Tortured: Book Three of the Jason and Azazel Trilogy (13 page)

Chapter Seven

April 30, 1990
Oh my God.
Oh my God. He kissed me.
Well, at first, I told him what I was
thinking. About the fact that he was of the Weem line and that he could easily
be the father of the Rising Sun. And that I could, you know, be the mother. And
he laughed at me.
 
When he realized I was serious, he was
mostly just angry. There was no way. He'd taken vows of celibacy, and I was
just a kid. But I'm eighteen, and I know what I want.
 
We argued for a long time. And then
suddenly, he just grabbed me by the shoulders. And he said, "Dear God, you
know there is a part of me that wants this more than anything."
And then.
He kissed me.
 
I think I'm in love with him.
 
"Azazel!" yelled Jason.
Wait. Why wasn't Jason running with me? Why hadn't I waited for Jason?
I paused on the steps.
Turned.
Jason was at the bottom
of the steps.
"It's the Sons!" I said.
"It's the Brothers," he said.
I made a confused face. What was the difference, really? The Brothers were the
branch of the Sons that did all the dirty work. Jason had described them as
Freemasons with guns or a cross between Jesuits and James Bond.
 
"I think
it's
okay," Jason said. "Come
back down."
I hesitated.
"I'll make sure you're okay," said Jason.
 
I started back down the steps.
 
When Jason and I reemerged into the stone room, all of the men were on their
knees, their heads bowed, including Moretti. I clutched my forehead with one
hand. "So they're like worshipping you now?" I asked Jason.
Moretti stood up. "Respecting," he corrected.
"Both
of you."
This was
 
weird
. I looked at Moretti. "Can
you tell them to get up?"
"Tell them yourself," said Moretti. "They are here to serve
you."
I shot a look at Jason. He made a face at me. "Uh," he said.
"On your feet."
The black clad men all stood up. They crowded around us, beaming at us
expectantly. There were so many of them. They didn't all fit in the room. Some
of them were spilling back into the hallway. What were they? What were they
doing here?
"These men," said Moretti, as if reading my mind, "are true
believers.
Defectors from the Sons.
They don't agree
with Hoyt's edict that you are not the Rising Sun. They refused to be part of a
plan to kill you."
Well, that was nice anyway, even if it was creepy. "Thanks for not killing
Jason," I said, trying to smile.
"They've been arriving here, once I was sure that the two of you were who
I thought you were," said Moretti. "We're here to assist you in any
way we can. We already took care of a problem for you.
In the
basement of the assembly hall."
"
You killed Jude?" asked Jason.
"Indeed," said Moretti.
"And disposed of the
body."
"
You know," I said, "the thing is
,
we weren't sure if we were going to kill him yet."
"May I speak?" asked one of the Brothers.
 
Moretti turned to us.
 
"Uh, sure," said Jason.
 
"I was there," he said. "In
Shiloh
,
when he shot you. I carried him off that night, while he was screaming that he
would stop at nothing to see you dead. If it had been up to me, I would have
killed him right then. Trust me when I say that one would have caused you
nothing but harm."
I didn't know what to say. I looked at Jason, but he was looking down at the
ground. I tried another smile at the Brother. "Well, thanks, then," I
said. "We're, um, not really used to having anyone look out for us."
 
And,
 
I added silently,
 
I'm
not sure if I really think these guys are doing that exactly.
Jason looked up. "Yes," he said, nodding. "Thank you
all."
The Brothers all smiled, like they'd just been thanked by God himself. I
grabbed Jason's hand. I wasn't sure I really liked any of this.
Moretti held up his hand again.
"If you all could leave
us now.
We have things to discuss."
The men scurried out. Moretti folded his arms over his chest. I inched closer
to Jason. He let go of my hand and put his arm around my waist. He pulled me
against him. I looked up at him. He gazed down at me reassuringly.
 
"Well," said Moretti, "it would appear that it doesn't exactly
matter whether you think you're the Rising Sun or not. They do."
"Yeah," said Jason, "I guess they do. But, you know, I've grown
up surrounded by people who thought I was the Rising Sun. Excuse me if that
doesn't exactly completely change my mind."
"I thought you might say something like that," said Moretti.
"And I could simply say that whatever your beliefs were, you had a
responsibility to those men, and also a responsibility to me. Which I think is
true. However, I think I can offer you some more convincing evidence. Follow me."
He took off through the doorway.
"You know," Jason called after him, "I've heard all the
prophecies already."
Moretti stopped and turned.
"Not prophecies exactly,
Jason."
He gestured around him at the stone walls. "This place
used to be your father's study, you know."
The room seemed a little more comfortable than the big stone room we'd been in
before. It was smaller. It had carpets on the floors and a couch along one
wall. There were stacks of old books lining the walls. Moretti settled into a
chair at a paper-covered desk, and gestured for us to sit down on the couch.
 
We sat down gingerly.
 
Moretti chuckled. "You look so much like your mother, Jason. She was
brilliant. I still remember some of the essays she wrote for me." He
looked at me. "Your essay on
 
Things Fall Apart
 
almost reminds me of them."
"Yeah, well, she wasn't my mother," I said. But I had to admit I was
a little confused. Michaela Weem had been brilliant? And Moretti had read her
essays?
"Your mother attended the
Sol
Solis
School
,"
said Moretti.
Jason shrugged. "Yeah, well, she did say she went to school in
Europe
. Can we stop calling her my mother? Michaela Weem
is fine with me."
"Her name was Aird when I knew her," said Moretti. "She was a
bright, eager student. She had so much potential."
"Right," said Jason, "until Edgar Weem got a hold of her."
Moretti shook his head. "I don't think you quite understand, Jason.
Ted—Edgar—was a colleague of mine at the time. He taught Philosophy and
Mythology. He and I spent a great deal of time together in those days. We were
friends."
"You aren't anymore?" I asked. I couldn't help it.
 
"Ted went on to greater things than I did," Moretti said, shrugging.
"The Council.
A high position in the
Sons.
I stayed here. Of course, he couldn't very well have continued
working here. Not after the business with Michaela. There were suspicions at
that point that something untoward had happened."
"Well, something had, hadn't it?" I asked.
"Michaela told us all about it," Jason said, looking sullen. He stood
up. "Azazel, we don't have to stay here. We can go."
There it was again. Jason wasn't the least bit interested in his family. Why
not? "Aren't you slightly curious?" I asked.
 
He shot a look at Moretti and then brought his eyes back to me.
"Maybe," he said.
"Maybe a little."
He sat back on the couch. "So people thought that my dad was a jerk and
didn't want him teaching teenagers anymore?"
"Ted was a very good-looking man back then," said Moretti.
"So what?"
I said. The way Michaela had
described
it,
Edgar Weem had raped her, repeatedly,
and forced her to do all manner of disgusting things, like drink bull semen.
What did being good looking have to do with that?
"Michaela wasn't exactly unwilling to participate in his
experiments," said Moretti. "Ted was a very popular professor, quite
adored by the female population. I rather suspected it was a point of personal
satisfaction for her. She seemed quite taken with him."
"Yeah," I said, "but when we talked to her, she described him as
vile, didn't she?"
"She also said I was an abomination," said Jason. "You know I've
never really believed a word that came out of her mouth. Go ahead, Professor.
What were these experiments? What did my father do and why?"
Moretti smiled. "Well, I don't know all the details. I wasn't involved in
them. For obvious reasons, Ted felt they were private. But I do know that when
he first started teaching here, I had the opportunity to engage in many
conversations with him about the nature of the Rising Sun. It's always been a
hotly contested issue within the Sons. For many years, it seems that there were
two separate camps of thought. One school of thought held that the idea of the
Rising Sun was simply a metaphor—that it referred to a period of time when the
world would change significantly. Another school of thought was convinced that
the Rising Sun was literally a person. That he would return to us like a dying
god out of a myth.
"Now," Moretti continued, getting up and crossing the room to take a
book off a shelf, "I had always been firmly in the camp with those who
looked at the Rising Sun as a metaphor. I knew that the official position of
the Council was that the Rising Sun was definitely a person, and that they were
even on the lookout for him, but I had never seriously considered the idea. I'm
a scholar, not a mystic, and I wasn't about to be convinced of something that I
thought was so ludicrous."
I chewed on my lip, trying to let this sink in. Brother Mancini had said
something like this, hadn't he? That the Sons hadn't been pursuing the Rising
Sun mythos until the past few hundred years? "So, you're saying that the
Rising Sun stuff might all just be metaphorical? That maybe there is no
Rising
Sun?"
"No," said Moretti. "I'm saying that's what I believed before I
met Ted." He handed the book he was holding to Jason. "However, Ted
showed me this."
Jason opened the book. It was very old. The pages were crumbly around the
edges. The interior was in a language I couldn't understand. "Is this in
Latin?" asked Jason. He turned to the title page. Then he looked up at
Moretti. "A book about King Arthur?" he said. "Are you
kidding?"
"Not just any book about King Arthur," said Moretti. "This is a
book that traces the genealogy of the historical King Arthur."
"Hold up," I said. "King Arthur is a myth. He wasn't real."
"He was certainly real," said Moretti. "His name might not have
been Arthur, however. He is known chiefly to historical records by his title
Riothamus, a Latinization of a Brythonic word meaning 'king-most,' or high
king."
"Yeah, yeah," said Jason. "I've heard that theory. But there are
at least five others, all with evidence claiming that someone else was the
historical King Arthur. The fact is we don't know anything."
"No," said Moretti, "most people don't know for sure. We do,
because we have that book. It's all there. But knowledge like this is best kept
safe here, among the Sons. We wouldn't let just anyone know about it."
That also sounded like Brother Mancini. I narrowed my eyes and started to say
something, but Jason interrupted me.
"Who cares, though," said Jason. "Who cares whether or not King
Arthur was real?"
"You've heard of the documents connecting King Arthur to the Rising
Sun," said Moretti.
"That stuff about Arthur coming back to
England
is first mentioned in the
12th century," said Jason. "It's a tenuous connection at best. At
worst, it's just stupid. People probably patterned the Arthur myth on Jesus
Christ."
"No, no, no," said Moretti. "The earliest mention is this
book." He took it back from Jason, holding it up in our faces. "And
that's not all. Ted believed that the idea that Arthur would return to
England
was a
mistranslation. He thought it meant that Arthur's descendant would save
England
in its
time of worst trouble." Moretti carefully placed the book on the shelf.
"I mentioned the book contained a genealogy. The reason that Ted had it
was that it clearly points out that he, Edgar Weem, is a descendant of King
Arthur."
I furrowed my brow. "I feel like I'm stuck in
 
Holy
Blood, Holy Grail
," I said. "Next you'll be telling me
that book also connects Weem to the bloodline of Jesus Christ."
Moretti snorted. "Jesus Christ didn't exist. He was an invention of the
Jewish rabbis, created entirely to quell a revolution."
"
What?!"
I
said,
my
jaw dropping.
 
"It's just a theory, Azazel," said Jason.
"Right," I said. "So Jesus isn't real, but King Arthur is. I
suppose the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy are historical figures too."
"Actually," said Moretti, "there is some very intriguing
mythology surrounding—"
"Let's stay on topic," said Jason. "So Weem convinced you that
the Rising Sun was real because he was descended from King Arthur?"
"Well," said Moretti, "the evidence was quite compelling. The
Sons have always been tied quite strongly to
England
, and Ted was English
himself. The idea that the Rising Sun might not be the culmination of the King
Arthur mythos in addition to everything else that he was, well, I couldn't deny
the possibility.
 
"Ted really felt that the Rising Son would be born soon, and that he would
be born to someone of his own family. Due to his own professed celibacy, of
course, he didn't then think that he would have anything to do with it."
"Really?" said Jason. "Sure. So what changed his mind?"
"Your mother, of course," said Moretti. "It was her idea."
"Oh sure it was," I said. "I'm sure she was gung-ho to be part
of all that sick, ritualistic sex with her teacher. Gross." Why did men
always blame the girl for that kind of stuff? Weem had been the adult. It had
been his fault.
"Doesn't matter," Jason said. He stood up. "Professor, all of
this has been interesting, but I have to admit, I'm underwhelmed. I don’t care
who I'm descended from or what ridiculous things my father decided to do. The
fact is, being followed all over the world by people who are trying to capture
me or kill me or kill my girlfriend is really, really grating on my
nerves." He held his hand out to me and helped me to my feet. "We'd
hoped to find some kind of evidence that we could use to extricate ourselves
from this mess, but I think you cleared it up for me back there. It doesn't
matter what I believe or what evidence I find. Those