Death would be better. Death would be better than this.
Peter’s body hit the wall again, this time slowly. Blood spattered inch by inch by inch. She could almost reach out and touch it.
“Moira!”
“Stop, stop! Make it stop, make it stop!”
Holding her tight, Rafe spoke quietly. Soothing. His words filled her mind, though she barely heard what he said. The memory grew fuzzy and faded. She began to cry and he held her, rocking her. She clutched him as if she were drowning.
Chaos was all around her. Magic flew through the air, as the coven members tried to avoid arrest. Shouts and orders as Skye cuffed Elizabeth Ellis. “Secure the scene! Back door!”
“Rafe-” She caught her breath. She had so many questions. What he’d done, what he’d said. But now, she was so tired and his embrace gave her blissful peace.
“Your hand,” he said, holding it to his lips. The bleeding had stopped. She stared at the wound.
“You’re in shock,” he said.
“Lily?”
Rafe looked over her head. “Anthony and Jared are with her.” Then his body tensed. He rose and put her on her feet. He took her hand and she saw what he saw.
They ran to the middle of the damned spirit trap. Father Philip lay on the floor.
Moira knew he was dead, but she said, “He’s going to be okay, right? He’s going to be okay.” She knelt next to him, remembering what the demon had done to him. How he’d fallen, saving Lily.
Father Philip’s eyes were partly open. His neck was bruised, his mouth open. Anthony checked for a pulse and breath, tears dropping on Father Philip’s body.
“He’s okay,” Moira said. “He’s okay. He’s okay.”
“He’s gone.”
“No. No!” She held him. “Father, please. Please don’t leave me.”
Rafe put his arm around her. Anthony took Father Philip’s hand and gave him Last Rites, his voice breaking.
“Amen.”
FORTY-ONE
Fiona packed her things quickly, rage fueling her energy.
“I hate them!”
Matthew squeezed her shoulders. “It’s not over. We’ll confront them again. It’s inevitable.”
“They trapped my demon! It’s mine!”
Matthew tilted her chin up. “Sweetheart, we don’t have time to rant about Andra Moira or Raphael Cooper. All in due time. The police must know where we are. I sent Serena and Pennington to get the boat.”
“You should have let that idiot die in the fire.”
“I considered it. But he’s useful.”
Fiona reluctantly concurred. “We need a good plan to retrieve the tabernacle. I think they’ll store it at the mission, or at the church downtown.”
“You’re right, dear, but I have another plan.”
“Does it involve gutting Raphael and choking Moira with his intestines?”
“You are imaginative, dear, but I prefer subtlety. Rafe will soon remember how he knows me. He stared for a long time, but couldn’t place me.”
“Then you should never have left Santa Louisa. How I missed you!”
He kissed her. “I missed you too, darling.”
“How many women did you sleep with while you were gone?”
“Only you, my love.” He kissed her again. “Serena should be on the beach soon. We need to go.”
“You didn’t tell me your brilliant plan.”
He paused for a moment. “We allow them to do the hard work.”
“Meaning exactly what?”
“Why should we expend our energy tracking and trapping the Seven? Anthony, Rafe, and Moira will do it for us. And when they’re done? We’ll take them back. All seven of the deadly sins will be ours.”
Fiona considered the idea. “I can see how that might work.” She smiled. “And we can spend the extra time finding a new
“Yes, that is truly our one stumbling block. They don’t realize they can’t keep the Seven together, except in an
Fiona took a last look around the library where she’d spent so much of the last two years. This had been a good place for her, for her family, for her coven. And Andra Moira had destroyed it. Her daughter and Raphael Cooper. Though Matthew was trying to ease her anger, she didn’t want to let it go. How could they have such strength without magic? The heavens didn’t grant power; only demanded blind faith and obedience. Neither Cooper nor her traitorous daughter were obedient to anyone.
“Darling, we must leave.” Matthew had gathered their most important materials, the rare herbs, the priceless
Fiona turned to her lover. It had been Matthew from the beginning, for now and forever. None of the men she played sex games with meant anything to her, including Garrett; they were merely a distraction when Matthew was away. She trusted him-until tonight.
“You could have killed Moira tonight. At Good Shepherd.”
“Yes,” he said. “But we need her alive.”
“No! What she has done to me, to our cause! I suffered when she ran away.”
“Darling, I know, and I promise you, we will find her again and make her suffer tenfold. But we need her alive-she has a power I don’t understand.”
“Is that how she killed my demon?” Fiona looked into the room off the library where the demon had lain. She and Matthew had sent the slain body back to the underworld, but she was surprisingly upset over the incident.
“It’s about her, not her tools, not St. Michael’s Order. I just haven’t figured out exactly how she’s doing it. Perhaps it is magic, but she’s masked it somehow.”
“I haven’t felt any magic coming from her. She would have used it tonight.”
“There was so much energy in that warehouse, I had a difficult time discerning where the power was coming from.”
“Even you, my darling Matthew, are not infallible.”
He frowned. Like her, he didn’t appreciate being reminded of his imperfections. She kissed him to ease the sting of the criticism.
“Cooper cut her, poured her blood into Envy,” she said. “It weakened the demon, allowed Zaccardi to trap it.”
“Her blood is your blood.”
“And her father’s.”
Matthew said quietly, “It is time.”
Matthew didn’t have to explain what he meant. He was the only one who knew who Moira’s father really was. It had been a dangerous game from the moment Matthew approached Fiona when she was sixteen, and he ten years older, but they had been successful in everything-except keeping Moira in line. Exposing Moira’s biological father was risky, but the stakes had been raised after the release of the Seven Deadly Sins. The added danger meant bold action.
“He will be hard for us to get to.”
