Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 146722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 734(@200wpm)___ 587(@250wpm)___ 489(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 734(@200wpm)___ 587(@250wpm)___ 489(@300wpm)
He fought it for his brothers. He did it for Gabriel. But this moment, right now, when the monster was pacing, readying to be freed, to kill, to sate its constant bloodlust, was what Diel lived for. The blissful moment when Gabe turned off the collar and Diel gave himself over to the darkness—no pain, no fight, no guilt, just the hedonistic abandon of any good that remained hidden inside his body. He knew Gabriel had his back, and he could abandon the fight, the struggle, and just sink into evil.
There were no windows in the back of the van. Gabriel sat in the passenger seat as Winston, the manor’s driver, drove them to the first house.
Diel’s lip curled and he fought back a snarl at the thought of the house. Of who lived inside. One of the Brethren. Gabriel had finally set their sights on the Brethren. Diel closed his eyes and thought back to Maria and Gabriel gathering the brothers and informing them things were about to change.
* * *
Diel’s head twitched as he sat at the dining table. Sela sat beside him, twirling a drawing pencil in his hands. Bara and Uriel sat in front of Diel, Bara smirking at Gabriel and Maria as they took up their position at the head of the table.
They both stood, while the rest of the brothers sat. Michael and Raphael walked into the room last. Michael sat down, casually sipping on a glass of blood, his lips stained a deep crimson. Raphael moved to Maria, and Diel’s eyes were fixed on them as Raphael wrapped his hand over the front of her throat and pressed his lips to hers. Maria’s eyes closed, and a small moan left her mouth.
Diel tipped his head to the side as he wondered what that would be like. To want someone like that. Diel’s only love was of killing, of stabbing, of choking and ripping people apart. He had never experienced any kind of romantic love.
Diel was in his twenties and had never even been kissed. He had never even looked at a woman the way Raphael looked at Maria. He had asked Raphael once what it was like to fuck. Raphael was a lust killer and had fucked a woman on his very first kill. His brother needed it, was controlled by it. As Raphael had described it, it had been nothing that Diel craved. No one had ever captured his attention enough to want to fuck their pussy. His monster had seen the very few women he had ever encountered as weak and a waste of his time. He had no time for someone who would cower whenever he was close.
Diel didn’t dwell on it. He didn’t think of anything beyond a kill. He would come every time his victim died, multiple times a night as his killing sprees grew in number—Gabriel understood that his kills had to be many to sate his need. But the more Diel saw Raphael and Maria in the manor, the more he wondered what it would be like to have someone by his side, someone who understood him—all of him. Maria was the only woman he had even known beyond the female staff at Eden Manor.
Diel was sure there was no one in the entire world who would understand what he and his brothers had gone through, the darkness that they were born with, and the fact that they needed to kill and would never give that up—not for anyone. How would anyone understand Purgatory and the torture room that the Brethren would take them to? How would they understand that he had been chained to a bed for most of his life, and now wore metal collar around his neck?
Raphael broke from Maria’s mouth and sat down beside Michael, golden eyes tracking his woman’s every move. Raphael was obsessed with Maria. He hadn’t killed her when she’d been more than willing. That said everything. Diel’s monster wouldn’t stop for anyone.
Gabriel cleared his throat. Maria looked at Gabe, and with a short nod, he faced Diel and his brothers. “Since we left Purgatory and found our home here at Eden Manor, we have lived by a certain set of rules, commandments that each of you have followed rigidly, religiously.” Gabriel glanced at Raphael. “At least most of you have.” Raphael smirked, then looked at Maria, zero apology in his expression for breaking the commandment forbidding him from bringing Maria home. “We have targeted certain people for you to kill—killers who needed to be stopped, who had hurt others and deserved to face retribution at your hands.”
Diel’s hands fisted at his sides when he felt his monster stirring, waking at the sound of Gabriel’s voice. It never settled anymore. It pushed at Diel constantly, forever pacing and snarling to be set free, to finally take control. And Diel was weakening. He was losing the fight he’d fought since childhood. His eyes moved over his brothers. Bara and Uriel still wore the worst of the injuries he’d inflicted on them in the gym. A quick glance at Sela beside him showed him that even his best friend hadn’t been spared by the monster—it didn’t care who it hurt; it had no boundaries or loyalties. Family meant nothing when the tantalizing ecstasy of violence and death was before it. The monster took and took, gaining strength with each kill, until it was a frenzied beast who only rested when its bloodlust had been sated or Gabriel turned the collar back on and forced it to retreat.