With every step Gabriel took toward the Tomb, Raphael’s roars of fury grew louder. When Gabriel reached the top of the spiral stone staircase that would lead him down to his brothers, he reached out his hand and took a deep breath. His eyes closed, and the choking feel of dread attacked his chest. He rested his back against the cold stone for strength and opened his eyes. He stared at the commandments written in black calligraphy on the stone wall opposite. The rules the Fallen must adhere to in order to make their system work. The system that kept innocent lives safe, but allowed his brothers to satisfy their murderous urges. One line in particular seemed to pulse from the stone in bold.
Thou shalt not kill an innocent.
He thought back to the young woman in the day room. The woman with hair that reached her thighs. She was pretty, slight, innocent-looking, perhaps submissive in nature . . . and that hair . . . She was Raphael’s ultimate fantasy made flesh.
Gabriel smacked his hand against the wall. “I should have known,” he whispered to no one but himself and God. He should have known that his brothers, when face to face with their fantasy kills, wouldn’t be able to resist. In that moment, no commandment or edict given by him would be obeyed. The truth was, the darkness that lived inside them controlled them. It indulged Gabriel’s pathetic attempts to keep it on a leash for a while, making him feel like their system had some kind of authority over their baser desires. But all this time the darkness had simply been waiting to break free.
Gabriel pushed his fingers through his hair. He didn’t know what to do. In ten years, even before that in Holy Innocents and Purgatory, Gabriel had always been able to think of a way to protect Michael, then his new brothers. But right now, he didn’t know what to do. Raphael needed to be punished. His golden-eyed brother would know this. But Gabriel had no idea what to do about the woman. She was so young. Looked barely twenty-one. And if she had been sent by the Brethren, what color was her soul? Was she another unrighteous member of the group who had inflicted nothing but pain on Gabriel and his brothers for too many years, changing them all in ways they could not repair?
“Let me out!” Raphael’s lethal voice climbed up the stone staircase, as vicious and ungodly as a demon scuttling up from the depths of hell.
Gabriel barely recognized his brother. Raphael was always calm. Controlled. Composed. Right now, he was anything but.
Gabriel descended the steps, and as he drew closer to the Tomb, he felt the evil he tried to keep at bay begin to chip at the small amount of goodness left in his soul. When Gabriel entered the Tomb, he saw Raphael in the cell in the corner. In ten years, the only brother who had had to occupy it was Diel, and only when he couldn’t control himself. On seeing Gabriel, Raphael wrapped his hands around the bars and yanked on the metal. “Let me out, Gabe. She’s mine. You won’t take her from me. She’s mine, and I’m having her whether you approve or not. You’re not taking this from me. Not after I’ve found her.”
Gabriel could feel the eyes of his other brothers on him as they stood around the room, watching his every move. For once they were all silent. Even Bara had nothing to say. Raphael’s eyes were wild, showing Gabriel just how close his brother was to the edge. Gabriel stopped in front of the cell but out of Raphael’s reach. It saddened Gabriel that, right now, he couldn’t trust Raphael. He had always trusted his brother.
Raphael was breathing heavily, the muscles on his bare torso strained and tight. Gabriel’s eyes dropped to the sword-and-angel-wing emblem they all wore. The one they all had had branded on them when they signed their oaths to the Fallen brotherhood. The brand that eradicated the upturned cross the Brethren had scarred on their flesh when they were kids. It was his and his brothers’ way of taking back some semblance of control from the priests who had chipped away at everything they were, who’d played with their bodies like toys and crushed their spirits until there was little left to be salvaged.
It was the emblem that bound them in their odd brotherhood. Right now, Gabriel felt it only mocked who they were, how far they had all come.
“You’ve made a mockery of that brand,” Gabriel said aloud, purging his inner thoughts. He pointed at the sword and wings on Raphael’s chest. “You have taken everything we are, the blood oath, our brotherhood, our commandments, and turned your back on us. All for a woman.”
“She’s not just a woman,” Raphael said calmly. Calmly, but darkly. “She’s my one.”
Gabriel resisted the need to run his hands over his face or show in his expression just how much Raphael’s actions had hurt him. Instead, he kept his face neutral. From the minute his brothers had escaped Purgatory years ago, Gabriel had had to be their leader. They could never see him weak. Gabriel took a step closer. Raphael watched him intently. Gabriel couldn’t equate this savage with the man he knew. Raphael had always been one of the closest to Gabriel. Right now, that friend appeared lost, focused on one thing only—the young woman with pale skin, a slender neck, and thick hair that fell to her thighs.
“Was she holding the rosary?”
Raphael clenched his jaw and gripped the bars tighter.
“Was she holding the rosary, Raphe? Was she holding the rosary of the Brethren when you met her in the club?”
Raphael glared at Gabriel; Gabriel didn’t break the challenge. Finally, Raphael exhaled a furious breath. “Yes.”
Gabriel heard the low murmurs of anger from his brothers behind him. His heart sank. He thought back to the woman, how terrified she had been when Diel attacked. Her wide eyes, the way she cowered, the way her eyes dropped to the floor, a victim alerting her attacker to her utter submission.
How could she be working with the Brethren? Or was she just a pawn they used to lure and trap Raphael? Gabriel didn’t think her meekness was a ruse. Too many thoughts clogged his brain, making it ache.
“They knew of your predilections, Raphe. They must have discovered where you were hunting and laid their trap.” Gabriel looked at his brother, who was pacing the ground of the cell. “But you discovered their trap before they could get to you.”
Raphael stopped. His face had lost some of its anger and he seemed to have regained some of his sanity. “She wanted to play.”
“You had another target,” Gabriel reminded him. Raphael had been sent for the trafficker. The Fallen had been paid handsomely to ensure that kill would be made.
Raphael’s eyes lost focus. “Not after I saw her, I didn’t.” Gabriel felt nauseous at how quickly Raphael had forgone his self-restraint and thrown himself into the path of the Brethren’s bait. “I found the rosary in her bra. Hidden, until it fell to my feet.” He didn’t smirk when he said, “Maybe your God wanted to save me after all.” Gabriel believed that, but that was by the by right now.
“And you thought to bring her back here?”
Raphael glanced down at his hands, then wrapped them around one of the metal bars. He began to squeeze, and his eyes seemed to lose focus again, taking Raphael out of the Tomb and to somewhere else in his complex mind. The metal groaned under his hands as he squeezed the bar tighter and tighter and tighter, his fingers turning white. “I wrapped my hands around her throat,” Raphael said, voice deepening and growing hoarse. “I squeezed her slim neck, felt her pulse slowing under my thumbs.” Raphael’s breathing grew more rapid. “I stared into her eyes as I watched her drain of life.” Gabriel ignored the shameless sexual gratification Raphael was obviously gaining from the replay. Raphael pushed himself against the metal bar, hissing as it pressed against his bulging groin. “She fought me. She clawed at my arms.” Raphael’s pleasured tone quickly turned into anger. “It wasn’t how it was meant to be. She isn’t meant to fight back. She gives herself to me willingly. When I’m deep inside her, she whispers my name. Loving me. Needing me. Obsessed and consumed by me. I’m the only thing that exists in her world.” Raphael’s eyes snapped to Gabriel, fully present again. “I have to complete it the way it was meant to be. I have to have her in the right way.”
“You can’t kill an innocent, Raphe. I won’t allow it.”
“She’s not an innocent.” Uriel stepped forward from his place against the wall. His arms were folded over his chest. “She’s with the Brethren. She’s anything but innocent.”
Something pulled in Gabriel’s gut. Something that wanted to agree with Uriel. But Gabriel had looked into the woman’s eyes. He’d seen her confusion when she discovered the Fallen. The fear. He’d seen her staring at Raphael’s back, at the scars they all shared. There was shock and sadness in her eyes, not recognition of the Brethren’s punishments. He didn’t know how they did it, but he was sure the woman had been deceived by the Brethren. The way he had been as a child. Fooled by their masks of good. She’d had no idea about the predators she would be facing in the Fallen. She couldn’t have. No one would willingly put themselves into a killer’s path.
“The Brethren don’t allow women into their fold. They’re a modern extension of the Spanish Inquisition. They see women as temptresses and weak, as witches susceptible to sin. They wouldn’t take one into their employ. They may be a modern version, but their ideology isn’t.”
“She can’t be allowed to leave, Gabe.” Sela came to stand next to Uriel. He knew the Brethren more intimately than the rest. He had ties to them none of the other Fallen did. “She’s seen where we live. She’s seen us all. She’ll leave this place and go running back to Father Quinn and tell him everything. Believe me. I know first hand. She’ll betray us, and they’ll come for us. You know this.”
Gabriel’s brothers nodded in agreement with Sela. Gabriel faced Raphael, who was watching him just as closely as the stained-glass window of Mary had always done in Holy Innocents Church. He knew they were right. But the thought of allowing the death of an innocent . . . Gabriel couldn’t breathe. Phantom hands wrapped around his heart and squeezed.
But what was his choice? When he had plunged himself into Purgatory years ago, following the dangerous path of his little brother, he had unknowingly signed himself up to being who he was now—the Fallen’s leader. His allegiance lay with them. Their protection was everything.
Gabriel felt a flicker of the light he held dear dim into darkness. A candle snuffed out in a thunderstorm of immorality.
“You get no Revelations for six months,” Gabriel heard himself saying. He felt detached from his body, as though it wasn’t him giving the order to Raphael. His mouth was speaking words he didn’t want to serve. Gabriel could practically feel the uncontainable excitement pulsing from Raphael in his cell. “She isn’t to be allowed out of the manor . . . ever again.” Gabriel felt a spear pierce his side and cut right through his heart. “You keep to your rooms. And when it’s over, you never betray us again.”
“I won’t,” Raphael said. “I promise.” Gabriel finally let himself meet Raphael’s eyes. They were dilated. Uncontained excitement beamed from his brother’s face, Raphael’s cheeks were flushed and his eyes were bright—Gabriel had never seen him so happy. Ever. Gabriel felt physically sick. Raphael was elated at being permitted to take another’s life. Gabriel couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand in the vicinity of Raphael’s triumph. Gabriel turned to Bara. “Make him stay for another few hours, then take him to his rooms. I’ll see she is brought there afterward.”
“Maria,” Raphael said as Gabriel turned to leave. Gabriel stilled. “Her name is Maria.” Gabriel closed his eyes. Knowing her name made it exponentially worse. Maria. Gabriel had just signed the death warrant of a young woman named Maria.
Gabriel climbed the first few steps of the staircase, following the wall’s bend until he was out of sight. The minute he was hidden from view, his legs gave way and his back hit the wall. He slid down the cold stone and sat down on a hard step. Gabriel’s head fell into his hands. He had just given a murderer permission to kill an innocent. Something he had vowed never to do.
He focused on breathing through the burning fire of guilt in his chest. But as he concentrated on not falling apart, he heard, “Yes, brother!” Bara’s unmistakable voice sailed to Gabriel’s ears. “You’re getting it. Getting the kill. What we all dream of. You’ve won the damn lottery!”
“Grab the pen and paper from over there. I need to get some things for her.”
Gabriel was frozen as he heard the sound of feet moving across the stone floor.
It was silent for a few minutes, until, “Nice. Though I take it you need one of us to get all this from our not-so-pure friends.” Sela laughed.
“Yes. And I need it all tonight. But the main piece . . .” Raphael paused; Gabriel knew he would be smiling in excitement. “That only arrives when it’s perfect. It must be perfect. You design it, Sela. You know what I want.”
“On it, Raphe.” Gabriel heard Sela move to the back of the Tomb and place a call to one of the many unsavory men they dealt with. Black-market friends, as John Miller had told him when he had given Gabriel the black book full of contacts.
“So, what’s the play?” Uriel asked.
“Seduce her. Spend days inside her. I’m gonna possess her, consume her, make her need me to live.” Raphael’s voice was low and serious, laced with dark determination. Gabriel’s eyes moved in the direction of the base of the stairs, as if he were looking into Raphael’s golden eyes and watching his face light with excitement. “Then I’ll kill her. Kill her so perfectly I’ll never forget it.” Raphael inhaled a loud stuttered breath. “No kill will ever measure up again. It will be what I’ve waited for all my life.”
Gabriel’s body felt as if he had been swallowed by a bath of ice water. The back of his head hit the stone wall of the manor he had inherited from his serial killer grandfather.
Gabriel was exhausted. He couldn’t move even if he’d wanted to.
The priests had been right. He always knew they had been. It had become more and more obvious over the years. The Brethren had rightly detected something sinister running through the veins of his brothers.
Gabriel thought back to Father Quinn, to the Brethren’s priests, to how they treated the boys in Purgatory. They never gave any of them a chance at redemption. They didn’t try to understand them. Just branded them damned and began their exorcisms in earnest. Gabriel cursed the priests for not helping them when they had been boys. What they did didn’t purge his brothers of their evil thoughts and desires. Instead, the corrupt sect of priests had dragged them further into the darkness, stripping away any hope of salvation. Hurting them, brutalizing them, and humiliating them, until there was no good left in their souls. No flicker of light that could be fostered and aided back onto the path of good. Now, they were all as dark as midnight, not a single star illuminating their godless worlds.
The Brethren had made his brothers believe that people were only out to hurt them. That they didn’t belong among normal society.
Gabriel didn’t know how to heal them, how to cure them. As he sat on the stone step, he was consumed with helplessness.
“You’re an incubus, Raphe,” Diel said, and Gabriel caught the low laughter from his other brothers in the Tomb. “This woman doesn’t stand a chance. She’ll be yours in no time.”
Gabriel exhaled a shaky breath and forced himself to move. He would never show his brothers how much their lifestyles destroyed him. He had agreed to this. He had been the one to adopt his grandfather’s system. This was his idea. Not theirs. They had been made to feel inferior their entire lives. Gabriel wouldn’t be another to cast a stone on their already battered souls.
Gabriel crossed the foyer and went to his office. Retrieving the medical bag from his desk, he made his way on unsteady feet to the day room and knocked on the door. When he walked into the room, Maria was sitting on the couch, arms wrapped around her bent legs. Gabriel swallowed back his shame at what he was about to let happen.
“Father,” Maria said as he approached.
Gabriel stared down at her, at the hair that wrapped around her body like a cocoon. Maria was clearly religious, Catholic. That was nothing new in Boston. Gabriel understood it must have been how the Brethren tasked her with seeking out Raphael. But he didn’t want to know if she was part of a congregation he knew. He didn’t want to know if she had a strong faith. As he looked at Maria, her blue eyes warily locked on him.
Gabriel dropped to his knees and opened his bag. Silently, he took out the thick elastic band. Maria watched him closely. “Hold out your arm,” he said. Maria only hesitated for a second before she did as he asked. She didn’t ask him why. She just did as he ordered. Gabriel squeezed his eyes closed and took a calming breath. She was perfect for Raphael. He had no idea why she was so submissive, especially when faced with a stranger. With danger. But she obeyed and offered her arm for him to do with what he wanted.
Gabriel tied the band around her arm. Her veins protruded as he held her upturned wrist. He retrieved a needle from the bag and pushed it into her flesh, watching as her red blood burst into the syringe’s clear chamber. Maria didn’t even flinch. When Gabriel looked up, Maria was watching him, her blue eyes studying his face. Maria didn’t once ask why he was taking her blood. She didn’t question if his needle was clean. She simply did as she was told.
Maria clearly had a high tolerance for pain, never once wincing or flinching as the needle pierced her flesh. Gabriel wondered if the devil himself had placed this young woman in Raphael’s hands as a reward. He had never met someone so perfectly crafted for another . . . for his brother.
Pulling the needle from her arm, Gabriel wiped the small wound with an antiseptic wipe and placed a Band-Aid over the needle mark. He put the blood in his bag and got to his feet. His heart beat rapidly as he lifted his head and found Maria watching him again. “I will send someone to get you later.” He could see the hope in Maria’s eyes—hope that she would be freed. Gabriel couldn’t let her hope in vain. He wasn’t cruel. “You . . . you will be taken back to Raphael, Maria.”
Maria kept her chin held high. Her blue eyes briefly dropped, but when they lifted again, she nodded as though a silent internal question had just been answered. He saw nothing but strength and resolution in her gaze. She has resolved herself to die. Gabriel cleared his throat, pushing aside the pain this moment brought. “You are not to leave his rooms again.” It sounded like she was forbidden to leave. But they both knew what the underlying message was—she would never leave his rooms alive.
Gabriel turned, needing to leave. Just before he reached the door, Maria said, “You care for them.” Gabriel’s eyes closed at the lack of judgment in her voice. The lack of censure. Gabriel couldn’t remember the last time he spoke to anyone who wasn’t linked to their abnormal lives in the manor. He turned and met her eyes. It was the least he could do after he had damned her to death. “Those men . . . Raphael . . . you love them. Despite their natures. You try to redeem them.”
“I thought so once . . .” Gabriel went to say, but then stopped. “There’s no redemption for them. I know this now.”
Maria smiled. It was the final death blow to Gabriel’s guilty conscience. “I . . . I believe everyone can be redeemed. Even those we fear are most unsalvageable.” Maria hugged her arms around her chest as if she had been struck by a blast of cold. “I suppose as long as the people who love them don’t give up on them. As long as people push aside their fears and prejudices and endeavor to bring out the good in them, no matter how vain the effort may seem. Someone, someday, may get through to them and show them a new path, a better path. Or bring them the light they never realized they needed in their days of perpetual darkness. Wouldn’t you say, Father?”
Gabriel stared at this woman, looking so small and frail on the couch. “Why were you working for them?”
He could tell by Maria’s reaction—locked muscles and flared eyes—that she knew exactly who he meant. Father Quinn. The Brethren.
Maria straightened her shoulders. “We all do what we must,” she said, the slight shake in her voice betraying her lack of conviction. “I know you understand.”
Gabriel felt his chest pull. Because he did. He understood it fully. Though he was curious as to what his old priests had on Maria to make her so compliant. He wouldn’t ask. Her breaths were limited. Whatever demons plagued her mind were hers to bear. He had no right to intrude when he had sentenced her to death.
With a simple nod of farewell, Gabriel left the room, locking it behind him. Allowing the insufferable guilt to eat away at his soul, he rushed to his rooms. The minute he was inside, he crossed the carpet and slid his bookcase to the side. Gabriel entered the secret room he’d had built not long after they had moved in, and swiftly rid himself of his clothes. Disgust and shame ran thickly through his body. He took Maria’s blood from his bag and poured it into a vial. From the fridge, he took out another vial marked “Raphael.” He paused as he ran his fingers over each of his brothers’ names. Vials and vials of blood sat waiting for him, blood he drew weekly from his brothers. They believed it was for medical checks. They had no idea of the truth.
Lighting the church candles that decorated the wooden altar, Gabriel glanced down at the marked wooden surface, stained by years of spilled blood. He reached for the loaf of bread that sat to the side, dropped to his knees, and ripped off a chunk. Taking Maria’s vial of blood, he uncorked the lid and poured three drops onto the bread, the crimson quickly smothering the white as it sank deep. Three drops for the trinity. Gabriel closed his eyes and whispered his familiar prayer. “My soul for hers. May Maria’s transgressions transfer to me. May she enter the kingdom of heaven pure and without sin.”
Gabriel chewed the bread and, as he swallowed, felt the heaviness of the burden weigh down his chest. With a shaky breath, Gabriel took Raphael’s vial and repeated the same action on a new chunk of bread. “My soul for his. May Raphael’s transgressions transfer to me. May he enter the kingdom of heaven pure and without sin.” The copper taste of blood coated Gabriel’s mouth, trickling down his throat when he swallowed Raphael’s bread. He sat back on his haunches and stared up at the crucifix hanging on the wall. He focused on the agony on Jesus’s face as he was crucified. He focused on the nails in his palms and feet and the spear wound in his side.
Gabriel reached for the barbed wire crown in the trunk behind him and forced it onto his head. He gritted his teeth as the barely healed wounds from a few days ago reopened and began to trickle with blood. Gabriel knew his blond curls would be stained and sullied. He picked up his scourge and ran all seven thongs of rope and blades over his palm. The bladed scorpions were designed to tear into his flesh. Gabriel looked down at his thighs, at the spiked cilice that bit into his leg. Gabriel let the anger he warred with build in his heart, the darkness that had begun to possess him over the years. His thigh muscles tightened and blood seeped from his wounds. He took the seven-thonged scourge, each thong representing a deadly sin and also, to Gabriel, a brother, and he used the sinful anger heating his blood to whip the scourge behind him and across his back. The pain was blinding as the lashes whipped his already tender skin and the scorpions bit into his flesh. “Raphael,” Gabriel whispered, then brought the scourge back, only to whip himself again. “Uriel . . .” Gabriel whipped and whipped, a brother’s name falling from his lips with each blow as he purged the sins he had eaten and the wrath he had accumulated from his body. “Selaphiel . . . Barachiel . . . Jegudiel . . . Michael . . .” Gathering the last of his strength, fighting through the agony that was threatening to overwhelm him, Gabriel struck the hardest blow. “Gabriel!”
Gabriel dropped the scourge and fell forward, palms slamming on the cold ground. He tried to breathe through his nose, tried to calm his body from the pain he had inflicted on himself. But the agony roared louder until Gabriel collapsed to the floor, the cold winter wind creeping in through the cracks in the brick wall and slapping at his nakedness. Gabriel moved his heavy head and focused on Jesus’s face. “Forgive me,” he whispered, his voice drifting away with the breeze. “They know not what they do.” But Gabriel was well aware of what he did. And for it, he would sacrifice his soul. He had sworn to protect his brothers. And that was exactly what he would do.
He would consume their sins and save their souls.
After everything they had been through, they at least deserved that.
*****
Father Murray pulled at the rack. The boy’s screams echoed around the room. But he kept on turning the wheel, glaring at the dark-haired boy with the brown eyes. They weren’t golden, but they were close enough. The boy screamed again, his limbs beginning to pull from their sockets. But Father Murray needed to see the demon-possessed boy in pain. He needed to hear the crack of bones and the screams of imminent death.
“Please,” the boy whispered. “I’ll repent.” Father Murray paused. He met the boy’s eyes. Months. It had taken Father Murray months to get this boy to break, to repent and hand himself over to the Brethren as a heretic and lover of Satan. But when Father Murray saw the look of fear and begging on the boy’s face, all he felt was disgust. He had broken another one. Every such boy he had broken, but one. Father Murray pictured the boy he never conquered in his mind. The evil boy with golden eyes, olive skin, and face made by the Lord himself.
“Repent,” he hissed.
Raphael remained unmoved. Father Murray’s seed ran down the back of Raphael’s legs. Blood covered his skin from the whip, and marks peppered his neck from where Father Murray’s hands had wrapped around it and squeezed. But the boy didn’t say a word. Just stared at him with a rebellious expression. Father Murray grabbed Raphael’s short hair and yanked his head back. Raphael met his eyes, but there was no weakness there, no sign of tiredness, no sign of submission. “I will break you,” Father Murray promised. “One day, Raphael, I will break you and make you beg at my feet. You’ll kneel to me, and you’ll give me your soul.”
Too lost in his head, when Father Murray looked down at the boy on the rack he only saw Raphael staring back at him. “I’ll break you,” he promised again.
“No,” the boy begged, but his voice was all wrong. It wasn’t the voice Father Murray needed to hear. He needed to hear that raspy voice tell him he had won. “Please!”
Father Murray shook with rage at the sound of the whiny voice. Using all his strength, he thrust the wheel of the rack forward. The boy screamed, and cracks and snaps echoed off the stone walls. Without even looking at the boy’s broken corpse, Father Murray stormed from the room and along the hallway. Seeing a trainee priest, he snapped, “The boy is dead. Get rid of the body.” Father Murray kept on walking until he reached his private quarters. He slammed the door and bolted it, then moved to his decanter of whiskey. He poured a large glass and stared at the picture he had pinned on the wall. Rage boiled inside him, threatening to wake the darkness that lay asleep in his soul. For a moment, he let that darkness free. Reaching into his robes, he pulled out his knife and charged at the wall. The blade sank in deep. Father Murray bared his teeth. The picture was almost destroyed, but the golden eyes that Father Murray hated so much stared back, mocking him.
“I’ll kill you, I promise,” he growled, the whiskey fueling his words.
Breathless at his momentary lapse of control, Father Murray backed away and stared at the school picture of Raphael he had salvaged from the archives of Holy Innocents’ vault.
Raphael had Sister Maria.
“She’s nothing, Father Murray,” Father Quinn had said when she had disappeared from the club. “She was a nun who easily shed her chastity. Like all women, she is a product of Eve. Weak and easily tempted. She was disposable. I hope he killed her slowly.” Father Quinn placed his old hand on Father Murray’s shoulder. “We will get them. Our day with the Fallen will come. The Lord will soon show us another path.”
Father Murray pulled at his hair. He didn’t care if Sister Maria was dead. He cared that Raphael had bested him again.
His skin itched with fury. His muscles twitched with the need to do something. To go after the heathen. Father Quinn had to reconsider his stance. Before Father Murray could see sense, he jumped out of his chair, the buzz from the whiskey in his blood taking the wheel. He stormed down Purgatory’s barren hallway until he arrived at Father Quinn’s door. Without even knocking, Father Murray slammed his way through the high priest’s quarters. He stopped at the desk. Father Quinn was changing his robes, his bare chest on display. Father Murray’s cock hardened as he looked at the man who had been his teenage savior. The man who had rid him of his own demon.
Father Quinn paused in his dressing. Father Murray knew the high priest must have returned from cleansing a child.
“Father Murray.” Father Quinn’s voice was neutral in tone, but Father Murray felt the shivers race down his spine at the angered expression on his face. “You weren’t invited in here.”
“We have to get Sister Maria,” he snapped. Father Quinn dropped his shirt to the floor. The zipper of his slacks were open, his underwear’s band visible underneath. “He can’t have her. He needs to be stopped. I’m sick of them winning! Sick of their sins and evil ways.”
Father Murray panted after his tirade. Father Quinn was deathly silent, until, “Come here, Francis.” Father Murray lost his breath as Father Quinn stepped back from his desk by a foot. The high priest’s cock hardened under his slacks. With Father Murray’s attention still on him, Father Quinn pulled out his length. “In front of me, demon.” Father Murray felt the demon inside him scuttling away to hide. But he ignored the rushing of his evil-tainted blood and moved to Father Quinn. Turning, Father Murray bent over his high priest’s desk, lifted his robes, and pulled down his pants. His hands lay flat on the old wooden desk before him. He felt Father Quinn take hold of hips, and he held his breath as Father Quinn pushed inside him. Father Murray’s eyes rolled back. This was what he needed. Like when he was a boy, he needed Father Quinn to rid him of his evil, keep the devil at bay. Sweat beaded on Father Murray’s forehead as pleasure began to build in his groin. He fought back a moan, but the sound slipped from his lips. Father Quinn stilled. The older man leaned over him, and Father Quinn’s mouth met his ear. “I cleanse you of the evil in your soul.” He slammed into Father Murray. Father Murray cried out, but Father Quinn didn’t stop. Instead, he pushed on, Father Murray’s cock growing impossibly hard. Then Father Murray felt it. The agonizing rush of pain in his erection. He glanced down to see Father Quinn’s hands on his cock, a fine needle being pushed into the tip. Blood poured from him, lancing the evil from his flesh. His cock quickly lost its erection, and Father Quinn released inside him, purifying him of the ever-threatening darkness that would forever dwell inside him.
Father Murray laid his cheek on the wooden table, the needle still in his dick. Father Quinn pulled out, his holy seed dripping down Father Murray’s legs. Father Murray felt like he was fourteen again. An evil boy being exorcised by Father Quinn.
He’d saved him.
Father Murray loved him.
Father Quinn came to stand beside him, cock spent. Father Murray stared up at him. Father Quinn’s hand pressed to his cheek. “There, Francis. The darkness is defeated for another day.”
“Thank you, Father,” he whispered, voice fractured with the heady cocktail of pain and pleasure. Father Quinn reached down and pulled the needle from Father Murray’s soft cock. Father Murray knew there’d be another scar to add to his already ruined flesh. But they were scars of triumph over evil. Of his ongoing battle with the devil.
One that his high priest would never let him lose.
Father Quinn held his hand out for Father Murray. Father Murray kissed his fingers, and Father Quinn rewarded him with a caress on the cheek. Kneeling down, Father Quinn stroked Father Murray’s sweaty hair. “You need to practice patience, my child. God will bring the Fallen into our arms again. You must be patient. They may have won this battle, but we will win the crusade.”
“Yes, Father.” Father Murray got to his feet. He tucked his throbbing cock into his pants and left the room. Dazed and light-headed, he made his way to his room, feeling calmer now that Father Quinn had silenced the demon in his soul.
Forcing himself to sit, Father Murray poured another whiskey. The fire roared before him, the hot flames matching his inner ambition. “One day, Raphael,” he said to the almost-ruined photograph. “I’ll destroy you.” Father Murray smiled. “And you will finally repent.”