“I know.”
“And now you are, but it’s not…” He shook his head again. “Fuck.”
I wanted to touch him, but when I got close, he backed away.
“I can’t,” he said, holding up his hands to ward me off.
“Jason, please. This is shitty. I know it’s shitty, but it’s not like I wanted this. I didn’t mean for it to happen this way. I didn’t…”
He headed for the door again. “I can’t be here. I need to go… somewhere else.”
“Oh,” I said.
He opened the door. “Don’t worry about your precious Jude, either. I won’t lay a finger on him.”
“Jason—”
He slammed the door in my face.
CHAPTER TWO
~jason~
“Jason?” Hallam peered into the doorway of the downstairs den.
I was sitting in there, because that was where we kept the liquor, and I was about five shots into a bottle of whiskey. “Hallam.”
He entered the room. “What’s going on in here?”
I looked around at the empty chairs, the open liquor cabinet, and the table where my bottle of whiskey and shot glass were sitting. “Not much.”
He sat down opposite me. “Are you okay?”
I poured myself another shot. “Peachy.”
“You’re drunk.”
“You’re observant.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this drunk.”
He was right. I wasn’t much for getting trashed. It always freaked me out to do it. I’d spent most of my life on the run, and the thought of being attacked while I was too drunk to shoot straight terrified me. Even though we’d been relatively safe for the past several months, and there wasn’t any pressing danger, I was in the habit of behaving as if I were always in danger. So I generally didn’t get drunk. After what Azazel had just told me, however, I didn’t much care what happened to me or to anyone. Nothing fucking mattered.
I shrugged at Hallam and downed the shot.
“Give me that bottle, Jason.”
“No,” I said. “I feel like getting drunk. You can’t tell me what to do.”
He sighed.
I glowered at him.
Then he got up and went to the open liquor cabinet. There was some glassware in there. He got himself a shot glass and brought it over. He filled his own glass and sat down again. “You want to tell me what’s bothering you?”
I laughed. It came out kind of bitter and sarcastic. “Still trying to be my big brother, Hallam? I thought it was pretty obvious that you didn’t want me around.”
He took the shot and grimaced a little. Hallam wasn’t much used to drinking either. “Why would you say that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Basically, you decided I was a bad seed a long time ago, didn’t you?”
“No.” Hallam furrowed his brow.
“Remember back when Azazel and I lived with you in Florida?” I said. “Remember how you were communicating with my fucking father because you and him were both convinced I was a monster? Remember when I showed up in D.C. when Kieran and Eve were still in charge? Remember how you told me to turn around and walk away?”
“You’re still angry about that?”
“I was never angry about it.” I toyed with my empty glass. “I get why you said that stuff. You’re not wrong about me.”
“Jason, what’s going on?”
I leaned back in my chair. “I don’t deserve any of this. I never have. I thought I could keep it together enough to have… to be with Chance, to be with her, but…” I set the glass down next to the bottle. “I am a monster.”
“You’re drunk is what you are,” said Hallam. “So, you’ve made some questionable moral choices in your life. So have I. I was wrong to judge you. The world’s been a lot tougher on you than it’s been on me.”
He didn’t know about the girls. The redheads. If he knew that…
But I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him anything.
Hallam leaned forward. “Let’s not forget that it was me who killed those sorority girls. Not you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You still think about that?”
“Don’t you?”
I looked away.
“Talk to me, Jason. What’s wrong?”
I poured another shot of whiskey. “Jude fucked Azazel. That’s what’s wrong.”
“What?”
“Oh, not on purpose,” I said. “See, when we were locked up in that place that we use as headquarters nowadays, the vampires there were trying to breed immortals. They used to dose the food with this very powerful aphrodisiac. It would make you nuts. It was practically impossible to resist it.” I mused over the single-mindedness the drug had produced. I remembered the way it had felt. There had been nothing I wanted more than to be with Azazel, and I’d taken her over and over and—I looked up at Hallam. “Anyway, apparently they ate some of the food there one night and dosed themselves with it. And now, my brother—the brother who shot me in the head once upon a time—had his dick in my girlfriend.”
Hallam looked confused. “What kind of aphrodisiac was this?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t thought about it since we got out of that place.”
“Well,” Hallam said carefully, “if the two of them were really under the influence of something that powerful, then…”
“Right,” I said. “Then I should get over it. I should let it go. I shouldn’t be angry with them.”
Hallam shrugged. “No. I’d be angry.”
“You would?”
He held out his glass for a fill-up.
I filled his glass and my own. “I keep picturing it. That’s what’s making me crazy. I half want to go up and ask her about it. Like I want to know every detail. I want to know where it was, how it happened, and what she said to him, and—But then I don’t want to know any of it. And I don’t want to see her. Maybe ever again. Because every time I see her, I’m going to think about him… on her.”
Hallam took his shot.
I did too.
“And that’s not even the worst part of all of this,” I said.
“It’s not?” said Hallam.
I shook my head, smiling grimly. “She’s pregnant.”
“You’re kidding.”
I laughed helplessly. “Oh god, do I wish I was kidding. You know, Hallam, sometimes, when I look back at my life, and I think of all the things that have happened to me, I kind of wonder how much more of this I can take.”
“Jason—”
“No, really. I was chased and shot at as a little kid. I didn’t have a relationship with my parents—which was actually probably a blessing, since my mother tried to kill me more than once and my father…” I looked down at my hands. “And people like you taught me to kill. Did you have to make me so damned good at it?”
“Why are you talking about killing?”
“I don’t know.” I was drunk. My brain wasn’t functioning with any kind of clarity.
“You wouldn’t hurt Azazel, would you?”
I looked at him, shaking my head. “I can’t believe you just said that to me.”
“I’m sorry, Jason.”
“You do think I’m a monster.”
“I don’t. I think you’ve been through a lot, like you said. We all have.”
“I would never hurt her. I’ve never, ever laid a finger on her. She is the most important… I mean, besides Chance. The two of them. You know, I might need to… let off some steam sometimes, but…”
“Let off some steam?”
I shook my head. “Never mind.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing.”
“Jason, you wouldn’t have said it if you didn’t mean something.”
“Killing the vampires, I guess,” I said.
“You do that to ‘let off steam’?” He raised his eyebrows.
“You know what? Why don’t you leave?”
He
held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m not trying to judge.”
“You know, Hallam, it’s wonderful that you were able to settle down here with Marlena and never pick up a gun again or whatever, but it doesn’t work that way for everybody.”
Hallam handed me his glass again. “Who says I don’t want to pick up a gun? I’m surrounded by superbeings. You’ve all got immortal blood and nothing can hurt you. There’s no reason for someone normal and boring like me to even get involved.”
I poured him a shot. “Oh.” I looked at him. “I guess I didn’t—”
“Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that. The truth is that I don’t miss it. Mostly, I don’t. I’m happy with Marlena, and I wouldn’t want to leave Kenya without a father. I want to be there to watch her grow up. So, I don’t really want to take unnecessary risks. That doesn’t mean that it’s always easy, though, especially with you guys gallivanting off every couple months to go up against something or other.”
I handed him back his shot. I poured myself another one.
He held his glass out. “Cheers.”
I clinked my glass against his.
We both took the shots.
I felt that one a little more than the others. I was definitely drunk. I cleared my throat. “If you really wanted to come along, I could give you my blood, you know. It would make you just as invincible as the rest of us.”
Hallam shook his head. “Oh no. I’ve seen how Azazel is about that shit. It’s addictive. I don’t want to be dependent on that stuff.”
I nodded. “Right.”
He studied his empty glass. “Jason, you ever think about how strange that immortal-vampire stuff is?”
I shrugged. “No stranger than half the other shit we’ve been through.”
“Do you think you were always an immortal?”
“I guess I had to be, right?” I said.
“That’s just it. I’m not sure,” said Hallam. “You know, if there were beings like that on earth, roaming around—if one of them was Jesus Christ according to that Imri man—don’t you think the Sons would have known about it?”
It was hard for me to think after all the whiskey I’d drunk. I concentrated as hard as I could. “Well, maybe they did, but they didn’t tell us about it. Maybe there was some secret immortal-studying-wing somewhere.”
“No, I don’t think so, Jason. I was deep in that organization. I had access to all the files, all the secrets. I don’t think the Sons knew about them.”
“Well, I guess even the Sons had their limitations.”
“Either that,” said Hallam, “or they didn’t exist back then.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What are you saying?”
Hallam sighed. “I don’t know. I’m drunk. It’s just that it seems so strange to me. All of it.”
“How would they have not existed, and then existed?” I said.
“You used to be able to control armies of people with your mind,” he said. “You could just think at them all to die for you, and they would. Now you can’t do that anymore.”
“Well, that’s different,” I said. “You know that neither Azazel and I have powers anymore.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Don’t mind me. Anyway, this isn’t important. We were talking about Azazel being pregnant.”
Damn it. For a second there, I’d forgotten all about that. Now the knowledge splintered through my head again, and it made me feel disgusted. “Pregnant with Jude’s baby.”
“She knows that for sure.”
“She said she had a test,” I said.
Hallam furrowed his brow. “Wait. How can Azazel be pregnant? Isn’t she frozen in time so that she can’t age further than a month without her neck snapping or something?”
“Yeah, the baby’s keeping her alive.”
“Oh,” said Hallam. “Wonderful. So, it’s a powerful little bugger.” He held up his shot glass. “More whiskey, please.”
I laughed, picking up the bottle.
“I gotta tell you, Jason,” said Hallam, “around the two of you, everything’s always a little crazy.”
I poured him another shot. “Maybe it’s a good thing that it’s not our baby, anyway. God knows what a baby like that would be.”
Hallam took the shot. “Nothing saying that you can’t just work double time and impregnate her again after this one.” His voice was a little slurred.
I rubbed my forehead. “Weren’t you listening when I said I can’t even look at her right now?”
* * *
~azazel~
Marlena found me throwing up in the bathroom that morning, which was the general way I greeted the day. Although—I had to say this, whoever called it morning sickness was crazy, because it wasn’t just in the morning, but in the afternoon and the evening and after lunch and any damned time it pleased.
I was almost into my second trimester, after which it was supposed to stop, but I wasn’t holding my breath.
“Hey, do you have the flu or something? It seems like you’ve been getting sick a lot lately.”
I flushed the toilet and stood up. “No.”
“Have you become bulimic?”
“Does it look like I’m losing weight?”
She cocked her head. “Seriously, I’m worried about you.”
There wasn’t much point in hiding it anymore, was there? I’d told Jason last night. That had gone even worse than I’d anticipated. I crossed to the sink and splashed water over my face. “I’m pregnant.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, Zaza, that’s wonderful news!”
I shook my head. “It’s really not. It’s not Jason’s.”
“What?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it if you want to come to the kitchen with me so that I can hunt down some saltines.”
“Okay,” she said.
I explained the whole thing to her in the kitchen. I sat at the table, stuffing saltines in my mouth, and Marlena watched me, her face getting whiter and whiter by the minute.
When I was finished, she just gazed at me, her mouth open a little bit. “Oh, Zaza.”
I crammed another saltine between my lips.
“Well, that’s… that’s not ideal.”
“No,” I said.
“Are you sure about the paternity test?”
“Pretty sure,” I said.
“But you had Imri’s doctors do it.”
“I had to,” I said. “Who else would understand our situation with all that immortal blood and everything else? Imri has doctors who specialize in that kind of thing. It seemed like it made more sense than going to a regular doctor.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s only that I don’t know if I trust that guy. He kidnapped Chance, after all.”
“I don’t know if anyone really trusts him.” I shrugged. “But we work with him now, so we have to hope that he’s on our side.”
Marlena reached across the table and snagged a saltine. “I wish I knew what to tell you.”
“Jason hates me,” I said.
“He doesn’t hate you,” she said.
“I think he does.”
“He couldn’t hate you.” She chewed on the saltine. “I remember the first time that I saw the two of you together, and the way he looked at you. Never seen him look that way before. And he still looks at you the same way. Boy adores you. Always has, always will.”
“You didn’t see the way he was looking at me after I told him last night.”
She sighed. “Well, I thought it was bad when I was pregnant with Kenya in a metro tunnel underground while we were the hub of the resistance against Kieran and Eve. But this—”
“No,” I said. “You’re right. Your pregnancy was worse. Kieran’s men almost killed the baby. They were beating you up. I remember that.”
She considered. “That was bad.”
I sighed. “Hey, you remember when I thought I was pregnant with Kieran? You know, before he was an evil powerful dude
controlling everyone’s minds?”
She nodded. “I do. I was so mad at you two. I thought it was going to be a disaster. I thought that people couldn’t have babies during the apocalypse. And then… I got pregnant.”
“You know,” I said. “It’s funny about that. Because at first with that pregnancy scare, I didn’t want to be pregnant at all. I was young, and the world had fallen apart, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about Kieran. But then… you know when I got my period? It was kind of devastating. I didn’t think I wanted the baby, but I did. And ever since then, I have wanted to be a mother. So bad. But I never got pregnant. Never. And then when the guy snapped my neck, I was sure it would never happen. And now… it has. And oddly enough, I wish it hadn’t.”
She got up from the table and came around to give me a hug from behind. “You don’t.”
“No, I do.”
She released me. “If you really wished it hadn’t happened, you would have gotten rid of it.”
I twisted to look up at her. “Oh, no, I couldn’t. This could be my only chance. It’s not the way I wanted it, but—”
“Exactly,” she said. She patted me on the head. “It seems bad, but it’s going to work out. You hungry for something other than saltines?”
I shook my head. “No, I couldn’t keep anything else down.”
She pointed at the stove. “Because there’s Coco Wheats on the stove from the kids’ breakfast that I still haven’t cleaned up. Mina made breakfast, so I’m supposed to do the dishes.”
“If I have a kid, am I going to have to be part of the cooking rotation around here?” I asked.
“Do you… cook?”
“Sure,” I said. “I mean, I have. I did. I cooked during college when we lived here.”
“Like when did you do that?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes. I made pasta a lot.”
She smirked at me. “Pasta.”
“And other stuff,” I said. “Like, um, nachos and…” I sighed. “Okay, maybe not that much. Give me a break. During the time that most people were learning to cook, I was out destroying the world and getting amnesia and then leading the resistance against Kieran and Eve. I was kind of busy.”
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