Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Noa sat oppositethe cage on a wooden chair. Her hair, damp from her shower, hung down her back, and she was dressed in an oversized white button-down shirt and leggings. She stared at the man in the cage. The low sizzle from the collar around his neck filled the cave that housed the cage built by the War of Independence soldiers years ago for their prisoners.

Noa handled the remote in her hand, feeling nothing but guilt about the now-live collar around the man’s neck. When they’d arrived back at the tunnels, Noa had gotten Jo to take a look at it. Her sister, being a genius with anything mechanical and technical, had quickly fashioned Noa a makeshift remote of sorts. Naomi, their healer, had taken one look at the scars around the man’s neck, underneath his collar, and found clear evidence of past trauma. She explained that the redness came from excessive low-grade electrocution.

The collar controlled the man somehow. As Noa thought back to him killing the priest and attacking her and Dinah, she didn’t have to wonder too hard about why his collar was necessary. So, Jo had made her a remote that could temporarily control the collar. And then Noa waited. She had been waiting for him to sleep off the drug she had injected him with and wake up for quite some time.

An hour later, a shift of his fingers was the first indication that the man was waking. Noa held her breath when his hand moved. A low groan slipped from between his teeth, and his jean-clad legs shifted on the damp cave floor.

Seconds felt like hours as he moved his head and began lifting his torso, bracing his large body on his hands. Then he lifted his head. Blue eyes roved their gaze around the cave, finally landing on Noa.

It was like witnessing the flick of a switch. A mere second for his lethargic body to spring into action and charge at the cage bars like a man possessed. His body slammed into the side of the cage, his shoulder immediately reddening as he flung his body against the iron bars to try and break them down. The collar around his neck crackled, then, with a vicious roar, he dropped to the ground, lips thinned and jaw tensed as the collar sent electricity bolting through his body.

Noa shifted on the wooden seat, watching him fight the pain. But then he snapped his head up, and as fury flashed across his face, he charged at her again. Just as his hands reached the bars, wrapping around the iron, he dropped to his knees, holding his breath. His body jerked and his muscles strained underneath his reddening skin. His neck was corded and strained and his teeth clenched together. The collar’s electrical bite was clearly agonizing.

But even through it all, he kept his murderous blue gaze on Noa, promising all the hurt his hands could possibly inflict.

Then he closed his eyes and started to breathe, like there was some part of him that was rational, that was somehow talking him down. Noa watched, fascinated, as he seemed to calm himself. His breathing went from harsh pants to smooth rises and heavy falls of his broad chest. After several seconds, he opened his eyes, and Noa saw something else in their depths. A flash of something that wasn’t monstrous.

A flicker of humanity.

Noa sat forward on her seat, remote in one hand, knife in the other. The man’s nostrils flared as he watched her back, a duel of wills. “Come closer,” he said, with a soft hooking of his lip that looked beyond enticing on his stunning face. Noa couldn’t believe how a simple smile could make him that much more attractive.

She sat back in her chair, crossing her right leg over her left. “I think I’ll stay here, thanks.”

His head repeatedly twitched, and his beautiful smile widened to an uncomfortable grin. “I want to meet you properly.” Noa felt like she was talking to the demon controlling the man and not the actual man himself. When she didn’t move, he gripped the bars harder, the only indication of his ire. The bars groaned under his grasp, and Noa had a flash of fear that, due to their age, they might not hold.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“What’s yours?” he replied, a growl to his tone.

“Noa.” She searched his body. The light was low in the cave, but she found scar upon scar on his skin. And faint scars circling his wrists. She stilled as she suddenly felt her own wrists burn.

The man must have seen her attention was on his wrist scars, as he said, “Ever been on a rack?” He smiled wide, teeth showing, but the sight wasn’t comforting. He asked the question as though it were a threat.

Noa got to her feet and approached him. His eyes tracked her the entire way. She stopped just out of reach of the bars and rolled back the cuffs of her shirt. She held up her wrists, and the white scars shone silver in the path of the lamp. The man’s head canted to the side, like a predator trying to work out exactly what kind of creature its prey was.

Noa reached down to her leggings and pulled the legs up. The scars on her ankles were visible too. She turned her attention back to the man, whose gaze snapped from her ankles to her face. “Yeah. I’ve been on a rack.”

“Who are you?” he snarled, the iron bars groaning under the pressure of his grip.

“Who are you?”

He smiled again. The cold look on his face sent chills to Noa’s spine. “Your worst fucking nightmare.”

This time Noa smiled back, and something lit in the man’s eyes. His smile turned from taunting to what could be deemed impressed in a split second. Noa crouched down to his level. She held up her knife and the makeshift remote. “Actually, it seems like I’m yours.”

“Let me out and we’ll see,” the man said smoothly.

Noa felt that stirring in her chest that she had pushed back years ago. She felt it curling inside of her at the sound of this man’s voice. Intrigued by his aura of pitch-darkness, the constant threat in his every move. “You killed that priest,” Noa said, waiting for his reaction.

It was instant. The game of verbal tennis they had been playing crashed to a sudden stop, and he slammed against the bars, teeth bared as he hissed, “He needed to fucking die. They all needed to fucking die.”

“All?” Noa held her ground as the man turned feral before her.

He suddenly calmed, then lifted his head, the taunting side of him returning. “You. It was you who got to them all first. You tied them all up but left them alive.”

Noa suddenly realized what he was saying. “You killed more priests last night, didn’t you?”

“You’re fucking weak,” he spat. “Pathetic. You should have slit their throats and stabbed their hearts.”

“Why?” Noa said, focusing on the brand on his torso.

The man followed her eyes and then tilted his head as he studied her. He smiled again. His head twitched. But he stayed silent, hands gripping the bars, bloodied body unmoving.

Noa was done with dancing around this shit. She got to her feet and moved to the lock of the cage. “Yes,” he said, his Boston accent thick with excitement. “Open the cage, gentle Noa. I won’t hurt you.”

Noa felt her heart race, a trickle of fear in her veins. But she knew he was like her. The rack, the brand, the collar … she had to make him see he was like her, like all her sisters.

Noa unlocked the padlock of the cage and stepped back. She gripped her knife and held on tightly to the remote. The man watched her like a hawk but slowly got to his feet. She noticed he kept his breathing steady, taking calming breaths with every flicker of movement. The collar sizzled as the man reached for the cage’s gate. His attention never moved from her.

Noa gripped the handle of her knife tighter, and the door to the cage opened. The man filled the cage’s doorway and inhaled deeply, like he could smell freedom. His head twitched, eyes blinked, then without any form of warning, he charged at her, his expression morphing into one of pure evil. Noa dodged him, and the man roared as the collar spiked to high voltage, causing him to slam his hands on the nearest cave wall in rage.

Noa watched him closely. “I know why you were there. At the priest’s home.” The man spun. His lips were white from pain, but he fought it. His neck was corded, and Noa could smell the familiar scent of burning flesh. “I know why you were there to kill him.”

Those words seemed to ignite something in the man. “You know nothing!” He charged at her again, only this time he caught her arm and slammed her up against him. His face was in her face, his nose touching the tip of her own. He lifted her off the floor by her biceps.

“He was a priest,” Noa said, and the man’s face turned red with anger. “But he wasn’t an ordinary priest, was he?”

With a growl, the man ran and plowed her back into the cave wall, so hard that her knife dropped from her hand and her lungs were emptied of oxygen. “I’m going to enjoy killing you,” he said through clenched teeth, like he was fighting the need to rip her apart. Like he was somehow leashing his need to lose himself to the darkness running through his veins and tear her to pieces like he did the priest.

As she tried to catch her breath, Noa noticed movement from the mouth of the cave. She saw her sisters appear, weapons in hand. They were about to rush at the man in her defense, but Noa shook her head. Dinah stopped dead, arms out to signal to the others to stop.

Noa moved her finger and managed to turn the collar up higher, a piece of her succumbing to guilt as the man’s legs began to buckle under the pain. He screamed out in anger as he fought it. His hands tightened on her biceps, before he dropped his hold and staggered back, sinking to one knee as he fought to calm.

Noa caught her breath. “He was a Brethren priest. He was a fucking Brethren priest, and you were there to kill him in revenge, weren’t you?”

Despite the high voltage and his obvious pain, the man got to his feet and ran at her again. His face was contorted with anger, and she let him push her against the cave wall again. “What do you fucking know?” he growled. “What the fuck do you know of the Brethren?”

Noa lowered the collar’s voltage a fraction, and she laid her hand on his brand. The man stilled, and Noa could feel his heart pounding in his chest. “You wear the upturned cross. For being a sinner, a heretic.” Her fingertips brushed over his ruined skin. “You are evil, born of the devil, and the Brethren were there to drive out that evil, to cleanse you, to drive the wickedness from your blackened soul.”

The man inched his face closer, but he released one of her hands to slam his fist into the cave wall above her. Fragments of the stone fell to the floor around them like a shower of solid rain. “You’re one of them,” he said, his graveled voice dripping with hatred. “You’re fucking one of them!”

Noa took a deep breath, dropped the remote and ripped open the buttons of her shirt. “No, asshole, I’m one of you.” Noa heard her sisters talking in quiet whispers behind the man, but she didn’t look at them. Her focus was entirely on him.

Noa wore no bra, and her action had exposed her breasts and torso. But she watched as the man’s gaze dropped to her open shirt. And he froze. His hands on her arms kept her in place as his blue eyes moved over the pentagram on her torso … but what held him paralyzed was the upturned cross in the center of the brand.

The man still stared at her skin, which was marred black with the Coven’s brand. “My sisters and I were taken from the safety of our families by the Brethren.” His blue eyes flashed to hers, and he studied her face as if searching for any sign of deception. “We were deemed heretics.”

She swallowed and felt the swirl of anger beginning in her gut. “They told us we were born evil. They told us darkness ran in our veins.” The man’s head twitched over and over again, his eyes blinked in exaggerated movements. The collar buzzed, but he didn’t strike. He kept Noa locked in place, but he didn’t strike …

He was listening to her.

“They said we were evil witches.” Noa laughed, but there was no humor in her tone. “The devil’s whores.” Noa stopped her voice shaking from rage as she said, “And we were tried. For years we lived in what we knew as the Circle. The sixth circle of hell where heretics dwell. That’s what they told us, the Brethren. And we were tried and punished for turning from the faith, for being Satan’s agents on earth. For the sins of our forebearers.”

His breathing was stuttered, but he had lost the anger that contorted his beautiful features. He was listening closely, gaze drifting back and forth between her face and the brand on her torso.

“They called themselves the Witch Finders. The Brethren priests that specialized in ‘purging our souls of demons’ were called the Witch Finders, and their task in life was exorcising us. That’s it. Their entire life was dedicated to breaking us. Seven young girls. Until we got free.” Noa hated that her eyes filled with hot tears as she thought of those men—not men, demons. Demons disguised as holy men.

The man suddenly released Noa as if she carried the plague, and he stumbled away. His collar hummed, and his head twitched, but gone was the possessed man wanting to do nothing but kill. Confusion and shock flashed across his face instead.

“Now we find them,” Dinah said, walking closer to them. The man’s head whipped to Dinah and Noa’s sisters, who were poised and ready to fight the man in the mouth of the cave. “We track them down and free the children they are holding in their homes.”

The man’s eyebrows drew down in confusion. “The children?” he snapped, eyes twitching.

“Children they are personally exorcising. Like we were exorcised.” Dinah nodded to the other sisters. One by one they opened or removed their shirts. They wore bras and sports tops underneath, unlike Noa, but each of them revealed the identical brands to the man. He stared at them as the Coven’s pentagrams and Saint Peter’s crosses were displayed.

“They’re as strong as ever,” Noa said, and the man refocused on her. “In fact, the Brethren, they’re even stronger. There are many of them. So many …” Noa closed her eyes, taking a moment to compose herself, to swallow down the hellfire igniting in her soul. She covered her exposed breasts with her shirt and opened her eyes. “We knew, somewhere, there had to be more survivors like us. That we couldn’t have been the only ones the ‘holy purging’ was done to. And we couldn’t be the only ones who’d managed to get away from their clutches.” Noa looked at her sisters, who were re-dressing, then turned back to the man. “When we saw the Brethren brand on you last night, we had to take you.”

Noa approached the man. His head was still twitching. Noa had never met anyone like him. He looked on the brink of killing her, like whatever lived inside of him was constantly fighting for dominance. “What’s your name?”

The man stared at Noa. He swallowed hard, hesitated, but then rasped, “Diel.”

“Diel?”

His neck corded as if he was battling to keep it together. “Jegudiel,” he added.

“An archangel.” Dinah sent a subtle glance to Noa. Noa turned back to Diel as Dinah said, “Jegudiel is an archangel.”

Diel nodded, glancing down at his bloodied hands. His fingers flexed, then curled into fists. He backed away from Dinah, who edged closer. His nostrils flared. He held out his hand. “Get back!” he snarled.

“Did they give you that name?” Noa asked, unperturbed by the threat in his voice. When Diel’s focus moved back to her, his shoulders seemed to lose a fraction of their tension. Something warmed inside her chest at that observation.

Diel nodded. His gaze lowered to the remote in her hands. “Turn it down,” he growled.

“You need to breathe,” Noa said, and Diel’s eyes narrowed. She had watched him calm himself before. He had breathed deeply and beaten whatever it was that was pushing to be freed within him. “We’re not the enemy. We want what you want—”

“I want them fucking dead!” he suddenly roared, but just as he was about to pounce, the collar buzzed, and he started to breathe deeply, slowly, calmingly. There wasn’t a muscle in his body that wasn’t pulled taut or a vein that wasn’t protruding. His chest rose and fell as his blue eyes slipped shut and he breathed.

Noa found herself following the rhythm of his inhales and exhales. She hadn’t realized she had edged closer to where he stood against the cave’s wall until his eyes opened, immediately fixing on her as if he had sensed her proximity. “I want them dead. We all do,” he said, voice graveled but anger curtailed.

“Who’s we?” Dinah said from behind them.

“Me and my brothers.”

Noa stopped breathing at those words and looked up at Diel. His jaw was tight, as though he wasn’t used to admitting to anyone that he had any brothers to speak of. His inner torment was displayed on his face like a movie reel. But eventually, after raking his assessing eyes over each of the sisters, he said, “We are the Fallen.” He took a second’s pause. “They told us we were evil. They told us we were possessed by demons.” Noa’s breathing hitched when he lifted his hand and ran it down the center of his Saint Peter’s cross. “They told us that darkness ran in our veins.”

Shivers raced down Noa’s spine. Those were the words they had spoken to her Coven. Her sisters cast knowing looks to one another. They were the words belonging to one group of men, one secret sect that brought only evil and cruelty to the world.

“The Fallen?” Dinah inched closer to stand by Noa’s side. “You were named Jegudiel, and you call yourself and your brothers the Fallen.” Dinah studied him. “Fallen angels. The Brethren called you that?”

Diel nodded. His hands lifted to his hair, and he started pulling on the dark strands. The collar buzzed, indicating the increase in his pulse rate. But this time Noa was sure it was from the memories of whatever he and his brothers had gone through at the Brethren’s hands and not because of Noa and the rest of the Coven’s presence.

“Breathe,” Noa whispered, and Diel locked his blue eyes on her. Noa began breathing deeply, and warmth burst in her veins when he began to copy her. She saw Dinah casting her a strange look in her peripheral, but she ignored her sister and kept her attention on Diel. The buzzing of his collar gradually lessened, but she could see he was agitated. His cheeks twitched as he looked around the cave.

Noa stepped closer to him again. “We are the Coven.” Diel froze and slammed his eyes back to her. Noa lifted her shirt to show the pentagram but conceal her breasts. Diel studied their brand again. The dilating of his pupils left her breathless.

“Home,” he snarled and turned toward the mouth of the cave. “I need to get home.” His face began to redden. Noa didn’t understand why. “I need to get fucking home!”

Diel’s collar hummed, and he rocked on his feet. Noa saw the darkness that he had managed to briefly push away begin to take control. She didn’t know the trigger.

Diel pushed off the wall, and Dinah took hold of Noa’s arm and pulled her back. He started to pace—a bull in a ring about to attack. His head twitched and his muscles tensed once more. He was losing it. Noa wanted to jump in his path and help him breathe, help him calm.

Flashes of the past filled her head. The young boy in a collar tied to a leash. The boy who’d prowled and paced and snarled whenever she looked at him. The boy with death in his eyes and the heavy weight of the devil on his back.

Just like Diel. As Noa studied Diel now, she saw an older version of the boy on a leash. His eyes promised nothing but pain and a violent end for her.

The Brethren. They had done this to him. Just like they had fucked with all of them who stood alive, but ruined, in the cave.

“Gabriel …” he murmured. “I need Gabriel.”

Dinah squeezed Noa’s arm. Noa pulled away from Dinah and stood in Diel’s path. In a second he had grabbed her arms and slammed her against the wall. She didn’t look away from his savage gaze.

“Breathe,” Noa said, her voice barely above a whisper. Diel’s hands trembled as he held her, not from strain, she thought, but from uncontained rage. Only his rage wasn’t a warning sign for her to withdraw or be quiet, but rather a beacon call to the darkness trapped within her. She felt it move, a slithering snake awoken from a deep sleep.

He clasped her arms harder. Noa reached for his hair and yanked on it. His head reared back, and his teeth gritted together in fury. “Calm the fuck down!” Noa hissed, refusing to look away from the inferno in his eyes. “We’re one of you. You won’t hurt us.”

“Don’t,” he warned, but his skin flushed, and his pupils dilated as he looked at Noa. His nostrils flared, and she felt him harden against her leg. Her heartbeat stuttered at the feel, at the erratic rhythm of her own breath.

“Fight it,” she spat, pulling harder at his hair. His head shook, but Noa kept hold of him and said, “Fight it. Calm. Breathe.”

His eyes stayed locked on hers, and in that moment, time was suspended. It was just she and Diel and the twin darknesses that lived in them both. Noa took in deep breaths, and to her shock, Diel began to follow her pattern. The grip on her arms slackened, and Noa let her hands drift from his messy black hair to fall on his neck, over the cold metal of the collar.

Diel hissed as her fingers ran over its edge, grazing his red and ruined skin. She felt the buzz of electricity vibrate under her fingertips. Her stomach turned, and something flickered in her chest, then traveled in small bursts of light through to the marrow of her bones.

“Gabriel.” A voice came from behind them. But Noa was locked on Diel’s stare and the hot, charged air between them. Diel pressed closer to Noa, and if possible, he was even harder than before. “Gabriel,” the voice said again. Diel’s head twitched. “Gabriel. Who is this Gabriel and how do I contact him?” He snapped his head to the side. Breathless, Noa turned to Dinah, who was watching her with concerned eyes.

“He’s my brother,” Diel said, his voice raspy once more—the sound of his temporary control over whatever stirred within him. “Our leader.”

“You have a number for this leader?” Dinah pushed. Diel looked tormented, then reeled off a number from memory. Dinah hesitated, then looked at Noa. “I need to call him.” She cast a worried glance at Diel, to his hands still on Noa’s arms.

“Then go,” Noa said. Apparently understanding that Noa felt safe enough for her to leave, Dinah nodded, then headed out of the cave. Noa met the worried eyes of the rest of her sisters and nodded to them that she was okay. Diel broke away and stumbled back. His hands were back in his hair, yanking at the roots.

“Diel—”

“Drug me,” he said through clenched teeth, face red. “Drug me when you move me. When we meet my brothers.” He backed away until he was in the cage. He gripped the bars. “Lock the fucking door.”

“Wait—”

“Lock the fucking door!”he roared. Noa quickly moved to the cage and locked him inside. Something that looked like relief flashed across his beautiful face as he sank back into the shadows of the cell, out of her sight. Then he went quiet. For several minutes Diel was silent, until he moved back into the light, that sinister smile on his full lips once again.

“Noa.”

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, a gut warning to be on her guard. He was back. Diel’s inner darkness, the one who needed the collar, was back.

“Come closer,” he said, taunting her once more. “I want to see you.”

Noa turned on her heel and walked out of the cave. Dinah was coming down the tunnel. She walked past Noa, holding a phone, and went straight to Diel. Noa followed. “Speak. He wants to know you’re okay.”

The cell phone was on speaker. A voice said, “Diel? Are you there? Talk to me. Are you okay?”

“I’m here,” Diel said, but his eyes never moved from Noa, tracking her like prey. His sadistic grin widened, and shivers ran down her spine. “And I’ve got something you and our brothers are really going to want to see.”