Gabriel chewed the bread and, as he swallowed, felt the heaviness of the burden weigh down his chest. With a shaky breath, Gabriel took Raphael’s vial and repeated the same action on a new chunk of bread. “My soul for his. May Raphael’s transgressions transfer to me. May he enter the kingdom of heaven pure and without sin.” The copper taste of blood coated Gabriel’s mouth, trickling down his throat when he swallowed Raphael’s bread. He sat back on his haunches and stared up at the crucifix hanging on the wall. He focused on the agony on Jesus’s face as he was crucified. He focused on the nails in his palms and feet and the spear wound in his side.
Gabriel reached for the barbed wire crown in the trunk behind him and forced it onto his head. He gritted his teeth as the barely healed wounds from a few days ago reopened and began to trickle with blood. Gabriel knew his blond curls would be stained and sullied. He picked up his scourge and ran all seven thongs of rope and blades over his palm. The bladed scorpions were designed to tear into his flesh. Gabriel looked down at his thighs, at the spiked cilice that bit into his leg. Gabriel let the anger he warred with build in his heart, the darkness that had begun to possess him over the years. His thigh muscles tightened and blood seeped from his wounds. He took the seven-thonged scourge, each thong representing a deadly sin and also, to Gabriel, a brother, and he used the sinful anger heating his blood to whip the scourge behind him and across his back. The pain was blinding as the lashes whipped his already tender skin and the scorpions bit into his flesh. “Raphael,” Gabriel whispered, then brought the scourge back, only to whip himself again. “Uriel . . .” Gabriel whipped and whipped, a brother’s name falling from his lips with each blow as he purged the sins he had eaten and the wrath he had accumulated from his body. “Selaphiel . . . Barachiel . . . Jegudiel . . . Michael . . .” Gathering the last of his strength, fighting through the agony that was threatening to overwhelm him, Gabriel struck the hardest blow. “Gabriel!”
Gabriel dropped the scourge and fell forward, palms slamming on the cold ground. He tried to breathe through his nose, tried to calm his body from the pain he had inflicted on himself. But the agony roared louder until Gabriel collapsed to the floor, the cold winter wind creeping in through the cracks in the brick wall and slapping at his nakedness. Gabriel moved his heavy head and focused on Jesus’s face. “Forgive me,” he whispered, his voice drifting away with the breeze. “They know not what they do.” But Gabriel was well aware of what he did. And for it, he would sacrifice his soul. He had sworn to protect his brothers. And that was exactly what he would do.
He would consume their sins and save their souls.
After everything they had been through, they at least deserved that.
*****
Father Murray pulled at the rack. The boy’s screams echoed around the room. But he kept on turning the wheel, glaring at the dark-haired boy with the brown eyes. They weren’t golden, but they were close enough. The boy screamed again, his limbs beginning to pull from their sockets. But Father Murray needed to see the demon-possessed boy in pain. He needed to hear the crack of bones and the screams of imminent death.
“Please,” the boy whispered. “I’ll repent.” Father Murray paused. He met the boy’s eyes. Months. It had taken Father Murray months to get this boy to break, to repent and hand himself over to the Brethren as a heretic and lover of Satan. But when Father Murray saw the look of fear and begging on the boy’s face, all he felt was disgust. He had broken another one. Every such boy he had broken, but one. Father Murray pictured the boy he never conquered in his mind. The evil boy with golden eyes, olive skin, and face made by the Lord himself.
“Repent,” he hissed.
Raphael remained unmoved. Father Murray’s seed ran down the back of Raphael’s legs. Blood covered his skin from the whip, and marks peppered his neck from where Father Murray’s hands had wrapped around it and squeezed. But the boy didn’t say a word. Just stared at him with a rebellious expression. Father Murray grabbed Raphael’s short hair and yanked his head back. Raphael met his eyes, but there was no weakness there, no sign of tiredness, no sign of submission. “I will break you,” Father Murray promised. “One day, Raphael, I will break you and make you beg at my feet. You’ll kneel to me, and you’ll give me your soul.”