Chapter 40
Azrael
Present Day
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced them open. I had fallen asleep watching her heartbeat.
I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t allow myself to do that.
I shoved myself straighter and leaned back, watching the line jumping on the monitor.
Emily and Havoc had convinced the others to decorate the house.
It had taken them days to put up all the Christmas decorations.
The wreaths, the garland, the bows, and lights.
They even put up an irritating amount of trees.
We had trees outside. Why did we need to kill them and bring them inside just to put tacky decorations on them?
Although, the house did smell like pine now.
And it wasn’t so dark with the soft warm glow of the colored lights filling every room that existed in this place. Including the basement, which Olivia and Havoc had worked diligently on by themselves.
My eyes lifted to the tree in the far corner.
A large one. Nine feet tall, six feet wide at the base.
It was covered in burgundy ribbons and bows, silver tinsel, twinkling yellow lights, and hundreds of colored lights.
It had ornaments covering every single branch that encapsulated each style of everyone who now lived here, and it sparkled brightly.
Scarlett was going to love it. It had been up for days, and I was still finding different ornaments that constantly had me thinking deeply about different members of the family. A chess piece, a snowflake, a cat, a tiara, a carved pumpkin, and so on.
I didn’t have time to linger on the warm feelings that threatened to fill me. I couldn’t allow myself even that.
“Why haven’t you told us about this?”
I looked over, finding Poppy sitting in a chair to my left. Close enough to watch the monitor herself.
It was the first thing she had said to me since my comment in August. I was impressed by how angry it had made her.
In the past, no matter what I said, what I tried to do to her, she never made the choice to stop speaking to me.
Usually, our communication was determined by whether or not I answered her phone call.
But…I understood my mistake and although I regretted very little of my life, I did regret what I had done to make her leave mine.
She was holding my notebook, looking over my recording of Scarlett’s heart monitor readings.
I watched her for a long time before turning back to the screen.
“Because it wouldn’t change anything,” I answered quietly.
It was difficult to ascertain how late it was these days without looking at a clock.
The sun set so early. It rained all day and most of the night.
Many rivers in Washington were even flooding this year due to the downpour.
It was dark all the time, but the sound of the rain was comforting.
But, after one quick glance at the computer clock and another around the room, I knew it was 1:32am on Christmas morning, and only Greyson, Beckett, Poppy, and I were awake.
“Since the…” she flipped through the pages. “13th, her heartbeat has changed,” she went on in a soft but accusing tone. “There’s no pattern, more severe jumps, hardly anything resting.” She tossed the book onto my desk. “She’s being tortured, Azrael.”
And it didn’t change anything. We were still no closer to finding her than we had been months ago. Despite having Zo and Thomas. Despite everyone knowing about them. Despite Evie being in a coma. We had nothing.
Why the fuck did we still have nothing? I was missing something. I had to be missing something.
She searched my eyes, her own hard and confused.
“What are we doing, Az? Why haven’t we gone to the church?
Why don’t you want us confronting Malachi?
Who cares about the ‘getting every root’ thing now?
We all know it’s not possible with how many Pillars and Favorites left the church, so why are we just sitting here, waiting for her to die? ”
I watched her for a few seconds longer before turning back to the computer. When Olivia and I had brought Beckett back with the news of Zo and Thomas, there had been a mix of apprehension, relief, and rage.
Beckett could help us.
Thomas and Zo must have answers.
But after moving past the betrayal not even Jack could get anything from Zo.
And Thomas? He was just as in the dark as he had been before.
It turned out that his father had disappeared, leaving him to try and figure everything out on his own.
The problem with that was that nobody knew any of the passwords or login information they needed in order to get into the churches servers.
Nobody was smart enough to hack into it, and Thomas was too paranoid to go outside his little circle of friends to ask.
All he was doing was what he saw his father do, but on a grander scale.
Selling, fucking, preaching, intimidating.
He had no contact with the Elders. He had no names, no information on routes, Absolution, anything. He was still an idiot.
But he was also the only person we had that connected us, in some way, to Scarlett, so he was still alive in that cabin with Zo.
Suffering, screaming, sobbing, shitting his pants.
He was fucking weak. Inside and out.
“If we do anything, she dies,” Beckett said from where he sat at the table.
I glanced over, finding both he and Greyson looking up from their seats.
“Even having Zo is putting her in danger. If Malachi gets a hint that Azrael cares for Scarlett, even a little, then he’ll kill her, sell her, or use her to bring him down.
Not to mention not preparing ourselves correctly in regards to the church.
No, at this point, it wouldn’t matter if we didn’t get every root, but it would matter if we didn’t at least get most of them.
We have to cripple them, Malachi, in a way that makes them too scared to try and rebuild. It's the only way this ends.”
He was right. The only reason father dearest probably hadn’t realized we had Zo was because of what little contact they actually had.
They had covered their tracks more than well, but there had to be some sort of check in.
I never gave Evie and Zo an actual church to hit.
So any information she had was useless. Father dearest probably had a monthly check in for information just in case.
It had to be any day now.
Which worried me deeply.
Poppy didn’t even glance his way. “But at what cost?” she asked me.
“Look,” she gestured towards the screen.
Towards Scarlett’s heartbeat. “She’s still alive.
Right now. Fighting. Maybe she isn’t worried about whether or not you’re going to save her, not after how you trained her, but a piece of her, a small part, has to be wondering where you are.
If you’re looking for her. A small piece of her mind has to be considering the very real possibility that she will never make it out of that house. ”
My heart was pounding, a chill settling over my skin at her words, my breathing becoming shallower as the sound of the ticking clock became louder and louder.
Tick tock.
I inhaled to reply, to curse her for saying such things, to explain to her that we trained Scarlett far too well for her to ever consider giving up, but the sound of my phone ringing interrupted such a speech.
My eyes instantly found my drawer, staring at it, my racing heart all but stopped.
The entire room went silent. The kind of silence only the night can bring.
“Who has that number?” Poppy asked when I didn’t reach for it immediately.
Scarlett. She was the only one who had all my current numbers.
The world seemed to slow as I finally reached for the drawer and opened it. The phone screen was lighting up, but the number was unknown. As it should be. Scarlett’s phone was with me.
I picked it up, staring at the Washington number as it rang and rang and rang.
My eyes returned to the heartbeat as I hit answer. It hadn’t changed. Not even a hitch.
Slowly, I put it to my ear.
Silence met me.
More silence.
And then…
I heard panting, whimpering, crying.
Slowly, I found myself standing, my hand tightening.
“Do you hear that?” Malachi asked coldly. “Can you hear her whimpering and moaning? Do you hear the chains, Azrael? Can you hear the muzzle?”
I closed my eyes, feeling that dangerous part of me roar to life.
The ticking started to fade to a threatening hum, the burning rage spreading through every vein, the craving for blood so overwhelming, that I feared for the next person who touched me.
“How did you get this number?” I asked, my tone coming off as bored and slightly tired.
“I learned a thing or two in my years,” he responded easily. “Extracting information, for one.”
“Do you think that worries me?” I asked, sliding a hand into my pocket as I walked towards the windows.
“No, I suspect you trained her in torture by the way we started out. Why have you not come after her yet? I’m assuming Zo’s check in was missed because of you, but still, maybe I overestimated the care you feel for her.”
I lifted my chin. When had he found out? The 13th? I was losing my step. He was making me lose my step. Fuck, I needed to focus. I needed to find my control again, my calculations, my deviousness. I needed to find myself again.
I stretched my neck from side to side and released a slow breath, and with it, everything else. It was the emotions that were ruining me, I knew that. I had to let them go. I needed to try and let them go. “It would be a first. Usually you underestimate me.”
“Which, for some time, you proved, but now?” He chuckled.
“Have you lost your step? No church visits, no coming after me. Kidnapping Zo was something, I suppose, but you haven’t even employed the help of your brothers and sisters.
How did you do it? Get Zo without tipping off Jack and precious little Rae? ”