Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ELLISON
Somewhere around the hour mark, Asmodeus falls asleep. It seemed like he’d been enjoying the movie, so I switch to something else so we can finish it when he wakes up later. His ferret is curled in his lap, surely leaving fur all over my furniture.
I rub my head, questioning what I’m doing, why I’m letting him into my life when I know that it comes with risks. But would it be okay for someone like him?
My phone beeps, and I glance at it and see that it’s a message from Landon.
Landon: Is Deus okay?
Me: I think he will be.
Landon: I’ve grown rather attached to our demon-worshiping weirdo. If either of you need me, I suppose I’ll stop reading long enough to come over. That should show you how much I care about you two.
Me: Thank you, but you are safe to continue reading. He’s sleeping right now.
Landon: Good because I’m at a really good part in my book and I hate how distracted I’ve been while worrying about his ass. I don’t like being distracted.
Me: We’re all good here.
Landon: I’m going to plan something fun for us to do tomorrow. That’ll help distract him. I’m actually going to make someone else plan it, but if it’s a good plan, you better give me the credit.
Me: Sounds good.
I stare at my phone for a moment before I click my mother’s number.
Me: Can you give me the phone number of the detective who was working on Asmodeus’s case?
Mother: Finally coming to your senses, I see.
Once I have the number, I contemplate it for a minute before glancing over at Asmodeus. Gently, I slip away from the couch and go into another room where I click the number and make the call.
“Where are we going?” Asmodeus asks as I drive about forty minutes from my house.
“Some place,” I say.
Asmodeus doesn’t seem thrilled with that answer as he stares at me. He’d woken up this morning reserved and looking exhausted and that’s how he’s remained all day until now at six o’clock, and it makes me wonder if I’m making the right decision. I could be fucking everything up, for all I know.
Maybe he just needs time and not something like this.
I don’t know the answer but I know that if I’d asked him ahead of time, he wouldn’t have come with me. I pull into the parking lot and he looks up at the restaurant I’ve pulled into.
“Pizza?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“We drove forty minutes for pizza? You must really like this place.”
“Never been here before,” I admit.
He raises an eyebrow.
“But it’s someone else’s favorite,” I say before I get out of the car. He trails after me as I question if I should put him back in the car and take him home before I fuck up something.
But the opportunity passes when a teenager turns around and Asmodeus sees her. He freezes, eyes fixated on her as time seems to fall to a standstill between them.
“It was too soon. I shouldn’t have done this,” I whisper. Why the fuck do I have to get in the middle of everything? Why do I want to control situations… and now I’ve fucked them up.
DEUS
A smile blooms across the teenager’s face, and I realize I’ve never seen her wear it before.
It looks strange on her. But it fits her.
It fits her more than that dead look she wore all of the other times I’d seen her.
The hollow look she wore when I stuffed a gun in her hands and trained her with the coldness I had always been given.
She cautiously takes a step toward me as I feel frozen in place.
“Asmodeus.” The word seems more like a breath, it’s such a quiet sound.
“Lilith,” I say while she slowly makes her way over to me.
She’s wary, and she has every right to be.
The last time she’d seen me, I’d been coated in blood as every person in her life lay dead behind me.
She’d screamed, hit me, and told me she’d find me and kill me, but she was ten. She wasn’t going to accomplish it then.
Now she’s what? Sixteen?
She steps up to me and throws her arms around me, and I feel confused by the action. My mind is telling me it’s a threat, but still I don’t pull back.
“You’re supposed to hug her back,” Ellison says.
I glance up at him and feel like having him here beside me throws life back into me. It urges me to move. It pushes my brain back into functioning, and I wrap my arms around her as she squeezes me.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“Can you thank me for what I’ve done?”
“I didn’t know how much I wanted to be free of that place. I was so filled with rage that I wanted to find you, I wanted to kill you, I wanted to rip you apart… but you saved me before it was too late. You saved me while I could still be saved.”
“Don’t you hate me?” I ask.
Lilith shakes her head. “No.” Her hands tighten on my shirt. “No. I could never hate the man who saved my life.”
I’m reeling from her words. Even as she pulls back, I don’t know what to do with them. I don’t know how to take them.
“Come. My mom got us a table. Come on.”
She takes my wrist, and I feel overwhelming confusion when she pulls me after her. Ellison sets a hand on my back, and it gives me strength as I’m led inside and over to a table where a woman smiles at us.
“You must be Asmodeus.”
I don’t know who she is or why she knows me. I don’t know how I’m here or how Ellison found them. I’d avoided ever looking for any of the children I’d left behind, assuming they felt nothing but hatred for me.
“Can I give you a hug?” she asks as she stands.
“I don’t…” I start. “I don’t understand.”
“That’s okay. I’m sure you’re very overwhelmed.” Instead of hugging me, she gestures me toward the table.
“Sit,” Ellison urges, so I slowly sit down.
“You wouldn’t believe the surprise I felt when I saw you were working as a city hero,” Lilith says. “I remember watching TV and just shouting to my mom to come see.”
I glance at the woman who she’s called “Mom.” I know who Lilith’s birth mother was.
She was a cold woman who made me use my fingers to dig the grave for a girl I’d been raised with, all because I’d hesitated and tried to help her…
I still believe if they’d let me help her, she would have lived.
She watched long after my fingers began to bleed, spewing words at me to make sure I knew that I had failed.
She’s nothing like this woman Lilith calls “Mom.”
“My name is Annie. I met Lily since I work for child services,” the woman says.
“When the seven children you saved were handed into my care, I’d never seen anything like it before.
I never… with their powers and their upbringing, so many were afraid to work with them…
they thought they’d never gain ground with them.
But I didn’t see the monsters the others did.
I saw broken children who needed a chance.
It helped that most of them were still young.
It took time, but we found outlets for their anger, for their hurt.
Lily, who was the oldest of the children, took the longest, but once she learned that life wasn’t filled with abuse—that people could show emotions and kindness—it was like a floodgate opening.
“They’re all very happy children, Asmodeus. Yeah, maybe most of them know how to assassinate a grown man, but we’ve used other outlets for their skills.”
Lilith smiles at me. “Amon… Amaymon is the name you knew him by, is a phenomenal martial artist. We take classes together. He wanted to meet you too, but Mom thought it’d be best if just one of us met you for the first time so we wouldn’t overwhelm you.
He’s obsessed with the hero work you do.
He’s working so hard to get into the superhero academy because he wants to be like you. ”
“I’m not a hero,” I say.
“I’m pretty sure you are,” Ellison counters.
I shake my head. “You guys are making me out to seem like I’m… something I’m not. I’m just—”
“Asmodeus, she is proof of the good you’ve done,” Ellison tells me. “I know it’s hard for you to believe, so I wanted to show you something that you’d have to believe.”
“So many people in that organization died before they even reached Lily’s current age,” Annie says.
“I’m sure you’re well aware of that. They didn’t…
they didn’t let people leave if they failed their tests because they couldn’t let their secrets out.
Anyone who didn’t fit the bill was found buried on the property.
She could have been killed because she wasn’t strong enough or made a simple mistake.
You saved her life. You gave me the daughter I always wanted and needed.
And I can’t thank you enough for that. Every day of my life, I thank you.
And I know Lily thanks you, as well as the other children you saved. ”
I feel like my world is spinning out of control. What she’s saying is so different from everything that’s been said in my head. A hand slides onto my leg and squeezes it, making me glance up at Ellison.
“You’re okay,” he murmurs.
“Ha… I’m not sure I am, but we shall pretend.”
“It’s okay to feel overwhelmed,” Annie says. “Why don’t we order some pizza and Lily can tell you a bit about her life?”
I nod. “Yeah…”
So we sit at a table eating pizza like it’s the most normal thing to do as Lily tells me about a life I never got to experience while claiming that I made it possible for her to experience it.
She tells me about how she’s on the honor roll and wants to go to college on a volleyball scholarship.
How she has a little sister that Annie also adopted, and then she tells me how she’s won every single marksmanship competition she’s joined.
Apparently her father likes to hunt, but she doesn’t like to kill animals, so he takes her to competitions instead and boasts about how his daughter can shoot better than any of the adults.
“No one’s ever beaten me in any of the competitions. I want to shoot against you, the person who taught me how to hold a gun,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“Can we? We could have a competition sometime? I’d love to see you shoot.”