Eden Manor, Massachusetts
The sound of Gabriel’s Gregorian chant music drifted up the Tomb’s steep, winding stairs. Raphael ran his fingertips along the gray stone walls. They were damp underneath his skin, slick with the stagnant water that trickled in from the overflowing lake outside. Forest-green moss crept in through cracks and fractures in the brick, betraying the manor’s age.
With every step he descended into the candlelit darkness, Raphael’s heart began to thunder into a heady velocity. The string that forever sat on his right index finger was so tight he could feel his pulse throbbing in the very tip. He focused on the rhythm of the beat, on the tightness of the string wrapped around and around and around his flesh. A fire of pleasure broke out in his chest and surged through his veins at the tightness, the suffocation, the hedonistic asphyxiation of the digit. It was a denial of blood, of the life his finger needed to survive, to thrive—to exist. Raphael’s lip kicked up in a smirk. He knew the tip of his finger would be blue, starved of the sustenance it needed to function. He hissed out in pleasure when the fire that vision ignited darted straight to his cock. Raphael didn’t care if his brothers heard him moan out loud. They would be caught in their own heads, their own excitement of possibly getting the kill, to care—they never cared.
Raphael felt Michael breathing heavily behind him, affirming his point. He knew Michael would be stroking the vial of blood around his neck while almost coming in his leather pants at the thought of sinking his sharp teeth into a vein and sucking down the blood. Gabriel told them Michael had something called hematolagnia. He had a word for what he claimed “ailed” all of them.
Nothing ailed them.
Gabriel just didn’t understand the way the six of them were, the way they had to be, the six of the Fallen who were nothing like Gabriel. They liked to kill. Needed to as much as they needed to breathe. It wasn’t abnormal to them. Blood and flesh and cries of pain inflicted by their hands didn’t bring repulsion, only satisfaction.
It was simply who they were.
Out of all the brothers, Raphael was closest to Michael. But right now, each of the brothers was completely alone. The Revelation ceremony brought out the utmost selfishness in them.
The chance to bring death consumed them.
Controlled them.
And Raphael wouldn’t have it any other way.
Raphael’s cock grew hard in his jeans at just the thought of taking someone’s last breath. He pushed the heel of his hand against his crotch as the blood rushed to it, but the burst of painful pleasure that spiraled up his spine only made him groan louder. The rubber cage he always wore around his dick constricted his flesh and began to strain, biting into him as the rubber rebelled against his hardening. The BDSM contraption was designed to bring pain. And it was successful; pain it brought. But Raphael didn’t see pain as a punishment. He lived for pain. The more agony he felt, the more pleasure he felt. He basked in the throttling of his penis, relished the choking of his erection as it tried to break free of the rubber constraints.
Raphael lost his footing, his back slamming into the wet wall. He barely even noticed his shirt growing damp as his eyes closed. All Raphael could focus on was the cage’s incessant strangling. His hands curled into fists as the addictive fire ravaged his body.
Flashes of his ultimate fantasy poured into his mind, fueling his ecstasy. He was powerless. He couldn’t stop them if he tried. But why would he? It was what inspired him to get out of bed each day, birthed every single breath his lungs inhaled. What he had waited years for, and would wait a lifetime more to capture. Raphael’s breathing became deep and labored as he imagined the scene—the king-sized bed, the red rose petals thrown on the pure white Egyptian cotton comforter. And her, the one, sprawled out for him on her back, naked, a temptation made true. Her cheeks would be flushed, and her lips would be cherry red. Her skin would be so soft, no blemish in sight, eyes bright and fixed on Raphael, piercing his gaze with nothing but adoration. She would be his, and he would be hers. There would be nobody else for either of them. She would be his one possession that he would have for all of his days.
Raphael knew his pupils were dilated beneath his closed lids—oddly colored golden-brown eyes that set him apart from everyone else. His greatest tool, eyes that lured in his victims—meaningless women he would chase for a while, seducing, enticing, making them enamored with everything he pretended to be . . . before he pillaged their lives, fucking them hard as death collected their souls, releasing into their dying bodies as he consumed their final heartbeat and breath with his unyielding hands.
Raphael’s eyes snapped open when he heard the church bell echo around the stone basement—Gabriel’s signal to robe for Revelation. As he descended the final steps, the tight rubber cage around his cock caused pre-cum to leak into his jeans. He lived for the sexual strangulation. He needed it as much as he needed to breathe.
Raphael realized he was late. He raced through the wide wooden door of the Tomb. His brothers were already in robes, the heavy hoods covering their heads as they silently awaited his arrival.
Raphael moved to his area of the Tomb to change and slipped on the black robe, tying the waist and lifting the hood over his head. The Gregorian chant drowned out any other sounds in the space. Tall white church candles led the way to a stone altar at the back of the small room, raised a single step higher than the floor. In front of the altar, a robed figure stood facing his brothers. A figure robed in red, standing out among the sea of black—Gabriel. Raphael’s brothers dropped to their knees. Gabriel paused as Raphael took his place, waiting patiently for him to do the same. Raphael took a deep breath as he lowered one knee to the ground. His jaw clenched, everything in his body telling him to refuse the submission. To get to his feet and never bow to anyone or anything ever again. He saw red, his heart pumping boiling-hot blood through his veins as he tried to get his body to obey. His muscles tensed and his skin felt too tight around his flesh as it fought the subjugation.
Raphael tightened the string around his finger and breathed in deeply. He thought of roses. He thought of red and pink and yellow roses. The familiar song he always hummed under his breath poured from his throat, filling the Tomb with its low notes.
This was Gabriel, he told himself. These were his brothers. It was a Revelation . . . and a Revelation led to killing. Raphael placed his hand on the stone floor beside his one bent knee. Felt the smooth hardness of the stone on his palm. Recalled the many times Gabriel had called his name and the lightness he would feel in his chest when he knew he had been given the kill.
Fighting every rebellious instinct in his soul, Raphael placed his second knee to the floor. The stone was cold under Raphael’s jeans as he kneeled. The hood caused his labored breathing to echo in his ears, his breath swirling around the confined space. He waited, muscles tense, for Gabriel to begin. He needed to get to his feet. He needed to be off the floor, off his knees. Memories flashed into his mind, memories of his neck being held and his mouth being fucked against his will. He shook his head, forcing them from his mind.
Roses . . . He focused on roses . . .
Gabriel turned down the music until the monks’ chants were no more than a distant hum. Under the lip of his lowered hood, Raphael watched Gabriel reach for the scroll that rested on the gilded plate on the center of the altar. The parchment, as always, was wrapped in a red ribbon. Red for the blood that would be spilled. The sin that would be committed.
Then there was silence.
Raphael watched Gabriel’s feet move along the six of the Fallen. Past Bara, past Uriel, past Sela, past Diel . . . then finally past Michael. Gabriel stopped before Raphael. “Rise,” Gabriel said in an authoritative voice. Dark-tinged adrenaline rushing like lava through his body, Raphael drew back his hood and looked up at Gabriel. His brother was staring down at him, Gabriel’s blue eyes boring into his. Raphael’s nostrils flared as his attention dropped to the scroll. The scroll that held the name of his next kill. Gabriel waited as Raphael slowly got to his feet. From the minute the Fallen were brought to the manor, Gabriel had made them practice restraint. Made them prove to him that they could control their murderous urges enough that they could be set free to kill outside of the manor’s doors when ordered. It was torture. The waiting, curbing the compulsion to flee the seclusion of the manor and kill and fuck whoever they wanted.
None of them had to obey Gabriel, of course. At any point they could leave. But they wouldn’t. They shared a covenant with their pure brother. As kids, Gabriel had saved them from the Brethren. He’d sacrificed his destined future as a Catholic priest, had attacked Father Quinn just to follow his little brother into the depths of hell. Was raped, fucked by priests, tortured, stripped and branded and torn down . . . all to save their already damned souls. The adoptive brothers he would never have wanted, but always kept close.
The guy was a living saint. And Gabriel had the Fallen’s allegiance . . . no matter how much it tested them to restrain their basest desires. Their self-restraint was their thanks to their brother for everything he had done. Without Gabriel, they would all be dead.
When Gabriel handed Raphael the scroll, Raphael saw what he always did in Gabriel’s eyes. Something that looked like pain. Raphael didn’t understand it. He would never understand what Gabriel felt in these moments. In Raphael’s opinion, their leader felt too much, period. He was too innocent. Gabriel couldn’t have been more different than the rest. Bara, back in Purgatory, used to tease him and call him “Angel.” The moniker couldn’t have been more accurate.
The angel willingly living in a den of demons. Unrepentant, soul-stealing demons.
“The Revelation has been given,” Gabriel announced. One by one Raphael’s brothers rose to their feet. Hoods were pushed back as Raphael unlaced the red ribbon that held the scroll closed. Dropping the ribbon to the ground, where it pooled like the blood he would spill, he opened the parchment and read the name written across the center in Gabriel’s perfect calligraphy.
Angela Bankfoot.
“Trafficker of young girls,” Gabriel said. “Made millions kidnapping teenagers from their homes then selling them to the sex trade.”
Raphael smirked.
Angela Bankfoot would be fun to kill.
Raphael walked to the stone font engraved with the Fallen’s sword-and-angel-wings emblem. The font wasn’t for holy water, as the fonts at Holy Innocents had been. This was an inferno. And rather than being used to bless a congregation or to baptize a child, the Fallen’s font consumed the names of the soon-to-be dead, preemptively sending their names to hell, to where the prey’s soul would soon follow. Mesmerized by the orange and red flames, Raphael let the fire heat his face. He relished the burn on his skin.
Raphael dropped the scroll into the fire. He watched as the blaze devoured the paper, swallowing up the letters that formed the bitch’s name. When he turned, Gabriel handed him a brown leather folder. It was filled with information on the target. Each brother was given one when they received a Revelation. All the intel they would need to seek out and toy with their deserving victim before bringing them their demise.
One by one, his brothers nodded in his direction. An act of silent congratulation. But Raphael saw the envy on their faces, the disappointment that it wouldn’t be them who got to elicit pain from another fucked-up soul and savor the symphony of their screams. Gabriel moved back to the altar. The Fallen all looked his way. When Gabriel nodded, they lowered their heads and began reciting the Commandments of the Fallen: “Thou shalt not kill an innocent. Thou shalt not stray from the Fallen’s path . . . Thou shalt not bring prey back to Eden Manor. . .”
As the commandments fell from Raphael’s lips, he fought the need to flee to his room, for privacy. To begin the preparation for the takedown. He smiled to himself.
It was time to begin the hunt. It was almost as fulfilling as the kill. Almost.
Gabriel walked to the ceremonial bell’s rope and pulled it down; the bell rang out, its tone vibrating through Raphael’s bones. He stared at the rope, and his smile widened. If he closed his eyes, he would be taken back to the genesis of his fall. To being a twelve-year-old child who thought nothing of watching someone die. And was no longer able to hold back the need to do so.
Raphael could still remember every detail of wrapping the red rope around Gavin’s slender neck. After months of studying every student at Holy Innocents school, he had finally chosen Gavin to be his first. The one to break Raphael’s virginity—his strangulation virginity. If he closed his eyes tighter, Raphael could still feel the rough fibers of the church bell’s rope under his fingers, the crimson strands caressing his palms as he wound it tightly around Gavin’s throat. Around and around and around, the bell signaling Mass ringing in his ears. Raphael sucked in a sharp breath as his cock swelled inside the cage. Replaying Gavin’s chokes and stuttered breaths in his head brought him to rapture. He remembered every detail of Gavin’s battle to hold onto consciousness as Raphael pulled the rope tighter and tighter, pulling it just enough that it drained Gavin of life but didn’t crush his trachea. Raphael needed the neck to remain perfect, no breaks or snaps. The true beauty of the kill lay in the remaining perfection in the aftermath. The elegance of the slow death without mutilation.
A most perfect asphyxiation.
Raphael was suddenly consumed by the need to begin his hunt. The memory of Gavin’s strangulation had awakened his senses, stirred to life the demonic beast that owned his blackened soul. The minute the final bell rang out, he rushed back to the change room to hang up his robe and made for the stairs. The winding of the stone steps only made the kindle of anticipation flare more strongly. The twisting, circular movements made his breath come in sharp puffs of strained inhales and exhales.
Raphael stopped when he reached the Nave. He opened the file on the vast wooden table at which the Fallen ate their meals. The bitch’s face in a photograph was the first thing he saw. Angela Bankfoot. A slim, tall blonde, pumped full of silicone, Botox, and fillers. But he didn’t gave a shit about her face or even her figure. It was her neck his eyes focused on. His head tilted to the side. Her neck was of adequate size. Not slender enough to make it the most exciting target yet, but sufficient to make the kill sweet enough to sate the darkness that roared inside his heart.
Raphael’s lip curled in disgust when he looked at her hair. Peroxide-blond hair that fell to the tops of her shoulders. Not as long as he craved. Raphael’s hands balled into fists on the tabletop, his eyes closed, and he breathed deeply though his rabid disappointment. Pulling himself together, he refocused on the file. He smirked when he saw where the bitch liked to go for pleasure.
A place Raphael knew all too well.
Angela Bankfoot liked fucked-up play. Unluckily for her, so did Raphael. The bitch had no idea what was coming.
“Well?” Sela asked.
Raphael stood, and his brothers gathered around him. At least, five of them did. Gabriel would still be in the Tomb, no doubt praying to God to forgive his soul for giving Raphael the mission. The self-hatred would be eating him alive, the agony of being judge and juror of someone’s soul.
It was a fool’s move. God had no place in their lives, in the manor. He’d abandoned them all a long time ago, letting his agents of sin fuck them and hit them, making them more fucked up than they’d ever been before.
A hand waved in front of his face. When Raphael’s vision cleared, it was to see Bara and his flame-red hair. His green eyes were alight with excitement. “Good target?”
Raphael pointed at the photograph of Bankfoot.
A hand landed on his shoulder. Sela. “Too bad she isn’t the one, brother,” he said. Sela leaned in closer for a better look. His long brown hair fell on the picture and, for a moment, made it look as though Bankfoot’s hair dropped all the way below her big, fake tits. Raphael hissed at the sight. Bara smirked, knowing exactly what had made him temporarily lose his shit.
“Maybe next time.” Sela stood back, moving his hair, ripping the fantasy away. He studied the photograph. “But she’d be easy to recreate. All that surgery makes for an easy death mask.” His eyes flared. Sela made masks of all his victims. Hung them in his room, so they would look down at him as he slept. “And those rubber lips would feel wicked good around my cock.” He shrugged. “At least until I cut them from her face and put them in a jar.”
“Where will you find her?” Diel asked. The black-haired, blue-eyed brother pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. His head twitched every few minutes, the tell that he was fighting for control of the killer inside. The part of him that would throw him into a killing spree. His collar buzzed, the telltale sign that Gabriel had it switched to automatic control. The minute Diel moved too fast, pulse increasing, feet picking up, switching from a walk into a run, it would activate, shooting in excess of fifty-thousand volts into his body and bringing him to his knees.
Raphael went to reply, but he was interrupted.
“Her blood would be vile.”
The men all looked to Michael, who rarely spoke. If he ever did, it was mostly to Raphael. For whatever reason, Michael had always been more drawn to him than to the others. Michael’s ice-blue eyes showed nothing but repulsion toward the target. He pushed back his black hair from his eyes. “All that Botox and shit takes the refinement from the flavor.” Michael flicked his tongue along his sharpened teeth, along the fangs he’d had made that were now permanently attached into his gums. Michael shrugged, then addressed Raphael, meeting his gaze. “If you choked her hard enough, you could always make her eyes bleed.” Michael’s nostrils flared. “That would be a sight to see.”
Diel turned the file around to face him. “Sex dungeons,” he said, amused. “Your favorite place to reside, Raphe. Apart from her hair, it’s what you like most, yeah?”
Raphael nodded. “And she frequents my favorite club too.” Raphael smiled and met each of his brothers’ eyes. “The most extreme and fucked-up toys to play with.”
“Wicked good,” Diel replied, smiling coldly too.
“She needs to be killed slowly.” Uriel moved closer to Raphael to see the picture in more detail. His voice had dropped into a low growl. “The whore is in love with herself. All that shitty work.” His mouth curled in disgust. “Murder the bitch over hours. Make the cunt scream until her voice gives out.” Uriel rubbed the spot over his upper chest, above the Fallen’s brand that they all wore with pride. Uriel’s body was littered with piercings and tattoos, marring every inch of his skin but for his neck and face. He was tracing one of the many words he had inked into his skin, the biggest one. The one that read “UGLY.” It was ironic; Uriel’s face was anything but. Uriel’s gray eyes met Raphael’s gaze. “When you’ve done it, you come and tell me how loud she wailed. How much you fucking made her pay. I need to know. I need to know every second of her pain, or I won’t be able to sleep.”
“Always,” Raphael said. And he would. One of the biggest pleasures they shared was the retelling of their kills. Every detail, every feeling the murders elicited . . . how their victims begged and pleaded to be spared, to be given mercy.
Mercy was never awarded by the Fallen.
No one was ever spared.
There was no goodness in their souls. Tears and cries rolled off their consciences like raindrops; protests and pleas made them smile.
Raphael closed the file. “I’ll see you all later.” Raphael walked through the vast mansion and upstairs to his own rooms. He crossed the bedroom and went through the hidden door in the vintage-wallpapered wall and into his private room. He headed straight to the large wall that was filled with pictures. Pictures of his kills, taken minutes after death, eyes wide open and faces frozen in a perpetual state of quietus. Graffitied words written in red and black expressed what each victim had done. How they had screamed. How they had clawed at his skin . . . how they had choked on their final breaths.
His gaze drifted to his left. To the one wall that was adorned with a gilded gold frame, a table of unlit candles, and an empty vase awaiting the single rose that would fill it and sit center stage.
A heavy pang of disappointment hit. He clenched his fist by his side.
Not yet, he thought. Not yet . . .
Pinning the picture of his next victim to the north wall of the room—his planning space—he began to plot. As Raphael stared at Angela Bankfoot, his desires for how she would die grew darker and darker. She wasn’t who he wanted. For that, she would pay. Raphael focused on crafting the seduction techniques: the whens, the hows, the methods by which he would tempt her to her eventual demise.
A while later, Michael strode into the room. He had a shot glass of blood in his hands, as he did every night. Raphael knew it was Michael’s own, extracted from his veins only minutes before. Drops of blood still stained his wrist, his black shirt barely disguising the wound. Michael sat on the chair on the corner, dipping his finger into the glass and circling his lips until they were painted a deep shade of crimson red. Around and around his finger went as he lapped at the liquid, the movement staining the skin around his mouth.
“When?” Michael asked, never taking his eyes away from his blood. As always, his shirt was open to his navel, and the vial he always wore sat over the Fallen’s insignia that was burned into his skin. Ever since they moved into the manor, Michael had started coming to Raphael’s room each evening. He never stayed the night, just remained in Raphael’s company until he went to bed. They wouldn’t always speak; Michael rarely did. But he always turned up.
They had lived in Purgatory for years. Years of torture, with only each other to rely on for support. When they escaped Father Quinn’s clutches and Gabriel gave them each their own rooms, it was too foreign for them all. For the first year they had all slept in the same room, together, on the hard floor of the Tomb.
The damp, the lack of windows and light, the stagnant air, the cold . . . it had been all they had known for so long. Even Gabriel had joined them, unable to sleep himself. As the years passed, they slowly began to gain independence. But they congregated each night at dinner and, more often than not, many other times in the day. It was brotherhood in its strongest form. They didn’t know how to live without one another—they didn’t care to find out.
Michael had been the youngest of the Fallen next to Raphael. The two of them were naturally drawn together. Even ten years later it was still the case.
“I begin tomorrow,” Raphael said, answering Michael’s question. He stepped back and glared at Bankfoot’s picture. It stared back at him, her blown-up red lips offending his golden eyes. Raphael took hold of the string on his finger and loosened it, letting his finger find momentary relief, only to once again wrap it around the base, then the knuckle, up to the nail . . . over and over again. “First, I will make contact with her, capture her attention. Then I’ll lure her in.” Raphael felt his breathing deepen as he envisioned the play. He thought of the club, the darkness and smoke that filled every part of the space. The smell of sex and cum, and the wooden contraptions in the open for everyone to see.
Raphael smirked as he glared at her face.
The road to death would begin tomorrow.
He could hardly wait.