Allison Brennan - Original Sin

“I am weary of your silence, Raphael,” Fiona said. “Who taught you the ritual? Who else knows the Conoscenza? Raphael, speak to me!”

“Your black magic. Does not work.” He bit back a scream as the demon clawed him. “On. Me.”

Serena walked into the room. She stared at Raphael. She tried to keep her face impassive, but Fiona knew the truth.

“Would you like to play with your lover?” Fiona asked her. “Go ahead. He can’t get away this time.”

Serena turned her back on Raphael and said, “It’s nearly time.”

“You’re not going to offer a sacrifice for his life? I’m surprised, daughter; I thought your love was eternal,” she mocked.

Serena said, “He chose the wrong side.”

She walked over to him. Fiona watched her daughter with interest shielded under a veil of boredom. She had worried a bit that Serena’s lust for Raphael Cooper would blind her to what needed to be done.

Rafe drew in an unsteady breath and watched as the young woman approached him. Calling herself Lisa, she’d played him, used him, seduced him, in order to torture and kill the priests for her evil sacrifice.

Now, Lisa-or Serena, or whatever her name was-took a long look at him. Her eyes, green and catlike, filled with pain and rage, but her voice was well-modulated when she told Rafe, “Every death after the moment on the cliffs when you broke our circle is on your conscience. If you had left us alone, all those people would still be alive.”

She touched his head and chanted something familiar. He recognized the sounds, the language, but not what it meant. It was the language he’d spoken the other night, but even at the time he hadn’t known what it was he was saying.

Suddenly he was on his knees. Images of violence, bloody and vile, played in his head.

She’d drawn out the memories of that night when the mission priests died. The memories he desperately wanted to forget, and now they played over and over and he could do nothing to stop it.

“Stop!” he begged, holding his head as he curled into the fetal position.

Fiona turned to her daughter, proud. “Impressive, Serena.”

“It’s time,” she said and walked out.

Fiona told her pet to guard the prisoner, then she followed her daughter. She was impressed, and not a little bit surprised.

Fiona would need to keep a watchful eye on Serena.

Late Friday afternoon and no one was in or around the vicinity of Good Shepherd Church. Lucky for her, Moira thought, as she picked the lock to the back door of the church. At the last moment she considered that there might be an alarm-half-worried, she looked around for a panel, motion sensors, or anything to indicate there was an auditory or silent alarm system. Nothing.

The church was one large room. There was definitely magic in here. Not a lot, and she suspected that none had occurred since Sunday, but it felt strong enough that Moira knew spells had been cast here. Something retained magical energy. She looked quickly around, taking in the simple room instantly.

It appared that this building used to be a business of some sort. Multiple outlets along the floorboard, for plugs and phones, indicated there were probably twenty desks or cubicles. Real estate was Moira’s guess. Now the room was filled with padded folding chairs; the carpet was new and lush, and the altar was a simple polished wood table with a gold cross hung on the wall above it. Moira didn’t want to stay here too long-though the sky was darkening as the sun rapidly set, the front of the “church” was all glass. But she took a moment and looked under the table with her flashlight.

Just as she thought: a sigil. The sigil-a demonlike creature in a hexagram-was unique and likely the patron “demon” of Pennington’s order. Whether it was Fiona’s or a special mark just for Pennington, she didn’t know. She looked around and saw protections over every doorway-herbs disguised as decorative flowers, or framed posters with sayings like “With God, nothing is impossible.” She’d bet there were occult symbols on the flip side of the paintings. Maybe that was the magic she felt, the simple protective spells cast to keep demons and spirits at bay.

There were four smaller rooms off the main room, all on the northern side of the building. The front room-with all the window exposure-was a classroom and day-care center. The next looked to be a meeting room. The rear two were offices. Moira searched both of them, not certain what she was looking for but hoping she’d recognize a clue if she saw it.

Since Pennington was one of the twelve at the ritual, he had to be in Fiona’s inner circle. He’d know where she was living. It wasn’t a hotel, not here in Santa Louisa, where the choices were sparse with no five-star hotels in sight. And Fiona had been here awhile-months. She may have arrived after the murders at the mission, but Moira would bet her money that Fiona had been here for much, much longer. Fiona wouldn’t have trusted even her most trusted circle with every detail of her plans. She would want to be nearby. To watch, supervise, and criticize.

Pennington had arrived in August. The priests died in November. Was he part of it? Directly, or on the periphery? She hadn’t pressed Rafe on the details of the murders, but maybe she should have. She had her theories based on what she did know, what Anthony and Rafe said, and what had been written about the murders in the papers. But she didn’t have details, and if she was missing something …

She searched both offices. The computers were passcode protected, and while Moira could pick any lock and hot-wire almost any car, she knew next to nothing about technology or code breaking. The file cabinets were locked, and those she easily picked. She found little inside-though a printed copy of the membership directory might come in handy. She snatched it, glancing through what looked like over three hundred names. She prayed they weren’t all witches. Chances were only a few of them were practitioners. People like Elizabeth Ellis.

The desk in Pennington’s office drew her in particular. There was magic here, strong and powerful, and for one fear-filled moment she thought she was being watched. It took all her willpower not to cast a shield around herself, knowing that the shield might protect her for that moment, but the magic it generated would alert Fiona to her location.

She shook off the feeling, searched the office, and found a hex bag meant to curse any who entered without permission. She dumped out the bag and said a prayer, then left.

Pennington lived upstairs. Another door, another lock, and she was inside.

He didn’t actually live here-she knew that as soon as she stepped into the stale rooms. These, too, had once been offices and converted into an apartment. It was clean, smelling antiseptic, and furnished with cheap but trendy furniture. The door opened into the living room-two couches and a couple of chairs. The kitchen was in the middle and windowless, the bedroom in the rear. Again, windows faced the street. She kept the lights off; it was not completely dark yet and a few cars had driven by. The church and apartment were on a side street that dead-ended into a park. There were only a handful of businesses here, and most were closed at five. A small cafe on the corner, which she could barely see from the bedroom window, appeared to be the only place still open, and it wasn’t doing a brisk business.

Still, she wasn’t going to take chances. She walked through the kitchen, looked in the refrigerator: sparse. Cans of soda, water bottles, and expired orange juice. The freezer had more food, probably used if he had to stay for a reason.

One of the two bedrooms had been converted into an office. Unlike Pennington’s official office downstairs, this space looked well-used. She searched the desk first. There was no computer, but there was a cord to connect a laptop to a nearby printer. Nothing of interest in the desk, except the bottom drawer, which was locked.