I was in the room,stone under my bare feet, the collar sat tight against my throat, a constant pressure.
“She’ll come,” Gabriel whispered, crouched over Brother Lucien’s corpse, carving away skin and muscle to reveal bone. Sister Mary Agnes would come soon.
There were too many wounds he’d inflicted on the corpse to count, clustered across his face, chest, and abdomen, where the skin had been tested after death, as he checked when the blood had stopped coming.
Brother Lucien’s muscles and bones were beautiful?—
Gabriel had peeled back skin, methodical enough that the structure beneath showed through. White. Smooth in places where it shouldn’t have been. Bone where there should have been expression.
Interesting.
That was the word that sat with it. Not horror. Not shock.
We were passing the time while waiting for her.
Raphael had positioned himself in the corner before she arrived, and for some reason, he dragged me with him, my back against his chest, his arm locked across me in a restraint, and his cock hard against my ass. Gabriel was stabbing the corpse, feral as fuck, and Patrick was rocking in the opposite corner, his mind having broken a long time ago.
Raphael saw her before I did.
He loosened his hold enough to let me breathe, then rose from behind me, unfolding slowly. He didn’t rush. Didn’t hide. He looked at her,reallylooked, and then lifted one eyebrow, a small, almost polite acknowledgment, as if she’d interrupted something minor rather than walked into a room full of ruin.
She inhaled to speak, the control in her hand, and all four of us fell to the floor. White-hot pain cut the moment clean in half, forcing me down to a crouch, before I could think, before I could do anything except exist inside the pain and wait for it to end. I met Raphael’s gaze as he squirmed, but he was smiling, a toothy grin, a snarl of sorts, and a blade in his hand. I don’t know where he got it, but it was there, palmed and ready to go.
Don’t move, he telegraphed with his brilliant turquoise eyes.
I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
I wokewith my hands at my throat, trying to drag a collar that wasn’t there anymore from my neck, breath dragging in hard, the cabin dark around me, the reminder of the pain as clear as if the system had never switched off.
The door slammed open, Caleb with his weapon drawn, half crouching, scanning the room.
“What the fuck, Novak?”
FIFTEEN
Caleb
I’d beendeep in researching the SaintMichael threads, cozied up on the sofa under a blanket, when I heard the shout.
Sharp. Raw. Pain.
I was already moving before I’d fully processed it, chair scraping back hard enough to jar, my laptop forgotten on the table as I crossed the space in three long strides and took the stairs two at a time. There was a thump—something hitting the floor, ceramic shattering—and every instinct I had went on high alert.
I hit the top of the stairs as lightly as possible, and turned toward his room, already running through possibilities—intruder, system breach, delayed response from the compound somehow tracking us—, but none of it fit the timing, the isolation, the reality of where we were. My hand went to my sidearm, drawing it cleanly, keeping it low and tight along my leg as I closed on the door.
Pushing it open with my shoulder, gun up as I cleared the frame, sweeping the room in a fast, practiced arc before settling on Novak.
He was upright, hands gripping his throat, the lamp in pieces on the floor beside the bed, the room dim except for the spill of light from the hallway. Apart from the throat thing, he looked… normal. Too normal. Breathing steady. Shoulders loose. No immediate sign of threat.
Which was wrong.
“What the fuck, Novak?” I asked, scanning him anyway, eyes tracking for injury, for anything out of place.
“I’m fine.”
Too quick.
