatic than she was, and she’d always counted on him to run media interference for her at these times. She hoped to heaven his eventual replacement would be as accommodating.

  “Don’t know, can’t say, and no comment,” she told the piranhas. She winced at the snarl in her voice, glad her supervisor wasn’t there to overhear. “We’ll let you know when we have a statement for you, just like we always do.”

  The uniform who had acknowledged her arrival lifted the tape so she could duck beneath it.

  “Yeah,” he muttered, “and the sharks will keep circling anyway, just like they always do.”

  Alex flashed him a sympathetic look and headed down the alley, her focus shifting to the tall, lanky man silhouetted against the floodlights, and to the scene he surveyed.

  Her stomach rolled uneasily around its grease-laden meal. Even from here, she could see the remains of a bloodbath. Splashes of shadows darkened the brick walls on either side of the narrow passageway, and rivulets of water, stained dark, ran together to pool on the pavement where they reflected crimson under the floodlights.

  Alex scanned the alley as she strode deeper into its belly. She passed a sodden cardboard box, mentally catalogued it as nothing out of the ordinary, and continued without breaking stride. Her gaze flicked over a numbered flag, placed by Forensics, and the blurred shoe imprint that it marked in a patch of mud. Another sat beside a door where nothing visible remained, likely the site of something already bagged and tagged.

  She inhaled a slow breath through her nose as she got closer to the scene. If this was the same as the others, if it was another slashing...

  She blew out the air in a soft gust, drew back her shoulders, and lifted her chin. If it was another slashing, she would handle it as she did any other case, she told herself. Professionally, efficiently, thoroughly. Because that was how she worked. Because her past had no place here.

  She stepped over the electrical cables powering the floodlights and joined Staff Inspector Doug Roberts, head of their Homicide unit. A tarp a few feet in front of him covered the vague form of a human body.

  “Good sleep?” Roberts asked, looking sideways and down at her. Even raised over the guttural thrum of the generator powering the lights, his voice held a dry note. He knew she’d never made it home. None of their shift had. Again.

  Alex snorted. “Nah. I figured the concept was highly overrated, so I settled for caffeine.”

  She ran a critical eye over her staff inspector’s height, noting the two days’ growth along his dark jawline. Perspiration plastered his short-cropped hair to his forehead, and she felt her own tresses wilt in mute sympathy. If the air out in the street had been heavy, here in the alley it was downright oppressive. The man looked ready to drop.

  “What about you?” she asked, wondering if she’d have to call for another gurney.

  He grunted. “Ditto on the sleep, but I missed out on the caffeine.”

  That explained it. Given enough java in his or her system, a homicide cop could run almost indefinitely, but without...

  Alex’s gaze slid to the tarp. “Well?” she asked.

  “We won’t know for sure until the autopsy.”

  “But?”

  Silence. Because he didn’t know, or because he didn’t want to say?

  “Chest ripped open, throat slit, posed like the others,” he said finally.

  “Damn it,” she muttered. She scuffed the toe of her shoe against a dandelion growing through the pavement. Four bodies in as many days, with the last two less than twelve hours apart. She flinched as one of the floodlights gave a sudden, loud pop, and the light in the alley dimmed a fraction. Underneath a loading dock, someone bellowed for a replacement bulb, his voice muffled.

  Alex pushed a limp lock off her forehead, scrunched her fist over it for a moment, and said again, “Damn it, damn it, damn it.” She released her clutch on her scalp and balanced hands on hips. “Is Forensics finding anything?”

  “After the rain we just had? We’re lucky the body didn’t float away.”

  “Maybe the killer’s waiting for it,” she mused. “The rain, I mean. Maybe he knows it will wash away the evidence.”

  “So what, he’s a disgruntled meteorologist?” Roberts shook his head. “The weather’s too unpredictable for someone to rely on it like that, especially lately. None of these storms this week were even in the forecast. I think it’s just bad luck for us.”

  She sighed. “You’re probably right. So, has the chief called for a task force yet?”

  “Not yet, but my guess is it’s about to become a priority. I’ll put in a call to him and get the ball rolling. The sooner we get a profiler working on this psycho, the better. You have a look around here, then go home, okay? I’ve put Joly and Abrams on point for this one. You’ve been on your feet longer than anyone else on this so far, and you need some sleep.”

  Alex rolled her eyes. “If this guy keeps up at the rate he’s going,” she muttered, “I can pretty much guarantee that won’t happen.”

  “If this guy keeps up at the rate he’s going, I’m going to need you on your toes, not dropping from exhaustion. So let me rephrase that: get some sleep.”

  Staff Inspector Roberts stalked away, his long legs covering the distance to the end of the alley in remarkably few strides. Alex watched him bulldoze his way through the waiting scavengers, and then, with a sigh that came all the way from her toes, she turned back to the bloody, rain-washed alley.

  Roberts was right. The others were getting more downtime than she was on this case. They always did on slashings, because as much as she liked to pretend her past had no bearing on her present, no one else brought the same unique perspective to these cases that she did. The kind of perspective that made her drive herself a little harder, a little longer...

  And made sure she wouldn’t sleep much until it was over.

  ***

  The Dominion Verchiel, of the Fourth Choir of angels, stared at the Highest Seraph’s office door, and then, grimacing, she raised her hand to knock. She didn’t look forward to delivering bad news to Heaven’s executive administrator, but she could think of no way to avoid the task, and standing here would make it no easier.

  A resonant voice, hollowed by the oa
ken door, spoke from within. “Enter.”

  Verchiel pushed down on the ornate metal handle and stepped inside. Mittron, overseer of eight of the nine choirs, sat behind his desk on the far side of the book-lined room, intent on writing. Verchiel cleared her throat.

  “Is it important?” Mittron asked. He did not look up.

  Verchiel suppressed a sigh. The Highest knew she would never intrude without reason, but since the Cleanse, he had taken every opportunity he could to remind her of her place. In fact, if she thought about it, he had been so inclined even prior to the Cleanse, but that was long behind them and made no difference now. She folded her hands into her robe, counseled herself to ignore the slight, and made her tone carefully neutral.

  “Forgive the intrusion, Highest, but we’ve encountered a problem.”

  The Highest Seraph looked up from his work and fixed pale golden eyes on her. It took everything in Verchiel not to flinch. Or apologize. She tightened her lips. Her former soulmate had always had the uncanny knack of making her feel as though any issue she brought before him was her fault. Over the millennia, it had just become that much worse.

  “Tell me,” he ordered.

  “Caim—”

  “I am aware of the situation,” he interrupted, returning to his task.

  Irritation stabbed at her. She so disliked this side of him. “I don’t think so. There’s more to it than we expected.”

  After making her wait several more seconds, Mittron laid aside his pen and sat back in his chair, “Where Caim is concerned, there is always more than expected. But go on.”

  “The mortals have launched an investigation into Caim’s work. They’re calling him a serial killer.”

  “A valid observation, given what he’s been up to.”

  “Yes, well, because the police officers involved will be more likely than most mortals to put themselves in his path, I thought it prudent to warn their Guardians. To have them pay particular attention to keeping their charges safe.” Verchiel hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “And one of the officers doesn’t have a Guardian.”