Raphael stopped when he reached the Nave. He opened the file on the vast wooden table at which the Fallen ate their meals. The bitch’s face in a photograph was the first thing he saw. Angela Bankfoot. A slim, tall blonde, pumped full of silicone, Botox, and fillers. But he didn’t gave a shit about her face or even her figure. It was her neck his eyes focused on. His head tilted to the side. Her neck was of adequate size. Not slender enough to make it the most exciting target yet, but sufficient to make the kill sweet enough to sate the darkness that roared inside his heart.
Raphael’s lip curled in disgust when he looked at her hair. Peroxide-blond hair that fell to the tops of her shoulders. Not as long as he craved. Raphael’s hands balled into fists on the tabletop, his eyes closed, and he breathed deeply though his rabid disappointment. Pulling himself together, he refocused on the file. He smirked when he saw where the bitch liked to go for pleasure.
A place Raphael knew all too well.
Angela Bankfoot liked fucked-up play. Unluckily for her, so did Raphael. The bitch had no idea what was coming.
“Well?” Sela asked.
Raphael stood, and his brothers gathered around him. At least, five of them did. Gabriel would still be in the Tomb, no doubt praying to God to forgive his soul for giving Raphael the mission. The self-hatred would be eating him alive, the agony of being judge and juror of someone’s soul.
It was a fool’s move. God had no place in their lives, in the manor. He’d abandoned them all a long time ago, letting his agents of sin fuck them and hit them, making them more fucked up than they’d ever been before.
A hand waved in front of his face. When Raphael’s vision cleared, it was to see Bara and his flame-red hair. His green eyes were alight with excitement. “Good target?”
Raphael pointed at the photograph of Bankfoot.
A hand landed on his shoulder. Sela. “Too bad she isn’t the one, brother,” he said. Sela leaned in closer for a better look. His long brown hair fell on the picture and, for a moment, made it look as though Bankfoot’s hair dropped all the way below her big, fake tits. Raphael hissed at the sight. Bara smirked, knowing exactly what had made him temporarily lose his shit.
“Maybe next time.” Sela stood back, moving his hair, ripping the fantasy away. He studied the photograph. “But she’d be easy to recreate. All that surgery makes for an easy death mask.” His eyes flared. Sela made masks of all his victims. Hung them in his room, so they would look down at him as he slept. “And those rubber lips would feel wicked good around my cock.” He shrugged. “At least until I cut them from her face and put them in a jar.”
“Where will you find her?” Diel asked. The black-haired, blue-eyed brother pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. His head twitched every few minutes, the tell that he was fighting for control of the killer inside. The part of him that would throw him into a killing spree. His collar buzzed, the telltale sign that Gabriel had it switched to automatic control. The minute Diel moved too fast, pulse increasing, feet picking up, switching from a walk into a run, it would activate, shooting in excess of fifty-thousand volts into his body and bringing him to his knees.
Raphael went to reply, but he was interrupted.
“Her blood would be vile.”
The men all looked to Michael, who rarely spoke. If he ever did, it was mostly to Raphael. For whatever reason, Michael had always been more drawn to him than to the others. Michael’s ice-blue eyes showed nothing but repulsion toward the target. He pushed back his black hair from his eyes. “All that Botox and shit takes the refinement from the flavor.” Michael flicked his tongue along his sharpened teeth, along the fangs he’d had made that were now permanently attached into his gums. Michael shrugged, then addressed Raphael, meeting his gaze. “If you choked her hard enough, you could always make her eyes bleed.” Michael’s nostrils flared. “That would be a sight to see.”
Diel turned the file around to face him. “Sex dungeons,” he said, amused. “Your favorite place to reside, Raphe. Apart from her hair, it’s what you like most, yeah?”
Raphael nodded. “And she frequents my favorite club too.” Raphael smiled and met each of his brothers’ eyes. “The most extreme and fucked-up toys to play with.”
“Wicked good,” Diel replied, smiling coldly too.
“She needs to be killed slowly.” Uriel moved closer to Raphael to see the picture in more detail. His voice had dropped into a low growl. “The whore is in love with herself. All that shitty work.” His mouth curled in disgust. “Murder the bitch over hours. Make the cunt scream until her voice gives out.” Uriel rubbed the spot over his upper chest, above the Fallen’s brand that they all wore with pride. Uriel’s body was littered with piercings and tattoos, marring every inch of his skin but for his neck and face. He was tracing one of the many words he had inked into his skin, the biggest one. The one that read “UGLY.” It was ironic; Uriel’s face was anything but. Uriel’s gray eyes met Raphael’s gaze. “When you’ve done it, you come and tell me how loud she wailed. How much you fucking made her pay. I need to know. I need to know every second of her pain, or I won’t be able to sleep.”