Original Sin

by Allison Brennan

  “You didn’t listen to anything I said.”

  “I have a headache, it’s been a shitty day. I promise, I’m not going anywhere. Besides, you have my passport.”

  “What did she do to you?” Skye asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe it. Best thing you can do is stay out of my way.”

  Skye turned off the ignition and bristled. “I don’t like threats.”

  “I’m trying to save your ass. Fiona won’t go after you unless you try to stop her from getting what she wants. She doesn’t know what tricks Anthony has up his sleeve, but you can bet she knows you’re screwing him and she’ll use that against you if she can.”

  Skye blanched. “I’m not—I mean, it’s—”

  “Save it.”

  “I’m not going to let anyone hurt Anthony, or get away with murder.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Shit, I hate it when Anthony says that and I really hate it when you say it.”

  Moira asked, “How’d you and Anthony hook up?”

  “You know about what happened at the mission?”

  “Santa Louisa de los Padres? Of course. A demon-driven murder-suicide.”

  “More like drug-induced murder-suicide. The priests were poisoned. There was one survivor, Anthony’s friend Rafe Cooper. Know him?”

  Rafe Cooper. Raphael Cooper?

  She shrugged, disguising her interest. “Not personally.” Of course she’d heard of him. He was from St. Michael’s. Moira glanced toward her motel room. No light.

  She’d left a light on.

  She discreetly looked around the parking lot. Jared. His truck was parked on the far side. Had he found Lily? Moira hoped so … and that he’d actually listened to her and brought his girlfriend here.

  Moira itched to get inside, but she also didn’t know if she could trust the sheriff completely. Yet based on the phone conversation Fiona had while torturing Moira, someone had tipped her off that the sheriff was coming in. Who? A cop?

  “So, where’s Anthony now?” she asked Skye.

  “Researching.”

  Moira couldn’t help but smile. Some things never changed. “I hope he finds something useful. I don’t know how much time we have, but Fiona will be working all hours of the day and night to finish what she started.”

  “And exactly just what did she start?”

  “You heard Anthony. He told you about the Seven. And—” She hesitated.

  “And what?”

  “Fiona said something that had me thinking her ritual went wrong. I don’t think she has the Seven Deadly Sins under her control. Not yet.”

  “Then where are they? Still in Hell?”

  Moira glanced at Skye, impressed that the cop was thinking like a paranormal investigator. “Possibly. Either there, or out and about, and wreaking havoc in the world.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because she was frustrated about it. Also, if she had them under her control, she wouldn’t have time to spend trying to kill me. It’s not like she can put them in a cage and walk away. She would need to maintain a demon trap, which is difficult in the short term and nearly impossible in the long term. Either way, she’d need to focus all her psychic magic on the trap, not walking away and playing games with her traitorous daughter.”

  “And why aren’t they still in Hell?”

  “They could be, but …” But what? “It’s just a feeling. And what I saw out there.” Moira didn’t want to explain her vision standing at the ruins, which would inevitably open the door to more questions that she didn’t have the time for. She itched to get inside and talk to Jared.

  Skye had more questions, but Moira cut her off with, “I’m really tired. Can I go in?”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

  “I’m fine.” She held up the quart of orange juice Skye had bought her at the mini-mart near the jail. “This helped, and with a few hours’ sleep I’ll be good.” She didn’t plan on sleeping.

  “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I’ll try to be smart.” She put her hand on the door, then asked, “What’s going to happen with Abby’s body?”

  “Why?”

  “You absolutely must convince the family to cremate her body.”

  “It’s not my place.”

  “You don’t underst—”

  “Stop!” Skye ran a hand through her hastily pinned-back hair. “You and Anthony—I swear, I understand a hell of a lot more than either of you give me credit for. Why, dammit, is her body so important?”

  She wanted honesty? “The human remains from a sacrifice are divided up for use in a variety of divinations. Her heart. Her liver. Her ovaries. Her eyes. Her organs have value. They’ll cut her up and use her for years. It’s sick, but it’s very effective. And it traps her soul. She’ll wander, restless, divided. Evil spirits are truly dangerous, because they usually can’t be destroyed until all their remains are destroyed. As soon as her remains are divided, she’ll be nearly unstoppable.”

  Skye looked ill. “I’m going to get some sleep,” Moira said. “Do what you can.” She wasn’t holding her breath. Moira herself would have to find the body and destroy it. There was no other option. Unless she could convince Anthony to do it. He would understand the dangers.

  She started to get out of the truck, but Skye grabbed her arm. “If you’re right, they’ve done this before. So why isn’t the world overrun with evil spirits?”

  Moira stared at her, a half-smile on her face. “Who says it isn’t?”

  Skye downed her third cup of foul-tasting sweetened black coffee and still felt fuzzy after two hours’ sleep and eight hours of investigation.

  She watched the medical examiner, her longtime colleague Dr. Rod Fielding, cut into the body of seventeen-year-old Abigail Weatherby.

  She had to admit that she was unnerved by the conversation she’d had with Moira O’Donnell on the way from the jail to the motel. She caught herself biting her thumbnail, and pulled out a pair of latex gloves from the box on Rod’s workbench to stop the nervous habit.

  Anthony didn’t like Moira because he thought she was a witch responsible for the death of one of his “brothers”—the boys he’d grown up with at the orphanage. She supposed it wasn’t technically an orphanage—Anthony had never referred to St. Michael’s as such—but Skye didn’t know how else to think about it. None of the boys there had parents, and they’d all taken the last name of one of the priests or monks in residence.

  Odd, but Skye had never contemplated Anthony’s unusual upbringing largely because he didn’t hide anything. Still, she couldn’t stop thinking about how many kids were abandoned by their mothers at a monastery to be raised as warriors for God. The entire idea sounded suspect to her analytical cop mind.

  Yet her mother had left when she was fourteen, walked out with a man who made lots of promises, then killed her. Abandonment wasn’t foreign to Skye, either.

  And she loved Anthony. She accepted what he said as truth, even though it was unusual.

  Then Moira O’Donnell showed up, and Skye saw a side of Anthony she’d only glimpsed briefly during the few months she’d known him. Anger and hostility. Had he and Moira been involved? She tried to brush it off as cop instincts, not feminine insecurities, but it wasn’t working.

  Rod was unusually quiet as he performed the autopsy, but he was generally more reticent when working on young people. Focused, deliberate, with none of the banter Skye was used to. It made the autopsy that much more uncomfortable. If it was a drunk or a sixty-year-old heart attack victim or even a gang shooting, Rod would joke to relieve the tension. But Abby was seventeen; she’d had her whole future ahead. Everything …

  Skye had come to the autopsy after telling Abby’s parents of her death. They had been sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee, both of them believing that Abby was still sleeping in her bed. It was the hardest damn thing she’d ever done. She knew Hiram Weatherby, and she also knew that Hi
ram would be on her ass day and night until she solved the crime.

  He was, after all, the mayor, and the council member who’d led the charge to appoint her sheriff.

  She said to Rod, “You’re killing me here. It’s been thirty minutes.” All he’d spoken were clipped orders to his young assistant.

  “I have nothing,” he snapped. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing … what the hell does that mean?”

  “Heart—perfect. Lungs—strong. No sign of cancer, heart attack, internal bleeding, physical signs of OD—I sent the labs over as a rush, and Monica just walked over tissue samples from every major organ, as well as skin and hair samples. I have a second set being worked up to send to the state lab for additional testing, beyond our capabilities. But sudden, violent overdoses would normally show something somewhere. Needle pricks in her arm? No. Bloody nose? Nope. No signs of sores or burns in her mouth. Hell, she probably has never even smoked a cigarette; her lungs are in great condition. Her stomach contents are next to nothing, some liquid—probably tea—no solids. Sent that over too.”

  “There was an odd smell at the scene when we arrived—maybe she was poisoned through the air, breathed it in.”

  “No sign of violence to her nasal cavities or throat or lungs. It’s like her heart just … stopped for no damn reason.”

  Skye wanted something scientific to hold on to, but Rod wasn’t giving her anything.

  He continued. “I saw the destruction on the cliffs, Skye. There had to have been more than one person on scene before or during her death. We didn’t find her clothing or her car, and she couldn’t have walked there without shoes—her feet are dirty, but no cuts or bruising. Someone had to have brought her out; someone had to have taken her clothing. Why? She should be alive. She’s perfect in every way.”

  “This morning her father said she’d recently lost a lot of weight, that she’d been exercising.”

  “How recent? Sudden weight loss, or over time?”

  “He said she started losing at the beginning of the school year. Lost twenty pounds or so, according to her mother.”

  “Twenty pounds in five months? Not common, but certainly possible.” He inspected her body. “Yeah, I see the loose skin here … here. But if she was popping pills, I’ll know when I get the bloodwork back. I’m running everything I can think of.”

  “Sexual abuse?”

  “No sign of recent or habitual abuse. No signs of forced entry or violence or bruising in the vaginal area.”

  He handed her a Polaroid photograph. “Here’s a copy of her tattoo.”

  Skye stared at the photo. The colorful tattoo was eerily beautiful, a circle with crisscrossing curvy lines that narrowed in the center. It was the same image upside down. “What is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but it’s a bit unusual. I thought you might need it, show it to the parents. Maybe one of her friends knows something about it.”

  She stuffed it into her notebook. “Lots of girls these days get tattoos.”

  “I’ve seen. Usually when they’re dead. And one more thing.”

  Rod turned Abby on her side and touched the small of her back. “I didn’t notice this at the site, but she has a faint birthmark here.”

  The pale strawberry stain looked like a sun, with a filled, near-perfect circle in the middle of faint lines reminiscent of varicose veins, except they were red. Almost as if smeared, the birthmark spread around her to her side, ending in a crescent.

  “A lot of people have birthmarks. What’s unusual about it?”

  “It seems too perfect for a natural mark. I’m wondering if it’s scarring left over from a previous tattoo. But she’s underage, she’d need parental permission to both get and remove a tattoo.”

  Skye shook her head. “In California, but it’s pretty easy to go to Nevada and get a tat, and there are plenty of people here who’ll do it for the right price. Did it contribute to her death?”

  “Doubtful, but since I don’t know what killed her, I’m not going to discount anything. I took a skin graft and should have some answers.”

  “Are you thinking maybe an infection from a bad needle?”

  “Again, doubtful—her white blood cell count is normal. She’s a little on the anemic side, but not dangerously low. But hell, Skye, I’m willing to look at every cell in her body if it’ll tell me what happened to her.”

  Her phone vibrated. Normally she wouldn’t answer it during an autopsy, but it was the hospital calling. “Sheriff McPherson.”

  “Sheriff, this is Doctor Bertrand at Santa Louisa General. I need to report a missing person.”

  “Doctor, I’m in the middle of—”

  “You’re the contact. It’s my coma patient, in the hospice wing. Raphael Cooper.”

  Skye straightened. Rafe Cooper was missing? “What happened? When?”

  “I don’t exactly know—he apparently walked out just after midnight.”

  “Walked out?”

  “I’ve already ordered a copy of the security tapes for you, but I saw it myself. He walked out of the hospital. Extremely odd.”

  Odd? That wasn’t the word Skye would use.

  Especially since he’d apparently gone missing two hours before Abby Weatherby died. He’d also been the prime suspect in the slaughter of twelve priests, until Anthony Zaccardi convinced her that a demon was responsible.

  Maybe Raphael Cooper wasn’t as innocent as Anthony made him out to be.

  “I’m on my way.”

  TWELVE

  Moira listened to Lily’s account of what happened on the cliffs. According to her, Fiona’s coven had killed Abby, though she didn’t know exactly how. Something had come out of the ground around Abby’s body, but she couldn’t say what.

  At least a dozen people had been involved, many from Santa Louisa. Lily hadn’t seen the faces of everyone in the circle, but she recognized some.

  Moira realized the absolute worst had happened. Not only had the Seven been freed, but no one had control over them. Neither Fiona nor anyone else. They were on the loose, and anything could happen.

  “My pastor was there,” Lily said. “Pastor Garrett. Why?”

  “Why did you go to the cliffs in the first place?” Moira demanded to know. “What were you thinking?” She breathed deeply, and her chest ached from the earlier attack.

  “I—” Lily glanced at Jared.

  “Don’t look at him,” Moira snapped. She was too tired and sore to coddle the teenager. She swallowed three aspirin and chased them with lukewarm water. “You went to the cliffs when I told you to stay the hell away from Abby. I told you she was up to something. You were supposed to tell me when the coven was meeting!”

  Lily blinked back tears and Jared jumped to her defense. “Don’t yell at her! She just saw her best friend die—her cousin she’s known her entire life—and saw things no one’s seen before.”

  Moira held back an outpouring of truths these kids needed to hear before it was too late; she wasn’t in the right frame of mind. Instead, she bit her tongue.

  Lily said quietly, “I thought I could help Abby. I thought that’s what she wanted, but didn’t know how to ask. But when I got there—she—she—” Lily stuttered, not knowing how to describe it.

  “Abby wanted to be there,” Moira said evenly.

  “Yes.”

  “You said they called you the arca. Is that right?”

  She nodded, accepting with a smile the water Jared offered her. “I don’t know what it meant, but they painted these symbols on me—”

  “Symbols? Show me.”

  “I showered. I felt so disgusting, dirty—I can’t.”

  Moira wanted to throttle her, but asked calmly, “Can you draw them for me?”

  “Maybe.” She bit her lip, obviously not knowing what was written on her.

  “I remember one or two of them,” Jared said.

  Moira tossed him a notepad and pencil.

  “Did you voluntarily cross into the circle?” she a
sked Lily.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Did they drag you kicking and screaming to their altar, or did you walk into the circle of your own free will?”

  “I—walked in, but I was worried—”

  “What does that matter?” Jared interrupted.

  Moira didn’t want to go into the nuances of human sacrifices and dark magic. She recited the CliffsNotes version. “Human beings have free will. We make our own decisions. Many rituals—especially the ancient rites—require a conscious choice.”

  “I just wanted to help Abby. I didn’t know—”

  “I told you!” Moira pressed her thumb in the center of her forehead. She’d warned her, she’d warned Jared—and she didn’t pull any punches. Maybe they hadn’t truly believed her because she was too blunt.

  Moira needed a good twelve hours of sleep but doubted she’d get ten minutes before dark. She pulled the makeshift compress from her lower back, squeezed out the water from the melted ice, and added fresh ice. Her entire body ached; she needed an icy bath to numb the pain and stop the swelling. She put the compress on the back of her head now that her back was so cold she could barely feel the bruising.

  “Something went wrong with the ritual and you ran away,” Moira prompted, wanting to get to the end of Lily’s story and figure out what to do with her while she called around to friends and “frenemies” to find out what arca meant. It was a container of some sort, but what could Lily have that was valuable to Fiona? “You’re certain you saw demons? What did they look like?”

  “Dark. Smoke, but thicker, and they had shapes—faces, tails, not like us. They changed, looked more like animals—monsters—than people. But they looked human, too.” She choked back a sob and Jared sat next to her on the edge of the bed. He took her hand.

  “It’s okay,” he murmured.

  “I didn’t want to look, I closed my eyes, but then the stranger told me to run or I would die.”

  Moira’s head snapped up. “Stranger? What stranger? Someone from the coven?”

  “No—he came right after Abby died. Just walked up and started saying these things—I didn’t understand him. It was a foreign language, really weird, and then he looked at me, told me to run or I would die. I ran. Then there were the most inhuman screams I’ve ever heard and I glanced back and the sky was like on fire, with lightning, thunder, screams, all there around the circle, and then they were gone like the fluttering of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of birds. I thought he was behind me, and I was scared of him, but he’d saved my life. I thought he might be an angel, but he wasn’t. He was running, but then he wasn’t behind me and I was alone.”