Jegudiel (Deadly Virtues 2)

Candace watched her girlfriend’s obvious exasperation and added, “Who the hell knows what else they have punished others for, or even if there are other groups in the world who have the same mission as we do.”

“We fucking know nothing.” Raphael squeezed the string around his finger so tightly that his finger turned deep purple. “Do we?” he said to Gabriel. “We know nothing about them. Not really.”

Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose. Raphael was right. They didn’t. “Then we must learn,” Gabriel said. “Somehow, we must learn more. We must become academics on the subject.”

“Are we still on for Friday?” Sela said. His arms were crossed over his chest, and Gabriel knew that was to keep composure, keep from letting his wrath loose.

Gabriel met Dinah’s eyes. She nodded. “We’re ready,” she said. “More than.”

“Then yes.” He felt the tug of his cilice biting into his thigh. Gabriel was sanctioning death. Encouraging his brothers to kill. The flicker of grace he still possessed was draining from him like sand from an hourglass. With every agreement to go after the Brethren, he feared he was losing more and more of himself.

But he’d do it. He’d happily sacrifice himself for his family. He ate their sins. He took their deficiencies from his own flesh. He just had to endure a little more pain.

Gabriel nodded at his family. “Then Friday, we launch our first attack.” His brothers practically vibrated with delirium. This was their calling; murder was what sang to their souls.

Gabriel couldn’t be in the room any longer. He could feel his faithful resolve dying, feel the devil’s hot breath on the back of his neck. It had always been his biggest personal battle—weighing his pacifist beliefs against his brothers, who took the utmost pleasure in ridding people of their lives. And although they had only killed people who hurt others, people that it could be argued “deserved it,” Gabriel knew that for most of his brothers, when their innate need to kill became too much, whether a person deserved it or not wouldn’t even be a factor.

“Rest,” Gabriel said to the Fallen and the Coven, forcing a soothing smile, being the older brother they needed. “Prepare.”

He nodded at them in goodbye, then left the room, going straight down the stairs and outside into one of the waiting cars. He drove through the grounds until he reached the groundskeeper’s cottage they had been renovating for weeks now. When he walked through the front door, he smelled freshly cut wood, and new paint on the walls. As always, he had been using his grandfather’s network of discreet organizations to do the work.

Gabriel cast his eyes around the newly laid floors, the vast industrial kitchen, and the many tables that could seat dozens of people.

This would be his penance. A safe house for children rescued from the Brethren. The orphanage that Holy Innocents should have been. A refuge for broken souls. A safe place to save them from themselves, from the anger that would no doubt live inside them.

Gabriel may be damned, but he would see others saved. He would battle the Brethren in his own way. He would see their so-called sinners survive.

He would see them thrive.

Gabriel hadn’t heard another car pulling up to the house. He hadn’t heard the front door opening, but suddenly, Maria was beside him. She took a few steps forward into the hallway, surveying the open-plan design. She nodded as she looked around the vast space. “This will work nicely.” She ran her hand over the newly carved banister of the sweeping central staircase.

Maria turned and regarded Gabriel empathetically. “I know you love your brothers more than anything else in the world. You want nothing but happiness in their lives.” She came to stand before him, smiling sadly. “But more pain will be uncovered. More tragedies will be unearthed within our family.” She sighed, and Gabriel knew she felt what he felt too. The Fallen had become her brothers too. She was one of them. Raphael’s soulmate, and to the rest of them their beloved sister. “Many of them are still closed off. They have much growing to do, much soul-searching to go through.”

Gabriel nodded. She was right. He wished it wasn’t so. But he knew it was true. He just wished he could protect them all from it.

“War is hard,” he rasped, clutching his treasured rosary. He had been gripping it so tightly through Diel’s regression session that the beads had left angry red imprints on his palm.

Maria laid her hand on his arm. The physical contact felt good. Comforting. Sometimes Gabriel wondered if his life devoted to God, to being celibate and alone, was the right decision. He saw the impenetrable bond between Raphael and Maria, the happiness, the peace that eros brought them. And Diel … he would never have believed that Diel would be where he was now, no matter how broken he was after today’s revelations. In love, because he was. He didn’t know if Diel recognized that, but the way he looked at Noa screamed it to be true.