by Cole, Tillie
The van would remain in the cover of a small copse of trees that Dinah, Candace, Jo and Noa had discovered on one of the many covert visits they had made over the past several weeks to scout the location. Just a few yards away was a natural spring, and behind it a small cave leading to the tunnels that would take them directly into the vipers’ nest.
Dinah placed her scarf over her nose and mouth and opened the van doors. With her nod as a silent command, the rest of the Coven and the Fallen covered their faces, becoming ghosts, and followed her into the trees, their dark leather clothes aiding them in melding into the night.
“We follow the line of trees to the spring,” Dinah said. “Then we travel through those tunnels directly underneath the barn.” She took in a deep breath. “Then we attack.”
Dinah led the way, Gabriel taking up the rear. Noa released Diel’s hand, but he was a shadow at her back. Someone being so protective of her would have irked her once. But Diel was a wall of comforting light behind her. And she was a shield of protection in front of him.
The sound of a trickling stream guided them to the cave. They ducked underneath the spring. The water ran in heavy rivulets off their leather hoods. Once they reached the network of tunnels, Dinah shined a dim flashlight. No one spoke. The sounds of breathing and footsteps on the hard ground were the only things Noa could hear.
Dinah navigated the twists and turns with ease, the days of scouting this location paying off in droves as she weaved and ducked past low rocks and slippery walls until she came to a sudden halt.
When everyone was gathered at a wide swell of the tunnel, Dinah pointed to the roof above them. Noa could see a circular hatch, one that would lead them into a feed store in the barn. From that door, they would enter the main body of the barn, which the Brethren had fashioned into a meeting room. The barn looked worn and unused from the outside. Inside, it boasted the usual opulence of the church.
Dinah cut the flashlight, plunging them all into darkness. Noa closed her eyes and let that inky darkness spread throughout her body. She let her tongue remember the taste of death—sweet, sweet death of the priests who had hurt her, her family, her sisters, and Diel.
Someone pressed against her arm, and she knew that scent. Diel. She relaxed for a second into his muscular arm. Uriel lifted Dinah up, she opened the hatch, then light flooded the tunnel and Dinah slipped though the opening. The Coven followed first, then the Fallen. Dinah closed the hatch, and the door became invisible among the barn’s wooden floorboards.
Noa’s head snapped toward the door to the meeting room. The low hum of chanting voices drifted toward them, a sinister prayer. Hatred pulsed within her. Diel and his brothers looked like rabid dogs, but for Gabriel, who appeared deep in prayer.
The rest of the Fallen rocked from side to side, racehorses frantic in their boxes. Even with a face covering, Noa could see a manic grin on Bara’s face as he stared at the door between the Brethren and themselves, his cheek muscles and crinkled skin around his eyes giving it away. The Fallen’s need for Brethren deaths was addictive, and Noa let go of any light she held inside her.
She became darkness. She was death incarnate.
Dinah held up her hand, just as a scream cut into the room like a thrown axe hitting the bullseye on a target. A child. One of the night’s sacrifices. The hum of the Brethren grew louder and louder, their sacrificial ritual growing in momentum. Noa could only imagine what was happening behind those walls, the fucked-up things that grown men would be inflicting on innocent souls.
A savage, low snarl slipped from Diel’s mouth. They quickly fell into their practiced formation, into the phalanx that Dinah had drilled into their heads so that it was simply muscle memory at that point. Dinah focused on the door. Noa took a sharp knife in her hand. She knew the Fallen were choosing their weapons too.
Then Dinah’s hand dropped, and she burst through the door. Both Coven and Fallen were a flowing sea of destruction, a relentless current coming to drag the Brethren under their waves.
Brethren were everywhere, their black robes and red dog collars beacons to Noa’s rage. But when the Brethren ran at their impenetrable phalanx, it wasn’t the priests that Noa’s attention fixed on. It was the two children in the center of the room. One was tied to a rack, his arms and legs spread-eagled, stretched, sweat pouring off his forehead. His eyes rolled as he fought to stay conscious.
All Noa could see was red, a curtain of death drawing over her vision. As the Brethren formed into lines, worthy enemies for the Fallen and Coven alliance, Noa unleashed fucking hell. As they barreled into her and her sisters like boulders, into Diel and his brothers, Noa sent her fists and feet flying.
But it was her blade that came for the Brethren with the most ferocity. With the first slash of her knife into a priest’s throat, the blood spattering across her face covering, she felt on fire. As she ducked from another priest’s attack, just like they’d practiced, he became wide open for Diel to rip apart.
Noa herself became a tornado of death and desolation.
Gurgled sounds of priests choking on blood, agonized screams of organs being slashed, and cracks of bones being broken spurred her on. Pushed her to kill and kill until her hands were drenched with blood and the blade of her knife was hot from overuse.
They cut the Brethren down. But for every priest killed, more seemed to appear. There were so many—too many.
Noa looked up at the sound of clinking metal. Every muscle in her body stilled as she laid eyes on a boy on a raised wooden plinth. Her stomach rolled and her heart squeezed when she saw what was wrapped around his neck.
He was in a collar and chain. Just like Diel. Just like … Noa shook her head, trying to focus on the priests before her, on the task at hand. She had to keep focused; she couldn’t be distracted until the priests were all dead.
She sensed Dinah on her left, Diel unwavering on her right. In her peripheral, she saw him fighting, snapping necks and slicing his long blades into hearts. She saw Uriel choking priests with his bare hands and gouging out eyes; she both saw and heard Bara laughing manically as pushed twin knives into Brethren skulls. She saw Michael slashing at throats with the metal claws on his fingers, his slashes perfectly hitting arteries every time, a master of sanguine anatomy.
Raphael wrapped chains around priests’ necks and pushed knives straight into their hearts. Then Sela. Sela moved as if he were the element of water himself. There was an almost poetic grace to his fighting that Noa had never seen before, his artist’s hands slicing body parts from the priests as if every death he made had to be a masterpiece in his mind.
Dinah and her sisters kicked and punched, funneled the Brethren into the path of the Fallen murderers.
It was working.
Despite the numbers they faced, despite only knowing one another for a couple of months, the Fallen and Coven were a unit—they were destroying the Brethren in their own sacred place.
Then Noa heard the clinks of metal again, the sound piercing her brain. Her attention was yanked back to the collared boy. He was thrashing on the plinth, trying to pull his bound hands from the wooden pole behind him. Suddenly, Dinah blocked a knife that almost hit Noa’s face. Noa met Dinah’s eyes. “Focus!” Dinah shouted, then moved to the next priest, rolling him over her shoulder so Noa could stab him with her knife.
It was carnage. Blood and screams and death permeated the air.
Noa brought her knife high, readying to strike another, when she saw a familiar face move from behind the boy on the rack.
She opened her mouth to warn her sisters and the Fallen. But someone growled out the priest’s name before any sound could leave her lips.
“Auguste.”
Sinking her knife into a priest’s leg, straight through his artery, as Beth threw him directly into Noa’s path, Noa risked a glance behind her. Sela. Sela’s dark eyes had focused on his older brother, who was watching them from a safe distance, a general watching his foot soldiers trying to bring the enemy down. Noa
frowned, wondering why he was raising his hand as if to signal, when the doors to the back of the barn burst open and a river of Brethren priests came pouring in.
More. There were even more of them. Noa looked back at Auguste and saw a smug, victorious smile stretch on his face. Reality hit her then, as hard as the priest’s fist that barreled into her face as he took advantage of her momentary distraction.
The Brethren had expected them. They had prepared for them.
The Fallen and Coven were outnumbered.
They were fucked.
“There’s too many,” Noa heard Dinah shout over the din of rushing priests. “We have to pull back.” Noa’s heart pounded as she watched another blur of red and black rush through the doors. “We have to pull back!”
“Pull back!” Gabriel said from the rear of the group, echoing Dinah’s command. Noa continued to fight. They all fought, priests falling at their feet. But not fast enough. The harsh reality was obvious—they couldn’t beat them all.
Noa stepped back, feeling Diel’s looming presence still behind her. They had to get out. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t all make it. Someone would get wounded … someone would die.
“Get back!” Dinah said again, but just as Noa went to move, she heard a clanging of metal against metal like thunder cracking through the room. Time moved into slow motion. She lifted her head toward the collared boy on the plinth, the boy she imagined Finn Nolan looked just like as a boy. Dark hair, skin and bone, and pure wildness in his blue eyes. And she watched, heart in her mouth, as the boy managed to get free of the rope binding his wrists to the plinth’s stake, only for his feet to slip off the small ledge he balanced his feet on. His body dropped toward the ground, and his collar and chain acted as a noose.
“No!” Noa shouted. The haunting scene from her past pushed her to break from the group and surge toward the boy. He began to thrash, the collar around his neck quickly robbing him of life. Noa’s feet led her forward, plowing through the priests that attempted to get in her way, her knives veritable swords as she sliced them down. The boy’s eyes bulged, and she was snatched back to the past …
“I’ll kill you for what you’ve done to him,” Noa hissed to the priest beneath her. Her rage spilled over, and she stabbed the priest, over and over, in the chest, the face. He’d had a boy put in a collar. A fucking collar, like a dog. She heard the boy fighting to be free from his chains behind her. But this priest deserved to die slowly. He had to pay. He deserved to perish for what he’d done to the boy. So Noa kept on stabbing, slicing into his flesh.
The priest’s eyes glazed over with death. Victory surged through her. Then she sat back, blood dripping down her cheeks. And then she turned, went to go to the boy, to take him somewhere safe … and her heart shattered apart …
“NOA!”
Noa frantically sliced and stabbed though the Brethren wall before her. Diel’s deathly voice was at her back. But she couldn’t stop. She had to get to the boy, whose face had reddened as he became starved of oxygen. His skinny legs kicked and his bony fingers clawed at the collar, desperately trying to get free. But Noa saw his small limbs tiring; she saw his body begin to jerk with the throes of death.
“No,” she panted as she picked up her pace. “No!” He couldn’t die. Not again. Not this fucking time! Noa fought and fought until she reached the plinth. She grabbed the boy’s legs, lifting him so the pressure would move from his throat. The boy gasped, tried to breathe as a morsel of air sneaked through. But Noa needed to get him down. She was going to have to release his legs so she could free him. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want him to struggle again, not even for a moment. The last time she had stalled …
“Noa!” Noa turned to see Diel’s bright blue eyes looking right back at her. He had broken from the ranks too. He had come after her. “Release him,” she said, hearing the cracking of her urgent, rasped voice.
Diel didn’t even hesitate. He reached up and yanked the chain to the boy’s collar off the plinth. The boy collapsed into Noa’s arms. She wrapped her arms around him, just as a line of priests came toward them. She couldn’t take her eyes off the boy. He was fighting to breathe, the red scar around his neck a milder version of Diel’s.
“He’s alive.” Diel crouched before her in a fighting stance, bracing for the priests that were about to attack. And they came. One after the other they came. Noa knew she should fight too, but she couldn’t let go of the boy. She pushed his dark hair from his face, choking on a sob when she saw color returning to his cheeks, his eyes fluttering open and closed.
But then she heard screams, screams from voices she knew. Noa straightened, still holding the boy close to her chest. Diel was surrounded. He fought off priest after priest, but they were a swarm of unrelenting evil. Noa looked for her sisters and saw that the phalanx had dissolved. Each of them was fighting on their own, exposed and vulnerable.
Guilt hit her with the force of a freight train. She had done that. She had broken from the ranks. Dinah had drilled into their heads that they must never break from the phalanx, not ever.
And Diel had followed her, leaving her sisters and his brothers open to attack. The scream came again, and Noa saw Naomi take a slash to the arm, one knee buckling to the ground as she tried to cover the deep, gushing wound. A violent cloud of flame suddenly erupted above her. Bara rushed forward with his flame thrower to ward off any priest in her path. Priests screamed in agony as fire engulfed them, eating at their flesh. But they didn’t back away; the Brethren’s cause was more important to them than saving their own lives.
And still more priests came.
Noa shot forward when Diel staggered under the onslaught, taking a slash to each of his thighs. She pulled out her knife, keeping the boy tucked into her chest, but even as she fought one-handedly, even as she stood by Diel and took on his opponents alongside him, they were swarmed. Like a cancerous spread, priests closed in on Noa and Diel, her sisters, the Fallen. Even Bara’s flame thrower was extinguished as he was wrestled to the ground.
Noa hit the ground too, the boy still in her arms. He was staring at her, blinking slowly as he tried to take in what had just happened. He was awake. She had saved him. But all she felt at that moment was hatred. Hatred and guilt and dread at what would await her family now, await the man she loved at Auguste’s wicked hands.
Diel shifted beside her, and even with his body being crushed by too many priests, he reached out and took her hand. Panic swelled in Noa’s veins as his fingers clasped around hers, tightening so hard she believed he would never let go, not even with death.
Their surprise attack had gone wrong. Everything had gone so fucking wrong.
“Enough!” Shivers raced down Noa’s spine at the sound of that familiar voice, the voice she’d first heard as a terrified child, the voice of the man who had exorcised her for hours and hours as her teenage body broke under his devilish inquisition techniques.
Heretic, heretic, witch … His taunts, his accusations were a drill being pushed slowly into her head.
Heavy footsteps echoed on the wooden floor. “Get them up.”
Noa heard scurried movements, then she was wrenched to her feet. Diel kept tight hold of her hand even as he fought to get free. Four largely built priests kept him in place.
Noa cradled the boy to her chest. Her heart shattered when his hands clung to her clothes, as if Noa was his savior. Hot tears streaked down her face as Auguste appeared directly before her. Behind him, her sisters and the Fallen were being restrained too. She met Dinah’s eyes, and she could see the sorrow in her sister’s gaze, for Noa, and for the boy in Noa’s arms.
Auguste flicked his hand. “Take the offering from this witch.”
“No!” Noa shouted.
Two priests approached Noa. Diel growled and dived forward as they tried to take the boy from her arms. “NO!” she shouted louder, and fought to hold on to the boy. She had to save him. He couldn’t die too …
Noa scrambled to stay with him,
but the priests wrenched him out of her grasp. At the same moment, Diel broke free from the men who held him. He charged at the priests taking the boy, but something crackled behind him, and Diel dropped to the ground, his body jerking as though he still wore the collar Noa had taken from his neck.
Noa’s face blanched, and her blood heated with fury as one of the twin priests who had killed her family stepped over Diel, holding a taser. She could never tell them apart. Even through the disabling volts racking his body, Diel’s blue eyes found hers, and Noa shook, shook so hard she had to grit her teeth to keep herself together.
She began to scream. She screamed as she struggled against the priests holding her. She kicked, she bit and she fought. Fought for the man on the floor, the man she loved, the one she had vowed to avenge. Diel’s brothers fought too, battling to break free from their captors. One brother broke away and reached Diel’s prone body, only to be wrenched back and tackled to the ground.
“I said enough!” Auguste commanded again. Noa realized the brother who had gone to help Diel was Sela; she recognized the deep brown of his eyes. Sela was brought to his feet by the twin priests. His hood and face covering were still in place. But Auguste’s head tilted to the side as he stared at Sela’s eyes.
Then Auguste was crossing the room in slow and controlled steps. Noa fought back a guttural scream as the boy in the collar was taken to another room. His slim arm reached out for Noa as he disappeared from sight, his blue eyes racked with pain. A machete through her chest would have hurt less. All the fight she had in her bones was turning to vapor.
Diel lay still on the ground, and a thick numbness traveled through Noa’s body. It was as if she was being taken out of the situation by her very own inner monster, becoming detached from reality. She wanted to crawl on the ground beside Diel and close her eyes as she breathed him in. She wanted to curl into his chest and have his strong arms hold her and never let go.
