Breathless (21 page)

And what had I gotten myself into? Not that I had a choice. It was either stay in Bramford with the crazy Satanists or run away with Jason. Still, I was beginning to feel that danger followed Jason around like a hungry wolf. From the moment he'd come into my life, it hadn't been the same. And now my life was turned completely upside down. I had run away from home. I was in New York City. I only had the clothes on my back and some cash we'd stolen. Who was I? What was happening to me?

"We're almost there," said Jason.

"Where is there?" I asked.

"My ID contact," said Jason. "I said I'd be in town within the next few months to pick one up. That was like three months ago. Anyway, I've been expected. Don't worry. It's safe."

Safe? Was anything safe anymore? I'd thought Bramford was safe. It showed how much I knew.

We rounded a corner, and Jason pointed to an apartment building a few buildings down. "That's where we're going," he said. All of the buildings on the street were brick and rectangular. They each had fire escape steps climbing up the sides. They were shoved against each other, like they were all one building. Air conditioners jutted out of some of the windows, even though it was late autumn. Mostly, the apartment buildings just looked a little . . . rundown.

We walked through the front door and into the elevator. Jason punched the button for the sixth floor. Once out of the elevator, he strode confidently down the hall, with me trailing behind him. He knocked on a door that had a welcome mat sitting out in front of it.

What was the point of a mat outside an apartment? Were one's feet really that dirty by the time one got up the elevator?

The door opened and standing inside was one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. She was tall, with smooth, cappuccino-colored skin. Her hair fell around her shoulders in tiny braids. Her eyes were light brown and almond shaped.

"Jason Wodden," she exclaimed. She had a British accent.

"Hey Marlena," he said, grinning.

She looked him up and down appreciatively. "You've grown up," she said, her voice was a little too sultry for my tastes.

This
was Jason's contact? He might have mentioned that she was a beautiful woman.

She gave Jason a huge hug. "Well," she said, "come in. Come in."

Jason and I went into her apartment. We entered a living room, decorated in reds and browns. Tapestries were thrown over the couches and the coffee table, which was decorated with candles. Incense was burning. The room was separated from the rest of the apartment by a beaded curtain.

"My God," said Marlena, "it's been ages. You were like twelve the last time I saw you."

"And that would have made you like thirteen?" said Jason, grinning.

"Joker," said Marlena, poking him. She shook her head at him. "Are you legal yet?"

He laughed. "I didn't think you much cared for legalities," he said. And then he grabbed my arm and pulled me close to him. "This is Azazel."

"Fine," said Marlena, laughing. "Point taken. Of course you'd want an age-appropriate girlfriend."

"Oh," I said. "I'm not—I mean—" I looked at Jason.

He dropped my arm.

Oops. This was awkward. I didn't know what I was supposed to say. I
wasn't
Jason's girlfriend. Was I supposed to lie? Did Jason want me to be his girlfriend? Before, he'd said . . . But a lot had happened since then.

"You guys have a seat," said Marlena, gesturing to her couches. We sat down. "You want anything? Tea? Coffee? Marijuana?"

I shot Jason a horrified look, but he just laughed. "Coffee's fine. Azazel?"

"Um," I said. "Coffee. Sure."

Marlena disappeared through the beaded curtain.

"How do you
know
her?" I whispered to Jason.

"She was a friend of Anton's," he said. "Used to do favors for him. We can trust her."

If he said so. There wasn't much about Marlena that I thought was trustworthy. She had to be at least twenty-five, and she was totally flirting with Jason. And I didn't like that. I didn't like it at all. Maybe that was stupid. After all, I had no claim on Jason.

Still, the thought of it just made me feel a little uneasy.

Marlena reappeared with two cups of coffee, which she handed to us. Then she ducked back out of the room to return with cream and sugar, in little packets like you get at a restaurant.

"Still stealing from fast food restaurants, I see," said Jason.

"You have no idea how much money I save on ketchup packets alone," said Marlena, settling down on a chair that faced us. "So," she said, suddenly all business, "your ID

is finished, Jason, but since I've had such short notice for Azazel, it's going to take me another day. And I should get a picture of her."

"Another day?" asked Jason. "I wasn't planning on sticking around that long."

"No?" Marlena looked disappointed. "Where are you planning to go?"

"You know I'm not going to tell you that," said Jason. "Okay, another day. We can do that. We'll find a hotel that will take cash or something. Unless—what about the credit cards I asked you about?"

"Oh," said Marlena, remembering. "Got you one." She held up her index finger. "Five thousand dollar limit."

"Great!" said Jason.

"But they track those easy. You know that."

"First they've got to connect it to me," said Jason. "They don't even know where I am."

"I don't think you should use the credit card in the city," said Marlena. "They might track it to me, and as much as I love you, Jason, I'm not going down for you."

Jason sighed. "Then I guess just don't worry about Azazel's ID. We'll leave tonight.

No hotels."

"Don't be silly," said Marlena. "The two of you should stay here for tonight."

Stay here? I didn't want to stay with Marlena.

"I don't want to endanger you," said Jason.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Marlena. "You're perfectly safe here, if it's only for one night. And I can have Azazel's ID for you in the morning."

"Okay," said Jason. "But we're gone first thing tomorrow."

"Of course," she said.

* * *

I just sat next to him, wondering at this new turn of events. We were staying at woman's house who made illegal IDs, could get Jason a credit card, and also probably smoked marijuana. It didn't seem like a particularly safe place to be. Plus, for some reason, I just didn't really like Marlena. She seemed a little too cavalier about what was happening to Jason. Of course, maybe she was used to interacting with Jason when he was in mortal danger. Maybe Jason was in mortal danger all the time.

Nothing was happening. When nothing was happening, it was too easy for me to think about the mess my life was. I didn't want to go back to the way I'd felt in the car, like I couldn't think or breathe. I began to panic, wishing I could distract myself easily the way Jason did. But I couldn't focus on the TV. What could I focus on? Then I remembered. Jason had promised to explain things to me. Now was as good a time as any.

"Jason," I said, "you promised to tell me who the Sons were later. It's later now."

"I guess I did," said Jason, and he shut off the TV. He took a deep breath. "I don't know where to start."

"How about with your mother?" I said. "Sheriff Damon said she was killed by her husband."

Jason looked confused. "When did he say that?" he asked.

"I overheard him talking to my parents once, right after you were found." Actually, now that I thought about it, Jason had apparently told my dad his mother had died in childbirth. Maybe I shouldn't have started with that little revelation.

"I never met her," said Jason. "Anton told me her name was Marianne Wodden and that she died right after I was born. That's all I ever knew." He looked thoughtful.

"Killed by her husband? So I guess that's a matter of public record?"

"I don't know," I said.

Jason disappeared behind Marlena's beaded curtain for a few moments and returned with her laptop.

"She doesn't care if you use that?" I asked.

"Marlena's like my big sister," said Jason. "Or as close as somebody like me gets anyway." He flipped open the laptop. He was quiet for a few minutes as he searched.

Then he sat back.

"What?" I said.

"All this time," he said, "and I never even once thought to just google her name."

"It's true?"

"Yeah," he said. He turned the laptop screen so that I could see. The screen was filled with a graphic of two big golden angels holding a banner that said, "In Memory of . .

."

Underneath the text read, "Marianne Rachel Aird Wodden, 1973-1991. Our beloved sister and aunt. Shot to death at the hands of her husband, Ted Wodden, who then being the coward that he was, turned the gun on himself. Nothing can bring her back, but she is in our hearts and prayers forever."

I scrolled down the page.

There was another entry. "Jason Edgar Wodden," it read. "Unborn child of Marianne Wodden. Marianne was pregnant when she was killed."

"Oh my God, Jason," I said. "Look at this."

He moved the screen back.

"That's you," I said. "You're supposed to be dead."

"Well, I'm not," he said. "Weird." He shrugged, closing the laptop. "Well, anyway, about the Sons of the Rising Sun."

I wanted to know about the Sons, so I didn't want to stop him, but I couldn't help but wonder, "That's it? You aren't more concerned about your mother?"

"If she's even my mother," said Jason. "Maybe Anton pulled a name off some website like this to name me in the first place. Who knows where I came from."

"They didn't have websites in 1991," I reminded him.

"Whatever," he said.

Okay. He really wasn't concerned. "Jason, if this is true, your mother had a sibling and that sibling had kids. You have a family."

He was quiet for a second. Then he shook his head. "No, not really, I don't. Let's not talk about this part anymore. I can tell you about what I know. I don't know anything about my parents."

"Okay," I said. "Who are the Sons of the Rising Sun?"

"They're the people who raised me," said Jason. "They're a huge, huge group of men who have influence all over the world."

"Like the Illuminati," I said excitedly.

He grinned. "Yeah, you and your Illuminati. I guess sort of."

"You're the one who called them Freemasons with guns," I pointed out.

"Okay, it's true that the Sons have members high up in every major world government. It's true that they affect global policies and all kinds of stuff I don't understand. I know that much. I just don’t know how they do it. Because there are members of the Sons who are out in the public like that, but there are also the Brothers, the other members of the Sons. Anton was a Brother."

"And you were raised by these Brothers?" I asked.

"I was raised by Anton. I saw other members. Sometimes. Not often, at least not when I was young. Anton was in communication with them. It was his job to keep me out of sight and safe. And to teach me and train me, in preparation for . . ." Jason trailed off.

"For what?"

"Well, you know, at first I didn't know what they thought I was," Jason said. "I didn't have any real idea of the way the rest of the world worked. My earliest memories are of Anton. I remember being a really little kid, maybe three or four, and Anton reading to me before I went to sleep. We always slept in hotel rooms. We were always moving. I remember things like Anton teaching me how to tie my shoes. I remember playing games with little men, which he had helped me make out of toothpicks. I remember eating in diners and fast food restaurants. I remember all kinds of little things like that. And at the time, I was too young to know that wasn't the way everyone lived. It's the only time I was ever really happy, I think. Because by the time I was just a little older, I began to realize that there was a whole other world out there that I didn't understand and wasn't part of. And that everybody else was part of it. And I hated that.

"But back then, I didn't know that things were weird, and so I didn't bother to ask why we did things the way we did. When I was older, when it started to become clear to me, I did ask Anton. I wanted to know why we didn't live in a house. And why we always traveled. And why I didn't have a mom and a dad like everybody else.

"Anton said that I certainly had a mother and father, but they were dead. He said that we traveled, because there were bad people who wanted to find me and hurt me, and we had to stay away from them."

"Did he tell you why people wanted to hurt you?" I asked.

"Well, back then, Anton just said I was special. And I was five years old, so I believed it. Who doesn’t think they're special when they're five?"

"Five? And that was when you started shooting guns?"

"Yeah, definitely. Anton always had guns. We shot cans off railroad tracks in southern towns. We always traveled through the south when I was a kid. A couple times he took me to a shooting range. He taught me guns were tools. That they were powerful. That they could cause all kinds of damage. They weren't toys. Anton was very serious about everything. It made for a kind of solemn childhood."

"Was that one of the things that made you think your life was strange?" I asked.

"Not really. In a lot of ways, everything I knew about the world, I got from watching television shows in hotel rooms. Everybody had guns on TV. No, I thought guns were normal."

I shivered. What a way to grow up! "So you've spent your whole life traveling from place to place?"

"No, not my whole life. The first ten years of my life pretty much. We were always running from one place to the other. The first time I think I realized exactly why was maybe when I was seven. I think I was about that old. Anton and I were staying in a hotel somewhere in backwoods North Carolina. I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of gunfire. They were shooting into our hotel room. The window shattered. There was glass everywhere."