Blood Sins

Hollis followed the other woman into the big, sunny kitchen and nodded when Tessa gestured questioningly at the coffeemaker. 'Please. I'm still jet-lagged.'

Tessa hunted in a still-unfamiliar pantry for the coffee and didn't respond until she found it. ' Eureka. Why jet- lagged? Don't you guys work out of Quantico?'

'Most of us, yeah, but I was out in California on another case. He didn't admit it, but I don't think Bishop expected the church to move so fast or to be so insistent once they made contact with you. You've only been here a couple of weeks, after all. From our research and experience, it usually takes a couple of months for them to even begin to gather a potential new convert into the fold.'

Measuring out coffee without looking at Hollis, Tessa said, 'It took months for Sarah, didn't it?'

Hollis slid onto a bar stool at the kitchen's island and clasped her hands together on the granite surface, frowning down at a chewed thumbnail. 'It did. But her cover wasn't quite as enticing as yours is.'

'Is that why I was placed here even before anything happened to her?'

'Well, the plan was to have multiple fronts, as it were. To use every avenue possible to find information and, hopefully, evidence. We couldn't be entirely sure, from the outside, just what sort of background or situation would prove to be the most attractive to the church and Samuel. And not every agent or operative is going to be working the same way or be able to gain access to certain levels of the church hierarchy. Sarah wasn't able to get near any of Samuel's closest advisers in any meaningful sense, but she was still able to gather valuable intelligence. And able to get a couple of the kids out.'

'Have they found her?' Tessa asked quietly.

'No.' Hollis waited until Tessa got the coffee going and faced her before she added deliberately, 'The bodies always turn up downstream. Sooner or later.'

Tessa looked at her for a moment, then said, 'It takes a while, I'm told. To build that shell around your emotions.'

Unoffended, Hollis smiled slightly. 'Sometimes. But it's usually all smoke and mirrors. None of us would be in this line of work if we didn't care deeply. If we didn't believe we were making a difference.'

'Is that why you got in?'

'I was dragged in. More or less.' Hollis's smile twisted a bit. 'When your entire life changes, you build a new one. But when that change happened to me, I was lucky to have kindred spirits around me, people who understood what I was going through. Just like you were lucky when they crossed your path.'

'It was easier for me,' Tessa said, adding, 'My abilities weren't triggered by trauma.'

'Adolescence is trauma,' Hollis pointed out.

'Of a kind, sure. But nothing like what happened to you.'

Musing rather than revealing much of herselfor, perhaps, revealing a great dealHollis said, 'In the SCU, my experience isn't so unusual. Not even the degree, really. The majority of the team went through some kind of personal hell, coming out the other side with abilities we're still trying to figure out.'

Tessa recognized the courteous warning and shifted the subject back to answer Hollis's implicit question. 'I didn't find kindred spirits because I went looking for them; Bishop found me. Years ago. But I didn't want to be any kind of cop, he left, and I thought that was the end of it. Until John and Maggie got in touch.'

'And you decided to be a cop without a badge?'

'Mostly, I haven't been. Investigating, but not in any sort of dangerous situation. Not like this one. Not with people dying. There've been eight bodies found in this general area, right? So far. Eight people killed the same way. The same very unnatural way.'

Hollis nodded. 'Over the past five years, yeah. That we know about, anyway. If we knew for sure probably more.'

Tessa didn't move from her position but leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms in a gesture that wasn't quite defensive. Hollis took due note of that and asked herself for at least the third time since she'd arrived here hours ago if John Garrett, the director and cofounder of Haven, had made a wise choice in sending Tessa Gray on this particular assignment.

She was a little above medium height and slender, almost ethereal, an impression emphasized by her pale skin, fair hair, and delicate features dominated by large gray eyes. Her voice was soft, almost childlike, and when she spoke it was with the absolute courtesy of someone who had been raised to be polite no matter the circumstances.

Which made her sound as vulnerable as she looked.

She was supposed to look vulnerable, of course; that was part of the bait for the church. Without family, lost and alone after the sudden and unexpected death of her young husband only a few months previously, burdened by business concerns she had inadequate knowledge to handle on her own, she was just the sort of potential convert the church had a history of aggressively pursuing.

Although never before this aggressively, Hollis mused, at least as far as they knew. And the question was why.

What was it about Tessa that Reverend Samuel and his flock considered so important? Was it only the property in Florida, highly valuable to Samuel for a reason that had nothing to do with the value of the land? Or was it because he had, somehow, sensed or otherwise discovered Tessa's unique abilities?

Now, there was an unnerving thought. The idea that your ace might be in plain view for all to seeand other players to usepushed the possible stakes much, much higher.

Given what they were reasonably sure Samuel could do, it made the stakes potentially deadly.

'I've never been sent in undercover,' Tessa said. 'Not like this, with a whole other life to remember.'

Hollis cast the useless speculation aside. 'Second thoughts?'

A little laugh escaped Tessa. 'More like first thoughts. I mean, John explained the situation, and Bishop filled me in on what happened last summer in Boston and a few months ago in Venture, Georgia. They both told me how dangerous it could bewould probably be.'

Not a big believer in sugarcoating, Hollis said, 'Yeah, if Samuel is who and what we believe he is, there's a pretty good chance a few more of us won't be left standing when it's all done. Even assuming we win.'

'Do you doubt we will?'

'Honestly? Having some idea of what he can do, I have more than a few doubts.'

Tessa frowned. 'Because you've already faced him, fought him?'

'Not exactly. Not even by proxy, really. He just wanted me out of the way. Bishop believes he's afraid of mediums and that's why he sicced his pet killer on me in Georgia.'

'Why would Samuel be afraid of mediums?'

'Well, think about it. If you were responsible for dozens of brutal deaths, would you be all that anxious to have someone around who could open up a door and allow your victims to pay you an extremely unsettling visit?'

'Probably not.'

'No. In Samuel's shoes, neither would I. We figure that's the reason, though more because it makes sense than because we have any kind of solid proof.'

'But that's the one ability we're pretty sure he doesn't want. If he is who and what we believe he is.'

'Safe bet. In fact, my semieducated guess as a profiler-in-training is that the reverend's terrified of finding out for certain that with the reality of spirits come all the other traditional trappings of an afterlife many of us are raised to believe in. Accountability. Judgment. Punishment.'

'Is there?' Tessa asked, figuring a medium would know if anyone would.

'Yes,' Hollis answered simply.

'Hell?'

'Some version of it. At least for monsters like him. And isn't it ironic? The only thing Reverend Samuel could preach with complete conviction and total honesty from his pulpit is the truth of Judgment Day. And that's the one thing he's spent twenty years making very, very sure his church denies.'

Washington , D.C.

'So that's his Achilles' heel?' Senator Abe LeMott sat utterly still at his desk, hands clasped atop his neat blotter, and studied the man in one of his visitor's chairs. 'The one thing he fears?'

'We believe so.' Special Agent Noah Bishop matched the older man in stillness, though his steady gaze was, if anything, more watchful. 'He had every chance to take the abilities of one of our strongest mediums. Instead, he