That Last Onset Read online

  Old me was shaking out his leg. It was healing, I realized. He must have my powers of invincibility. “Doesn’t this game ever get old for you?”

  Old Azazel was rolling her shoulder. It was healing too! They were like Kieran and Eve, sharing the invincibility power. They could shoot each other as much as they wanted. The thought of it made me sick.

  Old me took another shot at old Azazel. It hit her in the stomach. She screamed. “You asshole. You’re an abomination. You’re a monster.”

  “Shut up!” yelled old me. He shot her again, this time in the chest.

  She screamed again.

  I started forward. “Stop it.” I knew they couldn’t hear me, but I couldn’t handle watching myself hurt her like that. I would never hurt her.

  My Azazel tugged me back. “They can’t hear you.”

  Old Azazel was recovering on the couch. There was a nasty red stain from where she’d been lying. She was grinning like a wild woman, and her teeth were stained red. “I knew it when you killed Hallam. I knew I never should have let you live!” She raised her gun.

  Hallam? Seriously? Could this get worse?

  Old Azazel unloaded into old me, pumping four bullets into him. Two exploded in his face, two in his gut. He fell in a heap on the floor, gurgling.

  Old Azazel stepped over to his body, pointing her gun at him.

  Before she could shoot at him again, he aimed his gun and got off another couple shots.

  One burst through old Azazel’s face, and bits of her brain spewed out the back of her head. Her body crumpled to the ground as well. From where my Azazel and I stood, we could see her lifeless eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

  For several agonizing minutes, neither of them moved.

  “Oh God,” said my Azazel. “We killed each other.”

  Then old me twitched. He shoved himself to his feet a minute later. He was covered in blood, but his face looked healed for the most part. He stumbled past old Azazel. Spasms were racking her body.

  She pushed herself into a sitting position. The back of her head was matted with blood. She reached back and touched it. “I already washed my hair today, you asshole.”

  Old me kicked her as he walked by. “Shut up, cunt.” He staggered to the door and threw it open. “I really enjoyed our little chat. We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

  “Fuck you!” she yelled as he slammed the door. She sat on the floor for several more moments, tears welling up in her eyes. She studied the blood on her fingers from where she’d touched the back of her head. Then, tiredly, she pulled herself to her feet and left the room as well.

  It was quiet and still. The air smelled of discharged guns and blood.

  Both of us were too stunned to speak.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Azazel pulled her hand from mine. She walked away from me, over to the couch where the old version of her had sat. She gazed at the blood stains. She covered her mouth with a trembling hand.

  “I would never do that to you,” I said hoarsely. “I couldn’t. I could never...”

  She nodded, but she didn’t look at me. “It’s all a lie. They’re trying to screw with our heads.”

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah.”

  She tried to laugh. “As if we’d believe this crap. As if I would ever sleep with Chance. I wouldn’t do that. I don’t care how old he was.”

  “I know that.” I was still thinking about the way I’d behaved. It was haunting. I didn’t know if I could ever shake the image of myself, that ugly look on my face, shooting the woman I loved over and over.

  “And you.” She turned to me now. “You wouldn’t be sleeping with teenage redheads and killing them.”

  I broke our gaze. “Of course I wouldn’t,” I mumbled.

  “You wouldn’t.”

  I hesitated. “Azazel, the last time I had these powers, I did do that.”

  She closed her eyes, shaking her head. “No, you didn’t.”

  “You were there,” I said. “You bring it up enough. In Jasontown, I had a group of girls with red hair that were there for me to sleep with, and they all died.”

  “You didn’t kill them.”

  “It was my fault they got killed.” I ran my hands through my hair, then remembered how old me had done the same thing and dropped my hands, disgusted. “Maybe if we got our powers back again, especially all charged with this weird dark power we’ve got in this spirit world, I would do that.”

  “You only had those girls because I wasn’t around,” she said. “Once I showed up, you stopped sleeping with them.”

  That was true, as far as it went, I supposed. “But you didn’t have powers,” I said. “I could manipulate you. If you hadn’t been under my influence and without your memory, how would you have reacted to finding me like that? If you’d had your powers?”

  She blanched. “It would have royally pissed me off.”

  I nodded. “Exactly.”

  Azazel swallowed. She looked back at the blood stain on the couch. “Why’d you do it anyway? Why did you need all those girls? God knows I’ve never been celibate just because you weren’t around, but I never needed...”

  I didn’t answer for several minutes. I wasn’t sure how to explain, partly because I wasn’t exactly sure. When I’d been sucked into the power the way I had been back then, I didn’t always know why I did anything. “I liked being able to control people,” I said finally. “I liked making everyone love me. Making them love me...physically, it seemed like the next logical step.” I studied my shoes. “I made them do awful things, sometimes. Embarrassing things. And I made them love doing it.”

  Azazel was still staring at the couch. She barked out a hard laugh. “That’s great, Jason. That’s really great.”

  I was quiet for a few minutes. “I did tell you that when we got out of this, you should get away from me, didn’t I?”

  “You did,” she said. “But I think we both know I’m not strong enough to leave you.”

  “You left me before,” I said. “After what happened to Chance—to your brother.”

  “That didn’t exactly stick,” said Azazel. “And if we both have our powers, there are only two options, aren’t there? One is that we’ll be together, enjoying ourselves as we completely destroy all the people on earth and the other is that we’ll be fighting with each other and completely destroying all the people on earth in the process.”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  She turned on me. Strode across the room and took me by the shoulders. Shaking me, she said, “Don’t agree with me, Jason. Tell me it could go a different way. Tell me we’ll be okay. Tell me that we aren’t the worst thing that could possibly happen to the planet. Tell me that.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “And I can’t promise I won’t hurt you again. I always seem to hurt you, and that’s what I can’t handle.”

  She dropped my shoulders. “So what do we do? Fight anyway?”

  “I thought that was what you said we were going to do,” I said. “I thought these tests were just cruel lies.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  We stood in silence for a long time, not touching. Everything was quiet. I looked to the furniture in the room for answers, but it didn’t have anything to show me except bloody stains. Our violence was all around us. If Azazel believed in us, in me, then I could try to do so as well. But if she was defeated, then I had no chance, because there was too much Darkness inside me, and I’d been trying to fight it for too long.

  A small voice shattered my thoughts. “I know what to do.”

  Azazel and I both looked up. There, in the center of the room, was the tiny little girl from the previous test—Aerin. She wore her hair in two pigtails, and she was holding two guns. They were too large for her little hands.

  Azazel darted forward and snatched the guns away from the toddler. “What the hell are you doing here?” she snarled.

  “Just trying to help, Mommy,” said Aerin.

  “Don’t you call m
e that,” said Azazel. “Don’t you dare call me that. I know what you are, and you are not my baby.”

  Aerin shrugged, looking adorable. “Could be.”

  I went to Azazel and put my arm around her. “You don’t have to listen to that thing.”

  Azazel buried her face in my shirt. She started to cry.

  I stared over Azazel’s head at the little girl. “Please go away.”

  “No. I can help. You can stay with me,” said Aerin. “If you die in this world, you stay here. And if you two kill yourselves now, you’ll wake up back in our house. And it will be as though it’s real. Every day, you’ll be with me and Davin and Carly. We can read more stories. Please, Daddy?”

  “I already killed you and Davin and Carly,” I said.

  “But that won’t have happened,” said Aerin. “Use the guns I brought. Shoot yourselves. And then we can all be together forever.”

  Azazel heaved a shuddering sob. “You’re not real,” she said into my chest.

  “It’ll be exactly the same as if I am,” said Aerin. “I’ll feel real. You’ll remember having me. You’ll remember what it was like when I was in your tummy. You’ll be able to hug me and brush my hair. And you can make me strawberry pancakes again. I miss your strawberry pancakes, Mommy.”

  Azazel lifted her tearstained face from my chest. “Oh God, Jason.”

  “Please?” said Aerin. “Please, please, please. I miss you.”

  Azazel was still holding the guns she’d taken from Aerin. I pried one out of Azazel’s grip. “Maybe we...”

  She held up the other gun. She brought it up to my head. “It would be over...”

  I took a trembling breath and lifted my gun, settling it against her temple.

  Behind Azazel, Aerin clapped her hands together, grinning from ear to ear. “Yeah! When we get home, can we make pancakes?”

  Azazel nodded against the barrel of the gun. “Sure, sweetie,” she said. “Strawberry pancakes. As many as you want.”

  I looked deep into her eyes. “Is this what you want?” I asked.

  “Is it what you want?”

  “I...don’t want hurt anyone anymore. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She smiled sadly. “Then you can’t shoot me, baby.” She turned in my arms, knocking the gun I was holding against her head out of my grasp. She aimed the gun at Aerin. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. But you’re not real.” And she pulled the trigger.

  And one more time, everything turned white.

  * * *

  “Why?” I said, as the white cleared. “You wanted those children to be real. You didn’t want me to shoot them. And you said we couldn’t do anything good for the world. So...”

  Azazel scrubbed her eyes, mopping at her tears with the heels of her hands. “I couldn’t shoot you, Jason. I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know what kind of messed-up thing we are together. But that’s one thing I simply can’t do. No matter who tells me to do it and how much I love that person. I can’t kill you.” She put a hand on my cheek.

  I covered her hand with my own. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. But I’m glad to be alive, even if I shouldn’t be.”

  She gave me a half-smile. “I’m glad to be alive too.”

  I gazed around at our surroundings. The stone building—the maze where the Light tests had gone on—was behind us. In front of us was a free-standing doorway, similarly made out of stone. Instead of showing the scenery behind it, the doorway was obscured by a kind of cloudy, misty substance.

  Azazel pointed at it. “What do you think is through that thing? What could be worse than what we just went through?”

  “I guess we should find out,” I said. I approached the doorway, but I couldn’t see anything through it. Tentatively, I started to stick my hand through, but pulled back because the air felt strangely thick when I pushed into it. I felt it under my touch, a thin membrane. If I pushed hard enough, it would give way.

  “Jason, look!” Azazel pointed through the doorway.

  We could see through the doorway now. In front of us was the room we’d been in with Kieran and Eve. There were dead men littering the floor. Hallam and Marlena were in one corner, wrapped in each other’s arms. Marlena had dried blood her face. Both of them had their eyes closed as if they were sleeping. Against the far wall were both Azazel and me. We each had a wound on our foreheads—we’d obviously been shot. But I could see that our stomachs were rising and falling. We were breathing. We were alive.

  “Is this it, then?” asked Azazel. “Did we beat the Light? Is that the real world on the other side of that doorway?”

  “Could be,” I said. “Or it could be another test. Remember last time, we thought we’d really woken up when we hadn’t?”

  “Right,” said Azazel. “Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out. We go through and wait for something weird to happen.”

  “I guess so.” I reached up and pushed on the membrane again, putting a little more pressure on it so that it would break.

  “Hold on a second,” said someone behind us.

  Azazel and I both turned. Graham was standing there. He was wearing the same clothes he’d been in when he was shot in the Resistance hovel, not the police officer uniform we’d seen him in before.

  He had his hand into his pockets. “You two shouldn’t go through there quite yet.”

  “Are you the next test?” Azazel said. “Am I going to have to kill you next? Is there anyone I don’t have to kill?”

  “I think I already killed him,” I said. When he was a foul-mouthed police officer. And he wasn’t actually dead, which was kind of too bad. Of course, now that I thought about it, he was actually dead. Kieran’s men had killed him. So, what was Graham now? A ghost?

  “That wasn’t me,” said Graham.”I mean, it was an aspect of me. It was something the spirit world had sort of absorbed, but it wasn’t the whole me. It was just a piece of my memories, personality, and appearance that the Light used to manipulate you.”

  “And you’re the whole you?” I asked.

  “We have seen two different Agneses,” said Azazel.

  “Right,” said Graham. “But neither of those Agneses were really the real Agnes. They were both just aspects of her, things the Darkness or the Light was using to get to you to do what they wanted you to do.”

  I sighed. “I’m really sick of all of this. If you’re really the ‘real’ Graham, then who do you work for? You have another series of tests you want us to go through?”

  “No tests,” said Graham.

  “Why should we trust you?” I asked. “Why should I trust you? The last time I saw you, you were saying absolutely disgusting things about Azazel. You called her names.”

  “I’m telling you, that wasn’t me,” said Graham. “That was the Light. The Light wants you to fight with each other. They want you unbalanced. They don’t want you to ever get your powers back.”

  “Yeah,” said Azazel. “That’s what the first Agnes told us.”

  “She was the Darkness,” said Graham. “The Darkness wants you to have your powers back.”

  “So she told us,” I said. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Graham,” said Graham. “The guy who was Azazel’s fuck buddy up until I got shot and died.”

  “So you are a ghost,” I said.

  Graham shrugged. “Sure. You could say that.”

  “So all the people we’ve been seeing have been ghosts?” Azazel asked. “We are dead, aren’t we? This is Hell.”

  “You’re not dead,” said Graham. He pointed through the doorway at our bodies. “See. You’re alive. You aren’t conscious, but you’re alive. If you push through that doorway right now, you’ll go back into your bodies. You’ll have powers, and you’ll be able to heal yourselves. You’ll wake up. And then it will be up to you guys what you do. You passed the tests. You absorbed the Darkness. You defeated the Light.”

  “Okay,” said Azazel. “Maybe that’s true, and maybe it isn’t. Everyth
ing’s weird in this spirit realm or whatever. But assuming it is, why’d you stop us?”

  “I wanted to show you some things. Tell you what’s really going on. You don’t have to follow either of these paths. You can make your own decisions. I’m here to explain that,” said Graham.

  “You,” I said. “I don’t think I really like you very much.”

  Graham sighed. “The Light’s not wrong about jealousy being your biggest problem, you know that, guys?” He put a hand on my shoulder. “There’s no reason to worry about me, Jason. I’m dead. And she picked you, anyway. Besides, I was never even in the running.” To Azazel, “Help me out.”

  She chewed on her lip. “Help you out how?”

  “Tell him how you never cared about me,” said Graham.

  “It’s not as though I didn’t care at all,” Azazel said.

  “You don’t have to spare my feelings,” said Graham. “I’m dead, remember? Besides, this isn’t about me. It’s about Jason.”

  I glowered at Graham. “Forget it. You don’t have to put her on the spot like that.” I turned to Azazel. “If you trust him, it’s good enough for me.”

  “I...” Azazel looked pretty uncomfortable. “You know, I said things to Graham about you because I was angry at you. And I’ve been angry at you a lot. And you’ve deserved a lot of it, but—”

  I put up my hand to stop her. “Let’s not get into this again. Should we let him show us stuff or not?”

  Azazel looked at her shoes. “I didn’t know Graham was going to die so soon. I feel as though I made him waste his life with me.”

  “Don’t be like that,” said Graham. “You were clear about it going in. You said whatever we were doing wasn’t going to be serious. I knew that.” He glanced at me. “You’re lucky, though, you know that?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t know if lucky is the word I’d use to describe my life. And after all we’ve been through, I can’t help but feel as though we’re really freaking bad for each other.”

  “Well,” said Graham, “that’s real life, isn’t it? Nobody’s perfect. For whatever reason, you guys are the center of the power of the world. And if sorting out your love life is what you have to do to sort out that responsibility, then please do it. Because people like me are getting caught in the crosshairs.”