“He deserves to die.” Fiona stared at Moira. “You’ll be responsible for killing him. You brought him here; he’s your responsibility.”
Rafe began a traditional exorcism, buying more time for Anthony to get the tabernacle in place. The demon laughed, turned back into black smoke, and wrapped itself around the inside of the demon trap, blocking Rafe’s line of vision.
Suddenly, a searing pain hit Rafe in the back. He thought he’d been hit by a bullet but realized as he fell to his knees that it was electricity, a magical bolt coming from Matthew Walker.
Rafe kept the rite going, stumbling over the words as the spell Walker used sucked the air from his lungs. The more he inhaled, the less air he brought in. And the demon grew in size. Rafe cried out and saw Moira leap from the circle and tackle Walker with savage ferocity. Walker went down and Rafe regained his legs.
Serena was practically screaming her spell, and Rafe seemed to be countering it. The words came to him-he didn’t know from where, he didn’t want to think about where, he just wanted to survive. To save Lily. To save Moira.
Fiona was successful in breaching the spirit trap and she ran back to safety, a protective circle that she shared with her daughter Serena. But Envy didn’t want them, not yet. Envy wanted Rafe, and it slithered forward smiling, a hideous grin of death. It breathed his name.
“Raaaphaeeelll.”
Rafe reached behind his back and retrieved the dagger. He held it in front of him, expecting to be terrified, but instead experiencing complete calm. His eyesight sharpened, the pain from earlier attacks fading. He breathed fully, in and out, and stared Envy in the face.
“Come here, you bastard.”
Envy growled, lunging with a speed Rafe didn’t expect.
As the demon rushed him, Rafe charged. All thought left his mind; all he could think of was stopping the demon. Stopping Envy from spreading its wickedness throughout the earth.
He leapt, and slit the demon’s throat with the blessed dagger. The demon ripped off its own head and threw it across the room. The head turned into a thousand flies that buzzed all over, swarming.
What had he done? Why had he slit the throat? He didn’t know what he was doing. He froze, uncertain, his head throbbing.
The demon came for him, its head growing back, its eyes red and focused on him. Rafe stared. This was the end.
Moira screamed. Walker had her pinned, but his magic failed as he grew enraged. The bastard had his hands around her throat. He would choke her to death, a good old-fashioned human murder.
“I’ll kill you, Moira,” he said through clenched teeth. “And I will enjoy it.”
Moira had no doubt that Walker wanted her dead, and no doubt that he would enjoy squeezing the life out of her.
But Moira was not ready to die.
Simultaneously, she kneed him in the balls and shot her arms up between his, aiming right for his eyes. He turned his head at the last minute, avoiding permanent damage, but he loosened his grip and Moira slammed his biceps to push his hands away from her neck. She caught her breath, head butted him-Shit! That hurts- and flipped him.
Her backup dagger that Walker had seized earlier was in his pocket, and she pulled it out, unsheathed it, and ran to Rafe’s side.
Envy towered over Rafe, turning to gas, ready to fuse with the man.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said, and continued the exorcism where she’d left off.
Envy turned to her, retaking shape, and backhanded her with its clawlike hand. She fell to the ground and spit out blood.
Rafe rose from where he’d fallen and chopped off the demon’s arm. Baby snakes slithered out of the beast, winding their way rapidly around the room.
The women in the coven began to scream as snakes crossed their feet, red and black, vile creatures. Moira feared if any escaped they’d create even more problems than they already had.
Like they could have bigger issues than this!
Rafe cut off the other limb, but the demon slammed him with its tail. He flew across the room and hit the wall.
Moira couldn’t allow Rafe to die, not like Peter, not like the man she had once loved. “Damn you,” she said. “Veniat mors super illos: et descendant in infernum viventes!”
She took her dagger and with all her strength brought it down on the rattle of the demon’s tail.
Envy screeched, so loud, so violently, that Moira fell to the ground and put her hands to her ears. The witches covered their ears; some collapsed, as Envy tried to regain its strength.
Serena held up the book and intoned a command. All the flies that swarmed, all the snakes that slithered, were drawn to the book.
Serena called upon the living darkness, invoked names of demons that made Moira’s blood freeze, and all the vile creatures in the room turned and headed straight toward Lily.
Moira fought the pain and crawled toward the girl on the altar. “Stop,” she tried to plead with her sister, but Serena either didn’t hear or didn’t care.
“Rafe, help!” she cried as she stumbled.
Lily screamed as the snakes slithered up the altar, wrapping themselves around her feet, her ankles, faster and faster, flies buzzing around her head.
Rafe got up from the ground. He ran to Moira and grabbed her.
“Trust me,” he said.
She nodded, terrified, not knowing what he was going to do.
He raised the dagger over her.
“No,” she tried to say, but nothing came out.
He cut her hand and held it over the torso of the demon that lay on the ground trying to regrow its limbs.
Then he pressed her hand into one of the holes in the demon’s body.
She screamed as pain surged through her body. Rafe seemed shocked by what he’d done and pulled her arm out, holding her.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said.
She couldn’t see, the pain blinding white. She blinked, and it began to subside.
All parts of Envy’s body pulled together into a dark gas and turned into a whirlpool, moving faster and faster.
Moira watched as the demon fought being drawn up into the ventilation system. It fought a losing battle as it was drawn up to the ceiling, right into the tabernacle that Anthony had used to cap the vent.
There was sudden complete silence. Moira breathed again.
Fiona turned her magic on Moira as she said, “I will never underestimate you again.”
Moira tried to stand, but Fiona had both hands on her head, just the tips of her fingers. She couldn’t move. She could scarcely breathe.
“If you die now,” Fiona said, “it will be too soon. You will suffer. I will ensure that you suffer. If you love again, I will take him. If you trust again, I will ensure you will be betrayed. You have no one. You have nothing. You will find me and beg me to kill you. You do not know what pain is, Andra Moira.”
Moira stared into Fiona’s blue eyes, as if she were looking into her own. Bottomless, deep, but Fiona’s were filled with the passion of hatred.
The front doors burst open.
“Police! Freeze!” Sheriff Skye McPherson and three cops rushed in, guns drawn.
Fiona glared at Moira. “Remember this?” she said. “Enjoy the sweet memories!”
Moira felt the spell invade her as Fiona’s eyes fluttered.
“Freeze!” she heard, but saw nothing but the library at St. Michael’s seven years ago.
She was there with Peter. In slow motion she watched as he was thrown across the room. She saw every frame individually, as Peter’s body fought, twisted, moved. The fear on his face. The fear and the pain and the look of the betrayed.
She cried, but the malevolent vision would not stop. Again and again, Peter slammed against the wall, his eyes accusing her, death stealing him from her.
Death would be better. Death would be better than this. Dear God, make it stop, make it stop.
Peter’s body hit the wall again, this time slowly. Blood spattered inch by inch by inch.
She could almost reach out and touch it.
“Moira!”
“Stop, stop! Make it stop, make it stop!”
Holding her tight, Rafe spoke quietly. Soothing. His words filled her mind, though she barely heard what he said. The memory grew fuzzy and faded. She began to cry and he held her, rocking her. She clutched him as if she were drowning.
Chaos was all around her. Magic flew through the air, as the coven members tried to avoid arrest. Shouts and orders as Skye cuffed Elizabeth Ellis. “Secure the scene! Back door!”
“Rafe-” She caught her breath. She had so many questions. What he’d done, what he’d said. But now, she was so tired and his embrace gave her blissful peace.
“Your hand,” he said, holding it to his lips. The bleeding had stopped. She stared at the wound.
“You’re in shock,” he said.
“Lily?”
Rafe looked over her head. “Anthony and Jared are with her.” Then his body tensed. He rose and put her on her feet. He took her hand and she saw what he saw.
Father.
They ran to the middle of the damned spirit trap. Father Philip lay on the floor.
Moira knew he was dead, but she said, “He’s going to be okay, right? He’s going to be okay.” She knelt next to him, remembering what the demon had done to him. How he’d fallen, saving Lily.
Father Philip’s eyes were partly open. His neck was bruised, his mouth open. Anthony checked for a pulse and breath, tears dropping on Father Philip’s body.
“He’s okay,” Moira said. “He’s okay. He’s okay.”
“He’s gone.”
“No. No!” She held him. “Father, please. Please don’t leave me.”
Rafe put his arm around her. Anthony took Father Philip’s hand and gave him Last Rites, his voice breaking.
“Amen.”
FORTY-ONE
Fiona packed her things quickly, rage fueling her energy.
“I hate them!”
Matthew squeezed her shoulders. “It’s not over. We’ll confront them again. It’s inevitable.”
“They trapped my demon! It’s mine!”
Matthew tilted her chin up. “Sweetheart, we don’t have time to rant about Andra Moira or Raphael Cooper. All in due time. The police must know where we are. I sent Serena and Pennington to get the boat.”
“You should have let that idiot die in the fire.”
“I considered it. But he’s useful.”
Fiona reluctantly concurred. “We need a good plan to retrieve the tabernacle. I think they’ll store it at the mission, or at the church downtown.”
“You’re right, dear, but I have another plan.”
“Does it involve gutting Raphael and choking Moira with his intestines?”
“You are imaginative, dear, but I prefer subtlety. Rafe will soon remember how he knows me. He stared for a long time, but couldn’t place me.”
“Then you should never have left Santa Louisa. How I missed you!”
He kissed her. “I missed you too, darling.”
“How many women did you sleep with while you were gone?”
“Only you, my love.” He kissed her again. “Serena should be on the beach soon. We need to go.”
“You didn’t tell me your brilliant plan.”
He paused for a moment. “We allow them to do the hard work.”
“Meaning exactly what?”
“Why should we expend our energy tracking and trapping the Seven? Anthony, Rafe, and Moira will do it for us. And when they’re done? We’ll take them back. All seven of the deadly sins will be ours.”
Fiona considered the idea. “I can see how that might work.” She smiled. “And we can spend the extra time finding a new arca.”
“Yes, that is truly our one stumbling block. They don’t realize they can’t keep the Seven together, except in an arca. But we have the luxury of time. And I know just the place we can go.”
Fiona took a last look around the library where she’d spent so much of the last two years. This had been a good place for her, for her family, for her coven. And Andra Moira had destroyed it. Her daughter and Raphael Cooper. Though Matthew was trying to ease her anger, she didn’t want to let it go. How could they have such strength without magic? The heavens didn’t grant power; only demanded blind faith and obedience. Neither Cooper nor her traitorous daughter were obedient to anyone.
“Darling, we must leave.” Matthew had gathered their most important materials, the rare herbs, the priceless grimoires, and the last of Cooper’s blood, the latter in a small cooler. Everything else could be bought or taken wherever they went.
Fiona turned to her lover. It had been Matthew from the beginning, for now and forever. None of the men she played sex games with meant anything to her, including Garrett; they were merely a distraction when Matthew was away. She trusted him-until tonight.
“You could have killed Moira tonight. At Good Shepherd.”
“Yes,” he said. “But we need her alive.”
“No! What she has done to me, to our cause! I suffered when she ran away.”
“Darling, I know, and I promise you, we will find her again and make her suffer tenfold. But we need her alive-she has a power I don’t understand.”
“Is that how she killed my demon?” Fiona looked into the room off the library where the demon had lain. She and Matthew had sent the slain body back to the underworld, but she was surprisingly upset over the incident.
“It’s about her, not her tools, not St. Michael’s Order. I just haven’t figured out exactly how she’s doing it. Perhaps it is magic, but she’s masked it somehow.”
“I haven’t felt any magic coming from her. She would have used it tonight.”
“There was so much energy in that warehouse, I had a difficult time discerning where the power was coming from.”
“Even you, my darling Matthew, are not infallible.”
He frowned. Like her, he didn’t appreciate being reminded of his imperfections. She kissed him to ease the sting of the criticism.
“Cooper cut her, poured her blood into Envy,” she said. “It weakened the demon, allowed Zaccardi to trap it.”
“Her blood is your blood.”
“And her father’s.”
Matthew said quietly, “It is time.”
Matthew didn’t have to explain what he meant. He was the only one who knew who Moira’s father really was. It had been a dangerous game from the moment Matthew approached Fiona when she was sixteen, and he ten years older, but they had been successful in everything-except keeping Moira in line. Exposing Moira’s biological father was risky, but the stakes had been raised after the release of the Seven Deadly Sins. The added danger meant bold action.
“He will be hard for us to get to.”
“But not impossible.”
The final pieces were moving into place, but it would take all her concentration, all her magic, to ensure victory for her and her people. “With us,” Fiona smiled slyly, “nothing is impossible.”
He held her eyes with a promise of the ecstasy that awaited them. “I love you, Fiona. Now, we must leave before the police arrive. We have a long journey.”
Moira sat in the back of an ambulance while a paramedic picked small pieces of glass out of her hands and arms. “This is a nasty scar,” the guy said, pointing to where Fiona’s pet demon had bit her only a few hours ago. The injury looked months old. “What happened?”
She just shook her head. Anthony and Rafe spoke in hushed voices just outside the doors. Anthony still held the tabernacle. They were discussing where to put the box until they figured out how to send Envy back to Hell.
They’d caught only three of the witches, including Elizabeth Ellis. That gave Moira a small satisfaction. She really didn’t like that woman.
Fiona, Serena, and Matthew Walker had escaped. Skye had sent patrols to the house where Rafe had been held captive, and the other two properties Moira had identified, but there was no sign of them.
; Without Father Philip, nothing was the same. She felt desperately alone. Her eyes burned; she thought she had no more tears, but they came, hot, fast, unstoppable.
Without Father Philip, she had no one who loved her. No one who cared what happened to her. No one to love. He was her anchor, the reason she could get up every morning and continue the battle. For him.
He was gone.
Never had Moira felt so lost since the day she ran away the first time, before she’d met Father Philip. When all she knew how to do was run.
She’d made her stand and failed. Father Philip was dead.
Rafe climbed into the ambulance and sat next to her. “Is she going to be okay?” he asked the paramedic.
“Yes,” Moira responded, blinking back the tears, unable to look at Rafe.
The paramedic said, “I want her to go to the hospital, but she’s being stubborn.”
“I’ll take care of her.” He looked her in the eye and she saw he meant it.
Maybe she wasn’t completely alone.
Rafe turned to the paramedic. “Our friend Anthony has a nasty cut-can you take a look at it?”
“I’m not done here.”
“Five minutes.”
The paramedic sighed, then left Moira and Rafe alone.
He frowned at her hands. “It was pure madness in there,” he said quietly.
“I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why Fiona let the demon out of the circle. It could have attacked her or any of them. But it went right for you.” She considered that. “Fiona knew it would go for you. It wanted you, Rafe, specifically. Why?”
“I wish I knew. Was it something I said?” he half-joked. “Or did? I don’t know. Anthony said that Fiona is a powerful magician.”
“With Walker by her side, she’s even stronger.”
Rafe made her look at him. “What did she do to you?”
She didn’t want to talk about it. But she owed Rafe an explanation. “She turned a memory of mine, a nightmare, into vivid Technicolor slow motion. I couldn’t get out of it. I tried, but I couldn’t.”
Rafe touched her cheek. “Come here.” He put her head on his chest. The paramedics had given him scrubs to wear, reminding Moira of when she found Rafe two days ago.
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