JEGUDIEL: A Deadly Virtues Novel

by Cole, Tillie

  Noa got to her feet, but they were as heavy as lead when she tried to go to the door. She cast her head back toward the man on the floor. He was huge. Tall and broad and stacked with taut muscles. But that collar, that scarred neck, that upturned cross on his chest …

  “No,” Dinah said. “We can’t take him.” Noa looked at her sister, but the words slid off her as if she were made of Teflon. “He’s a fucking psycho, Noa. Did you see what he did to us? What he did to the priest? Do you remember that he tried to choke you the fuck out? And on top of all that, he wears what looks like an electric collar. A grown-ass man wearing a collar. I mean, what the fuck?”

  “Get his arms,” Noa said, ignoring Dinah’s rant and reaching into her waist belt. She removed a needle that was filled with a drug that would keep him knocked out cold. Dinah shook her head in frustration, but when Noa glared at her, she cursed under her breath then grabbed his arms, slinging the bag containing the large ledger over her shoulder. Noa injected the drug into his arm, then stowed the empty needle in the pouch attached to her holster. She moved to his legs.

  “We have a cage back home,” Noa said, feeling the disapproval that pulsed off Dinah. “I’ll keep him in there.”

  “He’ll fucking kill us when he wakes,” Dinah said.

  Noa stilled, and she stared at her sister until Dinah looked up at her. “He has the mark. He came to kill a Brethren priest, Dinah.” She let those words hang in the air between them until it grew heavy with their importance. “He’s like us.”

  Dinah raised an eyebrow. “He’s far from being like us.”

  “Is he?” Noa felt that dark stirring within her, that part of her she had fought hard to repress, worked hard to overcome.

  Dinah sighed, and sympathy filled her face. Noa didn’t want to see it. “Help me move him to the van,” Noa said. “I’m taking him back with us. I want to speak to him. I want to know where he came from, who he is. I want to know why he has the brand and why he came for the priest. And why he wears that collar.”

  Dinah focused on his neck. “A collar. He wears a fucking collar. Like a dog. And this one is fancy too. It’s electrical or some shit. High grade.”

  “He’s not the first person we’ve seen with a collar though, is he?” A stab of pain cut right through Noa’s heart, rendering her breathless.

  “Noa …” Dinah said softly, all tension dropping from her tone.

  Noa cleared her throat and looked anywhere but at her sister. She focused on the man’s face again. Dark hair, blue eyes. Even drenched in blood, he was beautiful. He looked around the Coven’s general age, maybe a little older. “Let’s move him. He won’t be a danger to any of the others. I’ll make sure of it.” Noa lifted her head to face Dinah. “Let’s go.”

  Dinah lifted the man’s arms off the ground, and they carried him unsteadily down the stairs and out into the van. Naomi’s and Beth’s eyes widened when Noa and Dinah reached the van’s back door.

  “Who is that?” Beth asked, voice slightly high-pitched as she stared at the big, bloodied body. But she shifted on the bench seat to make room for Noa and Dinah as they hoisted his half-naked form into the van and laid it out on the floor.

  “Long story,” Dinah said. “But he’s coming home with us.”

  Noa jumped into the back and shut the doors, knocking on the wall of the van to signal to Candace to move on out. Bypassing what she knew would be the gaping faces of her other two sisters, Noa let her eyes fall on the five boys they had found, huddled in the farthest corner of the van.

  She inhaled slowly through her nose as she took in the boys’ gaunt and lifeless faces. Then she stared at the crosses branded onto their chests. One of them turned and caught her gaze, showing he had some kind of life left in him. The others were numb, ruined and destroyed by what had been done to them for so long, completely unaware that they had been saved. The depravity, the cruelty, the incessant abuse by the Brethren had made them void of life, forced them to retreat to a place of numbness and detachment. The young boy’s eyes latched onto Noa. They were green, and even though his head was shaved, she could see a hint of red hair coming through on his scalp.

  Noa forced herself to smile. The boy didn’t smile back, just stared at Noa, then finally moved his gaze to the man. He stared at the body, head tilting as he focused on the tattoo and the obvious brand in its center. The boy lifted his bony hand and ran it down his own chest, over his own upturned cross. He looked at the other boys beside him and the upturned crosses on their emaciated chests too.

  “We are all like you,” Noa said, her quiet voice like a scream in the silence of the van. She laid her hand on her sternum, where her cross was too. The boy looked into Noa’s eyes, and she saw it. Her throat clogged with emotion when a spark of what appeared to be hope burst into his olive gaze. The boy then looked at the man, and a frown came onto his face.

  “He’s okay, kid,” Dinah said, because Noa couldn’t speak. She was being crushed by a dangerous cocktail of rage and intense sorrow for what these kids had gone through at the hands of the Brethren bastards. “He just needed rest. He’ll be okay.” Dinah met Noa’s eyes, unspoken words passing between them. They didn’t know if he’d be okay. He was a killer, that was for sure. But Noa didn’t see the blood coating his body or think about the way he’d stabbed the Brethren priest. All she saw was the collar, the scars around his neck and the brand that had been seared onto his chest.

  They had found one. They had finally found someone like them. Someone who had escaped the Brethren’s clutches too. He had to be like them. There was no other possibility.

  Noa became lost to her thoughts, only waking from them when the van stopped and Jo got out of the cabin and opened the back doors. Jo’s eyes immediately fell on the man, and she blinked slowly. “Well, this is new,” she said. “Bit old to have been kept in a priest’s basement, isn’t he?” She raised her eyebrow. “Care to share your piece of muscled show-and-tell with the class?”

  Candace rounded the van and stopped beside her girlfriend. She blinked in surprise, then looked at Noa, question in her gaze. “Long story,” Dinah said. She climbed out of the van and walked toward the house and Katie, who was opening the door and making her way toward them.

  The middle-aged woman stopped when Dinah reached her. “How many this time?”

  “Five,” Dinah said. Beth and Naomi started helping the boys from the van. They took the pile of blankets from the bench and wrapped one around each boy’s shoulders. Noa climbed out too, her gaze drifting to the home that had become the too-young Brethren victims’ salvation. In the top-floor windows, she saw several faces looking back at her. They all had longer hair now, had filled out, but despite their physical changes, she still recognized every one of them. Remembered exactly where they’d been found, and what had been done to them.

  Noa smiled at them; very few smiled back. Her heart broke. Because although they were safe, these kids were forever haunted by the demons wearing red dog collars. Just as she and her sisters were.

  Her gaze fell on the man in the van, still unconscious, breathing calmly. Was he haunted by them too?

  “We have no more room,” Noa overheard Katie telling Dinah as Naomi, Beth, Candace and Jo walked the boys into the house. Katie smiled at each one as he passed. Her smile fell as soon as the boys had entered the house and could no longer hear the women’s conversation.

  “We just got some more money,” Dinah said, hooking her thumb in Noa’s direction. “Noa managed to retrieve a huge amount this week.”

  Katie sighed. “There’s no more room in the house,” she repeated. Her eyes filled with sorrow. The Coven had found Katie when they had begun hunting Brethren priests. She had been a housekeeper for one at his parish. He’d beaten her, abused her too, but she had stayed regardless. She had stayed to care for the boy she had discovered in the priest’s basement.

  When the Coven had retrieved the boy, they had freed her too. But then the sisters had only found more and more victims.
So Noa had started to steal from the Brethren’s secret benefactors, and they had secured Katie a house in the middle of nowhere. From that day on, her home became a safe place for the discovered Brethren-abused boys. But that had been a few years ago, and now, too many victims later, she was stretched too thin.

  Katie sighed and rubbed her forehead. “I love all my boys. You know I do.” It was true. She was the most maternal person Noa had ever met, and the boys loved her too—in their own unique ways. “But there’s so many of them now, I’m struggling to cope with this alone.” She frowned. “And some of them are different. They like pain and …” Katie breathed deeply. “I’m not scared of them, but with some of the things they do, the dark things they say … I’m scared for them.” Sadness engulfed her face. “I think what has been done to them by those men has changed them, made them have preferences for the darker side of life.”

  Noa looked back at the man in the van. She thought of the way he had killed the priest, how violently. How savagely he had knocked out Dinah, and how Noa had seen death in his blue eyes as he smiled and squeezed her throat.

  Then her mind drifted to thoughts of Priscilla, the Coven’s seventh sister. Something sinister lived in her soul. Some kind of darkness that Noa knew she had inside herself too. But where Noa had fought to turn from it, to keep it locked away, Priscilla relished in it, bathed in its heaviness.

  Noa recalled Katie’s words: I think what has been done to them by those men has changed them, made them have preferences for the darker side of life … That was Priscilla. That perfectly described her wayward sister.

  “We’ll think of something,” Dinah said, pulling Noa from her chaotic thoughts, and hugged Katie. “I promise. We’ll save these boys. You know we will. We’ll never let those sadistic bastards win. We’ll find a way to help you all.”

  Chapter 6

  Noa sat opposite the cage on a wooden chair. Her hair, damp from her shower, hung down her back, and she was dressed in an oversized white button-down shirt and leggings. She stared at the man in the cage. The low sizzle from the collar around his neck filled the cave that housed the cage built by the War of Independence soldiers years ago for their prisoners.

  Noa handled the remote in her hand, feeling nothing but guilt about the now-live collar around the man’s neck. When they’d arrived back at the tunnels, Noa had gotten Jo to take a look at it. Her sister, being a genius with anything mechanical and technical, had quickly fashioned Noa a makeshift remote of sorts. Naomi, their healer, had taken one look at the scars around the man’s neck, underneath his collar, and found clear evidence of past trauma. She explained that the redness came from excessive low-grade electrocution.

  The collar controlled the man somehow. As Noa thought back to him killing the priest and attacking her and Dinah, she didn’t have to wonder too hard about why his collar was necessary. So, Jo had made her a remote that could temporarily control the collar. And then Noa waited. She had been waiting for him to sleep off the drug she had injected him with and wake up for quite some time.

  An hour later, a shift of his fingers was the first indication that the man was waking. Noa held her breath when his hand moved. A low groan slipped from between his teeth, and his jean-clad legs shifted on the damp cave floor.

  Seconds felt like hours as he moved his head and began lifting his torso, bracing his large body on his hands. Then he lifted his head. Blue eyes roved their gaze around the cave, finally landing on Noa.

  It was like witnessing the flick of a switch. A mere second for his lethargic body to spring into action and charge at the cage bars like a man possessed. His body slammed into the side of the cage, his shoulder immediately reddening as he flung his body against the iron bars to try and break them down. The collar around his neck crackled, then, with a vicious roar, he dropped to the ground, lips thinned and jaw tensed as the collar sent electricity bolting through his body.

  Noa shifted on the wooden seat, watching him fight the pain. But then he snapped his head up, and as fury flashed across his face, he charged at her again. Just as his hands reached the bars, wrapping around the iron, he dropped to his knees, holding his breath. His body jerked and his muscles strained underneath his reddening skin. His neck was corded and strained and his teeth clenched together. The collar’s electrical bite was clearly agonizing.

  But even through it all, he kept his murderous blue gaze on Noa, promising all the hurt his hands could possibly inflict.

  Then he closed his eyes and started to breathe, like there was some part of him that was rational, that was somehow talking him down. Noa watched, fascinated, as he seemed to calm himself. His breathing went from harsh pants to smooth rises and heavy falls of his broad chest. After several seconds, he opened his eyes, and Noa saw something else in their depths. A flash of something that wasn’t monstrous.

  A flicker of humanity.

  Noa sat forward on her seat, remote in one hand, knife in the other. The man’s nostrils flared as he watched her back, a duel of wills. “Come closer,” he said, with a soft hooking of his lip that looked beyond enticing on his stunning face. Noa couldn’t believe how a simple smile could make him that much more attractive.

  She sat back in her chair, crossing her right leg over her left. “I think I’ll stay here, thanks.”

  His head repeatedly twitched, and his beautiful smile widened to an uncomfortable grin. “I want to meet you properly.” Noa felt like she was talking to the demon controlling the man and not the actual man himself. When she didn’t move, he gripped the bars harder, the only indication of his ire. The bars groaned under his grasp, and Noa had a flash of fear that, due to their age, they might not hold.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “What’s yours?” he replied, a growl to his tone.

  “Noa.” She searched his body. The light was low in the cave, but she found scar upon scar on his skin. And faint scars circling his wrists. She stilled as she suddenly felt her own wrists burn.

  The man must have seen her attention was on his wrist scars, as he said, “Ever been on a rack?” He smiled wide, teeth showing, but the sight wasn’t comforting. He asked the question as though it were a threat.

  Noa got to her feet and approached him. His eyes tracked her the entire way. She stopped just out of reach of the bars and rolled back the cuffs of her shirt. She held up her wrists, and the white scars shone silver in the path of the lamp. The man’s head canted to the side, like a predator trying to work out exactly what kind of creature its prey was.

  Noa reached down to her leggings and pulled the legs up. The scars on her ankles were visible too. She turned her attention back to the man, whose gaze snapped from her ankles to her face. “Yeah. I’ve been on a rack.”

  “Who are you?” he snarled, the iron bars groaning under the pressure of his grip.

  “Who are you?”

  He smiled again. The cold look on his face sent chills to Noa’s spine. “Your worst fucking nightmare.”

  This time Noa smiled back, and something lit in the man’s eyes. His smile turned from taunting to what could be deemed impressed in a split second. Noa crouched down to his level. She held up her knife and the makeshift remote. “Actually, it seems like I’m yours.”

  “Let me out and we’ll see,” the man said smoothly.

  Noa felt that stirring in her chest that she had pushed back years ago. She felt it curling inside of her at the sound of this man’s voice. Intrigued by his aura of pitch-darkness, the constant threat in his every move. “You killed that priest,” Noa said, waiting for his reaction.

  It was instant. The game of verbal tennis they had been playing crashed to a sudden stop, and he slammed against the bars, teeth bared as he hissed, “He needed to fucking die. They all needed to fucking die.”

  “All?” Noa held her ground as the man turned feral before her.

  He suddenly calmed, then lifted his head, the taunting side of him returning. “You. It was you who got to them all first. You tied
them all up but left them alive.”

  Noa suddenly realized what he was saying. “You killed more priests last night, didn’t you?”

  “You’re fucking weak,” he spat. “Pathetic. You should have slit their throats and stabbed their hearts.”

  “Why?” Noa said, focusing on the brand on his torso.

  The man followed her eyes and then tilted his head as he studied her. He smiled again. His head twitched. But he stayed silent, hands gripping the bars, bloodied body unmoving.

  Noa was done with dancing around this shit. She got to her feet and moved to the lock of the cage. “Yes,” he said, his Boston accent thick with excitement. “Open the cage, gentle Noa. I won’t hurt you.”

  Noa felt her heart race, a trickle of fear in her veins. But she knew he was like her. The rack, the brand, the collar … she had to make him see he was like her, like all her sisters.

  Noa unlocked the padlock of the cage and stepped back. She gripped her knife and held on tightly to the remote. The man watched her like a hawk but slowly got to his feet. She noticed he kept his breathing steady, taking calming breaths with every flicker of movement. The collar sizzled as the man reached for the cage’s gate. His attention never moved from her.

  Noa gripped the handle of her knife tighter, and the door to the cage opened. The man filled the cage’s doorway and inhaled deeply, like he could smell freedom. His head twitched, eyes blinked, then without any form of warning, he charged at her, his expression morphing into one of pure evil. Noa dodged him, and the man roared as the collar spiked to high voltage, causing him to slam his hands on the nearest cave wall in rage.

  Noa watched him closely. “I know why you were there. At the priest’s home.” The man spun. His lips were white from pain, but he fought it. His neck was corded, and Noa could smell the familiar scent of burning flesh. “I know why you were there to kill him.”

  Those words seemed to ignite something in the man. “You know nothing!” He charged at her again, only this time he caught her arm and slammed her up against him. His face was in her face, his nose touching the tip of her own. He lifted her off the floor by her biceps.