Tortured: Book Three of the Jason and Azazel Trilogy (24 page)

* * *

Grandma Hoyt refused to actually give me any clothes.
If I didn't have clothes, I couldn't run, or so she said. She forced me to
attend dinner in my nightgown. We ate in the formal dining room—Chance,
Grandma, and I all gathered at the end of the long, narrow table. I was going
to refuse to eat. I sat sullenly at the table, staring at the elegant drapes
and the garish modern art on the walls. When they put the food in front of me,
however, I realized I was famished. And refusing to eat was kind of childish,
anyway, wasn't it?
I dug in. Grandma Hoyt kept up a steady banter of lighthearted conversation.
Well. Not really conversation, because neither Chance nor I said anything.
Instead, it was a monologue. She talked about the parties of the season, who
was getting married, and what designers they were using for their dresses. She
said that later on, perhaps when I calmed down, we needed to work on planning
my coming out party. I was a bit old to be a debutante, she said, but I needed
to be presented to society. I was her granddaughter, after all. She may not
have had much say in my upbringing thus far, but she was going to make up for
that.
 
I glowered at her over my boiled potatoes and peas. I hated this woman. I
wasn't going to do anything she suggested. I'd checked out the doors after
she'd said they were all guarded. She was right. There were burly men at every
exit. Through the window, I was able to see the gate to her estate. It was also
heavily guarded.
 
I didn't know how yet, but I was going to escape from this fortress, if it was
the last thing I did.
 
Dinner lasted an interminably long time. Afterwards, I went to my room. Chance
asked if I wanted to talk. He was really confused about what was going on.
"Who are the Sons?" he wanted to know. I wasn't in the mood to
explain. I apologized but said he was just going to have to be patient.
Eventually, I would explain everything.
I just wanted to be alone. In my room, I examined the windows. I was on the
second floor. I didn’t know if a drop out of the window would harm me terribly.
I could unlock the window and probably get the screen out. While I was checking
this out, I noticed that there were a bunch of large Doberman pincers wandering
around on the grounds. They looked mean. So that meant if I jumped out the
window, I was going to have to get past the dogs. I could possibly scale the
fence that surrounded the property, and maybe if I was lucky, there wouldn't be
any guards on the opposite side. But in doing so, I'd probably set off some
kind of alarm. And, of course, I didn't have a gun.
 
If I tried to escape and failed, Grandma Hoyt would probably triple the security.
Who knew, maybe she'd handcuff me to my bed or something. No. I needed to do
this right. I was going to have to plan. And I needed something waiting for me
once I got out. I wondered if Father Gerald could get me in touch with Hallam.
There was no phone in my room, but I did have a computer.
I looked up Christ is King Catholic church in
Shiloh
,
Georgia
on the internet. I found a phone number, which I scribbled on a piece of paper
and stuck in the pocket of my nightgown. (It had pockets. Go figure.)
I was considering whether or not I could make friends with the kitchen staff
and get some food to bribe the dogs with, like a big steak or something, when
there was a soft knock on my door.
"Who is it?" I yelled.
"It's your grandmother."
Go away
, I thought. But I
wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of speaking to her, not even to tell
her to get lost.
She opened the door and came in. I plopped down on my bed, my back to her.
Gently, she sat down next to me.
 
"Azazel," she said, "I wanted to talk to you."
I didn't look at her.
 
"I know," she said. "You hate me. You don't want anything to do
with me. You think I'm ruining your life." She reached over and tucked a
strand of my hair behind my ear. It was a tender gesture.
A
motherly gesture.
I pulled back from her, as if she'd stung me. "I
know you can't see it now," she continued, "but I'm doing this for
your own good. One day, you'll look back on this, and you'll see I was
right."
Was she insane? I untucked my hair from behind my ear.
"We really need to get you an appointment with a decent stylist," she
mused. "That color is absolutely terrible for your skin type."
Oh my God. The love of my life was going to be executed across the ocean. It
was her fault. And she had the gall to talk about hair stylists?
"Listen," she said. "I wanted to come in to talk to you. I know
you're angry. And I'll give you time to calm down. But I wanted to explain to
you a few things. I don't know if you understand exactly what's happening
here."
"I understand perfectly," I said. "You're keeping me prisoner
while you have my boyfriend killed. It's sick and horrible. You're an evil
person."
She sighed. "I thought you might think something like that. Let me try to
start at the beginning. You never met your grandfather—Grandpa Hoyt. He died
before you were born."
What did my grandfather have to do with this?
"I would have never met you if my parents hadn't been killed by the
Sons," I said. "They killed your daughter.
Both of
your daughters.
Why don't you hate them?"
"The Sons didn't do that," she said. "Edgar Weem did that. He
gave those orders." When she said Edgar Weem's name, it was like she was
saying a particularly disgusting word. She reminded me of Michaela Weem. Then
she clenched the comparison.
"Vile man.
Vile."
Michaela had said those exact same words. I suddenly turned to my grandmother
with interest.
She continued. "Your grandfather was a complicated man, Azazel.
A good man, but not without his weak-nesses.
When I met him,
I was barely older than you are. I did not come from a wealthy
background—"
"Yeah," I muttered. "You're a gypsy or something, right?"
Anger flashed in her eyes. "I've done a lot of work to cover up that fact.
I don't know how you discovered it. But, yes, my family was Roma. We traveled
in a caravan throughout the
United
States
. I had always been both blessed and
cursed with dreams—visions more accurately. And I saw him coming.
Your grandfather."
She smiled then. "He was so
beautiful then.
Very charming.
I was besotted with him
from the moment I dreamed of him. When he arrived, coming to our carnival, I
was not surprised to see him. But I was surprised when he seemed to take an
interest in me.
"We had a whirlwind romance, the way only young people can. His family was
against it. They wanted him to settle down with someone proper.
Someone who befit his social standing.
They were horrified
when he married me. It was a love match. We were blissful.
At
first.
"We didn't know it then, Azazel, but our elders were right. Love does not
last. All the problems they predicted would happen did indeed happen. Your
grandfather tired of me. I was hopeless when it came to fitting in socially,
and I had to learn the hard way, pulling myself up to a station of respect
within society. And all the while, I had to do this while your grandfather was
blatantly unfaithful to me. There were whispers everywhere I went. I was the
gypsy girl who'd married into money because my husband had been crazy about me,
only to be disinterested in me in just a few years.
"It wasn't easy. As a woman, and an originally poor one at that, I was
kept completely in the dark about your grandfather's money and about his ties
to the Sons. I knew nothing of who they were. But we did socialize with members
of the Sons on a fairly regular basis. It was then I met Edgar Weem. He was
young.
Quite a lot younger than I was.
But so excited, eager, and full of energy.
 
"The Weems and the Hoyts have never gotten along. There has been a
long-standing feud between the two families. Edgar and I both knew this, but we
had an affair anyway. It was short. He was far too much my junior, and in the
end, he took his vows to the organization too seriously to continue it. He had
made vows of celibacy, you see.
 
"But I was able to learn much about the Sons from Edgar, who was quite
open about the organization and about the prophecies with which he was so
obsessed. It was clear that your grandfather had absolutely no interest in the
organization. Instead, he left that to his brother, Ian. I was able to use my knowledge
to make myself invaluable to Ian. After all, I had a certain amount of control
over the Hoyt fortune. I used that control to cement my position in the family.
"After your grandfather died, I remained in control of the fortune,
instead of having my coffers skimmed by the Sons. We had no male heirs, but it
was okay, because I was able to perform the duties your grandfather had
performed.
"And that was when Edgar Weem blackmailed me. He had the information that
we'd had an affair, and he knew that would ruin me. It would have ruined him if
it had come out as well, but he knew I'd never let that happen. He wanted two
things from me. He wanted me to bless his union with some ridiculous
girl,
so that she could bear what he thought was going to be
the Rising Sun. And he wanted my financial and influential backing to help him
rise in the ranks of the Sons. He wanted to sit on the Council. He wanted to be
in control.
"I was livid. First of all, it was insult that he had left me entirely
because he wanted to honor his vows of celibacy. Here he was with some slip of
a thing, who he was trying to sire a child upon. I hated him for that. And I
hated him for trying to use what had been between us for his own gain.
Furthermore, he would be working against the Hoyts, my own family, because he
was a Weem. I was siding against my legacy with this horrible man. And I had no
choice.
 
"This Rising Sun he intended to erect would be his child. He would be able
to mold the child as he saw fit. And he would wrench the power completely away
from the Hoyts. I knew exactly what he was doing. He said it was about noble
things, about bringing the Rising Sun into the world. He claimed to believe in
the prophecies. But I saw through him. It was a power play, pure and simple. He
was a despicable, wretched, scheming man. I wondered if he hadn't orchestrated
the entire affair with me entirely for that purpose.
"When he arrived here with that girl, that Michaela, I could see
immediately that she had an impressionable mind. So I did the only thing I knew
to do. The only thing I could think to stop him. He wanted me to use my gypsy
powers to help him and his child. So I used my gypsy upbringing all right. But
not in the way he thought. I planted ideas in Michaela's mind.
False visions.
I thought if I could turn her against Edgar
Weem and the child, that she would just get rid of it."
"What do you
mean,
you planted ideas in
Michaela's mind?" I asked. Just how freaking powerful was my grandmother?
"It's a bit like hypnotism," said Grandma Hoyt. "It's something
I learned in my carnival days. It's been useful other times as well. When Edgar
Weem alerted me that a Brother named Anton Welsh knew our secrets, I was able
to place certain ideas in his head as well. Not the ideas Edgar would have wanted,
of course, but then he was too stupid to realize that I was always working
against him.
Always."
My head was spinning. Grandma Hoyt was responsible for what both Michaela
 
and
 
Anton thought? "What kind of
ideas did you plant?" I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew the
answer.
"I told them that the child, that Edgar's child, was an abomination,"
said Grandma Hoyt.
"That he shouldn't live.
That he would bring nothing but evil to the earth.
And I
didn't bless
him,
instead I cursed him, so that my
predictions would come true."
"Cursed him?"
"
A gypsy curse.
I cursed him
 
to descend deeper into darkness
as the power inside him—power already bestowed by others—grew. Soon, he won't
even be human." She took my hands. "So, you see, that's why I want you
away from him, darling. I know you think you love him, and I've felt that way
before too, but what you don't understand is that those passionate feelings are
adolescent. They fade over time. They don’t last. I'm not saying it doesn't
hurt now, but it will get better."
I snatched my hands away from her. I was reeling from what she'd just told me.
She'd planted the visions in Michaela's head? And the idea that Jason was an
abomination? "Wait," I said. "Did you plant the vision of the
vessel in Michaela's head?"
"Of course not!" said my grandmother. "I don't know where she
came up with that ridiculous idea. I wasn't pleased at all when she didn't just
terminate the pregnancy. Instead, she wove this elaborate conspiracy to get rid
of Jason, and she involved my own daughter in it. I was less than amused by
that."
"Your own daughter you weren't speaking to," I pointed out.
"Because she wouldn't listen to me when I told her that the whole thing
was ridiculous and made up," said Grandma Hoyt.
"So the only reason Michaela hated Jason was because you hypnotized
her," I said to myself more than her. That was so strange. It made
everything different. Suddenly, there weren't any visions stating that Jason
and I were evil or that we'd do terrible things together. It was all just
ravings of a hypnotized woman. Except . . . "Michaela's visions were
sometimes right, though," I said. "It couldn't have just been because
you hypnotized her."
"She wasn't right," said Grandma Hoyt, dismissing that entirely.
"But she was," I said, and I explained about her prophecy and the men
in the church in