Mortal Sin (4 page)

It was here, on rocky cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, alongside dead plants and dead birds, and the remnants of human sacrifices searing her bones as she felt their souls cry with the pain of eternal torture, that Moira knew she’d find Fiona. The clues were here; she just had to understand. To listen. To suffer until the truth revealed itself.

Rafe said she was psychic, but Moira feared foreknowledge, unable to trust it as he did. Maybe because she didn’t trust herself. What if this psychic curse came from what her mother had done to her as a child? What if her mother could twist this curse and use it against her? To kill her?

Or, worse, to kill Rafe.

Kill the man she loved. Again.

Moira should never have fallen in love again. Her love was her greatest weakness. It made her vulnerable. Susceptible to being controlled. She had to step away, to get away from Rafe and everyone she cared about. Only then, could she think straight and protect them.

An involuntary cry escaped her chest. The despair that filled her would be debilitating if she stayed on the scorched cliffs too long. She must go. She knew she should leave, but times like now, she accepted the punishment. Didn’t she deserve to suffer for all the pain she’d caused in her past?

“Moira,” a voice said.

Moira pulled her knife and was ready to throw it without looking. But the voice was familiar.

Gut instincts stopped her from killing eighteen-year-old Lily Ellis.

“Dammit, Lily! You shouldn’t be here.”

Moira looked around for a threat before she sheathed her knife. Lily had lost weight she couldn’t afford to lose. At first, Moira thought the teenager had been under a spell, but she saw her nearly every day and never felt magic around her.

Maybe you just don’t know. Maybe you lost your spidey sense.

Lily glanced around nervously, then focused on Moira. Her skin was unnaturally pale. “My mom came to the school today. She was waiting for me at my locker during lunch.”

“Well, shit.” Moira ran both hands through her hair. What was that woman up to now?

Elizabeth Ellis was a witch in Fiona’s coven. She was so evil, so dark, that she’d been willing to sacrifice her daughter to the Seven Deadly Sins—incarnate demons that had been released from Hell fourteen weeks ago. Two were trapped at Olivet, but five still roamed the Earth, claiming souls, stealing lives. But every time Moira had been sent into battle, thinking she was facing one of the Seven, the demon had turned out to be a lessor spirit. As if the Seven had pulled up false demons to fool them, to wear them down. Moira was going stir-crazy, wanting to either find one of the Seven or her mother. Or both.

Or neither. Sometimes, running away looked particularly appealing.

Lily’s chin quivered. “She said they’re coming for me.”

“She’s trying to scare you.” Moira walked over to Lily, who stood on the outside of the now eradicated circle that had once contained the Seven. She led Lily away from the portal, away from the energy drain. Almost immediately, Moira felt better. Rafe didn’t want her coming here alone, but Moira knew she’d find answers if she was strong enough. It was just a matter of time, of patience, of penance.

“It was different this time,” Lily said.

“You’re eighteen now. She doesn’t have a claim on you.”

“You’re sure I’m… clean?”

Lily looked so fearful that Moira spontaneously hugged her. The physical embrace felt awkward to Moira, but Lily was comforted.

“There’re no spells surrounding you. But if you let them see your fear, they’re that much closer to winning.”

Still, Moira opened her senses, just a bit. She felt the heat from the portal behind her, the fires of Hell no one felt except for her. She sensed Lily’s fear, a dark and deep fear that went beyond whatever Elizabeth Ellis had said. But there was no active spell. Nothing to influence Lily.

She stared at the young girl. She looked both older and younger than her age. So much had happened that she hadn’t been prepared for. She saw blood on her arm. She reached out, took Lily’s wrist, and turned so she could inspect the mark. A scratch. “What’s this?”

Lily stared, as if she’d just noticed “That’s where my mother grabbed me. She squeezed me so tight I didn’t think I could get away.”

Moira sighed. She didn’t know how to make this right, but there was something going on with Lily beyond the surprise visit from her Mommie Dearest.

“What are you really scared of, Lily?”

She shook her head.

“Tell me.” Her voice came out more forceful than she’d planned. “Lily. You have to tell me the truth.”

“Dreams. Nightmares. I can’t sleep. I see—
things.
Bad things. I wake up screaming and Jared and Mr. Santos run into my room and I feel so stupid. But they seem so
real
.”

Jared Santos was Lily’s boyfriend, and the kid who had tipped Moira off at the beginning about what was going on in Santa Louisa. He’d made it his personal mission to protect Lily. Hank, Jared’s father, was a deputy with the sheriff’s department, and agreed to let Lily stay with them because no one trusted Elizabeth Ellis. Apparently, there was no legal evidence against Elizabeth that could keep her in prison. Moira didn’t care about the law, but she couldn’t very well kill the woman in cold blood.

She said to Lily, “I’ll check Jared’s house again, just in case.” Moira didn’t think that Elizabeth was powerful enough to cast a dream spell and Moira would be able to feel the remnants on Lily. But Moira believed in double—triple—checking.

Lily sighed with relief. “Thank you.”

“You need to eat.”

“I try. I can’t. Something bad is coming.”

“We knew this day would come,” she said, both excited that it was going to end soon… and fearful of what that end would mean. Moira could keep up the brave front, but she wasn’t prepared for a battle. Not with her mother. She’d much rather face another of the Seven than the woman who started this all.

“It’s different,” Lily said. “My nightmares are all about you. And blood. And a voice.”

She didn’t want to know, but she asked anyway. “What voice?”

“He repeats over and over ‘Save Moira. Save Moira.’”

“Do you know who?”

The girl nodded.

“Well? Tell me!”

Still, Lily hesitated before whispering, “Father Philip.”

Moira’s heart skipped a beat as grief—physical, overwhelming grief—hit her. Father Philip was dead. His body was buried in consecrated ground. He wasn’t talking to Lily or anyone. Because he was
dead.

Moira would never forgive herself for what happened to him. He’d come to Santa Louisa to save her, and then, he died.

“It’s just a dream,” Moira insisted.

Lily shook her head. “It’s
more
than a dream. He’s talking
to me
. He’s trying to tell me something important, I know it. I feel…
connected
to him. I can’t explain it any other way. He’s scared about something, and that makes me scared.”

“He’s dead, Lily. Gone.” Moira didn’t want to think about it. The pain of loss still haunted her.

Tears brightened Lily’s eyes. “His body is gone. But that’s all.”

“You can’t talk to spirits. They lie. It’s not Father Philip!”

Lily stepped back. “I’m not talking to him. He’s talking to me. I swear to you, Moira, I’m doing everything you’ve told me to. I can’t control these dreams. The more I try, the more they come to me.”

Why wasn’t Father talking to Moira? Was she that vain, that jealous, that she thought that Father Philip—her mentor, the only man she actually thought of as a
father
—should talk to her after death instead of a teenager he’d barely known? Why Lily?

Because he’d baptized her. He sacrificed himself to save her. He’d said she was important.

Moira’s head hurt. She didn’t want the pain of grief, not with everything else she was juggling.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “Okay.”

“You believe me?”

She didn’t answer the question. “Let’s go to Jared’s house. Make sure everything is kosher there. Then we’ll talk about what we’ll do about these dreams of yours.” She started walking toward the turn-out where she’d hidden the truck she wasn’t supposed to drive because she didn’t have a license. Then she stopped and frowned. “Lily, how did you get here?”

“I walked.”

“That’s like two, three kilometers.”

“I’ve been walking a lot.”

“That has to stop, Lily.” Moira turned to her. “You can’t be alone. Not out here. Not
anywhere.
”

“Sometimes,” Lily said, looking over Moira’s shoulder toward the ocean, “I start walking and I don’t realize it until I’m somewhere else.”

“Sleepwalking?”

“I guess—but it happens in the day, too. Like today—I thought of you, after my mother came, and I just started walking. I didn’t know where I was going; I just knew I’d find you.”

Well, shit. Moira needed to talk to Rafe. And Anthony, maybe, if she couldn’t avoid it. If Lily was going into trances, that couldn’t be a good thing. And thinking that Father Philip was communicating with her? What if his spirit wasn’t at rest? What if he was trapped in the astral plane, dead but unable to move on because of some nefarious reason? If that was the case, Moira would bet her mother had a hand in it.

Tears fell from Lily’s pale blue eyes. “What’s wrong with me, Moira? Did my mother do something? Am I always going to be so… so
broken?
”

Broken. That’s exactly how Moira felt.

“I’ll find out,” Moira said. “Let’s go. This place is draining, and I need an energy boost.”

#

By energy boost, Moira meant a quad-shot latte at the popular downtown coffeehouse, The Bean Bag. “Bean” for coffee bean and “Bag” for tea bag, but the tea was barely drinkable. Though Moira much preferred tea, she’d learned to appreciate the benefits of espresso, even though she disguised the bitter taste with six packets of sugar.

There was no use sending Lily back to school because it was after two in the afternoon. But she didn’t want to leave the girl alone, and she needed to get into Jared’s house again. She sent Jared, Lily’s boyfriend, a message to meet them at The Bean Bag ASAP.

Lily was sipping a watery iced green tea, the sight of which made Moira cringe. They sat outside, and Moira watched the street. She’d been jumpy all day. Maybe because Rafe had been up all night with a migraine and she hated that she couldn’t help him. He’d finally fallen asleep at dawn. Moira could only sleep for a couple hours before being drawn to the cliffs.

Something was brewing. As Lily said, something bad was coming. Bad was such an all-encompassing word. They had faced
bad
already; it had nothing on what they would soon face. Moira felt it, an electric tingle over her skin, both alluring and terrifying.

She’d called Rico yesterday, her trainer at Olivet. Olivet, the training ground for St. Michael’s warriors. Rico had never liked when Moira called him part of God’s special forces, but if the shoe fit. Still, Rico was—for lack of a better word—her boss. He’d trained her, he sent her on assignments, he debriefed her. He gave her tools and weapons and had created a clean identity in case she had to bolt from the country in a hurry. So when she got these odd sensations, she called him and shared her thoughts. He’d said she was antsy because there were no big hot spots, nothing to signal where the Seven were active. Said to be patient, they were doing all that they could.

She’d told him to pound sand.

Okay,
maybe
she’d sounded the false alarm a couple of times, but patience had never been her virtue, and dammit, the Seven
were
still out there, claiming souls and leaving destruction in their wake. Why couldn’t they see it? Was humanity so broken they couldn’t decipher the difference between human destruction and supernatural destruction?

And then there was the matter of her mother…

“We need to put a bell on you,” Moira muttered.

“Excuse me?” Lily said.

She hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud. “You can’t just wander around. You left the school at noon and two hours later were on the cliffs. It wouldn’t take longer than an hour to walk there—what were you doing for the other hour?”

Lily frowned as if she had never considered that before. “I don’t know.”

“If your mother realizes you’re having these blackouts or whatever we’re going to call them, she might be able to use them to her advantage.”

“Maybe she’s causing them.”

“I don’t think so.” She’d checked up on Lily far more than she would have under any other circumstances. She was over-protective of the girl, and Moira didn’t know why. Instincts? Guilt? Her promise to Father Philip? What she knew was that she hadn’t felt any spells over Lily, nothing magical on her person, no hex bags or even a simple memory loss spell. Moira didn’t know whether to be more worried about the memory loss or by the dreams where Lily thought Father Philip was talking to her.

What if Father
is
talking to her?

Her phone rang. It was Rafe.

“You’re awake,” she answered.

“Anthony is here. Bertrand was murdered.”

Her sense of foreboding deepened. “What happened?”

“We don’t know yet,” Rafe said. “But after yesterday… ”

He didn’t need to spell it out. Anthony had confronted Bertrand as a distraction so Rafe and Moira could search the hospital for clues as to what Bertrand had done to Rafe during the ten weeks he was in a coma. All three of them would be on security cameras. “We have to be ready to bolt,” she said.

“That’s extreme.”

“Is it? This smells like a set-up.” Her phone beeped. She glanced down and sighed. “Rafe, it’s Rico. I gotta go.”

She didn’t give Rafe a chance to argue with her. She hung up and answered Rico’s call. “Hello, Sunshine,” she said.

“I need you at Olivet ASAP.”

“I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”

“I don’t have time for your sarcasm. John disappeared after sending me a photo of a demon mark.”

She hesitated. John Martinelli was one of the best and brightest under Rico’s tutelage. He was all stealthy and smart. “John disappeared how?”