Mortal Sin by Allison Brennan Read Free Book Online Page B

Rafe really fear?
    “I’m not reckless,” Moira said.
    “Yes you are.”
    “Not as much as I used to be.”
    “ Ex ordine caeli, et eiecti sunt vincti ,” Rafe whispered.
    Rafe took a step back. The words just came out, he didn’t understand why, he hadn’t been thinking about it. Moira stared at him with a deep concern. He didn’t want to worry her now.
    “What?” she demanded.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Dammit, not now!” She glared at him. “It sounds Latin. An exorcism?”
    He closed his eyes, saw the words in his head. “‘You are bound and banished,’” he mumbled.
    “If it were only that easy,” she said.
    “Moira—I don’t know what it means, but obviously, it’s something you need to know. Remember it.”
    “Bullshit!” She turned away.
    He put his hands on her shoulders, turned her around and forced her to look at him. “Moira—” He stopped. He didn’t want to tell her his suspicions, not until he could figure out what they meant. But he had to put her mind at rest while they were apart. “I’m okay.”
    “They did something to you, Bertrand and the others, and now we’ll never know what.”
    “It wasn’t Bertrand. It was from before.”
    “You’re making no sense.”
    How did he explain it? The migraines were because he was trying to force the memories to the surface, seeking answers that wouldn’t come without pain and suffering. He hadn’t told Moira he was causing the migraines because she would have made him stop. But it was his head. His thoughts. He needed the truth.
    “Six months ago, when I walked into the chapel as the last man died… I felt…” His voice trailed off.
    “Don’t think about it.”
    “I have to! The answers are there, in my head, the answers to everything.” He’d been locked in his room at the mission, his door bolted not by a lock, but by magic. He heard the screams of his friends, the troubled priests he was sent to Saint Louisa to help. And he’d failed. They were all dead because he didn’t see the truth until it was too late.
    He continued. “It’s like all that death, all that blood—the memories—their memories—are here .” He tapped his head. “All of them. I just can’t access the memories on my own. They come and go. Nightmares. Dreams. Information when I need it, but I can’t lift up the hood and see how it all works.”
    “Don’t look. You don’t know that it wasn’t a spell. A curse.”
    “But you would look. If you felt what I did, you would want to know the truth.”
    “Rafe—stop this now. While I’m gone, at the very least, please put it aside. I beg you. I need you whole when I return.”
    She leaned into him, grabbing his shirt as if she were drowning. She kissed him, but a deep, dark fear suddenly overwhelmed him. “Don’t go,” he said, panic rising.
    “I have to.” She brushed back his hair.
    “You can say no.”
    She kissed him again, desperately. He held her face in his hands, assaulted her lips. Her neck. Her ears. If she died, they would lose this war. He would lose his soul because he would scorch the Earth to avenge her. He couldn’t explain in words how much he needed her, this overwhelming, overflowing love that could only be compared to how Christ loved His church.
    Even more. And if that was sacrilegious, so be it. His heart beat for Moira O’Donnell alone.
    “Three days,” she said. “Tops.”

 
     

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Skye pulled on latex gloves, a cheap disposable gown, and over-sized paper booties over her work shoes. She stepped into Rod Fielding’s morgue and stared at the body. She didn’t like Richard Bertrand, and she was pretty certain he was instrumental in what went down at the mission—all those people killed—but she couldn’t prove it, and she would have rather have arrested him than seen him dead. Now she had to find his killer, and hoped it wasn’t someone she knew. Like Rafe. Or Anthony.
    “Thanks for rushing this,” she said to Rod.
    “I’m just about