It can’t be . . . not after all this time . . .
“Look up,” Father Murray whispered, the soft sound from his mouth disappearing into the heavy music pulsing through the speakers. “Look. Up.”
As if God were rewarding him, honoring him with a boon, the man looked up, and a rush of disbelief crashed through Father Murray’s body, so strong he had to reach out and touch the wall to remain on his feet. Golden eyes. Golden eyes smoldered as sensuous lips hooked up into a smirk, making the woman flush and bat her eyelashes.
“Raphael,” Father Murray whispered. Just the name leaving his lips caused his eyes to close and memories to spill into his mind.
“Get on your knees.” Father Murray had been working on this boy’s soul for four months. Raphael was Father Murray’s first. His first soul to cleanse. After Murray had pledged to the Brethren, Father Quinn had awarded him this boy.
One just like himself. But where Father Murray had succumbed to the exorcisms Father Quinn had performed on him for five years, giving his soul over to serving God instead of the devil, Raphael was resisting.
The evil in this boy was strong.
But he was no match for Father Murray. He would prove to Father Quinn that he was worthy of the Brethren pledge, the brotherhood he had been welcomed into. He would break this boy and the evil that lived within him.
Raphael glared at him, refusal in his strange golden stare. Time on the rack had made his body weak, stretched until he couldn’t take a second longer. Yet Raphael still stood before Father Murray, shoulders slouched in pain and exhaustion . . . but not defeated.
Drawing the baton from the deep pocket of his robes, Father Murray lashed out and rapped Raphael on the back of his knees. The boy’s legs gave out and he crashed to the floor, palms smacking flat on the stone. Raphael tried to scramble to his feet, refusing to submit, but Father Murray wrapped his hand around the boy’s throat, incapacitating him where he kneeled. The priest was aware of the crime that had brought this boy to Purgatory. It had been frighteningly similar to his own.
Raphael stilled, breathing deeply—a rabbit caught in a hunter’s snare. His body relaxed further the harder the priest squeezed, and Father Murray noted the quick release of breath from his parted lips and the enlarging of his pupils.
He liked this. Raphael liked to be strangled.
Father Murray regarded Raphael. He freed himself from his pants and edged closer to the boy. “I will cleanse you, heathen. I will cleanse your blackened soul.”
When the memory cleared, Father Murray cursed; the seats where Raphael and his whore had been sitting were empty. He raced to the bar. “Where did they go? The couple who were here,” Father Murray demanded of the bartender.
The bartender was drying a glass with a white towel but paused to say, “You know the rules. No information is given on members. If you can’t abide by the laws of the club, leave.”
Father Murray wanted nothing more than to snap the sinner’s neck for his insolence, but he refrained. His job was to blend in with the crowd, to be indistinguishable among the clientele.
But that man had been Raphael. After all these years, he had spotted a Fallen. They were still in the Boston area. Must have been.
He had to tell Father Quinn. Father Murray scoured the club, needing another glimpse of the boy he had long ago failed to exorcise. Raphael had been the only evil spirit he had never succeeded in breaking. Father Murray didn’t fail. And he had always had a certain penchant for Raphael. They were too alike for him to forget the pretty boy with the golden stare.
Kindred spirits. But one of them was pure, made with light, and one of them made with the blood of hell.
Father Murray saw a door shutting to the far right, a man in black leading a woman inside. The woman who had been sitting at the bar, enraptured by Raphael’s affection. Father Murray was about to follow when the man who had been Father Murray’s next chosen victim came to the bar beside him. “Have you seen Suzy, Ben? She went to the bathroom and hasn’t come back.”
Father Murray’s ears pricked up at the question.
“Sorry. I haven’t seen her.”
“I’ll keep looking. She may have found another partner for us to play with.” The heathen smiled and disappeared into the crowd.
He had to go. Father Murray couldn’t stay if a victim was being noted as absent. His brain told him to leave, but everything else in him needed him to stay. To find the man with the golden eyes and bring him back into the Brethren’s care.
“You want a drink?”
Father Murray looked at the bartender, who was waiting for him to make an order. He didn’t answer. Instead he rushed out of the front doors and through the liquor store that hid the depraved pit of evil beyond its storage room. The frigid Boston winter slapped him around the face. But it was no competition to the raging inferno that was consuming his flesh from within. The satisfaction of finding one of the worst sinners to ever darken the doors of Purgatory.