Sin's Dark Caress (7 page)

13

Sanctum of Death

W
hen McManus closed his eyes, he could still feel the heat of the flames, hear the terrified screams, smell stench of burning flesh. It haunted him now as much as it did when it happened almost twenty years ago.

He glanced at Bianca's sympathetic expression and moved away. His fingers ached from gripping the coffee mug too tightly. He didn't want pity from anyone, especially not her. He swiped up the newspaper clipping from the kitchen counter and shoved it into his pocket. As if that could shut away the pain.

“That kid in the picture,” she said. “It's you.”

He turned away. “The papers were ordered by the courts to protect our identities and keep our names out of it, but it didn't stop them from printing that one shot.”

Bianca led him to the sofa and pushed him down gently. “I'll get you some more coffee.”

The cup shook in his hand. “Don't suppose you have anything stronger?”

She placed her hands on her hips. He rarely saw her in jeans, without makeup and her professional mask. He liked it. She looked fresh, like a girl.

“I'm all out of wine, sorry.”

There was no way he could tell her this without a little fortification.

“Are you sure you want to do this with your hangover?”

“There's no better cure.”

“All right. I'll see what I can find,” she said, throwing up her hands.

She disappeared behind the counter and he could hear her rummaging through her cupboards.

“Ah, perfect,” she said aloud, and appeared with a bottle of dark green liquid. “But if we're going to do this, we have to do it right.”

She handed him the bottle and returned to the kitchen.

“What's this?” he asked, pulling the cork stopper.

It was herbal-like, almost medicinal, and he upended the bottle to take a swig. It slid down his throat like broken glass yet coated his tongue with a thick liquorish taste.

God that tastes like shit.
But a warm tingle spread out from the center of his chest.

Bianca returned carrying a tray with four small glasses and a bowl of sugar cubes, which she put on the table in front of him. “Hey!” She snatched the bottle away. “I said if we're going to do this, we do it right. I just need one more thing.”

She went back and rattled through more cupboards. Moments later she returned carrying a strange looking contraption, a brass stand with little spigots and a glass bowl on top filled with ice and water. She placed it in the middle of the table.

“What the hell is that?” he asked.

“That is an absinthe fountain. And this is absinthe made from an old family recipe with anise, fennel, and wormwood grown in my mother's very own garden.”

“Isn't it illegal?”

“Probably. Good absinthe is around seventy to eighty percent alcohol. This is the best kind—homemade. It's the wormwood that made it illegal—it's poisonous.”

“Sin, you surprise me. I'd never have guessed you were into homemade illegal hooch.”

“There's a lot you don't know about me, McManus,” she said, filling two of the antique glasses with three fingers of the green spirit. “Anyway, my mother gave me this. Like I said, it's an old family recipe. Witches have been doing this for centuries, and we're going follow the old way, the proper way.”

She took two slotted spoons from the back pocket of her jeans and laid one over each glass. On top of each spoon she placed a single cube of sugar and then positioned the glasses under the tiny fountain faucets. Water drops fell onto the sugar, dissolving it a little each time. As the cube melted, the green spirit slowly changed to a milky color.

“Everything is about ritual with you people,” he said. “A man could die of thirst waiting.”

“Ritual is everything to a witch.” She glanced at him before returning her attention to the absinthe, regulating the water to drip at just the right rate. “Patience is a virtue. Anything good is worth waiting for.”

“I'll try and remember that.”

The silence dragged on for what seemed forever as the sugar cube totally dissolved and turned the liquid pale and cloudy.

Finally, she held out one of the glasses. “Here you go.”

She set up another set of glasses before picking up hers.

“À votre santé,”
she said, holding up her glass. “To your health.”

“And yours.” He closed his eyes and held his breath as he drank, but this time it tasted better—smoother, more subtle and slightly sweeter. “Mmm—not bad.”

Bianca put her glass down and turned to him, all seriousness. This was the moment he'd been regretting.

“Tell me about it.”

He had run from the memories for so long, it almost felt a relief to stop and think about them. He drained his glass before putting it next to hers. “The Sisterhood found me at their gates, wrapped in a woman's blue sweater, my umbilical cord still wet. A note was pinned to it with the words ‘Lancelot McManus.' The sisters didn't know if it was my name or not, but that's what they called me.”

“Lancelot?” she said, smiling with amusement.

“Go ahead, yuk it up.”

The alcohol warmed his body and gave him the courage to keep going. Even if just for a little while. Maybe telling Bianca might help him rid himself of some of the demons haunting every sober moment.

“Life with them was good. Until . . .” He looked at his hands, searching for the words, but it was probably best to start at the beginning. He looked at the water dripping on the sugar cube over the absinthe and sighed. “The sisters took in orphans when required. They were devout, and didn't use magic.”

Bianca nodded. “The Sisterhood believed that the best way to honor the Mother and their devoutness was to give up magic use.”

She reminded him of the Sisterhood, a witch without magic. “Because most were familial witches, they wouldn't allow any animals in the Sanctum, in case they accidentally bonded. I remember when one of the other kids found a homeless dog with a litter of puppies. We hid them in the dormitory, but Sister Morgan found them and had them taken away. Some of the younger kids cried for a week.”

“They must've thought that was cruel,” Bianca said, glancing at a black cat cleaning itself on the kitchen windowsill.

He shrugged. “Not really. We knew the rules and it was never meant to be a punishment. The sisters never allowed animals within the Sanctum, pure and simple. Sister Morgan was just as heartbroken as the children.”

“So what happened?” she asked, taking a sip from her glass.

“The sisters were gentle and good and kind. They took great care of us. When I was about thirteen, there were eleven kids in the orphanage, including me. I was the oldest and had been there the longest, so I could sense the undercurrent of tension in the sisters. We were restricted from going outside the Sanctum without supervision. Two sisters began watching over us during the day, and then one night . . .”

A lump formed in his throat, choking the words. He swallowed. “I woke to the smell of smoke.” It was as clear in his mind today as that night.

“We can stop if you want to,” she said, taking his hand in her warm, comforting ones.

He shook his head, trying to get the words out. Bianca handed him the remainder of her own drink. He gave a quick nod of thanks and drained it. The cloudy spirit went down as smooth as honey. His head started to feel light. With a little more fortification, he continued.

“I climbed out of bed. The smoke was everywhere, and I woke the older kids to organize the little ones up while I ran to fetch Sister Morgan. She was our dorm mother, the one who got up for the kids who had nightmares. But her room was empty.” He swiped a hand across his face and looked at her. “I was so young and I didn't know what to do. I should've gone looking for the sisters. If I had, then maybe they would've survived.”

She sat beside him on the sofa and squeezed his hand. “But you saved the kids instead.”

The words lodged in his throat as the memory of those kids hit hard and fast. Their terrified faces all turned to him, huge eyes looking for answers. Answers he didn't have. He was just as terrified as the other children. But he was the oldest. The next eldest, Gavin, was eleven, and was just as scared. Tiny Isabelle, who looked younger than her eight years, was twice as brave as the rest of them and kept the younger ones calm.

“They would've died without you,” Bianca whispered, as if reading his thoughts.

The derisive laugh escaped before he could stop it. “Maybe?”

“No maybe,” she admitted. “I studied all the reports, though your names were left out of them. From all accounts, the children would've been trapped if you hadn't led them to safety. They would've died, just like the sisters.”

He could hear the frightened sobs as they made their way out of the dormitory, the terrified screams as they came across Sister Morgan's body, her throat cut and blood pooling around head, frightening them. Memory after memory assailed him all at once. The cracking of burning timber crashing around them as they ran out of the building; the sight of Sister Elaine jumping from the fifth story window, flames engulfing her nightgown and the sizzling pop of her eyeballs exploding as the fire consumed her broken body where she lay in full view of the children.

He'd tried to open the door to reach the rest of the sisters inside, but the heat was unbearable as the flames seared his skin and the overpowering stench of his own flesh burning stopped him. It all became too much. He needed to make it stop.

He reached for the bottle of absinthe on the table and guzzled several mouthfuls before Bianca was able take it away, pulling him against her in a fierce hug.

McManus became aware of her warmth. “The sisters, they all died.” His voice was muffled against her shoulder, and he clutched her with a tightness that bordered on desperation. “I tried to save them, but I couldn't. I was too afraid.”

“McManus, you were a thirteen-year-old kid. You witnessed more than any kid should have, you helped nearly a dozen other kids to safety and you were suffering severe burns.” She stroked his hair. “You did more than I could possibly imagine.”

“But it wasn't enough.”

“There was nothing more you could've done.”

He wiped at his damp cheeks, feeling a little stupid. “Fuck me.” It'd been almost a decade since he last cried over the Sisterhood, and the tears surprised him. He drew back and looked at Bianca. She was so close, so soft, and so warm. Her moist eyes were filled with pride, not pity. He wiped away a tear with the pad of his thumb and moved closer. Her lips parted.

He stopped and pulled back before he did something stupid, and caught what looked like a flash of regret in her eyes.

Clearing his throat, he looked away. “When I became a cop, I looked into the police records leading up to the fire and found some strange incidents the sisters reported. Spot fires, stones thrown through windows, threats against the sisters and the orphans. But no one would listen. Even the report on the final fire said it was an unfortunate accident caused by a gas leak. But the sisters never used the gas. No one believed us about Sister Morgan either. They said it was just the trauma of everything that happened.”

“That's why you became a cop?”

He nodded. “And I found out that a rival coven corporation was trying to buy the land. They purchased it for a song after the fire and put up a housing development. Nothing I turned up could prove they were involved with what happened to the Sanctum, but I know they were. I know it.
Fucking
witches.”

He looked down at his hands, which were no longer shaking. “I became a cop so I could make sure this didn't happen to anyone else.”

“Good ambition. Impossible, but still a good ambition.” Bianca smiled and the tension went out of him. “You were burned pretty badly.”

“Turned out to be not as bad as they first thought. When I was admitted to the hospital, they diagnosed severe second, third, and fourth degree burns to seventy percent of my body. I healed too quickly for that.”

“What about the other children?” she asked.

“By the time I was discharged, the others had been sent to different foster homes and institutions. Me and Gavin ended up at the Cedar's Home for Boys.”

Bianca sucked back her breath. “Oh, McManus, I'm so sorry.”

He hated thinking of that place. “I was there three years, until just before I was sixteen when I met the cop who saved my life. He and his wife took me in. Gavin was smart and only in Cedar's for six months. Last I heard, he's changed his name to Wayne Gray and is some high-flying lawyer type on the West Coast. I lost touch with most of the others. But Isabelle . . .”

Sweet, brave little Isabelle . . . Her broken body surrounded by candles and other thaumaturgic paraphernalia.

“That little girl from the newspaper clipping?” she asked.

He nodded. “When I was fresh out of the police academy, I attended a disturbance call.” The image of her body in that fleabag motel was burnt into his brain forever. “They weren't witches, just wannabes. When I found her in that room, her innocence had been stolen, her face all swollen and mottled with bruises; her naked body abused, raped, and stabbed over a hundred times.”

“Oh, McManus,” she said, squeezing his hand. “I'm so sorry.”

“I saved her once, but I couldn't save her when she really needed me.”

The memory of her death reminded him of their latest case. There'd been so much blood. Yet the murder scene of the first eviscerated girl had been surprisingly clean. The coroner surmised she'd been murdered somewhere else and dumped.

“Hey,” he said, sitting forward. “Do you think that first murder would've had as much black magic as the last?”

“Probably, why?” Bianca asked.