Allison Brennan - Original Sin

In ancient Latin she spoke a spell that Moira had never heard before. The words seemed to be aimed at her through a fast-moving tunnel. Moira’s vision faded. She put her hands out and screamed, but felt no vibration in her throat. She was falling, falling, deeper and deeper into her mind.

It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real .

She lay naked on a bed of feathers, the sunlight streaming through the high windows of the retreat on the far side of the island off Sicily. This was her cottage, where the priests had hidden her while she, Peter, and the others tried to find a way to save her and defeat Fiona.

Peter came to her, glorious with his olive complexion, broad chest, long sun-streaked brown hair. They were in love, had fought their feelings for months, knowing that giving in to the desire building inside of them would be violating everything that Peter held dear.

“Loving you isn’t wrong,” Peter told her as he slid into bed with her. “Loving you is heaven on earth.”

She felt his hands, his lips, his breath on her neck. So tender but determined; confident but timid. The conflict was in both of them. Guilt battled need, pleasure battled duty. He skimmed her breasts, her stomach; his hands were between her legs, then he was sliding inside her, filling her, loving her …

“Loving me is deadly.” Her hands went up around his neck and squeezed him. “Your fall from grace was of your own accord. You will burn in Hell!”

No, no, this never happened! But Moira couldn’t push the vision from her mind. She tried to fight it, and as she fought she heard distant laughter. Her mother.

See him now, see him now, see him now .

Suddenly, she was free-falling and floating, as if having an out-of-body experience. She saw Peter.

Peter! My love, I miss you, I love you, I’m so sorry …

He was in the middle of an Irish meadow, the grassy knoll outside her grandmother’s cottage. She wanted to run to him, fly to him, but she was trapped, held back by invisible hands. The meadow turned to fire. Peter stood on an island in the middle of lava, whips of flame slicing his back, leaving red welts. Over and over and over …

“You bitch!”

Moira pulled herself from the spell …

… use your mind, look inside …

… Rico was talking. Focus, focus, focus . She built the wall around her mind, like a caterpillar built a cocoon, fighting back as best she could.

Your will is powerful. Focus .

The laughter rang louder. “Poor girl,” Fiona said, mocking.

Moira was pushed by an unseen force against the back wall. The wind was violently knocked out of her and she couldn’t draw in another breath. She was suffocating. She would die in this cell, not a mark on her, and Fiona would win. She’d take the Seven Deadly Sins and complete whatever fearsome plan she had.

Fiona released her and Moira fell to the cement floor, gasping for air. She had nothing to protect her. The sheriff had confiscated her knives, her cross, her holy water, her medallion, the medal that Rico had told her never to remove.

“You were chosen, and you rejected the greatest gift in the universe!” Fiona said. “You damaged me. But I fought for what was mine and I’m stronger now. More powerful than you or any of your kind.”

Moira’s head ached and she mentally pushed back, fighting whatever images Fiona tried to plant inside her. Her head felt as if it would explode.

She felt something wet and sticky on the ground; she touched her face and came away with blood. Her nose was bleeding like a waterfall. She would bleed to death. Here. It would be called natural causes. A fluke. And no one would believe the prisoner in the far cell, that a beautiful woman had killed Moira without touching her. Who would?

“I wish I had time to toy with you, fealltoir . But I have work to do.”

Moira looked up from where she bled on the floor. Fiona sounded irritated, and her brow was wrinkled, showing frustration.

“If I want it done right,” Fiona murmured, then turned her attention back to Moira. She stepped as close to the bars as she could without touching and smiled.

Fiona’s lips moved, but Moira couldn’t hear what she said, or read her lips. Her lungs grew heavy, as if filling with water, and Moira felt as though she were drowning. She couldn’t breathe. She grabbed her throat, the sensation of choking so real-suddenly, she coughed up water, a half cup, then more.

Fiona watched. “It would be such fun practicing on you, but I don’t have time. I’m going to share something with you before you die, though. Something to take with you.”

Moira screamed as if a knife had pierced her brain. The pain was so excruciating that Moira prayed to God to just kill her now. The invisible knife twisted, twisted, her skull pounding in agony. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she curled up in a fetal position, wanting to pound her head into the cement because anything would feel better than this.

She tried but failed to use her will to hold back the pain, to stop the inevitable. Fiona was too strong, too powerful. Rico had been wrong. Moira’s will was far too weak to fight. She’d told him before that she couldn’t battle Fiona without magic, and now she was proven right. Her will … useless.

Suddenly a flood of images cascaded through her mind. Women. Naked, virgins, all sacrificed brutally, bloodily. Dead because Moira had escaped her fate, had run away from being goddess of the underworld, liaison to the magicians, the Mediator.

She whimpered, unable to speak. Fiona said, “Do you know how many had to die in your place? Eleven. One for each month I couldn’t find you during the year you hid from me. By the time you reached your twenty-second year, it was too late. The window was gone. You did that. To all of them. The priest was icing on the cake.” She laughed, but there was no humor, just cold pleasure. Moira tried to crawl into the corner, as far from Fiona as she could get, but the pain stayed. She was dying. She could move no more than a few excruciating inches, her nose still dripping blood. She swallowed and tasted her blood, her mouth coated with the sweetly metallic flavor.

The priest was icing on the cake . Peter. Dear God, how could you let this happen? How could you allow Fiona to hurt so many?

Fiona said, “I wish I could have shared those sacrifices with you a long time ago, but the one thing you are good at is running and hiding. You should have stayed hidden, Andra Moira, because you are incapable and weak. You will never defeat me.”

Moira’s body rose from the floor and hovered in midair before Fiona’s telekinetic magic threw her across the cell, against the far wall, where an unseen force had her pinned. Moira began to speak Hebrew through the blood in her mouth, the blood flowing from her nose. Weak, weaker, weakest … she was weakest. She began to fade, her mind mush, black then white then dark again.

Moira knew little Hebrew, but she remembered this one protective prayer Peter had taught her to hide her soul from Fiona. All her concentration went to remembering the words, and repeating them over and over. She was going to die, but she couldn’t lose her soul. Fiona would torture her for eternity, torture those she cared about.

“Your pathetic attempt at fighting me will fail,” Fiona said, and the pain inside Moira’s head exploded so she couldn’t remember her name, let alone an ancient Jewish prayer.

Suddenly the pain stopped, and Moira lay in a pool of blood. She thought she was dead, until the pain returned-throbbing, aching, bruising pain, but not the unbearable agony of before. Tolerable.

Fiona was on her cell phone. “I need a few more minutes.” She scowled and stared at Moira.