Gabriel held up his hands. “I won’t hurt you. I promise. But please, follow me.” Maria didn’t really have a choice. She followed the priest out of the dining room, across the vast foyer and to a locked door. A day room was on the other side. Gabriel handed her a bottle of water. “I need to speak to Raphe. I’ll lock you in here. No one has the key but me. You’ll be safe.”
“You’re not like them,” Maria said as Gabriel turned to leave.
Gabriel looked over his shoulder and gave her a sad smile. “Don’t let the clothes deceive you.” He ran his hand over his shirt. “I’m more like them than you know.” With that he left the room, leaving her alone. Maria curled up on the chair. The blue and white floral wallpaper in the large room seemed to close in on her. Clutching the bottle of water to her chest, she prayed to God for guidance. What was she meant to do? Stay and try to minister to Raphael’s darkness? Or beg to leave? To escape this strange and dark place?
I’ll leave it to you, Lord, to show me the way. Whatever you decide, I will obey.
As Maria endeavored to remain calm, she couldn’t get the sight of Raphael’s back from her mind or the echo of his words in her head . . . She is mine . . .
She is mine.
Chapter Six
With every step Gabriel took toward the Tomb, Raphael’s roars of fury grew louder. When Gabriel reached the top of the spiral stone staircase that would lead him down to his brothers, he reached out his hand and took a deep breath. His eyes closed, and the choking feel of dread attacked his chest. He rested his back against the cold stone for strength and opened his eyes. He stared at the commandments written in black calligraphy on the stone wall opposite. The rules the Fallen must adhere to in order to make their system work. The system that kept innocent lives safe, but allowed his brothers to satisfy their murderous urges. One line in particular seemed to pulse from the stone in bold.
Thou shalt not kill an innocent.
He thought back to the young woman in the day room. The woman with hair that reached her thighs. She was pretty, slight, innocent-looking, perhaps submissive in nature . . . and that hair . . . She was Raphael’s ultimate fantasy made flesh.
Gabriel smacked his hand against the wall. “I should have known,” he whispered to no one but himself and God. He should have known that his brothers, when face to face with their fantasy kills, wouldn’t be able to resist. In that moment, no commandment or edict given by him would be obeyed. The truth was, the darkness that lived inside them controlled them. It indulged Gabriel’s pathetic attempts to keep it on a leash for a while, making him feel like their system had some kind of authority over their baser desires. But all this time the darkness had simply been waiting to break free.
Gabriel pushed his fingers through his hair. He didn’t know what to do. In ten years, even before that in Holy Innocents and Purgatory, Gabriel had always been able to think of a way to protect Michael, then his new brothers. But right now, he didn’t know what to do. Raphael needed to be punished. His golden-eyed brother would know this. But Gabriel had no idea what to do about the woman. She was so young. Looked barely twenty-one. And if she had been sent by the Brethren, what color was her soul? Was she another unrighteous member of the group who had inflicted nothing but pain on Gabriel and his brothers for too many years, changing them all in ways they could not repair?
“Let me out!” Raphael’s lethal voice climbed up the stone staircase, as vicious and ungodly as a demon scuttling up from the depths of hell.
Gabriel barely recognized his brother. Raphael was always calm. Controlled. Composed. Right now, he was anything but.
Gabriel descended the steps, and as he drew closer to the Tomb, he felt the evil he tried to keep at bay begin to chip at the small amount of goodness left in his soul. When Gabriel entered the Tomb, he saw Raphael in the cell in the corner. In ten years, the only brother who had had to occupy it was Diel, and only when he couldn’t control himself. On seeing Gabriel, Raphael wrapped his hands around the bars and yanked on the metal. “Let me out, Gabe. She’s mine. You won’t take her from me. She’s mine, and I’m having her whether you approve or not. You’re not taking this from me. Not after I’ve found her.”
Gabriel could feel the eyes of his other brothers on him as they stood around the room, watching his every move. For once they were all silent. Even Bara had nothing to say. Raphael’s eyes were wild, showing Gabriel just how close his brother was to the edge. Gabriel stopped in front of the cell but out of Raphael’s reach. It saddened Gabriel that, right now, he couldn’t trust Raphael. He had always trusted his brother.