The Brethren’s only failure in over four hundred years.
Well, one of seven.
Father Murray jumped into his van and pulled out onto the downtown streets. The sun was beginning to rise. Another day of the Lord. The sound of a body rolling around the cabin filled the van, but the priest paid it no mind. He would dispose of the body, find Father Quinn, and tell him what he had discovered.
It was time to act.
It was time to complete the exorcism that had begun so many years ago.
An hour later, Father Murray pulled into the crematorium outside of the city. He drove the van into the underground parking lot and jumped out. The undertaker came to the back of the van and wordlessly took the body from the cabin and carried her off to the incinerator.
When the undertaker came back, Father Murray smiled as he noticed the rosary he wore, a crucifix with a “B” embossed on the center of Jesus’s chest. The wider church had no idea what greatness walked among them. Knights of Jesus, Warriors of the Lord, keeping the faith safe by eradicating evil they could only imagine in their worst nightmares. And it wasn’t just priests who were part of the Brethren and their mission, but men in both high and low places.
The Pope and the Catholic Church were oblivious to who lived under their banner. It had been that way for over a century. And as the years passed, the Brethren only grew in strength.
They were unstoppable.
And they would never be defeated.
The undertaker took a hose and spray and began dousing the back of the van with chemicals. It was important to remove all traces of the sinners they killed. Every detail must be attended to with complete professionalism. Father Quinn made sure the men of his cloth never made it close to a mission without mastering how to eradicate any evidence that an exorcism had been made.
The priest rocked on anxious feet as he waited for the undertaker to complete the cleanse. He bit his nails as he pictured Raphael’s eyes in his mind. That smile. That olive skin and dark hair. Hair that was much longer than it had been in Purgatory.
Raphael had been beautiful as a boy. But as a man, he was unrivaled. Beauty was a sin, vanity the worst of all. And it was clear that Satan had blessed Raphael, his precious denizen, with extreme beauty to lure in his victims. Weak sinners wouldn’t stand a chance under Raphael’s hypnotic attention.
His kills must be so easy.
It was why Raphael needed to die. He was too powerful to remain on this earth. A deadly magnet to innocent, lost souls.
Thirty minutes later, Father Murray was heading back toward Boston, no trace of the woman who was now ash in the sky. When he’d parked the van, he ran into the shower, scrubbing the whore’s poisonous touch from his skin. Just the memory of his hand around her throat made blood fill his cock. He didn’t want it. Didn’t want the act of strangulation to still be attractive, to make heat travel over his skin and bones.
He took hold of the fine needle he kept in a small plastic case in the shower, breathed through his nostrils, and pushed the needle into the tip of his penis. Father Murray clenched his jaw, fighting back a scream as the needle sank in deep.
Gasping, he dropped to his knees. The hot water turned cold as it rained down on his bowed head. Insufferable agony suffused his every cell. Father Murray opened his eyes. Blood poured over the shower floor. He bared his teeth in disgust at his own weakness. At the hardening that never left him. Even after his exorcism and years in Purgatory, the feel of a slender neck under his palms, the last desperate gasp for life, and the frosting over of the eyes still caused him to become aroused. But Father Murray had married himself to the Brethren. He had forsaken sexual desires and would not succumb to his baser urges. He wouldn’t sacrifice his soul as he had once done.
After a deep breath, he jammed the needle the rest of the way into his hard flesh. He screamed at the blinding pain and toppled to the side, curling into a fetal position on the tiled floor. Blood washed from his cock and down the drain toward the depths of hell. He breathed in long deep breaths, fighting through the torture.
Then, mercifully, his cock began to deflate. Father Murray watched as he slowly lost his erection. The pain from the invasive needle began to numb as triumph smothered lust. A deadly sin to which he would no longer succumb.
He lay there for minutes and minutes, until his body had calmed and a heady peace swelled through his veins—peace birthed by victory, good defeating evil. He slowly extracted the needle from his unaroused penis. Blood seeped from the tip, crimson red, but blood penance was the price to pay for the temporary darkness he had allowed into his body.