Chapter 27 Azrael
Azrael
So, when I got up, still trying to shake away the dizziness, I didn’t bother looking for anything.
I picked up her bracelet, ring, and necklace and shoved them into my pocket before picking up her dagger and grabbing my cane. I shifted them to the same hand, the road already coming into view, and pulled out my phone.
Olivia picked up on the third ring, which was enough time for me to reach the bike, snap the cane on and tuck the dagger away.
“Hello, prickling rose,” I said in way of greeting as I stepped into the road and studied either side, searching for any tire marks.
They would have had to have left in a hurry. They knew we were trained to resist most tranquilizers. They would have known they didn’t have much time.
She was panting into the phone, a gurgling sounding in the distance. Everett had mentioned she had an errand to run while he worked on the school. I assumed it would include spilling blood. “Azrael,” she said in way of greeting.
There was nothing. The rain made the roads slick. Even if the tires did spin, it wouldn’t have left enough for me to bring back to Havoc.
I stared at the bend in the road, knowing they had taken her back towards the city, the sound of Olivia disassembling someone as loud as her breathing. “Where is your king?” I asked, a deadly calm in my voice.
“Hiring someone for the school,” she answered. “Do you need him?”
“No.”
There was a thud, and she took a breath, seconds ticking by. When I didn’t elaborate, I could almost hear the gears in her mind working. “You don’t call unless it’s serious,” she finally decided. “What happened?”
I turned for the bike, flexing my hand, feeling that cold rage burning through me, threatening to take control. “I need your help, Olivia.”
~~~
“They fucking took my goddamn sister?” Olivia snarled, walking into the office, Alaric behind her, blood splattered across her clothes and face, her hair wild.
Havoc was standing behind me, Bishop at their shop. Alaric had been keeping busy in the basement until I pulled him out to fetch Olivia, but the second she was delivered, he was off again.
I hoped Marla knew that she would not survive this.
Poppy looked back from where she sat in front of me before turning back to me. “I told him we should go to the Training Building right now and put a knife in his neck, but he said no.”
Olivia barely spared her a glance as she rounded the desk, joining Havoc’s side. “That’s what he wants, and you know it,” she told her.
“We’ve always given him what he wanted,” Poppy countered bitterly, “why stop now?”
“How many trackers did you put in her?” she asked, staring at my monitor.
“I had five until they cut these off,” I explained, gesturing to the necklace, ring, and bracelet laying on my desk.
“And don’t you worry your pretty little head, rose, they won’t find the other three unless they know where to cut.
I used our dear techy brother’s prototype technology to improve his ideas.
The trackers are made of silicone. Every single piece, all the way down to the little wires. There is no metal in them at all.”
I felt her eyes on me. “Those scars.”
“Not every cut was purely for pleasure,” I explained, watching the trackers move.
“Where are they?”
“Neck, thigh, arm,” I answered coolly. “We were attacked by 52 of them. She managed to kill eight of them before they caught her. I killed 26. Their bodies are still in the woods.”
“Did you search them?”
“I was more interested in searching for her.”
Olivia nodded, stepped back, and got on the phone as I watched the three little red dots move slowly across the terrain.
They were long outside of Seattle now, going deeper and deeper into the mountains, into the trees.
I knew Absolution would be nearer to this church, and I knew it would be well hidden.
I also knew that’s exactly where they were taking her.
“He’s having them take her to Absolution, right?” Poppy asked, sitting up. “Wasn’t that the plan?”
“No,” I answered. “She decided not to go.”
Her brows lifted. “She what?”
My eyes flicked to hers. “She wanted to stay,” I repeated chillingly. “We were going to move forward with the secondary plan, which was to follow the others to our respective church, torture them for the location, leave them with you, and find Absolution ourselves.”
Her eyes widened as if the kidnapping was just now hitting her at full force. “What the actual fuck! Then let’s go fucking get her, Azrael,” she shouted, shoving herself to a stand. “What the Hell are we doing here if she didn’t want to go in the first place! You have her location, let’s go!”
I watched her carefully, my own heart slamming against my ribs, the anger boiling mercilessly under my very skin.
I didn’t like this rage, which was strange because I craved all rage, but this?
It was unfamiliar to me. It felt…uncontrollable.
It felt like a kind of feral I wasn’t completely confident I could keep control of.
The leash around my neck was tight, my nails bloody from clawing at the cage within me, my voice hoarse from the snarling and growling. I wanted blood.
Tick tock.
When I didn’t respond, Poppy snarled, rushing the desk, slamming her hands down viciously.
“They’re going to rape your wife, Azrael,” she said, trying to get me angry enough to react.
“Not just because that’s what they do, but because she’s your wife.
The great Azrael Thorin’s property. They’ll ruin her.
Now is not the time for your creepy goddamn patience, it’s time to act. It’s time to go.”
I knew what they were going to do to her.
I knew intimately what they would do to her, but I also knew that if they sent 52 people after us, there would be hundreds more around Absolution, just in case, waiting.
Malachi was smart, probably as smart as me, which was why it had taken him so long to get caught, and only caught by yours truly.
Smart enough to probably have realized months ago who my Claim was and that I had been in his church for a long time. Smart enough to busy himself with the excuse of ‘meetings’ while he went around working the problem in his own way.
The game just got far more complicated.
He had contingencies for his contingencies. So every step we had to play had to be perfect. Every card dealt had to be with a precise hand. There was no room for missteps, for miscalculations. There was no room for error. So running in with guns blazing to save her was not an option.
Not now, at least.
It was my fault, I suppose. I underestimated him.
I had been playing ghost for so long, I outsmarted everyone for so long, that I never dove deeper into my doubt that he didn’t know about us getting married.
If I had, I would have realized that there was no way the Founder wouldn’t know when the Chosen One was married off and who she was married off to.
Every document, every paper, had been signed with ‘Kaz’ but that didn’t stop the talk, and the marriage of the Chosen One was important enough that even if the Elders had been ignoring every other email Garrett had sent, they never would have ignored that.
Malachi must have found out. Must have questioned why this ‘Kaz’ would buy that marriage after Thomas had had it for so long. He would have looked deeper. Somewhere, there was a document with my name on it and he finally looked close enough to see it.
Poppy scoffed, shaking her head when I didn’t respond. “You’re a fuck, Azrael. For one second, one second, I had myself convinced that maybe you actually did care about Scarlett. That the Claim actually meant something to you, but clearly, I was wrong.”
“You usually are,” I hummed, returning my attention to the screen.
“Azrael!” she snarled. “Grey left the actual country to protect Emily. Rae was never taken, but Jack did everything in his power to solve her fucked up story, and Everett spent months killing and hunting, hunting and killing to track down Olivia and bring her home.” She straightened and shook her head, giving me the most disgusted look I had ever seen cross her face.
“Out of all of them, I really thought you’d be the one who saved her before they managed to touch her but look at you. Just another one of his puppets.”
My eyes flicked back to hers just as she turned and stormed off for the door. “Don’t do anything stupid, Poppy,” I sang after her, causing her to stop just at the threshold.
She turned back to me, her brows pulled together, her mouth twisted in confusion and worry.
Her throat bobbed and she turned away, running her tongue over her lips, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. After a moment, she shook her head and left the room.
“Okay, I’ve got a few of my most trusted people going to the location you were attacked to clean up what was left,” Olivia said, rejoining my side.
“Everett is on his way. The others are still out of state, but I doubt all of us milling about this place will be of any good, so I’ll send them a message from my burner, telling them to be on standby.
How do you want to proceed with the churches? ”
I turned back to the screen, watching those little dots move.
“We wait. She is me, Olivia. She has to be, especially now. So, we will wait and prepare. Once she gets to Absolution, we will wait three days. It’s enough time for her to gather some information before we get her.
I’ll figure out the plan for the churches while we prepare.
” We would need to hit Absolution at the same time as the churches now, but that was fine. I would adapt.
She nodded from my right side, studying that monitor. “Okay,” she agreed only to lean forward and gesture to the second screen. “Is that a heartbeat?”
My eyes flicked to the other screen, watching the heart monitor beat steadily. “I also installed a little device in her chest that tracks her heartbeat. So, even if they do find those trackers, I’ll still have that.”
“Hmm.” She went quiet for a few seconds before she spoke again. “Can you give me one? I want to install it in Everett. Without his knowledge, of course.”
I felt a bare smile flick one corner of my lips up for half a second before it fell. “Of course, little chess player.”