Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Diel opened his eyes,his hazy gaze traveling down the damp gray stone wall around him. His cheek was cold as it pressed against the freezing floor. His neck ached, the throbbing ghost of numbness snaking over his bare shoulders and the top of his spine. His head twitched, and he flitted his eyes to the iron bars that trapped him inside the cage.

The cage he knew all too well.

The monster within him rippled under his skin, waking from the forced sleep it had been plunged into. A spear of anger soared through Diel’s veins, overriding the aches and numbness and the lethargy of his muscles. Again. They had grounded him again. Lamed his monster again.

Jaw clenched and hands fisted, Diel used his waning strength to lift his torso off the slick ground and sat up. His pulse thudded faster and faster at the fact that he was in the fucking cage. But his pulse had no sooner started to race than the metal collar around his neck crackled against his already scarred and scalded skin. The electricity sizzled its warning, a sharp-fanged serpent, ready to strike the minute he lost control of his senses.

Diel breathed deeply and forced his body to still, the darkness within him to rest. Every inch of him became a statue, and the hiss of the collar lessened to a low-grade hum.

He fucking hated the collar. It was the bane of his existence. But it was a necessity.

Diel closed his eyes and thought back to how he’d got to the cage in the first place—a dream. Another fucking dream that had ripped him from sleep and had seen him racing through the manor looking for someone to tear apart, to sate the bloodlust of the monster living inside him.

No. Not just someone. His monster yearned for some very specific someones.

The Brethren. The motherfucking Brethren that he and his brothers had recently destroyed after they’d captured Maria, Raphael’s woman. The Fallen had headed to Holy Innocents, the school that had robbed them of their childhoods and fucked with their bodies and minds. They had descended, for the final time, to Purgatory, the place where they had been held as kids.

And they had burned it to hell.

The flames may have destroyed Diel’s childhood tormentors, but the rage following the inferno remained. The monster that lived inside him, seeking blood and pain and death, only grew stronger, thirstier, more intolerant of the collar that wrapped around his neck like a leash, denying both of them what they craved—death. Such beautiful, sadistic deaths by their hands.

Diel heard the sound of a pencil scratching on paper and turned his head to see Sela sitting on a chair at the side of the Tomb. He was sketching on a pad of paper, eyes fixed on whatever he was creating.

“Upper hallway, left wing,” Sela said, without taking his eyes off the pad. His long dark hair curtained his face as he concentrated on whatever picture he was purging from his creative brain onto the page. “Gabriel had us bring you down here until you awoke.”

The tendons in Diel’s neck corded. The darkness inside was more than pissed at being handled in such a pathetic way. He ground his jaw so hard that the sound of teeth on teeth made Sela lift his eyes and meet his stare.

Sela’s pencil stilled. “Third time this week.”

Diel inhaled deeply through his nose and exhaled slowly. He mentally wrestled the monster back until its presence was a dull ache at the back of his head, throbbing like the very worst of migraines. Diel sat back on his ass and laid his arms over his bent knees. His head twitched as he fought the everlasting battle to keep his anger in check.

“The Brethren,” Diel said, voice raspy with exhaustion. Sela twirled the pencil in his fingers as he listened to his best friend, the stick of wood and charcoal practically an extension of his artistic hand.

Diel’s eyes lost focus as he bathed in the memory of his collar being turned off in Purgatory. Anger had filled his veins, and Diel and the monster he kept at arm’s length had become one, united in violence and death, twin dark souls synced and, for once in their lives, calm and at peace as they plunged their twenty-inch blades into the men that had destroyed their childhoods.

Destroyed every single part of them.

“D?” Sela said, pulling Diel from his stupor.

His temples throbbed, his ever-present migraine pounding like iron bars being slammed into his brain over and over again. His migraines had always been bad, the monster never sleeping long enough to grant a reprieve. It was constantly pacing at the back of his mind, desperate to finally be freed of the collar’s stringent control.

Diel rubbed the back of his neck. “I keep replaying that night in Purgatory.” Memories of killing the Brethren flashed like a highlight reel in his mind. “When the collar was off and we finally got to end them …” His cock stirred as he recalled the feel of his blades slicing into flesh, of hitting bone when they plunged too deep. But his excitement misted away to vapor when he remembered the familiar buzz of the collar being reignited and his monster being lashed and gagged once again. “And then Gabe switched it back on.” It had been like a junkie getting his fix, the most hedonistic drug cocktail of his life, only to be abruptly forced to go cold turkey afterward.

Diel’s head twitched again as his pulse began to race at just the memory of smelling the Brethren’s blood on his skin—the sweetest perfume. His hands flexed as he felt the phantom necks that had snapped under his fingers.

The collar buzzed and sent warning volts soaring through his body. His muscles tensed as he absorbed the pain, as it hissed at the monster inside to retreat. To get the fuck back. Sweat beaded on his forehead; a single drop ran down his spine.

Gasping for air, Diel submitted to the monster’s sudden surge of power to snarl, “I want this fucking collar off. I want to be who I was fucking born to be without the restraints.” Diel tensed and threw the monster back from taking control. The monster retreated, but its anger-tipped words echoed around Diel’s head like they were being blasted through speakers. Diel’s stomach turned and a fissure of panic slithered across his fractured soul at that thought. The thought off actually being free from the collar … of what that would look like, feel like …

Diel knew his monster could never be freed. He knew the collar could never come off. It would consume Diel. It would eradicate every part of who he was.

“D?” Sela asked, concern in his voice.

Diel couldn’t tell him that his monster was gaining power. Flooding Diel’s brain daily with thoughts of death and freedom and never having to obey electrical currents again.

“I want the Brethren gone,” Diel said. He had to throw Sela off the scent of his fear. “Every one of them. I could give a shit about any other murderous fucker Gabe sends us to kill. I want the Brethren. Only the fucking Brethren.” The words may have been a cover for Diel’s battle with his monster, but it made them no less true.

That night in Purgatory had done something irreparable to Diel. For years the Fallen had evaded the Brethren, stayed hidden so as not to draw their attention to the boys who had evaded the final exorcisms. Gabriel had made it that way, made them ghosts to anyone outside of Eden Manor, for their own protection. But Gabe wasn’t like Diel or his brothers. His blood didn’t sing to exact revenge on the men that had tortured them. He didn’t yearn to kill every single one of the secret sect until none of them remained. Until nothing was left of them but bloodstains and bones.

It was all Diel thought of. Day and night. Every minute of every day. It was his obsession.

Sela nodded, then, with his paper in hand, approached the bars of the cell. He kneeled down, his dark eyes fixed on Diel, and turned the piece of paper he had been drawing on. Diel’s blue gaze fell on the intricate sketch—every detail was perfect, as if created by Michelangelo himself.

It was the Brethren.

The Brethren dead on the floor, seven cloaked and hooded men around them. The Fallen, looking down on the sect of priests that had plagued them for too many years to count. Diel reached out and ran his fingers over the slain and broken bodies. His skin bumped in excitement. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“If you think the rest of us don’t think of destroying them too, all the fucking time, you’re dead wrong.” Sela turned the page to face himself and drank in the picture, his cheeks bursting with red. “It’s consuming.” Sela’s brown eyes darkened as something clearly crossed his mind. Diel knew what it would be. His best friend would be thinking of the member of the Brethren that Sela would one day bring down. The one who haunted him the most, the one who’d betrayed him beyond anything the rest of the brothers had experienced. The one who should have protected him, but instead threw him to the wolves.

The sound of footsteps on the stone staircase to the Tomb echoed off the old manor’s walls, ripping the two best friends from their mutual bloodlust. The light in the Tomb was low, but Diel saw Gabriel’s golden hair despite the darkness. It was like a damn halo, bright blond curls that framed his face and fell over his forehead. Gabriel was dressed as always in his priest’s attire, even down to the white dog collar. His blue eyes fell on Diel. Blue eyes that were always haunted, teetering on the brink of showing how badly he was breaking. Sela got to his feet and moved back to his chair, pencil back on the paper once again.

“Diel,” Gabe said, approaching the cell. “You okay?”

“Let me out, Gabe.” Diel got to his feet, wiped his hands on his pajama pants and wrapped his hands around the metal bars of the cage. Gabriel sighed, but, clearly happy that it was Jegudiel he was speaking to and not the monster inside of him, he reached for the key on his waistband and unlocked the door.

As it swung wide and Diel stepped out, Gabriel said, “We’re in the gym.” Diel felt the remnants of last night’s dream clinging to his skin like starving leeches, biting into his tight muscles, refusing to let go. But he nodded and followed Gabriel up the stairs, through the manor and out to the large gym Gabriel had had built in the vast gardens. The frigid air slapped at his skin, a heavy mist hovering over the landscaped grass like a sleeping spirit. The sky was overcast and gray, and drizzling rain sank into Diel’s dark hair with every step. Sela followed, his newest picture tucked into his pocket.

The rest of Diel’s brothers were already in the gym, shirts off, track pants on, and sweat dripping from their skin.

They looked up at the sound of the door being opened. “Here he is.” Bara approached Diel and Sela, his long red hair like a raging flame in the still-dark morning.

Silently, Gabriel moved to the changing room, leaving Diel with the rest of the Fallen. Bara stopped in front of Diel, his skin flushed from exercise and his usual disturbing smirk on his lips. Uriel came beside Bara, resting his arm on his best friend’s shoulder. His heavily tattooed skin was drenched in sweat, and messy blond hair stuck to his damp cheeks.

Diel’s head twitched under their attention, his monster pacing back and forth with excitement that Diel was about to train, to blow off some steam. His eyes searched the gym. They landed on the blades on the walls. His hands itched to hold them. They yearned to use them.

Raphael and Michael approached too. Raphael flicked his chin at Diel in greeting. Something inside of Raphael had calmed since he’d met Maria. Since he’d had the chance to kill her but, instead, saved her life, keeping her by his side as one of them. Michael stared across the gym, his eyes displaying their usual blankness as he clutched the vial of blood around his neck.

“The Brethren again?” Uriel asked, studying Diel with narrowed eyes. Diel met his pale gray gaze.

His blood heated as he remembered the dream. He nodded. “We were all there.” A slow grin formed on his lips, his monster curling affectionately around the fucked-up memory. “And they were all screaming at us to stop. Begging.”

“Fuck, brother. You’re going to make me hard,” Bara joked, but his green eyes were shining as he hung on Diel’s every word, needing more and more. Needing to hear—in close detail—about the violence, the revenge … the death.

“What else?” Raphael asked, wrapping his piece of string around his finger tighter and tighter, until the skin turned blue and his pupils dilated. His strained muscles jerked as his breathing became labored. “What else did we do to them?”

Even Michael’s usually disinterested ice-blue eyes drifted to Diel then, his tongue licking along teeth that had been cosmetically lengthened and sharpened into fangs.

“Pain …” Diel rasped. The collar buzzed at the quickening of his pulse. “Lots and lots of pain.” His brothers shifted on their feet, their slow breaths turning into heavy pants. “Agonized screams. And blood. Lots of spilled blood dripping from their chests, their throats and their eyes.” Diel’s eyes whipped to Michael’s as the youngest brother lifted his hand and bit down on the flesh of his palm beneath his thumb. Blood spilled into Michael’s mouth, crimson streams running down his chin and onto his bare chest. Michael pulled his hand away from his lips and smothered the blood onto his torso, over the Fallen brand that they all wore with pride.

Electric shocks snapped at the ruined skin underneath Diel’s collar in warning.

“Breathe.” Diel turned toward the sound of Gabriel coming up behind him. “Control it. Steady your breathing.” The monster inside him hissed at Gabriel, the one who held it back. Diel had never been able to control himself, ever. But he closed his eyes and did as Gabriel said. The crackling of the collar decreased to a low, steady hum. Eventually, Diel opened his eyes. Sela stayed beside him until he was steady, then Diel tossed off his shirt, preparing to train. Gabriel’s priest’s uniform had gone and he was dressed in sweatpants, his torso bare but for the Fallen brand that marred his skin.

Gabriel nodded at Diel in reassurance, but Diel’s eyes fell to the small remote in Gabriel’s palm, fixated on it. Gabriel always reduced its power when they trained, took away the pulse-trigger function.

“Let’s go,” Gabriel said to his brothers, and took off running around the perimeter of the huge gym.

Diel cracked his hands and neck and fell into step. He felt the moment Gabriel lowered the charge on the collar. In a flash, the monster inside shifted from its containment and began to seep its darkness into Diel’s bloodstream, his muscles, his damaged soul. The twitch of his head stopped, and the world around him sharpened into focus. He felt the presence of his brothers around him, heard their breaths, smelled the sweat on their skin. He felt the calling of the blades and other practice weapons that hung from the walls.

The monster wanted him to escape, to use this opportunity to run. But it was the one need Diel always fought back. Despite the evil inside him, despite his monster’s ever-growing need to be untethered from the collar and set free to kill whoever and whenever he wanted, these men were Diel’s family. These men were his brothers. They were all he had—that was what kept Diel willing to take the frequent electric shocks. He didn’t know who the hell he was without them. He never planned to find out.

When Gabriel had freed them from Purgatory years ago, when he had brought them home, baptized them “the Fallen,” implemented their rules and purpose, he had also made sure they all knew how to fight. He had brought in experts to teach them. The Fallen had stealth. They could fight. They could exist in darkness and rid the world of people it was better off without. They were as trained as any military unit would ever be. But where others killed to keep people safe, the Fallen killed because, for them, there was simply no other choice.

“Diel,” Gabriel said after an hour of pushing through moves. Diel looked at Gabe. He was drenched in sweat—they all were, but Diel’s blood was still rushing through his veins, adrenaline still coursing through him at a blistering speed.

Gabriel nodded at the rest of the brothers. They all turned to the wall, taking practice weapons in their hands. One by one they surrounded Diel. Diel’s blue eyes locked on each of them in confusion.

Gabriel held up the remote. Diel stopped breathing. “I know you’re finding things hard right now.” Gabriel sighed, and Diel saw what looked like sympathy, and maybe guilt, flash across his face. Diel’s attention snagged on the collar’s remote again. “I know the darkness inside of you is stronger, more persistent than ever before. Since Purgatory …” On cue, the monster prowled inside Diel, waiting for whatever was about to happen with teeth bared.

Gabriel stepped back, and Diel’s gaze fixed once again on his brothers. “We want to help you.” Diel’s head twitched as he took in Bara’s sadistic smile and the chain he held in his hands, Uriel’s tattooed neck cracking and the metal pole in his grip. Raphael’s golden eyes and the rope he repeatedly made into a noose, then unraveled it only to start again. Michael, who wore metal claws, blunted for training, on each of his fingertips. Then Sela, his best friend, holding a wooden katana and nodding encouragingly at Diel.

“I’m going to turn off the collar. Completely,” Gabriel said, and Diel froze. Gabriel moved in front of him until Diel was forced to meet his older brother’s eyes. “Get it all out,” Gabriel instructed. “Here, with your family, exorcise the darkness inside. The rage that has been building too high of late. You can’t go on like this.”

Diel scanned his waiting brothers. He was being cleaved in two. His monster roared in victory, counting down the seconds to his bout of freedom. But Diel’s skin grew ice cold as a slither of fear crawled over his body. This wasn’t like normal, like when he had been given a Revelation in the Tomb, to carry out a kill on some fucked-up person outside of the manor. Since Purgatory, something had changed between Diel and his monster. It was stronger, more insistent. It was getting too hard for Diel to fight back.

Diel wanted this exorcism, this reprieve. Needed his monster to release some of his pent-up rage. But he knew what happened when that collar was switched off. He knew what he became. What he would need—death. Death and blood and his brothers’ screams of pain.

His monster wrapped its hand around his throat to try to stop him speaking, to make this happen. But Diel forced it back to hiss out, “No.” His hands balled into fists as he fought against the need to accept Gabe’s offer. “I’ll kill them.” He took a step back from Gabriel as his collar started to crackle and he could feel his resolve against his monster waning. “I’ll kill you.”

“Aw, it’s cute that he thinks he can take us,” Bara said to the others. The taunt instantly boiled Diel’s blood.

Uriel looked at Bara, his pierced and tattooed muscles twitching with the need to fight, then met Diel’s eyes. “Collar off, blue eyes. Let’s go.” He smirked. “Unleash the fucking beast.”

Diel vibrated with irritation. He tried to fight back the fury, the rage the monster was conjuring, but it was a losing battle. Rolling his neck, he closed his eyes and gave himself over to the bloodthirsty monster inside. “Gabe,” he growled without looking at his leader. “Turn the collar off.”

Diel heard a click, then the blissful sound of the collar losing its hum entirely. It was dead, just like the monster wanted his smirking brothers before him to be. Like a deadly plague, the monster spread through his body at breakneck speed, possessing him, taking full control, and Diel melded into the pitch black that came with his complete surrender to evil.

As if his body had been commandeered by a sadistic puppet master, Diel lifted his head and smiled coldly at his brothers. It was euphoric, the surrender. The freedom of dropping his continuous fight, to become one with the evil inside. A roar ripped from his throat, and he charged.

He ran for Uriel first, swiping the attractive blond’s legs from underneath him. Uriel crashed to the ground, a blur of dark tattoos and metal piercings, but he thrashed out and cracked the metal pole against Diel’s back as he jumped back to his feet. Diel charged again. Because this was what got him hard—the fight, the spree. The need to take not just one life, but many, one after the other, the greed, the binge of pure murder. Uriel swung the pole; Diel caught the end and yanked the blond to him. Diel crashed his head against Uriel’s. Blood burst on Uriel’s face, but the blond just smiled and let the blood pour down the perfect face that Uriel himself detested.

Diel lashed out and cracked Uriel across the jaw, then a flash of red appeared in front him. Before Diel had even realized Bara had come for him, a chain wrapped around his torso, yanking him to the side. The heavy metal bit into his waist, threatening to crack his ribs. Bara’s sadistic smile came into focus, and pure rage ignited inside Diel. He spun, unraveling himself from Bara’s hold. Gripping the end of the chain, Diel brought it down on Bara’s back. The redhead buckled to his knees.

Uriel grabbed Bara’s hand and launched him back to his feet. Bara’s smile widened, showing pure white teeth. “My dear Jegudiel, don’t you know that kind of rough play just excites me?”

Bara cracked the chain over Diel’s chest. The pain was like a bolt of lightning to his flesh. Diel snarled and went to retaliate, but Sela’s katana plowed straight into his stomach. Red-hot fury blazed through him. His hands rolled into fists, and blackness descended. His sharp gaze roved over his best friend, and all his brothers around him. Raphael’s golden eyes met his and he lashed out with his rope, hooking a noose around Diel’s throat. Michael bared his metal-tipped claws and attacked.

With a manic laugh, Diel fought back. The monster was unrelenting—slicing, punching, striking. It was a fucked-up melee of violence, blood and pain. But Diel reveled in it. All the brothers bar one basked in its rapture.

But with every strike, every flash of his brothers’ weapons or fists, he was transported from the gym and thrust back there. Back to the underground hell that was Holy Innocents’ Purgatory. The torture room that the Brethren would lead Diel into by the chain they kept him affixed to. The racks, the strappado, the hot irons they pressed onto his skin as they exorcised the demons from his soul, the evil that never went away.

The memories penetrated the monster too as Diel was mentally taken back to the stairs that led to the hallway in Purgatory. Both monster and Diel heard the echo of his brothers’ footsteps behind him. Smelled the damp and mold of the old bricks that kept the Brethren’s depravity sealed away from the wider Catholic Church, from anyone who could help. Felt the hard stone of the floor as the Fallen were forced to their knees. And he felt the chain weighing heavy around his neck as he was forced to take a Brethren priest into his mouth, only to be pushed to the ground afterward and taken from behind.

Diel felt his fingernails snapping on the ancient stone as he tried to find purchase against the pain. But the worst memory … the worst memory was the sound of the Brethren “exorcising” the evil inside of him and his brothers, their grunts and growls as they released inside them.

Diel was no longer present in the gym. He was fully back in Purgatory, only this time he was older, stronger, and he was driven by hatred and the need for revenge.

His collar was off.

Diel broke their necks; he drove his twin blades into their hearts, kidneys, lungs, meeting their terrified stares as the blood and life drained away from them.

“Diel!” A voice called his name in the distance, but Diel was trapped in Purgatory, surrounded by the cult of priests who had hurt and tortured him for too many years, who had kept him chained to a bed like a motherfucking dog.

“Diel!” Hands tried to grab him, but Diel saw Father Brady before him, that ugly face he would never forget taunting him to come closer. Snarling, Diel charged. The priest stood his ground as Diel wrapped his hands around his throat and slammed him against the wall. Diel hissed in his face, his monster salivating at finally having one of them in his hold.

Diel didn’t hear the other men behind him, coming to the priest’s defense. He didn’t hear anything until electricity wrapped around his neck like a charged noose and pierced his skin with hundreds of volts. He squeezed Brady’s neck harder, trying to hold on, to fulfill this kill, but the volts increased and brought Diel, screaming, to his knees.

Diel wouldn’t let go.

“Diel!”

He blinked, his gaze coming back into focus. His monster had no choice but to retreat, leaving Diel—panting, bruised and bloodied—behind. He blinked again, clearing his eyes of the rest of their red mist, and a head of golden hair came into view. Blue eyes were fixed on his. But these eyes were nothing like Father Brady’s. These ones were watching him with something that Diel thought could be kindness … no, sorrow.

It was a trick. This was a motherfucking Brethren trick.

With a savage roar, Diel shot to his feet, slamming the blond Brethren imposter back against the wall. The ring of electricity around Diel’s neck burned so fiercely that Diel smelled the singeing of skin, of body hairs burning. His teeth ground together so hard at the pain that they threatened to crack. “Di …el …” the priest pleaded under Diel’s hold. His voice was broken. The haunting timbre circled Diel’s fogged-up mind. The voice … Diel knew that voice. He recognized that voice.

But before he could think harder on whose it was, he heard a bellow of “Michael!” from behind him. Suddenly hands were wrapped around his throat from behind, and sharp points pierced his throat above his collar. The pain was too much to withstand. Diel screamed as his hand slipped from the Brethren priest’s neck and he was slammed to the ground. As he looked up, ice-blue eyes stared down at him from above, lips covered in blood … blood that was slowly dripping down crimson-coated fangs.

The collar crackled as it eased its attack.

“Michael. Stop.”

Diel’s eyes darted around him. The sight of familiar walls cut through his brain. The smell of sweat and wooden floors sailed into his nostrils, grounding him, hurtling him back home. The man who hovered above him had porcelain skin, and a tattoo of a sword and wings that moved up and down with his rapid breaths.

Jet-black hair. Ice-blue eyes rimmed with dark liner. Long fingernails that were painted black.

Then, “Michael. I’m okay. Listen, I’m okay. Step back. Please.”

Diel knew that gentle voice. A new face suddenly looked down on him. Blond curls fell around his eyes, and he had the same tattoo—a sword and wings.

“Diel. Are you back with us?” the blond asked.

Other faces came into view, all of them familiar. None of them belonging to the Brethren. No Father Brady. No Father Quinn. No torture room or burning pillar candles. Diel’s hand twitched. The one with black hair stepped in front of the blond, teeth bared, ready to bite.

“Michael,” the blond said, carefully placing a hand on the dark-haired man’s arm. “It’s okay. Let me talk to him.” The dark one’s ice-blue eyes narrowed on Diel, but he moved to let the blond back through, although he stayed close to his side.

Michael. The one with fangs was called Michael.

Diel looked at the blond again. Gabriel.

Diel looked at the others who were now coming closer. Red hair—Bara. Tattoos—Uriel. Golden eyes—Raphael. And long dark hair—Sela. Sela, his closest friend.

“You back, brother?” Sela leaned down a little, meeting Diel’s gaze.

Diel closed his eyes and breathed. These men weren’t the Brethren. They were his family. Diel felt his monster pacing, wanting to keep up the fight, continue the spree. Wanting to punish Michael for even fucking daring to touch him, wanting to rip out his fangs and pierce his throat. But when Diel opened his eyes, Gabriel was crouching beside him, studying him. Gabriel’s face was pale, and there were bright red marks on his neck—finger marks. Diel’s finger marks.

“I want the Brethren,” Diel rasped, for once his own desires aligning with that of his monster’s. Gabriel froze. The room went completely silent.

Eventually, Sela reached down and offered Diel his hand. Michael hovered behind Gabriel, his gaze never leaving Diel, tracking his every move. Diel took Sela’s hand, and Sela helped him into a sitting position. “I want the fucking Brethren,” Diel said again, and Gabriel took a deep, frustrated breath.

“Diel, we can’t, we must—”

“I don’t want the others! I don’t give a fuck about the other ones we’ve been killing, the ones who ‘deserve it.’ I want the Brethren.” Diel’s pulse started to race and the collar hissed in warning. “I need to kill the fucking Brethren.”

“I second that.” Raphael was staring at the string around his finger. He looked up and addressed Gabriel. “I need their necks under my hands.”

“Raphe—”

“I agree,” Bara said, interrupting Gabriel. The redhead crossed his arms over his chest. His skin was scratched, torn and bleeding from the fight with Diel.

“Me too.” Uriel nudged his chin in Diel’s direction in support.

“And me,” Sela said, his jaw tight.

Gabriel stared at the artist. “You would want that? Even knowing who you might face?”

Sela’s lip hooked up in dark amusement. “Let’s just say there’s no love lost between him and me, if that’s what you’re getting at. I’ll face him one day. It will happen eventually. I’ll make sure of it.”

“I want them too.” Gabriel’s head snapped up when Michael, his true, blood-related brother, spoke. Gabriel watched as Michael stared at the vial around his neck, a flush coating his pale cheeks.

“I know it’s what you all want.” Gabriel ran his hand down his face. “But that’s a Pandora’s Box I’m not sure we should open. Ever open.” Diel’s head twitched in annoyance, but he got to his feet, only catching the carnage around the gym in his peripheral. Carnage he had caused. “I don’t even know where they all are, who they all are. I’ve spent years learning how to avoid them, not to walk right into their path.”

“We’re meant to destroy them,” Bara said. Uriel nodded in agreement with his best friend. “We escaped Purgatory to kill them. I know it. And I know you do too, Angel.”

Gabriel sighed, shutting down the topic, then looked back at Diel. “Are you okay now? Are you calmer?” Diel gave him a curt nod, but it was a temporary peace between him and his monster; everyone in the gym knew that. Gabriel knew that most of all. Despite the collar’s current effectiveness, Diel understood that the monster’s need to kill was only growing stronger—the need to kill the Brethren, to finally claim the ones who’d hurt them, who still lived in the world, free and unpunished. Diel was a ticking time bomb. He knew Gabriel understood that too by the obvious worry in his blue eyes.

The Brethren were going to die by Diel’s hands, sanctioned by Gabriel or not.

* * *

Gabriel sat staringinto the fire. The grandfather clock ticked a hypnotizing rhythm beside him. The room was in complete darkness but for the orange flames that climbed up the chimney in front of him. He was dressed back in his clerical suit, showered and shaved after the nightmare that the gym session had become.

Gabriel had thought letting Diel exorcise his frustrations would help; instead, it seemed to have had the opposite effect. Gabriel knew his brothers. He knew their every emotion, knew how to read them better than they could read themselves.

And Diel was breaking.

The night they saved Maria from the Brethren had set off a chain reaction in Diel that Gabriel had no way of stopping. All that they had built at Eden Manor since their breakout from Purgatory as teens was crumbling to ruins, and Gabriel could feel his soul breaking too, his tight hold on his brothers’ salvation slipping away like sand through his fingers.

Gabriel had seen his brothers the night they’d confronted the Brethren. He’d seen the elation on their faces as they’d torn down their tormentors in cold blood, as they’d looked the men straight in the eyes as they ripped them apart, as they’d attacked their abusers, living and breathing their reckoning as they simultaneously sated their darkest desires.

And Gabriel had been guilty of that too. The flames before him taunted him, swaying as they climbed from the hearth. They danced seductively, mocking him for his own sin. His moment of wickedness when faced with his old guardians.

Gabriel closed his eyes and saw Father Quinn on the floor of Purgatory, looking up at him as if Gabriel was nothing but filth. And in that second, Gabriel had been weak. In that moment, with gasoline poured all around the underground building that was riddled with abuse, Gabriel had met the old priest’s eyes and lit the match that let that underground prison burn.

Along with Father Quinn.

Gabriel shifted, feeling the cilice around his thigh bite into his flesh, just as the door to his office opened. He looked up, and Maria walked through. She crossed the room and switched on the two tall lamps, bathing the office in light. She moved silently to the liquor table and poured out two glasses of brandy, then came to the fire and handed Gabriel a glass.

“Thank you,” Gabriel said as Maria sat in the chair opposite him. She was dressed in jeans and a white button-down shirt. Her hair was down, falling to the backs of her thighs. Gabriel knew she would never cut that hair. It was hair that Raphael obsessed over, had broken all of the Fallen’s strict rules to own.

“Has he told you?” Gabriel took a soothing sip of the brandy, praying it would bring him some reprieve from the headache that was pounding at the back of his skull.

Maria sat back in the armchair, and Gabriel finally met her eyes. She nodded. Raphael had told her what happened in the gym. And he had no doubt told her what his brothers had asked of Gabriel.

Maria leaned forward. “How is your neck?”

Instinctively, Gabriel raised his hand to his dog collar and the bruise that was burgeoning underneath. He recalled Diel’s face as he’d slammed Gabriel against the gym wall. As he’d wrapped his hands around Gabriel’s neck and started to squeeze. In that moment, Gabriel had witnessed the evil in Diel’s eyes. He had come face to face with the monster that Diel said lived inside of him, the one that his victims would see as they fought for their final breaths. The blue in Diel’s eyes had been eradicated, blackened by his dilated pupils. His teeth had been gritted, and Gabriel didn’t know if Diel knew it, but he had chanted a name over and over again.

Brady … Brady … Brady …

In his head, Diel had been in Purgatory. He wasn’t killing Gabriel; he was killing one of the Brethren priests.

“Gabriel?” Maria’s voice tore him from the haunting memory. “Are you okay?”

Gabriel stared at her. He thought about how Raphael was with her now. He always held her hand at dinner, always stared at her whenever they were together, as though he couldn’t believe that she was with him, as though she was the prize for enduring all those years of hell.

Gabriel recalled when she had been smuggled into Eden Manor. As soon as she’d been discovered, Gabriel had known she would die. And Maria had. Just not in the way he’d believed. Her life as a nun had come to an end; her life of seclusion and prayer had been replaced with one as Raphael’s soulmate and only love. Raphael, Gabriel’s brother and a born killer, had found someone who loved him for exactly who he was. Maria’s old purpose was discarded, and she had been resurrected as Gabriel’s right-hand woman, someone to share the burden of being the Fallen’s leader.

“They want the Brethren.” Gabriel downed the rest of the brandy.

Maria sighed, then moved to the wall where they planned who would be the next target for the brothers. But then she went to the smaller section of the wall, where Gabriel had compiled a small list of Brethren he knew were still alive—names, parishes and where they lived. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had been able to gather. Gabriel had made sure he and his brothers were wiped from the map for the sake of their safety; the Brethren had clearly done the same. There were thousands of priests in Boston alone. He had no idea how many of them subscribed to the Brethren’s teachings.

“You and I both know this isn’t the sum total of how many Brethren are out there,” Maria said, folding her arms across her chest.

Gabriel rose from the chair and stood beside her. Maria was petite, yet somehow she had managed to contend with Raphael’s lust for her death with the strength of David facing Goliath.

He looked at the grainy pictures of the five priests on the wall. “How would Raphael kill them now he has you? His …” He paused, carefully thinking of how to phrase what he wanted to say. “His preferences are very specific.” Raphael was a lust killer. He had always gained sexual gratification as he killed his victims, had often been inside them as their hearts ceased to beat.

Maria stilled, but then explained, “The strangulation is enough for him now.” She cleared her throat, and her cheeks blazed. “He has me for the rest. To fulfill the rest of his … needs that come with his kills … afterward …”

Gabriel closed his eyes and breathed slowly. He didn’t know what that entailed. But he knew Sela had designed and crafted a coffin for Maria, a coffin Raphael kept in their room. And he knew that Maria often lay inside it for Raphael’s pleasure.

Gabriel would never forgive himself for allowing Maria to be brought into this life, for not freeing her from Raphael when he had the chance. Yet, at the same time, he could see the intense, all-consuming love she had for Raphael in her every breath, her every move. He could see how happy she was. The way she looked at Raphael, the way he looked at her as if being with her was like touching heaven itself. In truth, Gabriel envied them, despite his lack of understanding of how they had found their way to love when they were so different, both morally and spiritually.

An ache broke out in his chest. In his entire life he hadn’t experienced anything like that kind of love. He couldn’t even imagine what it would be like … to have someone who loved him with that kind of fierceness, that kind of understanding and unwavering faith. His mind drifted to Michael, and he felt warmth in his chest as he remembered how Michael had bitten Diel to get him off Gabriel. He had pushed Gabriel behind him to protect him. Michael rarely showed any emotion over anything but blood and the thought of exsanguination. He certainly didn’t speak to Gabriel like a normal brother. He never had done. But Gabriel fought a small smile when he remembered just how fiercely Michael had hovered over Diel when he’d been lost to his dark thoughts. Gabriel may not have had eros, a love in his life like Maria and Raphael did, but he had his family, and for him, that would be enough.

Maria sighed, pulling his attention back to her. “You know I believe I was meant to be here, Gabe. You are a man of faith just as much as I am a woman of it. We both believe the world works in ways we will never understand—mysterious and magical.”

She turned to face him, putting her hand on his arm. “I believe that all of it—my family’s deaths, my kidnapping, my rescue, my training as a nun, meeting Father Quinn and Father Murray …” Maria laughed and lifted a strand of her long hair. “Even this hair. It all led me to Raphael. Without any one of those things, we would have been ships passing in the night.” She squeezed Gabriel’s arm. “All of that, it led me to help you. To share this burden.”

Maria approached the wall. She lifted a finger and ran it over the pictures of the priests they knew were definitely part of the Brethren sect. Gabriel saw her become lost in thought, then she said, “Have you ever entertained the notion that Raphael, Diel and the others were saved, you were saved, to rid the world of this evil?” She pointed to the small list of names before her.

Gabriel stilled. A shard of ice trickled down his spine. He’d only ever felt that feeling a few times before. When he’d finally accepted what Michael really was, when he’d found that Purgatory was real, and when the true colors of his much-adored priest, Father Quinn, had been revealed. A feeling like his soul was shifting, leaning in another direction.

“The Bible has numerous examples of people being sent down a path by the divine to free people from enslavement, to rid the world of evil, to put right what has been wronged.” Maria shrugged. “Have you ever considered the idea that we were spared so we could rid the world of the Brethren, pretender priests who do nothing but bring pain and sin, polluting people’s trust and faith? That everything you have been put through was for this? For this very task? This moment?” She smiled fondly.

Gabriel and Maria had become close friends, no, more like brother and sister. “Your namesake, the archangel Gabriel, was a guardian, a protector of his people.” She nodded at him. “If those qualities don’t pertain to you, I don’t know what does.”

“Maria.” Gabriel rubbed his hand across his forehead. But her words had had the desired effect. A wave of peace and knowing washed through him. He did believe that things happened for a reason, he always had. He had always trusted his gut feelings as confirmation of something coming his way, of something big and poignant approaching. Right now, his gut was screaming at him to listen to Maria, to Diel, to all his brothers.

He had to trust in his family.

Gabriel looked at the wall, at the priests he had trusted implicitly as a child only to be hurt by them in ways no child—no person, regardless of age—should be hurt by another. “It would be a war, a holy war, that we’d be starting.”

“We haven’t started it, Gabe,” Maria said with conviction. “The Brethren started this the minute they swayed from the church, from the rightful path onto one of evil and sin.”

Gabriel knew she was right. But … “It might expose us. It might lead them straight to our door. Are we even ready for that?” His temple throbbed at the thought of anything happening to his brothers, or to Maria, or to the staff that resided in the manor.

“Not if we’re careful. Just because our gears are changing, it doesn’t mean that we need to falter on the secrecy that has protected us thus far.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re completely sold on this, aren’t you? I can hear the conviction in your voice.”

Maria leaned back against the edge of the table behind her. Her head fell forward in contemplation, and when she lifted it, her eyes were shining. “When I hear what they did to you all …” She swallowed back her emotion, her voice cracking. “When Raphe talks to me, about back then, what you all went through …” She looked away, and when she turned back, tear marks stained her cheeks. “When I see his scars and the brand that they forced upon him, when he wakes in the night desperately searching for me because another memory from his childhood has come back to haunt him, to plague him, to tear him apart …”

Maria sadness was replaced by a swift wave of anger. Gabriel felt as if a hole was caving in his chest at what she was saying about Raphael, about them all. “The Brethren need to be stopped,” Maria said firmly. “They need to be destroyed.” She smirked. “And you have a legion of so-called fallen angels who not only desire this war you speak of, but are capable of winning it.” She pushed away from the table, shoulders strong and chin held high. “I, for one, cannot live with the thought of this sadistic cult of delusional priests hurting anyone else. Any more children.” Maria looked Gabriel dead in the eyes. “Can you?”

Gabriel thought back to the gym, to how his brothers had fought Diel. They’d all risked their lives to try to save him from the darkness that was smothering him, rising day by day inside him. Even though Gabriel’s plan to exorcise the monster had failed, his brothers had still expressed their need to go after the Brethren along with Diel—always each other’s champions, always each other’s fiercest protectors.

Gabriel had had a system in place for years, one adopted from his serial-killer grandfather. That system that had served them well up until now. But the wind the Fallen sailed on was changing and setting them all on a new course, one he prayed was divinely sent and not one that would ultimately lead to their damnation.

Gabriel stood beside Maria, his headache instantly easing as his decision was made.

“How do we do this?”

Maria smiled wide. “I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out.”

So they got to work.