“Not my son,” Divine said coldly. “You’re the one who encouraged him to be the way he is.”
“Well, yes, because that’s what a parent does, Basha,” he said with exasperation. “A parent is supposed to encourage the child.”
“He wasn’t your son to encourage,” she growled.
“No, but then neither was his father, and I encouraged him and helped him find his full potential too,” Abaddon said with a shrug.
“You helped Leonius Livius find his true potential?” she echoed dubiously.
“Of course. Do you really think he came up with the idea of creating an army of his own sons all by himself?” he asked dryly. “The man didn’t think past his next pleasure, let alone the next day. He wasn’t concerned about the other Atlantean refugees getting wind of what he was doing and rising up against him.”
Divine merely stared at him. She’d always thought that Abaddon was just another follower of the man. That he’d shown up on the scene after Leonius Livius was well into the plan. Now he was suggesting he’d been there at the start of it.
“Most no-fangers are mad, but not really naturally cruel,” he lectured, apparently determined to convince her and lay claim to the dubious honor of being the puppet master behind the monster. “Mostly they just seem to be lacking a conscience and don’t care who or how they hurt others to get what they want. The cruelty Leo has and his father had before him, though? That had to be nurtured and helped to grow in them and I did that for both of them, Leonius Livius I and the son you raised.”
Divine stared at him with horror. “You ruined Damian.”
He snorted at the claim. “Nonsense! I didn’t put the knife in his hand the first time he chopped up a child. I just helped him develop to his full potential once he revealed it.”
She was shaking her head in denial before he even finished speaking. “He had a conscience, you said yourself he was weeping and fretting over what he’d done. He knew it was wrong. If I had known and—”
“He was weeping and fretting at the possibility of getting caught and the consequences of it,” Abaddon corrected sharply. “He was afraid his mommy would be angry and not love him anymore.” Lips pursing with disgust, he added, “The boy has some serious mommy issues, Basha. Despite everything I’ve done for him, he will listen to you over me when he feels he has to, to appease you . . . and he doesn’t want you hurt or angered either.” He scowled and added, “Mind you, he might worry less about that if he knew his precious mommy was thinking of turning him in to her uncle Lucian. What kind of mother does that make you?”
“He’s torturing and raping innocent mortals,” she barked defensively, stung at the accusation that wanting to stop Damian made her a bad mother.
“And killing. Don’t forget that,” Abaddon added with a grin. “But innocent, bah!” he sneered, and then said with disgust, “Most of them are runaways, whores, and junkies who had a short life expectancy anyway.”
“Made even shorter by my son’s arrival in their life,” Divine growled. “And you said most of them are, what about the others? How many lives has he brought to an early end? How many women has he tortured before killing?”
“Women and men,” he corrected. “Unlike his father, Leo has a liking for family picnics. Something you instilled in him, by the way.”
“Family picnics?” she asked with bewilderment.
“Yes, you know, finding a nice wholesome family out on a farm and taking them all out to the barn for a meal. Although I believe you used to take them one at a time, and generally on the back porch or behind the barn. Of course, you never let him hurt or kill them, making him take just enough blood to get by before putting them back in their beds. Still, those are fond memories for him and he likes to relive them.”
“Relive them?” she echoed uncertainly.
“Yes. Mind you, Leo likes to do things on a much grander scale.”
“Grander how?” she asked, sure she wouldn’t like the answer.
Abaddon considered her briefly, but apparently couldn’t resist and rushed over to claim the chair across from her. Leaning on the table, he smiled enthusiastically and explained, “See, he gets half a dozen or so of the boys together, and they find an isolated farmhouse with a nice big family. But that’s where his feedings differ from the ones you took him on. Instead of taking one member at a time, he and the boys roust everyone from their beds and take the whole family down to the barn together. Now, they’re still in their pajamas, mind, and Mommy and the kids are huddled together with a couple of boys keeping them from running or looking away, and they get to watch while Daddy is strung up by his feet like a pig for slaughter, and then . . .” He shrugged. “Well, they slaughter him.”
Divine closed her eyes against the images he was painting, but they continued to play across her mind as he added, “It’s really something to see, the boys all working together with their dad as they slice and dice their prey. They do it slowly, of course, to draw out the pleasure.”
“Shut up,” Divine whispered.
“Sometimes they get thirsty and stop to chug blood from the pails they set out beneath him to catch the precious liquid, but other times—although this is only toward the end,” he assured her, “one of them will hit a major artery like a carotid, or—and this is cool—the ulnar or radial in one of the arms hanging down, and then they just stand there and let it squirt and flow into their mouth from his arm like it’s the spout of a teapot.”
“Shut up,” Divine repeated, her voice stronger but raspy. It felt like her throat was closing up.
“Oh, I’m sorry, am I making you thirsty?” he asked solicitously.
“Thirsty?” she echoed with disbelief. “You’re making me sick.”
“Oh,” Abaddon said with feigned surprise and then tsked and shook his head. “You always did have a weak stomach, didn’t you? Ah well.” He shrugged and then said, “Anyway, that usually finishes off the dad and then they string up Mom next to him, also upside down, which is handy for getting her nightgown out of the way if she’s wearing one, and then they do it all over again. Of course, she’s followed by the eldest child and so on.”
Unable to kill him chained to the chair as she was, Divine just bowed her head, trying to shut him out as he finished, “So there’s the bonfire, the blood, the screaming, and fun is had by all. The boys love it. They get all excited when Leo says they’re going on a family picnic.”
“Dear God,” Divine breathed.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Abaddon chided. “You should be proud of your son. He’s at least equaled, if not surpassed, his father when it comes to acts of depravity. And that was despite having you for a mother, which was certainly a handicap, what with your goody-two-shoes ways.”
“He’s not my child,” she said coldly, raising her head and staring through the man.
“No,” Abaddon said sympathetically. “Your child was a girl with big silver-blue eyes and ice blond hair like yours is under that nasty dye. She—” He paused as his phone made another sound, this time a twitter. Pulling it out, he peered at the message and smiled. “Well, Marcus made good time too. He’s just pulling in.”
Divine felt her heart sink at this news. Despite his saying they were waiting for Marcus, she’d hoped he was just lying to her or that Marcus would have the sense to not come in the end. She would even have been happy did he hate her now that he knew she was the woman who had unknowingly rescued a monster when she’d swept her son up and carried him away that day in the hotel. She hated herself for it now that she’d heard what he’d been up to all these years.