Chapter 6 Azrael #2
By this time, father dearest was most likely aware of what I had done, but I was still refusing Red’s pleas to take his calls.
I was busy completing my mission, he could call upon others to help with his little assignments.
I did have my own questions though. For instance, did he know that his brother was having the shadows seek out and slaughter his army?
Questions in need of answering.
Every room we walked by Scarlett peeked in. She had long since memorized what was down here, but I knew she liked to look despite that. She was a curious being, an eager little thing. She craved to know when anything changed, and I appreciated that about her.
We walked by the cages, the coffins filled with spikes, the room with the pit where we buried people alive in, and straight to the end of the hall where it opened up into a circular room with doors lining the walls.
I walked to room 11 and opened it up, the woman hanging from the ceiling by her wrists bleeding and whimpering.
There was a hood over her head, her hands bloodied from where the shackles dug, her toes an inch from the ground where the drain was.
There wasn’t much blood dripping from her, but the water from being hosed down was still draining, and she was dripping wet.
Alaric must have visited this morning before dealing with his own man.
I walked over to her, the stench enough to put a grown man on his knees, as it was, I was used to it.
I took her in as I stepped just to the right of her and turned my girl.
Scarlett stood taller these days, her expression soft, quizzical. She stopped halfway between the door and the woman, her eyes flicking to mine. “Who is she? What did she do?”
“She was an accomplice,” I answered, earning a soft whimper from the woman when she realized she was no longer alone. “She claims ignorance, but I know better, don’t I?” I asked the woman.
She did nothing but whimper softly. I couldn’t have expected anything more.
She had been here for just over two months, being tortured, hanging and then buried in the glass coffins before being hung again.
She would probably never regain full function of her hands again, but I wasn’t planning on letting her leave this place alive anyway.
I found Scarlett’s eyes again. “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful little family. A mother who gave birth to a beautiful little girl and a doting father who would move Heaven and Hell to make sure his daughter always had the best. They were spies. The mother trained her husband how to be just like her. They went on missions, stole things, saved people, restored balance to this world, raising their daughter to do just the same. They had spy friends who went on missions with them, and their life was limitless until one fateful day in 2015 when the father stumbled upon a flyer, leading him to a church.”
Scarlett froze, her entire body going as still as stone.
“He loved this church, and after a few months of attending, started confessing things that, while most churches would require repentance, this church encouraged. In 2017, the father was approached by a high-ranking member of this church. You see, when some people are given the type of power we have, they tend to let it get to their heads. The person who approached the father saw the potential in him. It seemed that on one of their missions, the father allowed things to go bad. He raped someone he wasn’t supposed to, and it was witnessed by one of their spy friends, so the next time they went on a mission, he killed those parents, leaving their daughter, a friend of his daughter, an orphan.
Of course, she,” I nodded towards the woman, “believed it was an accident, but some part of her knew it wasn’t.
“So, the man that approached him had witnessed this, and he confessed to him the whole story. The rape, the need to rid the world of the people who would ruin his life, the fact that the Leaders of the church had encouraged him to fulfill his desire.
“It didn’t take him long to accept the offer of promotion, the recruitment into the higher rankings of the church, just a Pillar,” I put in to clarify.
“He was elated. Why wouldn’t he be? He had already been attending the services, had already talked to the Leaders, and now he had finally proved himself enough to be noticed by this man.
Raping a 13-year-old girl, killing those who saw him, showing signs of lust towards his own daughter.
He couldn’t believe that was all it took. ”
“She knew,” Scarlett said, her eyes now locked on the woman. “People don’t wake up one day and suddenly start looking at their kids like that, she knew.”
She knew and decided not to see it; I was sure of it. It had been going on for years, his lust for his daughter. In fact, he had been raping people for years prior to Beth’s parents being murdered. And every single one of those girls had looked just like his daughter.
“What the father didn’t know, prior to this, was that his wife had been having an affair as well, although her affair was with someone much older than the girls he was raping.
She had met a man who had raised four little assassins.
She had heard the stories of his empire, and she wanted her daughter to be put through the same training in 2016. ”
“Your father trained Rae?”
“The family often went on separate missions,” I continued without answering.
“So when his daughter was gone for the year, he never questioned it.
Never questioned when his wife left for long periods of time, in fact, it only allowed him to indulge in his own fantasies.
Fast forward to 2018 and the father was now a Leader, confessing his darkest fantasies to the other Leaders of the church.
“At this point, the mother had run, telling the daughter that they needed to be apart because she felt that something bad was going to happen, so they separated, changed their names, and lived their lives, that is until the father finally located his daughter with the help of the other Leaders who wanted him to live out that which he had always coveted.
“I don’t believe she went down without a fight, but even the most skilled cannot take on an army that sneaks and slithers in the night. He took her to Absolution and made his own tapes during the four months she had been kept there.”
Her shoulders had tensed, her eyes finding mine. “Mr. Young told Mr. Alascer to have his fun with her.”
I nodded, turning to the woman. “That’s where it gets a little murky.
The bad thing she thought was going to happen was because she,” I gestured towards Marla, “found something out about us that caused her to run. She was afraid for her and her daughter’s life because of this information.
Who’s to say what would have happened had she never found this information out. ”
“What was it?”
She wouldn’t share. No matter what the brothers or I did to her, she wouldn’t share. It only made me want the information more, although I had my guesses as to what it might be. I just needed to hear her say it.
“I brought you here because you’ve been doing so well. You deserve a reward. Marla Alascer, wife of Charles Alascer, mother of Charlotte Alascer, otherwise known as your dear sweet older sister.”
I plucked the canvas bag off, revealing the long-standing resident of our home.
Marla had blonde hair, just like the daffodil’s. Her eyes were blue, her skin wrinkled, no makeup from the countless ‘baths’ she’d had. She had a swollen left eye, a split lip, and a healing scar across her left cheek. We tried to stay away from the face when it was information we needed.
She turned her face into her arm, her cheeks permanently damp from the tears, her whimpers getting a little louder.
Scarlett walked forward, studying her carefully, her eyes burning with hatred.
Marla sniffed, slowly turning back, blinking, squinting. “Please,” she whispered to Scar. “Please, help me. They’re insane. Insaaaaane,” she sobbed.
“R.A.E. is my sister,” Scarlett told her. “You hurt my sister. Why?”
I repeated the words to Marla, curious to know what Scarlett would do.
“I didn’t know Charles would do that,” she tried. “That’s what I’ve been telling them! I’m innocent! I tried to save my daughter!”
“She faked her own death,” I explained. “When her daughter was released from Absolution, the first thing she remembered was her mother dying and the blood found in an alley. The police, who worked for the people of the church, claimed it was her blood. Claimed that she was dead, and the daffodil spent the next several months trying to solve that murder. Along with that, Charles went by the name Blanchard and hired a man to play her half-brother, along with a few members of high society who had also attended the church in L.A. to play the game as well, however, someone found out about this and sent a letter to those people, warning them to stay away from my family, only for things to shift because what’s to happen but my dearest brother claiming the girl. ”
“He never should have done that,” Marla cried. “My poor daughter, my poor daughter, falling from one fly trap into another.”
“Says the woman who sent her straight to the crime lord himself,” I hummed, walking around her slowly.
She struggled against the shackles. “I already told you,” she spoke, enunciating each word, “I did that to protect her. You four are the most well-trained assassins in the world. Certifiable serial killers that get away with everything. You hardly take a bullet, you know things about the dark underbelly of this world most normal people would puke hearing about. I needed her to have that strength.”
“Because Charles was raping children that looked like her?” I asked.
“I. Didn’t. Know. That.”
Impossible. We already wrote out her story. “How did you and father dearest meet? My little prodigy wants to know.”