Tortured: Book Three of the Jason and Azazel Trilogy

by V. J. Chambers

  "Why?" I said.

  "He's not exactly a very stable person," said Brother Mancini, stacking the piles on top of each other.

  Jason raised his eyebrows. "We can handle unstable," he said. "We can handle a lot of things."

  Brother Mancini just kept shaking his head. "No, I don't think so," he said. "I won't tell you where that man is. In fact, I don't even think I remember. And maybe he is dead. God help us, maybe he is." He looked up at us with a strained smile. "Well, if that's all, then the two of you should really be on your way, shouldn't you, then?"

  "We're not leaving until you tell us where to find Cornelius Agricola," I said. "What's so unstable about him anyway?"

  Brother Mancini crossed himself. "The Reddimus Order may not be the most traditional in its beliefs," he said. "Certainly, we are students of pagan religions and mythology. Perhaps not all of us see things as black and white. But, I must tell you, if there is evil in the universe, Cornelius Agricola serves it. And it has been my misfortune to have to deal with him." He stood up again. "But that is all I will say about him. You won't get anymore out of me, and I refuse to tell you where he is."

  Brother Mancini went back to the door. Jason didn't move.

  "Evil, huh?" asked Jason. "Well, Azazel and I know a little bit about that, considering she's imbued with the spirit of a Jewish demon, and I'm the devil incarnate, so that's really not going to scare us off. If this guy's so bad, why do you even know who he is?"

  "No!" said Brother Mancini, putting his hand on the doorknob. Jason settled firmly against the door. "I won't talk about it. You won't make me. You two need to go."

  Jason caught my eye above Brother Mancini's head. "Don't be difficult, Brother Mancini," he said. "We'd really like this to be a pleasant visit."

  "Yeah," I said. "Just tell us where he is." I reached into my jacket for my gun. I just put my hand on it. I didn't take it out.

  "I've told you I won't," said Brother Mancini. "You can't trap me here in my own office."

  I slid the gun out. "Brother Mancini," I said. "Please just tell us what we want to know."

  At the sight of the gun, Brother Mancini began muttering to himself in rapid Italian. He retreated into a corner of the room, his hands in front of his face, cowering away from us. Jason pushed away from the door, drawing his own gun. I stood up. We advanced on Brother Mancini. Both of us leveled our guns.

  Brother Mancini's eyes were wide. "Listen," he said. "Cornelius Agricola is not someone you can just have a chat with. If you knew what he'd done and why he forces the Order and the Church to allow him to stay in the city, you wouldn't want to go there."

  "So tell us," said Jason.

  "No," said Brother Mancini, crossing himself again.

  "We don't want to shoot you, do we, Azazel?" Jason asked me.

  "No, we don't," I said. "Thing about shooting people is that it's always messy."

  "Fine!" said Brother Mancini. "Fine, I'll get you his address. But put away the guns!"

  * * *

  "We weren't really going to shoot him, were we?" I asked Jason as we strode out of the monastery.

  Jason handed me the slip of paper Brother Mancini had given us with Cornelius Agricola's address on it. "Maybe in the leg," said Jason, "if he really wouldn't have given us the address."

  I nodded. That sounded reasonable. "It was kind of cool, wasn't it?" I said. "I mean, standing over him with our guns like that. It felt, I don't know, kind of powerful." I looked at Jason. "Do you think that's bad?"

  He shrugged. "We didn't hurt him. Don't worry about it."

  Okay. I wouldn't.

  Chapter Ten

  August 17, 1990

  It does hurt. We only did it twice so far. Once was at the Colosseum. We did it at midnight, while intoning a chant in Latin that Ted taught me. It hurt. Afterwards, I told Ted that I loved him. He told me I shouldn't say things like that. That we were doing this for a specific purpose, not for personal pleasure. I should have said, "Good," because there wasn't much pleasure for me anyway.

  Brother Mancini of the Order of Reddimus directed us to Cornelius Agricola yesterday. Last night, we went to see him. Ted was very excited, because Cornelius apparently has access to some kind of power that he could imbue into the child. I didn't get to find out much about what it was, because they talked without me.

  It was strange and weird. I had to drink from several really disgusting tasting drinks. Then they smeared my body with something that smelled horrible. Ted and I did it again, in dark, with just these candles. And Cornelius Agricola watched. I don't like him.

  Today, I feel tired. We only have two more days in my window of fertility. Ted hasn't told me where we're going next.

  Brother Mancini had made Cornelius Agricola sound pretty dangerous. The entry in Michaela's diary hadn't. She'd said she didn't like him, but nothing more than that. I hadn't had the chance to read beyond her entry on Cornelius Agricola, though. Maybe she talked about him more later. I wished the diary was like Google, and it had a search function. It didn't though.

  Jason and I decided the best course of action was to be cautious. I had to admit that I didn't like the fact that Brother Mancini had seemed so frightened of Agricola. I was curious about why, but if it were really, really bad, maybe it was better that we didn't know. We approached Agricola's house with our guns drawn. It was a tall house, connected to the other houses on the street. Most of Rome was like that. All of the houses looked like a wall. The street and sidewalk met the edge of the foundation. There weren't any trees or yards. The city was completely covered in stone. It was as if the original builders of the city had wanted to eradicate nature or something.

  The entrance to Agricola's house was a tall, metal gate, made of twisting wrought iron. It wasn't locked. Jason swung it open, and I followed. That was when we both took out our guns. Inside the gate was a courtyard. There was a fountain in the center. When we looked up, we saw a balcony. Dozens of hanging plants dangled in our faces. Jungle-like and dark, the courtyard gave me a touch of the creeps.

  Jason went first. We tiptoed across the courtyard to a door across from the gate. It had an old, iron knocker on it. Jason raised it and dropped it. The sound was a resounding boom. We both jumped a little.

  Nothing happened. We waited.

  "You think he's not home?" I whispered, tightening my grip on my gun.

  Jason took a look around and then raised the knocker again. It hit the door and made another loud booming sound.

  Still nothing.

  "Should we come back?" I wondered.

  Then there was the sound of shuffling feet from behind the door. It opened. A short, wizened woman stood on the other side of the door. She had stringy white hair, olive colored skin, and she was quite rotund. "Buongiorno?" she said.

  "Uh," said Jason, keeping me behind him. "We're looking for Cornelius Agricola."

  The woman looked confused. She let out a string of Italian words.

  Jesus. This was stupid. Why were Jason and I trying to get around in a city where we didn't speak the language?

  "Um," I said, "Inglese?" (Which was essentially the extent of my Italian. It meant English.)

  "Ah," said the woman, looking saddened. "No Italiano?"

  "No," I said.

  "Cornelius Agricola," said Jason. "Does he live here?" He pointed at the ground, as if that was supposed to somehow mime "live."

  "Agricola," repeated the woman, still looking confused.

  There was a thud behind us.

  Jason and I whirled, raising our guns. I didn't have a chance to see what had fallen behind us, however.

  Before I could think, someone or something kicked both my gun out of my hands and my feet out from under me. I fell back, my head cracking on the stone of the courtyard. And everything went dark.

  * * *

  I woke up in a darkened room, my back to Jason. We were sitting on the floor, and we were chained up. The chains looked like chains from some medieval dungeon. They were heavy
, and they attached to large metal shackles that encircled our ankles and wrists. The room itself was dark and stone, with no furnishings except some whips and chains hanging on a far wall. The only light came from a grate high in the ceiling, where a shaft of light fell down directly on Jason and me. I gulped. What had we gotten ourselves into, exactly?

  I nudged Jason. "You awake?" I whispered.

  "He's awake," said a voice. Not Jason's. The voice was deeper and older than his, with a heavy Italian accent.

  I didn't say anything else. My gun was gone. I'd had it in my hand when I'd been knocked out. I noticed now that both our guns were hanging underneath the whips. Whoever had us was taunting us, putting our weapons in sight but out of reach. This sucked. It didn't seem likely that this guy, if he actually was Cornelius Agricola (the lady at the gate hadn't seemed to recognize the name), was going to be real helpful. He probably wasn't going to tell us anything.

  "I've been waiting for him," continued the voice. The man who was speaking strode around the circle and into my vision. Apparently, he'd been standing in front of Jason. He was a tall man with broad shoulders. His head was shaved, and he had a goatee. The way he glared at me from under his eyebrows projected something sinister. I didn't like it. "You, though," he continued. "I didn't think there would be a girl." He smiled. "But that will make things even more interesting."

  Interesting? What was this guy planning to do to us?

  "Sit tight, lovelies," he said and left the room, shutting and locking a heavy door behind him.

  We were quiet for several minutes after he left. I was expecting something to drop in through the ceiling or crawl out through some grates in the floor that I couldn't see. Something like poisonous snakes or some deadly gas. But nothing happened.

  "He said he'd been waiting for you," I said. "Do you think he knows who you are? Do you think he's Cornelius Agricola?"

  Jason was rattling his chains, examining them. Trust Jason to be practical, only concerned with trying to get us out of the situation and not with the motives of our captor. "These are old shackles," he said. "I don't think they were made for women. You might be able to slide out of them."

  I tested one of them, trying to pull my hand out of it. It seemed pretty tight to me. Plus it was hard to move my limbs since they were connected to such heavy chains. "I don't think so," I said.

  "Try," said Jason.

  I dragged the chains closer so that my hands were close enough to touch. I held onto one of the shackles and tried to slide my hand out of it. It slid up over my hand, but caught on the knuckle of my thumb. I tried to push it farther. It wouldn't go. I folded my thumb against my hand, making that part of me as small as possible. It slid a little further up. Then it caught and wouldn't slide any further. "No," I said. "I can't."

  Jason twisted, flinching as he did so. He was straining against his chains. He checked my progress. "You've almost got it," he said. "Keep trying."

  "It hurts," I said.

  "Keep trying," he insisted. He moved his hand forward to help me, but his chain didn't reach far enough.

  I grasped the shackle again and tried to force it over my hand. It scraped my knuckles, drawing blood. "Ouch," I said. But it had moved forward more, so I kept struggling with it.

  More scraping. More bleeding. And then—success! My hand was free! Awesome.

  "It worked," I told Jason. "I have a free hand!"

  "Good," said Jason. "Keep going."

  The second hand was easier to free, but I scraped it up even worse, probably because I knew it could be done and wasn't as careful of myself. With both hands free, I started on my feet. I shrugged out of my shoes and socks and started to try to get the ankle shackles off. At first it seemed hopeless. I pushed the shackle down as far as I could get it. It slid down over my heel, but bit into the skin of the top of my foot, drawing more blood.

  Then I had a vague memory from when I was a very little girl. I couldn't have been more than three. My mother was in her bedroom, putting on a pair of very tight jeans. She couldn't get the end of the jeans over her heel. I remembered the way she'd pointed her toes, like a ballet dancer. Then she'd yanked the jeans up. They were tight on her ankle, like a second skin.

  This shackle was bigger than those jeans. Of course, it was also not made of fabric. Still, I tried it, elongating my foot and pointing my toes. The shackle slid right off. "Got a foot!" I told Jason. The second one came off just as easily. I was free!

  I stood up, going around to face Jason.

  "Good," he said. "Good job." He smiled at me.

  "How do we get you out?" I asked.

  "We don't," he said. "My hands and feet are too big. I've tried." He held up his hands, which were just as scraped as mine, but still encased in their shackles. "Instead, you've got to get the guns and wait behind the door. When he comes back, you shoot him. Then hopefully he's got keys on him, and you can get me out."

  It wasn't an awful plan. "But," I said, "if he's Cornelius Agricola, we still want him to tell us about what he did with Michaela and Edgar Weem."

  "Well, don't kill him," said Jason. "Just disable him."

  "So, where do I shoot him?" This guy looked pretty big. I wasn't sure if he'd go down with a shot in the leg. If it came to fighting hand to hand, I'd never be able to match him.

  "Go get the gun," said Jason. "Let me think about it."

  It turned out to be a moot point. I couldn’t reach the guns. They were too high on the wall, out of my reach. I tried jumping. I couldn’t even get my fingertips to brush them. Jason was taller than me. If we could get him free, he could probably reach them.

  But Jason assured me that he couldn't get out of his shackles. I told him to keep trying. I surveyed the door. It opened into the room, so it was possible that I could hide behind it when it opened, like Jason had said. "Maybe I could trip him," I said. "When he comes in?"

  "And then what?" said Jason.

  "Well," I said, "if he falls down flat on his face— How far can your chains reach?"

  Jason crawled forward. "Maybe," he said. "Maybe I could reach him. I could get a chain around his neck or something. But you'd have to help. If you ran up and kicked his head from behind, that would hurt him. Keep him down. It might work."

  We didn't have a better plan, so we decided to try it. I positioned myself behind the door and waited for the man to come back. He didn't come back. I got sick of standing and sat down behind the door.

  It felt like hours passed. But we didn't have any way to measure the time. The light from the grate over us seemed to be dimming. Moving. Was it early evening? Late afternoon? We didn't know.

  "You know what's been bothering me?" I finally said. "Two people at the school said that they started thinking about us on Friday."

  "What?" said Jason.

  "Faruza or maybe it was Fairie. And the head. When I asked them when they started to think we were special or whatever, they both said they did on Friday. And that was the day that I found you with Jude."

  "So?"

  "Well, every other time something weird has happened to us, it's been right after we kissed," I said. "And we did kiss on Friday. Do you remember?"

  "We kiss every day, Azazel. Weird things don't happen every time we kiss."

  "Yeah, but do you remember that kiss? It was a pretty intense kiss."

  Jason didn't answer for a second. "Yeah," he said. "I do remember. And right before we were kissing, I was wishing like hell that I could just be normal and enjoy high school."

  "Were you? Because I was wishing that we had someone who supported us," I said.

  "Huh," said Jason.

  "We got our wishes, didn't we?"

  "Do you think that's how it works?" he asked me. "Because before the Sons went nuts in Shiloh, I was totally wishing that we could get out of that situation."

  "And when I thought you were dead, I could hardly accept the fact that you were. I wanted you back."

  "Huh," said Jason again. "Maybe we should ditch this w
hole tripping him plan and just wish really hard that he'd come let us go. And then make out heavily."

  I laughed. "You think so?"

  "It wouldn't hurt anything would it?" Jason asked. "Plus, the whole thing doesn't sound unpleasant."

  I laughed again.

  "Come over here," Jason said.

  I went to him. I sat down next to him. I touched his face and his chest.

  "Now wish," he whispered.

  I shut my eyes. I wished as hard as I could. With my eyes still closed, I felt Jason's lips press against mine. They were sweet and soft and familiar, and they still made me feel like the entire world was splitting apart and falling away. I clung to him, our kiss deepening, our mouths opening, our tongues entwining. When we broke away, I sighed.