Mortal Sin (24 page)

A demon mark.

It was slightly different from the marks of the other victims, but it had the same thin red bloodline making up a tattoo-like pattern. Anyone who didn’t know would think it was a tattoo.

“He’s dead,” Rafe said.

“Tasers don’t kill people,” she said in disbelief. She didn’t want to kill anyone. That’s why she used her Taser. Non-lethal force. She felt sick to her stomach.

“It wasn’t the taser. Don’t blame yourself. You had no choice.”

Skye might not have had a choice, but it weighed on her.

Now is not the time to wallow in self-pity, Skye!

Ty came up to Skye. “Sheriff, my men are ready. I suggest we clear the street first, then move in and assess the status of the bar. According to my guy on the roof across from Floyd’s, no one has been in or out since he’d taken up his post. But the blinds are closed and we have no visual inside.”

“Clear the street,” she agreed.

She let Ty do his job. There were two dozen people, many of them injured. Some were victims, hiding in or under cars, trying to get away from the fights. Others were the attackers, using fists, sticks, or chairs to beat their victims. Thank God none of them had knives or guns; it would have been a war zone.

Skye worked with her deputies to get the victims to safety in the park across the street where medics were stationed for triage. She wasn’t surprised Rafe knew first aid and assisted—but she also noted that he was focused on the victims’ necks and backs, looking for the demon mark. None of the victims were so marked.

Rod arrived as Skye brought over a young woman who’d been assaulted and nearly raped until her boyfriend beat off her attacker.

“Where’s my boyfriend? He’s still in the bar. Andy. His name is Andy. He saved my life,” she sobbed.

“I’ll find him,” Skye promised.

Rod told Skye, “I have a sedative ready. It might help.”

“Rafe told me. Follow me.” She led the way back to her truck.

“Where is Rafe?” Rod asked.

“He’s helping with triage. And looking for a mark.” Rod understood exactly what she meant.

SWAT had nearly cleared the street. They had to use force to subdue many of the attackers, who fought their restraints. It was like everyone was on PCP—wild, aggressive, stronger than they should be.

Two cops brought over a man who thrashed so violently in his cuffs that his wrists were raw and bleeding.

“Stop,” Rod said.

“Fucking pigs! Fucking Fascist Cops! I know my rights! I want a lawyer!”

“Doctor, we need to get him in a pen,” one of the cops said.

“Let me try something.”

The cops looked at Skye, who nodded. Rod took out a syringe with a cloudy liquid. It took four cops to hold the guy down so Rod could inject him.

The guy growled and screamed as he fought the hands that held him down. Within half a minute, he stopped fighting. His eyes were still wild, but they were also confused. A half-minute later, he was lethargic. Not completely sedated, but compliant.

“Keep him cuffed,” Rod said. “Take him directly to the hospital. I’ve already talked to the administrator. They’re creating a secure wing so we can test their blood and find out what’s going on with them.”

Good. Keep up the myth that this was a drug-induced act of violence.

“We only have two wagons. We have at least twelve people to sedate and get over there.”

“Bring them to me, I’ll sedate them and we’ll send them over in the wagons.”

Within twenty minutes, SWAT had the street under complete control. Now they had to contend with the bar.

No one had spoken to Tom Williams in nearly an hour. No one had spoken to anyone in the bar. From all witness accounts, there were eight to fifteen people still inside.

“I wish Moira were here,” Skye whispered to herself. She looked around for Rafe.

He was nowhere to be seen.

The street was eerily quiet. Many of the streetlights were busted, but the patrol cars were shining their lights down the street. Ty Stevenson approached Skye.

“We’ve secured the street. We have three men in the alley with eyes on the back door. Three men behind the tactical truck across the street from Floyd’s, and one on the roof with a good visual of the building. No one has left the bar. We’re calling for more equipment—cameras, radios, the works—from Santa Barbara County, but it’s going to be a while before their unit gets here.”

“We have three options,” Ty continued. “Wait until we get reinforcements from Santa Barbara, breech the facility, or open hostage negotiations.”

“Let me start negotiations,” Skye said. “And call David Collins. He’s probably still at the church, but I need him here. Did you see the man I was with earlier? Raphael Cooper from the mission? He was helping with triage.”

“He went with a paramedic to retrieve a woman hiding under a car. She was terrified. He talked her out.”

Sounded just like Rafe. Except, he wasn’t here now, and her gut told her he’d done something really, really stupid.

When Rafe helped the EMT retrieve the woman who refused to move, he took a moment to assess the bar.

It was quiet, but not completely quiet. There were people crying. An occasional raised voice. Something was going on in there, but Skye’s deputies weren’t close enough to hear.

He’d told the EMT he was making sure there was no one else in the area and let the man leave with the woman. At the first available opportunity, Rafe slipped into the building next door to Floyd’s, through a broken window. It helped that there were police and firemen moving people to safety, and he was dressed in black. No one saw him.

Rafe went upstairs to the roof and, using the vents as shields from the sharpshooter on the roof across the street, he stayed low until he reached the roof of the bar.

Rafe knew Josh Anderson and his girlfriend Violet Williams. When he first moved to Santa Louisa, several months before the massacre, he’d come into the bar a few times, usually when he was in town for supplies. Rafe wasn’t a big drinker, but he liked people, and being around the troubled priests 24/7 was draining. Josh was easy-going and Violet easy to talk to. And under different circumstances, Rafe would likely have become friends with the two.

He knew them well enough to know the top floor was the apartment Josh and Violet shared—a two-bedroom, one-bath flat with large rooms and a view of the street. The middle floor were offices. To make extra money, Josh rented the middle floor out to a real estate company and used the second bedroom in the apartment as the bar’s office. The bottom floor was the bar.

There was no access point from the roof. The windows facing the alley were narrow, but fortunately had wide enough ledges for window boxes. He dropped down from the roof and broke a window into Josh’s apartment.

He wished Moira was here.

When they worked together, they were stronger. He didn’t have to know why. It was enough for him to know that Moira and he were greater than the sum of their parts. But it was only him tonight, and there were a dozen or more people in danger. He didn’t know what he would face in the bar. It was clear that a demon was responsible for this destruction.

He knew which one.

Based on the fights he’d heard and people he’d spoken with, the demon who’d affected these people was Wrath. Whether Wrath itself was inside the bar, or one of the infected was holding these people hostage, anger was the fuel. Rafe had to keep his cool, not give the creature, human or not, any more ammo. He didn’t know exactly what he was going to do, but hoped the solution presented itself when he needed it.

Quickly, he searched Josh’s apartment and found no one hiding inside. He took out his dagger and slipped it up his jacket sleeve. Cautiously, he opened the door and walked down the stairs to the second floor. The insurance office was set up into one large office with cubicles, and two smaller offices. He almost left when he heard faint, panicked breathing in one of the offices.

He stepped inside, ready to pull his dagger if necessary. “Who’s there?” he asked.

A whimper, followed by a faint
shh!

“I’m Rafe Cooper. I’m here to help. Police are surrounding the building, but we need information.”

Two heads popped up from behind a desk. Girls, barely old enough to drink.

Rafe walked over to them. One was bleeding from a deep cut on her arm, the other had blood all over her, but Rafe thought it was her friend’s.

“What are your names?”

“M-Molly. I’m Molly,” said the girl without the cut arm. “This is Ashley. She’s really hurt.”

“You did good hiding in here. How many people are downstairs?”

“I-I don’t know,” Molly said. “It’s my twenty-first birthday. We’re going to Las Vegas next weekend, but I had to work today, so Ashley and me came here after work and—”

“Shh,” he said as the girl started talking louder. “How did you get up here?”

“After Ashley got cut, we crawled into the corner. When the deputy came in, he distracted everyone. The stairs were right there, so we climbed up. That was so long ago. An hour or more.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“Everything happened at once. We were planning on leaving because people were just being mean. You know, snippy at the waitress, complaining about the drinks. One guy, was so mad that his baseball team was losing, he threw a bottle at the television. Then he got in an argument with this other guy, and hit him. At the same time, this guy at the bar hit a man with his mug. Then beat him. I-I think he’s dead.”

“A lot of them are dead,” Ashley whispered.

“Is there anyone who seemed unusually calm? Or like they weren’t not as upset as everyone else?”

Molly shrugged. “I don’t know. Everyone was either crying or yelling. Then it got very quiet, but we didn’t want to leave.”

“The guy in the purple tie,” Ashley said. “I watched him. He was very angry at first, then he, like, smiled. And—and he picked up Josh, the owner, like he weighed nothing and pushed him over the bar. I hope he’s okay. I think he’s dead. He didn’t get up and the waitress was crying.”

Purple tie. “Thank you both. Stay here. Do you have cell phones?”

“They’re not working.”

Rafe looked around the office. Didn’t they have real phones anymore? Finally, he found the landline on another desk. “Get to that phone and call this number.” He wrote down Skye’s cell phone. “That’s Sheriff McPherson. Tell her everything you told me, and where you both are. Fire and rescue may be able to come in through the window. Tell Skye that I’m going downstairs. And tell her to be ready.”

“You can’t!”

“It’s okay.”

He walked out and left them, hoping they did exactly what he said.

The staircase was at the end of the short hall. It curved once, halfway down. Rafe stood there, before the turn, and listened.

The demon had possessed someone in the bar. The question was when? How? Was it through a ritual or spell? A willing possession or a forced possession? If willing, the demon would be almost impossible to exorcise; if forced, Rafe had a few tricks up his sleeve.

It might not be one of the Seven, but it was still powerful enough to wreak havoc and kill. Still… it had to have a purpose, otherwise everyone would already be dead or crazy. Demons didn’t like to wait around and play. They were brutes, taking what they wanted and leaving destruction in their wake.

At first, Rafe didn’t hear much but stifled voices. Then, a clear male voice tinged with darkness, said, “And now we get to
you
Joshua Anderson. Why aren’t you angrier that your bar has been destroyed?”

“What do you want?” Josh spoke. His voice was weary and pained. He was definitely hurt.

“I want to understand.”

“You’re crazy, George. You’ve totally gone off the deep end.”

“You’re going to bleed to death unless you talk to me.”

A female yelp. Violet, most likely.

Footsteps. Coming closer. Then, a voice at the bottom of the stairs. “If it isn’t Raphael Cooper. Come on down! You’re the next contestant on
The Price Is Your Soul.”

Demons couldn’t read minds, but their instincts were sharp. Sight. Smell. They understood human nature better than most human beings, and they used every tool at their disposal to turn humans to serve them.

Rafe walked down the stairs.

It was clear to him that George, the man with the purple tie, was possessed. His eyes were too bright, his skin too slick, his command of the room too great.

It was also clear to Rafe that George, the human, was dead inside his body. He had a gunshot wound to his chest, a large red mass that would have at least floored him, if not fatal. What did everyone else think? That he had on a bullet-proof vest? That it was a flesh-wound? Or were they thinking he was possessed?

Rafe stepped into view of the rest of the room and took in the damage. The bar was completely trashed. The tables had been pushed against the door and windows, which were shuttered closed from the inside. Violet Williams knelt on the floor next to Josh. Her father, the assistant sheriff Thomas Williams, was sitting in a chair, handcuffed. His gun was missing. There were five bodies on the ground that Rafe could see, and he suspected they were all dead. Two men were in chairs, unmoving, their eyes watching but frozen in place. Held in place by the demon’s will, or by fear?

“What a nice present,” the demon in George said. “Is your mistress coming next? Mistress? Slut? Whore? What does
Andra Moira
go by these days?”

“If she were here, you’d be on your knees.”

“Like you?”

The demon waved his fingers and Rafe fell to his knees. Rafe spoke a simple exorcism rapidly in Latin and the demon wavered just a bit. Rafe watched the others in the room. The two men locked into their chairs moved slightly.

Good. Rafe needed to weaken the demon in order to free the others.

“It won’t be as much fun killing you if she can’t watch,” the demon said.

Definitely not one of the Seven. This demon was playing games. And while Rafe wouldn’t put it past the Seven to toy with their victims, they wouldn’t lose control.