Jegudiel (Deadly Virtues 2)

Dinah looked at her sisters, and Gabriel saw her dark eyes were bright. “You’ll help the kids? Really?” Her voice was rough and rasped, as though she daren’t let herself believe someone would actually help them after all this time alone.

“You have my vow,” Gabriel said, hand over his heart. He looked at his brothers, then the Coven. They were all cut from the same sullied cloth, bloodstained and ragged, but still surviving, still serving some kind of purpose despite their frayed and torn edges.

Gabriel felt a change spark inside him, something akin to hope. They had all been alone for so long. The Fallen had banded together, an unbreakable unit of brotherhood, survivors of a life no one outside of them could ever believe. Their enemy was both hidden from the world yet thriving in plain sight. And these women … they were the same. After all these years, the Fallen had found people just like them. Different circumstances, different experiences, but they had survived same brutal and savage storm the Fallen had walked through.

“We can send people to retrieve your things,” Gabriel said. “Trustworthy, discreet people. You can have the old housekeeper’s home. It’s large and empty, and it’s yours.”

“And them.” Dinah nodded toward Gabriel’s brothers. “Can all of them be trusted?”

Gabriel nodded back, conviction in his voice. “We have family commandments that they do not, and will not, break. If you are living on this estate with us, you won’t be harmed. We do not harm people we consider allies.”

Dinah silently communicated something with her sisters, then sat forward and held out her hand to Gabriel. “We’ll do a trial period. To see how we work together.”

Gabriel bowed his head in agreement.

“Then you have a deal, Goldilocks.”

Gabriel shook Dinah’s hand, and as he pulled back, he looked at his brothers and the Coven all gathered around the Nave, and then finally at the still-open ledger on the table. So many names. So many priests, and too many potential children that needed to be saved.

Warmth spread over Gabriel, and something clicked into place inside him. Looking at Maria, then Dinah, he clasped his hands on the table. “Now, where to begin?”

Chapter 8

Auguste surveyed the room. He pressed his hand to the clean sheets that Father McConnell slept in. They were cold. Not a single thing was out of place in the room. There was no blood, no signs of a struggle, yet he knew something was off, just like he’d known something was off with the others. Father McConnell, along with four other priests in close proximity, had mysteriously gone missing. Not a word from any of them. Gone, vanished into thin air.

Father Auguste turned when Father Abel walked into the bedroom. “The charge has gone from here too.”

A twitch pulled at Father Auguste’s cheek. The young sinners the priests had been exorcising at home had been taken. He tipped his head back, the end of his long ponytail reaching the center of his back. Anger swelled in his blood, and one face sprang to mind. Disgust and shame filtered into his bones as he thought of his brother. As he thought of Selaphiel’s sinful face.

He opened his eyes and cast one last look around the bedroom. He was about to leave and go back to the Brethren headquarters when he noticed an old picture on the wall was ever so slightly askew.

Father Auguste approached the picture and lifted it off the wall. It concealed a safe. His hands curled into fists as he stared at the lock that had been expertly broken. Calming his temper, just as Father Quinn had taught him, he opened the safe and found it empty.

“Father Abel? Father Job?” he called out. The twin brothers who were his right-hand men came quickly up the stairs from their search for any clue as to who had taken the priest. Because someone had.

Father Auguste hadn’t reached his prestigious position as Witch Finder General at such a young age for his lack of thoroughness. On the contrary—he was ruthless. He was meticulous, and he left no stone unturned when it came to any threat made against his beloved faith, against the true saviors of this sinful, doomed world.

The twins arrived at the bedroom doorway, waiting for Father Auguste’s command. “Search the house for the ledger.” They immediately did his bidding without question. Auguste searched the bedroom again—old floorboards, boxes, under the mattress—but he came up empty-handed.

Thirty minutes later, the twins came back to Auguste. “There’s nothing, General,” Father Abel reported.

“We’ve searched everywhere. It’s gone,” Father Job added.

Auguste’s jaw clenched. “Call in the investigators. I want prints and DNA found for anyone that has been in this home.” He walked past the twins and down the stairs to the waiting car outside. He got into the back seat; the twins followed. “All the homes we have been in tonight must be searched.”