breath ghosting over his face. Could smell that lavender-and-musk scent that drifted up his nose and exploded in his veins like a hit of heroin. And as he lost consciousness, he vowed to remember the dark eyes of the one who’d dared to end his spree before he was fucking ready.
And when Diel next awoke, he and his monster were in firm agreement that she would pay. She would scream, and she would breathe her very last breath under his hands.
Chapter 5
Noa ripped the man’s hand from her throbbing throat, coughing as she scrambled off his limp body. Dinah raced to where Noa lay and crouched down beside her. “You okay?”
Noa went to answer, but her eyes were fixed on the unconscious man. What the fuck was he? Her eyes drifted to the priest, to the remnants of what was left of him on the bed—just a mass of blood, bones and torn-up flesh. Then they moved onto the collar around her attacker’s neck. The thick, smooth metal seemed to have no seam.
He wears it all the time, she realized. He wears a collar …
“Noa, we need to go.” Dinah tried to pull Noa to her feet. But Noa was fixed on the man on the floor. She could still feel his hand around her neck. Her skin burned, but she knew the damage didn’t even come close to the scars that ringed his neck underneath his collar. His collar had shifted to expose red, raw, ruined skin underneath.
Just like …
Noa’s eyes burned, and she closed them to relieve the sting. The darkness took her back to a few years ago. To the only other time she had seen a scar like that, as severe as that, underneath a much less impressive collar. Her stomach rolled and her heart squeezed, guilt and shame plaguing her.
The smell of the blood of the slain priest on the bed only made the memory stronger. Blood had been on her hands that night too—it had been there ever since, no matter how much she tried to wash and scour it away. Rage and hatred had clouded her vision in that moment.
“Noa!” A hand gripped Noa’s face, and she opened her eyes. Dinah had pulled back her hood and lowered her scarf, exposing her face. “We need to leave.” Dinah glanced at the bed and the dead Brethren priest. “Beth and Naomi have got the kid. We need to move.”
Noa’s eyes found the man’s chest. Her heart started racing. “His chest.” She crawled forward until she was crouching beside him. He was coated in blood, but she knew what she was seeing. Noa ran her hand over her torso, over the pentagram … over the small upturned cross in the center of her chest. The brand that had been seared into her skin as a child. She reached out and lowered her hand to the man’s chest. She stopped breathing—the black body of the sword was rough underneath her fingers. His skin was ruined there.
“Saint Peter’s cross,” Noa whispered, then closed her eyes and traced the rough skin with her fingertips, searching for a familiar pattern. Her pulse thudded in her neck as her fingers found, underneath the inked wings-and-sword design, an upturned cross. She opened her eyes. “He wears the mark,” Noa said breathlessly and looked up at Dinah, who was regarding her Coven sister as if she were insane. Noa’s eyes widened. “He wears the Brethren’s heretic mark, just like us.”
Dinah looked at the man’s chest, and Noa saw her swallow in shock. Dinah quickly composed herself. “We have to leave, Noa. It’s too risky to have been here this long.”
Dinah got to her feet and took hold of the ledger they had found hidden in a safe behind a picture in the priest’s room. She placed it into a folded-up shoulder bag she had brought with her just in case they found anything of worth. And worthy it was. If they’d retrieved what they thought they had, they had just discovered a small section of the Holy Grail when it came to hunting these Brethren pricks. “We need to get this back to the tunnels. We need to make sure it’s kept safe. When they realize it’s gone, there’ll be hell to pay.”
Noa got to her feet, but they were as heavy as lead when she tried to go to the door. She cast her head back toward the man on the floor. He was huge. Tall and broad and stacked with