I should not have run out on Zoe, but if I had stayed in that stale, windowless room for another minute, the darkness inside me would have taken over.
Pulling out my phone, I call my brother. In London, it is close to midnight, but I need information, and Maddox is the only one who might be able to get it for me.
“Sin?” His deep voice is rough, yet it soothes the cracks in my armor and allows me to take an easier breath. “What’s wrong?”
“He has returned.”
“Who?”
In the background, Mad’s lover, Killian, tells him to come to bed, but Mad hushes him. When the distinctive sound of kissing carries over the line, I roll my eyes. “Maddox.”
“Hang on, brother. It’s late. We were...”
“I do not need to know what you were doing,” I snap, then regret my ire. “My apologies. It has been a trying day, and I need information from Gabriel.”
A door shuts wherever Maddox is, and he clears his throat. “I haven’t spoken to Gabriel since I chose Killian over returning to the celestial realm.”
“Mad, the demon…the one who… Fuck. Thorn is back.”
“Killian!” Maddox shouts for his witch and switches the call to video. The two of them huddle close together in front of the camera. “There’s a demon after Sin.”
Killian frowns, then runs a hand through his mussed hair. “I thought Sin was part demon.”
“I am half-incubus, witch. And I do not know if Thorn is afterme. But heisafter men and women of the Other and has been for eighteen months now.”
“Shit,” Mad says. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am sure! Do you think I would make something like this up?” I want to throw the phone off the cliff, but that would solve nothing.
Maddox sighs and shakes his head. “Of course not. Does he know you survived?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. He is aware I brought him and Regina to the Underworld. That I struck a bargain that trapped me in Hell right along with them. But we were not tortured together. For the past eighteen months, he has been moving from city to city across the United States, and now, he is in San Francisco. Two bodies have already been found. If I do not stop him, he will continue his reign of terror across the world. I did not spend centuries in Hell to damn thousands more to my fate. Ineedto speak to Gabriel.”
A hand claps me on the shoulder, and I whirl around.
“Well, if that is all you wanted, you could have simply asked.”
The archangel stands before me, his long white robes and flowing hair billowing in the breeze. I stagger back a few steps, his presence almost painful, and meet Mad’s gaze on the screen. “I have to go.” Ending the call, I swallow hard. “Hello, Gabriel.”
Nine
Sin
“You called?” Gabriel says with an air of superiority to his tone I have not missed in my centuries of banishment. “I do not enjoy this realm, Sinclair. Get on with it.”
I grab the archangel by his robes and shove him against my car. “The incubus piece of shit calling himself Thorn. Why is he no longer in Hell?”
With a roar, Gabriel knocks me back ten feet, and I land on my ass in the dirt at the edge of the cliff. Fuck. Any closer and I would have gone over. “You forget your place, half-breed.”
“And you forget that the Almighty welcomed my father into the celestial realm. If you are going to insult me, do so for my choices,notmy parentage.” I brush off my black pants as I give Gabriel a wide berth lest he decide to teach me yet another lesson. “I went to Hell for almost two centuries so that abomination would never be free again. Yet he has returned to the mortal realm and has been terrorizing and murdering for over a year now. Care to explain?”
Even with his wings hidden, Gabriel carries himself like the Almighty’s chosen one. Shoulders straight, chest puffed out, and somehow staring down his nose at me, even though I am a full two inches taller. But as he processes my words, his countenance shifts and his brow furrows. “I was not aware. Are you certain it is the demon? Humans are quite often horrible creatures, Sinclair. One or more of them could simply be abducting those of theotherfor sport.
Pulling out my phone, I bring up the photo of the dead police officer’s arm with Thorn's signature tattoo. “If this is not his work, someone is doing a bang-up job of impersonating him. No human alive should be aware of this mark or its symbolism.”
With a sharp breath—breath he technically does not need to take—Gabriel narrows his eyes at the image. Anger makes his alabaster skin glow, and the rumble in his chest is not a sound I have ever heard him make before. Not even when he banished me to this realm until I hadatonedfor my misdeeds.
“This should not be possible,” he says, almost to himself. When he returns his gaze to mine, disdain and disgust twist his normally perfect features. “I will have to pay Lucifer a visit. Ihatethe trip to the Underworld. If this is all some human playing at demonology, I will be very pissed off.”
