Original Sin

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.

“I have to do this again. And again.” She closed her eyes. “I’m not strong enough.”

“You’re stronger than anyone I know. But you are not alone. We can do this.”

She hoped so. The world was a dangerous place without the Seven Deadly Sins making it deadlier.

“We’d better get started. They’re not going to wait around for us to get our act together.”

“Sleep first,” Rafe said.

Rafe looked at Moira’s arm and the bite marks. There had been so much blood, and the acid dripping into Moira’s cuts, her cry of pain. He would never forget what happened in that room. The bite … Moira’s pain … the demon’s dying scream. And now … he looked at the cut he’d made on her hand.

“How did you know?” Moira whispered.

He shook his head. “I remembered how when the Cerberus bit you, it died. I hoped … maybe your blood …” He stopped, not knowing what he was going to say because he couldn’t get his mind around it. “I just knew.”

“Like you knew the magic words.”

“Magic words?”

“How you slowed him down. The exorcism or whatever it was you did. It was the language Serena was speaking. Is that what you did on the cliffs the other night?”

He didn’t know. “Moira, I’m sorry, I wish I had answers-I don’t.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“How did I earn your trust?” It mattered to him, greatly.

“I don’t know, but-we’re in this together. All of us.”

Anthony appeared, joining them inside the ambulance. “I agree,” he said. “Together.” He looked at Moira’s arm as well. “Are you sure it was a demon that bit you? I’ve never heard of anything like a demon dying from biting a human. I’ll research it.” He didn’t sound hopeful.

Rafe smiled woefully as Moira dozed off. “Let’s keep it quiet. There are a lot of people who don’t like Moira.”

Anthony nodded. “I’ll be discreet. Skye’s wrapping up the explanations.”

“Which are?”

“I’m not sure yet, I think she’s winging it. She knows how far she can go.” He put his hand on Rafe’s shoulder. “As soon as she’s done, we’ll go back to my place. You-and Moira-need sleep.” He left.

Rafe looked at the sleeping beauty beside him. Her expression was uneasy and she moaned. He pulled her closer to him and kissed the top of her head.

“I’ll do anything to protect you, my love,” he whispered. “Anything.”