Four weeks had passed. Night had just fallen, and Gabriel walked the halls of the manor like a ghost. Letting himself into his grandfather’s study, he moved around the desk and sat in his grandfather’s seat. Gabriel’s head fell forward into his hands. He was failing. He didn’t know how to get them out. Miller had started adoption proceedings, but there was no trace of his brothers on any record. They were vanished. Cast from the earth by the Brethren. Gabriel was sure Miller believed he was inventing his brothers. Believed that Gabriel was mentally scarred from his time in Holy Innocents and had made up his brothers as a way to cope with loneliness, with abandonment.
Stressed and at his wits’ end, Gabriel pushed his hands through his hair. He sat back and stared down at the desk. It was old and ornate, with drawers on either side. He had rifled through the contents. But there was nothing there. Nothing to help Gabriel understand his grandfather. He was just about to get up off the seat when he noticed an edge of paper sticking out of one of the decorative drawers across the room. Gabriel’s eyebrows pulled down. A flicker of curiosity sparked in his chest as he got to his feet and approached the drawers. He ran his hand over the expensive cherry wood and exquisite craftmanship. Gabriel studied the locks; there was no sign of a key. Pulling on the handle, he tried to open them. They didn’t move. Gabriel didn’t understand why he was so hell-bent on getting inside the drawers. But this task, fleeting as it might be, took him from his constant hell of worrying about his brothers. So he focused on it.
He dropped to knees and studied the drawers. He felt victorious when he found a small gap. It showed him there was something inside. He turned back to the desk, picked up the letter opener, and slid the blade into the fake drawer. The blade hit what appeared to be some kind of hidden lock. Gabriel stabbed and stabbed at the metal until something clicked and the fell drawer open.
Gabriel dropped the letter opener on the ground and stared at the contents. Journal after journal was piled inside. He reached for the first one, slumped to the floor, and opened the brown leather cover.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t think of killing. When it didn’t consume my every waking thought, when it didn’t drive my actions every single day of my life . . .
Breath vacated Gabriel’s lungs as he read page after page. The blood drained from his face, and his hands shook. Gabriel read so intently that he didn’t realize the sun had risen and was now high in the sky until the door to the study opened.
Miller walked around the desk and froze when he saw Gabriel sitting on the floor. “Gabriel?”
Miller’s expression fell to one of fear when he saw what was in Gabriel’s hands. “You knew,” Gabriel said. It wasn’t an accusation. It was a statement of fact. Gabriel held up the journal in his hands. He had already read through three. Each one defining who his grandfather was. A killer. A murderer. Detailed descriptions of how he killed, of the blackness that lived within him that made him need to take lives . . . of why he had stayed away from his daughter. Fear that his evil ways would pass to her. Or worse, that he would harm her when he spun out of control.
Only they hadn’t passed to his daughter. They had skipped a generation and passed to his grandson. His grandson who was currently under the Brethren’s sadistic care.
“Gabriel.” Miller ran his hands down his face. “I can explain.”
“You don’t need to.” Gabriel’s blood zinged through his veins. He had just read how his grandfather channeled his need for blood. The protocols his staff had had in place so he could satisfy his deadly needs—the staff who worked in the manor. And how his best friend, John Miller, had kept his secret and helped him find the people to kill. Created a system whereby innocents weren’t harmed . . . only those who truly deserved it.
“Gabriel, I can explain.” Miller dropped down on the desk chair with a thud. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar.
“I want you to show me. I want you to show me how you found the ones to kill. How you controlled Jack, how you both made it work for all those years without being detected, or killing innocent people.”
Miller’s face transformed from an expression of guilt to one of utter shock. “What? Why—?”
“Michael is like Jack. Michael, my brother, my blood brother . . . and all of my brothers, are like Jack.”
Miller swallowed, eyes widening. “What?”
“They want to kill. They will kill one day. They told me this themselves. It’s why the Brethren took them to Purgatory. Because they believed them to be possessed by demons.” Gabriel’s head fell. Taking a heavy breath, he let it all out, the burden of truth that clogged his chest. He confessed it all to Miller. About Purgatory, the Brethren, the Fallen . . . everything. When he had finished, Miller’s face was red with fury. “We need to get them out,” Gabriel said.
“There’s no record that they even exist. And Gabriel, the church is powerful. In Boston, the Catholic Church is everything. It’s a war we don’t want to start. We have to be smart about this.”
“It’s not the Catholic Church. Just a group of priests who have strayed from the path.”
“How many belong to this sect?”
“I’m not sure. But not many. We never saw any more than twenty priests.”
Miller slumped in his seat and palmed his eyes. “Shit, son.” Miller groaned. “Jack thought if he just stayed away it would spare you all from whatever marred his soul,” he all but whispered to himself.
“It didn’t. Whatever ran in his veins now runs in Michael’s. The Fallen have been stricken too.” Gabriel said. Closing his eyes, he continued. “In his journals, Jack mentions people who did unsavory things for him—burying bodies, clean-ups . . . even getting people out from dangerous places undetected.” Miller looked like he wanted to argue, but instead slowly nodded his head. “Do you still have their contact details?” Miller nodded again. Gabriel’s heart started racing with a whisper of a plan, with possibility. “We could secretly get my brothers out. Bring them here. The manor is off the grid; you said so yourself. No one will find us. They wouldn’t be able to find us.” Hope ran through Gabriel’s heart. “I could use Jack’s methods as a way to guide them, to keep innocent people safe. I can do this. I can help them. This . . . ” He felt the ever-present weight lift from his chest. “This could be it. What it was all for, the pain, the horrendous acts. This could have been my calling all along.”
Miller sat forward. “Gabriel, you don’t know what it’s like . . . to take on that kind of responsibility.” The excitement in Gabriel’s body slowed to a steady flow of apprehension at the tiredness and defeat in Miller’s voice. “You’re young. Too young. But more than that, you’re a good kid, Gabriel. This kind of life . . . doing what it takes to be around people who want, no, need, to kill . . .” He sighed. “It taints the soul. Irreparably. I should know.” Miller studied Gabriel. “I read your file. It said that you were meant for the priesthood yourself. A life completely opposite to that which you’re planning now. You’d sacrifice what could be your soul for them?”
Gabriel thought of his life, of the Fallen’s lives over the past few years. He thought of the rapes, the pain, the exorcisms, and the darkness that still lived within his brothers, and a little in himself. The darkness that, he realized after months of punishment, was there to stay. It didn’t seem to be a choice for them. It was them. “I’m willing to make the sacrifice.” In that moment, Gabriel damned himself. He knew the turn his life would take under the responsibility of the Fallen. But he had to try. He had to save them in order to save others. It was bigger than him, his brothers. There was more at stake than just the state of his soul.
He needed to bring down the Brethren.
To do that, he needed to sin. He needed to become complicit in death and murder, just as Miller had done for Jack.
Miller got to his feet. “You know the location? The layout of Purgatory?” Gabriel nodded. He would never forget that place. Dwellings for the so-called sinners to “repent.” Instead it was a torture chamber run by priests who had bastardized the Catholic faith and its ideals. “It will cost you. A lot of money for the best men.”
Gabriel smirked, the first time he had found humor in so long. “Apparently I’m good for it.” Miller didn’t smile back. Instead he went to the painting of the archangels and slid the large frame to the side. It covered a safe that was sunk seamlessly into the wall. Miller opened it and took out a black book.
“There’s no going back after this. You know that, right? You’ve been through a lot, I get that. No one should endure what you have. We can stop the Brethren in other ways. I can help. It may be a long process, but we can get your brothers’ records back in the government system—illegally, of course, but it can be done.” He waved the black book. “There are more than just murderers and thieves in this book. Think about it, son. We could go through the proper channels”
Gabriel straightened his shoulders. “It has to be this way. I’ll step into the sin freely. The Brethren will never let my brothers go. I’m sure that, as we speak, they are trying to discover where I am and how they can get me back. No one leaves Purgatory alive without joining their cause. It’ll take too long to get them out any other way. The Brethren are a product of the Spanish Inquisition, Miller. They have existed for over a hundred years. They won’t let me be the ruin of everything they have built.”
Miller’s head dropped, but he then gave him a solemn nod. Gabriel stayed in the room as Miller opened the black book and made the contact. Gabriel was amazed at how straightforward it was.
“Sit down, son. We have a lot to discuss if this is the life you’re going to dive into.” So Gabriel did. He and Miller sat at the desk, and Miller told him how it was all done and the people he had access to. When Miller finally closed the black book, ending the conversation, he pulled out a whiskey decanter and two crystal glasses. He poured a measure for himself and one for Gabriel.
“I don’t drink,” Gabriel whispered. He was raw from the level of depravity a role like this would require of him.
“You want some advice, son?” Miller said. He pushed the glass of whiskey Gabriel’s way. “Start. Today is nothing to the trials and tribulations you’ll face. You need to be aware of that going in.”
Gabriel closed his eyes, blew out a breath, and reached out for the glass. He downed the whiskey in one, gasping as the burning liquid ignited inside his chest. He coughed, trying to clear his throat. Miller didn’t laugh. There was no humor to be found right now. Instead he got to his feet and checked his watch. “We need to leave if we’re going to make the meeting.”
Two hours later, two men turned up at Miller’s offices downtown. Gabriel drew them a layout of Purgatory. Told them where the dorm was, and where his brothers were to be brought after the retrieval. Not the manor. But a safe neutral site where Miller would arrange for Winston, the driver, to escort them home in a van. Gabriel didn’t know who the men were and what they did in life. He didn’t need to know anything, other than how they would rescue his brothers. Gabriel gave them a time when the priests would be at Holy Innocents Church. It was the best time to get into Purgatory.
“And any priests still in the building? Should they be disposed of?” one of the men asked.
Gabriel felt the upturned cross on his chest ache with the question. This was it. The moment he stood on the precipice of salvation or damnation. A life of devotion, or that of selfish gain. But when he pictured the Fallen’s faces in his head, the disbelief that Gabriel would actually return for them, save them . . . he willingly jumped into the abyss. “Leave not one of them alive.”
Gabriel and Miller drove back to the manor in silence. Miller said nothing as Gabriel got out of the car and went through the front doors. As he walked, Gabriel thought of the time he had spent studying Miller’s framework of how to mentor the Fallen, as the lawyer had done his grandfather. Gabriel thought of their lives at Holy Innocents. Their time in Purgatory. The systematic institutionalization that had controlled their lives since they were tiny children. Using it as a springboard, Gabriel designed the rules and regulations in a way that the Fallen would understand. Familiarity. Structure and commandments. Ceremonies, rituals.
Gabriel began to run. He ran down and down the staircases until he reached the small hidden chapel his grandfather had built when the house was constructed.
He darted down the short stone aisle and dropped to his knees. As he stared up at the crucifix, tears fell from his eyes. His palms slapped down on the cold stone. Gabriel cried. He expelled all the shame and repulsion he felt toward himself for what he had just done. For the souls he’d had no right to condemn. Gabriel lifted his head, a prayer on his lips, a prayer for forgiveness.
Something black in the corner of the chapel caught his eye. A whip of some kind lay discarded on the floor. No, not a whip. It was a Roman scourge. Gabriel crawled toward the tool and took the wooden handle in his hands. Seven thongs of leather hung from the whip, each laced with bone and balls of metal. Gabriel looked up at Christ’s face and slid off his shirt. Kneeling at the altar, he closed his eyes and whipped the scourge along his back. Gabriel hissed, clenching his teeth so he didn’t cry out. But as the bone-and-metal-clad thongs sliced into his flesh, he felt God’s punishment purge his sins from his body. Felt years and years of sin and lies drain from him. Gabriel’s eyes rolled back in pleasure as he let all seven of the whip’s leather laces extract their revenge. Seven, one for each of the Fallen and the mortal sins Gabriel knew they would one day commit. Seven for the deadly sins, and seven for the heavenly virtues that would aid in his redemption.
And Gabriel stayed there until he was bloodied and beaten, prostrate on the chapel floor, Jesus’s wooden face gazing down in approval of the self-flagellation.
Gabriel took rest on the floor as he waited for his brothers to return home. Closing his eyes, drenched in his own blood, Gabriel slept soundly . . . for the very first time in years.