Original Sin: The Seven Deadly Sins

by Allison Brennan

  “Sorry.” She pretended to put a drop in her eyes and pocketed her emergency “test” kit. She didn’t know why she had it. When she’d faced someone possessed, she knew it as certainly as she knew her name. But Rico insisted, and she was good at following orders. Most of the time. Sort of.

  “I should have gone to Abby’s house first,” Jared mumbled. “Lily is probably there.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  “I’ve called her cell phone ten times … maybe she’s mad at me.”

  “Stop second-guessing yourself.” Moira should have sat on the girl, or pushed her harder. Lily had seemed too fragile to handle all the information about the dangerous game Abby was playing with magic, and Moira had avoided the harder truths. Some people weren’t ready for any truth, let alone the tough facts. Friends who played with the dark arts were already too far gone, but Lily wouldn’t have been able to accept that truth about her cousin and confidante, Abby Weatherby. Once committed, there was no turning back. Once a person tasted dark power, giving it up was impossible.

  So Moira had told Lily to stay away from her cousin, to let Moira know if there was anything strange going on, if Abby confided in her. She’d damn well learned her lesson—rely on no one else—and she prayed Lily was alive.

  “We’ll just look around the ruins for ten minutes,” she said. “I’ll know if the coven was here. Maybe we’re not too late.” She said it to give Jared hope; she didn’t believe it.

  A reluctant Jared followed her into the night. Almost as soon as she’d stepped from the truck, Moira smelled evil. A subtle aroma on the edge of the ruins, growing with each step she took. Incense. Poisoned incense. Strong herbs and odors to control spirits. But it was the sulphuric stench of Hell itself that raised the hair on her arms and made the scar on her neck burn. As Moira neared the midpoint of the spirit trap, she slowed her pace, her feet heavy as lead. Slower. Slower. She wanted to run back to the small, safe island off Sicily and lock herself inside St. Michael’s fortress. She didn’t need this, didn’t want it, but she could not shirk her responsibility.

  All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men—and women—to do nothing.

  As Moira approached the wide circle painted in white on the ground, it became clear that the ritual had been interrupted. There were signs of violence—overturned candles, disturbed earth, a feeling of unrest, of commotion. While no candles burned, the scent of extinguished flames hung in the low-lying fog.

  There, in the middle of the circle, was a dead body.

  Jared saw it right after she did.

  “Lily!” he cried.

  “Don’t—” Moira tried to stop him, but he pushed her aside and ran into the center of the ruins.

  Moira hated being this exposed. There was nowhere to hide, but at least she’d be able to see anyone approach as easily as that person could see her. A small consolation.

  Jared knelt next to the body. When Moira looked over his shoulder, she saw it was not Lily, but her cousin Abby.

  She lay naked and dead on a red silk sheet. Her eyes were open, her mouth gaping, but there were no wounds on her body. No knife marks, no claw marks, no burns or any external sign of how she died.

  Could she have been poisoned? There were impressions in the sheet and ground where bowls of incense had burned, and in the daylight Moira could probably identify what herbs and resins had been used, by scouring the ground for spillage and faint smells. But Fiona and her coven were smarter than that; they wanted to intoxicate their victims, not poison them. They didn’t make those kinds of mistakes.

  If Abby Weatherby was dead, they wanted her to be dead.

  Jared put his fingers to Abby’s neck, presumably to check for a pulse, but Moira snapped, “Don’t touch her!”

  “We have to get her to a hospital,” he said.

  “She’s dead.”

  “How do you know? You don’t know that. She could be—”

  Moira said, “Look at her eyes, Jared. Open, glassy, and her mouth—dammit, she’s dead and you must not touch her.”

  She didn’t know why that was important, or even if it was. Maybe it was more important for the cops, none of whom would believe that something supernatural had killed the teenager. Without a doubt this was Fiona’s handiwork. The drama, the location, the oversized circle, the elaborate symbols.

  Moira cast her light around the site. She hated being inside this spirit trap, even though it had been violently broken. A pile of incense was scattered across the linen. Dried candle wax mixed with dirt and rocks. Any vegetation or plants, here at the lot where the house had burned, were all dead. Nothing living could survive above a gateway to Hell.

  What had happened? The ritual circle was a mess. It was a big no-no in the occult world to leave behind signs of any rituals. Witches were hunted as fiercely as they themselves hunted. If demon hunters—like her, Moira acknowledged—could trace a coven’s symbols, they could better track and stop them.

  Leaving anything here, at the ruins on the cliffs, told her that Fiona and her minions had been stopped.

  Before or after they summoned the demons? Moira didn’t know for certain. But based on the earlier lightning and darkness flying over them, Moira suspected there was at least one more demon on earth tonight.

  Jared paced. “Where’s Lily? What happened to Abby? Why is she naked? What’s going on, Moira? You didn’t tell me anyone was going to die!”

  Moira countered his hysteria with a calm voice. “I don’t know where Lily is. She and Abby were playing with dangerous things. Where there’s danger, there can damn well be death.”

  Moira turned away from the dead teenager, deeply sad and angry at the loss of life. She said, “I don’t know what happened here, but there was a fight—and they left fast. Picked up most of their supplies, but there are two candles over there.” She gestured toward two black pillars on the edge of the circle. “And they didn’t completely eradicate the symbols. Very sloppy, and Fiona is not sloppy.”

  Leaving Abby here … that was plain stupid. They always disposed of their victims. They had to, or news of the crime would get out to the public and they would have to be even more cautious. Murder was a crime; occult worship was not.

  Ignoring her own advice to Jared, Moira squatted next to Abby and touched her body with two fingers. Her skin was cool and slick with moisture from the ocean fog. Moira was no cop, but she didn’t think the girl had been dead long. And the recent dead were ripe for the picking of demons. If Fiona had brought forth something, it would be around. Or coming back. Demons always returned to their origins—one of many truths Rico had pounded into Moira’s head during their lessons.

  She pulled out a container of salt from her pack and poured it in a circle around Abby’s body. She didn’t know whether it would do any good—if the demon was powerful enough, it could just lift her body out of the circle. But it would slow him enough to buy her time. Salt was a purifier and a preservative, a mineral that naturally repelled demons. But like virulent bacteria, the strongest demons built up resistance to any defenses, including ancient defenses like salt.

  “What are you doing?” Jared asked her, looking at Moira as if she were a nut job. She was used to it. She’d never been normal, and it seemed that now, at the ripe age of twenty-nine, normal wasn’t in her future, either.

  “The salt will stop a demon from snatching Abby’s body. She hasn’t been dead for long. After an hour or two”—Moira honestly didn’t know how long, Rico had only told her to guard the recent dead because they could be summoned—“it won’t matter, because the demons won’t be able to inhabit her. Sort of like animals who only eat fresh kills.” She guessed.

  Jared shivered.

  “What about Lily? Where is she?”

  Moira looked around the area. The ocean waves, less than a hundred yards west and a hundred yards down, crashed unseen against the rocks. In different circumstances they would have soothed her, reminded her of the west coast of Ireland, the only
place she’d had peace.

  “I’m going to call someone to pick up Abby’s body,” she said. Damn, she dreaded making this call. The minute Father Philip had told her Anthony was in Santa Louisa, she knew she’d have to make contact eventually. She’d be lucky if he didn’t kill her. If he weren’t such a damn high-and-mighty ethical demonologist, he wouldn’t hesitate to slit her throat and blame it on her demonic soul.

  “My dad will have to come out,” Jared said, staring at Abby’s body. “I can’t believe she’s dead.”

  “Your dad doesn’t understand what’s happened here.”

  “What does he need to understand? We found Abby dead! He’s a cop. He’ll call the crime scene people, find out who did this. Find Lily.”

  “Who did what? Come on, Jared! I told you how these people operate.”

  He was torn, Moira saw the conflict and confusion in his pained expression, but she wasn’t about to sugarcoat the truth.

  “Yes, we need to find Lily,” she said. “I don’t know if they have her, but if they do we have to try and save her. If they don’t, we have to find and protect her. I’m with you on that, Jared. But this”—she gestured toward the partially obliterated occult symbols—“needs someone who specializes in … this,” she ended lamely.

  Moira no longer wanted Jared here because she feared Fiona’s minions would return. He could hardly be expected to defend himself against magic he didn’t understand, and she couldn’t protect both him and herself. Not against Fiona’s coven. If there was more than one magician, Moira would have her own battle to wage. And she could not let them take possession of Abby’s body. The girl deserved a proper burial—after she was cremated into three pounds of ash.

  But Moira also couldn’t let Jared search for Lily on his own … what if Fiona’s coven was watching? They didn’t have to be too close, there were other ways … She shivered. “Trust me.”

  Jared scowled. Trust her. Right. She barely knew him. He’d frequented an online message board about supernatural phenomena, but he was in no way prepared for this.

  Jared bent down and picked up two articles of female clothing. Jeans and a pale pink sweater. He looked ill. “Lily was wearing this sweater today.”

  A distant scream pierced the night. Moira jumped. It came from the woods, far on the other side of the road. Then there was silence, which sounded even worse.

  “Lily!” Jared exclaimed. “I have to find her. I’m sorry, Moira, I—she must be terrified.” He ran to his truck, ignoring her protests that he shouldn’t go off alone.

  His truck was driving away when she whispered, “Don’t leave me.”

  The wind whipped up from the ocean, salt air stinging her cheeks. She felt as though she was being watched, but there was no place nearby to hide … No one was watching, no one was here. But telling herself that did little to alleviate her rising panic.

  She shook her head, thinking herself foolish, and looked again at poor Abby. She wished she had Rico or Father Philip here to tell her what to do.

  Anthony. She had to bring him in. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Father Philip.

  She was surprised when he answered the phone himself after the first ring.

  “Father, it’s Moira.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. But it’s bad, Father. I think—I don’t know what to think. Something happened at the cliffs. There are signs of violence, a spirit trap, obscure symbols I’ve never seen before. And no one is here, except”—she glanced at Abby’s naked corpse—“a dead teenager.”

  “Holy Mother of God.”

  She smiled; otherwise she would cry at Father’s version of cussing.

  “I’m worried about Anthony,” Father continued. “He’s not answering his phone.”

  Bright lights shot out at her from the road and approached quickly. As soon as the spotlight hit her body, the red and blue rotating spheres clicked on.

  Fuck.

  “Father, I need to go.”

  “Moira, wait—what’s wrong?”

  “Keep trying Anthony, and hope that he has a get-out-of-jail-free card in his pocket. I think I’m going to need it.”

  She hung up and pocketed her cell phone.

  A voice said over a speaker: “This is the Santa Louisa County Sheriff’s Department. Stay where you are with your hands visible.”

  Moira kept her hands in front of her, plainly in sight, and fought the urge to bolt.

  FIVE

  Moira had to come up with a plausible story as to why she was here in the middle of the night with a dead girl. Maybe … she’d been walking in the area and … right. Like anyone would believe she’d walked the ten miles from her motel to the cliffs. At two in the morning. And she was in the middle of friggin’ nowhere with three abandoned, boarded-up houses on an unpaved road next to a cursed lot. She got lost? Sure. She’d wandered aimlessly near the edge of dangerous cliffs in the fog, just happening to stumble across a corpse.

  But she certainly couldn’t say anything about what had happened—what she thought had happened. Moira had to carefully maneuver a tightrope. She wasn’t an American citizen. She could be deported, her student visa revoked. Father Philip had arranged with Rico to “enroll” her in Olivet, and no one in the States had yet questioned that Olivet was an all-male theology seminary. Yet. And she didn’t want to shine a light on them, because they weren’t really a seminary. Olivet was the western hemisphere university for demon hunters and not officially recognized by the Vatican or any quasi-legitimate authority, as opposed to St. Michael’s, which had some protection from the powers that be. If people sniffed around, they might discover that no priests actually graduated from Olivet.

  Fortunately, she’d wisely left her gun back at the motel, but the dagger wouldn’t go over too well with the sheriff. And who would believe her that there had been an occult ritual here? Exactly—no one.

  An officer shined a light in her face. Moira couldn’t see beyond the brightness, could barely make out the two shadowy figures when she squinted. Suddenly the idea that Fiona’s coven was bigger than her mother traditionally maintained—Fiona plus twelve in the inner court, and a few strays used for muscle and eyes and grunt work—terrified her. What if someone in the police department was part of it? What if Fiona controlled the town? This had happened before in small towns, and Santa Louisa had only thirty thousand residents. Moira should have put her own pride aside and contacted Anthony when she’d first discovered he was in town. At least she’d then have someone on her side who understood what they were up against, and maybe he’d know whom to trust.

  “Always have backup,” Rico had said during their training. “Never go blind into a situation, even if you think there’s nothing going on.”

  “I don’t have a partner,” she’d said. “And I don’t want one.”

  “What are you doing out here?” a female voice asked, jolting Moira from her memory.

  “Are you the sheriff?”

  “Sheriff Skye McPherson. And you are?”

  “Moira O’Donnell. I was with Jared Santos, but he ran off after—”

  A man in plainclothes stepped forward from behind the sheriff. Moira shielded her eyes from the light and squinted. She could see no details, but the way he moved was familiar, like a big, caged cat.

  The sheriff reached out to grab him. “Wait, Anthony—”

  Anthony brushed off her hand and quickly approached Moira, stopping only a foot from her. Disbelief and anger rolled off him in palpable waves.

  Anthony Zaccardi. Though she knew he was in town, she was still stunned to see him again after all this time. The towering demonologist’s middle name could have been Intimidation.

  “Moira O’Donnell.” He spoke the name as if it were a curse. “I should have known where there is trouble from the underworld, you would be nearby, puttana.”

  “Prick.”

  She held her ground, though Anthony’s hostility put her on edge. He hadn’t liked her even before she’d k
illed Peter. If Father Philip hadn’t been there, Moira was absolutely certain Anthony would have killed her that same night.

  “What did you do?” Anthony glanced briefly at Abby’s body, then his gaze focused on her.

  Sheriff McPherson walked over to the body and, careful not to disturb anything or turn her back to Moira, bent down to feel for a pulse. “Shit,” she mumbled. “You said you were here with Jared Santos? Where is he? I want the God’s honest truth. What happened here? Were you drinking? Getting high?”

  “Summoning demons?” Anthony whispered.

  Moira said, “We thought Jared’s girlfriend, Lily Ellis, was coming here. We found Abby instead of Lily.”

  “You know Abby Weatherby?” Skye asked as she approached, standing beside Anthony.

  “Not personally.”

  “Anthony?” Skye asked. “Do you know this woman? Can you vouch for her?”

  “Vouch? I can vouch that she’s a killer.”

  “Fuck off,” Moira snapped. “Look around, Zaccardi. I didn’t do this, and you damn well know it. And Sheriff, this has nothing to do with kids getting high or drunk; Abby died because she was sacrificed. Lily Ellis is missing. We think she came here to try and talk Abby out of the coven, but—”

  “Coven?” Anthony shook his head. “That sounds familiar—something you know really well. What was your part in it? Or are you going to pretend you were possessed again?”

  “Pretend? You bastard!” She swung her arm out to slap him. He grabbed her wrist and squeezed so tightly she thought her bone would snap. She kicked him in the shin and he let go, wincing. She turned and walked several feet away. She had to control her temper around Anthony. It would get her in trouble.

  “That’s enough!” Skye said. “Anthony, let me ask the questions, okay?”

  Anthony backed off.

  Skye radioed for the coroner, crime scene unit, and backup. She glanced at Moira, then added into her mic, “Call Deputy Santos. He’s off-duty. Patch him through to me when you reach him. Over.”