CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 

We were both so quiet that the sound of the front door opening was very loud. It closed, and we heard footsteps.

“Jason?” I whispered weakly.

Hallam immediately darted out of the living room to check. I heard his voice. “Jason, thank goodness. We have a little bit of a situation here.” I could hear him explaining what was going on, babbling on and on, but to my ears, the words were starting to run together like one of those weird abstract paintings I’d studied in my freshman art class. I idly contemplated the fact that I was mixing my senses. That words had taken on a visual quality to me, and I wondered if this was the first sign that my brain was deteriorating. I was losing my grip on reality. Would this be what death was like, everything becoming a confusing mesh of sensation that I couldn’t make proper sense of?

Then Jason’s face loomed in my vision, too large. “What if I give her more blood?” His voice was panicked. “Do you think that will work? Do you think the leaves will block it?”

“No,” I managed. “No more blood. I don’t want to live if that’s what it means. I don’t want to be one of them.”

They ignored me.

Hallam had my arm, was ripping the bandage off, squeezing it, forcing it to bleed. I couldn’t feel a thing.

Jason had the pocket knife out again, and it glinted dully as he slashed his arm. I thought about how small the knife looked, but yet its serrated edges were like tiny teeth.

“No,” I said again.

But then I caught the bright tang of his blood, and I remembered the taste. I wanted it. I narrowed in on his bleeding arm, my body throbbing with desire. I would have reached for it, but I couldn’t move.

And his arm was on my mouth, and it was flowing into me—vivid, intense, buoyant. It seared into me, lighting me up, healing me. I groaned against him, feeling and motion returning to my arms. I grasped him right away, tugging him against my mouth, unwilling to let him go.

Jason gasped, either out of pleasure or pain, I couldn’t tell. He wrapped himself around me, and I was engulfed in his arms, his life and energy seeping into my mouth. I drank him, greedily sucking him into me.

His lips were at my ear, his voice a rumble in his chest. “You’re not going anywhere. I won’t let you.”

I didn’t want to stop this. Jason’s blood lit me up like a forest fire. Every cell in my body was in flames, burning so brightly. I reveled in it, in the power, the euphoria, the pure perfection of drinking it.

He murmured my name over and over, clutching me tightly with the arm that I wasn’t drinking from.

Hallam cleared his throat. “You guys are starting to make me blush.”

Jason shifted. I felt rather than saw it, because my eyes were slammed closed against everything except the sensation of taking Jason’s blood into me. I didn’t want to stop. I wouldn’t stop. I wanted to drink this forever.

“Enough?” Jason asked me.

I kept drinking. There was never going to be enough. I couldn’t be satisfied. This blood was the only thing in the entire universe I cared about.

He tried to pull his arm away, but I held it fast.

“Azazel,” Jason said. “Stop.”

I didn’t.

It took help from Hallam to pry me off of him. Even when I’d stopped, Hallam had to hold me back to keep me from springing on Jason again, because once I wasn’t drinking, all I could think was that I wanted to be drinking again.

Jason was white-faced, leaning against the couch, holding his arm at the elbow. Blood was dripping down his forearm, beautiful red rivulets. I wanted to lap them up with my tongue. I struggled, but Hallam had me in a chokehold.

“Easy,” he was saying. “Calm down.”

I thought about twisting in Hallam’s arms, raking my hands over his face, getting away from him and leaping on Jason again, latching my mouth against him, getting it inside me again, taking more. Oh, God, I wanted more .

Jason let his arm flop against his knee. The cut was healing. It was disappearing, his skin growing over it. He wiped the blood against his shirt. “Let her go.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Hallam.

I was starting to feel a little bit of sanity return to me. And with it, a torrent of shame. “Clean it up. Change your shirt.”

Jason started to stand up, but I could see the loss of blood had made him lightheaded.

I started crying. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

* * *

By the time Jason came back downstairs in different clothes, the leftover blood washed away, he was okay again. Color had returned to his face. I hadn’t hurt him, not really. He healed quickly. But it was still horrible. I’d been monstrous, overtaken by my desires, and I felt horrific.

Hallam wasn’t holding me back anymore, but he eyed me warily, as if he was afraid I might lunge at Jason like a wild animal.

Jason just wrapped me in his arms, whispering into my hair, “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

I pushed out of Jason’s arms. I didn’t deserve his closeness. I’d hurt him. I’d been awful. I felt gross and unclean. Something else lived inside me now. Something I hadn’t wanted, like the power I used to have. The power that had a scaly voice, urging me to take pleasure in suffering, in killing. I’d gotten rid of the power, but there was no way to lose this desire for blood except to die. And I thought that might be preferable to living like this.

Hallam massaged the bridge of his nose. “The two of you... It’s always something, isn’t it?” He left the living room, telling us, “I’ll let you guys sort it out.”

I let out a harsh, bitter laugh. “Sort it out? This isn’t sortable.”

Jason shook his head. “I knew I should have tried those leaves on myself.”

That was like him. He was always trying to make it his fault. He blamed himself for everything. Well, it wasn’t his fault, and I didn’t feel like trying to reassure him anymore. I sank down on the couch. “You should have let me die.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t going to stop. I wanted to drink you dry. I could have killed you.”

“I don’t even think that’s possible,” he said. “I’m fine.”

I buried my face in my hands. “I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want to be one of those things, like the people that imprisoned us. You don’t know what they were like. They had no sense that what they were doing was even wrong.”

He sat down next to me. “You don’t want to be like them, because you’ve convinced yourself that they aren’t people. So you think you aren’t human anymore.”

“I’m not,” I said.

“You are,” he said. “And they are. You can call them vampires all you want, but that’s just a word masking the truth. The truth is that they’re people, just like the rest of us, and that they’re doing what they have to do to survive. Like everyone does.”

I looked up at him. “Everyone does not do the kind of things that they do. That I do.”

“They do. Maybe it’s not imprisoning people or drinking blood, but the whole of the human race does whatever it can to live, and if that means hurting other people, then so be it. After everything we’ve seen and done, I can’t believe you don’t see that.”

“You’re wrong. People are good.”

“People made up good,” said Jason. “It’s a way to try to make sense of all the decisions we face on a daily basis.”

“I thought that you were trying not to kill because you were trying to do the right thing.”

“Sort of,” he said. He stood up and crossed to the window. “Something’s broken in me. I don’t have this thing that the rest of you do.”

“Thing?”

“A conscience, I guess.”

I leapt off the couch. “I’m so sick of this, Jason. I’m so sick of you saying crap like that. It isn’t true. I’ve seen you do things because you knew that you were wrong. I’ve seen you struggle with yourself. You feel guilt. And if you didn’t have a conscience, you wouldn’t. So get over it.” I stalked out of the living room. I went out the front door. Outside the house, I made my way over to the leaves. I’d just chew on a bunch of them and go hide myself somewhere to die. Then I’d be rid of all of this.

But I didn’t chew the leaves. I held them, trying to work up the courage, and felt angry at Jason.

Every time I was in an argument with him, I always felt like I thought of the perfect thing to say after I’d left. Right then, I wished I’d told him that the problem with his whiny self was that I needed him right now. I was going through something, and he had to make it all about how he was worried that he was a bad person. I was sick of always being there and telling him he was okay. He needed to grow a pair and accept himself. I’d accepted him. Why wasn’t that enough?

I dropped the leaves. I couldn’t die yet. I needed to kill Bartholomew first.

Jason thought this was his fault, and I was blaming myself too, but the truth was, it wasn’t either of us. This was Bartholomew. He’d killed me. He’d made me into one of them. And he was going to pay for that.

* * *

Jason was quiet at dinner. I didn’t sit next to him, because I was still mad at him, and I thought he needed to apologize to me. As it was, there were seven adults and two children trying to assemble their own tacos in the dining room. The dining room was big, but with all of us in there, it felt a little crowded.

I watched him be sulky, and it made me even angrier at him, so I did my best to ignore him. I started talking to Mina about the most girly things I could think of, from makeup to clothes. She and I had been roommates my senior year of high school, and we used to do lots of things together. It was a nice distraction. I realized I’d missed having a friend like her. Now that I thought about it, I spent way too much time steeped in life-threatening situations. I should go shopping or something.

After dinner, Boone was getting me up to date on his hacking project, and Jude overheard. He was pretty excited and said he’d be willing to help in any way we needed. I wasn’t sure how much help Jude would be. He’d handled a gun before at least. I’d rather have Jason at my back when we went back, but I didn’t think that was going to happen. I wasn’t sure if arming Jude would make him an asset, or if I’d spend all my time trying to protect him.

Boone still wasn’t inside the vampires’ network, but he said he thought he was close. I told him to keep at it.

While I was doing all of that, I lost track of Jason. I frittered away the rest of the evening, distracting myself from my thoughts and worries with television. Grace was right. I had some catching up to do.

When I went to bed, Jason was already lying down with the lights off. I got undressed and into my pajamas as quietly as possible, but when I slid into bed next to him, he woke up anyway.

He rolled over to face me, propping himself up on one elbow. “I did something that pissed you off.”

I burrowed into my pillow. This felt so familiar. This room, this bed. Jason and I arguing, avoiding each other, only to end up together at night to go to sleep. This was what the two years of our life had been like after I’d killed the Sons. Before Jason had shot my little brother Chance. Always arguing. Always making some kind of tenuous peace in the darkness of our bed. Was this all our relationship would ever be?

I remembered agonizing over it back then, wondering why we couldn’t just be happy. I loved Jason. I always had. But being around him always felt like there was a constant bomb going off. Sometimes it was exciting. It made my blood churn and my passion stir. But sometimes it was only exhausting. I’d never been able to quite relax with him. He threw me off-balance.

Back then, I thought it was a sign that we weren’t meant to be together.

But no matter how hard I’d tried, we’d always ended up back in each other’s arms. Right at that moment, I was stuck in the same process of rumination. Were we good together? Did we actually make each other happy?

But I realized it didn’t matter. I was going to die, anyway. Jason had given me more blood, and the clock had reset. One more month. But this would be the last month. Once I’d taken care of the vampires, I’d check out. It would be a relief. All of the worry and violence would be over.

So I pressed myself against his hard body, and I said, “Let’s not worry about it anymore. We talk too much. We go round and round and nothing ever gets resolved.”

He ran his fingers over the small of my back, kissed my neck. “I didn’t mind it, you know.”

I thought we weren’t going to talk. I found his mouth in the dark, tried to kiss away his words.

He responded eagerly, but when he pulled away he said, “I liked it.”

“Liked what?” He wasn’t going to let this go, was he?

“You drinking my blood.”

I went rigid. Goddamn him. I rolled away. “Let’s go to sleep.”

He snuggled up against me, spooning me. “Don’t get mad. You told me to get over worrying about my conscience or lack of one. Maybe you need to get over this too.”

“I hated the way I acted. I was out of control, and it was disgusting. I can’t just ‘get over’ that.”

His hand caressed my thigh. “I understand that feeling more than you know. You love me even if I do things I think are disgusting. And I love you, even if you think those things about yourself. Isn’t that enough?”

His words echoed my own thoughts from earlier. But this was different. This was me losing myself, becoming a monster. “Maybe it’s not.”

He sighed, but he stayed close to me, and his touch was distracting me, making it hard to think.

“Why did you like it?”

He drew in an audible breath. “Because of how much you wanted me.”

I turned onto my back, and because we were so close, it meant I ended up under him, more or less, his dark features hovering over mine. “I don’t think I want to want you like that.”

He kissed me. “You want to know something fucked up about me?”

“I don’t know all the fucked-up things about you?”

He laughed, the sound dark and intimate, sending shivers through me. “I want things obsessively. I want it all, and I want it to be mine, and no one else’s.”

“I already know that.” It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. He’d created a town and named it after himself.

“You remember, when we were locked up, and you asked me about the bruises. The other girls?”

I stiffened. That kind of stuff wasn’t something we usually discussed in bed, not when we were so close.

He pulled back too. He wasn’t looking at me anymore but above my head at the wall over the bed. “It turns me on to... mark things, make things mine. Leave evidence, I guess, so that if anyone else tried to take it, they’d see that I’d claimed it already.”

I swallowed. “You realize you’re calling a woman an ‘it’?”

Then he was staring into my eyes again. “Yeah.” It was a challenge, as if he was daring me to cringe from him. I’d never known him to lay himself out quite like that, be so vulnerable.

I didn’t react at all, just held his gaze.

“I don’t think of you that way. It doesn’t mean I’m not possessive.”

I only nodded. He was incredibly possessive. Occasionally, he was dangerously so. And as a little thrill coursed through me, I realized that was part of the draw of him. Why I couldn’t ever quite leave him. It was the fact that he was something dangerous, something untamed, and I got a charge from seeing how close I could get without getting mauled. I guessed that was a fucked-up thing about me.

“It was...” He closed his eyes. “It was perfect. You wanted me so much, and while you were sucking down my blood, you completely and totally belonged to me. And I belonged to you.” His hand tangled in my hair, pulling my head back, creating just a tiny bit of pain.

The thrill went through me again, the fear tinged with pleasure. Could I control him, or would he destroy me?

“That’s how I want you, Azazel. I want all of you.”

His lips were on me then, urgent and demanding. For a second I surrendered, but then I struggled away, gasping. “Take me, then,” I said. “If you can.”

His grip on me tightened, and he made a half-strangled noise in the back of his throat, as if he’d been waiting for an invitation like that for a long time.

* * *

“I got it!” Boone yelled as he ran into the kitchen.

I looked up from my breakfast, which I was eating with Jude and Mina. “Got what?”

“Come see,” he said.

Jude and I trooped up to Boone’s bedroom, where he proudly displayed to us his open laptop. On the screen was the main room. Emma was sitting at the table, reading a book as if nothing had changed.

“You hacked into the camera system,” I said.

He grinned. “Yup. And that’s not all. I’ve got building schematics and access to their files as well.” He closed the window that displayed the shots from the camera and opened up another file. “This is a schedule of when they drink the blood. We’ve got about five days until their next dose, so that should mean they’re weaker now, right?”

“In theory,” I said. “Bartholomew said the blood wore off fast, so maybe they’re fine right up until the last minute.”

“Well, then we should go at the last minute,” said Boone. He pulled up another file. It looked like blueprints. “According to the schematics, they keep the blood supply here.” He pointed. “So, I think our first move should be to take that out. I’ve been looking up some stuff about explosives, and I think it’s something I could handle.”

“Wait,” I said. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves.”

Boone arched an eyebrow at me. “Did Jason convince you to give up on the whole thing?”

“No,” I said. “I’m still in. But this is huge. We need time to plan.”

“I thought you were going to be computer guy,” said Jude. “You can’t be blowing things up. We’re going to need you to be unlocking doors and monitoring things.”

“He’s right,” I said.

“Fine,” said Boone. “But don’t you think we should take out the blood supply?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I can do it,” said Jude.

Which would leave me going in without backup. Still, that was probably okay. I wasn’t sure how much help Jude would be anyway.

“What are you guys talking about?”

We all looked up to see Grace at the door to Boone’s room. No one said anything.

She walked further in. “You’re going to go back and getting everyone out, aren’t you?”

“We’re ironing out logistics,” I said.

“I want to help,” she said.

Boone stood up, folding his arms over his chest. “No. No way.”

She raised her eyebrows. “No way? You don’t get to tell me what to do, dickface.”

“It’s too dangerous,” said Boone. “You need to sit this out.”

“Look,” said Grace, “if Jude is blowing up blood, and Boone is manning the computers, and Azazel’s in there killing vampires, then who’s helping the Nephilim get away after they’re free?”

This was why we needed a detailed plan, going over every possibility. I had forgotten about freeing prisoners, which was really the primary objective of the whole mission.

“I can do that,” said Grace.

“Maybe,” I said.

Boone turned on me. “I don’t want her anywhere near that place.”

I cocked my head at Grace, sizing her up. I hadn’t been that much older than her when I’d started learning how to take care of myself. “You ever shot a gun?”

She shook her head.

“I can’t believe you’d even consider that,” said Boone. “She’s not going.”

“If you’re coming along,” I said, “then you have to get some target practice in first.” I looked at Jude and Boone. “You guys too. I want everyone armed. We can work on using the leaves inside bullets. It seems like a pretty good weapon against them.”

“Azazel,” said Boone. “Not Grace.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why you care anyway.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he said. “So we aren’t together or whatever. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about your safety.”

I held up a hand. “Grace doesn’t go in.” I took a deep breath. “In fact, none of you except me actually goes in.”

* * *

I needed to go shopping. I wished I was going shopping for fun things, considering I’d been telling myself I needed a break to do girly stuff, but it wasn’t going to be that kind of shopping. Instead, I was going to be buying cell phones and surveillance equipment and possibly guns. I needed to check with Hallam to see what kind of weapons he still had. Back when we lived in abandoned metro tunnels, we had lots of guns. I wasn’t sure what had happened to them. Anyway, I’d need to probably take a few trips. Boone was coming with me, and I’d told him to sit tight until I asked Mina if I could borrow her car. Hallam and Marlena were both at work. Mina was home watching Kenya.

I found Mina in the living room, but she wasn’t alone. Jason was talking to her. I could have just interrupted, but I was curious about the conversation, so I flattened myself against the wall outside the doorway and listened.

“He’s your son,” Mina was saying. “I don’t have any legal right to him, and if you want to take him back, I’d understand that.”

“No, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about at all,” Jason said. “He’s yours. He’s yours always, and I would never take him away from you. You’re a much better parent than I could ever be.”

“But you should still be part of his life. You’re his father.”

“I...” I was sure he was running his fingers through his hair, not meeting her eyes. “I don’t know if I’m ready for that. I haven’t really seen him since we got back.”

“I know,” said Mina. “Chance keeps asking about you. I told him you’ve been through a lot, and that you’d be ready to see him soon.”

“That’s the thing,” said Jason. “Could you not tell him stuff like that? I don’t want him to get attached to the idea, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to be ready.”

Mina made an exasperated sigh. “You’re living under the same roof with the kid. You honestly think you can avoid him?”

“I’ve been doing okay thus far.”

“So, what am I supposed to tell him? His dad isn’t ready to be a dad? Great, Jason, just great.”

“Don’t be like that. It’s complicated.”

“I don’t think it is,” said Mina. “You have a child. No one’s ready to be a parent. I wasn’t ready when I got pregnant at sixteen. Neither was Chance.” A pause. “Big Chance, I mean. My Chance.”

“I know what you meant.”

“Well, we stepped up, anyway. It’s what you do. It’s part of being human.”

It was Jason’s turn to sigh. “This isn’t about me being selfish, you know. It’s about who I am. You know me, Mina. When we lived in this house together all those years ago, you know about all the fights I got in, all the guys I pulverized. You remember that the reason I left was because of what I did to your Chance .”

Mina was quiet.

“Are you sure you want someone like me having influence on your son? Because I don’t think I do. I want him to have a good life. I want him to be well-adjusted and kind and happy. And I’m just not sure that exposing him to something like me is a particularly good idea.”

“Jason, things aren’t like that anymore,” she said. “No one’s after you anymore.”

“Someone’s always after me,” said Jason. “And if not, then I’m after someone. No one was after me when I paralyzed your boyfriend from the waist down, were they?”

“I heard...” She took a deep breath. “Hallam said that while you were away, you stopped all of that. That you weren’t hurting people anymore. He said you changed.”

“I want to change,” said Jason. “I don’t know if I can.”

There was more silence.

Jason’s voice, soft. “Will you keep him away from me?”

“What am I supposed to tell him? He’s been waiting for you to wake up from this coma for so long. He knows about you. I can’t tell him that his own father is some violent psychopath. That would mess him up too.”

“Maybe I should leave, then,” said Jason.

At that, I burst into the room. “Leave?”

He whirled to see me. “Azazel?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was coming to ask Mina something, and I couldn’t help but hear.”

Mina was twisting her fingers together. “Do you think it’s true, Zaza? Is he really too dangerous to be around Chance?”

“I don’t think it’s true,” I said. “He doesn’t even want to hurt the jerks who captured us.”

“Is that what you were talking to Boone about?” she said. “After he took you guys away at breakfast?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I was actually coming to see if I could borrow your car to go shopping for some things we’re going to need.”

“So, you’re going to do it,” said Jason.

“We have to,” I said.

He shook his head.

“You don’t have to help,” I said. “I’m going to do it without you. If you think you won’t be able to handle the violence, I trust you. You can stay away from it.” This is it, I thought. Jason wouldn’t want me to put myself in danger without him. He was going to agree to help, now that he’d seen how determined I was. He’d be annoyed about it at first, but he’d come around.

But he only backed away, his head down. “You do what you have to do, I guess.”