The morality of this series insists that multiple broken bones, being bankrupted by medical bills, and months of painful physical therapy aren’t sufficient punishment for a consensual act that Cigarette-Burning Man paid for, even though there was no information from Marie that he took things too far or did things she hadn’t agreed to or told him to stop. If any of these things had been true, the narrative should have told us. As it is, it just comes off as moralizing about a sexual preference that’s out of the mainstream, or kink-shaming. But, because his sexual tastes touch on Azrael’s arousal when hurting people, Cigarette-Burning Man must pay and pay richly for causing us to think there might be a kinship between them. And so he does. Sorry, spoilers, in case the title of the post didn’t do it.
We start the chapter out in Oren’s POV and he’s seen the entire beatdown of Cigarette-Burning Man and has had the shit scared out of him by it. He doesn’t think she’s a woman anymore because of the way she fights and has now fixated on her as his ultimate victim because she’s Not Like Other Girls with their weakness and sluttiness.
Oren calls out the fact that Azrael is plain and has the amusing thought, “Ah. They had that in common: a love of corporal punishment.” (Italics in the original) He also clarifies that she has “ethereal beauty” when she’s beating someone almost to death. (Urban Fantasy heroine trope: she may be plain, but discerning people can see she’s really more beautiful than any other woman who ever lived—check).
Then he pulls back to his car and watches two of the sex workers get Cigarette-Burning Man into a car and follows it until it drops him off at “a quiet but lower-middle-class neighborhood.” Oh, lower-middle-class, huh? We get no description of this neighborhood, not like the plethora of details about how dirty and poor and disgusting the slums are. Jimbo Kern’s buddy pulls Cigarette-Burning Man out of the car and drops him on the curb before driving off, and Oren sees his chance when nobody notices. What time is it? I guess night, but no specifics as usual.
Oren does the child act and lures Cigarette-Burning Man into his car by promising to take him to the hospital and then doses him with whatever’s in the syringe (I would presume Midazolam since that’s what he used with Bliss). The man is so badly hurt and in so much pain that he barely feels the shot before he passes out, much less questions why a child is driving a car.
So now Oren’s ecstatic because he has a new victim to sate Aunt Dory and Uncle Myer, who were “getting antsy” without anybody to torture and murder. Oren does note that Cigarette-Burning Man isn’t going to last long. Yeah, all the injuries that Azrael inflicted will weaken him enough so he can’t put up any resistance or escape, so she’s the indirect cause of his death. Shame she didn’t have her orgasm over it, but that’s life. Or death.
When he gets back to Stately Cleaver Manor, he calls them down to the basement and gets irritated because it takes them five minutes to get there. They were “in their bedclothes” so it must be late enough at night for adults to be asleep. And, since Merriam-Webster defines “bedclothes” as “the covering (such as sheets and blankets) used on a bed,” they’re wrapped in sheets and blankets. It probably took them five minutes to get their toga party look together. If the writer meant pajamas but the word was too plebeian for her, “nightclothes” would have been the correct choice.
Myer takes the lead when Oren shows him Cigarette-Burning Man and then asks a lot of inconvenient questions that just piss Oren off and he finally tells Myer it’s none of his business.
Dory, however, is all in for the torture orgy and appreciates how bloody Cigarette-Burning Man already is, which causes her nipples to get hard and show through her nightgown. Now wait a minute, we already established they’re wearing bedsheet togas. Oren tells them that this is a gift and they can do whatever they want this time. As opposed to last time?
He doesn’t like Myer being a wet blanket with all his questions like, “He doesn’t have any family looking for him, does he?” and “But, if he dies…” which isn’t actually a question but does convey he isn’t completely kill-crazed and understands consequences can result from actions. Besides, what can he do? How long does it take the penis to heal after getting split open with a riding crop? Myer also notes that he prefers women for the torture orgies. Oren then promises him Azrael, not by name but we know who it is, and gets excited as all get-out thinking about it.
So Dory and Myer take Cigarette-Burning Man, who’s still unconscious, to the extra storage room, and start going to town. We don’t get any specifics on what’s happening because the house has an intercom system and Oren can hear them through it. We get Dory “groaning with pleasure,” Cigarette-Burning Man letting out “hoarse screams of agony,” and Myer inflicting pain “with the vigor of a man half his age” but there are no sounds to go with this so I don’t know why he thinks this. Oren also calls Dory “a rutting pig” in his mind because older women who have sex are disgusting, I guess. It’s of a piece with the ageism that permeates this series.
Oren’s letting them have first crack because he wanted to go upstairs and change clothes, which are “dirty, frumpy,” and he notes he hates these clothes and wants “finer” ones, to contrast with Azrael who doesn’t care about clothes because she’s Not Like Other Girls. He’s happy to hear all the pain sounds because she’s been cramping his style lately and he couldn’t do any torturing.
When the sounds stop from the intercom, he heads down to the basement, or “the bowels of the grand house.” It’s the second time I recall that the basement of Stately Cleaver Manor has been compared to an excretory system. He smells death (if Cigarette-Burning Man hasn’t started decomposing, there isn’t any smell), excrement (I thought this might be what was meant by death but it can’t be since it was called out separately), and sweat. How close is he to the extra storage room that he can smell sweat? I can believe he’d smell it once he was in the room, but for now he’s still outside.
Once he gets in, we get the following description of “the tableau of pain.”
The mangled body of the man, now stained with blood and his own body fluids, as well as secretions from his relatives, showed signs of grotesque abuse.
What signs were those? Fuck you, that’s what they were! This would never cut it in a Thomas Harris novel, or even James Patterson.
Despite the “secretions” on Cigarette-Burning Man, both Dory and Myer are sulky because the victim died too fast. So I guess they both raped him? That must have torn the scab off Myer’s split penis. If Cigarette-Burning Man has bodily fluids of his own that aren’t blood on him, I guess they forced him to have an orgasm during his own torture. We can’t be told this because that’s not ladylike. Dory didn’t get off but apparently Myer did, from Oren’s perspective. He derides them as “buffoons” in his mind, then gets a surgical knife to mutilate the corpse in some nonspecific for the moment way and thinks what he’s doing will be a great joke.
There’s a section break here and we’re in Wesley’s POV. The sole saving grace of the last chapter was the absence of Wesley, but we knew it wouldn’t last. Ann’s teasing Wesley about falling for Azrael, and I for one would not have such a friendly relationship with a man who kissed me against my will knowing I was in a relationship with another man and who kissed me to settle a score with the man I was with, but that’s just me. Sunnydale PD’s Human Resources department still exists in blissful ignorance.
Wesley tries to cut back at her by shaming Morty but she isn’t having any and, in fact, doesn’t seem to know he’s cutting at her. Ann questions whether he’s fucking Azrael and he calls her nosy. She alludes to a reason for wanting to know and he’s instantly suspicious when she follows up with wanting to know when he saw her last. She says she’ll tell him why she’s asking when they’re in his car but he refuses because how dare some helpless vagina-haver try to get him to do something and “plant[s] his big feet.” Big feet, big you know what else, huh? This has never been subtle at any point in the series. If I had a dollar for every time the words “big” and “hard” have been used with respect to him, I could…buy something kind of expensive. I won’t lie, I haven’t been keeping track, but it’s a lot.
So she manipulates him into leaving by telling him she wants to go to Morty’s because Azrael’s there. So there’s been a time jump during the section break, which wasn’t noted but will be apparent later. Wait a minute. Bliss was supposed to get out of the hospital the day Azrael ran into the burning building, but it’s at least a couple of days later and we haven’t seen her at all. We’re also told Ann’s wearing high heels. I don’t know how common that is for female detectives, but I can’t imagine it’s comfortable if she has to run.
Once they’re in Wesley’s car, Ann tells him that Azrael’s brought Bliss to Morty’s apartment building and will be there for a while. Morty’s been eavesdropping on private conversations and tattled to Ann that Azrael’s asking Bliss for specifics on being a sex worker to be convincing while playing one. So he’s managed to drive wedges between Azrael and Morty (for the second time) and Ann, so she still won’t have anyone who could protect her against Wesley if she revealed the sexual harassment and assault. Both of them would go to him before taking any action. Wesley is one slick manipulator.
So inside he’s angry but for once it isn’t explicitly called that. He’s cursing her in his mind and calling out “her perfidies” and “her harebrained plan” and “her foolhardy plan.” If she’s that deceitful and stupid, why are you pursuing a relationship? Oh, yeah, she’s a challenge and a pure untouched flower of a girl who has never been kissed on the cheek or even touched by a man before him. Which is a lie, because we saw Father Acute-Interest-in-Teenagers touch her on the forehead while she was having a seizure. Don’t like my definition of touched? Then one should have been provided.
Ann’s surprised he hasn’t gotten furious enough to crash the car and kill them both, but he explains by saying Azrael won’t be going through with her plan. She knows enough to be careful with him and waits a bit before asking how he intends to stop this. She is not reassured by his response, nor should she be.
“I’ll stop her.” Luther flexed his hands on the wheel. One way or another, he’d force her to see his reasoning. “That’s all you need to know.”
Not sure if I should count that under him wanting to cut off her oxygen, but the hand flex sounded like they want to squeeze her throat.
Again, Ann picks her words carefully so as not to piss him off, making sure to tell him that she loves him as a friend and partner—she is not his partner! She has never been called his partner at any time in the series before this! This is a retcon! She would never let any partner of hers behave the way Wesley does. But every woman in this series genuflects to Wesley because of sexual desire or sheer fear. Gotcha.
And she specifically says, “I don’t want to anger you.” This is a rageaholic that everyone walks on eggshells around at work. The gist of what she tells him is that he’s letting his obsession with Azrael color his thinking and he’s not picking up on certain things. He doesn’t explode at her and try to strangle her, so she feels free to continue.
She wants to know how Azrael knew Burning Building Lady was there, and the paranormal sticks a tentative nose back into the story after taking an extended vacation. Wesley instinctively tries to deflect by using the cop intuition argument that Azrael used at the hospital, which doesn’t fly with Ann because she doesn’t have a boner. Then she brings up her finding the old dead man Oren killed in the alley and almost immediately finding the pipe bomb in a location several blocks away. That’s our Ann Kennedy, the smartest cop in the Sunnydale Police Department!
Wesley mentally beats himself up for not thinking about any of this and does realize it’s due to the power of his boner. He gets nervous and tries to pass it off as a coincidence, but again that doesn’t fly with Ann because she’s too smart.
“But, Luther, you’re a cop. You have to accept the other possibility—that Gaby knows these things, because…”
He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t. “Ann—”
“She knows, because she’s the one responsible for them.”
You’re so close, Ann. You’ll never get closer than this because Wesley will never share what he knows about Murdered Mutilated Grandpa and the cancer people at the abandoned hospital, and KY Lady and the child abuse victim fell down the memory hole, but at least you’re willing to believe that Azrael’s capable of murder, because she is. Wesley needs to push his boner to one side so he can see past it.
He decides to try this for a little while and asks Ann if she thinks Azrael’s capable of that. She tells him Azrael’s capable of it but she doesn’t think she did it, which is a mighty relief to him. He doesn’t for a second think about what he knows about the murders he should be sure she committed in the first book, so I guess it’s just about keeping her out of prison so he can fuck her. Or the writer assumes we never read the first book.
To get even with her, Wesley tells Ann he thought Morty and Azrael were together when he first met her and was jealous. At least he admits that much, although the sexual harassment and assault will never pass his lips.
Ann now tells him she thinks Azrael “is incapable of causing such carnage,” but knows more than she’s saying. Nine paragraphs ago she said, in response to a question about whether Azrael’s capable of murder,
“Capable?” She answered without equivocation. “Absolutely. I’ve never seen anyone more capable.”
So that’s a No Edit Clause fail.
As the more competent detective in the car, Ann tells Wesley they have to stay open to the possibility of her guilt because they’re cops and they can’t be ruled by their boners. Whoops, the actual word was “feelings.”
Wesley decides to clarify whether she means he should consider Azrael a suspect for Dead Tortured Lucy, the old dead man in the alley, and the pipe bomb, proving that he’s not the brains in this car. She tells him yes, even though Morty won’t like it and it will hurt their relationship.
Ann definitely doesn’t know that Morty watched Azrael murder eight people (the only one of the NINE murders in the first book that he didn’t see was Murdered Mutilated Grandpa) and never lifted a finger to save any of them, despite the fact that they were all old and virtually unable to do anything other than fall forward as an offensive move, because he had such a crush on Azrael. He’s maybe not the catch you think he is, Ann.
They get a call, which Ann answers, and for whatever reason Wesley can’t hear the other end of the call. So it couldn’t have been on the radio in the car. I’ll assume this was on her cell phone and let it go, since we’re almost done with the chapter. Although if it is her cell phone, why was it phrased to make it seem like either of them could have answered it but Ann decided to?
She tells him they’ll have to “make this visit short,” so I guess they’re still going to Morty’s even though there’s an active murder investigation underway and they should be on the crime scene. Ann, I can’t believe you even suggested shirking work to go on a social call. Is every cop in Sunnydale lazy as fuck? What am I saying; as far as we know, Wesley and Ann are the only detectives on the Sunnydale PD.
Ann reveals the body of Cigarette-Burning Man has been found and his injuries are consistent with the ones on Dead Tortured Lucy. Oren wasn’t concerned with forensic evidence on her since she was going into the river, but since he’s chosen to dump the body two blocks from the phase-shifting motel/whorehouse, I wonder if he took any precautions like cleaning the body with bleach to get the secretions off. DNA is in secretions, you know. Again, though, what am I saying—DNA doesn’t exist in this universe.
We finally find out what Oren’s joke was: he cut off Cigarette-Burning Man’s testicles and removed his heart, and left them next to his head. And they have an “anonymous source” telling them about the beatdown and the threat Azrael made to him afterward. I did like Wesley’s reaction.
Luther scrubbed his face and laughed. “Leave it to Gaby to let her arrogance bury her neck deep in shit.”
Even Wesley is calling out her arrogance now. He does tell Ann she isn’t stupid enough to commit murder in exactly the way she threatened to do and leave evidence. Wesley agrees she could cut him up to a fare-thee-well if he hurt one of the sex workers and Ann’s surprised he’d admit that.
Then he looks Ann Kennedy straight in the eyes and lies his balls off. And he knows this is a lie, even if his boner is blocking his vision, but if you haven’t read the first book you might buy this argument. This seems to be something the author is counting on.
“But if Gaby murdered someone, no one would never know about it. The body would never be found.”
Ann doesn’t express an opinion on this. She lets him know that there are uniforms on the scene and she’ll go by herself if he wants to talk to Azrael, and he refuses to let her go alone, telling her the interrogation will be “quick.” So he’s not going to arrest her then, even though she had means, motive, and opportunity? Then why isn’t Ann arresting her? Ann isn’t trying to force her to have sex by making empty threats about arrest.
Ann wants to know what happens if Azrael is “resistant” and he says she won’t be, proving he hasn’t paid attention to anything except his boner in their entire relationship. He’s mad that he has no wiggle room about this and tells himself it’s her own fault, and we are told that he feels tremendous guilt, but I don’t believe that since he has never demonstrated a capacity to feel anything other than anger and lust.
And—chapter! Three chapters left and then we move on to the third and last book in the series. The writer must be leaving the reveal about whether Oren is female-to-male trans as the final twist.
The eleventh-hour reveal that Ann Kennedy is his partner—well, I guess that’s as close to an ineffective governing mechanism as could be put on him. As a woman, Ann will never threaten his dominance as an alpha male and he can dismiss anything she says because she’s a helpless vagina-haver. I will bet the farm that no captain ever shows up, because as an alpha male Wesley can never have another man in a position of authority over him lest his penis shrink.
This chapter does prove that Oren is the smartest opponent Azrael’s ever had, which isn’t saying much as the last one was Dr. Chiles. However, I don’t think Oren is making a rational cost-benefit analysis here about the short-term pleasure of strapping Azrael to the torture table and going to town versus the long-term pleasure of being free for many years to continue torturing and killing. His mistake here is making this personal between them. Since he’s rich, he should just pack himself, Dory, and Myer up and find another town to kill sex workers in, but we know that won’t happen because then Azrael would be defeated and we can’t have that.
Next time, chapter 14, where Azrael flees Morty’s apartment building and proceeds to display what a numbskull she is.
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