Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Auguste surveyed the room.He pressed his hand to the clean sheets that Father McConnell slept in. They were cold. Not a single thing was out of place in the room. There was no blood, no signs of a struggle, yet he knew something was off, just like he’d known something was off with the others. Father McConnell, along with four other priests in close proximity, had mysteriously gone missing. Not a word from any of them. Gone, vanished into thin air.

Father Auguste turned when Father Abel walked into the bedroom. “The charge has gone from here too.”

A twitch pulled at Father Auguste’s cheek. The young sinners the priests had been exorcising at home had been taken. He tipped his head back, the end of his long ponytail reaching the center of his back. Anger swelled in his blood, and one face sprang to mind. Disgust and shame filtered into his bones as he thought of his brother. As he thought of Selaphiel’s sinful face.

He opened his eyes and cast one last look around the bedroom. He was about to leave and go back to the Brethren headquarters when he noticed an old picture on the wall was ever so slightly askew.

Father Auguste approached the picture and lifted it off the wall. It concealed a safe. His hands curled into fists as he stared at the lock that had been expertly broken. Calming his temper, just as Father Quinn had taught him, he opened the safe and found it empty.

“Father Abel? Father Job?” he called out. The twin brothers who were his right-hand men came quickly up the stairs from their search for any clue as to who had taken the priest. Because someone had.

Father Auguste hadn’t reached his prestigious position as Witch Finder General at such a young age for his lack of thoroughness. On the contrary—he was ruthless. He was meticulous, and he left no stone unturned when it came to any threat made against his beloved faith, against the true saviors of this sinful, doomed world.

The twins arrived at the bedroom doorway, waiting for Father Auguste’s command. “Search the house for the ledger.” They immediately did his bidding without question. Auguste searched the bedroom again—old floorboards, boxes, under the mattress—but he came up empty-handed.

Thirty minutes later, the twins came back to Auguste. “There’s nothing, General,” Father Abel reported.

“We’ve searched everywhere. It’s gone,” Father Job added.

Auguste’s jaw clenched. “Call in the investigators. I want prints and DNA found for anyone that has been in this home.” He walked past the twins and down the stairs to the waiting car outside. He got into the back seat; the twins followed. “All the homes we have been in tonight must be searched.”

Father Abel lifted his cell phone and made the appropriate calls. Father Auguste met the driver’s eyes. “Take me to Father Quinn.”

* * *

“He will see you now,Father Auguste,” Elaine, Father Quinn’s personal nurse, said as Father Auguste waited in the hallway of his apartment in the Brethren headquarters.

Father Auguste walked through the door to Father Quinn’s rooms. His anger was quick as he looked at his savior in the armchair overlooking the leafy park outside.

Auguste stopped before Father Quinn and dropped to one knee. He waited for Father Quinn to hold out his hand. It took his mentor a few seconds longer than it should have, but he held out his hand, and Auguste held the frail fingers and pressed a kiss to the back of his palm. His skin was rough from the extensive burns, but Auguste held on to the fact that he was alive. God had saved his Brethren mentor from the evil of his old charges.

“Auguste,” Father Quinn said, his voice weakened and hoarse.

“Your Excellency.” Auguste rose to sit in the chair opposite Father Quinn. He looked at his mentor, the man who had plucked him from the orphanage he had been sent to and cleansed his soul that had been ruined and tainted by wickedness and sin. Father Quinn had saved Auguste; he owed him his eternal soul.

“Speak, child,” Father Quinn said. Auguste tried to hold in his rage as he studied Father Quinn’s face. Gone were his hair and eyebrows. His skin was mottled from the severity of his burns, and the reconstruction surgery he had been receiving did nothing to take away the evidence of how he had almost perished in Purgatory, after the cursed Fallen subjects had returned and massacred most of the holy men who had been there. There doing God’swork.

The devil had triumphed that day, but Father Auguste had vowed to be the one who destroyed the Fallen, who brought about their fall back to the depths of hell where they belonged. He would seek holy revenge on the sinners who had managed to evade the Brethren’s care and spread their evil into the world, as devastating and cruel as the most deadly poison.

“I believe they have come for us again,” Father Auguste said, and Father Quinn’s milky eyes seemed to burn with contempt. “Five homes were attacked last night.”

“And our priests?” Father Quinn asked.

“Gone.” Silence stretched between them. Father Auguste clasped his hands in thought.

“Speak, child. I can see God is sending you a message, making something clear to you.” Father Quinn smiled, his scarred lips barely moving as he did so.

“It was always the same pattern.” Auguste thought back to a few years ago when, for a brief period of time, priests had been savagely killed in their homes. Then he thought back to the more present series of invasions—a different tack.

He sat forward in the chair. “In the more recent attacks on the homes, the charges were gone, but the priests were there, alive. Always an ‘H’ written on their forehead in their own blood.” Memories sailed into Father Auguste’s consciousness. Burning flesh on wooden stakes, and screaming witches being lowered into deep water. Seven young witches clawing at him for mercy, the devil spitting false truths from their heathen mouths. He could feel them under his hands, sweating and crying and screaming as he drew the demons from their souls, as he worked with God to cleanse the sin from their darkened hearts.

He could still feel the wetness on his finger as he drew an “H” on their foreheads in their own spilled blood. A purging of evil, and a benediction of the one true faith. Yet the witches would thrash as the mark spiritually burned into their bodies, the demons within trying to battle against the healing power of that “Heretic” mark.

The Coven. The seven witches that had escaped his capture. They were never found after they fled. The Brethren had many enemies. The non-deadly attacks reeked of the Coven.

But this most recent hit was a new beast entirely, a sharp and accelerated change in modus operandi. The priests had not just been tied up by hooded assailants. They were gone, their homes cleansed of any evidence. And now … “Father McConnell’s ledger was also gone,” Father Auguste said, and he saw Father Quinn’s nostrils flare.

“Them,” Father Quinn said, his scarred skin reddening.

Auguste felt the impact of that accusation sinking into his skin. “They’ve made their next move,” he said, and felt his warrior senses rising in him like ash from a fire.

Auguste thought of Selaphiel’s face, one eerily similar to his own. He remembered his brother’s screams and the way his back would arch as the demon within him fought harder to hold on to his soul. Auguste’s little brother was lost to Satan, along with the other heathens that made up their sorry group, and therefore was no brother of his. The Brethren was his true family. Selaphiel was just a blight on the goodness of the world.

And now the time had come to cleanse the world of the Fallen’s stain.

Father Auguste reached forward and took Father Quinn’s hand. “They may have taken the ledger, but that can now be to our advantage.” Father Quinn’s fingers wrapped around his. “I won’t fail you, Your Excellency. Trust me on this. I will bring them to justice.”

“I know you will, child,” Father Quinn said. “You have never failed me. You were always the brightest star to me.”

“Thank you, Father,” Father Auguste whispered. Those words filled his heart with deep love and purpose. But he thought back to a blond boy with soft curls that framed his face like a true, living angel. Joseph, or, as he was now known, Gabriel. Gabriel had always been the one to win Father Quinn’s favor, until he’d opened his heart to evil and tried to kill their leader in cold blood. Father Quinn’s attention had then fallen onto Auguste, where it should have been all along. And Auguste would not fail his mentor. He would bring home a victory for the Brethren over the Fallen. He wouldn’t stop until they all perished.

“God brought you to the Brethren for a reason. You are the best at what you do. A true warrior of the faith, like the Finder Generals of old, our forefathers who lit the way for us to follow. He placed their talents in you. A celestial gift for your unwavering devotion.”

“Thank you,” Father Auguste said, radiating happiness. He kissed Father Quinn’s burned hand one more time before he got to his feet. “I will get to work straight away.”

Father Auguste left the Brethren headquarters and sat back in his town car. The twins waited silently for his instruction. As they made their way back to the Witch Finders’ base, plans circled Auguste’s mind.

If the Fallen thought that they had the upper hand, that they could seriously take on the might that was the Brethren brotherhood, they had sorely misjudged their enemy. Because Auguste was ready to load an army of holy angels onto their sinful ways and crush them where they stood.

So, Auguste told the twins of his plan, a smile breaking out on his mouth at the thought of watching all the sinners die beneath their holy swords. Judgment Day was coming for the Fallen angels who had gotten away, and Auguste’s eyes would be the last thing they saw as he sent them back to hell.