Raphael (Deadly Virtues #1)(62)

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.