Tortured: Book Three of the Jason and Azazel Trilogy

by V. J. Chambers

  Eventually we emerged into a room about the size of a living room. The ceiling was low, and everything—walls, ceilings, and floor—were all composed of interlocking stones. The room was empty except for a few desks, which had laptop computers on them (of all things). Moretti held up a hand and told us to wait there. He disappeared through a small dark doorway on the other side of the room, and we could hear him calling out something in Italian.

  Suddenly, a group of men came rushing through the doorway. They were all dressed entirely in black, many of them carrying guns.

  The Sons!

  I didn't wait. I didn't think. I just took off back up the stairway as fast as I could. We'd seen them. The guy outside the church. And the figure I'd seen leaving the library. How could we have been so trusting?

  As my feet pounded against stone, I thought about how many times Jason and I had trusted a teacher. They'd always betrayed us. Why had I thought this would be any different?

  Chapter Seven

  April 30, 1990

  Oh my God. Oh my God. He kissed me.

  Well, at first, I told him what I was thinking. About the fact that he was of the Weem line and that he could easily be the father of the Rising Sun. And that I could, you know, be the mother. And he laughed at me.

  When he realized I was serious, he was mostly just angry. There was no way. He'd taken vows of celibacy, and I was just a kid. But I'm eighteen, and I know what I want.

  We argued for a long time. And then suddenly, he just grabbed me by the shoulders. And he said, "Dear God, you know there is a part of me that wants this more than anything." And then. He kissed me.

  I think I'm in love with him.

  "Azazel!" yelled Jason.

  Wait. Why wasn't Jason running with me? Why hadn't I waited for Jason?

  I paused on the steps. Turned. Jason was at the bottom of the steps.

  "It's the Sons!" I said.

  "It's the Brothers," he said.

  I made a confused face. What was the difference, really? The Brothers were the branch of the Sons that did all the dirty work. Jason had described them as Freemasons with guns or a cross between Jesuits and James Bond.

  "I think it's okay," Jason said. "Come back down."

  I hesitated.

  "I'll make sure you're okay," said Jason.

  I started back down the steps.

  When Jason and I reemerged into the stone room, all of the men were on their knees, their heads bowed, including Moretti. I clutched my forehead with one hand. "So they're like worshipping you now?" I asked Jason.

  Moretti stood up. "Respecting," he corrected. "Both of you."

  This was weird. I looked at Moretti. "Can you tell them to get up?"

  "Tell them yourself," said Moretti. "They are here to serve you."

  I shot a look at Jason. He made a face at me. "Uh," he said. "On your feet."

  The black clad men all stood up. They crowded around us, beaming at us expectantly. There were so many of them. They didn't all fit in the room. Some of them were spilling back into the hallway. What were they? What were they doing here?

  "These men," said Moretti, as if reading my mind, "are true believers. Defectors from the Sons. They don't agree with Hoyt's edict that you are not the Rising Sun. They refused to be part of a plan to kill you."

  Well, that was nice anyway, even if it was creepy. "Thanks for not killing Jason," I said, trying to smile.

  "They've been arriving here, once I was sure that the two of you were who I thought you were," said Moretti. "We're here to assist you in any way we can. We already took care of a problem for you. In the basement of the assembly hall."

  "You killed Jude?" asked Jason.

  "Indeed," said Moretti. "And disposed of the body."

  "You know," I said, "the thing is, we weren't sure if we were going to kill him yet."

  "May I speak?" asked one of the Brothers.

  Moretti turned to us.

  "Uh, sure," said Jason.

  "I was there," he said. "In Shiloh, when he shot you. I carried him off that night, while he was screaming that he would stop at nothing to see you dead. If it had been up to me, I would have killed him right then. Trust me when I say that one would have caused you nothing but harm."

  I didn't know what to say. I looked at Jason, but he was looking down at the ground. I tried another smile at the Brother. "Well, thanks, then," I said. "We're, um, not really used to having anyone look out for us." And, I added silently, I'm not sure if I really think these guys are doing that exactly.

  Jason looked up. "Yes," he said, nodding. "Thank you all."

  The Brothers all smiled, like they'd just been thanked by God himself. I grabbed Jason's hand. I wasn't sure I really liked any of this.

  Moretti held up his hand again. "If you all could leave us now. We have things to discuss."

  The men scurried out. Moretti folded his arms over his chest. I inched closer to Jason. He let go of my hand and put his arm around my waist. He pulled me against him. I looked up at him. He gazed down at me reassuringly.

  "Well," said Moretti, "it would appear that it doesn't exactly matter whether you think you're the Rising Sun or not. They do."

  "Yeah," said Jason, "I guess they do. But, you know, I've grown up surrounded by people who thought I was the Rising Sun. Excuse me if that doesn't exactly completely change my mind."

  "I thought you might say something like that," said Moretti. "And I could simply say that whatever your beliefs were, you had a responsibility to those men, and also a responsibility to me. Which I think is true. However, I think I can offer you some more convincing evidence. Follow me."

  He took off through the doorway.

  "You know," Jason called after him, "I've heard all the prophecies already."

  Moretti stopped and turned. "Not prophecies exactly, Jason." He gestured around him at the stone walls. "This place used to be your father's study, you know."

  The room seemed a little more comfortable than the big stone room we'd been in before. It was smaller. It had carpets on the floors and a couch along one wall. There were stacks of old books lining the walls. Moretti settled into a chair at a paper-covered desk, and gestured for us to sit down on the couch.

  We sat down gingerly.

  Moretti chuckled. "You look so much like your mother, Jason. She was brilliant. I still remember some of the essays she wrote for me." He looked at me. "Your essay on Things Fall Apart almost reminds me of them."

  "Yeah, well, she wasn't my mother," I said. But I had to admit I was a little confused. Michaela Weem had been brilliant? And Moretti had read her essays?

  "Your mother attended the SolSolisSchool," said Moretti.

  Jason shrugged. "Yeah, well, she did say she went to school in Europe. Can we stop calling her my mother? Michaela Weem is fine with me."

  "Her name was Aird when I knew her," said Moretti. "She was a bright, eager student. She had so much potential."

  "Right," said Jason, "until Edgar Weem got a hold of her."

  Moretti shook his head. "I don't think you quite understand, Jason. Ted—Edgar—was a colleague of mine at the time. He taught Philosophy and Mythology. He and I spent a great deal of time together in those days. We were friends."

  "You aren't anymore?" I asked. I couldn't help it.

  "Ted went on to greater things than I did," Moretti said, shrugging. "The Council. A high position in the Sons. I stayed here. Of course, he couldn't very well have continued working here. Not after the business with Michaela. There were suspicions at that point that something untoward had happened."

  "Well, something had, hadn't it?" I asked.

  "Michaela told us all about it," Jason said, looking sullen. He stood up. "Azazel, we don't have to stay here. We can go."

  There it was again. Jason wasn't the least bit interested in his family. Why not? "Aren't you slightly curious?" I asked.

  He shot a look at Moretti and then brought his eyes back to me. "Maybe," he said. "Maybe a little." He sa
t back on the couch. "So people thought that my dad was a jerk and didn't want him teaching teenagers anymore?"

  "Ted was a very good-looking man back then," said Moretti.

  "So what?" I said. The way Michaela had described it, Edgar Weem had raped her, repeatedly, and forced her to do all manner of disgusting things, like drink bull semen. What did being good looking have to do with that?

  "Michaela wasn't exactly unwilling to participate in his experiments," said Moretti. "Ted was a very popular professor, quite adored by the female population. I rather suspected it was a point of personal satisfaction for her. She seemed quite taken with him."

  "Yeah," I said, "but when we talked to her, she described him as vile, didn't she?"

  "She also said I was an abomination," said Jason. "You know I've never really believed a word that came out of her mouth. Go ahead, Professor. What were these experiments? What did my father do and why?"

  Moretti smiled. "Well, I don't know all the details. I wasn't involved in them. For obvious reasons, Ted felt they were private. But I do know that when he first started teaching here, I had the opportunity to engage in many conversations with him about the nature of the Rising Sun. It's always been a hotly contested issue within the Sons. For many years, it seems that there were two separate camps of thought. One school of thought held that the idea of the Rising Sun was simply a metaphor—that it referred to a period of time when the world would change significantly. Another school of thought was convinced that the Rising Sun was literally a person. That he would return to us like a dying god out of a myth.

  "Now," Moretti continued, getting up and crossing the room to take a book off a shelf, "I had always been firmly in the camp with those who looked at the Rising Sun as a metaphor. I knew that the official position of the Council was that the Rising Sun was definitely a person, and that they were even on the lookout for him, but I had never seriously considered the idea. I'm a scholar, not a mystic, and I wasn't about to be convinced of something that I thought was so ludicrous."

  I chewed on my lip, trying to let this sink in. Brother Mancini had said something like this, hadn't he? That the Sons hadn't been pursuing the Rising Sun mythos until the past few hundred years? "So, you're saying that the Rising Sun stuff might all just be metaphorical? That maybe there is no Rising Sun?"

  "No," said Moretti. "I'm saying that's what I believed before I met Ted." He handed the book he was holding to Jason. "However, Ted showed me this."

  Jason opened the book. It was very old. The pages were crumbly around the edges. The interior was in a language I couldn't understand. "Is this in Latin?" asked Jason. He turned to the title page. Then he looked up at Moretti. "A book about King Arthur?" he said. "Are you kidding?"

  "Not just any book about King Arthur," said Moretti. "This is a book that traces the genealogy of the historical King Arthur."

  "Hold up," I said. "King Arthur is a myth. He wasn't real."

  "He was certainly real," said Moretti. "His name might not have been Arthur, however. He is known chiefly to historical records by his title Riothamus, a Latinization of a Brythonic word meaning 'king-most,' or high king."

  "Yeah, yeah," said Jason. "I've heard that theory. But there are at least five others, all with evidence claiming that someone else was the historical King Arthur. The fact is we don't know anything."

  "No," said Moretti, "most people don't know for sure. We do, because we have that book. It's all there. But knowledge like this is best kept safe here, among the Sons. We wouldn't let just anyone know about it."

  That also sounded like Brother Mancini. I narrowed my eyes and started to say something, but Jason interrupted me.

  "Who cares, though," said Jason. "Who cares whether or not King Arthur was real?"

  "You've heard of the documents connecting King Arthur to the Rising Sun," said Moretti.

  "That stuff about Arthur coming back to England is first mentioned in the 12th century," said Jason. "It's a tenuous connection at best. At worst, it's just stupid. People probably patterned the Arthur myth on Jesus Christ."

  "No, no, no," said Moretti. "The earliest mention is this book." He took it back from Jason, holding it up in our faces. "And that's not all. Ted believed that the idea that Arthur would return to England was a mistranslation. He thought it meant that Arthur's descendant would save England in its time of worst trouble." Moretti carefully placed the book on the shelf. "I mentioned the book contained a genealogy. The reason that Ted had it was that it clearly points out that he, Edgar Weem, is a descendant of King Arthur."

  I furrowed my brow. "I feel like I'm stuck in Holy Blood, Holy Grail," I said. "Next you'll be telling me that book also connects Weem to the bloodline of Jesus Christ."

  Moretti snorted. "Jesus Christ didn't exist. He was an invention of the Jewish rabbis, created entirely to quell a revolution."

  "What?!" I said, my jaw dropping.

  "It's just a theory, Azazel," said Jason.

  "Right," I said. "So Jesus isn't real, but King Arthur is. I suppose the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy are historical figures too."

  "Actually," said Moretti, "there is some very intriguing mythology surrounding—"

  "Let's stay on topic," said Jason. "So Weem convinced you that the Rising Sun was real because he was descended from King Arthur?"

  "Well," said Moretti, "the evidence was quite compelling. The Sons have always been tied quite strongly to England, and Ted was English himself. The idea that the Rising Sun might not be the culmination of the King Arthur mythos in addition to everything else that he was, well, I couldn't deny the possibility.

  "Ted really felt that the Rising Son would be born soon, and that he would be born to someone of his own family. Due to his own professed celibacy, of course, he didn't then think that he would have anything to do with it."

  "Really?" said Jason. "Sure. So what changed his mind?"

  "Your mother, of course," said Moretti. "It was her idea."

  "Oh sure it was," I said. "I'm sure she was gung-ho to be part of all that sick, ritualistic sex with her teacher. Gross." Why did men always blame the girl for that kind of stuff? Weem had been the adult. It had been his fault.

  "Doesn't matter," Jason said. He stood up. "Professor, all of this has been interesting, but I have to admit, I'm underwhelmed. I don’t care who I'm descended from or what ridiculous things my father decided to do. The fact is, being followed all over the world by people who are trying to capture me or kill me or kill my girlfriend is really, really grating on my nerves." He held his hand out to me and helped me to my feet. "We'd hoped to find some kind of evidence that we could use to extricate ourselves from this mess, but I think you cleared it up for me back there. It doesn't matter what I believe or what evidence I find. Those men, and you apparently, are functioning on faith. And they're not going to stop believing. Not for any reason." He turned to me. "So I guess we're screwed."

  Jason and I started for the doorway.

  Moretti moved in our path. "No, Jason, you aren't. You saw how many men there were. And more are arriving daily. They are dedicated to you, body and soul. They will protect you until the death. I wouldn't call that being 'screwed.'"

  Hmm. He kind of had a point.

  "Besides," said Moretti, "it seems that the campus community has become quite supportive of you."

  "Yeah," I said. "We're like suddenly really popular. Do you have anything to do with that?"

  "What could I possibly have to do with that?" said Moretti. "It is the two of you. Your power compels. It has done so before. It will only grow."

  I swallowed. I didn't think I liked the sound of that. I didn't want to be compelling.

  "I assure you," said Moretti. "You are safe here. You are safe on this campus. We are watching. We are protecting you. You are too important to be damaged."

  And then, creepily, he knelt down in front of us.

  * * *

  Jason sighed as he sat down heavily on a pew in the old church. "Normally, I'd say
let's just get out of here," he said.

  After leaving the library, we'd sent the Weem twins on their way and come inside the assembly hall to talk. It was kind of our spot.

  "Leave?" I said.

  "I've been thinking about it for awhile," said Jason. "I've been thinking that we aren't having any luck getting into the library, and that the school year's almost over, and that we're gonna have to figure out what we're doing next."

  Funny. I hadn't thought about what we were going to do next. I guess I'd been too caught up in my dreams to worry about anything else.