Chapter 40 #2
My jaw tightened at the strange lilt in his voice when talking about her. “They’re quite unobservant when Zo’s off on her own.”
He chuckled. “I suppose so. Caught up in a love affair of the ages, those boys are. I suppose I should thank their women for taking their eyes off of me. For some time there, I worried they would see too much.”
Oh, on the contrary, it was their wives who helped them become more, something I had never believed in prior to this last year.
“I will hand it to you though, it is rather irritating, you convincing them all to turn off their trackers. Maybe they are working with you. Reports can be forged, after all.”
“The hatred you instilled in them against me should tell you otherwise. But, aside from that, shouldn’t you trust them enough not to need them? It’s quite sad you can’t even do that.”
“It makes one think,” he pondered, ignoring my comment. “Refusing certain assignments, going silent, Emily leaving New York. Quite concerning, I would say.”
He knew. Even if he didn’t know, part of him had an idea that they were, at the very least, helping me.
“Perhaps they were just getting sick and tired of you controlling every aspect of their lives when you and your brother were allowed to disappear any moment you pleased,” I countered.
“The daffodil loathed you for lying about her mother, and you know how in love your perfect little assassin is with her. The mouse does like to travel, and her professor is nothing if not whipped. A vacation, perhaps. I can’t speak for the Claim and his writer, but you know as well as I that they have been working diligently on the school you so disapprove of. ”
“I don’t disapprove of their school—”
“Oh, apologies,” I sang, “you greatly dislike the idea of it. Probably because you didn’t come up with it yourself. Don’t worry, father dearest, the dick measuring contest will come to an end very soon.”
He laughed. “Threatening me while I stand in this basement with your wife? Risky.”
A basement was something. It didn’t eliminate much, but it did eliminate some. “What’s risky is thinking that I care so much for someone that torturing them would do you any good.”
“Oh? Did you hear that, Chosen One?”
Her whimpers roared in my ear. Pain-filled whimpers. Unlike anything I had ever heard before.
“Well, you should know that while you have been so very…uncaring in this situation, that babysitter of yours has come to see me in the last couple weeks.”
My spine straightened and I turned to my desk where Poppy had stood and was watching me with hard, unflinching eyes. “Did she?”
“She did. You know, I picked out those three women in hopes that they would tame you, but it seems you three had a difficult time not being leaders.”
I took a slow step towards her, and then another. “It’s difficult for women not to conform to men who actually act like men,” I hummed. “It’s the demon’s they fall in love with. The obsession. Even if they don’t feel anything romantic, it’s instinct.”
“Is that why the world is in such an epidemic?” he asked. “Because men aren’t—”
“Yes,” I answered. “Men aren’t. They don’t exist. Not like they used to.” I didn’t care for his little rabbit trail. His distraction. I could still hear her whimpers. I could see the question in Poppy’s eyes. I could feel something inside of me cracking, and I didn’t like it. “Why did she see you?”
“Oh, don’t you worry, dear Azrael, she was the ever-faithful little puppet you created her to be.
She told me how you weren’t searching. She told me how you didn’t care.
How you were going on with your little secret mission, not a word to her, but that you were acting stranger than normal. That she wanted to know why.”
She went fishing, I realized, slowing to a stop. Creating this narrative that nothing had changed in the last year. But he knew that wasn’t true. He had to have known—
“But we both know she was lying,” he went on. “It’s the one thing I hadn’t considered, Azrael, was how little control I would have once it became this big.”
Things fell through the cracks. My name, for instance, my marriage.
He was too busy to think, to check in on his churches.
“When two worlds collide,” I hummed. “Was it difficult? When Thomas started talking of war between the church and The Family? Was it difficult trying to figure out how you would navigate that?”
“Is it difficult knowing that your wife has been raped countless times? Is it difficult knowing she has been beat with belts, fucked with chair-legs, and choked until her heart stopped before being paralyzed, fucked like a ragdoll, and brought back to life? Is it difficult knowing that even if you do get her back, something I will do everything in my power to prevent from happening, that you will never have her back? Is that difficult for you, Azrael? Is it difficult knowing that however smart you believe you are, I have always been one step ahead of you? That you are just as simple and just as plain and just as witless as your brothers?”
I laughed, the ticking of the clock growing faster and louder. I laughed and laughed. I threaded my hand through my hair and threw my head back and laughed until tears filled my eyes, until my smile was so painful, I felt my muscles tearing.
“Tick tock goes the clock,” I said maniacally, the voice not my own. “Tick tock goes the CLOCK!”
“For your wife and your family too,” Malachi hummed tightly, the fear only a soft hint in his voice, but it was enough.
It was all I needed.
Scarlett started screaming and I felt the entire world tilt, my laughter growing worse, harsher, sharper, until my throat started to shred itself.
She screamed and screamed.
“Do you hear that?” Malachi asked over it all. “It took us four months, but we finally made her scream.”
I dug my nails into my own skull, pulling at my hair, my hand tightening around the phone until I heard it whine in my ear. “Tick tock tick tock tick tock,” I said over and over again.
“The clock can’t help you now,” Malachi stated coldly.
“AZRAEL!”
I froze, the laughter and chanting dying on my lips, my mind going completely silent. I had never heard it before, her voice. Other than moans and whimpers, I had never heard it before.
“Ah, so she can speak,” he hummed. “How delightful.”
I felt the tears burn the rims of my eyes, the smile touching my temples on either side, my head pounding, my mission, my new mission, becoming very clear in that moment.
“You should have just killed me,” I purred, my insides shaking, my hands shaking. Why was I shaking?
“But this is so much more fun,” he sang and then quickly hung up.
The ticking of the clock became a roaring in my ears. Voices, too many voices humming and talking and screaming in my head. Why wouldn’t they stop? Why wouldn’t they stop?
I grabbed my chest, a clattering meeting my ears. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t force my thoughts to align, what did that mean? It hurt. My chest hurt.
I looked down, rubbing my chest, watching my own hands rip open my vest, my shirt, the buttons scattering. I searched. There was no bullet hole.
I was sure I had been shot, but where was the blood?
Why was there no blood?
“Azrael.”
My head whipped up and there was Greyson. His hazel eyes were burning, watching, studying. “Are you okay?” he asked, but his words were underwater.
“I was shot,” I told him, but the voice wasn’t my own. It didn’t come from my lips. From my vocal cords. It was wholly different.
My eyes fell back to my chest, searching.
A hand wrapped around my arm and my head whipped up again, the roaring unrelenting.
Greyson was shaking his head, his own hand against his chest, his lips moving.
I watched them, shaking my head, confusion and rage filling me. Where was Scarlett? Where was my wife?
“At Absolution,” Greyson’s words broke through.
My brows furrowed. Had I said that out loud?
“Azrael, focus,” he said, his hand tightening around my arm. “She’s still there. She needs you to focus.”
Me? I shook my head, but the world kept spinning, kept roaring, kept singing. “I’m no savior.”
“No, you’re a protector. Azrael,” he said again, his voice slowly coming into focus. “You have always protected us, now she needs it. What did he say? You have to tell us what he said.”
My eyes fell back to my chest. She cried out for me. Me. Why? Didn’t she know I was worthless? Didn’t she know I was weak? I was powerless. Lady Elise beat that truth into me. Raped it into me. I was powerless.
Powerless.
Powerless.
She was in danger and I couldn’t help her.
She cried out for me.
My knees gave out and I grabbed onto the only thing I could: Greyson’s shoulder.
He held onto me tightly, my nails digging into him, our eyes locked.
~~~
December 2022
Christmas was on a Sunday this year, and despite her detest for the holidays, she had picked colors that reflected Christmas.
A dark green, turtle-neck sweater, and a burgundy skirt that fell to her ankles. Her hair was back in a tight ponytail, a single braid mixed among the bundle of hair.
I could appreciate the beauty of it. The way the colors played off her skin. The way she continued to wear that braid, simply to rebel against what they were doing. It, once again, proved to me that she still had a little fight left in her. Constant and small, but unrelenting.
The rebel of the church.
A perfect little sinner.
She was beautiful.
~~~
Present Day
I shook my head. “I don’t know what to do,” I confessed, the words a bare whisper, my eyes wide, vision blurred. “What do I do?”
Grey’s eyes burned with a fire I knew well. “You do what you’ve always done. Be you. No more waiting. No more contingencies. No more fears or worries. He’s already torturing her, Azrael. If we wait any longer, she’ll die. Say the word,” he told me. “Say it, and we’ll go.”
I searched his eyes, my heart pounding, the roaring fading to a low rush, the ticking slowing. He was right. It was time to go. I nodded and forced myself to straighten, my arm falling to my side. “Get to your church. Wake the others and go.”
He watched me for a moment longer before nodding and heading for the door.
Poppy started for me. “What happened? What did Malachi say?”
“Keep your eye on the computer, Red. Stay with her, uncle. If the others come down, tell them to do as the cub said.”
“Where are you going?” he asked.
I grabbed my cane and headed for the door, Malachi’s mistake screaming through my mind. “To get a new suit.”