JEGUDIEL: A Deadly Virtues Novel

by Cole, Tillie

  The Brethren locked his gaze on Diel. Blood ran from his face, and Diel’s head tipped from left to right as the evil grew inside him, rising like a swelling well about to flood any nearby ground. His cock stirred when the priest froze. The father’s eyes dilated as he watched Diel.

  “The General sent you, yes?” the priest said, but his words ran off Diel’s back like rain off a body bag.

  Diel glared at the priest and uttered one single word.

  “Run.”

  The priest opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words fell from his lips. “Run,” Diel said again, his voice lower and more graveled, his patience slipping. The priest swallowed, released a pained whimper, then bolted for the stairs. Diel’s face split into a wide grin as the monster within him roared and propelled Diel to give chase. Diel burst from the bedroom and toward the staircase the priest was stumbling down.

  The priest looked up, one trembling hand on the banister. His eyes widened on seeing Diel approaching, and he tripped, stumbling down several steps as Diel reached the top. The priest crashed to the bottom, moaned and frantically looked up. Diel’s sadistic grin promised all the pain he was about to inflict. The priest tried to get to his feet, but he collapsed back to the ground. His foot sat at the wrong angle. He used his hands on the wooden floor to try and scurry away.

  Diel’s monster drew them into a steady walk as they descended the stairs, the priest trapped in their glare. The priest looked back, and a cry ripped from his throat. “Please,” he said, his voice piercing Diel’s head like nails being dragged down a chalkboard.

  Please … please … please …

  Diel’s head throbbed, a migraine born from an onslaught of fucked-up memories. From Purgatory. Of himself as a boy, tied to a rack as the Brethren priests had pulled the lever, stretching his arms and legs until he felt like they were going to rip off, his abdominal muscles burning like hot coals. His shoulder popping out of place on a thunderous crack, and Diel screaming in agony as the Brethren looked at his broken young body and smiled. “Please,” Diel had whispered. “Please … no more …”

  But they never stopped. It only ever got worse. Diel’s monster showed him the past, brought him the pain, then together, they turned their gaze back on the priest. He was one of them. One of the ones who’d tied him to racks, who’d burned him with iron bars, beaten him, flogged him, thrown him in iron maidens for hours on end … this priest belonged to the sect that had fucked him to within an inch of his life.

  “Please,” the priest begged again, and Diel stopped on the stairs. His head tilted to the side as he observed the piece of shit on the ground. The monster surveyed him, bathing in his terror like holy water, turned on by his begging, the pleading that the monster most relished.

  But then the priest’s pleading halted and his eyes narrowed. “I know you,” he said, and Diel began to shake in rage. “I know your eyes.” Disgust rolled over the priest’s face, then terror once more as Diel moved his hand to the hem of his long-sleeved black shirt and slowly lifted it up. Diel and his monster watched, a collective unit, as the priest’s gaze slammed to the brand that they had forced upon him as a fallen boy. The addition of the wings and sword handle Sela had put on each of the brothers couldn’t disguise the original brand that had been burned into his skin, never to be removed. The upturned cross that had branded him a sinner of the worst kind in the Brethren’s eyes, a soul meant for hell. A heretic of the true Brethren faith.

  “No,” the priest whispered. Diel released the hem, the material falling back to the waist of his pants. “You’ll burn in hell,” the priest spat, his ideology and beliefs rising to the surface even when faced with the deadliest of killers—a killer they’d had a hand in creating. “You and the ones who came before. The ones with the hoods.”

  Diel hadn’t a fucking clue who he was talking about. And he didn’t care—his monster was done with staring at this piece of shit on the ground. This fucked-up priest was the start of the spree, the kill the monster always toyed with the most, before the blood led them into an uncontrolled frenzy and any morsel of rational thought fled their brains.

  “Jegudiel.” The priest dropped his eyes to Diel’s scarred and ruined neck. “You’re Jegudiel—”

  Diel jumped from midway up the stairs. His feet landed on the priest’s already broken ankle, crushing it to dust. The priest screamed so loud Diel felt it shudder through his body like an earthquake, his cock hardening at the blessed sound, the high-pitched wail swelling his balls to the point of aching. Diel reached into his waistband and pulled out the long knives. The beast inside him struck the priest, the craving for blood overriding any other need, slicing along hamstrings, his Achilles, his groin. When the priest screamed again, the tongue was next. With every stab of the knife into the priest, Diel lost himself to the red mist of murder, the haze of screams, the rainstorm of blood, and the heady sound of skin and muscles tearing.

  The monster rejoiced. It bathed in the sounds of horror and pain. It led and controlled Diel’s every lethal movement until they were a perfectly in-sync, sadistic, fucked-up partnership—the very thing the collar tried to stop.

  Diel stabbed and stabbed until the monster drew back, satisfied with this kill and already yearning for the next. Diel pocketed his knives and took off out of the house, not even a backward glance for the mangled priest lying in a bloodied, unrecognizable heap on the wooden floor. As Diel burst from the home, the cold air surrounded him like a cloak. His feet pounded the pavement toward the next Brethren house. His breath came out in steady white puffs of smoke as the monster pushed them to run faster, to move quicker, to get to the next priest sooner.

  Diel arrived at the next house—smaller than the last, but just as secluded. He burst through the doors, any element of surprise lost in a surge of adrenaline. Diel raced for the stairs and charged into the bedroom. The monster snarled, briefly releasing Diel from its possession as it found yet another priest bound to the bed, gag in his mouth. The monster gnarred in fury.

  Someone was getting to them first. But they weren’t killing them.

  Why weren’t they fucking killing them?

  Diel looked down. He and his monster caught sight of the red collar of the Brethren around the priest’s neck, and they attacked. They murdered and slashed and ran. Over and over again, over four homes, and with every house, the monster grew more and more savage, ripping the priests apart, pissed that someone had been there before them. Every motherfucking house. All the priests were tied. All were gagged, and all wore the red “H” on their heads, written in the blood from their own split lips. The monster didn’t like its prey being fucked with. It wanted the chase, the hunt, not a motherfucking sacrificial offering.

  Diel licked his lips as he sprinted to the last house. His heart beat a frantic rhythm. The monster was on edge and ready to destroy whoever was toying with them, daring to fucking touch their kills first.

  Diel knew something was different the minute he reached the back door. The handle was still warm under his palm. His eyes narrowed on the hallway from his place beyond the door, and he heard a sound from upstairs. He smiled, his teeth aching as the cold wind lashed against them.

  He was going to get more than the priest in this house.

  Diel slid into the hallway, stealth his ally as he moved to the base of the stairs. He closed his eyes and listened. He heard a creak from the basement. Snapping his eyes open, he whipped his head in that direction. He moved his feet to take a step, when a pained cry came from the bedroom upstairs, followed by a voice hissing, “Shut the fuck up.” A voice that didn’t belong to the priest.

  Diel licked his lips, tasting the blood from his previous kills. He was covered in blood; it had seeped into every piece of clothing he wore. Diel began climbing the stairs, his blood pumping fast through his muscles, preparing them to strike. He heard the voice again. Some part of him vaguely registered that there was something unexpected about its timbre, but the red mist was too strong for any further thou
ght.

  Diel drew to a stop outside the bedroom, and his chest heaved in excitement. He was going to get more kills. More bodies. More screams.

  His cock twitched, and Diel threw open the door so hard it slammed against the wall behind it. The monster scanned the room and saw two figures dressed in black, hoods and scarves covering their heads and faces. One of them was on the bed, tying the hands of the priest who was watching him with wide, terrified eyes. One of the people in black leather pants and shirt rushed at him, something in their hand. Diel charged at the moving figure and shouldered them into the wall. The person was light, and he easily knocked the wind from them as they crumpled to the ground, knocked out cold.

  Diel went to pull out his knives, and the one from the bed rolled off the mattress, rounded the footboard and faced him. Diel met the eyes staring back at him. Brown eyes with long black lashes. His monster roared in excitement, the cry from the priest on the bed only heightening it. The black-hooded figure pulled a knife from a holster at their waist.

  Diel paced back and forth as he stared at the smaller figure in front of him. They were foolish to believe they could take him. He had four deaths under his belt tonight, and he was driven by the need to kill even more. As the person moved to attack, Diel ran at them full force. He held out his hand and wrapped it around their neck. The hooded stranger choked on an exhale as he slammed them against the wall. They dropped the knife, but this one didn’t crumple like the one behind him had.

  They slammed their arm over his, tearing themselves from his hold. They spun out of his grip, but Diel spun too. The hooded figure lashed out and drove their fist into Diel’s mouth, then landed a quick but strong kick to his thigh.

  He felt his lip burst and his knee weaken, but the pain and the warm liquid running down his chin only made his cock harden more, nearly coming at the violence and scent of death building in the air. This fucker thought they could best him.

  The monster smiled, and a manic laugh slipped from Diel’s throat. The stranger before him stilled for a second, before crouching low and taking another knife from their holster. Diel walked around them, toying with this victim, relishing the savage foreplay, their slow dance to a bloody death.

  Then the hooded rival spun, turning in to his chest, and sliced the knife over his shirt. Diel looked down; the fabric of his shirt was ripped in two, his Fallen brand instantly on show. The skin on his torso had been sliced open, but not deep enough to do any damage—he wouldn’t have cared if it had. The monster’s grin didn’t fall. Instead, Diel’s excitement doubled as he ripped the shirt from his chest and dropped it to the floor. The still-wet blood from his previous kills had stained his chest, but his black brand was still prominent.

  Diel heard the priest struggling on the bed. Diel remembered that piece of shit on the now soiled mattress who was staring at him with wide eyes. He remembered his ugly face from the torture room in Purgatory. He’d pulled Diel’s rack lever once. Diel couldn’t wait to dislocate his shoulders in revenge.

  The hooded person in front of him stilled, eyes locked on his chest. Diel reached forward and grabbed them by the hood, slamming their head into the wall. The person dropped to the floor at the impact, and the hood fell from their head, revealing a riot of pale pink hair. The scarf dropped from their face, and Diel froze at the sight of the face staring back at him, dark eyes dazed as they tried to focus on him.

  She was female.

  Diel heard the priest again, and, needing to feel someone’s hot, wet blood coating his skin, he climbed on the bed and took out one of his knives. Red mist took hold of his urges once more, and he began to stab. He stabbed and stabbed until he felt the spray of blood freckling his face, the hardness of bone shattering under the blade, until the priest lost any fight and became a slice of rotten meat beneath him. A creak on the floorboard behind him made him turn, and he saw the woman again. The one with the pink hair was on her feet, her wide, unreadable eyes locked on his. Her gaze dropped to his neck, and then the brand on his chest.

  Diel leaped from the bed, ready for more. The monster paced inside him as it studied the woman. It snarled and hissed, but it wouldn’t look away from her.

  It was fixated.

  She held up her hands. “Wait,” she dared to say, but he charged at her and crushed her against the wall with his wide, naked chest. With his hands on her upper arms, Diel lifted her off the floor, hissing at the feel of her fragile body in his grip. As he glared into her deep brown eyes, her stare drifted to the bed, then turned back on him. Diel still tasted the slain priest’s blood on his tongue.

  He smiled.

  Diel moved one of his hands to the woman’s neck, feeling her pulse throbbing fast beneath his fingers. He leaned in and inhaled. She smelled of lavender and some kind of sweet musk.

  Goosebumps broke out over his body when she quickly lifted her arm between them and wrapped her hand around his throat too, above his collar. His cock punched against his jeans as she squeezed, as her fingers moved over his deep, rough scars. He growled, his monster snarling but suddenly obsessed with ending the woman who dared to fucking touch him. Diel began to squeeze, and the woman’s skin flushed, her lips parting as oxygen failed to reach her lungs.

  But then she dropped her attention to his chest again, to his brand, and something flickered in her gaze, something he didn’t understand. And that was all it took. That split second of distraction was all it took for the apparently no longer unconscious hooded person behind him to get off the floor and press a taser just below his jaw. Hundreds of electric volts pounded through his body. Diel squeezed the throat of the pink-haired woman harder and harder, trying to kill just one more, before black spots invaded his vision and his muscles began to weaken.

  But the one with the pink hair didn’t take her eyes off him. Even as his knees buckled and he dropped to the ground from another shot of the taser to his ruined neck, she watched him, her hand still around his throat too as he dragged them both to the floor. He yanked her on top of him, her face hovering above his. He could feel her breath ghosting over his face. Could smell that lavender-and-musk scent that drifted up his nose and exploded in his veins like a hit of heroin. And as he lost consciousness, he vowed to remember the dark eyes of the one who’d dared to end his spree before he was fucking ready.

  And when Diel next awoke, he and his monster were in firm agreement that she would pay. She would scream, and she would breathe her very last breath under his hands.

  Chapter 5

  Noa ripped the man’s hand from her throbbing throat, coughing as she scrambled off his limp body. Dinah raced to where Noa lay and crouched down beside her. “You okay?”

  Noa went to answer, but her eyes were fixed on the unconscious man. What the fuck was he? Her eyes drifted to the priest, to the remnants of what was left of him on the bed—just a mass of blood, bones and torn-up flesh. Then they moved onto the collar around her attacker’s neck. The thick, smooth metal seemed to have no seam.

  He wears it all the time, she realized. He wears a collar …

  “Noa, we need to go.” Dinah tried to pull Noa to her feet. But Noa was fixed on the man on the floor. She could still feel his hand around her neck. Her skin burned, but she knew the damage didn’t even come close to the scars that ringed his neck underneath his collar. His collar had shifted to expose red, raw, ruined skin underneath.

  Just like …

  Noa’s eyes burned, and she closed them to relieve the sting. The darkness took her back to a few years ago. To the only other time she had seen a scar like that, as severe as that, underneath a much less impressive collar. Her stomach rolled and her heart squeezed, guilt and shame plaguing her.

  The smell of the blood of the slain priest on the bed only made the memory stronger. Blood had been on her hands that night too—it had been there ever since, no matter how much she tried to wash and scour it away. Rage and hatred had clouded her vision in that moment.

  “Noa!” A hand gripped Noa’s face, and s
he opened her eyes. Dinah had pulled back her hood and lowered her scarf, exposing her face. “We need to leave.” Dinah glanced at the bed and the dead Brethren priest. “Beth and Naomi have got the kid. We need to move.”

  Noa’s eyes found the man’s chest. Her heart started racing. “His chest.” She crawled forward until she was crouching beside him. He was coated in blood, but she knew what she was seeing. Noa ran her hand over her torso, over the pentagram … over the small upturned cross in the center of her chest. The brand that had been seared into her skin as a child. She reached out and lowered her hand to the man’s chest. She stopped breathing—the black body of the sword was rough underneath her fingers. His skin was ruined there.

  “Saint Peter’s cross,” Noa whispered, then closed her eyes and traced the rough skin with her fingertips, searching for a familiar pattern. Her pulse thudded in her neck as her fingers found, underneath the inked wings-and-sword design, an upturned cross. She opened her eyes. “He wears the mark,” Noa said breathlessly and looked up at Dinah, who was regarding her Coven sister as if she were insane. Noa’s eyes widened. “He wears the Brethren’s heretic mark, just like us.”

  Dinah looked at the man’s chest, and Noa saw her swallow in shock. Dinah quickly composed herself. “We have to leave, Noa. It’s too risky to have been here this long.”

  Dinah got to her feet and took hold of the ledger they had found hidden in a safe behind a picture in the priest’s room. She placed it into a folded-up shoulder bag she had brought with her just in case they found anything of worth. And worthy it was. If they’d retrieved what they thought they had, they had just discovered a small section of the Holy Grail when it came to hunting these Brethren pricks. “We need to get this back to the tunnels. We need to make sure it’s kept safe. When they realize it’s gone, there’ll be hell to pay.”