Jegudiel (Deadly Virtues 2)

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.