That Last Onset

by V. J. Chambers

  I sat still, trying to absorb what she’d said. “You’re saying you’re some evil force who’s been manipulating our lives for years?”

  “Evil’s such a limiting word, don’t you think?” said Agnes.

  “You were on our side when we were using our powers to hurt people,” Azazel said, trying to work it out. “Then you were on Cameron’s side, since he wanted to hurt people. But that didn’t work, and now you’re on our side again?”

  “That about sums it up,” said Agnes.

  “But you want us to hurt people again,” I said.

  Agnes grinned. “Oh, yes. Yes, we definitely do want that.”

  “You know, we don’t actually like causing pain, don’t you?” said Azazel.

  Agnes smirked. “Don’t you?”

  “No,” I said. “We don’t.”

  Agnes laughed.

  “So,” said Azazel, “if we get our powers back, what happens? We turn into crazy psychos again? We set the world on fire?”

  “That’s the plan,” said Agnes.

  Azazel and I locked gazes. This was an incredibly bad idea, wasn’t it? We couldn’t do this. We’d lose ourselves again. “No,” I said. “I swore never to hurt people again.”

  “You just killed a bunch of men when you were trying to get free of Kieran and Eve,” said Agnes.

  “But that was only because I was trying to save Chance,” I said.

  Agnes sat back on the couch, folding her arms as if to say, Well, there you go.

  I swallowed. I got the feeling we were being painted into a corner here. “If we get our powers back,” I said, “we’ll be able to save Chance.”

  “Of course,” said Agnes, smiling.

  “And if we don’t,” I said, “we’ll probably die of gunshot wounds and Kieran and Eve will continue ruling the world.”

  Agnes inclined her head.

  I sighed. Why did it always seem as though my life was filled with nothing but no-win situations?

  Azazel laid her hand on my arm. “I think we’re going to have to do it.”

  “But is it worth the risk?” I asked.

  “I care about Chance too,” she said. “You know that. We can’t let Kieran and Eve get to him. God knows how bad they’ll screw him up.”

  “But how bad will we screw him up if we have our powers?” I asked.

  Azazel didn’t say anything.

  “You were born of Darkness,” whispered Agnes. “So take us and breathe us and become us.”

  And as she spoke, I felt stronger, somehow. As if the words were flowing into me, giving me sustenance. I turned my hand over and squeezed Azazel’s hand. “I guess we don’t have a choice.”

  “Do we ever have a choice?” she muttered. To Agnes, “So what do we have to do to get our powers back?”

  Agnes snapped her fingers again. We were back outside once more, in the same place we’d been before. The bodies on the ground were gone, however. To our left was a long stretch of forest. The trees were densely packed together. The trunks were shadowed by the overhanging branches. I couldn’t see anything inside the woods but darkness. It looked ominous, like something out of a fairy tale, the kind of place the hero would be warned about. The kind of place that wasn’t safe to go into. Agnes gestured towards the woods. “A test,” she said. “Go into the woods, and when you come out, you will be transformed.”

  Well, that sounded great. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”

  “We have to,” said Azazel.

  “One at a time,” said Agnes. “Azazel first.”

  I watched her disappear into the woods. And then I followed her. When I passed the tree line, the branches swallowed me. I felt as though I was falling.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  My mother was cutting up raw meat on a cutting board in our kitchen. Candles flickered from the chandelier overhead. I slouched in the doorway, watching my brother Jude clear the plates from the table. We’d just finished dinner.

  Mother turned, wiping her hands on her apron. She left red streaks on the white apron. Her hair was pulled up in an elaborate up-do on the top of her head. Her makeup was severe—crimson lips, heavily lined eyes. Her eyelashes were long. She batted them at me. “Don’t run off yet, Jason. I have an errand for you.”

  Jude dropped the plates in the sink with a clatter. “Mo-om,” he complained. “You always let him go on the errands. How come I can’t go? Huh?”

  Mother’s thin lips curled into a smile. “Jason’s the oldest, sweetheart.”

  I glowered at both of them. “Send Jude,” I told my mother. “I’m busy.”

  “See,” said Jude. “He doesn’t even want to go. Let me do it. Please? Please?”

  Mother didn’t even look at Jude. She locked eyes with me. “No, Jason will do it, won’t you, darling?”

  I sauntered over to her. “What is it?”

  She smiled up at me, fluttering her lashes. “I just want you to take a little trip through the woods. Take these treats to your father.” She gestured to the hunks of meat she’d been cutting up.

  They seeped red juice onto the cutting board she’d been using. Flies were swarming all around the pieces of meat. Mother swatted them away.

  “I didn’t think you two were on speaking terms,” I said.

  Mother’s eyes widened innocently. “What? Just because he’s left me to raise the two of you on my own and shacked up with that woman who’s old enough to be your grandmother? Why would I hold a grudge over that?”

  Wonderful. The last thing I needed to hear about was my parents’ drama. I rolled my eyes. “What are you going to do, Mother? Poison him?”

  Mother laughed, a tinkling noise. She placed a hand on my cheek. “Oh, Jason, you are so melodramatic. What’s wrong with sending him some meat? Edgar always did love meat, you know. He liked having something to sink his teeth into. And this is so fresh. He’ll love it. He may have hurt me more than I can ever say, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t be the bigger woman, does it?”

  “I think you should poison him, Mother,” said Jude. “He’s always been a royal jackass.”

  “Shut up, Jude,” I told him.

  “Boys,” said Mother. “Don’t fight, now.” She went back to cutting up the meat on the cutting board. “If I were to poison him, it would be fitting if you brought the poison to him, Jason, though, wouldn’t it? You were always his favorite.”

  “You’re everyone’s favorite,” Jude pouted. “Mother likes you better too.”

  Mother turned to Jude. “Don’t be ridiculous, Jude. I love both my boys equally. Jason just happens to be...” She winked at me. “Older.”

  I started for the doorway. “I’m not killing Father for you, Mother. I have much better things to do with my afternoon.”

  Mother darted across the room, wedging herself between me and the doorway. “Don’t go anywhere, darling.” She fluttered her long lashes at me. “I already told you I wasn’t going to kill him, didn’t I? Don’t you trust your mother?”

  I rolled my eyes again. “I’m busy, Mother.”

  “Oh, come on, Jason. Do Mother this little favor, won’t you?”

  I looked back at the bloody meat, still covered in flies. “Can I take the car?”

  “I hardly think you need the car,” said Mother. “It’s a twenty minute walk from here. Just through the woods.”

  “Forget it,” I said, pushing past her.

  “Jason Edgar Weem,” said Mother. “You get back here this instant.”

  I hated it when she used the Mother voice on me. My shoulders sagging, I turned back around. “I don’t see why I have to do it. Jude is practically salivating for it. Why can’t you just send him?”

  Mother went back to the meat and began wrapping it up in white paper. “We’ve been over this, Jason.”

  “Whatever,” I muttered.

  Jude was sulking next to the sink. “You really could let me go, Mother.”

  “Not another word, Jude,” warned Mother. She placed the packages of meat in a wicke
r basket and set it on the table, right underneath the chandelier. The basket flickered in the candlelight. Mother beamed at me. “Thank you so much, Jason.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said.

  She embraced me. “Give Mother a kiss.”

  Obligingly, I pecked her on the cheek.

  She patted my shoulder. “You’re such a good boy. Hurry and take this to your father, then. And make sure you watch out for wolves. They’re always after meat, you know. And they roam the woods in the evening.”

  I nodded. She was always going on about the wolves. I picked up the basket and started out of the kitchen.

  “Jason?” called Mother.

  I stopped. “What now?”

  “Make sure you take your hoodie,” she said. “You don’t want to catch a cold.”

  She had to be kidding me. “I don’t need a coat, Mother.” I kept walking, gripping the basket.

  “Just pick up the red hoodie from the rack on your way out,” she called after me. “Jason?”

  “What?”

  “You’re taking the jacket, aren’t you?”

  I picked up the hoodie from the rack. I wasn’t going to put it on, but if I didn’t take it, she’d never shut up about it. “Yeah, I’ve got it.”

  “Be careful, sweetheart. Watch out for wolves!”

  I stepped out of the house and slammed the door. Wolves. Yeah. Sure. I hated my mother.

  Outside, the sun sank blood red in the sky, tingeing everything else around it with a scarlet glow. A chilly wind nipped at my nose and fingers. Grudgingly, I pulled the red hoodie on over my shirt. I started off down the path that led from the front door of my house towards the woods. The dark lines of the trees pulsed and bled darkness into the world. I stuck the hand not holding the basket into a pocket in my hoodie and entered the forest.

  There was a tiny path that wound amongst the tree trunks. As long as I stayed on it, I’d end up at the house my father was living in. It was dark in the woods. I wished I’d brought a flashlight.

  As if in response to my thought, there was a clicking noise, and a glowing red light appeared ahead of me on the path. It was a cigarette. Azazel Jones was leaning against one of the tree trunks a few feet away. She was smoking. I watched as she brought the cigarette to her lips and then slowly blew the smoke out.

  Azazel was one of the girls at school who was always in trouble. She got kicked out on a regular basis. She dyed her hair blue-black. She put ashy eye makeup all around her eyes. It made her look as though she was always bruised. The cigarette lit up the hollows of her face, so that her cheekbones glowed. “Well, well,” she said. “If it isn’t Jason Weem.”

  Azazel made me nervous. Even though she was a troublemaker, she always appeared dangerously attractive to me. Whenever I saw her at school, I always followed her with my eyes, taking in all the curves of her body. Now wasn’t any different. I couldn’t help but stare at her tight black corset or her torn jeans or the lace-up black boots that came to her knees. “What do you want?” I asked her.

  She sucked on her cigarette. “Nothing.”

  Fine. Whatever. I yanked my hood up over my head and continued down the path. The sooner I did this errand for Mother, the sooner I could get back home and be alone.

  “Where you going?” Azazel asked.

  I stopped. I’d caught up to her and when I turned my head, we were facing each other. She was beautiful up close, her dramatic makeup making her eyes look big, her whole face somehow both vulnerable and worldly, like a child and woman mixed together in one body. I was seized with the desire to touch her, let my finger graze the translucent skin of her neck and throat. “I’m going to your grandmother’s house.” That was where my father had gone. He’d gone to live with Azazel Jones’ grandmother. It was the scandal of our small town. It made Mother hide her face in shame when we were out and about. And it was my only connection to Azazel Jones, the positively gorgeous bad girl. I held up my basket. “I’m taking my father some meat.”

  Azazel bit her lip. I watched it plump out under the pressure of her teeth. I wanted to be the thing putting pressure on her lips. I wanted to... Oh, God, the things I wanted to do to her. “Meat?” she said. Her lips parted. She ran her tongue over the tips of her white teeth. “I like meat.”

  What was she saying? I tore my gaze away from her. “I have to go. It’s getting dark and there are wolves in the woods.” Even though I didn’t really believe it when Mother went on and on about the wolves.

  Azazel pushed off from the tree trunk. She bent over to put out her cigarette, giving me an eyeful of her breasts, which bulged out over the lacy corset she wore. “I see you watching me, you know.”

  I couldn’t look away from her breasts. They were so white and perfect. “I don’t watch you.”

  She stepped close to me, winding an arm around mine. Now she was practically rubbing against me. I gazed down into her cleavage, unable to help myself. “Sure you do.”

  “No, I don’t. I need to go. I’ve got to get back home before dark.”

  Azazel’s fingers were under my chin. She tilted my head up so that I was looking at her face and not her chest. “Come into the woods with me, Jason. Leave the path.”

  “Mother says if you leave the path, the wolves come,” I said. But I thought all that stuff she said about wolves was bullshit. I always had. Mother wanted to control me. And I was sick of being controlled.

  Azazel raised her eyebrows. “Is Jason afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”

  I stiffened at the accusation. I wasn’t afraid.

  “Or is Jason afraid of me?” She took a step back, running her hands over her waist and hips. “Can’t handle this, Jason?”

  I chuckled. “That’s the wrong question, Azazel,” I said, stepping closer to her as if I were stalking my prey. “The question is whether or not you’d be able to handle what I’d do to you?”

  She grinned, biting her lip again. “Let’s find out, then.” She walked off the path, one hand trailing around the trunk of a tree. She circled around it, peering around the tree at me from the other side. “Off the path.”

  I hesitated, but only for a moment. The sky was growing darker, and the trees cast heavy shadows in the red light of the evening. If I left the path, I didn’t know if I’d find my way back. But I wasn’t sure I cared. Azazel beckoned to me, and she was a sweet, dangerous temptation. How could I resist? I followed her off the path. As the tree branches closed around me, I heard a howl in the distance, but I didn’t turn back. Instead I followed the white gleam of her skin through the darkness.

  When we were deep in the forest, she turned around, snatching hold of my hoodie and pulling me against her. She slid her hands under my clothes, cold against my skin.

  I thrust her body into a tree trunk. I pressed myself against her. I trapped her lips with mine.

  * * *

  Azazel’s bare skin was white and immaculate. Wrapped in her, I sighed into her eyebrow. The darkness was complete around us, black velvet, caressing us deeper into the night. The forest was silent except for the sounds of our shared gasps.

  And then another howl. A wolf shrieking at the sky as if his heart were breaking.

  I raised my face from Azazel’s, trying to penetrate the inky blackness with my sight. I couldn’t see anything.

  Azazel’s hand was on my face then, forcing my gaze back to her. “Let them come.”

  And I lost myself in her eyes, in her flesh, her limbs, in the way our bodies tangled together.

  If there were more howls, and there were more, they hardly seemed important anymore. I was consumed by our union—savage, blazing. So consumed that the brush of bristling fur could have been the fingers of the darkness, stroking me. So consumed that the scratch of teeth and nail could have been the wind dragging the branches across my skin. So consumed that the howling, so close to my ear, could have been the cries I made myself.

  When we broke apart, she lit another cigarette. The smoke spilled out of her mouth when she spoke, making
a halo around her face. Her makeup was smeared. There were angry red scratches marring her white skin. She didn’t seem to mind, and I couldn’t quite be sure where they’d come from. Had I done it myself, or had something joined us there in the dark forest? Had something taken us, entered us, mounted us, ridden us until we were its plaything? “You ever think about killing?”

  “What about it?” It was cold outside, but I didn’t feel it anymore. The icy breeze cut into my skin. I didn’t care. I felt relieved, as if I’d been carrying around something heavy, and someone had taken it away from me. The brisk air felt good in my lungs. I felt alive.

  “Doing it, I guess.” The tip of her cigarette glowed bright red as she took a long drag.

  I put my hands on her again. It was too tempting, her so close. “Sometimes. Do you?”

  “Sometimes,” she said. She arched her back, presenting herself to my hands.

  I drew her close. “Who would you kill?”

  She closed her eyes. “Anyone I felt like killing.”

  I bent my head to her skin. I put my mouth on her, ran my tongue over her.

  She gasped. Moaned. Let the hand holding her cigarette fall limp to her side, surrendering herself to my mouth. I raised my eyes to hers, keeping my lips on her. Half-lidded, her eyes returned my gaze. “Who would you kill?” she asked.

  I trailed my tongue over her skin to the deep scratches. I kissed them. I pulled away. “My parents.”

  She brought the cigarette to her lips again. “Would you kill mine too?”

  “Would you help me?” I asked.

  She blew out the smoke. “Sure.”

  I took in her perfect skin again. Beautiful. “When?”

  She smiled. “What are you doing tonight?”

  * * *

  When we entered the house, I fantasized about what it would be like if it wasn’t my house, and I didn’t know every detail of it intimately. If it weren’t my house, if it were the house of a perfect stranger, she and I would have to grope along in the dark, careful not to make noise, trying to get the lay of it, trying to figure out where all the rooms were. We’d have to communicate without words, let our bodies and our expressions do the talking. I imagined it would be fantastically exciting, breaking into someone’s house about to do what we were going to do.