by Cole, Tillie
She placed her hand on his cheek and guided his eyes up to meet hers. The need for further confession burned in her soul. “I had to free you from that collar,” she said, quietly, but full of truth. “You were formidable. You were strong, tough, and a killer in the very best of ways.” Noa dropped to her knees, meeting him face to face. “But you were trapped by the collar. Plagued by a symbol of what they had done to you. The chains they had imprisoned you with. You were denying who you truly were, and I couldn’t bear to see it.” She shook her head. “I was selfish. That wasn’t my decision to make. But—”
“You saved me,” Diel said softly. Noa choked on a silent sob. Her heart began to beat harder, faster … but contentedly. “You saved me, Noa.” He kissed her cheeks, then laid a soft kiss to her lips. They were trembling. She was emotionally exposed and vulnerable. But Diel wouldn’t hurt her. He cherished her, cared for her.
He loved her.
“That boy tonight, when I saw him struggle on the plinth, when I saw him fall …”
“You were back there,” Diel said. Noa nodded. He kissed her again, then said against her lips, “I was back there too. Back in that shack with my neglectful mother and her drunk boyfriend. I was weak and too young to save Cara or myself from the Brethren who preyed on us.” Noa blinked away her tears. But they fell harder when Diel whispered brokenly, “Why do they do this to us?” His face was devastated. It screamed hopelessness. “Why do they hurt us, people like us?”
“Because despite what their fucked-up little sect teaches them, they’re not the good guys,” Noa said, her voice gaining strength. She would be Diel’s fiercest protector when he was weakened. And she knew he would be hers.
Noa stared into his bright blue eyes. They were filled with sadness. “You followed me,” she said, running her hands over his stubble. “You broke from your brothers, my sisters, and you followed me to the boy. You helped me save him.”
Diel inched closer, brow pressed to her brow, slightly shaking hands on her jaw. “I would follow you anywhere,” he rasped. “To hell.”
Noa shattered apart. She felt Diel’s unshakable devotion, his love, wrap around her, cocooning her in a light she had only known as a child, as a Wiccan … as the witch she was destined to be.
Noa tucked her head into the crook of Diel’s shoulder and neck, and she cried. She cried and she cried, and she exorcised all the guilt she still retained over the boy who had died in that attic. She cried for her grandma and her family that she had so tragically lost. And she cried for Diel. She cried for little Finn Nolan. She cried for the monster that he’d had to conjure from his own soul to protect himself, to bear the brunt of the pain inflicted on him by evil men.
And she cried for Diel now, Jegudiel, the Fallen’s death-greedy monster. She cried for the grown man who had only just remembered he had a sister. A sister they had no location for.
Noa loved him. She loved him with every cell in her body. She knew the elements, how each one added to the great mystery of life. Diel was her sixth element. She needed him just as much as she needed the rest, arguably more.
Diel lifted Noa to the bed. There was not a single sound but their deep breaths as Diel carefully, and so beautifully, shed their clothes. He moved above her and sank inside her, filling her inch by inch, parted lips, shuttered eyes and roaming hands. And as he brought Noa the highest pleasure, following her over that heartbreaking precipice seconds later, Diel kissed her lips.
He kissed her tenderly and gently, then reared back his head to look her straight in the eyes. “You are charity.” Noa’s lungs stopped working. “You give and give just to save the ones you love.” His eyes shone with emotion. “And those you don’t even know.” The boys. He meant the boy in the attic and the one from the Brethren meeting tonight.
Diel entwined his fingers with hers, bringing their joined hands to lie over her chest. “You saved me. You didn’t know me either. You knew I could hurt you. Could maybe even kill you. Yet you still saved me from that collar. You freed the monster inside me.” His breathing hitched. “You freed the little boy inside me.”
A stray tear fled from the corner of Diel’s eye, and it broke Noa’s heart. “Finn Nolan created that monster to shield himself. Then you came along, a white witch from a coven of fucking warriors, and rescued us both.” Diel’s lips trembled, and Noa began to cry again at how open he was being, at what being freed from his collar had truly meant to him. “You gave me back my past. You gave me back memories of my sister.” Diel blinked the tears from his long black lashes. “You gave me back me.”
“I love you,” Noa said, feeling a seismic shift within her, a crevice that had split around her heavily defended heart, allowing Diel inside. She was his home, and he was hers. His brothers were now hers, and her sisters were now his.
Noa released one of her hands from his and placed it on his cheek. He turned and kissed her palm as if he needed to kiss her and never stop. Noa waited until his attention was focused back on her. “I swear I’ll get your sister back to you too. You won’t just have memories of her any longer.”
Diel exhaled a stuttered breath. “We can all get her back. As a family.” The way he said “family,” as if he had always craved it, as if it had always been the thing he wished for in his prayers each night, destroyed whatever was left of her heart.
Noa nodded and kissed him, showing him without words that he was her entire world. But all the time her mind raced with thoughts of how to get Cara back. And where to even begin.
She pulled back. “Let’s shower and then join your brothers downstairs in the dungeon.” She took one last kiss from Diel. “We have someone in our home who can give us answers.” Noa squeezed his hand, a bloodthirsty smirk etching onto her lips. “Let’s go find out what happened to your sister.”
Chapter 23
Diel dressed in jeans and a sleeveless shirt. Noa was in leggings and one of his black t-shirts. His heart was a fucking loaded canon as he watched her pull the oversized shirt over her head and flick out her long damp hair from the wide neckline. But as his heart swelled, his stomach sank. He recalled watching her break from the phalanx earlier that night. He’d watched her slice through priest after priest like a demonic ghost, trying to get to the boy in the collar.
Diel had never known fear like watching her disappear into a black hole of robed priests. Noa thought herself evil, tainted by hell. But when he watched her, Diel only saw a fucking white witch wearing a goddamn halo. A heart made of pure gold. She thought herself cold, but she showed more love for people than most, a trait he had only ever seen in Gabriel. A charitable soul, only her charitable acts were done in her very Noa way. To Diel, charity didn’t always have to be pure and innocent. It could be given by a person dripping with rage and wielding a fucking unstoppable sword.
As if she knew he was thinking of her, Noa finished dressing, slipped on her boots and came toward Diel, who was sitting on the edge of the bed. She wrapped her arms around his neck, smelling of lavender and mint from the shampoo and body wash she had just used. Diel pulled her down with his hand on the back of her head and kissed her. Then he stood and held out his hand.
“We’d better get down there, or Bara will have gutted him,” Diel said. His heart burst when Noa smiled at that thought and wrapped her fingers around his.
She pulled him to the door. “Come on. We can’t let that ginger loudmouth have all the fun.”
Noa was fucking made for him. She might have resented her inner darkness at times, blamed it for that young boy’s death, but Diel relished it. She was his match in every way that counted.
They descended the stairs, and Noa found her sisters in the Nave, sitting around the dining table. Dinah got to her feet. “You going down there?” she asked Noa.
“Of course,” Noa said. “I want answers.” Diel watched Dinah closely for any sign that she disapproved of his woman and who she was inside. But there was no censure in Dinah’s expression.
Diel relaxed and led Noa dow
n to the cellar. He pushed open the door to the small dungeon-type room he knew the priest was being held in. All his brothers, bar Gabriel, were inside. The priest was on a chair in the center of the space, tied down, eyes rolling as he fought for consciousness.
Uriel flicked his chin to Diel and Noa in greeting. “Perfect timing. He’s just stirring. We kept him knocked out for you.”
Noa released Diel’s hand. Bara smirked. “Blood and torture? My idea of a romantic date,” he said. Diel saw that his redheaded brother had laid out knives, iron pokers, blades and scalpels on a metal tray, ready to make the fucker in the chair spill Brethren secrets.
Sela nodded at Diel, eyes narrowed as he stared the priest down. Diel was pretty sure he was imagining that it was his brother, Auguste, in that chair. Raphael moved to the captive and checked the ropes around his wrists. Then he stood and made a noose from another line of rope, hanging it from the metal loop fixed in the ceiling. Raphael’s golden eyes shone with mirth. “This is fun. We should do it more often. Family bonding.”
Michael stayed in the corner, staring at a vial of blood, turning it over and over, inspecting every crimson drop inside its glass shell. Diel knew it was the blood he had taken from Beth last night. Diel’s head throbbed. So much had happened in such a small amount of time that his head was spinning.
When Diel looked at the priest again, he felt bumps of hatred spreading all over his skin. His blood began to boil, and then the priest opened his eyes, and his gaze fell upon the men and Noa in front of him. His eyes widened, and he thrashed on the chair, trying to fight against his restraints. But Raphael was a master at ropes; the priest would be going nowhere.
The priest’s head whipped around the room. Then his eyes rested on Noa. The priest’s lip curled in disgust as his gaze raked over her body.
Diel’s blood went from zero to one hundred degrees. How dare the priest fucking disrespect Noa so blatantly? Diel was across the room before anyone could speak, throwing an iron fist across the priest’s face. The priest’s head snapped to the side. Diel took hold of the priest’s hair and yanked his head back so quickly he was sure the move would have given the Brethren fucker whiplash.
“You look at her like that one more time and I’ll fucking gouge out your eyes with my blunt nails,” Diel snarled, pulling so hard on the priest’s hair that a clump was ripped out of his scalp.
The priest screamed. Diel tossed the greasy clump of hair to the ground. He paced in front of the priest, trying to remember that they needed him alive, to get answers from him. Diel couldn’t just kill him like he wanted. He had to keep him alive, he—
Diel felt a soothing hand on his arm, and he breathed in deeply when he saw that it was Noa. She nodded at him, silently communicating with him to relax, to rein in his rage. She passed by him and took a scalpel from the tray Bara had laid out for them.
Diel stood in front of the priest, eyes fixed on his and arms crossed over his broad chest. He wanted to be in this fucker’s line of sight. Noa stepped in front of him. Crouching down, she placed the scalpel at his hairline. “We have some questions for you.”
The priest smiled just as coldly as Noa had spoken. “I’ll give you nothing, witch.”
“Oh, goody,” Noa said sarcastically, and pushed the scalpel into his skin. Blood bubbled from the small cut. Michael shifted excitedly in the corner at the arrival of blood. “You know me.”
The priest hissed as Noa dragged the scalpel down the left side of his face half an inch. “I know of you, heathen. I know your family worshipped the devil, that you were created from the spawn of Satan himself, and my brothers slayed them, ridding the world of their evil.”
“You’re the spawn of Satan?” Uriel said to Noa. The tall blond shrugged, his tattoos dancing on his arms as he did so. “I knew I liked you.”
The priest hissed again as Noa moved the scalpel down to his cheek. His skin split, but his eyes were on Uriel. The look he gave Diel’s heavily pierced brother was filled with pure hatred.
“So, here’s what’s going to happen,” Noa said, bringing the priest’s attention back to her. “You’re going to tell me what I want to know, or I’m going to let my man here, and each of my brothers, hurt you. One by one, in whatever way they want.” The priest’s face paled, but he pressed his lips together firmly, symbolically sealing them shut.
Noa nodded. “We’re looking for someone. A young woman, early twenties. She has a birthmark covering half of her face and is blind in one eye. Black hair, and eyes the color of his,” she said, pointing at Diel, who was still behind Noa, a bloodhound at her back.
The priest’s body didn’t move, but there was a twitch in his cheek and a glimmer of something in his eye at Noa’s question. Hope burst in Diel’s chest. Noa tilted her head to the side. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you? Or you know of her?” she pushed. But the priest turned his head away and didn’t answer.
Noa dropped the scalpel and got to her feet. She nodded at Bara. Bara smiled wide. He stepped forward, a compact blowtorch in his hand. He flicked the switch, blue flame morphing to warm tones, and edged toward the priest.
Noa moved beside Diel, and he watched, blood rushing through his veins, as Bara stripped the priest of his black robe until his skin was revealed. The branded “B” on his chest offended Diel’s fucking eyes. The priest sat stoic throughout, as if he had been trained to withstand torture. He only broke into a sweat when Bara began to scorch the skin of his arms and chest.
“Anything to say yet?” Noa asked when the dungeon reeked of charred flesh. Bara stayed close, shifting from side to side excitedly.
“Die, devil’s whore,” the priest snarled, breathless from enduring so much pain.
The slur was a red flag to Diel. He rushed forward, grabbed a knife, and plunged it straight into the priest’s shoulder until only the handle could be seen. Then he twisted the blade, slowly. The priest shook. His face reddened with agony, sweat poured from his forehead, and his teeth clenched as he tried to withstand the assault.
But Diel kept twisting and twisting, until Noa ran her hand up Diel’s back, signaling for him to withdraw. Diel forced himself to pull back. Noa crouched down and said, “Where is the woman?”
The priest laughed manically. His eyes narrowed on Noa as he hissed, “You’ll never find her.” Every muscle in Diel’s body locked; he was paralyzed by the priest’s words. His heart fired into a sprint, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe.
Cara was alive. She was fucking alive. The priest knew of her.
Noa stood and nodded at Uriel. Uriel took a large set of needles from the metal tray and walked slowly toward the priest. Noa came to stand before Diel as Uriel begin to pierce the mass of needles into the priest’s flesh, slow and deep. All over his body—his arms, his legs, his cheeks. Then Uriel pushed a needle into his groin, just beside his balls.
Noa’s hand on Diel’s arm drew his attention from the moaning priest to her. “You okay?” she whispered, low enough for only him to hear. Diel didn’t fucking know if he was okay. This bastard priest knew Cara, or he knew of her, and he wasn’t spilling shit.
Diel’s little sister was alive, which brought him relief. But she was with them, imprisoned somehow by them, which made him want to rip this fucker apart, then tear through every Brethren faction in the city until he found her.
Yet Diel nodded at Noa, giving nothing away with this prick in this room. By the knowing glint in her eye, he guessed Noa saw his true feelings.
When Uriel was done and the priest a human pin cushion, needles pushed into the parts of his body that would bring him most discomfort, Noa nodded at Sela. Sela approached the priest with the sharpest blade Diel had ever seen. The priest’s blood-curdling screams sounded as sweet as a fucking lullaby as Sela robbed the priest of two fingers and an entire ear.
The priest was moaning now, edging into delirium. Noa stepped forward. “The woman? Where is she?” The priest’s head dropped. Noa slapped him around the face. “Where. Is. She?”
“Eat … shit … witch,” the priest slurred, and Diel nodded to Raphael. Raphael’s golden eyes gleamed as he reached for the noose he had attached to the ceiling and carefully wrapped it around the priest’s neck.
Raphael tightened the rope around the priest’s neck until the priest was silently screaming for breath. Then Raphael, his usual string tight around his finger, yanked on the pulley. The noose began to drag the priest off the floor, the chair legs hovering an inch off the ground. His neck took the brunt of his weight; the rope’s fibers tore at his skin.
Noa slid her hand into Diel’s and squeezed, her eyes light with satisfaction as the priest fought for air, fought to be released. He choked, legs and arms desperately trying to break from Raphael’s ties. But it was futile.
Eventually, Raphael lowered him back to the ground, and the noose slackened enough to allow him to breathe. The priest gasped for air, then he let out a scream, filled with frustration—filled with the opening notes of defeat.
Noa rushed toward him. “The woman? Tell us where the woman is, and this will stop.” Diel smirked to himself. Because he knew his woman. This would never stop. This priest was going to bear the brunt of all the Fallen’s hatred toward his fellow black-robed brothers and their fucked-up organization.
The priest’s eyes rolled. Noa lifted his head by his hair. “Where is she?”
The priest fought unconsciousness, the pins still in his body, the knife Diel had inserted in his shoulder still handle-deep. Blood seeped from the wound. He was bleeding from where Sela had taken his fingers and ear. He was losing blood, and Michael was watching him from the corner of the room as if the priest was his next meal.
“The …” The priest tried to swallow through the noose around his neck. “She’s a … Sh-shunned,” he stuttered, his voice barely audible, ruined by pain and the rope. But Diel heard it. Noa whipped her head to Diel, eyes wide.
Diel shot forward, crouching down beside Noa. “Shunned? What are the fucking Shunned?” When the priest’s eyes rolled again, Diel grabbed him by the shoulders and wrenched him and his chair off the floor until his eyes met Diel’s. “What are the fucking Shunned?”