Allison Brennan - Original Sin

“We’ll just look around the ruins for ten minutes,” she said. “I’ll know if the coven was here. Maybe we’re not too late.” She said it to give Jared hope; she didn’t believe it.

A reluctant Jared followed her into the night. Almost as soon as she’d stepped from the truck, Moira smelled evil. A subtle aroma on the edge of the ruins, growing with each step she took. Incense. Poisoned incense. Strong herbs and odors to control spirits. But it was the sulphuric stench of Hell itself that raised the hair on her arms and made the scar on her neck burn. As Moira neared the midpoint of the spirit trap, she slowed her pace, her feet heavy as lead. Slower. Slower. She wanted to run back to the small, safe island off Sicily and lock herself inside St. Michael’s fortress. She didn’t need this, didn’t want it, but she could not shirk her responsibility.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men-and women-to do nothing .

As Moira approached the wide circle painted in white on the ground, it became clear that the ritual had been interrupted. There were signs of violence-overturned candles, disturbed earth, a feeling of unrest, of commotion. While no candles burned, the scent of extinguished flames hung in the low-lying fog.

There, in the middle of the circle, was a dead body.

Jared saw it right after she did.

“Lily!” he cried.

“Don’t-” Moira tried to stop him, but he pushed her aside and ran into the center of the ruins.

Moira hated being this exposed. There was nowhere to hide, but at least she’d be able to see anyone approach as easily as that person could see her. A small consolation.

Jared knelt next to the body. When Moira looked over his shoulder, she saw it was not Lily, but her cousin Abby.

She lay naked and dead on a red silk sheet. Her eyes were open, her mouth gaping, but there were no wounds on her body. No knife marks, no claw marks, no burns or any external sign of how she died.

Could she have been poisoned? There were impressions in the sheet and ground where bowls of incense had burned, and in the daylight Moira could probably identify what herbs and resins had been used, by scouring the ground for spillage and faint smells. But Fiona and her coven were smarter than that; they wanted to intoxicate their victims, not poison them. They didn’t make those kinds of mistakes.

If Abby Weatherby was dead, they wanted her to be dead.

Jared put his fingers to Abby’s neck, presumably to check for a pulse, but Moira snapped, “Don’t touch her!”

“We have to get her to a hospital,” he said.

“She’s dead.”

“How do you know? You don’t know that. She could be-”

Moira said, “Look at her eyes, Jared. Open, glassy, and her mouth-dammit, she’s dead and you must not touch her.”

She didn’t know why that was important, or even if it was. Maybe it was more important for the cops, none of whom would believe that something supernatural had killed the teenager. Without a doubt this was Fiona’s handiwork. The drama, the location, the oversized circle, the elaborate symbols.

Moira cast her light around the site. She hated being inside this spirit trap, even though it had been violently broken. A pile of incense was scattered across the linen. Dried candle wax mixed with dirt and rocks. Any vegetation or plants, here at the lot where the house had burned, were all dead. Nothing living could survive above a gateway to Hell.

What had happened? The ritual circle was a mess. It was a big no-no in the occult world to leave behind signs of any rituals. Witches were hunted as fiercely as they themselves hunted. If demon hunters-like her, Moira acknowledged-could trace a coven’s symbols, they could better track and stop them.

Leaving anything here, at the ruins on the cliffs, told her that Fiona and her minions had been stopped.

Before or after they summoned the demons? Moira didn’t know for certain. But based on the earlier lightning and darkness flying over them, Moira suspected there was at least one more demon on earth tonight.

Jared paced. “Where’s Lily? What happened to Abby? Why is she naked? What’s going on, Moira? You didn’t tell me anyone was going to die!”

Moira countered his hysteria with a calm voice. “I don’t know where Lily is. She and Abby were playing with dangerous things. Where there’s danger, there can damn well be death.”

Moira turned away from the dead teenager, deeply sad and angry at the loss of life. She said, “I don’t know what happened here, but there was a fight-and they left fast. Picked up most of their supplies, but there are two candles over there.” She gestured toward two black pillars on the edge of the circle. “And they didn’t completely eradicate the symbols. Very sloppy, and Fiona is not sloppy.”

Leaving Abby here … that was plain stupid. They always disposed of their victims. They had to, or news of the crime would get out to the public and they would have to be even more cautious. Murder was a crime; occult worship was not.

Ignoring her own advice to Jared, Moira squatted next to Abby and touched her body with two fingers. Her skin was cool and slick with moisture from the ocean fog. Moira was no cop, but she didn’t think the girl had been dead long. And the recent dead were ripe for the picking of demons. If Fiona had brought forth something, it would be around. Or coming back. Demons always returned to their origins-one of many truths Rico had pounded into Moira’s head during their lessons.

She pulled out a container of salt from her pack and poured it in a circle around Abby’s body. She didn’t know whether it would do any good-if the demon was powerful enough, it could just lift her body out of the circle. But it would slow him enough to buy her time. Salt was a purifier and a preservative, a mineral that naturally repelled demons. But like virulent bacteria, the strongest demons built up resistance to any defenses, including ancient defenses like salt.

“What are you doing?” Jared asked her, looking at Moira as if she were a nut job. She was used to it. She’d never been normal, and it seemed that now, at the ripe age of twenty-nine, normal wasn’t in her future, either.

“The salt will stop a demon from snatching Abby’s body. She hasn’t been dead for long. After an hour or two”-Moira honestly didn’t know how long, Rico had only told her to guard the recent dead because they could be summoned-“it won’t matter, because the demons won’t be able to inhabit her. Sort of like animals who only eat fresh kills.” She guessed.

Jared shivered.

“What about Lily? Where is she?”

Moira looked around the area. The ocean waves, less than a hundred yards west and a hundred yards down, crashed unseen against the rocks. In different circumstances they would have soothed her, reminded her of the west coast of Ireland, the only place she’d had peace.

“I’m going to call someone to pick up Abby’s body,” she said. Damn, she dreaded making this call. The minute Father Philip had told her Anthony was in Santa Louisa, she knew she’d have to make contact eventually. She’d be lucky if he didn’t kill her. If he weren’t such a damn high-and-mighty ethical demonologist, he wouldn’t hesitate to slit her throat and blame it on her demonic soul.

“My dad will have to come out,” Jared said, staring at Abby’s body. “I can’t believe she’s dead.”

“Your dad doesn’t understand what’s happened here.”

“What does he need to understand? We found Abby dead! He’s a cop. He’ll call the crime scene people, find out who did this. Find Lily.”

“Who did what? Come on, Jared! I told you how these people operate.”

He was torn, Moira saw the conflict and confusion in his pained expression, but she wasn’t about to sugarcoat the truth.