Original Sin

by Allison Brennan

  “Who?”

  “Lisa Davies. She’s a witch; she was the daughter of the cook at the mission. If you talked to her, she deceived you or cast a spell so you didn’t look too closely. But she was there at the mission when the priests were killed. She, Jeremiah Hatch, and Corinne Davies summoned a demon through a violent sacrifice. I was trapped in my room and heard everything, heard the cries …” He hesitated, and Moira took his hand and squeezed. “I don’t know how I got out, but I think when the demon was brought forth Lisa loosened her mental grip on my prison in order to control him, and I broke free. When I came into the chapel, I saw them … and I saw the demon in his true form. Hideous … wretched … then suddenly beautiful, trying to lure me. But I broke their concentration, and their circle, and the women ran to the sacristy for protection. I intended to kill Jeremiah to stop the demon, but he was already dead.”

  Everyone looked at Rafe. He spoke as if he was in a trance, the memory so painful that for a moment no one could speak, feeling his anguish.

  Anthony said, “Lisa is dead. She died in the fire on the cliffs two days after the murders.”

  Rafe shook his head as he rubbed his forehead. “She’s not dead. I saw her on the cliffs. She changed her hair, from dark to light, but it was her. She’s a witch with strong magic. And I was blinded to it. Because of me, because of my weakness, I didn’t see the truth. Lisa’s spells and her mother’s poison forced my brothers to relive their worst nightmares. Those nightmares really happened. When they died, they wanted to die to escape the unbearable pain of reliving their past.”

  “Thank you,” Anthony said when he and Skye lay in bed awhile later. The grandfather clock dinged the half-hour—3:30 in the morning. “Rafe isn’t safe anywhere else, and I know this was difficult for—”

  She cut him off. “Don’t thank me.”

  “What’s wrong? Talk to me Skye. You’re upset—”

  She sat up in the dark, the moonlight filtered through her filmy curtains making her look pale and blue, to match her mood. “I just realized that you knew where Cooper was and didn’t tell me.”

  “He didn’t kill those men. You know that! And you also know that no one will believe it.”

  “Yes, I get that. But I still need to put his comments on record.”

  “He can’t tell anyone what really happened.”

  “But he can tell us he saw the Davieses in the mission when everyone died. That he saw the weapons!” She paused. “Do you believe that he saw Lisa Davies the other night? What if she’s behind Abby’s death? What I don’t understand is why.”

  “To release the Seven Deadly Sins.”

  “Right. Bring forth the demons,” she said sarcastically, and Anthony tensed. “What I mean is, why the elaborate murders at the mission? Why the ritual with Abby Weatherby and Lily Ellis? Why now? What’s their purpose?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And Rafe never told us how he ended up at the cliffs. You wouldn’t let him. Every time I led the conversation in that direction, you steered it away.”

  “It’s late. We were all tired.”

  “Tomorrow, you need to let me ask the hard questions. I need to take down a statement.”

  “Of course.”

  He rubbed her shoulders, gently pushed her back to the bed. “It’s been rough today for you.”

  “For all of us,” she said. She relaxed a little, but her mind was still moving. She asked, “Who did it? Who kept Rafe in a coma? Richard Bertrand was his doctor—I just can’t think of him being some sort of Satan worshipper. I’ve known him most of my life.”

  Anthony bit back an angry comment. She was tired. “They’re not worshipping Satan.” He thought hard for a minute. “Maybe the massacre at the mission was the beginning, and this is the end.”

  “It’s not the end until I find out what happened to Abby.”

  “Your dedication and compassion are two of the many reasons I love you.” He kissed her forehead. “Sleep, Skye.”

  “I’m so tired, but I don’t know that I can sleep. People are dying all over town. I had a suicide this afternoon, then a whacked out salesman comes back to work after his dinner break and shoots his co-workers. Why do people do it? Don’t we have enough human evil in the world, why do these damn witches have to create more?”

  “Shh,” Anthony murmured and kissed her long fingers and pulled her to him. He loved her so much. He was worried about her job, her health, and the forces in Santa Louisa. He hated what she’d seen, what she had to do, how she had to keep her feelings closed off so she could do her job. Skye wasn’t what he’d call a vulnerable woman, but her deep-seated need to understand the unknowable was her Achilles’ heel. She was vulnerable to the evil that roamed the town because she still, even after what she’d seen in November, couldn’t wrap her logical mind around the supernatural. But she tried, and he loved her for it.

  “Sleep, Skye. I’m here. I love you, and I’ll protect you. Just sleep.”

  He held her until she finally relaxed and slept.

  Santa Louisa was a small, quiet coastal town. Could so many deaths, in such a short time, be unconnected? It could be demons, but it wasn’t like any possessions he’d heard about. If anyone was possessed there would be residual clues—smells, possible marks on the floor or walls. He suspected Moira would be able to walk the crime scenes and know for certain.

  If there was something supernaturally evil responsible for the cases Skye pulled over the last twenty-four hours, Anthony would find out. And if he had to ask Moira O’Donnell for help, he’d do it.

  He would do anything to protect Skye.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  O God! can I not save

  One from the pitiless wave?

  Is all that we see or seem

  But a dream within a dream?

  —EDGAR ALLAN POE

  It was the dream that couldn’t die.

  Gino held a knife. He’d taken a life. Guilt pulsed through his body like a snake slithering through his veins. The nightmare that was real.

  The boy had been possessed, moving through the village with singular purpose: to kill. Men, women, children. One after another. No one stopped him. They hesitated in their fear, and he slit their throats. They fought back, and he tortured them in ways Gino had never fathomed, wished he’d never known or seen. When the boy reached the third hut, the screams and cries of the dying awakened those still sleeping.

  Gino’s friend Ravi, the village elder who had brought him to this forsaken Central American country, tried to stop the boy, yet the boy was no longer of this world but of the next. He held Ravi with one hand—impossible, but Gino had seen it with his own eyes! Held him up and snapped his neck with a squeeze.

  Impossible, except that the boy was possessed. His eyes were dead. Evil flowed through his body, not blood.

  Ravi collapsed in a heap on the parched earth, his neck at an impossible angle.

  Gino ran back to his small hut and took up his crucifix and Bible. He could taste evil, feel it crawling on his skin, hot and seductive and fearsome. He could hardly breathe as the screams and cries of the dead and dying vibrated in his head. His hands shook, but if he did nothing to stop the slaughter, the demon would kill all ninety-seven people in this small, poor village.

  He ran out to confront the beast.

  “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave!”

  The boy flinched, as if stung by a bee.

  Gino, emboldened by the power in his voice, began the rite of exorcism.

  “In the name of the Father, and of the …

  The boy slit the throat of a woman who knelt in prayer. Her dying eyes accused Gino.

  … you told me God was loving and merciful … you lied to me … you brought death to our peace …

  And Gino knew then that her unspoken words were true. It was his fault; he’d brought evil with him. He must destroy the damn book!

  “Gino,” the demon mocked, and he saw the true face of evil slithering beneath
the boy’s skin.

  He called upon St. Michael the Archangel.

  The demon laughed. “Geeeeennnoooooooooo …

  His head hurt and blood dripped from his nose. Still he continued the exorcism. He threw holy water on the boy’s body. Steam rose from his skin as the beast cried out in pain, a demonic scream that seemed to come from under the earth as the child fell to his knees.

  Gino’s strength grew.

  Then the demon rose, laughing, and lightning struck a hut, trapping the family inside the blazing room.

  Gino spoke the words that had been so effective before. Why didn’t they work now? Where was God? Where was St. Michael?

  Or was it him? He’d opened the book, but he hadn’t read. Had the demon been inside, waiting for his weakness to crack a seal he didn’t know was there?

  “Leave the boy, Satan!”

  He felt his feet rising from the ground.

  I am dying.

  He hovered two feet off the ground, trapped and helpless as the demon set another hut on fire. And another.

  In the demon’s excitement over the fires, he dropped the knife.

  Gino continued the exorcism ritual even while levitated; the demon faltered, but never stopped. Gino, however, fell to the ground and the knife was within his reach.

  He clenched it. It was infused with evil, but he held on. It burned his flesh, but he held on.

  The next hut went up in flames. If anyone ran, they were thrown through the air as if by magic.

  As if by magic. The book!

  Gino rose to his feet, knife dripping innocent blood, and with strength he prayed for, he cut the demon’s hand off. Small snakes slithered out of its body, spreading the darkness, the evil, coming for him. He stabbed the demon once, twice, three times …

  The boy fell to his feet. Smoke filled the air, whirled around him; he felt the demon touch his soul, then scream as he disappeared into the earth, and the ground was scorched.

  “F-Father.”

  The boy’s eyes were dying. Dying. Gone. He died. Innocent. At Gino’s hand. He dropped the knife and prayed for death, but God wasn’t merciful.

  Gino searched his hut for the book he’d found last week in an abandoned, crumbling structure that at first he’d believed was a church hundreds of years old. He should have known from the arcane and profane symbols on the remaining walls and floor that the church wasn’t dedicated to God. If he’d never gone inside he would never have found the book.

  He searched the entire village three times before collapsing in exhaustion.

  The book was gone.

  His penance, it seemed, was purgatory on earth. Reliving the nightmare, the fear, the suffering, the murder of an innocent boy. The endless searching for a book that seemed to have vanished into thin air.

  Gino woke from the violent memories every night these last few weeks. So often, in fact, that he feared the dark and dreaded sleep. He took to walking the halls alone, praying for peace, praying to be free.

  For two decades he’d fought the memories, beaten them back, and they were finally gone. For years they were gone. His penance had been paid. He had been healed in the loving presence of God, his faith restored … but then the memories had returned, worse than before. Vivid. The taste and scent and feel of blood on his hands, in his nose, twisting him in knots so tight he couldn’t eat or sleep or think.

  Repent. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

  Chants from the chapel drew him out of his bed and he stood, feet bare, his sleep shirt brushing against his old, gnarled knees.

  He looked down and saw snakes. Small, baby snakes, slithering. He couldn’t scream. He couldn’t move. He squeezed his eyes closed.

  “Gino, come to us, as it is above, it is below.

  “Robert, come to us, as it is above, it is below.

  “Lorenzo, come to us, as it is above, it is below.”

  They were all being summoned to the chapel, every one of them. They were sinners; they needed to repent and be cleansed. Be punished.

  You have been forgiven. Stay.

  He opened his eyes. The snakes were gone.

  “Gino, come to us, as it is above, it is below.”

  Gino didn’t notice the tears streaming down his face as he turned the knob and left his room. He walked down the hall, heard other doors opening, heard the chanting in the chapel.

  He needed the pain to stop.

  He stepped into the chapel and smelled blood. It was his own.

  Rafe’s chest burned as if he’d been stabbed with a knife. He reached down to pull the knife out …

  “Rafe—”

  He opened his eyes and saw Father Isa Tucci, a knife in his hand, blood spatter on his face.

  “No!” He struck out. Hit flesh.

  A grunt—female—registered. He sat up, didn’t know where he was.

  “Rafe! It’s me, Moira. Rafe, please, you’re having a nightmare.”

  Moira. She stood next to him, her hand rubbing her jaw.

  Oh, God, I hit her. I hit her.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I’m tough.”

  She sat next to him. Took his hands in hers. He looked at her. Her jaw was red, on top of the assorted cuts and bruises from the earlier assault. She wore a black tank top, the bandage Anthony had dressed earlier was clean and startling white. She wasn’t bleeding anymore.

  He pulled one hand from hers, gently touched the tender spot where he’d lashed out in his sleep.

  “What was it?”

  He rose from the bed and looked around. Skye’s guest room. Moira had insisted on taking the couch, but he’d wanted her to have the bed. She’d refused. She was stubborn. He faced her. That stubborn expression was still on her face when she stood, only inches from him, and asked, “Rafe, was it another memory?”

  “It wasn’t mine. What did they do to me? Why did they do this to me?”

  She hugged him close to her. She smelled fresh, of soap and water. Fresh and alive and so beautiful it made him ache.

  “I promise you, Rafe, we will find out exactly what they did.”

  He liked the way she felt, the way she smelled. She was solid, whole, real … just what he needed. “I—I don’t understand anything. But I feel everything, like I was right there. The smells, the pain, the fear.”

  She repeated, “We will find out what they did and reverse it.”

  “You were a witch, why don’t you know?”

  The pain on her face came and went so fast Rafe almost missed it. But it was there, and it lingered in her eyes before she shielded them.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  She cut him off. “Anthony and Skye are still sleeping. I’m going for Lily now, before dawn.”

  “You can’t do it alone.”

  “You can’t come with me. They want you—I told you what I overheard last night.”

  “But they want to kill you.”

  “My mother has wanted to kill me for a long time. But they want you for something else, and until we know exactly what they did to you in the hospital and what they need you for now, you have to keep a very low profile.”

  He wanted to explain his comment, that it came from frustration and fear, not because he thought she was one of them. She’d taken off the bandage from her neck; the welt was still red. She’d braided her hair loosely down her back, making her look almost vulnerable.

  He’d hurt her. He ached inside and wished he could take the words back.

  “I’m sorry,” he said simply.

  “It’s okay.”

  But she didn’t look at him, and then she walked out.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  As Moira neared the Ellis home, she felt the magic at work even before she saw the Victorian house at the crossroads. The spells were so potent that she feared she’d be discovered before she even crossed the threshold.

  She drove past the house without slowing, continued around the block, and parked far down the street behind it. Dawn had just
started to bleed over the mountains, and dark shadows shielded her as she walked along the tree-lined street in the early morning fog.

  She circled the house, careful to stay off the property, using all her senses in search of a weak spot.

  You’re a witch, reverse the spell.

  She could. She still felt the power inside her, the evil she’d been born with. She could unleash it. She’d find Fiona, if Fiona didn’t find her first. If she planned it, she could stop the coven.

  And people would die.

  The knowledge that Moira could do something didn’t mean it was right or safe. She and Peter had planned for months before she started using magic to thwart her mother. They’d done everything they could to protect her, everything to keep her safe.

  And that plan had ended in death.

  Enough, Moira. Do your job.

  She stared at the dark Ellis house. There was magic at work here, but she discerned that any spells were to protect against evil spirits only. The herbs growing in the garden, the plants under the windows, the talismans above each door—they wouldn’t stop a person from walking in, or alert the witch that there was an intruder. Maybe Moira had a shot after all.

  She picked the narrow side yard, next to the attached garage, because there was a door that couldn’t be seen from the main house. It provided her with a natural barrier from both neighbors and Lily’s mother spotting her.

  She stepped into the yard, her senses on high alert. A television was on two houses over, a news program, but Moira couldn’t hear distinct words. Birds tweeted, high and low, building in sound as dawn grew. She was calm but alert, and had no sensation that the spell cast here was turning on her, signaling the witch.

  Emboldened, she approached the door. Locked.

  There were no locked doors when you were a witch, but you didn’t need to be a witch to use a pick. She pulled her small set from her pocket and three seconds later she was in, mentally thanking Rico for teaching her not only how to kill demons but to break and enter the old-fashioned way.

  The garage housed a compact car and shelf upon shelf of dried herbs and canning jars. At first glance it appeared to be the craft shop for a creative sort, but Moira knew what these herbs and plants were used for, and none of it was good. A dried flower arrangement hung above the door. Decorative on the surface, but the herbs were to banish spirits, further protecting those inside.