JEGUDIEL: A Deadly Virtues Novel

by Cole, Tillie

  When he was loaded with weapons, he rocked on his feet. It still wasn’t fucking time to go. He squeezed his eyes shut, but all he could see was Noa sitting before him in the underground tunnel system the Coven used to call home. Smirking at him, unafraid, as she kept him in a cell.

  His mind wandered again, on its own journey, and took him to the night in the folly. To the moment he’d fought Noa, to the very second he’d felt the collar open and drop from his neck. To turning on Noa, monster and man dueling for dominance. His and Noa’s bodies crashing together like boulders. Then her underneath him, his lips smashing to hers as he sank deep inside her, feeling things he had never felt before. An addiction to Noa, a sense of right engulfing his senses.

  Then he thought of her never leaving his side afterwards. Until earlier that day … until she sacrificed herself to give him back his sister, Noa’s final act of charity for the fucked-up monster she had fallen in love with. But it had taken her away from the monster. From the man who couldn’t even breathe without her.

  And Diel couldn’t fucking bear it.

  When Diel opened his eyes, he had backed away from the armory. He was breathless and panting, losing his grip on reality, on his wafer-thin self-control, as he raced out of the manor and burst into the gym. He started running. He ran and he ran around the perimeter of the large space, trying to temporarily sate his need to go, to run, and to kill.

  He felt his adrenaline building, but with every step, Diel pictured Noa tied down. The images were hammer blows to his head. He pictured blood spouting from her body, Auguste and his fucked-up men wrapping a noose around her neck and pulling it tightly, screaming “Heretic!” and “Witch!” at her beautiful face.

  Diel’s skin bumped and his muscles twitched. His blood was lava in his veins, scalding him from the inside out. He pushed himself harder, faster around the gym. His breathing echoed in his ears as he drove his legs to their breaking point. But the more he ran, the more fucked-up images he saw in his mind. Noa burning on a stake; her hanging off a plinth, choking, legs thrashing; her fucking drowning as the Brethren smiled in victory at killing a witch.

  “No,” Diel snarled, his monster’s deep voice replacing his own, savage and untamed. “No!” he hissed as he thought of her skin paling in pain, of her strapped down and calling out for him to help.

  Then Diel pictured her screaming in agony, unable to take any more … and he fucking broke.

  “NO!” Diel bellowed into the high ceiling of the gym. His legs gave out and he dropped to the floor. His kneecaps and palms slapped to the ground, and his eyes filled with tears. The salty drops were boiling water, singeing his eyes, but not the torturous sights that remained in his mind. “Noa … my Noa …”

  Diel heard the sound of rushing feet on the gym floor, but he didn’t move, couldn’t. He was paralyzed by those fucked-up images that were now cycling around his head like a whirlwind, one after the other, each more fucked up than the one before. Noa and blood and ripped flesh and worse …

  “Brother.” Someone dropped to his knees beside him, planting a hand on Diel’s back. But Diel still couldn’t move.

  He couldn’t fucking move!

  More footsteps came. More hands on his back, on his arms. Diel was freezing cold, but where the hands were, flickers of heat tried to break through. He heard his breathing, labored and strained. Then he felt a hand on the back of his head and knew instinctively that it was Gabriel.

  Slowly, and with more strength than he’d thought he had left, Diel lifted his head, and his gaze crashed with Gabriel’s. “We’ll get her back,” Gabriel said, and the firm tone cooled some of the heat in Diel’s blood. But Gabriel’s face quickly blurred. Diel rocked his numb body backward and sat back on his heels. He cast his tear-filled eyes around him. All of his brothers were there. Every single one of them, their hands on his arms and back in support.

  And as the tears spilled over Diel’s cheeks, all strength drained from him, and he whispered, “I can’t lose her.” His head dropped in defeat. Every part of him felt too heavy to hold up, too heavy to even function.

  “Brother.” Sela put his hand under Diel’s chin and lifted his head for him. Sela was dressed for battle—all black, armed with weapons, and his dark hair half tied back. “You won’t lose her.” Sela placed his free hand over his heart, a pledge. “I swear it.” He pulled a knife from his weapons belt.

  Lifting his hand, Sela sliced the blade down his palm. Blood trickled from the wound. He took Diel’s hand and cut his palm too. Diel didn’t even feel the cut, too numb to any pain but the one biting into his heart. Sela clasped their hands together and gave Diel a firm nod.

  A sacred blood oath.

  Diel swallowed, his heart lobbing back into some semblance of a life-giving beat. Raphael came forward, taking Sela’s place. “I know what it is to fear the worst for the woman you love.”

  Diel stared into Raphael’s golden eyes. Raphael did understand. Maria had been in the clutches of the Brethren after she and Raphael had fallen in love. And Raphael had lost his fucking mind when she was gone. “You all stood by me when they had Maria. We got her back, my fucking heart.” Raphael cut his palm with his knife as he spoke, then clasped Diel’s hand tightly. “Nothing will stop us from getting your Noa back to you.” Diel nodded, a morsel of strength returning to his hollow bones.

  Then, one by one, each of his brothers took a knee before him and cut their hands, pledging to find Noa and bring her back to Diel. To her sisters.

  Bara, with an excited smirk on his face. “I should thank Noa really. Because of this, we now get to kill more of the Brethren cunts.” Then Uriel. “I’ll rearrange their faces with my knives in honor of your sister, who one day we will recover too.” Michael silently cut his palm, gave Diel a tight nod, then clasped hands with him, slowly licking along the bloody wound after the oath was made. All his brothers pledged their oath to Noa, and to protect the members of the new fucked-up family the Fallen and Coven had become.

  Finally, Gabriel held his hand up and sliced his palm. He held Diel’s gaze as he said, “I pledge to you, Diel, that I will help you save Noa.” Gabriel looked at his brothers. “I would lay down my life for any of you. That extends to whoever you fall in love with.” Diel’s heart switched from an out-of-rhythm beat into a steady hum, his blood cooling to normal temperatures and his muscles twitching with the life that swelled in their frayed fibers.

  “Now,” Gabriel said to Diel. “The van is prepared. The Shadows are en route to the church.” He placed his hand on Diel’s cheek. “Let’s get Noa back and bring her home.”

  Home. The manor, with Diel and his brothers, the Coven, was Noa’s home.

  Adrenaline, so potent he felt like he was high, flooded Diel’s body, and he lurched to his feet. The tears on his cheeks dried to salt, and as he walked to the van, flanked by his brothers, he let death sink into his very being.

  Tonight, the Coven and Fallen wouldn’t fail.

  Chapter 27

  The four walls of the van felt like a fucking cage as they all waited for the signal from the Shadows to attack. On the way to the church, the Shadows had told them that the army was patrolling the small derelict church as if they were waiting for an ambush.

  Auguste knew they were coming. And his actions showed that he wanted a fight. So, a fucking fight they would get. Diel felt his monster whip its tail. No, not a fight … a fucking massacre.

  Gabriel clutched the burner phone in his hand. A grainy image lit up the screen. It was the Shadows moving in on the Witch Finder army, silently, stealthily, as their name suggested. Diel’s eyes were focused on the small screen, the green and black images like a fucking technicolor movie to his gaze. Then Diel heard it. He heard the cacophony of bullets pouring from the Shadows’ guns.

  Gabriel took a deep breath. “Stay close like we have trained.” A beeping sound blared from the phone, and Diel’s body sprang into action. Looking Gabriel dead in the eyes, Diel smiled coldly, then his older brother
said, “Now.”

  The van doors burst open and Diel jumped out. His brothers and the Coven surrounded him, weapons ready, and they fled from the copse of trees that Beth had guided them to.

  As an impenetrable unit, the brothers and sisters ran toward the church, the sound of bullets slicing through Brethren flesh a fucking symphony to Diel’s ears.

  Diel’s eyes were focused entirely on the paint-chipped white church, but his rage was focused on the fuckers that guarded the entryway to the torture chamber that lay underneath. With every step he felt more of his unease slip away, and in its place was rage unleashed, fury unbridled … evil incarnate.

  And as he found himself watching the Shadows fighting the Brethren army, the men who guarded Auguste and his twin dogs who were “exorcising” Noa, he called upon his monster, on the entity he had relied on for so long. He called on its strength, on its ruthlessness and on its sadism.

  Legs pumping, long knives in hand, he gave himself over to the frenzy of the killing spree that was about to occur. Diel’s skin was too thick to release the pounding boiled blood slamming against its walls. Boiled blood turned to poisoned vapor. Black tendrils broke from his flesh like an obsidian tapestry, forming claws and fangs and death, engulfing him in an armor of rage.

  And then they were there. Dinah broke through the Witch Finder army first, her sisters following behind. Their hooded heads and covered faces melded into the veil of night. But this time the Coven had brought knives. They sliced them into Brethren flesh and tossed the priests over their shoulders for Diel and his brothers to finish off.

  The first priest fell at Diel’s feet. With a deranged laugh, Diel dove down, twin blades ripping into the priest’s shoulders. Diel felt the blades hit bone, then he wrenched them down in one thrust. The priest’s scream made Diel’s cock harden as he slit the priest’s flesh, disemboweling him. Diel’s face was spattered with blood, but the coppery scent on his heated cheeks and on his tongue only spurred him on. His monster roared out in victory of the first kill.

  But he and his monster wanted more. They always wanted more and more and more …

  Diel turned just as Naomi spun, leaving a wounded priest trapped before him. Diel didn’t even give the priest time to take a breath. He pounced, sinking his blade into the motherfucker’s skull. As the blood spurted onto his face, Diel heard the priests screaming around him. In his peripheral, he saw the ignition of Bara’s flame thrower; a blast of heat rushed past as a burning priest ran for cover. Diel swerved, cutting a line right down the enflamed priest’s chest, deep enough to kill, but not before the flames ate him first. The priest’s eyes widened as pain took him in its fang-toothed bite.

  “The door!” Gabriel shouted, and Diel fell back into the phalanx. The church’s entryway was right up ahead.

  “Move!” Dinah said, and they fought the cluster of priests not yet killed by the Fallen and Coven or the Shadows. Like a well-rehearsed dance, Dinah and Jo stepped aside to let Bara spray the Brethren blockade with his flame thrower, Uriel dousing them in gasoline as he did so.

  The heat from the instantly alight bodies licked at the hair on Diel’s face, but he lurched forward, slitting throats and collecting Brethren screams regardless. He hacked and stabbed and basked in blood, until Gabriel pushed through the doors of the church, only for another battalion of Brethren fuckers to appear on the other side.

  Like a cancer of black robes and red collars, they swarmed forward, trying to raze down Diel, his brothers and sisters. But the Fallen had only just begun to fucking play. The blood on their bodies was just their appetizer. They were more than primed for the main course.

  As one, they moved onward, hands lifted to strike, to slice and to kill, when an explosion boomed on the far side of the small church, rocking the rafters. The Brethren screams were instant, as was the blood draining from Diel’s face. “Noa!” he screamed. He went to surge forward, but Gabriel’s hand on his arm stopped him dead.

  “No,” Gabriel said. Diel’s blood ignited in fury at the command. But then Gabriel said, “That wasn’t caused by the Brethren or the Shadows.” Gabriel’s eyebrows were drawn down in confusion. Just then, a second explosion sounded, and Diel looked to the door Beth had said led to Auguste’s underground lair. The explosions had cleared the Brethren out of the way, formed them a path. Climbing from the floor, the injured Brethren priests gathered themselves to attack.

  But Diel needed to get to that door. He needed to get to that fucking door right now!

  “Go.” Dinah stepped in front of him, taking his place. “Go and get my sister.” She held her knife higher in her fist. “We’ll take these fuckers down, then join you.”

  Diel didn’t hesitate. He sprinted for the door as if Noa’s life depended on it. The brown wood was like a fucking beacon. Witch Finder priests tried to get in his way, but Diel’s murderous spree was in full swing, as was his efficiency, monster and man merged to create one unstoppable unit. Craving death and death and even more fucking death. Diel was a sadistic Grim Reaper, cutting through priests like they were nothing, like he was a demon ridding them of their fucked-up souls.

  He reached the door, snapped the lock and swung it open. The hairs on his neck rose when a high-pitched scream billowed up from the cave’s depths.

  So, Diel took a deep inhale, then gave himself over to evil.

  Chapter 28

  Noa was weak as she sat in the wooden chair, the garrote tight around her throat. She didn’t know how long Auguste and the twins had had her in the underground cave, but the last of her energy was draining from her.

  As though they were on borrowed time, Auguste and the twins had moved Noa from one piece of equipment to the next, barely any reprieve in between their cruel tortures.

  They were going to kill her. She knew that. But she couldn’t seem to find any scrap of regret within her for how she’d ended up back in their clutches. Beth would have gotten back to the manor with the ledger by now. The Fallen and the Coven would have the information on the Shunned.

  The only thing that made Noa’s heart shatter into pieces was picturing Diel’s face when he realized what she had done. Picturing her sisters, Dinah when Beth told her that Auguste and his men had her as their captive once again.

  “Repent,” Auguste said, ripping her from her thoughts. She felt him hovering at her back. His legs pressed against her hands, which were tied behind the large wooden chair he had fastened her to. She could barely breathe with the garrote so tight around her throat and a sharp spike pressing against the base of her skull.

  Noa tried to swallow, but the garrote made it almost impossible. For a second, she thought of Diel. Of how he must have felt wearing chains in Purgatory. And then in the years afterward, where he was trapped behind the collar that would curb the man he was always destined to be.

  “Repent, witch!” Auguste hissed.

  Noa clenched her teeth but managed to spit out, “Never.” Auguste didn’t care if she repented. She had been under this man’s harsh hand for most of her childhood. He didn’t care about her salvation. He just wanted to bring her pain, a sadist in priest’s clothing. Auguste and the twin fuckers who’d killed her grandmother were going to kill Noa too.

  It was simply a matter of time.

  And as she sat there, something became crystal clear within her—Noa would never renounce who she was ever again. She was the granddaughter of a Wiccan priestess. She came from a long line of persecuted witches, and she would never give in to the men who had hunted them down like dogs. She would die who she truly was.

  A witch.

  A heretic.

  But an innocent woman.

  “The devil has his hands firmly on your soul,” one of the twins said, slicing his hand across her cheek. It burned, setting her skin alight. But Noa was growing numb. Her fight to stay conscious was waning. Her fight to stay alive was dimming with every second under their command.

  Auguste turned the lever to the garrote, tightening the leather collar around
Noa’s throat. She tried to keep still, but as her airway was crushed, her legs tried to thrash and she instinctively fought the restraints around her hands.

  The creaks of the collar and ties on her hands were a thunderclap in the dank room. Then Auguste was before her, victory in his stare. “I win,” he said. Noa’s face reddened as she fought for air. Her vision became blotchy, black spots floating around her like an aura. This was it. This was the moment she died.

  “What you and your heretic sisters could never understand is that we always win in the end. It has been prophesized. Heretics like you will burn in hell for all eternity. This …” he said, gesturing to the garrote, to the stake they had already burned her on, only cutting off the flames when the skin on her legs and stomach had begun to melt, and to the stream they had plunged her into several times until she had passed out, only for them to revive her and do it all over again. Noa was exhausted. Yet something inside of her kept fighting. Something in her spirit kept her holding on. “This is nothing to what awaits you in the eternal inferno.” Auguste brought his face closer to hers. “Witch.”

  It took Noa all her remaining strength, but she stared him dead in the eyes and smiled, widely. She watched with joy in her heart as the smile seemed to hit him with as much force as a bullet to the chest. Auguste slowly lifted his chin, wickedness washing over his rigid stance.

  Straightening to his full height, he looked over her shoulder at one of the twins. “Snap her fucking neck.”

  Noa braced for her imminent death. She closed her eyes, ready for whatever came next. But suddenly, the sound of machine guns firing ricocheted off the cave walls around them.

  Noa snapped her eyes open. Auguste stared at the door that led to the main body of the church. “Guard the door,” he said to the twins. She heard them move, and something ignited in her chest.