Carnal Sin

by Allison Brennan

  “Clear,” he whispered.

  He closed the door soundlessly and surveyed the space. Their eyes were already adjusted to the absence of light and they listened intently. An antique clock—several of them, by the sound—tick-tocked in a room to the left. The entry itself opened into a large square gathering room. To the left was a grand dining room that sat at least a dozen, with pillars instead of walls separating it from the entry and the hall.

  To the rear was a vast kitchen and great room, and a wall full of windows looking out into the dark valley dotted with lights from other people’s grand houses. To the right was a hall with several dark, closed rooms.

  Without speaking, Moira pointed down the hall. There was a staircase that led downstairs, and Rafe nodded.

  As they descended, Moira tensed again, but she kept moving, leading the way. Jackson took up the rear.

  They didn’t stop on the second level, but continued silently down. At the base of the stairs was an office of sorts, only ten feet wide but twice that in length, the far-side sliding doors leading to the balcony. It looked as though it had been divided off from the rest of the floor. Two desks, bookshelves, and a few chairs filled the space. Double doors led to another room.

  They stopped at the base of the landing and listened.

  Silence.

  Moira pointed to Jackson with her dagger and motioned for him to stay and watch the stairs, then gestured toward the closed doors. Rafe understood. They stood on either side of the doors and Rafe cautiously opened the knob on his side. Moira opened the other door. Incense wafted through the open door—myrrh and sandalwood and something else Rafe couldn’t identify right off. He peered through the crack. It was pitch black in there.

  A memory rushed into his head and he froze.

  Screams of agony pierced the silence as Samuel Ackerman’s two closest friends were tortured by a demon. The sound shredded Samuel’s heart.

  “Stop, stop! Please leave them alone.”

  The witch turned to him, satisfied he would give her what she wanted. “Samuel. You know better. What will you do for me?”

  “Don’t do this, Susan. Please, stop.”

  “You stole from me.”

  “You know what you’re doing is wrong. How could you turn your back on God? On what is good in the world?”

  “Who’s to say what is good? What has God ever done for me?” She waved her arm toward the living room where a succubus and incubus tortured William and Tessa Burns. They’d been stripped naked, unable to move, unable to stop the horrid acts of sexual violence being done to them. Samuel was spared only because for him, it was worse torture to watch. He had brought this down on his friends because he’d tried to do the right thing. William and Tessa knew more about the supernatural than he did. He hadn’t believed in such evil until he’d witnessed Susan’s horrid acts. He realized now that she’d been born without a conscience; that was the only explanation for her actions.

  He’d stolen the chalice, and now …

  “I have everything I want because I have the knowledge,” Susan said. “I have power. I need the chalice you stole from me.”

  He hesitated. Susan chanted in ancient Latin, then said, “Kali, the soul of William Burns has been pledged, and is freely given by your mistress; take what you will!”

  William screamed as the succubus kissed him, sucking his soul out of his body until he died. It took a long minute, and through it all Samuel prayed for deliverance, begged God to stop this.

  God did not answer. Instead, Susan laughed. The demon, satiated, was dismissed with an incantation from Susan’s teenage daughter who watched the entire proceedings, the rapes and the soul-snatching, with rapt attention. Wendy had been such a sweet child, and now …

  “My chalice, Samuel! Now! Or Tessa will die next.”

  “Raphael Cooper!” Moira hit him, her voice a harsh and worried whisper.

  Rafe shook his head, his eyes still seeing the violence of his vision. Samuel Ackerman had been murdered at Santa Louisa de los Padres Mission three months ago. Why was this important—why did he remember this now?

  “Rafe, please!”

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, still trying to rid his head of the horrific images. He still heard the screams of William Burns as he was sacrificed.

  “Listen,” she whispered.

  He remained silent. They stood outside the doors. There was no movement; there were no sounds from above except for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the entryway.

  Moira frowned and her hand tightened around her dagger.

  He mouthed, “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head, uncertain, but Rafe trusted Moira’s instincts. He motioned to leave, but she shook her head again and pushed open the door.

  Rafe shined his flashlight into the space. He found a light switch that had a dimmer, and put the overhead light on at the lowest possible setting.

  It was a long room, three times the size of the one at the base of the landing. One wall was windows with three sliding glass doors. The scent of incense was stronger, as well as the smell of fresh candle wax. Candles sat on every available surface, both black and white, and in the center, under a spirit trap painted in black on the ceiling, was a hexagram with a solitary black candle in each of the six triangles. It looked much too similar to the trap Fiona’s coven had used to summon the Seven.

  There was enough space for a couple dozen people to move about. Comfortable furniture, both contemporary and feminine, was strategically placed to provide conversation and optimal viewing. The windows looked out on the brilliantly lit Los Angeles Valley.

  Moira took in the room quickly, then her gaze locked on the double doors on the far side of the room.

  “Mo—”

  She cut him off and whispered so low he almost didn’t hear her. “There’s a demon in there.”

  Rafe’s blood froze. “Let’s go.”

  She shook her head. “This is it. We trap it now and take it with us.”

  “I’ve never known a demon to go quietly.”

  “Tell Jackson to get in here. We’ll lock the doors and hold them off as long as we can.”

  “Moira—”

  “Rafe, we cannot let it go!” She bit her lip, glancing at the door, her eyes narrowed.

  She was right, but Rafe hadn’t been expecting to face the demon tonight.

  “I’ll tell Jackson.” Rafe stepped back through the doors.

  Moira started across the room. She relaxed her senses, letting them feel the magic and evil that filled the room. She calmed her breathing, and focused on the demon behind those doors.

  From the moment she’d entered the house, she’d known something was off. As she walked down the stairs, her apprehension grew. But as soon as she stepped through the doors into this chamber, she smelled it. Hell. There was a portal to the underworld right here.

  The demon Envy had been able to change form at will—from human to beast, and every combination. They had all nearly died trying to contain it. She feared the demon Lust would be the same, except that it had been trapped by Wendy. That meant it was weaker. It couldn’t take different forms. She hoped.

  A possessed human had increased strength as well as the demons’ ability to violently move people and objects with their will. But in a spirit trap, the demon would be largely impotent. This truly was their best opportunity to stop it, and while Moira didn’t relish facing Wendy or Nicole Donovan, she’d do what she had to in order to leave with the demon.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Where were Rafe and Jackson? She was already across the chamber at the door, which led, she expected, to the demon. Her heart quickened with fear that someone had seen Rafe. But he would have alerted her, wouldn’t he? He would have made noise, bumped something.

  Then Rafe stepped through the chamber door with Jackson, who closed it quietly behind him and locked it.

  “I don’t like this idea,” Rafe said.

  “It’s our only option.” She held up three f
ingers, two, then one.

  Moira opened the door. Candlelight flickered in the windowless room. The demon possessed the body of a mysterious and beautiful woman, was dressed in the Velocity uniform. She hissed at her. “I’ve been waiting for you, Moira.”

  Moira hadn’t expected the familiarity, though why was she surprised? In a different form, the demon had also known Moira in the alley.

  Rafe started an exorcism rite in Aramaic. Moira didn’t know it by heart; Aramaic didn’t come easily to her. The demon flinched, and Moira checked the security of the demon trap. It appeared sound. Moira glanced around the room. This was where Wendy cast her darkest spells. Her asthame—the dagger a witch used in rituals—was properly stored on the altar. Other tools and herbs were aligned as well.

  And the chalice was on a special shelf above the altar, surrounded by black candles. It was a golden chalice about ten inches tall, the top a black glass sphere. The bottom of the chalice had a thick, curved lip, just like in the picture Jackson had showed them earlier. Two jars of blood were at either end of the altar. Moira concentrated on one of the jars, unable to sense through the thick glass whether it was human or not.

  The beautiful demon hissed at the exorcism, and Rafe’s voice rose. Moira skirted the spirit trap, which covered half the small room. She reached the altar and picked up the chalice.

  It was ice-cold in her hands, and it weighed at least five pounds. There were demonic symbols carved around the edges, but Moira didn’t have time to decipher the hieroglyphics. On the base was a sigil etched into the gold, a female demon who looked like a cross between Medusa and a serpent.

  The demon screamed as Rafe invoked the names of God. As Rafe continued, the chalice warmed in Moira’s hands.

  “The rite is working,” Moira said to Rafe.

  Footsteps from upstairs told them that Wendy was now awake. Moira went to the door and called to Jackson in the front room, “Watch yourself! They’re coming!”

  The demon said, “Moh-rah.”

  “Shut up,” she told the demon, knowing better than to get in a conversation with a creature like this. “Hurry, Rafe!”

  Rafe was sweating profusely as he increased the pace and intensity of the exorcism.

  “Moh-rah, free me. You will join me and my master.”

  “Fuck you.”

  A crash against the first set of doors told Moira their time was running out.

  “Rafe!”

  “Free me,” the demon said. “Free me.”

  Moira suddenly feared they were doing something wrong. The demon flinched, but wasn’t in obvious distress, nor was it even close to leaving the woman’s body. Exorcisms could be as short as five minutes or take days. With one of the Seven, it would more than likely take several days.

  They barely had five minutes.

  A crash in the front room shook the house. If anything happened to Jackson, what would she tell his daughter?

  “We have to go, Rafe!”

  Suddenly, the body inside the trap collapsed. The demon was partly freed. A hot swoosh of air tainted by the foul stench of Hell itself filled the space within the trap, floor to ceiling, the energy emanating from it enough to knock both her and Rafe down. The demon spun faster and faster, but it couldn’t get out.

  Moira couldn’t understand how Rafe’s exorcism had worked that fast. But if the demon abandoned the female body on its own, why hadn’t it left Nadine earlier? What was going on here? Why wasn’t it trapped in the chalice? They were way over their heads with this one. For a moment, Moira doubted if they’d even get out of there alive.

  “What are you doing?” Wendy cried, flinging open the doors into the small room. “Stop right now!”

  Moira didn’t wait for Wendy to get her bearings. Tucking the chalice under her left arm as if she were running with a football, Moira charged at Wendy, punching her square in the stomach, then kneeing her in the nose as the witch doubled over.

  Out of the corner of her eye Moira saw movement. She turned and pivoted, but it was too late. Nicole Donovan—the bitch of a witch from Fiona’s coven in Santa Louisa—slammed the butt of her asthame against Moira’s head. Moira’s quick reflexes minimized what could have been a killing blow, and she managed to keep hold of the chalice, but her eyesight blurred. She stumbled over Wendy as the witch tried to get up, falling to her knees.

  Rafe kicked Nicole in the wrist and she dropped the knife. The demon roared from the trap, the woman’s unconscious body inside the trap with it being lifted to the ceiling. Suddenly the body dropped to the ground. Then it slowly rose again.

  “Rafe, the demon is killing her!” Moira screamed.

  Wendy crawled into the room and began chanting a spell. Moira knew it well: it was a binding spell to tame the demon.

  Moira didn’t want to leave the poor possessed woman trapped with the demon, but she also didn’t know how to save her.

  “Moira!” Rafe shouted. “Moira! Go!”

  She hesitated, but didn’t see any way to reach the trapped waitress. Nicole charged Moira, and Rafe stopped the witch with a punch to the jaw.

  Moira spotted Jackson trying to get up from the corner of the room. She ran over, helped him up, and handed him the chalice. “Come on, Jackson—we have to get out of here. Go—”

  “Where’s Rafe?”

  “I’ll get him, go!” she ordered the pastor.

  She spun around, shook her head to clear it, and saw Nicole leap onto Rafe’s back. Nicole had her asthame back in hand, its polished blade reflecting the dim light. Rafe shook her off, but then Nicole slammed headfirst into his back, knocking him to the ground.

  Moira ran over and grabbed Nicole’s wrist as she was about to plunge her knife into Rafe’s kidney. There was already blood on the knife—Moira’s chest heaved. “Rafe!” she cried out as she wrestled with Nicole.

  “I’m okay!” He scrambled to his feet and freed the knife from Nicole’s grasp as Moira held her wrist down on the ground. Nicole bucked beneath her, and Moira kneed her in the stomach.

  “You bitch!” Nicole gasped. “You’ll be sorry. When Fiona gets her hands on you, you’ll wish you were dead.”

  “Where is she?” Moira pinned Nicole’s neck down with her arm, holding her body down with her right knee and her weight.

  Nicole spat in her face. Moira pressed harder, cutting off her air supply. This bitch had watched Father Philip die at the hands of a demon she’d summoned. She didn’t deserve to live.

  “Moira, we have to go—!”

  Moira barely heard Rafe’s voice.

  “Where is Fiona?” Moira shouted.

  Nicole’s face reddened.

  Rafe pulled Moira to her feet. “Stop, Moira! Now is not the time.”

  Moira wanted to kill Nicole Donovan. Did that make her no better than her evil mother? Vengeance—it had driven her for so long. But was she a killer?

  “Let’s go.” Rafe took her hand.

  Wendy was consumed with controlling the demon, but the witch was strong and Moira felt the demon succumb. When the room began to fill with electricity, Moira didn’t notice at first.

  She glanced at Nicole, who was on the ground, catching her breath, chanting a spell.

  “Right behind you,” Moira said to Rafe, not wanting to find out what Nicole had up her sleeve.

  They bounded up the stairs to the top floor and fled the house. Jackson was nowhere to be seen. “Dammit, I told him to get the hell out of Dodge! I knew we shouldn’t have brought him!” Moira didn’t want his death on her conscience. She didn’t want to lose anyone else.

  A slight tremor beneath their feet had them both sprinting down the street.

  A vehicle rushed toward them. It was Skye’s truck, Jackson at the wheel. They jumped into the backseat, tires squealing as Jackson hastened away.

  “You got it!” Jackson said. “You really did. I put the chalice in the box.”

  Victory was bittersweet. Moira slammed her fist on the seat in front of her. “We didn’t get the demon
! That woman—”

  Rafe took her hand and squeezed. “We did what we thought would work—it didn’t. If an exorcism doesn’t work, we’ll figure out something else.”

  “What else is there?” Moira snapped. “We need to strategize, but we don’t have any time.”

  “Listen, we got the chalice. That’s one big plus for the good guys,” Jackson said.

  Rafe caught her eye and Moira flushed with embarrassment at her loss of control. Rafe said, “Don’t beat yourself up over your rage at Nicole Donovan. I wanted to kill her myself.”

  “I would have if you hadn’t stopped me. All I could think of was that face watching Father die.”

  Rafe took Moira’s hand, and she felt something damp. She flipped on the overhead light and saw blood on her fingers. She pushed aside his jacket and pulled up his T-shirt. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”

  “It’s not fatal.”

  She bit back a lecture and pulled her first-aid kit from her backpack.

  “Is he okay?” Jackson looked back from the driver’s seat.

  She inspected the injury. “Nicole did this? With her knife?”

  “When she hopped on my back. She just nicked me.”

  “This is more than a nick,” Moira mumbled. She focused on cleaning the wound and taping it up. She tried to rid her mind of the image of the possessed woman’s body falling from the ceiling, but even when she blocked the mental picture she could still hear the sick thud as the body hit the floor over and over again.

  “Moira, we’ll find the answers,” Rafe said. “We have the chalice—they won’t be able to use it again.”

  “But the million-dollar question is, can we use it to send Lust back to Hell?”

  After leaving Moira and Rafe at the hotel, Jackson ensured that the chalice was properly secured in the vault in the Grace Harvest church basement. The alarm was armed. He walked across the parking lot to the vicarage, physically exhausted but emotionally wound up.

  He knew about demon hunting and had participated in a few exorcisms, but only as an assistant or bystander, and only under controlled conditions. He’d had no idea what was required, what Moira and Rafe truly had to do, or how much fortitude they needed to face off a demon that wanted them dead. They had worked in unison, completely in sync with each other. It had been amazing to watch, as well as terrifying.