lock that had been expertly broken. Calming his temper, just as Father Quinn had taught him, he opened the safe and found it empty.
“Father Abel? Father Job?” he called out. The twin brothers who were his right-hand men came quickly up the stairs from their search for any clue as to who had taken the priest. Because someone had.
Father Auguste hadn’t reached his prestigious position as Witch Finder General at such a young age for his lack of thoroughness. On the contrary—he was ruthless. He was meticulous, and he left no stone unturned when it came to any threat made against his beloved faith, against the true saviors of this sinful, doomed world.
The twins arrived at the bedroom doorway, waiting for Father Auguste’s command. “Search the house for the ledger.” They immediately did his bidding without question. Auguste searched the bedroom again—old floorboards, boxes, under the mattress—but he came up empty-handed.
Thirty minutes later, the twins came back to Auguste. “There’s nothing, General,” Father Abel reported.
“We’ve searched everywhere. It’s gone,” Father Job added.
Auguste’s jaw clenched. “Call in the investigators. I want prints and DNA found for anyone that has been in this home.” He walked past the twins and down the stairs to the waiting car outside. He got into the back seat; the twins followed. “All the homes we have been in tonight must be searched.”
Father Abel lifted his cell phone and made the appropriate calls. Father Auguste met the driver’s eyes. “Take me to Father Quinn.”
“He will see you now, Father Auguste,” Elaine, Father Quinn’s personal nurse, said as Father Auguste waited in the hallway of his apartment in the Brethren headquarters.
Father Auguste walked through the door to Father Quinn’s rooms. His anger was quick as he looked at his savior in the armchair overlooking the leafy park outside.
Auguste stopped before Father Quinn and dropped to one knee. He waited for Father Quinn to hold out his hand. It took his mentor a few seconds longer than it should have, but he held out his hand, and Auguste held the frail fingers and pressed a kiss to the back of his palm. His skin was rough from the extensive burns, but Auguste held on to the fact that he was alive. God had saved his Brethren mentor from the evil of his old charges.
“Auguste,” Father Quinn said, his voice weakened and hoarse.
“Your Excellency.” Auguste rose to sit in the chair opposite Father Quinn. He looked at his mentor, the man who had plucked him from the orphanage he had been sent to and cleansed his soul that had been ruined and tainted by wickedness and sin. Father Quinn had saved Auguste; he owed him his eternal soul.
“Speak, child,” Father Quinn said. Auguste tried to hold in his rage as he studied Father Quinn’s face. Gone were his hair and eyebrows. His skin was mottled from the severity of his burns, and the reconstruction surgery he had been receiving did nothing to take away the evidence of how he had almost perished in Purgatory, after the cursed Fallen subjects had returned and massacred most of the holy men who had been there. There doing God’s work.
The devil had triumphed that day, but Father Auguste had vowed to be the one who destroyed the Fallen, who brought about their fall back to the depths of hell where they belonged. He would seek holy revenge on the sinners who had managed to evade the Brethren’s care and spread their evil into the world, as devastating and cruel as the most deadly poison.
“I believe they have come for us again,” Father Auguste said, and Father Quinn’s milky eyes seemed to burn with contempt. “Five homes were attacked last night.”
“And our priests?” Father Quinn asked.
“Gone.” Silence stretched between them. Father Auguste clasped his hands in thought.
“Speak, child. I can see God is sending you a message, making something clear to you.” Father Quinn smiled, his scarred lips barely moving as he did so.
“It was always the same pattern.” Auguste thought back to a few years ago when, for a brief period of time, priests had been savagely killed in their homes. Then he thought back to the more present series of invasions—a different tack.
He sat forward in the chair. “In the more recent attacks on the homes, the charges were gone, but the priests were there, alive. Always an ‘H’ written on their forehead in their own blood.” Memories sailed into Father Auguste’s consciousness. Burning flesh on wooden stakes, and screaming witches being lowered