Original Sin

of witchcraft, of sealing breaches between this world and the underworld. Even within St. Michael’s, he’d had talent-special gifts in their fight against evil.

Yet he’d had no part in any of the battles of late. He’d been most recently at St. John’s, hoping to become a priest but unable to say his vows. His mentor told him he should look deeper, try to better discern his calling. He’d thought helping the tortured priests at Santa Louisa de los Padres Mission was the answer.

He was wrong.

In his heart, he feared that somehow, he was just as culpable as the coven for what happened last night. When he stopped the demons from possessing the girl’s body, the arca, he’d known exactly what he was doing. Now? He tried to remember, tried to find the words, or at least understand their meaning, and nothing. Nothing but pain, in his head, in his heart, in every muscle of his body.

And now the demons were on earth, free. He had to find them, stop them. Demons could only be sent back to Hell; they couldn’t be killed.

Yes they can.

He frowned, trying to chase the words in his mind, to find the solution to the problem. If demons could be killed, how?

A sharp pain shot through his ear and his hands grabbed his head. Make the ringing stop! His stomach retched, but there was nothing inside, nothing to throw up, and he dry heaved until his gut ached.

He closed his eyes.

God, help me.

He slipped into sleep, or unconsciousness, or death … but the dead didn’t dream or remember, did they?

THIRTEEN

Skye watched the security tape twice without comment.

Rafe Cooper had been recorded four different times on three different cameras. The first was outside the elevator bank closest to his room-he’d shuffled by, wearing a hospital gown and appearing disoriented, confused, and in pain. A few minutes later he was seen entering the staff lounge at the opposite end of the floor. He seemed steadier, as if walking had given him strength, but he was still slow.

When he emerged-a good fifteen minutes later and in hospital scrubs he’d stolen from an employee locker-he still looked pale but walked with purpose, slow and steady. He was neither looking at the camera nor trying to avoid detection.

The last camera that caught him was mounted just outside the emergency room doors. He walked right out of the hospital.

“How does someone usually wake up from a coma?” Skye asked Cooper’s doctor, Richard Bertrand.

“There’s no typical way. I’ve seen a coma patient wake up after eight days with no side effects, ready to walk out the door. Mr. Cooper has received daily physical therapy and quality care, but his muscles would still have atrophied some after ten weeks, and he’d be too weak to walk. It normally takes weeks to fully recuperate. But Mr. Cooper’s unconsciousness-while technically a coma-was uncommon in itself. As I explained to you when he first came to me in November, he had no head trauma. No tumor, no aneurysm, no brain damage. His brain waves showed signs of REM sleep, but little activity during his so-called waking periods. It’s an atypical case, and while not the only such documented case, certainly rare.”

Skye was ticked off and worried. Where did this put her investigation? She had to talk to Cooper; he was still technically a material witness to the murders at the mission. She couldn’t very well put in her police report that a demon had been involved.

District Attorney Martin Truxel was going to be the biggest problem. The D.A. had made it clear that Cooper was his suspect, and when she reminded him that he was a prosecutor, not a cop, he told her flat out that she’d fucked up the entire case and it would cost her the election.

The D.A. had made it no secret that he was supporting Assistant Sheriff Thomas Williams, who’d recently filed to run against Skye for Sheriff. The election was five months away, and right now it was between Skye and Williams. With Cooper waking up-and walking out of the hospital-the murders at the mission would once again take front and center in the local media. The Santa Louisa Courier covered a small territory, but the four-person staff was dogged. Everyone in town read the paper daily, commented on the popular Courier website, and believed what was printed. If The Courier wrote it, it had to be true.

And on top of all that, she had daily messages on her desk from a Los Angeles crime reporter who was writing a damn book about the mission and the murders. It was enough to make Skye throw her hands up and take a full-page ad out in the Courier telling everyone exactly what happened-demonic possession and all.

Then Williams would win the election; her best friend, Detective Juan Martinez, would be either in prison or a mental hospital; and she’d probably be sued for wrongful death by the family of the deputy who had died on the cliffs, not to mention prosecuted for gross negligence. Because no one would believe that a demon-let alone witchcraft! — had been involved in the murders at the mission or the fire on the cliffs two nights later.

“No one saw him?” she asked Dr. Bertrand, incredulous that a formerly comatose patient could walk out of the hospital without anyone trying to stop him.

“A nurse checked his vitals at eleven p.m. before the shift change. At one a.m. the new shift was in, and the nurse who did rounds assumed he’d been taken for tests or moved, because his chart was missing. We’ve moved him a couple of times. And while tests aren’t common at night, because of tight budgets I run some of the scans then, when there is less demand on the equipment. I had been running REM tests on Mr. Cooper, trying to figure out what was causing the coma. The only answer is psychosomatic. He’d experienced a major trauma. His brain just shut down.”

Skye spoke to the nurse who’d found Cooper’s bed empty, the nurse who last checked his vitals, and everyone still in the building who’d been on duty between 12:07 and 12:29 a.m. while he’d been moving around the hospital before walking out of the building. No one remembered seeing him.

She finally said, “If he shows up back here at the hospital, call me.” She wrote her cell phone number on the back of her card and handed it to Dr. Bertand. “I’ll put an APB on Cooper, and anyone who finds him will be instructed to bring him back here for medical evaluation, under guard, until I know what’s going on. You good with that?”

“Of course,” Dr. Bertrand said.

She glanced at her watch. “Damn, I’m late.”

She’d spoken on the phone to the high school principal earlier this morning about the death of Abby Weatherby, and had asked to address the entire school in an assembly before lunch. Someone there knew something, and dammit, she wanted to find out what had really happened out on the cliffs-supernatural or not.

Anthony didn’t scare easily but when he’d learned more about the ritual that brought the Seven Deadly Sins forth, he was terrified for humanity.

At his desk in one of the two rooms left standing at the mission, poring over ancient texts and other research materials, he paused and contemplated the worst that could happen. It was a situation as dire as it could be.

Dr. Franz Lieber, a wheelchair-bound ninety-year-old theologian from Switzerland whom Anthony had met many years ago, had sent St. Michael’s a copy of all his notes. As far as Anthony knew, he had the only copy in his possession, the original still with Lieber, who was more reclusive than anyone Anthony had ever met.

Lieber doubted whether the Conoscenza still existed, but he had written at the beginning of his notes on the book:

There is very little information or rumor about the Conoscenza. The book itself is unnamed, given “Conoscenza” circa 1520 by Bishop Paulo Giovanni of St. Michael’s Order. Prior to then, it had been called both “The Book of Knowledge” and “The Book of Death,” depending on whether the speaker was a magician or one of the