Chapter 26 Azrael #2
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Why were there no clocks? Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Why were there no clocks?
A knock sounded at my door.
I stared at the clock for several more seconds before slowly turning to the door. I know time didn’t exist but I also knew it wasn’t time for food, for prayers, or for the daily sermon.
Who is at my door? Who is at my door? Who is at—
I turned and crossed the small room to my door. I opened it and let it swing open, preparing myself for whatever Lady Elise had decided I deserved.
But Lady Elise wasn’t waiting for me, nor were either of the orderlies. There was a small box sitting on the floor. Black with a red ribbon.
I studied it carefully before I crouched down, inspecting all around it, under it. Lifting up one tail of the ribbon and then the other.
I finally picked it up and brought it to my nose, sniffing and feeling for any sort of device. I wouldn’t put it past them to make a small bomb filled with holy water. Jesus was a carpenter after all, building things was what He did.
When I was certain nothing was there, I finally stood, shut the door, and walked over to the rag they had given me to sleep with.
I sank to the floor, sitting in the very corner, and carefully pulled the ribbon, holding my breath just in case there was a small click I might miss.
The ribbon fell away, next the lid. No triggers, no explosion.
Interesting. What was their game in this then? Preachers didn’t give gifts, the people were supposed to give them gifts and money and everything we owned. That’s what Lady Elise’s book claimed.
I carefully pulled the tissue paper off the top and found a small note.
To pass the time
- A
A? There was another person living in this place with the initial ‘A’?
I wondered who it could be. We saw other people here from time to time.
Saw them in the halls, in passing. Saw them being punished or escorted out.
I had even been taken outside with groups for punishments before, but we never learned each other’s names.
I wondered who this could be.
I took the card off and found a beautifully crafted silver pocket watch connected to a silver chain sitting in the center of the small box. Beautiful designs had been etched into the metal and polished over. I had never seen anything so beautiful.
I took it out and immediately clicked it open, the sound of the hands filling the room as the gears turned. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
I felt a smile touch my lips for the first time in some time. “Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock,” I hummed softly. “Tick tock goes the clock, watch the seconds go by. Tick tock goes the clock, these hands will never die.”
Present Day
“I know what your assignment is,” Red said, her voice low.
I spun around, grabbed her wrist and slammed my antlers around her narrow throat, pinning her to the wall.
She was heaving, her teeth bared as she flexed her fingers, my grip so tight, I was sure I had cut off her blood supply.
The smaller tines of the antlers dug into her neck, breaking the skin everywhere they touched.
I pulled her arm out, pulling her body taut as I stepped up to her, her eyes wild, her free hand wrapped around the end of my cane, just under the head of the deer. “Careful, deary,” I sang quietly. “Treading steps still find crumbling bridges.”
Even after all these years, there was still a flash of fear in her eyes, but it quickly disappeared into the deadly challenge she always carried with her. “Why are you keeping it a secret, Azrael?” she asked, her voice clear. “We’ve taken down pedophile rings in the past.”
I pushed the antlers in a little more, earning a warning snarl. “Shall I congratulate The Family for killing a handful of picture possessors?”
Her knuckles turned white around my cane. “I spoke to Olivia, and I know you.” She heaved. “You want to get every damn root, that’s what I’m here for. Why won’t you allow us to help you?”
I knew that wild rose is starting to step where she doesn’t belong. Perhaps we needed to have another chat. “I don’t need your help.”
“I won’t let you kill that girl.”
I felt that smile stretch wide, a soft chuckle leaving my lips, causing that blip of fear to rise back to the surface of her bright blue-green eyes.
“I won’t let you control my world,” I told her.
“If you must insert yourself then so be it, but this life you’re stepping into isn’t some resort of an assignment that Malachi plucked out just for you, Red. ”
“I’ve seen Hell.”
“This is so much worse,” I sang, hearing that light lilt that caused most to run in fear.
“If you’re so desperate to be where I am, then come to the Church of Daylight on Sunday morning.
Don’t speak to me, don’t sit near me. You are attending service, nothing more.
” I jerked my antlers out of her neck, removing myself from her completely.
I didn’t like being pushed, especially by the likes of those who called me family.
They needed to start being careful or I might just add them to the list I was making for the end of days.
“It’s at a church?” she asked, rubbing her neck, spreading the blood that had bubbled the second my antlers sliced into one side of her neck.
I turned for the hall. “Where else would a successful pedophilia ring be but within the walls of one of the holiest places in the world?”
I twirled my cane once and pulled out my phone, finding the picture I had saved of the little sinner late last night. She had been lying on her stomach on the ground, her brushed hair falling around her in waves, her face split in two as she admired her new painting.
I could see the painting clearly. “Tick tock goes the clock,” painted haphazardly all over the border of her twisted image.
I was already becoming a thought she couldn’t escape.
I had infected her. She would never be able to rid herself of the idea of me, which meant that I would soon have full access to that little, fractured mind of hers and get exactly what I needed to finish this mission.
This picture was snapped a second before she realized that the door to her house had been opened. I could see Thomas’ face clearly.
I had stopped watching just after that. There was no reason for me to see what happened next. I knew what happened next.
I closed the picture and pulled up the picture of a daffodil. They were wrong. She wasn’t losing herself in that cracked mind of hers, she was flourishing.
Some flowers needed water and sun to thrive, others needed shadows and blood. It wasn’t up to them to decide what was right for all those in the world.
She picked up just as a gunshot went off. “Busy,” she said through her teeth.
I smiled wide, feeling my fingers twitch in that quite rage that forever lived within me. “You told your brother about my little secret.”
She grunted and snarled, the sound of splattering blood music to my ear. “I was trying to help.”
“No, you wanted to have someone nice check up on me. You were trying to control a situation that you don’t like. This is not for you to control, daffodil. Don’t think you can play any sort of game with me and win.”
She released a breath, and I heard another gunshot sound in the distance. “Look, we’re kind of in the middle of something, so I’ll cut straight to the point.”
“Oh, goody,” I hummed.
“You found favor in a girl locked up in a church—”
I froze in my tracks, that dangerous rage slithering through my body, causing things to twitch while my sense of control slowly slipped away.
“—surrounded by people who have done nothing but beat her into submission since she was a girl.”
I could hear the rushing sound of an unforgiving ocean roar in my ears.
“I know that you’re certifiably insane, Azrael, and that you can probably relate to her the best out of us all, but that girl needs real help. Greyson is the best man for the job.”
That fucking cub doesn’t know the first thing about—
My mind started sparking in savage shocks of death, my heart beating hard against my cracking ribs. I was losing control. They were taking it from me again.
“They’re going to ruin it,” that voice deep within me sang. “They will ruin everything. Five years of work,” it laughed maniacally, “all for not. He will win. He will win. He will win and kill them all.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“You need—”
“Don’t tell me what I need, daffodil,” I said, my voice not my own.
She went as silent as a rabbit under the eyes of a snake.
My entire body buzzed with the rage burning through me.
I could feel the currents sliding through my veins, shocking through my mind.
“You forget who I am. What I am. I don’t care what you are to me, if you interfere with my world, I will rip your intestines out of you and use them to strangle you until the life has drained from your eyes and then I’ll peel back your skin and stitch it to your precious little owner before I slice his smile open ear to ear and let him scream himself to death.
You will mean nothing to me if you ruin what I’ve done.
Find your place in the hierarchy and remember, dear darling daffodil, that that place is far below me.
” I hung up and called upon the rose, that chant echoing in my mind.
“Tick tock goes the clock.” Over and over again, just like it had in that asylum.
“This number is new,” she said in way of greeting.
I laughed, the chill creeping down my own spine.
“This family presses and presses and presses until the whole world shatters. They need to remember their place,” I told myself.
“Tick tock, tick tock. You want to play with the ace, little chess player, then pack up your pieces and come play. Sharpen your thorns, soon the queen of the board will meet the Queen of Hearts and the whole world will turn red.”
She was quiet. “How long do we have?”
I pulled out my watch, watching the secondhand tick-tick-tick. “The clock runs out at half past midnight on the 20th.”
“Who is coming?”
I watched that secondhand move.
“Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock.”
I snapped the watch shut. “Whoever understands that the next time they break my rules, I will tear them apart piece by pathetic piece.” I hung up, my grip tightening until I felt the screen crack, slicing into my skin.
“Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock…”