Ghostly Justice (Seven Deadly Sins, #2.5)(3)

Moira and Rafe had met Fern when they first came down to L.A. last month. “He hasn’t told us anything,” Moira said.

Grant said, “Let’s talk inside.”

“Fine by me.” After putting on the gear, they followed Fern through the doors into the main facility. The pathologist said to Grant, “You look like shit.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Moira muttered.

Moira shivered not from the sudden cold, but from the high-creep factor as Fern led them through the main crypt lined with rows of bodies, covered with sheets so only their feet were visible. Another pathologist passed them, pushing a gurney toward the autopsy rooms.

Moira had faced demons in many forms, she’d killed and nearly been killed, but there was something about the morgue that freaked her out. The finality, maybe, or the sense of purgatory—that all these bodies were just waiting for judgment. She knew that wasn’t the case—they’d be cremated or buried or dissected—but she couldn’t stop her imagination from traveling down the horrific path toward the apocalypse.

She glanced at Rafe. His expression was off, as if he was listening to someone. Or maybe it was just her own uneasiness, and she was reading too much into his demeanor.

Moira steeled herself against her doubts and fears. What good was she to Rafe or St. Michael’s if she freaked out at a morgue? Even though there was a ghost here who’d spoken to Grant’s girlfriend, a witch. And there were probably more than one ghost hanging around. Moira seemed to be a lightning rod for paranormal activity lately.

Wouldn’t her many detractors from St. Michael’s monastery enjoy seeing her crumble.

“Are you coming or communing with the dead?” Grant stood impatiently in the doorway of a small room on the far side of the crypt.

Moira hadn’t realized she’d slowed her pace to a near crawl. “Just talking to my friends,” she snapped back.

Two technicians coming out of the cold storage unit looked at her as if she were crazy. She smiled brightly at them.

“Come.” Rafe steered her to the room where Amy Carney’s body lay under a sheet.

She felt uneasy when Rafe didn’t look at her. Were her nerves really embarrassing him? After all they’d been through, she sometimes forgot they’d only known each other for only two months.

Straightening her spine and pushing back her uneasiness, Moira stepped into the small room. Fern said, “This is our viewing room. The victim’s parents will be here shortly to identify the body, but Detective Nelson wanted to inspect it first. It’s bizarre.”

She pulled out a file folder and handed it to Grant. “A copy of the detailed autopsy and lab reports, like you asked.”

“Thanks.” He flipped through it as Fern spoke.

“When you called me about a teenage Jane Doe I would have told you to give me a description—do you know how many Does we get in here? Dozens a week,” she responded to her own question. “Young more often than not. But I knew who it was, because it was the oddest damn case I’ve had. At least up until the bodies that came through here a couple weeks ago.” She looked from Grant to Moira, as if waiting for someone to explain what had really happened. When no one said anything, she rolled her eyes.

“This Doe was an odd case because she was exsanguinated,” Fern continued. “Not something I’d ever seen before, but that wasn’t the creepiest thing about her.”

“Creepier than having her blood drained?” Moira said.

“She was bitten by a vampire.”

Moira was not amused. “Is this a sick joke? Are you screwing with us?”

Rafe pulled down the sheet. On the victim’s neck were two holes as if punctured by canine teeth.

“We’re outta here,” Moira said, turning around. Her emotions were already running high because of her stalled hunt for the Seven Deadly Sins, but now this farce?

Rafe put his hand on her. “Moira—”

“No! There’s no such thing as vampires. Shit, Rafe, we’ve faced plenty of monsters, and we know exactly where they come from. Vampires aren’t real. They’re sick humans who drink blood. End of story. This is a law and order case, not heaven and hell.”

The three were staring at her and she wondered if she looked like a raving lunatic.

Her heart pumped hard, and she knew she was overreacting, but she’d faced people who called themselves vampires—or as she recently heard, they replaced the ‘i’ with ‘y’ to become “vampyres.” Maybe the ‘y’ was a way of stating they were human dumbshits and knew it? Or some avant-garde way to spell? Whatever they were—or weren’t—they almost scared her more than demons. When she fought a creature from Hell, she knew exactly what she faced. They had one evil goal, one dark focus, and she had no qualms about destroying the thing. But people who drank blood? They had a sexual bloodlust, used psychology and seduction to lure in followers, turning them into drug addicts, and the drug of choice was blood.

But they weren’t immortal, they weren’t spirits, and killing them was murder. They bled like everyone else. Moira knew. Years ago she’d faced off against a coven of so-called vampires in Ireland who’d been in the middle of a dark magic ritual. She had to kill one of them—she had no choice—and it still haunted her.

When bloodlust and dark magic came together, the results were always volatile and usually deadly.