JEGUDIEL: A Deadly Virtues Novel

by Cole, Tillie

  Father Auguste approached the picture and lifted it off the wall. It concealed a safe. His hands curled into fists as he stared at the lock that had been expertly broken. Calming his temper, just as Father Quinn had taught him, he opened the safe and found it empty.

  “Father Abel? Father Job?” he called out. The twin brothers who were his right-hand men came quickly up the stairs from their search for any clue as to who had taken the priest. Because someone had.

  Father Auguste hadn’t reached his prestigious position as Witch Finder General at such a young age for his lack of thoroughness. On the contrary—he was ruthless. He was meticulous, and he left no stone unturned when it came to any threat made against his beloved faith, against the true saviors of this sinful, doomed world.

  The twins arrived at the bedroom doorway, waiting for Father Auguste’s command. “Search the house for the ledger.” They immediately did his bidding without question. Auguste searched the bedroom again—old floorboards, boxes, under the mattress—but he came up empty-handed.

  Thirty minutes later, the twins came back to Auguste. “There’s nothing, General,” Father Abel reported.

  “We’ve searched everywhere. It’s gone,” Father Job added.

  Auguste’s jaw clenched. “Call in the investigators. I want prints and DNA found for anyone that has been in this home.” He walked past the twins and down the stairs to the waiting car outside. He got into the back seat; the twins followed. “All the homes we have been in tonight must be searched.”

  Father Abel lifted his cell phone and made the appropriate calls. Father Auguste met the driver’s eyes. “Take me to Father Quinn.”

  * * *

  “He will see you now, Father Auguste,” Elaine, Father Quinn’s personal nurse, said as Father Auguste waited in the hallway of his apartment in the Brethren headquarters.

  Father Auguste walked through the door to Father Quinn’s rooms. His anger was quick as he looked at his savior in the armchair overlooking the leafy park outside.

  Auguste stopped before Father Quinn and dropped to one knee. He waited for Father Quinn to hold out his hand. It took his mentor a few seconds longer than it should have, but he held out his hand, and Auguste held the frail fingers and pressed a kiss to the back of his palm. His skin was rough from the extensive burns, but Auguste held on to the fact that he was alive. God had saved his Brethren mentor from the evil of his old charges.

  “Auguste,” Father Quinn said, his voice weakened and hoarse.

  “Your Excellency.” Auguste rose to sit in the chair opposite Father Quinn. He looked at his mentor, the man who had plucked him from the orphanage he had been sent to and cleansed his soul that had been ruined and tainted by wickedness and sin. Father Quinn had saved Auguste; he owed him his eternal soul.

  “Speak, child,” Father Quinn said. Auguste tried to hold in his rage as he studied Father Quinn’s face. Gone were his hair and eyebrows. His skin was mottled from the severity of his burns, and the reconstruction surgery he had been receiving did nothing to take away the evidence of how he had almost perished in Purgatory, after the cursed Fallen subjects had returned and massacred most of the holy men who had been there. There doing God’s work.

  The devil had triumphed that day, but Father Auguste had vowed to be the one who destroyed the Fallen, who brought about their fall back to the depths of hell where they belonged. He would seek holy revenge on the sinners who had managed to evade the Brethren’s care and spread their evil into the world, as devastating and cruel as the most deadly poison.

  “I believe they have come for us again,” Father Auguste said, and Father Quinn’s milky eyes seemed to burn with contempt. “Five homes were attacked last night.”

  “And our priests?” Father Quinn asked.

  “Gone.” Silence stretched between them. Father Auguste clasped his hands in thought.

  “Speak, child. I can see God is sending you a message, making something clear to you.” Father Quinn smiled, his scarred lips barely moving as he did so.

  “It was always the same pattern.” Auguste thought back to a few years ago when, for a brief period of time, priests had been savagely killed in their homes. Then he thought back to the more present series of invasions—a different tack.

  He sat forward in the chair. “In the more recent attacks on the homes, the charges were gone, but the priests were there, alive. Always an ‘H’ written on their forehead in their own blood.” Memories sailed into Father Auguste’s consciousness. Burning flesh on wooden stakes, and screaming witches being lowered into deep water. Seven young witches clawing at him for mercy, the devil spitting false truths from their heathen mouths. He could feel them under his hands, sweating and crying and screaming as he drew the demons from their souls, as he worked with God to cleanse the sin from their darkened hearts.

  He could still feel the wetness on his finger as he drew an “H” on their foreheads in their own spilled blood. A purging of evil, and a benediction of the one true faith. Yet the witches would thrash as the mark spiritually burned into their bodies, the demons within trying to battle against the healing power of that “Heretic” mark.

  The Coven. The seven witches that had escaped his capture. They were never found after they fled. The Brethren had many enemies. The non-deadly attacks reeked of the Coven.

  But this most recent hit was a new beast entirely, a sharp and accelerated change in modus operandi. The priests had not just been tied up by hooded assailants. They were gone, their homes cleansed of any evidence. And now … “Father McConnell’s ledger was also gone,” Father Auguste said, and he saw Father Quinn’s nostrils flare.

  “Them,” Father Quinn said, his scarred skin reddening.

  Auguste felt the impact of that accusation sinking into his skin. “They’ve made their next move,” he said, and felt his warrior senses rising in him like ash from a fire.

  Auguste thought of Selaphiel’s face, one eerily similar to his own. He remembered his brother’s screams and the way his back would arch as the demon within him fought harder to hold on to his soul. Auguste’s little brother was lost to Satan, along with the other heathens that made up their sorry group, and therefore was no brother of his. The Brethren was his true family. Selaphiel was just a blight on the goodness of the world.

  And now the time had come to cleanse the world of the Fallen’s stain.

  Father Auguste reached forward and took Father Quinn’s hand. “They may have taken the ledger, but that can now be to our advantage.” Father Quinn’s fingers wrapped around his. “I won’t fail you, Your Excellency. Trust me on this. I will bring them to justice.”

  “I know you will, child,” Father Quinn said. “You have never failed me. You were always the brightest star to me.”

  “Thank you, Father,” Father Auguste whispered. Those words filled his heart with deep love and purpose. But he thought back to a blond boy with soft curls that framed his face like a true, living angel. Joseph, or, as he was now known, Gabriel. Gabriel had always been the one to win Father Quinn’s favor, until he’d opened his heart to evil and tried to kill their leader in cold blood. Father Quinn’s attention had then fallen onto Auguste, where it should have been all along. And Auguste would not fail his mentor. He would bring home a victory for the Brethren over the Fallen. He wouldn’t stop until they all perished.

  “God brought you to the Brethren for a reason. You are the best at what you do. A true warrior of the faith, like the Finder Generals of old, our forefathers who lit the way for us to follow. He placed their talents in you. A celestial gift for your unwavering devotion.”

  “Thank you,” Father Auguste said, radiating happiness. He kissed Father Quinn’s burned hand one more time before he got to his feet. “I will get to work straight away.”

  Father Auguste left the Brethren headquarters and sat back in his town car. The twins waited silently for his instruction. As they made their way back to the Witch Finders’ base, plans circled Auguste’s mind.

  I
f the Fallen thought that they had the upper hand, that they could seriously take on the might that was the Brethren brotherhood, they had sorely misjudged their enemy. Because Auguste was ready to load an army of holy angels onto their sinful ways and crush them where they stood.

  So, Auguste told the twins of his plan, a smile breaking out on his mouth at the thought of watching all the sinners die beneath their holy swords. Judgment Day was coming for the Fallen angels who had gotten away, and Auguste’s eyes would be the last thing they saw as he sent them back to hell.

  Chapter 9

  The water pelted Diel’s head as he stood under the scalding spray of the shower. It ran under the metal of his collar—he didn’t even feel the sting of the freshly fried skin anymore; it was nothing but numbed, unsalvable flesh. He closed his eyes as the blood pooled around the drain. And he thought of brown eyes and a long braid of cotton candy–pink hair.

  Noa.

  He mentally traced the pentagram on her chest, and the upturned cross in the center. Then he thought of her breasts, of her opening her shirt to show him the brand—no bra, completely exposed to his eyes. His monster awoke inside him at the memory and began to prowl. Diel had never given a fuck about how a woman looked before. He killed them, killed anyone that he could. Gender didn’t matter. But Noa … she was everywhere inside him.

  Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her face, he saw her perfect nose and her full lips, saw her long lashes and her body in all that tight black leather. Diel’s hands flattened on the tile before him, then curled into fists. He gritted his teeth and looked down. His cock was hard. He tried to control his breathing, taking deep, calming inhales and exhales. But all he could see in his mind’s eye was Noa. Fucking Noa and her eyes and tits and the way she looked at him and showed no fear at all, her lip hooked up in a taunt.

  Everyone feared him. His victims’ fear was his lifeblood, the fuel to his very existence.

  But she wasn’t scared. She wasn’t fucking scared of him one little bit.

  Diel snarled as his monster thought of her too. It wanted Diel to go find her, seek her out. Diel’s forehead fell against the tiles, and he made sure his feet remained planted to the floor. He wouldn’t go, even though she was close. So fucking close. Gabriel had put her and her sisters in the housekeeper’s home on the manor’s property—Fallen property.

  Gabe had fucked up. He should never have put Noa that close. Diel wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation of having her so easily within reach.

  Diel’s breathing became choppy as his cock began to pulse. A fantasy was building—he pictured Noa on his bed, wearing no clothes and with her legs spread in invitation. With a guttural, confused roar, Diel wrapped his hand around his cock and squeezed the rock-hard flesh. His jaw clenched at the pain—not pleasure; he wanted to fucking bruise himself. But his monster fought against the self-assault. The monster wanted Noa. Diel slackened his grip on his dick, instead stroking along its length as the monster took control.

  Neither Diel nor his monster did lovers. They played no part in their life.

  They had never fucked anyone, never even kissed a person. They didn’t get hard for either men or women. They only got hard for kills and blood and the heady feeling that came with stabbing someone through their heart and watching their eyes widen and their lungs fight to breathe. The only time Diel came was when the hot spray of blood would spatter across his face, or when he was looking down at a face that was unrecognizable as the person they’d once been.

  But Noa … fucking Noa! She was all up in his head, in his chest and pictured clearly in the monster’s mind. He could feel the shift in him, his constant rage lighting with a different kind of flame.

  Diel’s monster worked his hand faster and faster as he pictured her on the bed, completely naked and massaging her tits, hips rolling in pleasure. He could almost feel her skin under his hands, riddled with scars and burns, but feeling like velvet and satin to his rough touch. He could feel the Coven’s brand under his palms, marring her smooth skin.

  Wrecked, just like him.

  He groaned, his hips punching forward as his cock ran through his tight fist. Was this what it would be like to fuck her? What would she taste like if he licked her skin … if he licked her pussy … ?

  Sweat clashed with the shower water as the monster drove his thrusts harder and harder. It envisioned sinking into Noa, her brown eyes latched on Diel’s and her nails slicing into the skin of his back. He’d lick along her scars, the burns and the brand, until he sank inside her and took her. Until she screamed underneath him and he came inside her, marking her as his.

  Diel closed his eyes tightly. Light burst behind his eyelids as he came, a tense snarl echoing off the bathroom walls, Noa’s name ripping from his lips.

  As his body shook with exertion, his monster slunk back into the darkness, satisfied for now, but leaving Diel spent and breathless, leaning against the slick wall. His body was drained, and his collar hissed from his accelerated pulse. But it wasn’t because he was losing control. It was because his mind was reeling, confusion running thickly in his blood.

  Diel looked down at his hands. They were shaking. His skin was flashing between hot and cold, and his throat had gone completely dry. He shook his head to rid himself of his monster’s fantasy of Noa naked on the bed. Pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes, he dropped to the floor of the shower. He didn’t want to fucking see it. He didn’t want to fuck her, didn’t want to touch her or have her touch him.

  He killed. He killed and he slaughtered, and he fought his fucking monster.

  That was Diel’s life. Not this shit.

  Flashes of Purgatory barreled into his brain. Heavy, putrid breaths in his ear as he was tied, belly down, on the rack. Pain and sweat and the rancid body odor of whatever priest had decided to exorcise him that day.

  Diel gasped and scrambled to his knees, pushing himself up on unsteady feet. Diel’s monster was already growing too strong. With its new interest in Noa … Diel couldn’t fight it. He couldn’t do it. He was already cleaved in two, his monster gaining strength day by day. He couldn’t fight this battle over Noa too.

  Gabriel had made a mistake. A deadly one. Diel needed the Coven fucking gone. He had to make them fucking go before it became the thing to finally destroy him. She would fucking destroy him.

  Noa.

  Diel snarled, and his monster shifted to the forefront of his brain, extending its claws in warning against even thinking about hurting her. But Diel didn’t want Noa. He needed her gone …

  He needed her dead.

  He pushed out of the shower stall and wrapped a towel around his waist. Diel slammed out of the bathroom, a red mist descending over his eyes. This time, the murder he craved had nothing to do with the monster, and everything to do with him.

  When he stepped out into his bedroom, he saw Sela on the cushioned seat of the bay window, drawing on his sketchpad. His long dark hair was hanging over one shoulder. Sela looked up at Diel and narrowed his dark eyes. “Haven’t calmed down yet?”

  Diel’s nostrils flared and his lip curled in disgust. His stomach tensed as he kept his monster down deep, unable to break free and sink its claws into his motherfucking brain.

  “He shouldn’t have brought them here,” Diel spat, and he moved to his closet to get out a pair of sweatpants. He threw them on and came back out into his bedroom.

  “The pink-haired one with the braid,” Sela said, not a question, just a perfect fucking guess at what had Diel so rattled. “What is it? You want to kill her or fuck her?” Sela raised a single eyebrow. “Or both?”

  “I don’t fuck.” Diel paced in front of the lit fire. Assault after Brethren assault fired at his brain like unrelenting rounds of bullets as that word circled his head. Fuck. The only kind of fucking he knew was as a kid, being strapped down and taken against his will. And with every fuck that had been forced upon him, the monster inside of him grew more and more powerful, woke from whatever depth of hell i
t was born in and possessed Diel’s soul.

  Over time, the monster grew bigger and bigger until it could spread its arms and legs and fill the marrow of every bone in Diel’s body, penetrate every fiber in his muscles. It had eclipsed any light inside Diel’s heart and taken the lead, pushing Diel behind it, taking on the Brethren so Diel didn’t have to—his frontline, war-shredded soldier. The monster had attacked. It bit and snarled and slashed at any of the priests who tried to cut him from Diel’s body. Who tried to douse him in holy water and fuck the bad from his depraved soul.

  So, they put Diel in chains. They wrapped them around his neck to cage the monster, to take away the monster’s freedom and keep them both strictly under their control.

  And the monster soured. Year by year, unable to fight, to protect Diel like it was designed to do, it soured and rotted until it became a wraith, an enraged black shadow of death—it offered no forgiveness or second chances. It killed without explanation, relishing in any blood it got to spill and any piece of flesh it got to tear. It was feral and untamed. And, in time, it became part of Diel. Inextricably fused to everything Diel was. They were dualistic. Twin souls trapped in one ruined body.

  But not right now. For the first time ever, they were split in their desires, opposing magnets ripping themselves apart.

  Diel could feel the monster trying to cut its way through his internal barrier to take control, to rise to the surface and bind his hands over this raging desire.

  Diel couldn’t let that happen. Not this time. Noa had to die. The act of fucking had only ever brought pain and destruction to Diel. He didn’t care about the joining of flesh or sinking into someone and coming inside them. If it didn’t involve death, he didn’t want to know.

  Noa had no choice but to die. He couldn’t let his monster have her like that. It would destroy everything they had built since Purgatory. It would make them vulnerable again. Diel wouldn’t ever be fucking vulnerable to anyone ever again.