continuous fight, to become one with the evil inside. A roar ripped from his throat, and he charged.
He ran for Uriel first, swiping the attractive blond’s legs from underneath him. Uriel crashed to the ground, a blur of dark tattoos and metal piercings, but he thrashed out and cracked the metal pole against Diel’s back as he jumped back to his feet. Diel charged again. Because this was what got him hard—the fight, the spree. The need to take not just one life, but many, one after the other, the greed, the binge of pure murder. Uriel swung the pole; Diel caught the end and yanked the blond to him. Diel crashed his head against Uriel’s. Blood burst on Uriel’s face, but the blond just smiled and let the blood pour down the perfect face that Uriel himself detested.
Diel lashed out and cracked Uriel across the jaw, then a flash of red appeared in front him. Before Diel had even realized Bara had come for him, a chain wrapped around his torso, yanking him to the side. The heavy metal bit into his waist, threatening to crack his ribs. Bara’s sadistic smile came into focus, and pure rage ignited inside Diel. He spun, unraveling himself from Bara’s hold. Gripping the end of the chain, Diel brought it down on Bara’s back. The redhead buckled to his knees.
Uriel grabbed Bara’s hand and launched him back to his feet. Bara’s smile widened, showing pure white teeth. “My dear Jegudiel, don’t you know that kind of rough play just excites me?”
Bara cracked the chain over Diel’s chest. The pain was like a bolt of lightning to his flesh. Diel snarled and went to retaliate, but Sela’s katana plowed straight into his stomach. Red-hot fury blazed through him. His hands rolled into fists, and blackness descended. His sharp gaze roved over his best friend, and all his brothers around him. Raphael’s golden eyes met his and he lashed out with his rope, hooking a noose around Diel’s throat. Michael bared his metal-tipped claws and attacked.
With a manic laugh, Diel fought back. The monster was unrelenting—slicing, punching, striking. It was a fucked-up melee of violence, blood and pain. But Diel reveled in it. All the brothers bar one basked in its rapture.
But with every strike, every flash of his brothers’ weapons or fists, he was transported from the gym and thrust back there. Back to the underground hell that was Holy Innocents’ Purgatory. The torture room that the Brethren would lead Diel into by the chain they kept him affixed to. The racks, the strappado, the hot irons they pressed onto his skin as they exorcised the demons from his soul, the evil that never went away.
The memories penetrated the monster too as Diel was mentally taken back to the stairs that led to the hallway in Purgatory. Both monster and Diel heard the echo of his brothers’ footsteps behind him. Smelled the damp and mold of the old bricks that kept the Brethren’s depravity sealed away from the wider Catholic Church, from anyone who could help. Felt the hard stone of the floor as the Fallen were forced to their knees. And he felt the chain weighing heavy around his neck as he was forced to take a Brethren priest into his mouth, only to be pushed to the ground afterward and taken from behind.
Diel felt his fingernails snapping on the ancient stone as he tried to find purchase against the pain. But the worst memory … the worst memory was the sound of the Brethren “exorcising” the evil inside of him and his brothers, their grunts and growls as they released inside them.
Diel was no longer present in the gym. He was fully back in Purgatory, only this time he was older, stronger, and he was driven by hatred and the need for revenge.
His collar was off.
Diel broke their necks; he drove his twin blades into their hearts, kidneys, lungs, meeting their terrified stares as the blood and life drained away from them.
“Diel!” A voice called his name in the distance, but Diel was trapped in Purgatory, surrounded by the cult of priests who had hurt and tortured him for too many years, who had kept him chained to a bed like a motherfucking dog.
“Diel!” Hands tried to grab him, but Diel saw Father Brady before him, that ugly face he would never forget taunting him to come closer. Snarling, Diel charged. The priest stood his ground as Diel wrapped his hands around