“That’s what Lilith said in my dream,” I said.
“I knew it,” said Hallam. He was slouched in one of the chairs, drinking hot tea. He looked wiped out. “Didn’t I say it didn’t make any sense, Jason?”
“Wait,” said Jude. “If the immortals weren’t real before, then… was I even alive?”
I furrowed my brow. “That would mean Jason and I brought you back to life. Why would we do that?”
“It wasn’t me,” said Jason. “It was you. You’re the one who was friends with him.”
“Maybe it was for the baby,” said Hallam. “Maybe Jude came back as a loophole, a way to make sure that Chaos could come back into the world. After all, Jason was the representation of Order, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I can’t remember all of what happened when we were in the coma. It’s really fuzzy.”
“And Chaos was aligned with the Satanists,” said Hallam. “Jude was aligned with the Satanists. If the baby’s pure Chaos, maybe it needed to come from two agents of Chaos.”
I bit my lip. “Maybe. After all, I was so convinced that I could never have a baby. But maybe my conviction about that was only that Jason and I could never have a baby.”
“And maybe when we did whatever we did to wake up, we rewrote everything,” said Jason.
“We are good at that,” I said. “I mean, everything that’s ever been prophesied about us has never come true exactly the way that they say it. We fight fate, Jason. It’s what we do.”
Jason held up his finger. “I still haven’t healed.”
“What?” I said. “That little cut from last night?”
“I want to try something,” he said. “Azazel, you stay here. I’m going to go away from you, because I haven’t been away from you since this happened.”
“Why would that matter?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’m formulating a theory,” he said. “Wait here.”
He left the room.
“Could he be more cryptic?” I said.
“Aren’t we supposed to be talking about the baby?” said Jude. “All this stuff about you guys being in a coma is interesting and everything, but whatever you did is over and done with, right? It can’t be changed. So, we should really be focusing on—”
Jason burst back into the room. “Ha! It did heal.” He showed me his finger.
“You need to be away from me to heal?” I said. “Why?”
“Not you,” he said. “The baby.”
“I don’t understand,” said Hallam. He looked like death warmed over. I guess contacting the oracle had taken a lot out of him.
Jason resumed pacing. “The oracle said that the power of Chaos wants to undo what came before and unwind magic. It said it wants to suck up all the power. So, I think the baby is kind of like a living embodiment of the leaves. Whenever magic of any kind is around it, then it absorbs it or something so that it doesn’t work.”
“Then why did it heal me?” I asked. “Why didn’t I die? The only thing keeping me alive was immortal blood. The baby should have negated it.”
“No,” said Hallam. “You need to be alive to carry the child and keep him alive. I think he healed you completely. I doubt you’ll ever have to worry about drinking immortal blood.”
“So, we can’t heal around the baby?” said Jude. “Even though he’s not even born?”
“Apparently,” said Jason. “Apparently, the oracle’s not lying when she said he’s really powerful.”
“If what Jason is saying is right,” said Hallam, “then no magic of any kind will work around the child. In fact, that’s probably why I feel like I was run over by a truck. I think he absorbed all the power I was releasing to contact the oracle. I imagine I was only able to contact her at all because the child is so young. Once he’s grown more powerful, a ritual like this would never work.”
I rubbed my belly protectively. “Well, maybe he’ll figure out how to turn it off.”
“It’s not necessarily a bad thing,” said Hallam. “Honestly, there are probably people who might think that the child would be a powerful weapon.”
“That’s what Lilith said. She said people would want to use him. But I won’t let anyone do that to him.” I looked at Jason and Jude. “All three of us know what it’s like to be treated as tools by our parents and by authority figures. People tried to use us in the struggle between Chaos and Order, and we didn’t let them. Nobody’s using the baby either.”
“Definitely not,” said Jason.
“No way,” said Jude.
My cell phone rang.
Seriously? No one ever called me. What the hell was going on? I pulled it out of my pocket. It was Imri. “It’s Imri. Should I answer it?”
Jason nodded. “Yeah, let’s hear what he has to say.”
I put it on speaker phone but signaled to the others to be quiet. “Hello?”
“Azazel,” said Imri. “It’s come to my attention that you’re too busy to come in for a few more tests. I have to say I can’t imagine why.”
I swallowed. “Well, you know, having a baby is more work than I’d thought.”
“Listen, these tests might be important. You want to provide the best care for your child, don’t you? This child especially, considering how unique it is.”
“Well, the doctor assured me that there was nothing wrong. Is there something wrong with the baby, Imri? Was there something he wasn’t telling me?”
“We need to do more tests to be sure of anything.”
“I don’t know about these tests, Imri. What are you testing for? What are you trying to figure out about the baby?”
Imri chuckled. “Oh, don’t be coy, Azazel. I can tell from the tone of your voice that you know everything about this baby that I do.”
“I do?”
“The tests confirm that the baby is powerful. That its very presence negates the healing powers of immortal blood.”
“Do they?”
“You know very well they do. And you’re intelligent not to come in for more tests, that is if you want to protect that… abomination growing in your womb.”
That sent my teeth on edge. “Don’t you ever call him that. Ever.”
“It’s not a baby, Azazel, can’t you see that? It’s simply something sent here to harm us, to harm the community of immortals. It must be stopped. It must be destroyed.”
“Are you threatening my baby?”
“I don’t make threats,” said Imri. “I’m telling you what has to happen. I know it won’t be easy for you, but you might as well start coming to terms with it. That thing inside you needs to die.”
* * *
“We should leave,” said Jason. We were all gathered in the living room of the house—me, Jason, Jude, Marlena, Hallam, Grace, Boone, and Mina. After Imri had dropped that bomb on us, it seemed like we all needed to be gathered together.
“We can’t leave,” said Marlena. “Our lives are here. We’ve built lives. Running now would be going backwards. I’m not going to live underground again.”
“Not all of us,” said Jason. “But Azazel and me, we should go.” He looked at me. “We can do it, you know? We’ve been on the run for most of our lives. It’ll be like going home.”
I twisted my hands together. He was right, I guessed. But I didn’t want to leave everyone. And I liked this house. It was a big house, and my grandmother had left it to me, and I liked having a big house.
“No,” said Jude. “You guys can’t run.”
“Why not?” said Jason.
“Because you’re not taking the baby away from me,” said Jude. He turned to me. “You promised me we would work this out.” He touched his chest. “I’m his father, you can’t take him.”
I sighed.
“Jude, it’s what’s best for him,” said Jason. “Maybe when he’s older, he’ll be so powerful that Imri won’t even be a match for him, but I have to get Azazel and the baby out of Imri’s reach.”
“No,” said Jude.
“Chance?” said Mina. “Oh, no, you’re not taking Chance.”
Jude crossed his arms over his chest. “See, there you go, Jason. You’re going to need another plan.”
Jason dragged his hands over his face. “What other plan? Just this morning, we were talking about how impossible it would be to go on the offensive against Imri. He’s too big and too well connected. There aren’t enough of us. It’s not like back in the day when I could control an entire army with my mind.”
“That was handy, wasn’t it?” I said.
“Man, you don’t know what you got until it’s gone,” said Jason.
“Doesn’t the baby have Azazel’s powers, though?” said Jude. “Could you use his power to do something like that?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think it works that way. The baby has the power of Chaos, but it’s not the same power as I had. He’s like a black hole for magic.”
“Imri’s kids,” said Boone. “You said if we had a clear objective, then we could try to manipulate Imri.”
Jason shook his head. “No, it won’t work. What? Do I capture his kid and say, ‘Okay, Imri, I’ve got your son. Now don’t kill my son, or I’ll kill yours?’”
“He’s not your son,” said Jude. “He’s mine.”
“No, I know that,” said Jason. “But I feel… Forget it. Do you see my point, though?”
Boone nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“There’s got to be a way that we can take down Imri,” I said. “We’re, you know, us. This is what we do. Impossible things.”
“Well,” said Jason, “maybe we could kill him. Maybe if we put together some kind of stealth mission, we could get in there and chop his head off. That’s the only way we could do it. The leaves won’t work on him, because he’s got that true immortal blood in him, remember? I brought him the head of Fleming for exactly that purpose.”
“Right,” I said.
“But after we kill him, then what?” said Jason. “At that point, does his town and his hundreds of offspring all come after us? Would they stop if he was dead?”
“Well, we’ve got to think of something,” I said.
No one said anything.
CHAPTER EIGHT
~azazel~
Two hours later, no one had come up with any usable ideas. We’d discussed everything from bombs to hiring hit men.
Everyone had stopped talking together, and now there were lots of side conversations. Marlena and Mina chattering anxiously about the children. Grace and Jude talking about making leaf bullets. Jason and Boone discussing the use of electronics to try to decrease Imri’s influence.
Hallam, who still seemed pretty drained, turned on the TV.
The redheads were on the screen again.
I went closer, so that I could hear.
“Police sketch artists have been working with victims who claim to have been captured and tortured. While most girls claim the man wore a mask, new information has come to light, and a man resembling this sketch is believed to be responsible for the crimes.”
A police sketch filled the screen.
Wait.
I looked at Hallam in alarm.
He gripped the armrest of his chair. Then he turned to me.
I shook my head.
He nodded.
That sketch looked too much like Jason for comfort.
“Jason, it’s time to pick Chance up from school.” Mina’s voice. Shrill.
“Well, I’ll go,” he said.
“No, I can go,” she said. “I took off work so that we could talk about this, and now I’m home, and I want to see him.”
“I always pick him up, Mina.”
“I don’t want you to pick him up.”
“Why not?” Jason sounded irritated.
“Because if you do, I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.”
“What? Why would you say that?”
“You want to run off with him and take him on the road, when you know he would be better off with me,” she said. “After he got kidnapped, I told you that I should take him somewhere safe, and you wouldn’t let me. And now you’re going to steal him from me.”
“I would never do that,” said Jason.
“I don’t have any recourse,” she said. “He’s not even related to me. So if I tried to go to court, they’d never award me custody. But I’ve been his mother since he was a baby. And I won’t let you take him from me. I won’t.”
Jason held up his hands in surrender. “Mina, I’m not going to do that. If you’re worried, then fine, pick him up on your own.”
* * *
“You think it’s him, don’t you?” I looked across the den at Hallam, who was sitting in a leather easy chair. “You think Jason’s got something to do with those girls.”
“Don’t you?” said Hallam.
I hugged myself. I didn’t want to think it, but they all had red hair, and I knew Jason had a thing about redheads. I also remembered something he’d said to me when we out in the woods trying to get Grace back a few months ago. He’d been wounded and nearly dying, and he’d tried to tell me about some “bad thing” he’d done to a girl with red hair.
I’d told him I didn’t want to know, and I hadn’t thought about it since.
I sat down across from Hallam in one of the matching chairs. “Maybe.”
Hallam drew in a deep breath. “They’re prostitutes, Azazel. When Jason and I attacked that sorority house, we did it because we were told they were running a brothel.”
“But they weren’t,” I said. “They were normal girls.”
He gave me a funny look. “Why would you say that?”
“I saw…” I tangled my hands together in my lap. Had I never told Hallam about this? Well, I guess there wasn’t much reason to bring it up, was there? “When my older brothers Noah and Gordon captured me years ago, they showed me videos of interviews with the survivors. And a bunch of other eye-witnesses to Jason’s… activities. They wanted to prove to me that he was a killer and that he didn’t deserve to live.”
Hallam looked shaken. “They weren’t prostitutes?”
“Does it matter, Hallam?”
A shudder of revulsion went through him. “I killed those girls, not Jason.”
I couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Maybe that’s what it’s about,” Hallam muttered. “Maybe he’s trying to make up for not killing them. Maybe that’s why he can’t stop.”
“It’s about more than that,” I said. “They always have red hair. The sorority girls didn’t have red hair, did they?”
“No.” Hallam sat back in his chair. “Your friend did, though. Lilith.”
My dream. Jason reaching out to me with blood on his hands. I can’t stop killing Lilith.
I felt sick. “Why does he need to kill Lilith?”
“Maybe it’s connected to the sorority girls,” said Hallam.
“How could it be connected?”
“I didn’t spend a lot of time getting to know Lilith when she stayed with us,” said Hallam, “but I couldn’t help but notice that she was a little… what’s a nice word for it? Provocative?”
“Slutty, you mean?” I said.
Hallam laughed. “Well, she was a teenager, and I was in my twenties. Let’s go with provocative.”
I smiled a little. “I still don’t see what that’s got to do with anything. So, Lilith wore low-cut t-shirts and was pretty willing to jump into the sack with guys. Why would that mean he wanted to kill her?”
“Well, same reason we killed the prostitutes,” said Hallam.
“Why did you kill the prostitutes?” I said. “I mean, they weren’t actually prostitutes. But why does that make any difference one way or the other?”
Hallam rubbed his chin. “I didn’t grow up in the Sons the way Jason did. I grew up under their influence. My father was a member, and I knew about them. Bu
t it wasn’t until I was older that I chose to become a Brother. My father wasn’t one. Obviously. Brothers don’t get married. They don’t have children. But Jason was raised by a Brother.”
“Anton,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Hallam. “The stuff they taught us, it’s got to be deep in his psyche.”
“What did they teach you? All prostitutes must die?’
Hallam considered. “Not exactly. Like most religious philosophies, a lot of it was open to interpretation.”
I shook my head. “Jason almost never talks about the Sons,” I said. “When he does, it’s mostly about shooting guns or fighting. He doesn’t talk about what they told him to believe. So, I don’t understand it.”
“Well,” said Hallam, “there’s a sort of philosophic train of thought that’s somewhat Greek and Platonic, but it also winds through a lot of different religions. It’s the idea that the spirit and the flesh are separate? You understand that?”
“Um…” I furrowed my brow. “Like the difference between a soul and a body?”
“Right,” he said. “The soul would be the spiritual part and the body would be the flesh. The way the philosophy goes, the spirit is elevated above the flesh. The flesh is sort of… weak and base.”
“Because sex is a thing your physical body wants, and sex is dirty?” Personally, I’d never thought sex was dirty. I’d grown up in a town full of people who were very permissive about the whole thing. I’d been made fun of, in fact, for still being a virgin at seventeen. Satanists thought sex was good, very good. It was part of their rituals and everything.
“No, you’re putting the cart before the horse, Azazel. Before this specific sort of thought started to work its way into religions, no one thought sex was dirty. In fact, sex was considered sacred in a lot of early religions. It was fertility and life, and it was metaphorically connected to planting crops. And since most early religions were very nature-centric, about how humans and nature were interconnected, sex was a sacred, divine experience.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I think. I mean, that’s the way I was raised.”
He chuckled. “Okay, well, then the rest of this might be hard for you to grasp, but from the point of view of a deep thinker, like say Plato or Aristotle, anything that gets in the way of thinking deep thought is a big pain in the ass.”
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