Tortured: Book Three of the Jason and Azazel Trilogy

by V. J. Chambers

  "Let's go," she said.

  But as she opened the door to go back into the hall, a loud alarm went off. It was an annoying beeping sound.

  We both turned on the man. "Did you do that?" I asked.

  "No," he said. "No, no. I swear."

  Another alarm started to go off as well. This one sounded like a school bell.

  The man slid off his chair and crawled under his desk. "It's like the end of the world," he sobbed.

  Marlena and I glared at him. She opened the door a crack to look outside. "It's pandemonium out there," she said. "There are people running all over the place."

  "Because of us?" I asked. I was confused.

  "I don't know," said Marlena.

  A loud recorded voice came over PA system. "Alert," it said. "Lock system disengaged. Manual lockdown pro-cedures commencing. All personnel to designated areas." It repeated. And repeated.

  "Lock system disengaged?" Marlena said, yelling over the sound of the alarms and the recorded voice.

  "Jason," I said.

  She flung open the door. We ran out into the hallway, which was filled with people in suits and men in black outfits, running in various directions. Marlena and I sprinted for the elevator at the end of the hall. Once inside, the door snapped closed on us. Marlena punched the button for the ground floor. The elevator whisked us down. When the door opened on the dungeon floor, I was astonished.

  It really did look like a dungeon, complete with bars and chains. It was dank and dark and musty. All of the cell doors were open and empty. Marlena and I raced through the dungeon, but there was no one there.

  Abruptly, the recorded voice changed. "Security breached," it said. "Powering down."

  It didn't make much difference in the dungeon, but when we got back to the elevator, it wouldn't work.

  "I think Jason shut down the electricity," I said.

  "Great," she said. "Apparently, he didn't need us to rescue him."

  "We've still got to find him," I said. "And Palomino."

  "Stairs," said Marlena, pointing.

  Inside the stairwell it was pitch black. We grasped the railing and went up them as fast as we could. Two flights up, we heard someone clambering down the stairs. Marlena put out her hand to stop me from moving and pulled us up against the wall. We flattened ourselves there.

  "Hello?" said a voice.

  Dammit. Whoever it was had heard us.

  "Jason?" said the voice. Wait. I knew that voice. I was used to hearing it say things like, "You are forbidden to sleep in the same bed," but it was familiar all the same.

  "Hallam?" I called.

  "Azazel?"

  "It's okay," I told Marlena. We started back up the steps until we met Hallam.

  "Were you in the dungeon?" he asked.

  "Yeah," I said. "It's empty."

  "Great gods," said Hallam. "I don't know where Jason is. It's a bloodbath up there."

  A bloodbath?

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "I mean," said Hallam, "that there are dead people everywhere."

  "You think it's Jason?"

  "I don't know what to think. I came when I found out he was here. I was able to get in, because I know the protocol from when I worked for the Sons. I found him in the dungeon. I helped him dismantle the locks. I was supposed to meet him back in the dungeon. But then the lights went out."

  "Oh God," I muttered. "You talked to him? How did he seem?"

  "That's why I told him to meet me, Azazel. I've never seen him like this. Never. He seemed . . ."

  We both knew how he seemed. My grandmother's words came back to me as she was describing the curse she'd laid on Jason. Soon, he won't even be human. God. I had to find him. I had to get to him. I didn't know if my grandmother could actually really curse people, but she sure had done a number on Michaela Weem. It was possible, I guessed, in a world where men went nuts from a kiss and Jason could come back from the dead.

  "Where do you think he went?" I said. "You think he went to Hoyt?"

  "Could be," said Hallam. "Hoyt's office is on the top floor. It's where the Council Room is."

  "I don't understand," said Marlena. "What's wrong with Jason?"

  "Maybe nothing," I said. "Hopefully—"

  I was cut off as a door below us opened. Gray light streamed in and a woman toddled in, holding her protruding belly. "I can't make it down these steps!" she protested to the person who was coming in behind her. "It's dark."

  A pregnant woman?

  "Hello?" I yelled. "Are you guys from the pregnant teenagers wing?"

  "Who is that?" called the pregnant woman.

  "Do you know Palomino?" I asked.

  "Yeah, we know Mina. Who are you?"

  I turned to Marlena and Hallam. "Go with them," I said. "Find Palomino. Get her out of here. Get all of those girls out of here."

  "Where are you going?" asked Marlena.

  "To get Jason," I said, starting up the steps.

  "I'm coming with you!" Marlena protested. "I don't even know this Mina person!"

  Hallam caught her arm. "Let her go," he said. "When Jason's like this, she's really the only person who can do anything. Come on."

  The stairs went on forever. At first I ran, but I started to sweat and gasp for breath. I slowed to a walk. I couldn't tell where I was. It was so dark. All I could do was take a step at a time and climb higher into the castle. Once I paused at one of the floors, so I could see where I was. I was on the fourth floor. The fourth floor was littered with about twenty bodies. Some of them had just been shot, but a few were worse. One man's entrails spilled out of his stomach, dragging out onto the floor. Another man's jaw hung loose from his body, torn away from his face. I slammed the door and kept going.

  As I reached the sixth floor, I heard screams and gunshots. There's nothing like the sounds of men screaming. It's eerie, because it's high pitched but throaty. And, somehow, it's scarier. Maybe it's sexist, but you don't expect men to scream. At least, not like that, you don't.

  I pushed open the door to the sixth floor. The same gray light greeted me. There was no light, so the only illum-ination came from small windows. I stepped over the bodies at the door, trying not to look at them. And I walked in the direction of the screams.

  On this level, the castle didn't resemble an office. There was a plush carpet on the floor. The original stone walls were showing. Paintings of women and horses and strange mythological creatures decorated the walls. It reminded me of the ceiling in the library at the SolSolisSchool. A man pushed by me, hobbling away. His leg had been shot, and there was blood smeared all over his suit. I kept moving forward, a feeling of dread knotting in my stomach.

  I was going to find Jason, I told myself. I loved Jason. I tried not to remind myself of the time that Jason had cut off his own mother's finger and left it for his brother with a note. I tried not to remind myself of Jason stumbling into our apartment in Bradenton, covered in blood. I tried not to remind myself of the matter-of-fact way Jason had talked about killing Jude.

  Soon, he won't even be human.

  What would he be, then?

  I rounded a corner, and there he was. He was standing in front of a closed door which had Ian Hoyt's name on it. There were two men lying on the floor near him, wearing suits. They weren't dead. They had shots in both of their legs, and they were trying to crawl away from him. Jason was standing over a third man, his foot on the man's hand. He was shooting the fingers on the man's hand. The man was screaming each time one of his fingers exploded into gore. There was huge, leering smile on Jason's face.

  I shuddered. "Jason?" I said.

  Jason didn't even look up. He just leveled his gun in the direction of my voice and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Sixteen

  April 30, 1991

  He was so small the first time I saw him. So little. And even though it had been an agonizing ten hours trying to push him out of my body, I didn't hate him. I know I should. I have seen in my visions what he will
be capable of. I have seen him standing tall while the bodies lie around him dead. I have seen him turn on everything and everyone that ever loved him. But when I held him and looked into his tiny bright eyes and his arms batted at the air in front of me like he was trying to grab at something only he could see, I felt this burst of . . .

  Maybe it was love.

  I can't do it. I can't kill him. He's just a baby.

  I hit the floor. The bullet sailed over my head. "Jason, it's me!" I shrieked.

  He did turn then. He looked at me. Sort of. His eyes were dull, the way they had been when he'd come back from doing whatever he'd done to Sutherland that night in Bradenton. They looked through me. Expressionless, he kicked the man he was torturing away from him. The man screamed again. Almost as an afterthought, Jason turned and put a bullet neatly in the man's head, right between his eyes. The screaming stopped.

  Jason walked to me. He was still holding his gun. Aiming it at me.

  I started to push myself to my feet, but Jason knelt down in front of me. He put the gun to my forehead. I stopped breathing.

  "Jason," I gasped. "It's me."

  A flit of something went across his eyes. Recognition, maybe? I took the opportunity to grab the barrel of the gun. I tried to wrest it away from him, but he held onto it. I managed to twist it, so that it wasn't facing me anymore. I drew my own gun.

  I was scared now. Jason didn't recognize me. He seemed to have gone completely and totally crazy. And I didn't know what he was doing to these men or what he planned to do to me. Michaela Weem's words echoed back to me, from months ago.

  You will lie dead while he feasts on your guts.

  Had I been wrong, all those months ago, when so many people had urged me to kill Jason? Was he really the monster they'd painted him to be?

  Jason was tugging on his gun. He was stronger than me, and with one heave, he pulled it away from my grasp. I leveled my gun at him, struggling to my feet. We surveyed each other, guns trained on each other. Jason's finger tensed on his trigger.

  "It's Azazel," I said again.

  Jason cocked his head. The huge grin on his face was fading. "Azazel," he whispered.

  His gun dropped to his side. He rubbed his face with his hand, squeezing his eyes shut, and when he opened them, he could see me. He looked around himself, at the bodies, at the men who were mangled by gunfire, and he screamed.

  The gun fell out of his hand, landing softly on the carpet. Jason dropped to his knees, suddenly sobbing.

  I went to him, kneeling next to him, gathering him in my arms. He took my hand, the one still holding a gun, and pulled it up to his face. He rested the barrel against his cheek. "She said," he whispered, "that you were the only one who could kill me. So you have to do it. You have to do it or God knows what else I'll do."

  I dropped the gun like it burned me. It fell between us. I put my forehead against his, kissing his cheeks and his nose. "I would never do that," I said. "I could never do that."

  "You don't understand," he said, pulling back. "I've been lying to you. All this time, I've been lying to you. I tried to tell you, that first night in Rome, but I couldn't. I tried again in the hotel, but I—I couldn't tell you. I thought I'd lose you, but you should have known."

  "Jason, shh," I said. "Let's just get out of here."

  And go where? I wondered. More running? After what we'd done here, the Sons would hunt us down like dogs. But I needed to get Jason away. I needed to—

  "Listen," he said. "After the sorority house. They sent me on missions. Not with Hallam. Not always with Hallam. Sometimes by myself. I did things. Things like . . ." He gestured around himself. "Things like this. I don't always remember all the details. They're fuzzy and . . ." He sucked air in through his nose. "Your brothers. Those things they showed you. They were all true." And then he really started sobbing, like his heart was going to break.

  That fucking bastard Edgar Weem. I would never forgive him for this. "It's not your fault, Jason."

  This wasn't a curse. This wasn't my grandmother's twisted idea of revenge. This was a cold, calculated way of bringing up Jason to make damned sure he could do something like this.

  He didn't look at me. "Because of prophecies or fate?" he asked. "Because I'm made of evil and I'm meant to destroy?"

  "No," I said. "Because your father is an absolutely horrible man." I put my finger under his chin and turned him to look at me. "If it didn't bother you, I'd be scared. Then you'd be evil."

  I was sure. Agnes had said that I need to trust myself. Well, I did. I knew this was right. I knew Jason better than anyone on earth. If there was evil in him, I'd know about it. "You were abused," I said. "And we've both been through a really hellish year. But since we've come this far, we might as well finish the job."

  "The job?"

  There was so much he didn't know. "The Sons are trying to blow up the world in 2012," I said. "So, we should probably go kill Ian Hoyt."

  "No more," he said. "No more killing."

  "Okay," I said. "I'll do it." I bent my face to his, which was wet with tears. And I brushed my lips gently against his.

  And a crescendo of explosions underscored our kiss.

  I pulled back. "What was that?" I said.

  Jason shook his head. I got up. Ian Hoyt's office was right behind Jason. I tried the door, but it was locked. Picking up my gun, I put two bullets in the knob. The door swung open. There were about fifteen men crowded in Ian Hoyt's office, all wearing suits. They'd probably cowered in here when they'd discovered Jason was loose. That wasn't the strange thing, though. The strange thing was that they were all dead. They were all holding guns, and their heads were slumped forward or to the side. It looked like they'd all just shot themselves. And from the smell of smoke in the room, they must have just done it.

  You put that suggestion in those men's heads. You planted their insanity.

  Oops. Had I just made a whole castle of men shoot themselves?

  Epilogue

  "Chance," yelled Mina from the top of the steps, "it's your turn to make up a bottle."

  Chance and Jason were sitting in the living room of what used to be my grandmother's house playing Call of Duty on a huge widescreen TV. I was half-watching them, half-writing in the journal my therapist insisted I keep. Jason and I, as I had predicted, needed lots of therapy.

  "Two seconds," Chance yelled back.

  "Dude, it's cool," said Jason. "I'll pause it."

  Marlena came in through the front door, her keys jingling. "Is Hallam back from work yet?" she asked, ducking her head into the living room.

  "He's got a late class on Wednesdays," Chance reminded her as he got up to go into the kitchen to make a bottle.

  I followed him. Sometimes Chance needed help with this kind of stuff.

  "That's right," said Marlena. "I keep forgetting that."

  The house was huge, and Chance and I had inherited it after Grandma Hoyt's death, which had been officially ruled an accident. So the six of us lived here. Hallam and Marlena had apparently struck up some kind of romance over all the dead bodies at the Sons' headquarters. I liked the fact they were here, and I liked them as a couple, even if it was only because I could now tease Hallam about "living in sin" on a regular basis.

  All of the surviving members of the Sons had indeed committed suicide, and it hadn't just been the ones in the castle. Apparently, members of the Sons all over the world had jumped out of windows and thrown themselves into traffic. No one really had any idea how or why they'd done that, and I wasn't talking. It was a freak thing, like Jason coming back from the dead, I said.

  It wasn't that I wanted to hide the fact I might have some kind of crazy power. It was just that I didn't quite understand it yet, and it freaked me out. With the help of Agnes, who did indeed exist and live in an inn in Tuscany, I'd been able to contact some people stateside who worked with people with special talents. We were working on getting it under control, figuring out exactly how it worked.

  "You want
me to get the bottle?" I asked Chance as I entered the kitchen.

  He shook his head. "It's my turn. I've got to figure out how to do this." He looked around the kitchen with a panicked expression. "Where's the formula?"

  I pointed to the counter. "In front of your face," I said.