by Tillie Cole
Maria glanced down at herself. Needing something better to wear, she went to the room she knew Raphael changed in. When she entered, it was to find another closet, smaller than the one she had been staying in. Maria’s hand ran over the clothes. Each item smelled of Raphael. It made her feel warm.
Spotting the silk pants he liked to wear, she slipped them on and picked up a black shirt that lay discarded the floor. It was recently worn. As she pulled it on, the hem dropping to her thighs, she breathed in fresh water and sea salt. To her, the scent was Raphael.
Maria walked from the closet and to the locked doors. As quietly as possible, she turned the locks and slipped outside into the hallway. She walked along the hallways, down the stairs, and across the foyer. And she drank it all in. She admired the old paintings that hung on the walls. The expensive carpets and furnishings. She became lost in the mansion, letting her feet lead her wherever they wished her to go. And with every step she felt the shackles of her past begin to drift away. Raphael had done that.
They had done that together.
Maria was just about to make her way back up the stairs when she heard pained cries and grunts from behind a nearby door. She heard the cracking of what sounded remarkably like a whip. Maria’s heart raced with unease. She knew she should have left, fled for the safety of Raphael and his room. But seeing the door slightly open, Maria followed the sound of anguished moans and peeked inside. Her face blanched; in the center of a stone floor, Father Gabriel sat, naked, his back bleeding from the stripes he was forcing onto his flesh. Maria jumped when the scourge he was holding whacked into his skin, splitting his back, blood sprouting from the wound. His head was bowed and he was breathless. His back was ruined . . . just like Raphael’s.
Maria’s mind whirled. Who were these men? What had happened to make them hate themselves so much? Cause themselves this much pain? She had no idea if the other brothers in the house were the same, but after seeing Raphael and now Gabriel force such atrocities onto themselves, she guessed they probably were.
As Gabriel went to strike himself again, Maria snapped. She rushed through the door and caught his wrist. Gabriel started, his head of blond curls whipping in her direction. His pained blue eyes widened. Maria’s stomach fell when on his thighs she saw cilices. One on each leg, slicing into the muscle. “Gabriel,” she whispered, sadness lacing each word.
At the sound of his name, Gabriel dropped the scourge and pulled back his arm. He scrambled to his feet and rushed across the room to cover himself with a robe. But Maria saw his skin—barely an inch hadn’t been scarred. Like Raphael, he had the same tattoo of a sword and angel wings on his chest.
Maria realized she had no idea what was happening in this house. With these men.
Gabriel turned, blood seeping through the flannel of his white robe. “What are you doing here, Maria?”
Maria ignored his question and picked the well-used bloodied scourge off the floor. She observed the seven thongs, knotted with ropes and boasting sharp blades. “Gabriel,” she whispered. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”
Gabriel ran his hand through his hair. “You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me.” Maria needed answers. She needed to know what was happening in this mansion. Something in her gut compelled her to find out.
Gabriel looked up at her. He laughed without mirth. “You are with the Brethren. You wouldn’t understand.” He shrugged, his face showing an expression of blatant disgust. “Or maybe you would. Maybe you have seen the cause of this first hand.” Maria was shocked to see Gabriel’s eyes grow dark and intimidating. She never thought he would have such a side to him.
Then again, she didn’t know him at all.
Maria frowned, remembering his comment. Gabriel was watching her closely, a hawk on his prey. Maria shook her head. “Who? Who are the Brethren? What are you talking about?”
Gabriel opened his mouth to speak, but then a look of confusion took over his face. “The Brethren,” he said plainly. His eyes never left her; they narrowed as if trying to read something in her face. Before she could ask more questions, Gabriel stepped closer to Maria. He took the scourge from her hand. Maria noticed him wincing as he walked. The pain he must be in from the stripes and the cilices . . .
Gabriel placed the scourge in a closet, then turned to her, arms folded. “You work for Father Quinn.” His voice was tight with unshed anger.
“I . . . I don’t work for them,” Maria said. She wouldn’t do it anymore, even if they ever found her. Not after what she had just shared with Raphael.
Seeing a chair and table close by, she sat down, the fight dropping from her shoulders. Maria met Gabriel’s face, and she crossed her hands on her lap. “I’m a novitiate at Sisters of Our Lady of Grace. I am about to take final vows.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “A nun?”
“Or soon to be.”
He stood in contemplative silence for a couple of minutes then sat down at the other side of the table. Maria cast her eyes around the room. There was another table at the back, with a plate of bread on top. Maria saw vials of some description beside the plate, but Gabriel’s heavy sigh pulled her attention away before she could discover what was in them. “How . . . how did you meet him? Father Quinn?”
“He’s my mentor.”
Gabriel ran his hand over his face. He had large bags underneath his eyes. He looked tired and horrifically tormented. “Gabriel.” Maria pointed to his chest. “What is the emblem you and Raphael wear? Who are the Brethren? I’m so confused.”
Gabriel regarded her harshly for what seemed like an eternity, until he sat back in his chair, and all the fight left his tense shoulders too. His eyes glossed over, and Maria knew he was no longer looking at her, but lost somewhere in his head. She sat on the edge of her seat, a foreboding ache in her stomach.
“We were orphans.” Maria’s heart plummeted at the pain in Gabriel’s voice. “Some of us from being babies. Some of us from being small children.” Maria understood “we” to mean his and Raphael’s brothers. “We were sent to Holy Innocents Home and School for Children.” Gabriel blinked and met Maria’s awaiting gaze. “We were under the guardianship and mentorship of Father Quinn.”
Ice shards crystalized in Maria’s blood. Father Quinn. Gabriel smiled, but there was an underlying agony on his tight lips. “I was his star pupil. I dreamed of becoming a priest. I was intent on pledging my life to the church.” He nodded in her direction. “Like you, I imagine.”
Maria smiled tightly. It was not true. Maria had only chosen the church when her family had been killed and God had granted her a miracle by saving her life. Her marriage to Christ was a bounty to be paid, not a lifelong dream.
“But my brother . . .” Gabriel stopped when Maria’s eyebrows pulled together. “Michael.” Maria tried to remember which man from the dining room that had been. Clearly reading her, Gabriel answered, “The one with fangs and a vial of blood around his neck.” Maria remembered him all too well. He’d appeared vampiric and had a disturbing blankness in his blue eyes. “Michael. My true, full blood brother was always different. He held a darkness inside him from when we were small children. I always believed it was because we watched our mother die slowly . . .” He trailed off, not finishing that tale. “But I was wrong. Michael just liked blood, and to hurt people.” Gabriel sighed. “To cut a very long story short, Father Quinn, Father McCarthy, and Father Brady took him away after he hurt another student. I didn’t know where. I was told by a friend that they were taken to an underground building on the church’s grounds. Known as Purgatory.” Gabriel made sure he was looking right into her eyes when he said, “A place where a secret sect of Catholic priests, known as the Brethren, take boys they deem evil, torture them, rape them, and one day either convert them to their cause . . . or kill them.”
It sounded like fantasy. For a moment Maria entertained the notion that all of the men in the manor were insane. That what Gabriel was saying was nothing but
his dark imagination’s peculiar manifestation. But then she thought of Raphael’s harshness and need for control . . . Gabriel’s scourge, his cilices. “No,” Maria whispered, shaking her head in disbelief.
Gabriel sat forward, clasping his hands together as though in prayer. “I pretended to be evil to get inside. I had to find Michael.” A haunted expression overwhelmed his gentle features. “He was there. Michael, and every other brother you have seen in this house.”
“Raphael,” Maria murmured, her chest constricting as though a weight pressed on top of her. Gabriel nodded sadly. Maria tried to imagine a young Raphael, orphaned, lonely, and in pain. It split her heart in two. What must he have been through?
“Maria, Father Quinn is the high priest of the Brethren. We escaped. They have been searching for us ever since.”
Maria breathed deeply, trying to keep calm . . . then it became clear. She had been used to lure in Raphael. Fathers Quinn and Murray had used her to capture Raphael under the guise of her final vows . . . not a task from her church, but from this “Brethren.” “Why?” she whispered. “Why do they want you back so badly?”
“They believe us to be evil let loose in the world. A failure they must fix. The Brethren are a modern extension of the Spanish Inquisition, Maria. If you know anything about the devices and torture techniques used in that time by the Inquisitors, you’ll understand how sadistic Father Quinn and the Brethren are in their beliefs and methods.”
Vomit crept up Maria’s throat. She couldn’t believe it. Devices? The Inquisition? Gabriel had to be mistaken. She said as much. “I . . . Are you telling the truth?”
Gabriel’s face clouded with anger, and he opened the lapels of his robe. “This is the brand we have created for ourselves. We are the Fallen. All of us were renamed by the Brethren after archangels. A mockery of our dark and sinful natures. As children, they forced the Saint Peter’s cross on our chests to show us for the heathens that we were.” Gabriel pulled his robe closed. Maria was trapped in a state of shocked numbness. “We called ourselves the Fallen. It helped us bond. It helped keep us sane.”
Maria had felt the brand marks on Raphael’s chest. She closed her eyes and recalled him hitting himself in the groin. The cage he kept his penis trapped in, and the way he held onto the post of the bed as though he were being flogged from behind. The screams in the night, the sweat, the nightmares . . .
It was true. Everything Gabriel said was true.
“No . . .” Maria whispered, her voice breaking and eyes flooding with tears. Meeting Gabriel’s eyes, she confessed, “They told me I was to take on a mission before my final vows for the church. To apprehend a powerful and dangerous killer so they could take him off the streets and away from harming others. I did so . . . because of my past.” Maria explained her parents’ murder, her kidnapping, to Gabriel. He listened intently. When she was finished, Gabriel rubbed his tired eyes.
“They used you, Maria. They used you. They knew of your past and exploited it for their own ends. They think little of women. It’s in their creed, that women are daughters of Eve and temptresses prone to sin. You were a tool.”
Maria’s hands shook. She kept them in her lap for fear of being consumed by rage. When she had calmed some, she asked, “They must kill? Your brothers? They are all murderers?”
Gabriel laughed, but there was no humor in his voice. “It was my idea. I am able to find people who enjoy the less savory things in life, people who do evil things. I send my brothers out to kill people who deserve it before they kill innocents—because they would. They kill other killers, those worse than they are.” He gazed at the flames of the lit fire beside them. “I believed it was because of their start in life. I believed, with all my heart, that they could be cured.” Gabriel met Maria’s eyes, and she could feel the pain emanating from his body. “I was wrong.” He sucked in a breath. “I think they were born that way, after all. I think there is a darkness that lives inside them all. A darkness that can’t be defeated. I can no longer pretend it isn’t true.” Gabriel’s face paled. “You being here is proof of it. You should never have been brought here. Raphael defied orders when he saw you. But . . .” Gabriel pointed at Maria’s hair. “You are Raphael’s greatest fantasy, Maria. Father Quinn used you because he knew Raphael and what would draw him in.”
“What was that?”
Gabriel pointed at her hair again. “That.”
Maria thought of all the ways Raphael had stroked her hair, combed it, dried it, humming “Ring a-round the Roses.” Her hair was always in his hands. She didn’t want to know how he wanted to kill her. Some things were better left alone.
“It was more Father Murray,” Maria said.
Gabriel froze. “What?” Gabriel’s face paled. “Father Francis Murray? Young, dark hair and eyes?” he said quickly. Maria nodded. Gabriel closed his eyes. Her heart missed a beat at his strange reaction.
“Gabriel—”
“Raphael,” was all he said, before closing his eyes and dropping his head.
Gabriel’s reaction caused dread to seep into Maria’s bones. “What? Please tell me.”
Gabriel shook his head. “It’s not for me to tell.” He got to his feet and gazed into the fire. “They beat me. They tortured me.” Gabriel’s hand fisted and his eyes squeezed shut. “They . . . they raped me.” A choked sob ripped from Maria’s tight throat. “Over and over for years.” Gabriel turned to Maria, but he had nothing left in his eyes but emptiness. As if the memories he was sharing had drained the life from his very soul. “It was Father Quinn. I was Father Quinn’s charge.”
Maria’s eyes closed and she tried to breathe. She no longer doubted Gabriel’s word. She saw in his eyes, posture, and broken voice that it was all true. And if it had happened to Gabriel . . . Maria’s eyes snapped open. “Raphael,” she murmured. “It happened to him too, didn’t it? To all your brothers.” She held her breath, praying she was wrong.
“That’s his story to tell, Maria. I won’t betray his trust that way.”
But Maria knew it was true. Realization hit. Father Murray . . . Gabriel’s reaction to Father Murray’s name. Had he been the one to hurt Raphael? Had he forced himself on him?
Maria got to her feet, unable to stay seated. “You hurt yourself because you feel guilt.” It wasn’t a question. Gabriel’s very soul pulsed with self-disgust and shame.
He laughed sadly. “I pledged myself to God as a teen, only to do the devil’s work instead. I deserve to be punished. I deserve to burn in hell.”
Maria went to leave the room, her spirit defeated and exhausted. She was unsure how to offer comfort to a man who was so far gone with self-hatred. And if she was being honest with herself, she wanted—no, needed—to get back to Raphael. Some magnetic force was drawing her back to his side. She felt raw, and she knew only Raphael could make her feel whole.
But just as Maria was about to leave, she glanced over at the table in the corner. She froze. The vials she had seen from her seat were filled with blood. Crumbs of blood-soaked bread lay beside them. She ran her fingers over her inner arm where Gabriel had drawn her blood.
She looked back at the Fallen’s leader. “You’re a sin-eater.”
Gabriel’s head fell. Maria moved to the table and ran her hand over the worn wood. And she saw them. She saw the vials lined up, name tags on each. Michael, Selaphiel, Barachiel, Jegudiel, Raphael, Uriel . . . Maria . . .
Maria gasped at seeing her name. At seeing her vial of blood depleted and used. He had eaten her sins. Gabriel had taken the old-fashioned ritual that had died out years ago and tried to cleanse her soul of any sin by taking it on himself.
“I can’t see them die with so much evil in their veins. I love them. They’re my brothers.” Gabriel’s voice cracked. “They’re all I have. If there is any way to save them, I’ll do it.”
Maria’s heart broke for the man who held such a burden in his soul. “And me?” she asked.
Gabriel sighed but, meeting her gaze head-on, said,
“Raphael will kill you, Maria. It’s who he is. That will never change.” Her pulse thundered in her chest at his frank words. He walked to where she stood and placed his hands on her shoulders. “When Raphe brought you home I had to protect us. I couldn’t send you back to our torturers only for you to tell them where we lived. I had to protect my brothers . . . I couldn’t save your life, but I wanted to save your soul.”
Maria nodded, a lump building in her throat at the words he was saying. That he was trying to save her when all was lost . . . and that Raphael, no matter how hard she wished otherwise, would eventually stop her heart.
She covered Gabriel’s hand with her own. If he felt her shaking, he was kind enough not to say so. “You’re a good man, Gabriel.” Maria smiled, though it was strained. “You would have made a good priest. Better than the ones who mistreated you.”
“Thank you,” Gabriel said, genuinely seeming to mean it. He stepped back. Maria watched him open the closet doors and pull out the bloodied scourge. She watched him de-robe and drop to his knees on the stone floor. Maria turned before she could see the scourge ripping into him, but she heard the horrific sounds of the rope hitting flesh.
In a daze, Maria shut the door, her mind racing with too many thoughts to count. The Brethren’s existence, what had been done to Gabriel and his brothers . . . and Raphael. The pain he must have suffered as a child. The torture . . . the rape.
And despite it all, all that they had shared, he would kill her.
It was simply who he was.
Maria followed her feet back to Raphael’s suite. He still slept soundly. Maria shed her clothes, putting them back where she found them. Then she climbed back into bed. Raphael’s eyes cracked open, his arm threading around her waist and pulling her near. His eyebrows pulled together in tired confusion. “I needed to use the bathroom,” she lied. “Sleep.” Raphael, still half asleep, awarded Maria with the brightest, most beautiful smile she had ever witnessed. It left her completely enamored.