The Sin Eaters (audio story)

The Sin Eaters was the fourth release of the BBC Torchwood audio stories.

Publisher's summary
Alien larvae in a baptismal font mark the beginnings of a terrifying adventure for the "Torchwood" team in this exclusive audio adventure, read by Gareth David-Lloyd. Searching for the source of a bizarre Rift reading, Gwen, Jack and Ianto find a corpse on the beach, his face covered in hundreds of tiny cuts. Watching from the shadows is a man in black...The Reverend Hayward thinks he has found a way to take away people's sins. The trouble is, his special baptisms tend to take away their lives too. For the creatures he collects and puts in his church font are nightmarish parasites, feeding on their hosts' negative emotions before consuming them. It is up to Torchwood to track them down and destroy them...

Plot
Jack, Gwen and Ianto race in the SUV to a repeating energy signal off the coast of Monknash, but it fades away before they can reach it and they only find the corpse of a 1940s sailor covered in cuts. Unbeknownst to them, Reverend Neil Hayward sets down a flask which fills up with a liquid that he takes to the Holy Church of St Francis to rebaptise members of his congregation and cleanse them of their sins. Gwen performs an autopsy on the sailor at the Hub, identifying him as Ron Arnold who went missing in 1946, and finds that he was host to a number of egg sacs of which one remains. Jack finds an alien maggot inside and he and Ianto take a bioscan to use to trace the others.

Muriel Thomas is rebaptised by Hayward and asks if her son Matt, a friend of Rhys's, could be cleansed as well, but she is soon found dead in her home with her body covered in small cuts. Jack and Ianto try to follow the likely path of Arnold's body by activating the SUV's untested submersible mode, but it quickly sinks and Gwen and Rhys drop them back off at the Hub on their way to find Matt, whom they hope has an idea of where his mother became infected. When Jack and Ianto get back, the maggot turns into a creature with wings and Jack realises when it touches him that it is an eater of sins from the Shadow Dimensions.

Gwen and Rhys go to the Holy Church of St Francis and find Matt with Hayward, having been rebaptised.

to be completed

Characters

 * Jack Harkness
 * Gwen Cooper
 * Ianto Jones
 * Rhys Williams
 * Matt
 * Paul
 * Muriel Thomas
 * Derek Thomas
 * Claire
 * Pusska

Continuity

 * The corpse of a sailor from 1940 is found; the sailor is said to have been part of Operation Dynamo. (AUDIO: The Nemonite Invasion, PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)
 * Gwen mentions Rhys' encounter with the space whale. (TV: Meat)
 * The door to the Hub is still damaged from the Dalek attack. (TV: The Stolen Earth)
 * By the events of PROSE: Risk Assessment, Torchwood have replaced the Sea Queen with the Sea Queen II.