Mortal Sin (26 page)

“It wouldn’t surprise me, but I’ll keep it in mind.” She tilted her head. “And why are you telling me this?”

“Are you prepared to face your sister?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Can’t you ever answer a serious question?”

“What do you want me to say? That I’m prepared to kill her? Damn straight I am. She stood there and watched the demon Envy kill Father Philip. She drugged the priests at the mission, leading them to their slaughter.”

“We need her alive.”

Now Moira did laugh. “Alive? She’ll destroy you.”

“I have a room prepared for her.”

“Fiona will find her. Do not underestimate Serena. She is extremely powerful.” After facing her, Moira suspected she was even more powerful than Fiona thought. There was something going on with Serena that Moira hadn’t quite figured out yet, but Fiona would never allow anyone—even her favored daughter—to be
more
powerful than she.

“If your life is in danger, I understand that you must do what you must do. As will I. But if we can, I want her alive.”

Moira leaned forward. “She can’t be tortured.”

“I’m not making any promises.”

“No. I mean, she can’t. There is nothing you can do to Serena that our mother hasn’t already done. She won’t break.”

“There are scientific ways that do not involve physical or emotional torture.”

“Right. If you say so.” Even after facing Fiona’s magic, Rico never understood how the power worked. “If you really want to draw out Fiona, I’m the only bait that will work.”

“I’m not putting you up for bait, Moira.”

“Yes, you will. When it’s the right time.” Moira had accepted that long ago. “But not until we capture the Seven.”

“I don’t want Serena for bait. She has information I need.”

“You can not trust a word that comes from her mouth.”

They sat there, the rest of the food uneaten. Moira got up, rinsed their plates, and checked her weapons. “I’m ready.”

“Moira, I need you to trust me.”

She looked up at him. “I do.”

“John may have stumbled onto something else. I don’t know for certain, but there could be more going on here than witchcraft.”

“Fabulous,” she said sarcastically. “As if battling dark magic and demons isn’t bad enough. What is it now? Ghosts? Maybe something out of the storybooks like werewolves? Or vampires? Rafe and I stopped a group of wannabe vampires in Los Angeles. Maybe someone else really did get the gift of immortality from the blood demon Bathomet.”

“Stop. I’m serious.”

“Me, too.” She narrowed her gaze. “What are you not telling me?”

“Nothing.”

“Now who’s lying?”

“Nothing I can prove. Just—we both need to watch each other’s backs.”

“Always.”

“Me, too,” Kyle said, stepping into the kitchen.

“No,” Moira and Rico said at the same time.

“If there’s a spirit there, you need me.”

“Hell no,” Moira reiterated.

Monsignor Brody stepped into the kitchen. He wore a plaid bathroom and matching slippers. Without his eyeglasses, the priest looked extremely vulnerable.

“You’re not going either, Brody,” Moira said. She turned to Rico. “Stop this insanity.”

“I have no intention of going,” Brody said. “But Kyle can be of help.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Rico said. “He hasn’t been trained.”

“No one is better than I am at reading spirits,” Kyle said. “If there are spirits there, I can keep them at bay.”

Brody nodded. “I can’t help but think if John had taken Kyle with him that day, maybe John would still be with us.”

“Or Kyle would also be dead,” Moira said.

“I know where to go. I know what to do. I’m not a stupid kid, and I’m not rash.” He paused. “I warned John not to go underground alone. I don’t talk to spirits—other than to send them on—but they talk to me. All the time. And some of them are scared.”

“What would make a ghost scared?”

“The same thing that scares us. Going to Hell.”

“And maybe that’s why they’re still here,” Moira snapped, “because they know they screwed up big time and aren’t going to live in paradise.”

She sounded bitter and sarcastic, but she didn’t care. Rico grabbed her arm, angry, and she jerked away. She opened her mouth to give Rico a piece of her mind, but Kyle spoke first. “It’s different. They’re trying to hide, and not from me.”

Brody said, “Kyle is well aware of the risks.”

“You will follow my orders,” Rico said. He stared pointedly at Moira. “Mine. I am in charge. And if you can’t live with that, Moira, you can stay here. But I need your help.”

She didn’t say a word. She was angry at Rico and angry at Kyle. She didn’t want to be responsible for anyone else. The weight of these other people, their souls, was suffocating. She only wanted to be responsible for
herself.

“Fine,” she said through clenched teeth and walked out of the house.

#

Brody’s church was on the edge of town, but it didn’t take long for Kyle to drive them to downtown Victoria. It was dark, a few early commuters and trucks on the road, but otherwise quiet and peaceful.

Then why was she so nervous?

“I want to go to the theater first,” Moira said. “I want to know why it was so important to Serena.”

Kyle said, “I think it’s because of the tunnel.”

“What tunnel?”

“There’s a tunnel system under the city. Near the theater is a central connection, so you can get nearly anywhere downtown through the underground system. Many of the routes are blocked off, but it wouldn’t be difficult to get through. There’re no security cameras and maintenance is sporadic.”

“Is there a tunnel that goes from the theater to the abandoned building?”

“Yes.”

“Then that’s what we do—access the tunnel to the theater because I want to see where Serena was performing her spells, then follow the tunnel to the building.”

She glanced at Rico, expecting him to argue with her, but he nodded in agreement.

Kyle parked down the street from the theater, but headed in the opposite direction.

“Where are we going?” Rico asked.

“There’s a tunnel access point down this alley. It’s not really abandoned—it’s empty, but there are renovation plans for it. It would be harder to access on the street level, plus there are security cameras in the construction zone.”

Sometimes, Moira realized, it was good to bring a local along.

They walked half a block, then turned down an alley. Stairs led below street level to a basement door. The door was locked, but Kyle picked the lock with ease.

Moira smiled. “Okay, he’s a keeper,” she said with a wink.

“Take this seriously,” Rico told her.

“Lighten up.” She was already stressed; she didn’t need Rico to make it worse.

Moira rolled her shoulders. The whole town was making her prickly. Maybe it was the ghosts, but she usually wasn’t affected by spirits. She still had her internal shields up, but as Kyle led them down the dark, damp tunnel, she felt residual spells. They were all around. Passive, but powerful.

They turned on their flashlights and Rico took over the lead. She put her hand on his shoulder and he stopped.

“I need to go first,” she said.

He understood because they’d been working together more frequently of late. But never had Rico allowed Rafe to join them. Maybe that was a good thing because Rafe’s emotions distracted her.

But Rico also had emotions. He was just better at keeping them buried.

She walked ten feet ahead of Kyle and Rico. She put her hands up as if she could touch the spells that lingered in the passageway. The lights from Kyle and Rico’s flashlights cast large shadows on the old brick. Water ran behind the walls. Pipes. The river. She didn’t know. The air was old, cold, moldy.

Slowly, she lowered her defenses, using her well-trained senses to distinguish between the types of magic here.

“We need to tread carefully,” she said. “I feel something… familiar. It’s like a protection spell, but not exactly.” She stopped, put her hand up to stop Rico and Kyle behind her. She turned off her flashlight.

“Turn off your flashlights, just for a minute.”

They complied. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw what felt so familiar. There were demons in the walls. Weak, pitiful creatures. But they weren’t for battle. They were sentries, to alert their master when someone passed.

“She may be smart, but I’m smarter,” Moira murmured.

“What?” Rico demanded, his voice low.

“Sentries. Does Kyle have a medallion?”

“No,” Kyle said.

“Then he has to go back. Or—”

She turned back on her flashlight and cut her left pinky finger with her dagger. It was the least essential of her fingers, so the pain wouldn’t bother her as much.

She grabbed Kyle’s shirt and pulled it up. Before Rico could object, she drew a circle, then a cross in her blood on Kyle’s chest. “Gross, I know, but the demons won’t see you. They’re controlled by magic, and my blood can’t be seen by magic. Same principal as the medallions that were forged years ago at St. Michael’s. They have spiritual properties that offer some protections from witchcraft.”

She turned to Rico and smeared a drop of blood on the back of his hand. “Just in case I’m wrong about the medallions.” She winked.

He did not smile back.

She shined her light down the tunnel. Now that she knew the demons were there, she actually felt a little better, because she much preferred an enemy she could see to one she didn’t know. She let out her breath and released her barriers, letting the residual magic flow over her skin. The sensation was seductive, like a person smelling nicotine, craving nicotine, after years of not smoking.

She would not give in.

There were layers upon layers of magic the closer they got to the theater. Old magic, some spells so ancient she had no name for them. It was like paint on an old house, peel off one coat and another, older coat was underneath. The deeper she went, the more faded the coats. But one thing was clear. Serena’s signature was getting closer.

They walked another twenty yards before encountering a gate.

Kyle made a move to open it, but Moira put her hand up. “It’s booby trapped.”

“How do you know?” Rico asked.

“You, the skeptic.”

“Moira.” His voice was low and angry.

She sighed and put her hands up. “You want me to trust you? You need to trust me.”

She took out her dagger and touched the tip of it into the lock. An electrical charge sparked, the gate glowed, and then swung open.

“Okay, that was really cool,” Kyle said.

“Parlor tricks,” Moira said. “It’s all parlor tricks.” She hesitated. “There’re enough booby traps in here that no one, maybe not even me, is going to catch them all.”

“We’re prepared,” Rico said.

“Are we? Because Serena has gone to a lot of trouble to be alerted when someone comes in here.” She paused. “If it is Serena.”

“You can’t tell?”

“I know she’s been here. I can’t tell whether she set the traps. We should be okay—but I don’t know if John would have understood the dangers. He shouldn’t have been spotted by the demons because he has the medallion, but there are others things here, well hidden. I may have sprung something I don’t even know about.”

“Do you think you can learn anything about how John died?” Rico asked Moira.

“Yes,” she said. She didn’t admit she was terrified to do this. She’d seen death imprints before. Some were benign, like a movie on auto playback. Others could turn violent. And then there was the situation at the storage facility with Skye the other day. It wasn’t a death imprint; she just knew what had happened.

That scared her even more.

He nodded once. “We get in and out fast.”

“Stay alert,” she whispered to Rico. “Something is making me itch.”

“What?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you. It’s a presence, but I can’t tell you what kind. It could be residual.”

But it didn’t feel like that.

As soon as they stepped into the chamber under the theater, Moira knew exactly why Serena had picked this place.

The walls were smooth stone, old, etched with ancient spells like artwork. In the center was a stone altar, a bastardized version of traditional religion. Moira smelled old blood, heard the ancient call of her ancestors. There had been sacrifices down here, human sacrifices ending in death. Moira put her hands up to stop Rico and Kyle from entering.

“We find another way to where John died,” she said.

“We can’t.”

“Then we go back.”

“Face your fear, Moira,” Rico said. “Have you learned nothing from seven years of training?”

She whirled around. “And have you learned nothing from seven years of training
me?
This is the darkest of all magic. The spells bouncing in this room will hit us. I can fight them off, but that’s like putting up a flashing neon sign that says, ‘Hey, Serena! Someone’s in your house!’” She went back to the tunnel and waited as Kyle and Rico followed. She instantly felt better. There was something dark in that room, so evil she wasn’t ready to confront it.

Someday she might have to. But not today.

#

Kyle took out his map and found a way to bypass the chamber. It didn’t take them long before ending up at a door that was clearly the entrance to the old hotel’s basement. A new lock was on it, likely put on by law enforcement or construction workers after they found John’s body. Fortunately, it was a padlock, easier to pick than a combination lock.

“Can you handle it?” Moira asked Kyle.

“No problem.” He squatted and got to work.

Rico pulled Moira aside. “You’ve been on edge ever since we got here.”

She tilted her head. “And you think that’s odd?”

“It’s different from the other jobs we’ve been on.”

“More is happening. And the other jobs had nothing to do with Fiona. Serena has been here. John is dead and my sister probably had something to do with it.”

“And you’re thinking about Santa Louisa.”

Where had he gotten that idea? “I may be on edge, but I’m focused here and now.”