Tortured: Book Three of the Jason and Azazel Trilogy Page 2

She still didn't answer. I put my hand on her back and patted it gently. "Mina," I said softly, using her nickname. "Talk to me. Is it Chance? Was my brother a total dickhead to you?"

  "I broke up with Chance," she said, hiccupping and raising her face to look at me. Her eyes were puffy and red, but she was still a really pretty girl. Her long white-blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders. My brother was a lucky guy. Well. He had been, anyway.

  "What?" I said. "Why'd you break up?"

  "I just don't want to see him anymore," she said, rubbing her eyes with the heels of hands.

  "What did he do?" I asked.

  "Nothing," said Palomino.

  Really? "Okay," I said. "So why'd you break up with him?"

  "It's not him, it's me," she said, standing up and going to the sink.

  "Um," I said, getting up behind her, "that line might work when you're dumping your boyfriend, but it doesn't work when you're explaining it to your friends."

  Palomino surveyed herself in the mirror, making a face at her reflection. "I'm fine," she said. "I don't want to talk about it."

  "Come on," I said. "You're upset. Anyone can see that."

  She shrugged and splashed water on her face.

  I came closer, leaning on one side of the sink. "Look," I said, "I know my brother is not always the politest or even nicest guy ever. I grew up with him, remember? But I know he likes you. He really, really likes you—"

  "He won't, though," said Palomino. "He won't when he finds out. This way, it's a clean break. I did it first." She swept out of the bathroom, collapsing on her bed in the bedroom.

  I followed her. "Finds out what?" I asked, sitting down on my bed, which was opposite hers.

  Palomino pulled a pillow over her head.

  I sat back. "I can't imagine that anything you did would make him like you less," I said. "You're a really awesome girlfriend."

  She pulled her head out from underneath the pillow. "I'm an idiot."

  "No," I said, "you're not."

  "It was my idea," she said. "I told him it would be okay. In health class at my old high school, they said it would be okay. You're not supposed to be able to when you're on your period."

  I furrowed my brow, a niggling suspicion running through me. "Palomino," I said, "did you and Chance have sex?"

  She looked at me like I was an idiot. "We've been having sex," she told me. "Since before I came to this school."

  Really? "But Chance said you weren't his girlfriend," I said. "Back when you were hanging out in New Jersey. He said you guys weren't dating. You were having sex then?" This was kind of blowing my mind. Chance was my younger brother after all.

  "I knew I was coming here for spring semester," she said. "I didn't want to get attached."

  "So you were just randomly hooking up with my brother?" I demanded.

  Palomino rolled her eyes. "Azazel, you're such a prude. You wouldn't understand. Never mind." She buried her face in her pillow.

  The furrow in my brow deepened. I lay back on my bed, staring at the ceiling. "I'm not a prude," I said. Of course, I had just skipped out on my chance to have sex with my boyfriend. My first chance in months. Was I a prude?

  "You've only had sex with Jason, right?" said Palomino.

  "How many people have you had sex with?" I asked.

  "Three," she said.

  "Really?" I said. Palomino was fifteen. How did you fit three boyfriends into fifteen years? When had she started having sex? When she was twelve? "It doesn't make me a prude, because I've only had sex with one guy."

  "Whatever," said Palomino, "and I'm sure you guys are always super careful. You probably make him wear two condoms."

  "Just one," I said. "And I don't make him do it. We've just always . . ." Truthfully, Jason and I never talked about the condoms. He always had them. I sat back up and fixed Palomino with my gaze. "What are you saying? Are you saying you haven't been careful?"

  Palomino didn't look up from her pillow. Her voice was muffled. "I'm pregnant, Azazel."

  * * *

  Jason was scrubbing at the blood on his hands. He stood over the sink, the water rushing over them from the faucet. I stood in the doorway, watching him.

  "Where did the blood come from?" I asked him.

  He turned off the faucet, flinging his wet hands once, so that water spattered against the sink. It was pink with blood.

  He came to me, holding his hands out to touch me.

  I backed away. "Where did the blood come from, Jason?" I asked.

  Jason advanced on me.

  I backed into the closed door behind me. I fumbled for the doorknob behind my back.

  Jason was coming for me, blood dripping from his hands and fingers, dripping onto the floor, red like roses. The blood was all over his hands. All over his arms. Smeared on his white t-shirt.

  "I don't like it when you come home covered in all this blood," I whispered, still trying to turn the doorknob behind me.

  It was locked.

  Jason stopped in front of me. He put his hands on my cheeks.

  I pushed him away. "I don't want the blood on me," I said.

  "But it's your blood," said Jason.

  "No, it's not," I said.

  "It is," said Jason. "Come here and see our beautiful baby."

  "What?" I said. "What are you talking about?"

  I looked down at myself. I was naked from the waist down. My thighs were covered in smears of deep red blood. And now, suddenly, I could feel it. It felt like something had clawed its way out of my uterus. There was nothing between my legs but tatters of skin. I collapsed onto the bathroom floor, cold green tile against my skin.

  Behind the shower curtain, something screamed.

  Jason smiled at me. He pulled aside the curtain of the shower with a presentational flair, like he was a showman at a circus. "Isn't he beautiful?" he said.

  Behind the shower curtain, a long black worm-like shape slithered over the lip of the bathtub. Its sharp teeth glinted in the lights. Pieces of my flesh still clung to it. Wherever it slid, it left a trail of blood.

  I backed away, backed into the door again, shaking my head, muttering, "No. No."

  "He's our baby," said Jason.

  "No," I said.

  "Yes," said Jason.

  "No," I said. I stumbled to my feet. "It has to die," I said, lunging for the worm-shaped thing, ready to strangle it.

  "Stop!" cried Jason.

  * * *

  And I woke up.

  It was dark in the dorm room and quiet. Quiet the way it is in the morning before the sun comes up. Still. Peaceful.

  But my heart was beating out of my chest.

  Goddamn dreams.

  I'd been having bad dreams—nightmares—ever since Jason and I escaped my crazy Satanist family in Bramford, WV last fall. Recently, however, they'd started to get much, much worse. I had one nearly every night. Sometimes more than one. They never made much sense. Sometimes they had a basis in things that had happened. For instance, this one was clearly an amalgamation of Palomino's news and the time Jason had come home in Bradenton covered in blood. And maybe it had something to do with the fact that I wasn't quite sure if Jason and I weren't . . . evil.

  Jason's own mother had tried to get me to kill him. She'd had visions. Visions in which Jason did horrible things.

  What if my dreams were like visions? What if . . .

  I tried to calm down. Monitor my breathing so that my heart would slow down. It wouldn't help anything to think like that. People didn't have visions of the future.

  At least I didn't think so.

  Sometimes, though, Jason was so violent. I tried not to think about it, because nothing had happened in quite some time. But I'd watched Jason shoot his own mother in the head.

  He'd been protecting me.

  He'd never talked about it.

  The things that I thought about when I woke up from the dreams were sometimes worse than the dreams themselves. I didn't like the dreams, and I didn't like thinking
about whether or not Jason was too violent. I didn't like thinking about it at all.

  There was only one thing that worked to keep it all at bay, and I'd been so caught up in listening to Palomino tell me about being pregnant that I hadn't bothered with it before bed. Not like I usually did.

  It was dark. It was quiet. And my bed was warm. I didn't particularly want to get up.

  But I wanted to turn my brain off, and I only knew one way to do that. I climbed out of bed and knelt beside it. Feeling under my mattress, my fingers brushed the cold metal of my gun. It was good to know it was there, but it wasn't what I was looking for.

  Instead, I slid out a glass bottle of vodka.

  It was easy to buy liquor in Italy, even though I wasn't technically quite old enough to purchase it. The drinking age was lower in Europe. I never had problems. And it wasn't like I was buying it to party. It was like medicine.

  I gulped the burning liquid down my throat, feeling the oblivion rush into my temples.

  * * *

  I had a headache. I always had a headache. Drinking as much liquor as I did every night before bed (or in last night's case, in the middle of the night) tended to make me pretty much constantly hung over. I sat in my morning class, bleary-eyed, barely listening to Professor Moretti's lecture on Post-Colonialism. I'd been through various approaches to education my senior year of high school. The first had been honors classes in the West Virginia public school system. Then general classes in the Florida public school system. Finally, here I was, finishing out my high school career in a posh, English-language private school in Europe. The approaches all had some things in common, but here at the SolSolisSchool, the emphasis was on lecture. I came to class. Professors talked at me. I took notes. Later there was a test. It was the most challenging program I'd ever taken part in.

  In my pocket, my phone vibrated.

  Looking around to make sure Professor Moretti wasn't looking, I eased the phone out of my pocket and eyed the text message Jason had sent me.

  "whats up w/c and p?" it said.

  Careful not to look down at the phone too much, I quickly texted back: "what did chance say to u?"

  I made a show of scribbling down something on my notebook paper, waiting until my phone vibrated again before looking at it.

  "p broke up w/ him? she say why?"

  I chewed on my lip, considering. Jason and I had made a pact not to keep secrets from each other, but this wasn't my secret. Last night, Palomino had made it clear to me that she didn't want Chance to know. She was convinced that Chance would leave her if he found out. Apparently, she'd been sort of seeing a guy before Chance had transferred in the early spring. She hadn't had sex with the guy, but Chance didn't believe that. Palomino was sure that Chance would blame the baby on someone else. I told her my brother wasn't like that.

  At any rate, I didn't think Palomino wanted her business blabbed to anyone, not even Jason. I trusted Jason, but since he was living with Chance, it would be really hard for him not to want to tell his own roommate. Still, I didn't think Palomino should keep this to herself for too long.

  Conflicted, my fingers hovered over the keys of my phone.

  "Ms. Smith," said Professor Moretti.

  I didn't look up at first. My name was Jones. But we were undercover at the SolSolisSchool and we weren't using our real names. I was going by Amy Smith. My head snapped up.

  Professor Moretti was standing right next to my desk. He could see that I was texting.

  I blushed and shoved the phone back into my pocket. "Sorry," I mumbled.

  Professor Moretti looked concerned. "Ms. Smith," he said kindly, "you really need to heed your studies. Your grades can't afford distractions like this." He was referring to the D I'd gotten on my last test. I couldn't help that I wasn't studying so much. What with nightmares, hangovers, and trying to figure out a way into the library, I was distracted. School didn't seem so important anymore.

  I looked down at my desk, ashamed.

  Professor Moretti moved on. "The next chapter of Things Fall Apart for tomorrow, then," he addressed the class.

  Around me, students began to gather their belongings. Shove their notebooks into book bags. Stand up. A low buzz of chatter started to fill the classroom. The class was over. I didn't move for a few seconds. The noise was making my head pound.

  Slowly, I stood up and began picking up my own stuff.

  Jason appeared beside my desk, his book bag already slung over his shoulder. "Sorry," he said.

  I shook my head. "I should have kept my eye out for Moretti."

  "No," said Jason, "it was my fault. And I shouldn't distract you in class, anyway."

  Way to rub it in. Jason had, of course, gotten an A on the test. "Right," I said. "Your stupid girlfriend needs to concentrate, or she'll flunk out of school."

  He kissed my forehead. "Don't be silly," he said, taking my hand as we left the classroom and spilled into the hallway with the other students. "I just already know this stuff. When people think you're the messiah, they cram your head full of all kinds of useless knowledge."

  I elbowed him. "Shh. Don't say that stuff so loud. Someone might hear."

  He tickled my ribs. "Paranoid Azazel," he teased.

  "Don't say my name either," I hissed.

  "You're in a bad mood," he said. "Did you drink last night again?"

  "No," I said. "I forgot. I had a dream that we had a monster for a baby, and it ate its way out of my body."

  Jason made a face. "Eew," he said.

  I shrugged. "So then I downed half a bottle of vodka at like four in the morning."

  We made our way out of Rossi Hall and into the bright, spring day. Outside, other students like us walked in groups of two or three across the sprawling campus. They wound through old brick buildings that had been standing for hundreds of years. Jason and I were heading towards the dining hall for lunch. We usually met up with Palomino and Chance. I wondered how that was going to work out today.

  Jason shook his head. "I don't think it's good for you to drink so much."

  "And the nightmares? Are they good for me?"

  "I just worry about you. You know that."

  I did know. I squeezed his hand. "I'm okay."

  We walked without speaking for a few moments.

  "You don't ever have bad dreams?" I asked him. "After everything you've seen?"

  He shrugged. "Used to," he said. "A long time ago. After the sorority house. But not so much anymore."

  The Sons had assigned Jason and a man named Hallam, who we used to live with in Florida, to kill a house full of sorority girls. They'd told them the girls were running a brothel, but that had probably been a lie. No one really knew, because they were dead. Jason hadn't done any of the actual killing, but the night had scarred him deeply.

  "So, you think it'll get better?" I asked.

  "Maybe we should take you to a doctor. Like a psychiatrist or something."

  I snorted.

  "I didn't mean that you were crazy or anything," he added hastily.

  "We both need loads of therapy," I told him. "And we won't be getting it any time soon. Let's just find a way into this library and figure out what we need to know."

  Jason stopped walking, looking thoughtful. I stopped too.

  "Then what?" he said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "What if we find out that I actually am the Rising Sun? What if we find out that collectively we're going to bring about the end of the world? What do we do then?"

  I didn't say anything. After a few seconds, I started walking again. I didn't look back to see if Jason was catching up.

  I spotted Palomino standing in front of the dining hall, hugging herself. Chance was nowhere to be seen. I half-waved at her, and she waved back. As I walked over to her, Jason fell into my stride next to me. Out of habit, I reached for his hand, and he took mine.

  "Hey Mina," I said.

  "Hey," she said.

  "Why'd you break up with Chance?" said Ja
son.

  I elbowed him. Did he have no tact?

  Palomino swung around to face Jason, her eyes welling up with tears.

  I dropped Jason's hand and touched her shoulder. "You okay?"

  She shook her head. "I couldn't make it through my last class. I started crying, and I had to leave. Everyone saw."

  "Wait," said Jason. "Are you upset about breaking up with Chance? Because he's out of his mind, okay? He was freaked out when I got back to the dorm last night. What's going on with you two?"