Jegudiel (Deadly Virtues 2)

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.