Allison Brennan - Carnal Sin

Rafe waited until the cops turned left, then made a sharp U-turn in the truck and sped up to follow.

They were on Wilshire Boulevard minutes later. Moira glanced down the street toward Velocity. “They didn’t turn.”

“I’m not following him to the police station,” Rafe said.

“Agreed. If he goes there, we turn around and go to Wendy Donovan’s house.”

“How about food? I haven’t eaten, and I doubt you have-since you never eat unless I tell you to. We could get a pizza.”

“Whatever did I do before I saved your ass two weeks ago?”

“I have no idea.”

“I didn’t starve, that’s for sure.” She pulled an energy bar from her pocket, opened it, and split it with Rafe.

“I hate these things.”

“They’ve kept me alive for years,” she teased. “In fact-” She whipped her head around, recognizing the brunette in the red dress walking leisurely down Wilshire Boulevard. “Stop! That’s Nadine! Rafe, stop!”

Rafe braked, causing cars behind to honk.

“She’s beginning to drive me crazy,” Rafe muttered to himself as Moira leapt from the car.

Moira ran through traffic, eliciting more honking horns, but she barely noticed. Nadine Anson was easy to spot-tall, stately, gorgeous-but it was her darkly glowing aura that had caught Moira’s attention from more than a hundred feet away.

Moira didn’t dwell on the fact that her instincts-her extra senses-had been growing since the Seven Deadly Sins had been released. She couldn’t think about how or why, only that she knew that brunette in the red dress across the street was Nadine Anson even though she’d seen only one photograph of the woman.

One photograph and two visions .

It was the height of the dinner hour, and pedestrians walked in singles, pairs, and groups down the street. Moira irritated more than a few of them as she brushed past. She didn’t quite see Nadine anymore through the people, but she saw the glow and kept focused on that.

A thunderclap-though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky-jolted Moira. She kept moving forward, but no longer saw the glow. People around her were silent, looking at the sky.

“It’d better not rain-I just had my hair done!” a woman next to her said.

“I can’t believe this. They said no rain all weekend!”

But raindrops didn’t fall. The night sky was clear, though with all the lights Moira could make out only one or two stars in the sky.

Heart racing, Moira feared the demon that possessed Nadine was looking for more victims. She couldn’t imagine what it would do with all these people in the middle of a city street. Demons didn’t make grand statements; they preferred the small, quiet murders of the soul. Did they fear that if they acted too boldly they’d truly suffer the wrath of God? For a brief moment, Moira wished they would create some catastrophe so that the Big Guy would come down and banish them all forever; then guilt washed over her at the innocent lives that would be lost by such action.

In all of history, demons themselves rarely, if ever, acted among the masses. They didn’t show themselves, or cause disasters. Whether by choice or design, Moira didn’t know. Maybe there were guardian angels preventing the major catastrophes. Demons still used humans to do their dirty work, picking up souls one by one.

But thunder without clouds? A demon-it had to be the succubus possessing Nadine-had done something. Moira couldn’t even see Nadine with all the people.

A nearby scream had Moira picking up the pace, sprinting toward a commotion on the corner of Wilshire and Westwood, an incredibly busy intersection. The lights were annoying enough, but the horns and people were making Moira claustrophobic.

And there was Nadine, standing on the corner, screaming.

“What happened to her?” Moira heard one woman asking her boyfriend as they passed Nadine in distaste.

“Help me!” Nadine screamed.

Nadine Anson screamed for help, pulling her hair so hard that clumps of golden brown came out in her hands. She definitely wasn’t glowing with the demonic aura, and Moira had no idea where the demon had gone. She whirled around, looking at everyone, looking above them, trying to spot the demon’s shadow, but there was none.

The demon had disappeared.

Moira realized she’d never before seen a glowing aura, that her senses had always been focused on her own physical reaction to things she couldn’t see. She’d experienced a heightened awareness of all her other senses, but not sight-until now. She pushed the new talent aside-not just because the idea scared her, but because right now Nadine’s life was in jeopardy as the woman stood too close to the curb. The honking cars didn’t faze the distraught witch, nor did she seem to notice that she’d drawn a crowd.

“Where’s the camera?” a teenager next to Moira asked, eagerly looking around.

This girl thought Nadine was acting? Moira stepped in front of her, to a chorus of, “Hey! I can’t see!” from the girl and her friends.

“Nadine,” Moira said. “Look at me!”

“Help! Oh, God, oh, God, I’m sorry!”

“Nadine, it’s over. It’s gone. Step away, you’re going to get hurt.”

Nadine was sobbing without tears. She looked too thin, too weak, as if she hadn’t eaten in days. Her eyes were hollow and her skin-which had seemed so smooth and lustrous in her photograph-was splotchy and stained dark. What had the demon left behind? What had it stolen from Nadine?

Moira had been possessed once. She’d wanted to kill herself when it was over, because she’d killed the man she loved-the demon used her to kill the man she loved. Willing or not, Nadine couldn’t have known what the demon was going to use her for or how it would affect her.

Or when the demon suddenly left, without the protection of the coven’s circle, how lost and terrified she would feel.

Once the bystanders realized that this show wasn’t a movie, they moved away from Nadine as if she were a leper. Nadine flinched as Moira held her hands out, palms up. “Nadine, I’m a friend.”

“Stay away! Get away from me! It’s your fault. You saw and didn’t do anything! You didn’t help me!”

Nadine pulled more hair from her head, eyes wild and bloodshot. Moira stared at her eyes. They weren’t bloodshot-Nadine was crying tears of blood. Traffic sped by, causing Nadine to sway.

“I need to get you home. Nadine, let me take you home, okay?”

“I know you! I know you! Why didn’t you help me? You didn’t help me! Oh, God! What’s wrong with me?”

“Nadine!” Moira shouted because the woman didn’t seem to hear anything she was saying. “I will help you.” She took another step closer and Nadine took a step back, off the curb. Another horn blared. Where was help?

While most of the people stayed far from Nadine, Grant Nelson ran up. Shock crossed his face as he watched Nadine; then he turned to Moira and asked, “What happened?”

“I saw her walking down the street and jumped out-”

“I know. I saw you get out of the truck and cause a fucking traffic jam on Wilshire at the worst time of night.” Looking into Nadine’s dilated pupils, he made a quick assessment. “Damn drugs.”

Moira couldn’t very well tell the guy Nadine had been possessed for a few days by a psycho demon who’d left her half crazy.

“My partner’s calling an ambulance,” Grant told her, keeping his eyes on the hysterical woman. Someone took a picture with his iPhone, and Grant nearly decked him.

“Watch it,” Moira warned. “Everyone has a fucking camera-phone.”

Grant told the crowd to back off, then turned to Nadine. “Nadine, it’s me, Grant Nelson. You remember me, right? From Velocity?”