Deliver Us from Evil

by Allison Brennan

  “I didn’t follow you, Skye. You’re not thinking straight. Maybe it’s a spell.”

  “Spell? First demons, now witches? I should call myself Alice and start looking for white rabbits.”

  “Spell may not be the right word—”

  “You have no car,” she interrupted.

  “I ran. You’re less than a kilometer from the inn.”

  That was true. But that still didn’t explain how he knew where she lived.

  “Skye,” Anthony said, taking a step toward her, his arms outstretched, palms up. His shirt hung open. She’d done that. She remembered pulling apart his shirt with such clarity, when everything else was becoming fuzzy. “I had a dream you were in danger.”

  “You expect me to believe that?” She turned away from him, half running toward her house. Why don’t I remember leaving the house? How did I walk off the cliff?

  Her feelings of unease grew to near panic. Why couldn’t she remember? It was as if she wasn’t completely inside her own body. How absurd.

  She stopped to take a deep breath. “I just didn’t get enough sleep,” she said out loud, as if that would convince her that there was a logical explanation for leaving the house in the cold morning wearing nothing but a tank top and underwear. That it made sense for her to see her dead father. Lack of sleep intensified her complex emotions about her parents. And all Anthony Zaccardi’s talk about demons and whatnot had her thinking about her pathetic mother, leaving everything for a cult, for a god Skye didn’t know existed.

  Stop it! Stop thinking about it!

  She pressed her fingers against her head as another wave of pain crashed around her. She stumbled and tripped coming up the steps.

  Anthony caught her. She wanted to hit him, send him away, at the same time she wanted him to hold her, to make her feel as loved and safe and alive as when they’d made love.

  “Skye, something’s wrong.” His voice was low, almost a warning.

  Skye squeezed back the pain, let Anthony help her up the deck stairs and through the sliding door she’d left open.

  A foul stench assaulted her, as if someone had defecated and vomited throughout her house. She scowled. “What’s that smell?”

  “Hell.” Anthony eased her into a chair.

  “What—” She wanted to shower, to dress, to forget she’d thrown herself at Anthony.

  Her face burned. I practically raped him.

  “Wait.” He pulled a crucifix from his pocket and thrust it into her hands.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Trust me, Skye.”

  Skye nodded and Anthony turned, holding his own daggerlike cross in front him. For the first time, Skye believed that if demons really existed, Anthony could defeat them.

  Confident Skye was safe, at least for the moment, Anthony walked slowly toward the living room.

  An invisible, foglike warmth enveloped the house, making each step forward like walking through a swirling, resisting, unseen mist. The sulfuric scent of Hell worried Anthony. Was Ianax still here?

  His instincts told him the demon had left. Already, the smell was fading, the heat dissipating. But there was no doubt that a demon had been inside Skye’s house.

  He searched the house, quietly repeating God’s name in Aramaic, waiting for the telltale growl of a masked demon hiding in the furniture, the walls, the very air he breathed. There was none. The house grew colder.

  Every room appeared untouched, except for Skye’s bedroom. Inside, shredded paper filled the room, little glass jars from her dresser had been knocked over, some shattered, some spilling their sweet-smelling contents. He would have smiled at Skye’s love of perfume if he didn’t know what had happened in here.

  Only a demon—an angry demon—could have done this.

  Anthony picked up a piece of paper. Thick. Slightly yellowed with age. Then he saw the binding and knew that what had been destroyed was Rafe’s journal. He picked up more torn paper—blank. Every one of them blank.

  How?

  He left the house. He couldn’t tell Skye what he was doing, she wouldn’t understand. And right now, gaining her trust was paramount. Not only because of what they’d shared on the cliffs, but because her life was in grave danger.

  He took out a vial of holy water, twisted off the cap, and circled the house, sprinkling the blessed water in strategic spots to ensure a protective barrier.

  It wouldn’t stop a powerful demon, but it would slow and weaken it. It would have to be enough.

  He returned to the kitchen, but Skye wasn’t there. Panic clutched his heart and he started toward the kitchen door, fearing she’d already walked off the cliff. Someone, or something, wanted her dead. What if he wasn’t strong enough to protect her? What if his faith wasn’t powerful enough to save her?

  He listened, heard running water, followed the sound and found the bathroom door locked.

  “Skye?” he called.

  “Leave me alone.”

  Guilt flooded him. He’d taken advantage of her. He’d known something was wrong, that Skye wasn’t completely herself, but he craved her. Their shared kiss earlier in the evening had fueled a flame he’d kept under control for the better part of his adulthood. Her claim on him was greater than he’d realized, and then she lay on top of him and he saw her in all her beauty, her inner goodness, and he wanted her.

  His desire had consumed him and he’d allowed it to happen, potentially damaging their already strained relationship. Worse, he’d given in to wants that he should rightfully postpone until the demon returned to Hell.

  He’d let his guard down, a deadly sin in his vocation.

  “Are you okay?” he asked through the door.

  She didn’t answer him, but the water shut off. “I’ll be out in a minute,” she said.

  He wandered through Skye’s house and saw her life as clearly as if he were a psychic. True crime books on the shelves. Furniture that was clean, but old and worn. Decorations that, while free of dust, seemed to be remnants of another generation. A lone picture of a young Skye with her parents.

  A sense of loneliness assaulted him, a sorrow he understood all too well. It was a pain he lived with every day.

  “I have to get down to the police station,” Skye said, standing behind him. “Someone destroyed the journal.”

  He turned around, embarrassed to be assessing her home. She’d put on her uniform and was pulling her damp hair into a ponytail.

  “Skye,” he murmured.

  She was still wary around him. Embarrassed, perhaps, and he wished he could ease her fear. Tell her how he loved to hold her. Of course he couldn’t, she’d push him away. He understood that about her.

  He noticed the crucifix he gave her was around her neck. She glanced down, shoved the cross under her shirt.

  He needed to reach out. “Skye, don’t feel—”

  “Did you do it?”

  He didn’t understand. “What?”

  “Did you destroy that journal? Break my things?”

  Her voice cracked and he saw the strain, uncertainty, and unease in her eyes.

  “No,” he said.

  “It’s all my fault.” She looked both irritated and physically ill. “It was evidence, and I brought it home, left it in my bedroom. Stupid.” She ran a hand over her face.

  “It was two in the morning.”

  “I don’t care! I broke protocol and now the journal is ruined. Someone shredded it and must have bleached the pages or something while—” Her voice tapered off.

  “Skye, something happened to you this morning. Tell me everything.”

  “Why?” Her eyes bored into his. “Did you have something to do with this?”

  He quashed feelings of anger and frustration. That he would use sex as a ruse to keep her from her house? “You know I didn’t.”

  “I don’t know anything right now,” she snapped. Her voice softened, full of anguish. “I don’t jump strange men on the cliff every day of the week.”

  Anthony tried
not to be hurt by her comment. “How did you get out on the cliff?”

  “Walked,” she said sarcastically. Her defense mechanism.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “I was tired. I wasn’t thinking straight.” She avoided his eyes and crossed over to the coffeepot. It was half full. She picked up a mug from the counter and poured. As the mug touched her lips, Anthony stepped forward and grabbed it from her hand. Hot coffee sloshed over the edges, scalding them both.

  “What the—” she exclaimed, jumping back.

  Unmindful of the burn, he smelled the coffee, grimaced.

  “What?”

  “You drank some of this already, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I have coffee every morning.”

  “Someone poisoned your coffee.”

  “That’s a crock.”

  He shoved the mug under her nose, trying to be patient. “What do you smell?”

  She breathed in deeply, wrinkled her nose. “It’s sort of metallic.”

  “I think it’s mercury. Deadly in large doses, but on a small scale it’s a hallucinogen. My guess is that someone added it to the coffee grounds or water. The bitterness of the coffee would mask the taste.”

  “Why didn’t I notice it before?” she asked, still skeptical. “I need to get this to the lab.”

  “You were tired. You’d had two hours of sleep. My guess is that something woke you up, but you don’t know what. You rose, started the coffee.” He pulled the tray that held the grounds from the coffeemaker. “Poured a cup.” He looked at her. “Then what happened, Skye?”

  She blinked rapidly, her eyes coated with tears. “I . . . I started thinking about my parents. I don’t know why, it’s stupid, really. I told you about my mom leaving for some whacked-out religious cult, and my dad dying eight years later. I’ve been on my own for a long time, I don’t get all sappy about it, but . . .” Her voice trailed off and she wasn’t looking at him.

  “But it hurts.”

  She nodded, probably without realizing she was doing so. She seemed disconnected, and Anthony knew the drug was still having an impact on her.

  Skye’s inhibitions were down. When he saved her on the cliff, her emotions went from one extreme to the other. Despair to joy to relief to passion. He didn’t stop her. They made love, but it wasn’t Skye. It was the drugs. Guilt and nausea swept over him. He knew something had been wrong, but he’d ignored his instincts. He accepted her offering like a dying man would water.

  “Skye?”

  “Just leave me alone.”

  “You’re still under the influence.”

  “How do you know? Did you drug my coffee? You could have followed me home, drugged my coffee while I slept, then waited for me to hurt myself so you could ride to the rescue. So that I would trust you.” She spat out the word as if it were a curse.

  “That’s paranoia talking, Skye,” Anthony said calmly, taking a step toward her. “That’s the drug.”

  “Bullshit. That’s deductive reasoning.” She rubbed both temples with her fingers, a pained expression crossing her face.

  “Come here.”

  She stared at him, doubting. He stepped forward, took her wrists, lowered her hands, and led her to the couch.

  Her living room was sparse and functional, like the rest of the house. He sat on one end of the couch, pulled Skye down next to him.

  “Close your eyes, Skye,” he said.

  Skye felt so out of balance, but here, sitting with Anthony, she was regaining her footing. Her bottom lip trembled. Slowly, she closed her eyes.

  His thumbs pressed her temples and his fingers grasped the back of her head. For a fleeting second she pictured Spock performing the mind meld, but as soon as Anthony started rubbing, his fingers moving in firm circles, all thought ceased and she relaxed for the first time since walking into the mission massacre twenty-four hours ago.

  The pain faded, from sharp and burning to dull and throbbing. She relaxed and sighed in relief.

  “Turn around and put your head in my lap.”

  His deep, European voice sounded far away, as smooth as butter, as exotic as a tropical rain forest.

  She lay on her back, Anthony turning to a forty-five-degree angle on the couch to hold her head and shoulders comfortably. He continued to massage her temples, moving down to her cheeks, behind her ears, and her body gave up all its tension from sleep deprivation and drugs.

  “Do you really believe in everything out there?” Skye asked, keeping her eyes closed.

  “You mean in demons?”

  “Demons and Heaven and Hell and everything in between.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve seen the gates of Hell. I’ve felt the presence of evil. It’s real. I can’t conjure up a spirit to prove it to you, I can only tell you that you had a visitor, you smelled him, you sensed him, but you’re only thinking with your head, not listening with your heart. You want a logical explanation, but there isn’t one.”

  He paused, and she opened her eyes. His eyes held hers, strong, deep, fathomless. She whispered, “And?”

  He leaned down, kissed her forehead. “I’m asking you to trust me.”

  Skye didn’t know what to think anymore. Anthony was so ethereal and real at the same time. One minute she had everything sorted in her mind, knew exactly what she needed to do; the next, she wanted to place her entire faith in a man. In this man.

  She’d never fully trusted anyone but herself. Even then, she doubted. Worried over her decisions. But always, she had her reasoning. It had gotten her this far in her life and career, how could she place her trust in someone else now? That would be like turning her back on herself, on the very thing that had kept her sane and whole during years of loneliness.

  What would she have if she listened to Anthony? She’d be just like her mother, wanting to believe in fantasy because real life didn’t satisfy her.

  As if he could read her mind, he said, “You can’t live in the past. Your mother hurt you, and then she died and you couldn’t tell her how much she hurt you. It’s easier to be angry with her and God than it is to acknowledge you miss her, that she killed your trust.”

  She closed her eyes, trying to trap the tears that came, but they slid out the corners. Anthony brushed them away with his thumbs.

  “It’s the drugs,” she said, not wanting to admit that after twenty years she still ached for her mother.

  “It’s your heart, and it’s okay.”

  His lips touched hers so lightly, so tenderly. Her heart skipped a beat. This quiet intimacy, the emotion, was difficult for Skye. She choked back a sob.

  Anthony pulled her into his lap and held her, rubbing her back, his chin on her head. She could stay here in his arms forever.

  “My mother abandoned me,” Anthony finally said. “And while I knew it was for a higher purpose—that I had a calling—there were times, especially at night, especially when I was young, when I cursed God for giving me this life. For forcing my mother to sacrifice me. But in the end, it had been her choice.”

  “You never had a real family,” Skye said, feeling a kinship with Anthony she didn’t expect to have.

  “We were a family, but I missed—we all missed—having a mother. Skye, I know how betrayed and hurt you feel. But you are strong, beautiful, smart. It’s your mother who lost out on knowing what an incredible woman you have become.”

  She tilted her face to Anthony and said, “You’re a miracle worker. My headache is gone.” She spontaneously kissed him, then turned away. Almost embarrassed. But this felt—right.

  “I need to talk to Rod about the fire, follow up with my detective about the housekeeper—”

  “Let me drive you. Just until we know the drug is out of your system.”

  She felt herself—more herself now than she had for a long time—but she nodded.

  Her cell phone rang, and she jumped up, popped the phone from its charger, and said, “Sheriff McPherson.�
��

  “Skye, it’s Rod Fielding.”

  She glanced at her watch. “I thought we weren’t meeting for another hour.”

  “After you called about the fire, I came back to the morgue. I’ve had a guard posted outside all night.”

  “You think someone is going to come after the bodies?”

  “Possibly. But now I have a larger concern.”

  “What?”

  “I ran the tox screen myself. Twice. These men were drugged.”

  “Drugged? So they couldn’t fight back?”

  “I don’t think so. I think they were drugged to become aggressive, and it’s been happening for a long time. Months, up until two weeks ago. But I’m checking their blood for more possibilities.”

  Two weeks. The same time the housekeeper was fired.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Hair samples. It’s not a routine screening, but after the fire I decided to test for a wider range of narcotics, hallucinogens, and heavy metals.”

  “Test for mercury poisoning.”

  “Mercury? That would explain my findings. How did you know?”

  “I’ll explain when I get there. What about Cooper?”

  “The hospital drew his blood, he had no alcohol or recreational drugs, but I’ll need to broaden the panel. Now that I know what I’m looking for, it won’t take long.”

  “Good.”

  “There’s one more thing. I think I know what happened.”

  Finally, answers based on hard physical evidence. “What?”

  “You need to come down and see for yourself. You won’t believe me if I tell you over the phone.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  * * *

  ON THE WAY to the sheriff’s department, Anthony asked Skye about the conversation he’d overheard between her and Dr. Fielding.

  “They were drugged?”

  “Apparently it had been happening for months and ended two weeks ago. The same time as your friend fired the housekeeper.”

  “Housekeeper?”

  “Corinne Davies. Know her?”

  Anthony shook his head. “Do you know anything about her background?”

  “Not much. Detective Martinez is working on it. She came from Oregon highly recommended from the diocese up there. The bishop was ticked off that Cooper fired her, but apparently has no control over the workings of the mission. She’s on vacation.”