As he cast one last look at Gabriel, Diel felt the collar click into silence. With an internal feral roar, the monster burst from its electric confinement and flooded Diel’s body, saturating his blood with pitch-black darkness.
Diel’s eyesight immediately cleared, and the sharp focus that came with the monster’s possession took control. He sighed in relief of surrendering to his evil and smiled as, with a burst of pure fury, he kicked open the back doors of the van, jumped onto the cold ground and rushed to the dark coverage of the nearby cluster of trees. Diel scanned his surroundings. He saw the old stone house that held the priest he was about to tear apart. It was dark and secluded, and his lip hooked up. He could make the priest scream, and no one would hear.
Making sure everything was clear, Diel burst from the trees and rushed toward the house. His breathing was quiet as stealth took the lead. He stopped beside the back door, slowly pushed the handle, and found it open. His monster stilled, suspicious of why the home was open in the dead of night.
Diel ducked inside the house, freezing as he listened for any signs of life. His heart slammed in excitement, and his blood soared through his veins like rapids. His monster curled his lips back at the silence. Then Diel’s head snapped up when he heard muffled sound. A wide grin plastered itself onto his face, and he made for the staircase.
Following the sound of quiet, distressed cries, he felt shivers trickle down his spine. The priest was scared. The fucking Brethren priest was pissing himself. Diel liked his victims best when they were terrified. Fear had a particular scent, an addictive taste that would burst on his tongue like the finest wine as the kill was executed.
He reached the door of the priest’s room and kicked it open with his heavy boot. Diel charged at the bed, knives ready in the waist of his pants. But he stilled, his monster’s lust for death halted, when he saw the priest bound on the bed, a gag in his mouth. The fucker’s eyes were wide and locked on Diel. Diel studied his prey, his monster surveying what it had found. His gaze landed on the priest’s split lip and the “H” that had been smudged onto his forehead with blood.
The rage started as a flicker in Diel’s stomach. But like a wildfire catching on to dry and barren branches on a scorching day, the fury spread, igniting every muscle and cell into a raging inferno in his body.
Somebody had been there first. Somebody had come for his kill, his Brethren cunt that he was meant to fucking rip apart.
The priest began to thrash on the bed, trying to speak. Diel vibrated in anger—his prey had already been touched; someone had got to him first. Pathetically, they hadn’t killed him. They’d left him festering in his sin in the bed, bound like pig about to be gutted. Reaching for the knife in his pants, Diel sliced through the bonds tying the priest’s hands and feet and ripped the gag from his mouth.
“Thank you,” the priest rasped as he scrambled to his feet and stood on the other side of his bed. “Who the hell were those people?” He gagged on his words as the blood ran from his lip into his mouth. “The ones with the hoods? With most of their faces covered? Mercenaries? Burglars?”
Diel’s scalding rage only built as he stared at the fucker before him. He was one of them. He was a motherfucking Brethren, brother of Purgatory, Holy Innocents alumnus. Diel’s hands started to shake, and the monster extended its claws inside him, jaw opening and fanged teeth preparing to taste this prick’s blood. Mimicking the monster, Diel smiled, showing his teeth, his hands curling into claws. His muscles tensed like a bow as he readied to strike.
The Brethren locked his gaze on Diel. Blood ran from his face, and Diel’s head tipped from left to right as the evil grew inside him, rising like a swelling well about to flood any nearby ground. His cock stirred when the priest froze. The father’s eyes dilated as he watched Diel.
“The General sent you, yes?” the priest said, but his words ran off Diel’s back like rain off a body bag.
Diel glared at the priest and uttered one single word.
“Run.”
The priest opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words fell from his lips. “Run,” Diel said again, his voice lower and more graveled, his patience slipping. The priest swallowed, released a pained whimper, then bolted for the stairs. Diel’s face split into a wide grin as the monster within him roared and propelled Diel to give chase. Diel burst from the bedroom and toward the staircase the priest was stumbling down.
The priest looked up, one trembling hand on the banister. His eyes widened on seeing Diel approaching, and he tripped, stumbling down several steps as Diel reached the top. The priest crashed to the bottom, moaned and frantically looked up. Diel’s sadistic grin promised all the pain he was about to inflict. The priest tried to get to his feet, but he collapsed back to the ground. His foot sat at the wrong angle. He used his hands on the wooden floor to try and scurry away.
Diel’s monster drew them into a steady walk as they descended the stairs, the priest trapped in their glare. The priest looked back, and a cry ripped from his throat. “Please,” he said, his voice piercing Diel’s head like nails being dragged down a chalkboard.
Please … please … please …
Diel’s head throbbed, a migraine born from an onslaught of fucked-up memories. From Purgatory. Of himself as a boy, tied to a rack as the Brethren priests had pulled the lever, stretching his arms and legs until he felt like they were going to rip off, his abdominal muscles burning like hot coals. His shoulder popping out of place on a thunderous crack, and Diel screaming in agony as the Brethren looked at his broken young body and smiled. “Please,” Diel had whispered. “Please … no more …”
But they never stopped. It only ever got worse. Diel’s monster showed him the past, brought him the pain, then together, they turned their gaze back on the priest. He was one of them. One of the ones who’d tied him to racks, who’d burned him with iron bars, beaten him, flogged him, thrown him in iron maidens for hours on end … this priest belonged to the sect that had fucked him to within an inch of his life.
“Please,” the priest begged again, and Diel stopped on the stairs. His head tilted to the side as he observed the piece of shit on the ground. The monster surveyed him, bathing in his terror like holy water, turned on by his begging, the pleading that the monster most relished.
But then the priest’s pleading halted and his eyes narrowed. “I know you,” he said, and Diel began to shake in rage. “I know your eyes.” Disgust rolled over the priest’s face, then terror once more as Diel moved his hand to the hem of his long-sleeved black shirt and slowly lifted it up. Diel and his monster watched, a collective unit, as the priest’s gaze slammed to the brand that they had forced upon him as a fallen boy. The addition of the wings and sword handle Sela had put on each of the brothers couldn’t disguise the original brand that had been burned into his skin, never to be removed. The upturned cross that had branded him a sinner of the worst kind in the Brethren’s eyes, a soul meant for hell. A heretic of the true Brethren faith.
“No,” the priest whispered. Diel released the hem, the material falling back to the waist of his pants. “You’ll burn in hell,” the priest spat, his ideology and beliefs rising to the surface even when faced with the deadliest of killers—a killer they’d had a hand in creating. “You and the ones who came before. The ones with the hoods.”