Azrael starts out the chapter in mirrored shades, in her sex worker drag. Jimbo Kern is harassing his girls to change locations to up their productivity and she calls him a “stupid prick” in her mind. She gets mad and gives him a threatening look for, I guess, supervising his stable?
It turns out she’s told them Lucy is dead and gave them some gory details about it. Why wasn’t Wesley down at the phase-shifting motel/whorehouse questioning Jimbo Kern and the girls about Lucy’s last known whereabouts? Then I answer my own question by realizing that is work and Wesley hates work. So she was trying to scare the women so they wouldn’t listen to Jimbo Kern. Why does she want them not to listen to him? Fuck you, that’s why.
Anyway, the sex workers are bunched up together and don’t want to separate. There’s no real reason for this; if they’re working within sight of each other, they can keep an eye out for any suspicious characters. Jimbo Kern raises a hand to a sex worker we never met named Alma and Azrael warns him off.
Jimbo makes a crack about her “witchy mumbo jumbo bullshit” and she decides to roll with it in order to intimidate and control him. She tells him if the women are close she can protect them better and he takes a swing at her but doesn’t connect. He makes the argument that one dead sex worker is a fluke, which he wouldn’t make because as a pimp he knows sex workers are the victims of choice for most serial killers because the police won’t work too hard on their cases and nobody else gives a crap. Jimbo Kern, if he weren’t a terrible character, would be getting muscle on his payroll to protect his girls while they’re working until this killer gets caught, because there’s evidence that he’s targeting Jimbo Kern specifically with the murder of Dead Tortured Lucy and the attempted kidnapping of Bliss.
But we’re not going to get any commonsensical thought or behavior out of anybody here.
Azrael’s irritated by his “recusant stupidity” and tells him he’s wrong about Dead Tortured Lucy being a fluke.
Ultrasonic Carousel: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen! Tonight we have a return appearance from Merriam-Webster, and there won’t be any softballs this time! (Applause)
Merriam-Webster: Again, a pleasure to be here.
UC: Why don’t we just dive right in?
MW: That would be fine.
YC: Recusant.
MW (frowns): That is definitely not a softball. The first meaning of recusant is “an English Roman Catholic of the time about 1570 to 1791 who refused to attend services of the Church of England and thereby committed a statutory offense.”
UC (looks at audience): That doesn’t sound like what was meant. Is there a second definition?
MW: Yes, it also means “one who refuses to accept or obey established authority.”
UC: The context is “recusant stupidity.” It’s someone refusing to obey her.
MW: Is she established authority?
UC: Only through her violence.
MW: That would be de facto authority.
UC: That was Merriam-Webster, everyone!
Back at the phase-shifting motel/whorehouse, Jimbo Kern argues that Bliss can’t even decide on whether the person who attacked her was a man or a woman and that she’s just making stuff up so she won’t have to work. This is stupid on its face and no argument he would make.
Then Azrael threatens to kill him. Boy, that escalated quickly. For what? For not agreeing with her? For not doing what she told him to? She’s also pulled her knife out of that sheath on her back without him noticing (right) and now is holding it to his balls. At least we know it’s his balls, unlike with Rapist Guy. She wants him to tell her he knows this is serious and that he won’t endanger the women and that he will do as she tells him. And I am getting uncomfortable vibes from a white woman threatening to castrate a biracial man for not obeying her.
Jimbo Kern calls her insane and she agrees and she can finally use the word castrate. Apparently “make you a choirboy” is reserved for white men. She also considers cutting him so he’ll comply. What’s the difference between him and her, then? He was threatening his women so they’d work and she’s threatening him so he’ll obey.
…and then she felt it, the transuding of depravity into her being.
UC: And we’re back with Merriam-Webster! The next one we have is “transuding.”
MW (begins to sweat a little): Transuding is a verb. As an intransitive verb, it means “to pass through a membrane or permeable substance,” and a synonym is exude. As a transitive verb, it means “to permit passage of.”
UC: I hope you can stick around a while longer, as we might have some more questions for you.
MW (after a pause): Of course.
So Oren’s close by and that’s why she feels him. Then we get this speech, all in one sentence paragraphs for the illusion of movement.
She wouldn’t wait for God’s command. Not this time.
She’d hone her omnipotent numen and seek out the evil on her own recognizance.
Under her own tutelary power.
She’d be in charge.
UC: Welcome back, everyone! That came sooner than we thought, and we have three for you!
MW (picking up his glass of water and drinking): Go right ahead.
UC: Numen, recognizance, and tutelary.
MW: Numen is “a spiritual force or influence often identified with a natural object, phenomenon, or place.” Recognizance means “an obligator of record entered into before a court or magistrate requiring the performance of an act (such as appearance in court), usually under penalty of a money forfeiture.” Most people know that one from the phrase “released on your own recognizance.” A secondary archaic meaning is “token or pledge.” Tutelary means “having the guardianship of a person or thing; of or relating to a guardian.”
UC: Merriam-Webster!
During her holy killing order, Azrael accidentally cuts Jimbo in the balls and doesn’t think enough of him to keep her knife out while she’s leaving. As she’s sheathing it, he tries to punch her in the face, understandably enough since he was just almost castrated. Azrael has no sense at all about human nature. She ducks the punch and forces his arm up behind his back, saying, “You would dare, Jimbo?”
I’m getting sick of this bitch’s arrogance. It is not daring to tell you the truth (Ann) or return violence for the violence you’ve inflicted (Jimbo Kern). You are not omnipotent and you are not God. Stop thinking you are.
So according to her Jimbo Kern’s still “defiant,” so she twists his arm until he screams and tells him he did this to himself. Then she shoves him away and his women try to comfort him but he won’t take it and Azrael leaves. Man, Carver got off a lot more easily when she thought he tried to kidnap Bliss and that scene didn’t bring up a host of unsettling racial implications.
Then we have a section break and are into Oren’s POV. He’s dropped off a bunch of contaminated drugs at the crack house (presumably the one where he found Burning Building Lady), so I guess he’s also a drug dealer. He’s running around in the alleys in daytime because he’s too scared to go at night. We get some description to reinforce how dirty and disgusting the slums are, and he spots a homeless man with arthritis clutching an empty liquor bottle. There’s also a lot of description to reinforce how disgusting old people are, so we didn’t see the end of that in Awakening.
Oren jams a syringe into his chest. The man tries to fight, but he’s too old and feeble. Whatever the drug is, it paralyzed the old man and Oren starts stabbing him and laughing. Once he’s through cutting him up (the old man isn’t conscious for any of this and may be dead already), Oren leaves the knife driven into the old man’s face, puts his bloody gloves in his pocket, checks his clothes for blood, and leaves to go home. Well, alrighty then.
Another section break and we’re back into Azrael’s POV. She senses the old man’s dead because of how much more pain she’s in. She tries to think and uses a bunch of high-flown adjectives that Azrael of the eighth-grade education has never encountered in her life and is concentrating so hard she trips over the murder victim. For no reason we’re given in the Oren section, she can’t tell if the dead person is male or female. Here’s a hint, Azrael—check for breasts. Or a penis.
She finds a needle and is happy she can now convince Wesley the attacks are connected. When she takes a better look at the victim, she thinks of him as “the poor drunk” and commends God for how merciful the murder was and thanks him. I have some Bible talk that you might find enlightening. “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” You have the haughtiest spirit I have ever seen.
So she goes to a pay phone and calls Wesley. God must favor her if she could find a working pay phone in the slums. We do find out it’s been a few days since she saw him because she can’t sense evil when he’s around, which she didn’t have a problem doing in the first book, but whatever. She’s also calling Oren a “perversion.”
Wesley gives her the news that Oren’s contaminated drugs are already killing addicts. Somehow they’d decided someone “lost” a bunch of cocaine (well, it would really be crack if this is a crack house but whatever) and three women died. No word on where this crack house is, but anywhere inside or outside the city is his jurisdiction.
And somehow Azrael thinks they’ve broken up for no reason I can see, even though they weren’t really dating. She tells him about the dead guy in the alley, calling him a “transient,” and can hear anger in Wesley’s voice. He really is a one-note character. He wants her to stay there and not look for trouble, she’s still got the movie-Buffy monster cramps and won’t, he yells at her, and she hangs up. That’s most of their interactions right there.
She starts running and following the psychic GPS Oren didn’t turn off and winds up at the Playground of Innocent Children across the street from Morty’s apartment building. You remember, that one she was looking at naked in the window at the start of chapter one of Awakening. There’s a bunch of kids playing there and she spots a pipe bomb. How would she even recognize a pipe bomb? How would Oren build one? We’ve not had any indication that he would know how to do that.
Anyway, two kids start toward the pipe bomb and she blocks them. She also misspells “tittie” again. The kid with the speaking role is a redheaded white boy and Azrael proceeds to steal his cell phone. Does she ever think her life would be easier if she bought a prepaid burner phone so she wouldn’t have to hunt for pay phones and steal cell phones from children? She does say she’ll give it back when she’s done.
Redhead doesn’t go for that and continues trying to retrieve his cell. So she decides to get rid of him by “[u]nleashing the darkest of her paladin essence” and telling him, “Get out of here. Now.” The darkest what of her paladin essence? The only thing we’ve ever heard about regarding her being a paladin is the vamp face, but that’s not what she’s doing here. If this is a new superpower, there should be more clarity about its nature.
Redhead and his buddy beat feet and she doesn’t think they’re far enough away, but two sentences later she says they’re out of range of the detonation. Both of these things can’t be true.
Azrael uses her stolen cell to call Wesley, who “roars” at her instead of saying hello. There’s a little would-be Komedic dialogue before she tells him about the pipe bomb. He reasonably enough tells her to get clear of it and run, but she says she can’t because there are at least twenty kids there and they can’t be trusted not to mess with it. He says he’s on the way and is sending uniforms to evacuate the playground and she has time to look at the children and flashback.
Since they’re slum kids, they’re completely neglected and unkempt, but they’re happy because they don’t know any better. Of course Azrael had a much much worse childhood filled with pain (that waiting long enough would get rid of as per this book) and foster parents who didn’t understand her. Then wonderful sainted Father Acute-Interest-in-Teenagers showed up, but she can’t think about him because these memories will distract her.
After she’s finished talking to Wesley, she throws the phone back to Redhead and asks his name, which is Halen. The author’s name picker remains broken. The top 10 boy’s names in 1996, when this boy was born, were Michael, Matthew, Jacob, Christopher, Joshua, Nicholas, Tyler, Brandon, Austin, and Andrew. He lets her know he heard there was a bomb and she asks him to get the other kids clear. He doesn’t want to help cops, so he’s more street smart than Morty, so she threatens to tell them he stole his cell phone, which seems to work.
Then we get a description of the pipe bomb that doesn’t match any of the images I searched for it: an “eight-inch metal pipe with wires, a battery pack, and an LED light attached with an excess of Scotch tape.” The ones I looked at had a cell phone attached because those are good detonators, or a fuse. She may mean an LED display instead of a light. If so, an editor would have caught that. From the description, we can’t tell how Oren plans to trigger the bomb.
Redhead (I’m not calling him Halen) gets the kids out of the playground and the cops show up, but Azrael stands over the bomb because she doesn’t want to “risk a single child.” But they’re all gone, so I don’t know what she’s proving here. Wesley shows up right behind the police cars because fuck that old dead drunk and they have a brief dispute about her leaving the bomb. He forces her hand by threatening to come to her and she runs, jumping the playground fence and running directly into Ann Kennedy.
That was unexpected.
Ann has a stupid quip that fellates Azrael’s awesomeness that I won’t bother with and warns Azrael that Wesley’s anger “stems from concern for you.” That’s right up there with, “That boy in your class only hits you because he likes you” and “The neighbor boy just pulls your hair because he’s trying to get your attention.” But nothing you can do about it, boys will be boys, amirite?
So he hugs her and for the first time doesn’t unleash his rage immediately, probably due to the nearby police witnesses. They have some conversation about whether he would have done the same thing and he can’t keep his hands off her. For once, he has an excuse for it. But then, after she’s freed herself, he “smashed her head back to his shoulder.” No reason for the violent verb here.
He insists she come with him and she starts telling him that he messes up her ability to sense evil for no damn reason as he never did before. So he starts getting mad—we can tell because “a muscle worked in his jaw”—and she tells him he can’t be near her at all. He thinks this is “bullshit” and she’s lying. She tries to leave, but “he swung her around.”
Wesley Arm Grab Counter: 23
And being grabbed by the arms twenty-three times is what finally gets her to say, “I’m getting real sick and tired of your manhandling.”
Took you long enough.
Then he kisses her. She breaks free but he reestablishes the kiss and she eventually melts. Then he does the trick where he shoves her away completely and drags her off with a grip on her wrists which I’m not calling out separately because I don’t know if he ever released his hold from the twenty-third arm grab.
Wesley intends to take her to the crime scene where the old man died, then they’re going to eat and go over his rules again because they obviously didn’t sink in the first time. Then he indicates to her that he might want a serious relationship with her.
And—chapter! This one felt a lot shorter than the last one which is nothing but good. Maybe it felt shorter because there wasn’t much romance slowing down the action?
Next time, chapter 11, where Azrael eats her first meal of the book and she and Wesley have a conversation. That’s it. That’s all the action in the next chapter, so it will be pure distilled pain.
Ultrasonic Carousel 