Raphael (Deadly Virtues #1)(31)

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.

Raphael was breathing heavily, the muscles on his bare torso strained and tight. Gabriel’s eyes dropped to the sword-and-angel-wing emblem they all wore. The one they all had had branded on them when they signed their oaths to the Fallen brotherhood. The brand that eradicated the upturned cross the Brethren had scarred on their flesh when they were kids. It was his and his brothers’ way of taking back some semblance of control from the priests who had chipped away at everything they were, who’d played with their bodies like toys and crushed their spirits until there was little left to be salvaged.

It was the emblem that bound them in their odd brotherhood. Right now, Gabriel felt it only mocked who they were, how far they had all come.

“You’ve made a mockery of that brand,” Gabriel said aloud, purging his inner thoughts. He pointed at the sword and wings on Raphael’s chest. “You have taken everything we are, the blood oath, our brotherhood, our commandments, and turned your back on us. All for a woman.”

“She’s not just a woman,” Raphael said calmly. Calmly, but darkly. “She’s my one.”

Gabriel resisted the need to run his hands over his face or show in his expression just how much Raphael’s actions had hurt him. Instead, he kept his face neutral. From the minute his brothers had escaped Purgatory years ago, Gabriel had had to be their leader. They could never see him weak. Gabriel took a step closer. Raphael watched him intently. Gabriel couldn’t equate this savage with the man he knew. Raphael had always been one of the closest to Gabriel. Right now, that friend appeared lost, focused on one thing only—the young woman with pale skin, a slender neck, and thick hair that fell to her thighs.

“Was she holding the rosary?”

Raphael clenched his jaw and gripped the bars tighter.

“Was she holding the rosary, Raphe? Was she holding the rosary of the Brethren when you met her in the club?”

Raphael glared at Gabriel; Gabriel didn’t break the challenge. Finally, Raphael exhaled a furious breath. “Yes.”

Gabriel heard the low murmurs of anger from his brothers behind him. His heart sank. He thought back to the woman, how terrified she had been when Diel attacked. Her wide eyes, the way she cowered, the way her eyes dropped to the floor, a victim alerting her attacker to her utter submission.