Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Gabriel lifted his head,and Maria exhaled at hearing Diel’s voice. “There? You satisfied?” the woman said again. Dinah. She’d said her name was Dinah. She had Diel and wanted to meet to give him back.

“Listen to me,” Gabriel said, his temperature rising with panic. “He’s dangerous. Diel … he …” Gabriel searched for the right words to explain his brother without telling her too much. “He has … issues. He could hurt you.”

“No shit. Like the fact he needs to wear an electric collar? And he wants to kill us all? Yeah, we got that.” Maria moved closer to the table and closed her eyes in worry. “But let’s just say, Gabriel, we have a lot more than Diel in common.”

Gabriel looked at Maria. The confusion on her face mirrored his own. “We do?” he asked tentatively.

“Where do you want to meet?” Dinah said, changing the subject. Maria moved to a map and pointed to a place they both knew would be safe. Protected land that they owned. Free from anyone’s eyes if this turned out to be a Brethren trap somehow.

“I’ve got a place that’s safe,” he said and set a time with Dinah. When he hung up, Gabriel ran his hands through his blond curls and tugged at the collar of his shirt. He exhaled a long breath, then nodded. “Diel’s alive. And he’s contained. We have to find solace in that.”

“How are you, Diel and she alike?” Maria mused, arms crossed over her chest as she paced in front of the fire. “How do she and the Fallen have anything in common?”

“We’re about to find out.” Gabriel moved to the door of the study. Maria followed, and when they stepped outside, the rest of the brothers were waiting on the grand staircase in the manor’s vast hallway.

“Someone has Diel, and we’re going to meet them at the family graveyard. Soon.” Gabriel met the eyes of Bara, Uriel, Raphael, Michael and Sela, who were all watching him in return.

“Someone ‘has’ him,” Uriel said. “How the fuck do you even get Diel without him tearing your head off first?”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “They know about the collar.”

“There’s more than one of them?” Uriel asked.

“She said ‘we.’ There’s more than just her,” Gabriel explained.

“You think this is a trap?” Raphael asked.

“We spoke to Diel himself,” Maria said to her boyfriend. “He sounded okay, then said he has something he wants us to see.”

“Well, this is going to be fucking fun,” Bara said. “I’ve been bored out of my goddamn mind these past few days.”

“And which Diel did you speak to?” Sela asked Gabriel, eyebrow raised. He knew his best friend better than any of them.

Gabriel sighed. “His monster.”

Michael was leaning against the table, staring at the grandfather clock and the pendulum that swung from side to side. Gabriel’s younger brother was as silent and distant as always.

“We’re going to get him.” Gabriel checked the time. “Get ready. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”

“Is this the Brethren?” Sela asked, and the brothers halted in their tracks. “Are we being played by those fuckers right now?”

“It was a woman we spoke to,” Maria said. “The Brethren might use women in their plans, but they wouldn’t allow them to be organized or be leaders in any way. The woman we spoke to, Dinah … she certainly wasn’t meek like I used to be. That gives me faith that she is not involved with them. She sounded strong. She sounded bold.”

Maria sighed, likely remembering her previous life as a nun and how she unknowingly became a pawn in the Brethren’s wicked game to lure in Raphael and kill him. How easily Father Quinn and Father Murray manipulated her into believing she was doing God’s work and that it would benefit the wider church by having a killer such as Raphael contained in their custody.

But Gabriel felt his heart plummet when he saw a flash of doubt in Maria’s gaze. “We don’t believe this is a trap.” He sighed. “But we prepare for anything and everything.” His soul screamed in dismay at the thought of being drawn into another fight with the Brethren. Of more blood being spilled and more lives being lost. It went against everything Gabriel’s pacifist heart believed in. “But we get Diel back,” he whispered. “Above anything, we get our brother back.”

* * *

The wind whippedaround the dark graveyard, and the moon was full and high in the dark sky when Gabriel, Maria and his brothers got out of the van and stepped onto the cold grass that surrounded the sea of aged, wind-battered gravestones. The gravestones belonged to Gabriel and Michael’s ancestors … and some of the victims of their serial-killer grandfather that had never been discovered. Bare-branched trees cradled the graveyard’s outer edges. Gabriel, Maria and his brothers gathered near the ornate mausoleum that held his grandfather’s body, and they waited.

Gabriel exhaled in preparation for whatever was about to transpire. Minutes later, he heard the sound of tires on the gravel road leading to the isolated graveyard.

“Get ready,” he said quietly to his brothers. Raphael pushed Maria behind him, his golden eyes fixing on the shadow of the dark van that turned onto the long driveway to the cemetery.

Gabriel’s brothers were silent behind him, thanks to the years of training to be stealthy, to blend into the night and become living, breathing shadows. Each of them held weapons, concealed from sight, and he could feel the pulsing air whipping around them, his brothers itching for a fight, excited for the chance of killing.

Gabriel briefly closed his eyes, a silent prayer sailing from his mind into the sky. Please let this not be a Brethren trap. Please let Diel be safe, and save my brothers from shedding even more blood.

The lights of the black van were off as it came to a halt several feet before where Gabriel stood. He wore a long black jacket over his priest’s uniform, but nothing hiding his face. His blond curls shone like sunbeams in the gloomy, gray cemetery. He didn’t want to scare away whoever was in that van; he wanted them to see his face and understand that he meant them no harm.

The door to the van opened, and he felt his brothers readying for an attack. Gabriel squinted in the darkness as someone, dressed in all black, got out of the passenger side door. They wore a hood that covered their head and some kind of scarf that covered all of their face but their eyes. They approached, and a few others followed behind, dressed in exactly the same way.

“Diel was right,” Bara said for only his brothers and Maria to hear. “This is something to see.”

Gabriel stepped forward, his hands up so they could see that he held no weapon. “Welcome.” His voice carried like thunder around the empty graveyard, joining the midnight call of the resident owls.

A final hooded person stepped out of the van— in total, there were six of them. As his eyes focused on them, he could see that they were shorter and slimmer than him and his brothers.

Women, he realized. They were all women.

Confusion wrapped around him. Who could they be? The one at the front, who he assumed to be Dinah, studied Gabriel and his brothers. Her dark eyes landed on Maria behind Raphael, and her eyebrows pulled down.

“Dinah?” Gabriel stepped forward away from his brothers. The women immediately stood ready for an attack. Gabriel held up his hands higher. “No one will hurt you here,” he said, and she stepped closer.

When she stopped, she stood only feet from Gabriel. “Your collared man attacked us while we were rescuing a child from a Brethren priest’s basement.” Gabriel blanched. The blunt statement hit him as efficiently as any bullet to the gut ever could.

Gabriel felt the tension from his brothers behind him. He heard the sound of agitated feet moving on the ground.

“The Brethren?” Gabriel said.

Dinah rolled her eyes. “Let’s cut the shit. Your man told us who you were. The Fallen. Brethren-branded sinners who were taken away as kids and exorcised for years under the Brethren’s fucked-up hands. Ring any bells?”

“And what do you know of the Brethren?” Gabriel said calmly.

“About as much as you, I’m guessing.” Dinah shrugged. “Maybe a little bit more.”

Gabriel studied her. “The child?” he asked, his mind sticking on that one piece of information. “You freed him? Where is he now? Is he safe?”

Dinah was silent for a few seconds, then said, “You kill them? The Brethren? That’s what you do? That’s how you get your revenge for what they did to you?”

Gabriel looked across at the six hooded women. “Where’s Diel?” Almost as if his collared brother had heard Gabriel’s question, violent thrashing came from inside the van.

Gabriel knew that Dinah smiled under her scarf by the way her eyes crinkled at the corners. “I’d say he’s just woken up.”

“You drugged him?” Gabriel said.

“He told us to.”

“How do you know the Brethren?” Gabriel asked directly, feeling his brothers’ patience growing thin behind him.

Dinah spread her arms wide and gestured to her sisters. “We are the Coven. A sinful band of heretics. Witches, occultists, pagans and, best of all, the devil’s favorite whores.” Gabriel’s stomach rolled as the confession spilled from her mouth. “Raped, tortured and tried by the Brethren Witch Finders for most of our childhoods.” She paused. “Sound familiar, Goldilocks?”

Gabriel’s eyes closed, and real, disabling pain cut through his body. In that moment, his greatest fears were realized.

There were more of them.

The Fallen … Holy Innocents … It wasn’t just happening at their old school and parish like Gabriel had hoped. A one-off band of depraved and disillusioned priests. A small sect whose reach was limited and resources few.

Gabriel looked back at Maria and met her eyes. Her gaze was shining with tears. But Gabriel could see they weren’t tears of sorrow. Maria would be feeling that, too—she was empathetic and kind-hearted—but these tears were scalding with anger, fast with fury.

The sound of Diel thrashing harder came from the back of the van, and one of the hooded women broke from their grouping to walk over to it.

“Let us,” Gabriel said. “Despite his rage, he won’t hurt his brothers.” The sound of the van doors opening was followed by Diel’s false promise of, “Let me out of the van, Noa. I won’t hurt you.”

Dinah glared at Gabriel assessingly. She finally nodded her permission, and Gabriel walked past her and the other women. He realized that Diel had grown quiet, and when he reached the back of the van, he saw why. The woman who had opened the van had removed her hood and scarf, revealing her true self. She had a long pink braid that fell to the middle of her back, and dark brown eyes. She flicked a glance to Gabriel, but then refocused on his brother inside the van. Gabriel followed her attention and found Diel inside a heavy-duty cage. And he didn’t even acknowledge Gabriel. His monster’s blue stare was firmly fixed on the pink-haired woman.

Gabriel reached into his pocket and retrieved the collar’s remote. “Diel,” he said. Diel whipped his head in Gabriel’s direction. “You’re okay?”

But Diel ignored him, refocusing on the woman, his nostrils flaring and a deadly smile spreading on his lips. Gabriel frowned, but when he looked at the woman, she was staring back at his brother, not an ounce of discomfort in her gaze.

Their attention on one another seemed obsessive, somewhat possessive.

“You’re coming home,” Gabriel said to Diel, trying to break through whatever strange connection was building between them.

“Let him out, Noa,” Dinah said, coming to stand beside Gabriel.

The pink-haired woman, Noa, hesitated, studying Gabriel, but then she stepped into the van and unlocked the cage. She moved back quickly, and Diel slammed the cage door open. He flew from the cage, diving straight toward Noa. But before he reached her, Gabriel pressed the button on the collar, and Diel dropped to his knees on the cold, damp ground.

Diel snarled in defiance against the crackling surge of electricity, rolling forward to slam his palms to the ground. His limbs shook, and even with the moon as their only light, Gabriel could see the dried blood of Diel’s victims still on his skin. He felt those deaths like a tornado of punches to his face.

“Breathe.”

Gabriel whipped his head to Noa as she spoke. Diel froze at the sound. Then, to Gabriel’s complete surprise, Diel began to do what she instructed. Despite the raging volts tearing through his body, the monster’s evil sinking into his battered soul, Noa’s command seemed to hit his ears, and Diel overrode it all and began to calm.

Several seconds of slow and controlled breathing passed, then Diel raised his head, and Gabriel saw the true Diel looking back at him, not the monster that often took him away from his brothers.

Gabriel leaned down and wrapped his hand around Diel’s bicep. He hoisted Diel to his feet. Diel’s head twitched, showing his inner fight against the urge to bring the monster back to the forefront. Gabriel kept the collar switched high. He couldn’t risk him attacking the women. However, when Diel looked at Noa again, he was beginning to see why Diel hadn’t killed them all on the spot when they had met.

She held his attention somehow.

Just as he turned to leave, he noticed a makeshift remote in Noa’s hand. Gabriel took in a deep, exasperated breath when he realized it could control Diel’s collar. He held out his hand. “May I take that, please?”

Noa narrowed her eyes, clearly wanting to refuse Gabriel’s request, but then she reluctantly placed the remote in the palm of Gabriel’s hand. He placed it in his pocket. He would destroy it once he was home.

Gabriel rounded the van, Diel still beside him. He saw the Coven and his brothers glaring at one another; trust appeared to be nonexistent between them. Sela came forward from the shadow of the mausoleum toward his best friend. But as he stepped into the light, one of the women broke from the Coven and ran at Sela, knife in hand.

Sela turned just as the small hooded woman pushed him back against the mausoleum wall. She lifted her knife as if to strike, not a single word spilling from her lips, but another one of the Coven raced behind her and yanked her arm back, wrenching her away from Sela.

“Naomi, no!” The one who had attacked Sela thrashed in the other woman’s arms. The frenzy pulled back both their hoods. The attacker had bright red hair, not too dissimilar in tone to Bara’s. The other woman looked to be of South Asian, possibly Indian heritage, with rich brown skin and chocolate-brown hair.

“What the fuck is this?” the brunette hissed in Gabriel’s direction. The Coven went on high alert, legs bent and knives drawn and battle-ready. Diel fought against Gabriel, trying to break from his grip and charge at the women near Sela. Gabriel kept tight hold of him. “You have the General. Why the fuck do you have the General?”

“Who the flying fuck is the General?” Bara came forward. Uriel was close behind, his gray eyes sharp. Tension built, and Bara’s attention flew to the petite redhead. He smiled wide. “A fellow redhead.” He bit his lip, the flesh dragging through his teeth. “A feisty little fire witch.”

“Enough!” Dinah rounded on Gabriel, her eyes darting around the Fallen. “Why do you have him?” Gabriel realized they suddenly believed their meeting him and his family to be a trap.

Sela stepped away from the mausoleum wall, straightening his shirt. The Coven watched him with pure hatred in their stares. Sela combed his long brown hair from his face with his hands. “From your greeting, I take it you’ve met my brother. Father Auguste.”

Dinah’s breathing audibly hitched. “Brother?”

“I’m still fucking stuck on ‘General’? What and who the fuck is the General?” Bara asked.

“The Witch Finder General,” Noa informed them, moving to her sisters nearest Sela and pulling them back by their arms. Diel’s collar hissed as she moved past him. Diel watched her again, like he couldn’t look away, like his eyes were glued to any move she made.

Noa ignored it and addressed them all. “Father Auguste is the Witch Finder General for the Brethren. He deemed us all witches and heretics as young girls and sentenced us to a life of horrific witch trials.” Noa’s eyes narrowed on Sela. “You’re twins?”

Sela’s cheeks had reddened at the sharing of this information about his brother. The Fallen hadn’t known where Auguste was, or what role he played in the Brethren. Gabriel had never been able to discover anything about him, even with all his contacts.

Now they knew.

“Not twins,” Raphael said, his arm securely around Maria. “Auguste is his older brother. They just look alike.”

“And it sounds like Auguste’s scooting up the Brethren ladder,” Bara said, wiggling his fingers at the Coven. “Cleansing one little witch at a time.”

“Bara, enough!” Gabriel said firmly. Bara shrugged, then closely watched the woman who had attacked Sela. His redheaded brother was nothing if not provocative.

“You know where he is?” Sela said to Dinah, voice cold.

Dinah stared at Sela, unease rolling off her in waves. “It’s like I’m looking right at him,” she whispered. The damage and pain Auguste had clearly inflicted on her and her sisters was evident in her shaking voice.

“Genetics,” Uriel said. “Believe us when we tell you Sela and Auguste may look identical, but they are nothing alike.”

“You know where he is?” Sela pushed harder, his hatred for his brother slowly rising to the surface.

Dinah sighed, then pushed her hood back from her head and the scarf from her face. Her dark skin shone deep bronze in the moonlight, and her braided hair blew in the wind. She looked to her sisters, and the final two who still wore hoods and scarves removed them too. A small brunette with big dark eyes was revealed, along with a statuesque blonde.

Diel practically vibrated beside him, but as long as he stared at Noa, he seemed to be keeping hold of the monster who was rearing its ugly head inside. Dinah turned back to Gabriel and his brothers. Her gaze caught on Maria again, but then she sighed, lifted her shirt and revealed to them all a brand.

Gabriel’s breathing came quick as he saw a pentagram burned into her skin, and in the center an upturned cross. One just like the Fallen’s. “Our Coven’s brand,” Dinah said. “Forced onto us as children to show our sinful ways.” But it wasn’t the only mark on her. All around the brand was burned and mottled skin. Dinah turned, showing them her back. She had been burned all over, barely a spot where untouched skin remained. The burn seemed to reach the top of her neck, but her clothes hid that truth.

Her whole body. They had burned her entire body.

When Dinah turned, she dropped her shirt and nudged her chin in Diel’s direction. “When we saw his brand, we knew we were somehow connected to you.”

“They burned you?” Uriel asked, voice dripping with hatred for the Brethren.

Dinah nodded. “Among other things. Drownings were a firm favorite too. Drown and burn the witches. They were traditional in their approach.” Dinah gestured to her sisters. “We all have similar scars.” Then she smirked. “But it seems like we devil’s whores managed to get one up on them. I can only imagine how pissed our theft of their little sinners will make them.”

“The children,” Gabriel stated.

Dinah nodded. “Innocent children like we were.” She motioned to her sisters, then assessed Gabriel and his brothers. “As I’m guessing you were too.” Gabriel felt sick as he thought back to their visit to Purgatory not long ago, when they’d found seven new boys living in the quarters that had held them for so long.

It was happening again.

Apparently, it had never stopped.

And now Gabriel knew the Brethren were everywhere. How many children were they harboring in secret? Orphans, with no one to save them or even care that they were being harmed.

“Gabriel?” Maria’s voice pulled him back from his rising fury, and she walked toward him. Raphael stayed at her back, protecting her the entire way. Maria smiled at Gabriel, a reminder to him to curb his anger. Getting angry wasn’t going to help anything. He had to be calm; he had to keep emotionally steady. He inhaled a deep breath.

“Let’s invite the Coven home,” Maria said. “We have much to learn from one another, and it shouldn’t be done out here.” Although the graveyard was secure, Gabriel knew she was right. There was too much to discuss, to discover.

Gabriel inhaled once more and cooled himself down enough that he could talk. He felt the biting cilices tighten around his thighs, tearing into his muscles. The recent stripes on his back throbbed, stripes from his beloved leather scourge that rid him of his daily sins by taking them from his flesh.

He didn’t know why God had chosen him to walk deeper and deeper into the Brethren’s sinful world, but he would follow wherever He led him, sacrificing his own soul for his brothers and any other victim they met along the way. Gabriel looked at Dinah and, for a moment, he saw himself reflected in her dark eyes.

She was sacrificing everything for her sisters too.

“We have a home,” he said, hearing Diel’s breathing get faster and faster with every word Gabriel spoke. He was close to losing it. They had to get him back to the manor. To a place he knew to be safe. “It’s secure, and far out of reach of the Brethren.”

Everything inside Gabriel fought against bringing strangers into the manor. His entire life beyond Purgatory had been to protect his family, and he did it with supreme success. It went against everything he had built to let strangers into his home. But this, the Brethren … it was bigger than him and his brothers, bigger than the security he had built for them all.

And when he’d turned the Fallen onto this path—the path to battle the Brethren head on—he’d known sacrifices would have to be made and risks taken, as they would in any war. He yearned for a world of peace, but knowing there were others out there like him and his brothers, survivors of the Brethren too … he would never live with himself if he didn’t help. After all, though he was not officially ordained, it was in the very nature of the priesthood to be self-sacrificing, and that was the life he had vowed to God to lead. “We have protection that you will probably not have.”

“How?” Noa asked, suspicion written all over her face. As Gabriel studied the woman that had handled Diel so well and captured his brother’s peculiar fascination, he saw something in her demeanor that he didn’t see in her sisters. Because he had only ever witnessed it in his brothers. Noa fostered some level of darkness in her soul. Everything about her screamed that she had walked through shadowed and dangerous valleys—maybe still hadn’t reached the end.

“It’s a long story,” Gabriel said, vowing to keep an eye on the stoic woman.

Noa turned to Dinah, and Gabriel didn’t hear what was said between them. But when they turned back to Gabriel, Dinah nodded her head. “Lead the way.” She checked them all over with a tight gaze. “But fuck us over, and you’ll be sorry.”

“Same to you, head witch.” Bara turned his green eyes on each of the Coven. A stark warning not to take him and his brothers on was written all over his face.

Sela approached Diel and put his hand on his arm to take him to the van. Diel stepped forward and joined his brothers, but the heavy look shared between him and Noa didn’t go unnoticed by Gabriel.

“Follow behind,” Gabriel said to Dinah. “And please keep your lights off. We live a life off the grid. We have learned to exist in the darkness.”

Dinah and the Coven got back into their van. Gabriel jumped into the driver’s seat of the Fallen’s vehicle, and his brothers got in the back.

“Neo-pagan witches and fallen archangels,” Uriel said, bitterness dripping from his mouth. “What fucking wild imaginations the Brethren bastards have.”

As Gabriel pulled onto the back road home, the hairs on his arms stood on end. Because he knew, after meeting the Coven, that they were just the tip of the iceberg. How many other survivors were out there, living to bring down their abusers?

Gabriel couldn’t even hazard a guess.

* * *

Gabriel openedthe doors of the manor, and his brothers walked ahead. He turned and saw the shock and suspicion on the Coven’s faces. Dinah took the lead, Noa just a step behind. The others followed them up the sprawling steps and into the impressive foyer.

“Who the fuck are you guys?” Dinah said, awe in her voice, as Gabriel motioned for them to follow him into the Nave. In the chandelier’s bright light, Gabriel could better see the Coven’s faces. They looked close in age to him and his brothers, maybe a couple of years younger. Michael had disappeared to his bedroom. When he returned, he was holding a glass of blood, his lips stained red from the sips he’d already taken.

Gabriel waited until all his brothers were present to begin. Diel hovered near Sela, but he was watching Noa again. He hadn’t said a word all the way home. It was always the same after his kills and during his comedowns. Only this time Gabriel was sure the silence wasn’t because of the kills, but because of the meeting of a certain woman with a long pink braid.

“Allow me to introduce ourselves.” Gabriel removed his coat. The Coven saw his white dog collar and clerical clothing, and froze.

“You’re a fucking priest?” the statuesque blonde spat.

Gabriel had expected that reaction. “In spirituality only. Not ordained.” He smiled, but it was void of humor. “As you know, my life ended up going down a different path than I’d planned.”

Gabriel moved to Uriel. “This is Uriel.” Uriel crossed his muscled arms over his chest. With his jacket now removed, his tattoos and piercings were boldly on show. “Next is Bara.”

Bara bowed dramatically. “Pleasure to meet all you fine ladies,” he said, sarcasm thick in his words. When he rose from his bow, he flashed his white-toothed dark grin in the redhead’s direction. “Especially you, little fire witch.”

“This is Sela,” Gabriel said. “But you’ve already made his acquaintance.” Sela raised his eyebrow at the Coven, but Gabriel could see the news of Auguste was still occupying his mind.

“You’ve met Diel,” Gabriel said. Diel’s head twitched and the collar began to hum. Diel closed his eyes, and the collar eventually grew silent.

“Next is Michael.” Gabriel looked at his brother, but his attention was on the floor. Gabriel wasn’t sure Michael had even realized the Coven were in the manor. Michael sipped at his blood—it was always about the blood.

“Is he drinking blood?” the Indian woman asked, shock clear in her voice. Gabriel cast a glance at Maria. The Coven may have been Brethren survivors too, but the Fallen were not merely survivors—they were more. They had always been more. The Indian woman seemed to gravitate toward the petite brunette, perhaps to shield her somehow. The brunette stared at Michael, a flush to her cheeks.

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “Michael is my brother. My real brother. Born from the same parents.”

Michael licked his pointed teeth, and Gabriel heard gasps. The small brunette watched as Michael bared his fangs. At the sound of her gasp, Michael lifted his ice-blue eyes, and they met the brunette’s. His head tipped to the side as he studied her. He dipped his finger into the blood and sucked it off his finger before looking back down at the floor, disengaged once again.

The redhead subtly checked the brunette’s forehead. Gabriel wondered if she was sick. Maria stepped beside Gabriel and said, “I am Maria, and this is my other half, Raphael.” Raphael was holding Maria’s hair in his hands, combing through the strands.

“What are you all?” Noa stepped forward, full of courage as she crossed her arms over her chest. She faced Diel. “Diel kills. We watched him do it. He wears a collar and fights darkness within him.” She looked at Michael. “He drinks blood, has fangs and looks like he belongs in a goddamn horror movie.”

“Shit, say it how it really is, pink witch,” Bara said.

Noa narrowed her eyes, then looked to Gabriel. “You’re killers.” Gabriel tensed, but then exhaled and nodded his head. Noa turned to Dinah. “Just like Priscilla.”

“Priscilla?” Gabriel questioned.

“Our seventh sister.” Dinah raised her chin. “She’s on her own path, but she’s still one of us.”

Dinah pointed at the Indian woman and the tall blonde, who were holding hands. “Candace and Jo. They’re together.” She moved to the redhead. “Naomi.” Dinah’s eyes hardened. “She doesn’t speak to men, so don’t dare try and make her.”

“Ouch,” Bara said, hand over his chest. “You wound me. It’s fucking enlightening talking to me.”

“Nothing personal, we just don’t have a real high opinion of men in this coven,” Dinah said.

Uriel smiled. “And you think we do?”

Gabriel felt the years of abuse wash over him. Being pinned down, being touched against their will, fucked, only for the priests to start again. It was all done by men.

Dinah raised her middle finger. “Fuck the Brethren patriarchy.”

“Amen to that.” Bara smirked. “We’re all about feminism in this family.” His attention swung back to Naomi. Gabriel saw the flash of challenge in Bara’s eyes, and he vowed to speak to Bara about keeping away from the timid mute.

Dinah pointed to the small brunette. “This is Beth.” Gabriel heard a clink. Michael’s long black fingernail was circling the rim of his glass. His body had shifted slightly in Beth’s direction, but his eyes remained on the glass of blood in his hand. Gabriel frowned, surprised to get any reaction from his brother at all.

“Lastly is Noa,” Dinah said. “But you’ll all know her by now.”

“And you’re the fearsome leader,” Raphael said, his hands still in Maria’s hair.

“Of sorts,” Dinah said. “And that’s the whole gang.” Dinah looked at Noa and nodded. Noa took a book from the bag she wore around her back. “How much do you know of the Brethren?”

“Right now?” Gabriel said. Dinah nodded. “Not much. We’ve only recently actively turned our fight against them.”

Dinah moved to the dining table and laid out the book. Maria and Gabriel looked at it. It took Gabriel a moment to understand what he was reading. His eyes widened when it became clear. “A ledger,” he whispered and caught Maria’s quick inhale. There were lists and lists of priests’ names, addresses, and the local parishes and churches they controlled.

“Where did you get this?” Gabriel’s excitement waned as he read name after name. “There are so many of them.” He closed his eyes and lifted his face to the ceiling. “There are so many of them in such a small vicinity …”

“Shocked?” Dinah asked.

Gabriel sighed in defeat. “No.” He shook his head, then opened his eyes. “I wish I was, but I’m not. Have you discovered how many children they have? Ones like us?”

“Not yet,” Dinah said, and something in her strong demeanor seemed to soften, the armor she wore cracked, allowing Gabriel read her a little closer. She seemed hurt. She seemed defeated. But then she straightened her shoulders once more and said, “But we will. One day. I won’t rest until I do.”

“How do we take them all on?” Maria asked, her trepidation at the mammoth task before them evident in her tone. Gabriel’s brothers gathered around the table, listening.

“I can take out up to a hundred on my own in one go.” Bara sat on the edge of the table, arm resting on his bent knee. He smiled his usual disturbing smile. “And I wouldn’t even break a sweat.”

“You kill en masse,” Noa said knowingly. For the second time tonight, Gabriel studied Noa. There was a reason she understood the violent nature of his brothers without being told. He didn’t know why, but God had given him a way of seeking out people like them. He could just feel something dark within her too.

“The more the merrier, I say.” Bara reached over to the fruit bowl and took an apple. “Don’t worry though,” he said through a mouth of apple flesh. “Maria and Angel here are our token innocents. They keep the rest of our wicked souls on a leash.”

“Angel?” Dinah queried.

“He means me.” Gabriel ran his hand down his face. “I lean toward a pacifist’s life.”

“Then you’re in the wrong fucking line of work,” Candace said.

“I’m aware.” The still-raw stripes on his back burned in agreement.

“Where did you get this?” Maria asked, refocusing on the task in hand.

Dinah was trying to figure Maria out; he could see it in her confused expression. Maria must have seen too. “It’s a long story, but I was a nun who was used by the Brethren to try to capture Raphael. It failed, and I moved in here to be with Raphael when we fell in love. And to be with my new family.” Raphael wrapped his arm around Maria’s chest and pulled her against him.

“Where are you living?” Gabriel said, his mind ticking over at a million miles an hour. The Coven had knowledge of the Brethren, more than he and Maria had managed to discover. And the ledger … all of them were gravely at risk now they had such a thing in their possession.

“An abandoned tunnel system from the War of Independence,” Jo said. “Not ideal, but it has kept us safe so far.”

Gabriel frowned. “We own land. Acres upon acres. Government-protected. Off the grid. The Brethren will never find us here. To anyone outside of this place, we don’t exist.”

“Are you going to tell us why?” Dinah asked.

“Take a seat.”

Gabriel told the Coven of his grandfather and how he had left Gabriel an ever-filling well of money from his businesses. When he had told them of the Fallen’s most recent battle with the Brethren, he took a sip of the tea that Lynn, the housekeeper, had brought out, and the large room plunged into silence.

“Shit,” Dinah said, sitting back on her chair. “They’re going to be pissed. And they’ll be searching every inch of this globe for you all.”

Gabriel closed his eyes. The Brethren they had taken out at Purgatory recently were merely a scratch on the surface of their numbers. His heart fell when he thought of just how many other priests existed in the world, exorcising people they felt were heretics. And Dinah was right. They would be after the Fallen now. His brothers were more at risk than ever before.

When Gabriel opened his eyes, he saw the women before him. Women who knew how to live discreetly, and women who wanted what he and his family wanted too—the Brethren to be destroyed.

“We have housing here, on our land. Separate dwellings to the manor,” he said. Dinah met his eyes. “We have more to learn from you, and you have things to learn from us.”

“We need to help the children …” Dinah told Gabriel and the brothers of all the children they had recovered and hidden away. With every story of another example of Brethren abuse, his already ruined heart shed its final layer of protection until it was an exposed and unprotected mound of raw flesh.

“We have money,” Gabriel said, devastation running through his veins. “We have money and connections, and we can host the boys here on the land in one of the other buildings. Katie, their guardian, too. We can help them. Give them the help they need, help none of us ever got. An education. Food and shelter.”

Gabriel had always been tormented by the fact he had cast himself into a life of sin and murder. But this … this was a chance to help children who had been hurt like they had all been hurt, to help recover Brethren victims while they still had a chance at life. He felt something pull in his chest and knew that this was God giving him this duty. One laced with hope of salvation. A chance to help and offer kindness to those who had never experienced it. To save them before it was too late.

Dinah looked at her sisters, and Gabriel saw her dark eyes were bright. “You’ll help the kids? Really?” Her voice was rough and rasped, as though she daren’t let herself believe someone would actually help them after all this time alone.

“You have my vow,” Gabriel said, hand over his heart. He looked at his brothers, then the Coven. They were all cut from the same sullied cloth, bloodstained and ragged, but still surviving, still serving some kind of purpose despite their frayed and torn edges.

Gabriel felt a change spark inside him, something akin to hope. They had all been alone for so long. The Fallen had banded together, an unbreakable unit of brotherhood, survivors of a life no one outside of them could ever believe. Their enemy was both hidden from the world yet thriving in plain sight. And these women … they were the same. After all these years, the Fallen had found people just like them. Different circumstances, different experiences, but they had survived same brutal and savage storm the Fallen had walked through.

“We can send people to retrieve your things,” Gabriel said. “Trustworthy, discreet people. You can have the old housekeeper’s home. It’s large and empty, and it’s yours.”

“And them.” Dinah nodded toward Gabriel’s brothers. “Can all of them be trusted?”

Gabriel nodded back, conviction in his voice. “We have family commandments that they do not, and will not, break. If you are living on this estate with us, you won’t be harmed. We do not harm people we consider allies.”

Dinah silently communicated something with her sisters, then sat forward and held out her hand to Gabriel. “We’ll do a trial period. To see how we work together.”

Gabriel bowed his head in agreement.

“Then you have a deal, Goldilocks.”

Gabriel shook Dinah’s hand, and as he pulled back, he looked at his brothers and the Coven all gathered around the Nave, and then finally at the still-open ledger on the table. So many names. So many priests, and too many potential children that needed to be saved.

Warmth spread over Gabriel, and something clicked into place inside him. Looking at Maria, then Dinah, he clasped his hands on the table. “Now, where to begin?”