Tortured: Book Three of the Jason and Azazel Trilogy (21 page)

* * *

I was dreaming. In my dream, I was reading Michaela
Weem's diary, but I was sitting inside an old house. There was a cauldron
boiling over an open fireplace, and whatever was inside it smelled delicious.
The room was lit entirely by firelight and candles. It was cozy. I snuggled
under a quilt, sitting on an overstuffed easy chair.
 
A woman sat opposite me in a rocking chair. She had long white hair that
reached down to her waist. Her face looked so young, however—unlined. Her eyes
were wide and eager, like a child's. She was knitting.
 
"How am I going to find you?" I asked her.
"I have come to you," she said.
"You don't
have much time."
 
"Why not?"
I wanted to have time. I liked being in this house.
I could stay here forever, I felt. It was so warm and nice.
 
"They're coming for you," she said. "They're always coming for
you, aren't they?"
"Mmm," I said. They always were.
"I had hoped you could come to me," she said. "I had thought you
might. But things have changed." She smiled at me. "For two people on
the run, you sure do have a tendency to come in guns blazing, don't you?"
The guns.
I shook my head. "I don't like shooting
people."
"Of course you don't." She smiled again. "But wake up, Azazel.
I'm outside."
"Can't I just stay here?" I asked.
"Wake up," she said. "Come outside."
I opened my eyes, and I was inside the monastery. Jason was asleep beside me.
It was quiet. I sat up. Come outside?
Weird dream.
 
Come
outside
,
repeated the woman's
voice in my head.
I looked down at Jason. He looked so peaceful and beautiful sleeping
like
that. And I eased out of the bed and put on a pair of
jeans. I was going outside. Sure it was a stupid idea. Sure, it had just been a
dream. But that dream about Chance and Jason had led me to the basement of the
old church. And that dream about the diary had . . .
 
I moved quietly through the darkened halls of the monastery. When I opened the
door, I opened it onto a silent, dark street in
Rome
. It was after midnight. The air was
cold. Goosebumps broke out on my arms. I hugged myself. There was no one out
here. It had only been a dream.
 
I reached for the door knob.
"Azazel," said a soft female voice.
I whirled. There she was.
The woman from my dream.
"Agnes," I said, and I knew that it was her.
She nodded. "Walk with me," she said, reaching for my hand.
Her hand was warm and strong. I could feel her calluses against my palm. And
once I was close to her, it didn't seem nearly as cold anymore. We walked
through the silent streets, away from the monastery. Everything seemed
beautiful, bathed in a deep blue moonlight. And there was no one on the
streets.
No one at all.
She led me through the streets
of
Rome
as if
she had done it many, many times.
 
I was surprised when we arrived at the Roman Forum. I didn't know if we could
get in at night. During the day, you had to pay to tour it. But Agnes led me
over steps and around walls and before I knew it, we were inside. I stared up
at the splendor of it. These buildings were thousands of years old. They had
majestic columns and long staircases leading to their entrances. They were in
ruins—but they were still standing. When Jason and I had visited earlier this
spring, it had been awesome. But now, in the dark, standing here, looking up at
what was left of ancient
Rome
,
I felt as if the buildings were whispering to me, telling me their secrets.
 
Agnes squeezed my hand. "We will sit here," she said. "In front
of the Atrium Vestae."
The House of the Vestal Virgins.
How long ago had it been that I'd designed a Vestal Virgin Halloween costume?
 
We sat down.
 
"You must have questions," she said to me.
Of course I did. What were they?
"Are you the Agnes from the diary?" I asked her.
"Yes," she said. "I blessed Michaela and Ted's union. I prayed
to the goddess Hecate that Jason would be a powerful being, a blessing to the
earth."
"So powerful he could come back from the dead?" I asked.
She laughed. "That would be up to him, now wouldn't it?"
What? I didn't understand. I realized that I should probably be finding this
entire experience extremely weird, but I didn't. There was something about
Agnes that made me feel very, very relaxed. I trusted her. Maybe that was
stupid, but I did.
 
She smiled. "You want to know what happened. What I did for my part to
help create Jason."
I nodded. That was why we'd been looking for her.
 
"I can tell you that," she said. She took my hand. "Eighteen
years ago, a man and a woman checked into my little inn in
Tuscany
. That is what I do, you see. I am an
innkeeper. I have run my little inn my whole adult life. My mother ran it
before me. It is a charming little place. I didn't think anything of the
visitors who arrived, not really. I noticed that the girl seemed much younger
than the man, and that she looked tired and sad."
As Agnes spoke, I felt like I could see what she was talking about. I
envisioned the small inn, an old, old house of two stories. It was built of
stone. Inside, it was rustic and comfortable. There were quilts hanging on the
walls, rugs hugging the wooden floors. Each of the rooms had a fireplace. But
when Michaela and Edgar arrived, it was summer. No fires were burning. Instead,
air conditioners chugged in the windows. They arrived in the evening. The sun
was hanging heavy in the sky. Edgar was carrying the luggage. Michaela hung
behind him as he checked in and paid for the room.
 
Agnes' words swirled into what I was seeing. I both heard her and didn't.
Instead, it was as if I were there. Like my dream about the diary, I floated in
the corner of the room, looking down on what was happening.
 
Agnes was standing at her check-in desk. She had a feather quill pen, which she
was using to mark down the number of nights Edgar and Michaela would be
staying. They couldn't see me, but Agnes did. She waved at me and said, "I
gave them their keys, and I wouldn't have given them a second thought."
Edgar and Michaela trooped up the stairs to their room. Agnes opened the novel
she was reading and settled back in her chair. She wore reading glasses,
perched on her nose. Edgar Weem came back down the stairs.
Agnes stood up, marking her place in her book. "Is there a problem,
sir?"
"No," said Edgar. "I wanted to ask you something,
actually."
"Certainly," said Agnes, smiling her best for-the-customer smile.
"We heard some things about you in the village," said Edgar.
"You grow herbs. I saw your garden when we arrived."
Agnes seemed unsure of herself. "You're talking about the fact that some
of the villagers think I'm a witch."
"Yes," said Edgar. "I am. Is it true?"
Agnes hesitated.
 
"Because," said Edgar, "we are trying to have a baby, and I had
hoped that if you would be willing, you could lay a blessing on the two of
us."
Agnes nodded in recognition. "I see," she said. "I do suppose
there might be something I could do. You believe in the blessing of an old woman
you have never met?"
"Yes," said Edgar, smiling. "I do." He was actually a
good-looking man.
For an old guy.
Agnes turned to me. "So," she said. "I agreed to meet them that
night, after the evening meal. I was planning to bless their union, a similar blessing
to the one traditionally made at weddings. I gathered my herbs and prepared
them in my cauldron."
The scenery around Agnes changed suddenly. She was in the room I'd seen her in
in my dream, bustling about and dropping herbs into the boiling water. The fire
was hot. Every so often, she would wipe her brow with her apron. She was
humming to herself. Behind her, Michaela entered. Michaela looked so young. Her
hair was long and black. She had braided it, but wisps of hair were coming free
of the braid and framing her face. She was wearing a sundress. She clasped her
hands behind her back and cleared her throat.
Agnes turned to her. "Yes?" she said.
"Ted said that you were a witch," Michaela blurted.
"I prefer a different word," said Agnes. "I am only a simple
woman. But I do seek the power of the goddesses and study the wisdom of the
Tarot and of the stars. Are you concerned about the blessing your husband asked
me to
perform
?"
"No," said Michaela. "I am not concerned about this one."
She looked away from Agnes and there was a haggard look in her eyes. To the
floor, she said, "He's not my husband."
"You do seem quite young," said Agnes. Agnes crossed to Michaela,
touching her shoulder.
"And somehow sad."
Michaela looked at Agnes, tears in her eyes. "I said I would do this
because I love him. But he doesn’t love me. I wondered if there was something .
. . a charm, maybe, or a spell.
To make him care about me?
I could pay you."
"Oh my dear," said Agnes. "That is not what magic does. Magic
cannot force anyone to do things against his will. We ask magic to change
ourselves, not to change our environments."
 
Michaela shook her head. "Ted doesn't think that," she said.
"Well, I must admit I am curious. Why, if he doesn't love you, does he
want you to bear his child?"
"Not his child," said Michaela. "Not really. This will be
 
the
 
child. Ted feels he's going to change
the world."
Agnes looked confused. "I don't think I understand."
"Ted believes this child is going to save the world. There are prophecies.
He thinks we are fulfilling them. He thinks we're conceiving some kind of
messiah."
"And you?"
"I used to think so too. But last night . . ." Michaela shook her
head.
 
The sound went away, even though their lips still moved. Agnes' voice came up,
like a voice-over on a movie. "She began to tell me things," said
Agnes. "She poured out the whole story to me. It was tragic and
heartbreaking. She was young. I could see that her innocence was breaking. That
she was becoming embittered. And the man she was with was responsible for it. I
began to wonder if it would be the right thing to do to bless the two of them.
I began to wonder if I shouldn't instead try to find some way to get the girl
away from the man she traveled with.
"After she left me, I turned to my cards." I saw Agnes sitting at a
table, turning over Tarot cards. "I had quite a strange reading. Every
card I turned over was from the major arcana. When this happens in a reading,
it means that the subject of a reading is in play, and that there is little you
can do to change it. It means that powerful forces are at work." Agnes
looked over her shoulder, where I was hovering next to her. "Let me show
you the reading," she said.
I settled close to her and stared at the cards. They were arranged in rows. The
center looked like a cross. Agnes turned over the first card, the one in the
very center. "The World," she said. "This card tells what the
reading will concern.
The present situation.
The
present situation in my reading was the world. Generally, this card means that
one cycle of life is ending and another is beginning."
Agnes turned over another card and placed this one over the first card.
"This card," she said, "represents the immediate challenge to
the present situation. I drew The Tower. That card refers to a situation in
which a structure must be demolished to make way for something new." She
pointed to the illustration. "You see how the tower is falling apart in
the picture? How the people are falling out of it?"
I nodded.
"I wasn't sure what this meant. The immediate challenge was that the
entire world needed to be destroyed to make room for something new? I turned
over the next card." Agnes turned over the card. I looked at it. It said,
"The Emperor." But the card was upside down. "This card represents
the mind," she said. "It represents the structured world.
The world of rules.
It is upside down. In this position, the
position of the distant past, it indicates that the perversion of the
structured world has influenced the need of the world to change
radically."
 
Agnes turned over the next card. "This is the position of the recent
past," she said. The card was the Magician. "This card represents the
ability of the individual to transform things through his will. I surmised that
this card represented Ted. According to Michaela, he had decided to create the
Rising Sun.
To bring about change."
The next card was the card that revealed the best outcome of the situation.
"The Sun.
Clearly, here it represents the Rising Sun, I
thought. Also, it is a card of extreme optimism and positivity. So it seemed
that in regards to the immediate situation, the best outcome was that the
Rising Sun did indeed emerge."
The last card in the cross revealed the immediate future. "The Wheel of
Fortune," said Agnes. "Meaning that destiny and fate were in play.
And that in the immediate future, I would play my part."
She moved to the final four cards, which were in a row to the right of the
cross. "This seventh card reveals factors affecting the situation,"
she said. She turned it over.
"The Devil, upside down.
The Devil is the representation of the dark side with humanity, or within
yourself
. It represents desires, or lusts, destructive
forces that lurk within each of us."
I interrupted her. "What does that mean, it affects the situation?"
It was pretty obvious this Tarot card reading had as much to do with Michaela
and Edgar as it did with Jason and me.
"Simply that," said Agnes. "It will come into play. It does not
mean that it will overcome the situation and destroy the final outcome. But it
could. It is part of the whole."