Book of the Damned: A-E5L1-01-00
The JAK2 Cycle, Book 2
V.E.S Pullen
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Acknowledgments
Playlist for Book of the Damned
About the Author
Copyright © 2020 VES Pullen
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the author, by any electronic or mechanical means including but not limited to: exporting to file, photocopying, recording, information storage and retrieval systems, or other means known now or hereafter invented. Exclusions: brief excerpts or quotations for use in reviews or tattoos (pix or it didn’t happen).
This is a work of fiction. While references might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are products the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons — living or dead — businesses, or locations is purely coincidental.
Written with Scrivener
Created with Vellum
We don’t share the same beliefs, politics, interests, hobbies, or reading material — and don’t start now! — but I do love you. Thank you Mom, Dad, and Lee, for all the love, and all the years of material you’ve provided.
Death inspires me like a dog
inspires a rabbit.
— twenty one pilots
Prologue
Sev
We left the conference room and split up, Tai heading to Mouse’s lab and the rest of us heading to the school — us with Spider in our truck, the Callises in their pimped-out Escalade. It was early enough that Azzie may not have arrived yet for her phlebotomy, and Tai might have time to talk to Mouse a bit before she did.
After that meeting with Kane, there was so much we needed to talk to Azzie about.
Azzie, short for Azrael. Our friend, Azzie Vokaty.
But we just learned her real full name: Aesli Azrael Vokaty.
AESLI is the code — what we thought was a code — stamped on the side of every crate of vaccine that matters, the only one that’s never failed. AESLI has been used as the incentive to join the military for the last couple years, been the object of several disastrous and bloody crime sprees, and is the reason why we’re here.
The seven of us — me and my brothers, who they call the “Hellspawn Triplets”; the Callis assholes; and Tai and Spider Chandler, a pair of Native American, ex-military twins neck-deep in the Native Nationalist Coalition — signed on for an experimental study looking for men from multiple births that meet certain qualifications. We were vaccinated on entry to the base, and if the study is successful, we were promised vaccinations for our entire extended family. It was too powerful a temptation to refuse, and we didn’t need our father’s command to apply, though we got it anyway.
My dad’s been obsessed with these locked-down bases since a nomad first reported one out near Virginia Beach almost two years ago. Salem is the third we’ve identified, and the first time anyone has gotten inside, and it was nothing like we imagined.
We all assumed it was to keep the virus out, not keep the cure in.
Joining the study was a killing-two-birds situation: solve one of the biggest mysteries in the country while guaranteeing immunity for our whole community? No fucking question we’re going to sign up. That “success” in the study involves sexing-up and impregnating the girl of my dreams is a bit confusing to my penis: on the one hand, sex with Azzie; on the other hand, sex with Azzie because we’re being manipulated into it, and the outcome is disturbing at best.
I’d be lying to myself if I tried to deny it. I was already merging into traffic when she set down her books at the D&D game and declared herself the Dungeon Master — after that, I was accelerating so fast down this road that I can’t breathe half the time. I’m gone for her. Completely.
Love of my life. I’m saying it for the record.
In the car, Luka was going crazy trying to understand how it all worked, why Azzie’s disease was important. Tai knew way more about it than I did, but I’d been doing some research so I gave it a shot trying to explain her PV.
“Polycythemia vera is kind of like leukemia except instead of producing cancer cells, her bone marrow produces too many blood cells, both red and white. Like way too many, so much that her blood gets really thick and if nothing is done about it, it can’t circulate properly.”
“Yeah, I know that, she told me about it. And apparently they use it to make the vaccine.” He was snippy, and I got it — the shit we just had to sit and listen to upset and frustrated all of us, and I was trying really hard to ignore the attitude he was giving me. Yup, totally not getting pissy with him… being understanding and patient… “But how would that work for a kid? Is any kid she has going to get this disease?” Luka was looking around as if any one of us could answer that question, and not looking happy at the prospect.
“No. It’s not really inheritable, not from what I’ve seen,” I reassured him, but then frowned. “I saw one thing that said they’ve found some rare cases where it runs in families — Jews of Eastern European descent, which could be why they wanted us so badly.”
“We aren’t Jewish,” Sasha pointed out.
“No, but we might have ancestors that were. We’re definitely Eastern European.”
“True dat.”
“And so is Azzie,” I mused, remembering the conversation during game. “Her family is Czech on both sides. One of us knocking her up would increase the odds if there’s a recessive gene somewhere.”
“Wonder why they wanted Tai and me.” Spider was fiddling with the vents, clicking buttons randomly — he and Tai were usually the stoic ones, always perfectly still and giving nothing away, so all the fidgeting was a bit disturbing. “Hopi is about as far from Eastern European as you can get. And we’re solidly indigenous on both sides, there’s maybe a few drops of something else in there, maybe, five generations back.”
“You fit the profile in every other way?” Sasha shrugged, signaling to turn into the school lot. “Even for us, if Sev is right then it’s extremely unlikely we’d carry the necessary genes. There’s a slim to none chance that a kid would get PV and that seems to be the thing that works for a vaccine. Without PV, it’s just a baby with good immunities and a universal donor blood type. I don’t get it.”
“It must be worth the chance since we’re here. They don’t just want a baby, they want babies.” Luka still looked a little sick at the prospect; besides the obvious ick factor of the study, he was in no way prepared to be a father in any capacity. Unlike me.
I’d knock her up in a heartbeat.
“Yeah, fucking fantastic. Does she even
want a baby?” Spider pounded his fist into the back of Sasha’s seat, earning a glare in the rearview. “And would she want it with one of us? Especially if she thinks it’s because of a study?”
Therein lies the nightmare.
Once Azzie knows about the study, why we’re really here, she’s never going to believe we’d want her for any other reason. She might, eventually, let us in her pants but she will never let us in anywhere else — in every sense — and I want more. I want her, in every way and not just every position, though not gonna lie… haven’t been jerking it to anyone else for days.
And that meeting and the fucking study doesn’t change any of it. If anything, knowing who she is, is a complication I wish we didn’t have.
And there’s nothing she could throw at me that would convince me otherwise: not her disease, not our age differences, not the goddamn vaccine or her fucked up life. Not her being a cynical firecracker on the outside but an innocent sweetheart underneath, while I’m a criminal, a killer, and one sick fuck. None of that matters.
And our ages are only going to matter here, in this place. Four years ago, the idea of a twenty-one year old man and a seventeen year old girl might have been considered immoral or creepy. Tai and Spider are twenty-four, and that age gap would’ve been unacceptable. But things have changed.
When one-third of the world dies — and almost 43% of the U.S., by far the hardest hit — things change. Ideals change. Morals change. Priorities change. When early, painful death seems inevitable, most people give up a lot of moral inhibitions and judgments because life is too short to worry about who everyone else is fucking. Love who you love. Be with who you want to be with.
On the outside, away from this weird Matrix-bubble of pre-pandemic prosperity, people aren’t so bored that they latch onto whatever drama they can invent. For the most part, sex isn’t a big deal, it’s a coping mechanism, or a way to feel alive, or a way to connect with other people. It’s a relief from the unending misery, the only thing you might look forward to for the day, the week, even the month; one brief moment of pleasure can keep you going when everything feels hopeless. And sometimes sex is just a way to pass the time. The way her classmates are acting all scandalized by our relationships? Fucking ridiculous.
Or maybe that’s just our fucked-up lifestyle?
Eh. Whatever.
Point is, seventeen of her brutal Azzie-years is plenty old enough for whatever she wants to do, she’s been through more than most and deserves to find happiness and pleasure where she can. She can choose to be with one or all of us — just for now or for forever — and no one is going to slap a scarlet A on her chest on the outside, but who the fuck knows what the consequences will be in here. She’s already been getting harassed for shit we haven’t even done yet.
So no, as far as my brothers and I are concerned — and I think Tai and Spider too — seventeen and twenty-one isn’t a problem. Seventeen and twenty-four isn’t a problem. One girl and multiple men isn’t a problem. And the idea of being with Azzie certainly isn’t the problem.
No, it’s the study that’s the problem.
The nightmare is that we’re here, trapped in this utopian hellhole surrounded by active military, armed guards solely here to protect her, and we’re expected — no, required — to sex her up until she becomes pregnant. Ideally with twins or more. That’s a pretty fucked up scenario to try to woo a girl.
And it isn’t just that finding out about the study is going to fuck up Azzie as much as I suspect it will, that’s bad enough, but simply the mechanics of a “successful outcome” are terrifying. We already know she’s not getting medications that are available to treat her disease, what would they do if she was pregnant? How would they fuck with her, try to manipulate the outcome? And what’re they planning for the babies?
I’d knock her up in a hot second if I thought she could live through it and have my kids, no questions asked, and we’d be allowed to have a normal life. If her disease was being managed properly, if she was getting what she needed, if the pregnancy didn’t put her at risk, if they didn’t have some diabolical purpose behind it all… A. Hot. Second.
Hell, I’d even give my brothers a fair shot at being the baby-daddy. It’s all essentially the same DNA and as long as it didn’t cut into my practice time — fuck it, I can be decent when I want to be, I can even live with Tai and Spider in the mix because they make her happy, and those babies would be gorgeous.
But I’m drawing the fucking line at Jason and Ryan Callis, those fucks.
Speaking of Jason Callis…
He was at the end of the hall talking to Ben — Mr. Kalkunen here at school — and then he turned and pointed at me, a weird look on his face, and followed Ben as he approached.
Ben had that carefully neutral expression that teachers cultivate, right up until he didn’t. It dropped, giving way to fear, pain, and terrible sadness.
I stopped.
I stopped moving, stopped walking. I stopped thinking.
I stopped everything but feeling, and it felt like my world was breaking apart along with my heart.
I just knew. I just knew.
Azzie.
I needed to hear it, but I didn’t.
I never wanted him to get close enough to say the words.
“Sev.” His voice cracked. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone — they told us not to tell any students but you’re not just her friend— you’re in our game. Sev, it’s Azzie… she’s— she’s—”
“She’s dead,” I whispered.
“No!” he practically shouted, looking around to make sure we were still alone, then lowered his voice. “NO. Not dead, not— not yet. But it’s bad. She’s in the hospital, and she’s very, very sick. Somehow, even with all the precautions, she caught something, some new strain of JANUS. We’re all supposed to be immune! How could this happen!”
He didn’t know. I could tell by the way he was acting, how he was looking to me for answers, he didn’t know who she is. Somehow I kept my mask in place because he searched my face carefully, then shook his head, defeated by whatever he thought he saw, eventually turning away. Over his shoulder, in a cold voice as he walked away, he said, “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but I thought you should know. She’s in the hospital, the ICU. Complete isolation. If you believe in any sort of God, now would be the time to pray.”
Not dead.
Not yet.
But infected.
They did this to her, and she knew— the things weighing on her that were more important than our drama, more important than anything else. Her priorities.
She’s been so scared.
HOW COULD THEY DO THIS TO HER?
How long did she know what they planned to do? How long did she have to live with the anticipation? The fear? Knowing how much it was going to hurt. Knowing she might die.
And what did we do? We’d hurt her. We made her sad, made her feel pathetic.
We made her feel secondary to those other girls, beneath us.
We were disloyal to the only one who mattered, and she didn’t trust us enough to tell us.
“Sev? What do we do?” Jason looked as lost as I felt.
“I need to find my brothers.”
“They were at their lockers last I saw.”
“Where’d Spider go?”
“I think he’s in his classroom—”
I headed in that direction, gesturing to Jason to follow me, texting Sasha and Luka on the way. Jason texted Ryan, telling him to get to Spider’s classroom now. We arrived at the door, and I walked right in, surveying the room and all the students, and the mantle I’d thought I left behind at the clubhouse descended on my shoulders.
“Out. NOW.” I barked out the order, and not a one of them questioned me. Everyone but Spider scurried to grab their things and flee, pushing past Luka and Sasha as they tried to get in the door, Ryan a few feet behind.
Spider stood behind his desk, picking up and setting down his phone, unable to focus as
the room emptied. The second the door was shut, he asked, “How did you know?”
“Ben.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Kalkunen.”
“Wait, what? How would he know?”
“He said they’re informing the teachers, but the students aren’t supposed to—”
“Why would they care about Mouse?”
“What? What about Mouse?”
“She’s disappeared. What are you talking about?”
“Azzie—”
“What about Azzie?” Luka was up in my grill, grabbing my shirt.
“She didn’t show up at the lab either, Tai thinks she might be with Mouse—”
“She’s not. She’s in the ICU, they fucking infected her with something, some new strain of the JANUS virus.”
“WHAT?!”
“She’s sick, really sick. Complete isolation—” my voice cracked, I couldn’t get the words out.
“What?” Luka wasn’t processing anything I was saying, he was falling apart in front of me. “Why— why would they do that?”
“I don’t know. The vaccine maybe?” I ran my hands over my face, sliding my fingers in to grip my hair. “Ben was talking like she caught something accidentally but— but I fucking know they did this. And how she’s been acting?”
“She knew—!” Spider turned and slammed his fist into wall, denting the plaster. “She FUCKING KNEW! That’s why she told me not to forget her, the real her, if she died— she fucking knew what they were planning!”
Book of the Damned: A-E5L1-01-00: (A reverse harem, post-pandemic, slow-burn romance) (The JAK2 Cycle, Book 2) Page 1