Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Diel dressedin jeans and a sleeveless shirt. Noa was in leggings and one of his black t-shirts. His heart was a fucking loaded canon as he watched her pull the oversized shirt over her head and flick out her long damp hair from the wide neckline. But as his heart swelled, his stomach sank. He recalled watching her break from the phalanx earlier that night. He’d watched her slice through priest after priest like a demonic ghost, trying to get to the boy in the collar.

Diel had never known fear like watching her disappear into a black hole of robed priests. Noa thought herself evil, tainted by hell. But when he watched her, Diel only saw a fucking white witch wearing a goddamn halo. A heart made of pure gold. She thought herself cold, but she showed more love for people than most, a trait he had only ever seen in Gabriel. A charitable soul, only her charitable acts were done in her very Noa way. To Diel, charity didn’t always have to be pure and innocent. It could be given by a person dripping with rage and wielding a fucking unstoppable sword.

As if she knew he was thinking of her, Noa finished dressing, slipped on her boots and came toward Diel, who was sitting on the edge of the bed. She wrapped her arms around his neck, smelling of lavender and mint from the shampoo and body wash she had just used. Diel pulled her down with his hand on the back of her head and kissed her. Then he stood and held out his hand.

“We’d better get down there, or Bara will have gutted him,” Diel said. His heart burst when Noa smiled at that thought and wrapped her fingers around his.

She pulled him to the door. “Come on. We can’t let that ginger loudmouth have all the fun.”

Noa was fucking made for him. She might have resented her inner darkness at times, blamed it for that young boy’s death, but Diel relished it. She was his match in every way that counted.

They descended the stairs, and Noa found her sisters in the Nave, sitting around the dining table. Dinah got to her feet. “You going down there?” she asked Noa.

“Of course,” Noa said. “I want answers.” Diel watched Dinah closely for any sign that she disapproved of his woman and who she was inside. But there was no censure in Dinah’s expression.

Diel relaxed and led Noa down to the cellar. He pushed open the door to the small dungeon-type room he knew the priest was being held in. All his brothers, bar Gabriel, were inside. The priest was on a chair in the center of the space, tied down, eyes rolling as he fought for consciousness.

Uriel flicked his chin to Diel and Noa in greeting. “Perfect timing. He’s just stirring. We kept him knocked out for you.”

Noa released Diel’s hand. Bara smirked. “Blood and torture? My idea of a romantic date,” he said. Diel saw that his redheaded brother had laid out knives, iron pokers, blades and scalpels on a metal tray, ready to make the fucker in the chair spill Brethren secrets.

Sela nodded at Diel, eyes narrowed as he stared the priest down. Diel was pretty sure he was imagining that it was his brother, Auguste, in that chair. Raphael moved to the captive and checked the ropes around his wrists. Then he stood and made a noose from another line of rope, hanging it from the metal loop fixed in the ceiling. Raphael’s golden eyes shone with mirth. “This is fun. We should do it more often. Family bonding.”

Michael stayed in the corner, staring at a vial of blood, turning it over and over, inspecting every crimson drop inside its glass shell. Diel knew it was the blood he had taken from Beth last night. Diel’s head throbbed. So much had happened in such a small amount of time that his head was spinning.

When Diel looked at the priest again, he felt bumps of hatred spreading all over his skin. His blood began to boil, and then the priest opened his eyes, and his gaze fell upon the men and Noa in front of him. His eyes widened, and he thrashed on the chair, trying to fight against his restraints. But Raphael was a master at ropes; the priest would be going nowhere.

The priest’s head whipped around the room. Then his eyes rested on Noa. The priest’s lip curled in disgust as his gaze raked over her body.

Diel’s blood went from zero to one hundred degrees. How dare the priest fucking disrespect Noa so blatantly? Diel was across the room before anyone could speak, throwing an iron fist across the priest’s face. The priest’s head snapped to the side. Diel took hold of the priest’s hair and yanked his head back so quickly he was sure the move would have given the Brethren fucker whiplash.

“You look at her like that one more time and I’ll fucking gouge out your eyes with my blunt nails,” Diel snarled, pulling so hard on the priest’s hair that a clump was ripped out of his scalp.

The priest screamed. Diel tossed the greasy clump of hair to the ground. He paced in front of the priest, trying to remember that they needed him alive, to get answers from him. Diel couldn’t just kill him like he wanted. He had to keep him alive, he—

Diel felt a soothing hand on his arm, and he breathed in deeply when he saw that it was Noa. She nodded at him, silently communicating with him to relax, to rein in his rage. She passed by him and took a scalpel from the tray Bara had laid out for them.

Diel stood in front of the priest, eyes fixed on his and arms crossed over his broad chest. He wanted to be in this fucker’s line of sight. Noa stepped in front of him. Crouching down, she placed the scalpel at his hairline. “We have some questions for you.”

The priest smiled just as coldly as Noa had spoken. “I’ll give you nothing, witch.”

“Oh, goody,” Noa said sarcastically, and pushed the scalpel into his skin. Blood bubbled from the small cut. Michael shifted excitedly in the corner at the arrival of blood. “You know me.”

The priest hissed as Noa dragged the scalpel down the left side of his face half an inch. “I know of you, heathen. I know your family worshipped the devil, that you were created from the spawn of Satan himself, and my brothers slayed them, ridding the world of their evil.”

“You’re the spawn of Satan?” Uriel said to Noa. The tall blond shrugged, his tattoos dancing on his arms as he did so. “I knew I liked you.”

The priest hissed again as Noa moved the scalpel down to his cheek. His skin split, but his eyes were on Uriel. The look he gave Diel’s heavily pierced brother was filled with pure hatred.

“So, here’s what’s going to happen,” Noa said, bringing the priest’s attention back to her. “You’re going to tell me what I want to know, or I’m going to let my man here, and each of my brothers, hurt you. One by one, in whatever way they want.” The priest’s face paled, but he pressed his lips together firmly, symbolically sealing them shut.

Noa nodded. “We’re looking for someone. A young woman, early twenties. She has a birthmark covering half of her face and is blind in one eye. Black hair, and eyes the color of his,” she said, pointing at Diel, who was still behind Noa, a bloodhound at her back.

The priest’s body didn’t move, but there was a twitch in his cheek and a glimmer of something in his eye at Noa’s question. Hope burst in Diel’s chest. Noa tilted her head to the side. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you? Or you know of her?” she pushed. But the priest turned his head away and didn’t answer.

Noa dropped the scalpel and got to her feet. She nodded at Bara. Bara smiled wide. He stepped forward, a compact blowtorch in his hand. He flicked the switch, blue flame morphing to warm tones, and edged toward the priest.

Noa moved beside Diel, and he watched, blood rushing through his veins, as Bara stripped the priest of his black robe until his skin was revealed. The branded “B” on his chest offended Diel’s fucking eyes. The priest sat stoic throughout, as if he had been trained to withstand torture. He only broke into a sweat when Bara began to scorch the skin of his arms and chest.

“Anything to say yet?” Noa asked when the dungeon reeked of charred flesh. Bara stayed close, shifting from side to side excitedly.

“Die, devil’s whore,” the priest snarled, breathless from enduring so much pain.

The slur was a red flag to Diel. He rushed forward, grabbed a knife, and plunged it straight into the priest’s shoulder until only the handle could be seen. Then he twisted the blade, slowly. The priest shook. His face reddened with agony, sweat poured from his forehead, and his teeth clenched as he tried to withstand the assault.

But Diel kept twisting and twisting, until Noa ran her hand up Diel’s back, signaling for him to withdraw. Diel forced himself to pull back. Noa crouched down and said, “Where is the woman?”

The priest laughed manically. His eyes narrowed on Noa as he hissed, “You’ll never find her.” Every muscle in Diel’s body locked; he was paralyzed by the priest’s words. His heart fired into a sprint, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

Cara was alive. She was fucking alive. The priest knew of her.

Noa stood and nodded at Uriel. Uriel took a large set of needles from the metal tray and walked slowly toward the priest. Noa came to stand before Diel as Uriel begin to pierce the mass of needles into the priest’s flesh, slow and deep. All over his body—his arms, his legs, his cheeks. Then Uriel pushed a needle into his groin, just beside his balls.

Noa’s hand on Diel’s arm drew his attention from the moaning priest to her. “You okay?” she whispered, low enough for only him to hear. Diel didn’t fucking know if he was okay. This bastard priest knew Cara, or he knew of her, and he wasn’t spilling shit.

Diel’s little sister was alive, which brought him relief. But she was with them, imprisoned somehow by them, which made him want to rip this fucker apart, then tear through every Brethren faction in the city until he found her.

Yet Diel nodded at Noa, giving nothing away with this prick in this room. By the knowing glint in her eye, he guessed Noa saw his true feelings.

When Uriel was done and the priest a human pin cushion, needles pushed into the parts of his body that would bring him most discomfort, Noa nodded at Sela. Sela approached the priest with the sharpest blade Diel had ever seen. The priest’s blood-curdling screams sounded as sweet as a fucking lullaby as Sela robbed the priest of two fingers and an entire ear.

The priest was moaning now, edging into delirium. Noa stepped forward. “The woman? Where is she?” The priest’s head dropped. Noa slapped him around the face. “Where. Is. She?”

“Eat … shit … witch,” the priest slurred, and Diel nodded to Raphael. Raphael’s golden eyes gleamed as he reached for the noose he had attached to the ceiling and carefully wrapped it around the priest’s neck.

Raphael tightened the rope around the priest’s neck until the priest was silently screaming for breath. Then Raphael, his usual string tight around his finger, yanked on the pulley. The noose began to drag the priest off the floor, the chair legs hovering an inch off the ground. His neck took the brunt of his weight; the rope’s fibers tore at his skin.

Noa slid her hand into Diel’s and squeezed, her eyes light with satisfaction as the priest fought for air, fought to be released. He choked, legs and arms desperately trying to break from Raphael’s ties. But it was futile.

Eventually, Raphael lowered him back to the ground, and the noose slackened enough to allow him to breathe. The priest gasped for air, then he let out a scream, filled with frustration—filled with the opening notes of defeat.

Noa rushed toward him. “The woman? Tell us where the woman is, and this will stop.” Diel smirked to himself. Because he knew his woman. This would never stop. This priest was going to bear the brunt of all the Fallen’s hatred toward his fellow black-robed brothers and their fucked-up organization.

The priest’s eyes rolled. Noa lifted his head by his hair. “Where is she?”

The priest fought unconsciousness, the pins still in his body, the knife Diel had inserted in his shoulder still handle-deep. Blood seeped from the wound. He was bleeding from where Sela had taken his fingers and ear. He was losing blood, and Michael was watching him from the corner of the room as if the priest was his next meal.

“The …” The priest tried to swallow through the noose around his neck. “She’s a … Sh-shunned,” he stuttered, his voice barely audible, ruined by pain and the rope. But Diel heard it. Noa whipped her head to Diel, eyes wide.

Diel shot forward, crouching down beside Noa. “Shunned? What are the fucking Shunned?” When the priest’s eyes rolled again, Diel grabbed him by the shoulders and wrenched him and his chair off the floor until his eyes met Diel’s. “What are the fucking Shunned?”

The priest tried to focus on Diel. Then he smiled, igniting hellfire in Diel’s veins. “Pun …ish … Punished,” he said, fucking pride in his tone.

Punished, punished, punished …Diel ran the word over in his head. The Shunned. The punished. What did that mean? What did that fucking mean?!

Diel dropped the priest, sending the wood crashing to the floor. The chair fell back, and the noose pulled tight against the priest’s neck. Noa quickly righted the chair, then came after Diel. “Diel.” She forced him to turn and face her. “We’ll get more from him.”

Noa looked at Michael and nodded. Michael moved from the far wall and slowly approached the priest. He licked his fangs, and Diel felt as though his blood was scalding him from the inside. He needed more from the priest. He needed to know what and who the fuck the Shunned were. Why Cara was one of them and where the fuck she was.

The priest’s scream was deafening as Michael ripped his head to the side and sank his teeth into his flesh. But Michael didn’t drink from him. He recoiled, releasing the priest’s neck, and spat the blood onto the floor. Diel blinked, momentary shock rendering him motionless.

Michael always drank. He never wasted blood.

Diel glanced at Raphael, Michael’s closest friend. Raphael was frowning, shock in his expression too. The priest looked at Michael as if he were the anti-Christ. He screamed, trying to edge away from Diel’s blood-loving brother. But Michael sank his fangs into the other side of the priest’s neck. Seconds later, he wrenched his head back and spat the blood onto the floor once again. Michael’s facial expression didn’t change, it never did, but his body shook, Diel guessed with rage.

A low snarl sounded in Michael’s mouth as he wiped the blood from his lips with the back of his hand, smearing red across his cheek.

“Please …” the priest said, showing the first signs of surrender as he glared at Michael with wide, fearful eyes. But at the sound of his plea, Michael curled his long metal-clawed fingers and slashed them across the priest’s face. He did it again and again, until the priest was screaming so loud it rang in Diel’s ears.

“Stop! STOP! I’ll tell you anything!” the priest shouted, but Michael didn’t halt, as if he couldn’t hear the priest’s begging, or he didn’t want to. Diel went to rip him away from the priest, but Raphael was across the room before he could, wrapping his arms around Michael and wrenching him away.

Michael’s ice-blue eyes were wide as Raphael pushed him against the wall to calm down, keeping him from charging back to the priest. Michael lapped at his fangs, but as if the blood was repugnant and sour, he spat it onto the ground. It took minutes for Michael to calm enough for Raphael to move away. The moment he was freed, Michael dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out the vial he had been studying when Diel and Noa entered the room. He stared at it again as though it was the motherfucking Holy Grail, his pale skin paling even further.

“Tell us everything,” Noa said from behind Diel, and he realized she had gone back to the priest. He was dying. Slowly. “Shunned …” the priest wheezed. He was fighting for consciousness, fighting to stay alive—a vain hope.

“What about them?” Noa asked. Diel kept his eyes focused on the priest.

“Tainted by the devil … veiled … women,” he slurred.

Veiled. Tainted by the devil. Diel couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t fucking breathe.

“What do the Brethren do with them? The Shunned? The veiled women?” Noa asked.

The priest, even with his face and body mangled, fucking smiled. “They serve,” he said, coughing up blood. It poured down his chin and chest. “Slaves … paying their … repentance,” he said. Diel closed his eyes and imagined his sister, his younger sister, at the hands of the Brethren. And what the fuck did he mean by slaves? What were they fucking doing to her?

“Where are the Shunned?” Noa said.

The priest’s smile widened. “Don’t … know.”

“Wrong answer.” Noa went to signal Bara over to him again, ready for round two.

“Wait!” the priest said as Bara pushed off the wall. “I … really don’t.” The priest tried to swallow. “I’ve only seen them once … At a gathering …” He wheezed again, louder this time, his lungs quickly filling with fluid. They didn’t have much time. They needed answers from him.

Now.

Noa must have shared Diel’s concern, as she rushed to ask, “Who would know?”

The priest laughed, maniacal and delusional. “Fa-Father Auguste.” The hairs on the back of Diel’s neck rose at the thought of that cunt. He cut a glance to Sela. His brother’s expression was beyond dark; it was deathly. “H-has Shunned ledger … owns them … schools them …”

Noa looked at Diel, and he saw the pain in her eyes. Diel was consumed with the need to rip Auguste apart. To kill that fucker once and for all.

“You … won’t … succeed,” the priest said, and Noa turned back to him slowly. He was smiling at her, teeth washed with red. “God is on … our side …” The priest grinned wider.

Noa got to her feet, pulled Diel’s dagger from the priest’s shoulder, and rammed it right between his eyes. Blood spattered from the priest’s shattered skull, but Noa merely walked back toward Diel and wrapped her arms around his neck and said, “She’s alive.”

“But they have her.” Sela met Diel’s gaze.

“And we’ll get her back,” Noa said. Diel nodded numbly.

“The Shunned? Veiled?” Uriel said, shaking his head. “They’re hiding their faces?” Diel could hear the anger in Uriel’s voice loud and clear.

Noa’s palms moved to Diel’s cheeks. “She’s alive. For now, we’ll take comfort in that.”

“And my motherfucking brother knows about her too,” Sela said. He pushed off the wall of the dungeon and left the room. Diel watched him go, concern stirring in his chest.

“His brother needs to die. Soon, and fucking painfully,” Raphael said, then left the room too. One by one, the Fallen left Diel and Noa alone.

When it was just them and the dead priest, Diel said, “Is it her birthmark?” he rasped, letting Noa hear his inner pain, his worry. “Why they veiled her? Why they think the devil created her? Because of her birthmark, her blindness?”

Noa’s shoulders sagged. “I think there’s rarely anything that shocks me anymore when it comes to the Brethren. Their delusions run so deep, God knows what their fucked-up ideologies make them believe.” Noa edged closer. “Cara is strong,” she said softly. “She’s a fighter. Just like you.” Diel nodded, but he didn’t speak. Shunned? Veiled?

They serve … slaves … paying their repentance …

“What does she have to repent for?” he said eventually, voice hoarse. “What has she ever done wrong?”

“Nothing,” Noa said vehemently. “Nothing at all. Do not try and rationalize the Brethren’s beliefs and practices. They are cruel and wicked and base their ways on one of the most barbaric and senseless periods in history.” Diel nodded, but he felt empty inside.

His sister. His baby sister was in their clutches. She had been all this time … and he hadn’t even remembered her. He had failed her.

Noa threaded her fingers through his. “Let’s go to bed. Get some sleep. You’re dead on your feet. We can make plans when we wake.” Diel nodded numbly and allowed Noa to take them to his room and lay them down.

Diel held Noa tightly to his chest and closed his eyes. But when he did, he saw Cara in a veil, bowing low at Auguste’s unyielding command, a deep sense of fear in her heart.

* * *

Noa’s breathing evened out.But Diel stayed wide awake. All he could think of was Cara in a veil, under Auguste’s hand. He didn’t even know what his little sister looked like now she was older. His gut churned when he even dared to imagine what she might have been through at the hands of those motherfucking priests.

Noa turned in his arms, her face turning toward him on the pillow they shared. He stared at her peaceful expression. She was so beautiful. But then he imagined her veiled, let himself imagine her as a child under Auguste’s brutal torture techniques. She said they had been burned as witches, drowned, hanged. He felt his inner rage like a spark of fire in his soul. And it built and built until he couldn’t lie there. He softly drew back the covers and stepped out of the bed.

Diel felt like he was losing his grip on his anger again. Not the rising of his monster, just the pure rage that he felt when imagining those he loved under the Brethren’s totalitarian control.

Diel fled from his room and burst outside. The cold air slapped at his skin. And he ran. He ran and he ran, the cold air burning his lungs like flames. He pushed his muscles until they screamed at him to stop. But the anger just kept sweeping though him, an unstoppable force.

Diel’s hair dripped with sweat. Exhausted, he eventually stopped by Raphael’s rose garden. He slumped down on a stone bench covered by a wooden awning. He stared out at the manor’s vast grounds. Mist hovered over the grass and bit at his bare feet. But Diel didn’t even feel the cold. He felt numb. Numb, but with inner unease sparking like a live wire. He felt like crawling out of his skin.

He was fucking lost. He didn’t know how the fuck to get his sister back. He didn’t know how to defeat the Brethren. He fucking knew nothing.

Diel glanced up when he saw a flicker of movement beside him. Silently, Sela sat down next to him on the bench. His hair was wet too, feet and torso bare as if he had fled his bed too. As if he was unraveling too.

Sela stared out over the manicured lawn. The mist looked like ghosts waking from the dead to haunt the old grounds under the protective cover of darkness. Diel looked at his brother, his best friend, and saw Auguste’s unwanted shadow lurking around him. Without moving, Sela said, “I sometimes wish I could tear off my own face. Make a new one from all the people I kill.” Sela’s jaw clenched, the only indication that he was anything but calm inside. “Just so I don’t have to share any fucking features with him anymore.”

Diel felt immediate sorrow for his brother. He remembered how Finn Nolan had felt about his little sister, his only sibling. He’d adored her, wanted to protect her, wanted to get them both free from their mother and get them a better life. He couldn’t imagine hating her, wanting her dead. He couldn’t imagine having a sibling who was responsible for so many people’s grief and pain.

Diel didn’t say anything in response. He had no fucking clue what would help his brother right now.

Sela shifted on the seat. “Her name was Destiny.”

Diel froze. Sela’s eyes were downcast, and the high wind kept his long dark hair blown forward, hiding his face. But something in Sela’s voice sounded different. It carried an inflection of mourning. Of sorrow. Of longing …

“We were kids in the same group home,” Sela said. Diel stared at his brother in shock. Sela never spoke of life before Purgatory. None of his brothers really did. Those were the only memories they had the privilege of keeping to themselves. Kept just for them, when their entire lives had been held in someone else’s hands. Sela sighed, then looked at Diel. The sadness in his brown eyes cut Diel to the core. “Destiny had issues.” Sela sealed his mouth shut then, as if anything else he said would be a betrayal of the girl he’d obviously loved. He sighed, but then allowed himself to add, “Auguste had her taken away from me.” His jaw tightened. “I ended up in Purgatory.”

“Where did he take her?” Diel asked.

“Killed her,” Sela whispered after a few tense seconds. He lifted his chin. “He made sure I knew that he killed her. That she would never be mine again. That I would never have anything for myself ever again.”

The rage simmering in Diel rose to a boil. His hands shook, and he was sure he could feel his monster breaking through for a moment just to show his fury.

“Brother …” Diel said.

Sela stood, his shoulders sagging in defeat. “We’re going to get your sister back from whatever fucked-up reality he has her living in.” Sela’s face displayed more evil than any painting he could ever create. “Then I’m going to kill my brother once and for all.” Sela nodded, as if reassuring himself of that fact. “He has your sister. He hurt the Coven, your Noa.” Sela hissed as he inhaled. “And he took my Destiny away from me. My greatest and only muse. For that, he will die, and he will die slowly.”

Sela began to walk away.

“Sela … I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Diel said. Sela turned back to him, nodding his head. Then Diel thought of Sela’s studio. The paintings, the statues … and realization hit him. They were all different forms of the same person. Of the same girl. “She’s who you draw, isn’t she?” he asked. “Who you try to recreate.”

Sela’s gaze drifted off over the gardens again. “I found out a long time ago that you can’t recreate perfection.” He gave a self-deprecating smile. “Though every day I try, just so I can see her face again. Just so I can have her back in some small way.”

It took Sela a while to move again, clearly drained of energy. When it seemed he’d mustered up enough strength, he walked away in silence, and Diel knew not to follow. His brother wanted to be alone. But as he watched Sela go, Diel’s nerves felt untied, frayed. Auguste had killed the love of Sela’s life. His own brother took away his only chance at happiness and then dumped him in hell.

As Sela was swallowed up by the thick mist, Diel got to his feet. He raced back through the gardens to the manor and straight back into his bed. Noa shifted as her warm skin met his cold body. Her eyes flickered open, a sleepy smile forming on her lips when she saw Diel looking down at her. As Sela had said about Destiny, to Diel, Noa was perfection. Unaware of his inner worship, she laid her cheek on Diel’s chest, and he wrapped his arms around her as she fell back to sleep.

But Diel could only think of Sela and Destiny, his best friend’s “one,” whom Auguste had robbed him of forever. They’d taken Cara from Diel too. So he squeezed Noa tighter. If anyone even dared come for her, he wouldn’t rest until he’d torn them apart and bathed in their blood.

The monster inside him agreed.