Original Sin sds-1

by Allison Brennan

  “Well, well, well, hell-lo, hot stuff.” The sober prisoner sat up on his cot and gave Fiona an appraising look.

  Both Fiona and Moira ignored him. Moira had no idea how Fiona had found her, how her mother knew she was in town and specifically in prison, but she damn well knew why she’d come. Seven years ago when Rico and Father Philip saved her, Fiona had said:

  “You are cursed, firstborn daughter. I will find you. I will hunt you down, I will destroy you inside and out. I will wring your soul dry until it’s begging for mercy, of which I have none to spare you.”

  Anthony wouldn’t have let it out that she was in jail. If he’d known where Fiona was, he’d have gone after her himself. And he still believed Moira was working either with her mother or another coven. But Sheriff Skye McPherson-was she part of the coven? Covens loved to recruit people in positions of power. Cops, teachers, ministers. Anyone with authority and trust.

  And then there was Jared, who’d disappeared to find his girlfriend right before the police came. Could he have alerted Fiona? Perhaps his original intent in bringing her to the cliffs was to lure Moira into a trap, but something went wrong and the coven had dispersed.

  “Cead inion.” First daughter. Some might think it was a term of endearment, but Moira knew better. To Fiona, it meant she was property.

  “Cailleach.”

  Fiona smiled at the insult-Moira didn’t know what offended her more, the “old” part or the “hag” part. Her red, glossy lips wide, teeth so white they seemed false. Some might have called her grin inviting. But Moira knew better. She was a shark, circling her prey.

  Fiona’s brilliant, dark blue eyes matched Moira’s; her hair, a shiny, golden red, was thick and curly and impossibly long. Moira had the same curls, but she kept her black hair up or braided and out of the way. Fiona’s skin was smooth and flawless, her cheekbones high and aristocratic. Her mother had always been a dramatically beautiful woman. She hadn’t changed. She hadn’t changed physically at all from when Moira had last seen her. Fiona was forty-eight. She looked … younger. Stunning. Twenty-eight, maybe, but not forty-eight.

  “Andra Moira.” Her full name rolled off Fiona’s tongue with the Irish lilt and the proper accent. An-drah Mor-rah. Moira hated it. She preferred the wrong way everyone else in the world pronounced her name, with three syllables instead of two. And she refused to use her first name, Andra, knowing whom she was named for and why. An ancient goddess who relished blood and human sacrifice …

  Moira stared at her, tense and watchful. Wishing the damn sheriff would get her ass in here. How had Fiona gotten in? Had she killed someone …

  “You’re weak.” Fiona walked to the center of the jail and stared at Moira with both shock and contempt. “You haven’t been practicing! Pathetic.”

  She sounded disappointed, as if she’d wanted some sort of supernatural battle between them. But Moira had learned the hard way that all supernatural power came from the wrong side of the tracks, and payment for borrowing it was steep.

  “I know what you did on the cliffs,” said Moira. “I know what you’re up to.”

  “You can’t possibly imagine in your small mind what I am doing.” Her eyes glowed with excitement-from Moira’s entrapment or her own plans, Moira didn’t know. Probably both. “You are fortunate that I am forgiving.”

  “As forgiving as the devil himself,” Moira snapped. “Oh, wait, he’s one of your friends.”

  Fiona’s throat tensed, revealing delicate bones under flawless skin. “You should be more respectful of your father.”

  “Bullshit.” A chill started in the center of her bones, hardening her gut, bringing the panic on, but she stood perfectly still. Moira had never known her father. For all she knew, her mother had slit his throat after mating. Moira’s bravado was a farce, and she damn well knew that if Fiona smelled fear, she would pounce. She crossed herself more to goad her mother than to proclaim faith.

  Fiona murmured a spell aimed at Moira, but at the last minute tossed it toward the drunk cell with a flip of her wrist. Moira could almost see the gray smoke, even though she knew it wasn’t physically there, but merely an illusion.

  The drunks both groaned in their stupor, the nightmare Fiona had thrown into their minds taking hold.

  Fiona paced the length of the walk. The velvety blue gown swirling around her gave the illusion that she was floating. Wisely, the man in the far cell said nothing.

  “What did you do to the guards?” Moira asked.

  “They’re sleeping.”

  Fiona stopped dead center in front of Moira’s cell. “Andra Moira, I am granting you a choice.” She raised her left hand with flair, her jewels sparkling in the artificial light. “On the one hand, I will let you out. You come with me and fulfill your role as it was decided before your conception. You, the first daughter of a virgin womb, sacrificed to be the goddess of the underworld. Such a high status for doing nothing but being born. You are of the chosen, for I am of the chosen. I gave my body to the gods so you could exist.

  “On the other hand,” she waved her right hand as if swatting away a fly, “you will die now, and I will rip your soul from your body and send it into the pit to be tortured forever. She who gives life can also take it away.”

  Fiona held her palms up, as if in a peace offering. Moira stared, feeling an unspoken spell building. On Fiona’s open palms, two worlds balanced: one of fire, the other identical but with Moira in the middle, her face melting to bone, the bones turning to ash.

  Another illusion. Moira willed her mind to see only what was in front of her, to repel the telepathy that her mother was using to send images into her mind.

  She blinked and it worked. She saw only her mother. Rico had trained her well.

  “Free will conquers magic. Use your mind, your thoughts, your free will in battle. Turn not to external forces, but to the strength that God gave you.”

  An irritated scowl crossed Fiona’s face and she dropped her hands.

  “You released the Seven Deadly Sins from Hell,” Moira said, emboldened by her small victory. “There’s no reason-”

  “I didn’t free them! They were to be mine. It was that-” She stopped, straightened, and glared at Moira. “Your decision. Now! Come with me or die.”

  They were to be mine. Fiona did nothing without a reason, but Moira couldn’t come up with even one idea as to why Fiona wanted to claim, or keep, the Seven.

  Moira’s words were clear. “I am not yours. I refuse to be sacrificed to any of your demons. Go ahead and try to send me to Hell; if you succeed, I know ways to come back and thwart every one of your plans.”

  Fiona laughed.

  “You fool,” she said between bouts of laughter. “You know nothing. Those pathetic men on that ridiculous island have no idea of the power to be had. The wall separating the worlds is so thin, it is close to crumbling. Between the here and now, the underworld and time; I am the weakest link, where the membrane between humans and the supernatural universe is thinnest. You will never defeat me.”

  In ancient Latin she spoke a spell that Moira had never heard before. The words seemed to be aimed at her through a fast-moving tunnel. Moira’s vision faded. She put her hands out and screamed, but felt no vibration in her throat. She was falling, falling, deeper and deeper into her mind.

  It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real.

  She lay naked on a bed of feathers, the sunlight streaming through the high windows of the retreat on the far side of the island off Sicily. This was her cottage, where the priests had hidden her while she, Peter, and the others tried to find a way to save her and defeat Fiona.

  Peter came to her, glorious with his olive complexion, broad chest, long sun-streaked brown hair. They were in love, had fought their feelings for months, knowing that giving in to the desire building inside of them would be violating everything that Peter held dear.

  “Loving you isn’t wrong,” Peter told her as he slid into bed with her. “Loving you is heaven on e
arth.”

  She felt his hands, his lips, his breath on her neck. So tender but determined; confident but timid. The conflict was in both of them. Guilt battled need, pleasure battled duty. He skimmed her breasts, her stomach; his hands were between her legs, then he was sliding inside her, filling her, loving her …

  “Loving me is deadly.” Her hands went up around his neck and squeezed him. “Your fall from grace was of your own accord. You will burn in Hell!”

  No, no, this never happened! But Moira couldn’t push the vision from her mind. She tried to fight it, and as she fought she heard distant laughter. Her mother.

  See him now, see him now, see him now.

  Suddenly, she was free-falling and floating, as if having an out-of-body experience. She saw Peter.

  Peter! My love, I miss you, I love you, I’m so sorry …

  He was in the middle of an Irish meadow, the grassy knoll outside her grandmother’s cottage. She wanted to run to him, fly to him, but she was trapped, held back by invisible hands. The meadow turned to fire. Peter stood on an island in the middle of lava, whips of flame slicing his back, leaving red welts. Over and over and over …

  “You bitch!”

  Moira pulled herself from the spell …

  … use your mind, look inside …

  … Rico was talking. Focus, focus, focus. She built the wall around her mind, like a caterpillar built a cocoon, fighting back as best she could.

  Your will is powerful. Focus.

  The laughter rang louder. “Poor girl,” Fiona said, mocking.

  Moira was pushed by an unseen force against the back wall. The wind was violently knocked out of her and she couldn’t draw in another breath. She was suffocating. She would die in this cell, not a mark on her, and Fiona would win. She’d take the Seven Deadly Sins and complete whatever fearsome plan she had.

  Fiona released her and Moira fell to the cement floor, gasping for air. She had nothing to protect her. The sheriff had confiscated her knives, her cross, her holy water, her medallion, the medal that Rico had told her never to remove.

  “You were chosen, and you rejected the greatest gift in the universe!” Fiona said. “You damaged me. But I fought for what was mine and I’m stronger now. More powerful than you or any of your kind.”

  Moira’s head ached and she mentally pushed back, fighting whatever images Fiona tried to plant inside her. Her head felt as if it would explode.

  She felt something wet and sticky on the ground; she touched her face and came away with blood. Her nose was bleeding like a waterfall. She would bleed to death. Here. It would be called natural causes. A fluke. And no one would believe the prisoner in the far cell, that a beautiful woman had killed Moira without touching her. Who would?

  “I wish I had time to toy with you, fealltoir. But I have work to do.”

  Moira looked up from where she bled on the floor. Fiona sounded irritated, and her brow was wrinkled, showing frustration.

  “If I want it done right,” Fiona murmured, then turned her attention back to Moira. She stepped as close to the bars as she could without touching and smiled.

  Fiona’s lips moved, but Moira couldn’t hear what she said, or read her lips. Her lungs grew heavy, as if filling with water, and Moira felt as though she were drowning. She couldn’t breathe. She grabbed her throat, the sensation of choking so real-suddenly, she coughed up water, a half cup, then more.

  Fiona watched. “It would be such fun practicing on you, but I don’t have time. I’m going to share something with you before you die, though. Something to take with you.”

  Moira screamed as if a knife had pierced her brain. The pain was so excruciating that Moira prayed to God to just kill her now. The invisible knife twisted, twisted, her skull pounding in agony. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she curled up in a fetal position, wanting to pound her head into the cement because anything would feel better than this.

  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 chailin mo chroi, 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 P
eter 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.