Allison Brennan
Original Sin
and desire what is denied us.
PROLOGUE
Moira O’Donnell jolted awake, her breath coming in gasps, the cheap, scratchy motel sheets damp from perspiration, her skin slick and hot to the touch. As always, after this nightmare came a vision, hitting so hard and fast and fading so rapidly that every time she tried to focus on a detail, it would disappear like a wisp of smoke. But fear still clung tenaciously to every cell in her body, squeezing her tight until she was nearly blind with panic.
She’d been having nightmares every night. And just as the nightmares were the real past, the visions that invariably followed were the real present.
They were far from useful: even as Moira witnessed events happeningIt didn’t help that her visions were difficult to decipher, snippets of startling images and intense feelings, strangers’ faces and places she’d never been. She suffered with people she didn’t know, feeling their pain, sharing their terror, and was unable to do a damn thing to stop it. Father Philip explained to her there was a deeper meaning, to be patient, but Moira was tired of waiting for answers that never came. She was exhausted from watching the underworld win yet another battle, and seeing countless more innocent people suffer.
Moira was tired of living when she had nothing to live for.
She sat up, head in her hands, doing what Father Philip told her to do after a vision. Try to remember. Search for clues.
She heard the crashing of waves against cliffs far beneath her.
Moira could practically smell the salt air. Salt air tinged with smoke, ash, sulphur. She focused on remembering the images she didn’t want to see.