Original Sin

by Allison Brennan

  She tried but failed to use her will to hold back the pain, to stop the inevitable. Fiona was too strong, too powerful. Rico had been wrong. Moira’s will was far too weak to fight. She’d told him before that she couldn’t battle Fiona without magic, and now she was proven right. Her will … useless.

  Suddenly a flood of images cascaded through her mind. Women. Naked, virgins, all sacrificed brutally, bloodily. Dead because Moira had escaped her fate, had run away from being goddess of the underworld, liaison to the magicians, the Mediator.

  She whimpered, unable to speak. Fiona said, “Do you know how many had to die in your place? Eleven. One for each month I couldn’t find you during the year you hid from me. By the time you reached your twenty-second year, it was too late. The window was gone. You did that. To all of them. The priest was icing on the cake.” She laughed, but there was no humor, just cold pleasure. Moira tried to crawl into the corner, as far from Fiona as she could get, but the pain stayed. She was dying. She could move no more than a few excruciating inches, her nose still dripping blood. She swallowed and tasted her blood, her mouth coated with the sweetly metallic flavor.

  The priest was icing on the cake. Peter. Dear God, how could you let this happen? How could you allow Fiona to hurt so many?

  Fiona said, “I wish I could have shared those sacrifices with you a long time ago, but the one thing you are good at is running and hiding. You should have stayed hidden, Andra Moira, because you are incapable and weak. You will never defeat me.”

  Moira’s body rose from the floor and hovered in midair before Fiona’s telekinetic magic threw her across the cell, against the far wall, where an unseen force had her pinned. Moira began to speak Hebrew through the blood in her mouth, the blood flowing from her nose. Weak, weaker, weakest … she was weakest. She began to fade, her mind mush, black then white then dark again.

  Moira knew little Hebrew, but she remembered this one protective prayer Peter had taught her to hide her soul from Fiona. All her concentration went to remembering the words, and repeating them over and over. She was going to die, but she couldn’t lose her soul. Fiona would torture her for eternity, torture those she cared about.

  “Your pathetic attempt at fighting me will fail,” Fiona said, and the pain inside Moira’s head exploded so she couldn’t remember her name, let alone an ancient Jewish prayer.

  Suddenly the pain stopped, and Moira lay in a pool of blood. She thought she was dead, until the pain returned—throbbing, aching, bruising pain, but not the unbearable agony of before. Tolerable.

  Fiona was on her cell phone. “I need a few more minutes.” She scowled and stared at Moira.

  “It seems, a chailín mo chroí, that you have a temporary reprieve,” she said sarcastically. “But I will not forget. To quote a little book you may know—‘Stay awake! You do not know the day or the hour.’”

  “I will kill you,” Moira whispered, trying, failing, to stand. “I will undo the damage you have done!”

  Fiona whispered to Moira, barely loud enough for her to hear, “Remember the damage you’ve done.”

  On a curse, Fiona left the jail the same way she came in: without incident.

  TEN

  Skye pulled into her parking place at the sheriff’s department. She turned off the cruiser’s engine and turned to face Anthony. Anthony put his hand on the door—worried that Father Philip was right and Fiona O’Donnell would go after Moira—but Skye stopped him.

  She said, “I let my anger convince me to arrest her, and now you want her out.” She tenderly touched his jaw. It was a bit swollen and sore, but nothing was broken. Anthony was more irritated than hurt. “There’s obviously a dicey history between you two.”

  “She killed a friend of mine. Seduced and murdered him.”

  “Why isn’t she in prison? Is she a fugitive? Do I need to contact ICE?”

  Anthony shook his head. “Peter was a monk at the monastery where I lived. She seduced him into breaking his vows. Put him in the middle of something extremely dangerous.” He didn’t know everything that had happened during the years before Peter died. He’d been in the middle of his own training that included extensive travel studying ancient architecture and artifacts. Peter was younger, sometimes annoying in his eagerness to please, and while Anthony had always considered him his little brother, he also considered him a neophyte, one of the Order who was part of the whole but not singularly necessary.

  His arrogance had known no bounds then, and Anthony sincerely regretted it.

  “Father Philip found Moira in Italy. She’d been running from her mother, hiding to avoid being detected by Fiona O’Donnell’s coven.” Anthony feared Father was right and Moira was in trouble, and while on one hand he didn’t care what happened to the witch, he did care what Father Philip thought of him and his decisions. “Basically, her mother wanted to sacrifice her to the underworld in a ritual that would have given Fiona’s coven more power than any other coven on earth.”

  “How many of these covens—witches, whatever—are we talking about?”

  She was talking the way she had before—before she’d seen evil with her own eyes. Her dismissal disturbed him, but he tried to explain. “Hundreds of covens, thousands—probably tens of thousands—of witches, some practicing alone, some in covens. Most have little or no power. The larger, more powerful groups usually splinter off but remain affiliated with their founder. Fiona controls more covens than any other magician on earth.”

  “Please try to understand my position on this. It’s new to me. You’re going to have to give me a bit more before I launch a modern-day Salem witch hunt.”

  Anthony waved his hand. “The fools in colonial times didn’t understand dark magic. They killed more innocent women than true witches.”

  She didn’t say anything, and Anthony realized that not only was Skye skeptical, but he must sound foolish to her. The average person did not believe witches—like Fiona O’Donnell and her kind—existed, or that they had power over dark forces.

  His word, his experience, wouldn’t be enough to convince Skye. Like the last time, she had to see it. That put the woman he loved in danger, because the dark arts were alive and well, thriving in these times, and now here in Santa Louisa.

  “She needs to be deported,” he finally said. It was the only way to get Moira out of Santa Louisa. Father Philip trusted her, but she wasn’t to be trusted. Guilt niggled in the back of his head. He felt as if he were somehow deceiving Father. Anthony couldn’t let her roam free. Even if she wasn’t working with Fiona, Moira O’Donnell was still a witch.

  “First you want me to arrest her. Then you want me to let her out. Now you want me to deport her. I suppose I could call Immigration, send them her credentials, see if they have a reason to deport her, but it’s not within my power to do so.”

  “We have a crisis on our hands, and Moira O’Donnell in the mix makes it more complex and dangerous.”

  She looked as confused and frustrated as he felt. “I want to believe you, but I don’t understand. I need to understand. You said the Seven Deadly Sins were released. What does that mean?”

  “The roots of the Seven go much deeper than two thousand years of Christianity. The sins have been written about, with different names, different ideas, from the beginning of humanity. Ancient people told stories of the sins in pictographs on the walls of caves and pyramids and in Roman architecture. Even further back in Mesopotamic time. Most people believe sins are internal, personal battles we all must face. In one sense, that is true. Since the fall of man, all humans are capable of great evil. We want, we envy, we lust—we battle every day to keep these feelings, these primal urges, in check.

  “But the Seven aren’t internal sins. They are supernatural. They are mutations. They are among the Fallen Ones.”

  “You’re getting woo-woo on me, Anthony. Just lay it out for me. Logically. I trust you; I need you to be straight with me.”

  Would she believe the truth? “Some of my people think that the
Seven are fallen angels.”

  “Fallen angels,” she said flatly. “Like Lucifer.”

  “Yes.”

  He read in her eyes confusion, uncertainty. She bit her lip in an effort not to tell him she didn’t believe him, or questioned him. It upset Anthony, but he couldn’t entirely blame her.

  “What do you think?” she asked quietly.

  He touched her face. So beautiful, so strong, so full of justice that it ate her up inside and out. Her heart led her to truth, to righting wrongs, and he loved that about her. “I believe that they are here. I believe they are dangerous, that they are not like demons I know and understand, but far deadlier. I don’t know how to stop them, I don’t know how to send them back, but I will find out. I promise you, I’m not resting until I figure out how to send them back to Hell before more people die.”

  She reached out for him. “I trust you, Anthony. You do everything you can to find out what happened on the cliffs last night, and I’ll do everything I can to find the people involved. Whether or not something—demonic—is on the loose, you and I both know that a flesh-and-blood human being is ultimately responsible for Abby’s death. I want that person in jail.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Murder, of course! A teenager is dead.”

  It would be almost impossible to pin the girl’s death on a coven of witches without hard, physical evidence. And if Skye became troublesome to the group, to protect themselves they’d use their dark powers to hurt her, turn her, destroy her.

  A chill ran through Anthony. He had to find some way to protect Skye from their trickery. “I need to go to the mission.” He’d been rebuilding the library there, having books sent to him from his cottage in Italy. “But first—how do we deport O’Donnell?”

  “I’ll talk to the D.A. Are you still dropping charges?”

  “Yes—but I don’t want her to run. I need to know where she is at all times.”

  “I can keep her passport. She is a material witness. If you want to take my truck to the mission, I’ll be here awhile. Abby’s autopsy is in a few hours … I can grab a car from the pool if I need it.”

  He kissed her. He would do everything to protect Skye, whether she believed what he said or not. “I love you, Skye.”

  Her face softened and he touched her chin, her cheek, her soft blond hair. Love was not an adequate word for his feelings. “Be careful, mia amore.”

  “You too.” She kissed him lightly, then slid out the driver’s door and he moved into the driver’s seat.

  “I’ll return this afternoon,” he said.

  Skye watched Anthony pull out of the parking lot, driving too fast. She cringed. She probably shouldn’t have let him drive her official vehicle, but Santa Louisa had always been more laid-back than most counties in California. With fewer than twenty-nine thousand residents, it landed near the bottom of the population list, so small by West Coast standards that most California residents couldn’t pinpoint it on a map.

  She walked in through the main doors and heard the phone ringing. It was barely daybreak and the phone was ringing? She smelled something odd—but couldn’t identify it.

  The desk sergeant was asleep, the phone ringing next to him having no effect.

  Asleep or …

  She drew her firearm and looked cautiously as she approached Deputy Jorgenson to see if he was injured. The phone stopped ringing; the silence made her heart race. She felt his pulse. Strong.

  “Deputy Jorgenson!” Skye shook him by the shoulders. “Are you sick? Bruce!”

  Jorgenson wasn’t yet fully alert, but he struggled to speak and stand. She caught a whiff of something that smelled like rosemary and … something like baking. Food poisoning?

  “I—don’t know.”

  A fine, off-white powder covered his dark hair and shoulders, some falling on his desk.

  “Have you been drinking?” She touched the powder, sniffed it. Definitely a hint of rosemary, and lavender, and other herbs.

  “No!” He coughed.

  “Sit tight, be alert.”

  She didn’t know if he’d been drugged or not, but she didn’t want him covering her back if he wasn’t one hundred percent alert. She spoke into her lapel mic, “All available units, 10-34. I repeat, officer needs assistance at headquarters.”

  Another phone rang, but there were no voices. They had a minimum of four officers at headquarters during graveyard shift, more if the four jail cells were full. Where was everyone?

  The phone stopped ringing and Skye heard the faint sound of the television in the break room. The twenty-four-hour sports channel. Then steady banging, coming from the jail.

  She had no intention of walking into the jail cell without backup, but when she saw two more deputies sleeping at their desks, one right outside the holding pen, she feared for the lives of her men.

  Damn, damn, damn! She glanced at the log, noted that there were four prisoners, two drunk and disorderly, one grand-theft auto, and Moira O’Donnell.

  Just as she was about to enter the holding pen, Young walked in. “What happened, Sheriff?”

  “I don’t know. Jorgenson, the others appear to have been drugged. Did you see anything when you brought O’Donnell in?”

  “No, I booked her, then went on break across the street at the coffee shop.”

  “We’re going in. Ready?”

  He took out his sidearm and nodded.

  “On three.” She held up her fingers. One, two, three.”

  She opened the door with her key, slowly and quietly. She smelled blood and her heart skipped a beat, her mind transported back to the slaughter at the mission ten weeks ago. The murders had been human, but the cause was supernatural.

  She glanced around and noted the banging was Mr. Grand Theft Auto pounding the heel of his sneaker on the bars.

  “It’s about fucking time!” he yelled when he saw her.

  Skye saw Moira O’Donnell, sprawled on the cement floor, blood pooled around her and smears on the wall. Her first thought was murder. Skye had Young cover the door while she quickly searched—there were no hiding spaces in the jail.

  She opened the cell and checked Moira’s pulse. Strong. Her eyes opened, then closed again.

  “Moira!” Skye exclaimed. “What happened?”

  The auto thief said, “She’s bleeding to death, what do you think?”

  “Shut up,” Skye ordered.

  He continued. “This crazy dame walked in, some kind of psychic or something, and the babe just flopped against the wall like some big beefy guy was holding her up, and then her nose started bleeding like a fucking waterfall.”

  Moira groaned and tried to get up. “Relax,” Skye told her. Protocols would demand that Skye wait for additional backup, secure the prisoner, and arrange for transport to the hospital. But Anthony had dropped the charges, Moira wasn’t a threat to her. Could a demon have done this?

  She said, “Anthony dropped the charges against you, Ms. O’Donnell. You’re free to go. I’ll call a medic, get you to the hospital.”

  Moira rolled over onto her back, wiping the blood from her face with her stained shirt. She began to laugh, borderline hysterical, and Skye tensed. “She found me. Seven years and she never found me until now.”

  “Who?”

  She continued to laugh. “You—you think you can arrest Fiona O’Donnell? For what?” She sat up. Skye offered her hand, but Moira ignored it, crawling over to the bars and pulling herself up onto unsteady legs. Skye was stunned at the huge amount of blood left behind on the floor. It had presumably come from her nose, but Moira also had scrapes on her face and arms, and a nasty bruise on the side of her head, partly obscured by her hair.

  “Let’s get you to the hospital—” Skye said.

  “No. No. I just need a bathroom for a few minutes.”

  “You lost a lot of blood.”

  “I just need a few minutes,” Moira repeated. “And orange juice. If you have any. Or water.”

  Skye was inclined t
o take the woman back into custody and force her to go to the hospital, but what would she tell the ER doc? That no one touched her? She stared into Moira’s eyes, so incredibly blue—both dark and bright—that Skye felt entranced.

  “All right,” she reluctantly agreed. “Then I’ll drive you back to your motel.”

  She planned to argue, Skye could tell from her posture. Then she relented. “Thank you.”

  ELEVEN

  During the fifteen-minute drive from the jail to the motel on the edge of town, Moira didn’t speak unless the sheriff asked her a direct question. She was numb from both physical and emotional pain. All she wanted was to return to the Italian sanctuary of St. Michael’s and lick her wounds.

  But of course she couldn’t run away, and not just because the sheriff had kept her passport. The time for running was over. Her mother was here in Santa Louisa, and she had to be stopped. Fiona had done awful things in her life—kidnapping, torture, murder, a seemingly endless spree all done for power. Power begets power—the more control Fiona exercised over dark forces, the more power she craved.

  But it wasn’t simply the lust for power that drove Fiona and other magicians. It was the thirst for knowledge that could never be satisfied. One taste of the infinite possibilities and the need for more grew, all-consuming, never ending until death. And for Fiona, death was merely an obstacle that could be avoided, within reach was the golden trophy: becoming a demigod.

  Moira had to stand in Fiona’s way. She accepted that she would die—she deserved to—but Fiona would as well. Pure justice.

  Yet if Moira was caught again by surprise, trapped, there was no way she’d survive long enough to stop her mother. She could protect herself if she were free, but locked up—she was a sitting duck. She’d make sure that never happened again.

  Skye pulled into the motel parking lot. “Thanks for the lift,” Moira said as she reached for the door handle.