Chapter Twenty-Six
MALICE
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. For the first time ever, I want to ignore it. I know it’s going to pull me away from my sleeping pixie, and I don’t want to be anywhere but here. When it goes off a second time, I give in, picking up and opening the chat.
Chaos: It’s time to deal with Garrett
Chaos: Wasn’t expecting you to have company Mal but we gotta do this tonight
Me: I’ll be right up
Sin: Garage?
Chaos: Yep
Wrath: All set up. He’s wide awake looking at me like one angry fucker
Wrath: Doesn’t seem too happy to be back at the Heathen compound
Chaos: Tough shit for him
Me: Well I’m ready to party then
I peel myself away from Monroe, easily slipping out of the room after getting dressed in a pair of jeans, boots, and my leather cut. I meet my brothers outside, their hard stares all looking at me with the same expression.
“What?”
“Just surprised you brought her here. Last we all knew, you were still stalking her.”
“Yeah, well, what can I say? I’m irresistible,” I say as I light up a cigarette, something I’m determined to quit doing since meeting Monroe.
“Fuck that shit. How’d you do it?”
“Apparently my little ray of sunshine was charmed by my romantic wiles.”
Sin barks out a laugh. “Romantic? You mean stalker-like.”
“Whatever. She fell for me. She chose to be here.”
“We’re happy for you, brother. If anyone deserves to be happy and find their person, it’s you.”
“You assholes are making me want to crawl out of my skin. Let’s go take care of this piece of shit so we can get back to our queens.”
“I don’t know how long the fucker is going to last. You called dibs on him, but you’ve been distracted. Wrath had to have Stitch hook him up to an IV to keep him alive.”
“That was the point. Well, let’s see how much juice he’s got then, huh?”
Together we walk into the garage that sits detached from the main clubhouse. Two cars sit in it, unused, making it look like your average, unassuming garage. Little would anyone know, and most don’t except our club officers, that below it is a little place I like to call the fun factory.
“When are we going to make a decision about the Kingsnakes?” I ask Chaos and Sin.
“It’s hard not to wonder if it’s a trap. Send in someone to piss us off, bait us, send in a decoy to seem like our savior, and beg us to go in. If we’re working with Saint, they’d have all the details of our attack and would be prepared to counter. We could be walking into a bloodbath.”
“We need to get retribution for Rolo’s murder. His fucking brother sent out that hit!”
Chaos snaps, his head violently moving in my direction. “That’s not his fucking brother. We are his brothers. That’s someone who shares DNA, and blood doesn’t mean shit. Watch your fuckin’ mouth, Malice.”
I heed his warning, shutting my mouth even though I’ve got a shit ton more to say on the topic.
Sin pulls up the hidden door, and we head down the stairs, the scent of dried blood and death eternally permeating the air. The room has been soundproofed, complete with everything you’d need to torture someone in the most creative ways.
The ugly asshole hangs from a hook in the ceiling, his arms stretched wide, his toes dangling just above the concrete ground. Just as I ordered, no one has touched him yet. We’ve left him down here for a few days, starving him, letting him go insane while he wonders when we’ll come to end his life.
“Garrett, glad you’re still with us. You fucked up, picked the wrong club to fuck with.”
“I was following orders,” he groans, his voice sounding like a hundred-year-old smoker. I’m sure with the lack of liquid he’s had, it feels like he swallowed shards of glass. Hmm. There’s an idea.
“You were following orders. You hear that, brothers? He was following orders!” I yell back to Chaos, Sin, and Wrath.
“You killed my brother. Did he know it was coming? Did you tell him why? That his own fucking flesh and blood put out the hit?” My breathing is dangerously slow and controlled, but my veins are burning up, vibrating with fury.
“He knew. His last words were begging me not to kill him. He begged like the pathetic dog he is.” Then he spits, the moisture spraying across my face.
The room narrows around me, and all I see is him, his body distorting in front of me and turning into Rolo’s dead body, lying in a pool of blood.
Like a match dropped in gasoline, all I feel is white-hot, blinding rage.
I walk to the table that lines one of the walls of the room, picking up the new fleshing knife I requested.
I move in measured steps back to Garrett, spinning the knife in my hand.
There are no more words that need to be spoken, just a lesson to be taught.
And he’s going to feel every single bit of it.
I start with making a shallow cut around his wrist, the blood pooling and starting to trickle down his arm.
Then I stick my fingers in, gripping the skin and pulling outward, working my knife into the slot I created to hack away the skin from the muscle, trying my damndest not to nick any of the thin little bastard veins there.
There’s no noise but a rushing between my ears, but Garrett thrashes, making my cuts look rushed and sloppy.
I work my way around his forearm, taking my time to slowly make a clean separation.
He’s making it incredibly difficult, but the more skin I’m able to pull back, the easier it gets to continue to cut between his flesh and muscles.
By the time I’ve reached his elbow, blood cascades down his arm, covering my hands, arms, and chest. I’m drenched in it.
Bathed in the blood of my patch brother’s murderer.
Visions of Rolo stay front and center, but then they morph, the nightmares of the people who put me on Earth.
The cage. The hunger. The cold. The noises. The pain.
The fist slams into my cheek, making me stumble, but I don’t fall down.
Not yet. The pain doesn’t register. Having faded so long ago, I don’t remember what it felt like.
Another punch comes, this time to my stomach.
Air wheezes from my chest uncontrollably, and I lurch forward, just as another punch makes contact with my nose.
There’s a crunch that I hear deep within the marrow of my bones as I fall hard against a large mirror.
The glass shatters around me, and for a moment, I stare down at my distorted reflection, pale skin, eyes dark and empty, the purple-marred skin, my hair a dark matted mess. Blood trickles from my nose onto the glass, splashing and rippling outward.
Then I’m wrenched backward by my hair, dragged across the floor, and shoved inside the cage. The door slams, then rattles and bounces.
I pull my knees close to my chest, rocking back and forth while my eyes stare at the unlocked door of the cage.
It’s closed, but the lock missed the latch.
It’s dark, too dark to see much, but the lock clearly missed the hole.
My hands shake, my head twitching from side to side in slow jerking movements before my neck finally cracks. The pressure snaps. A release.
Time goes by, but I never know how much, so I sit and rock.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
No one comes to fix the lock, but I wait and rock.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Glass shatters. Voices yell somewhere far away, like they’re someplace else, or underwater. My body feels as though it’s floating, looking down at myself from above. Is this what death feels like? Slowly drifting away, watching yourself in your last moments on Earth.
And still I rock.
But the pressure builds.
I just want it to stop. I want the noise to stop. I want the pain to stop. I want the cold to stop. I want the hunger to stop.
And builds.
It needs to stop.
The cage opens with barely a push, my knees crunching on broken glass and trash as I crawl out. I stop on all fours, looking down at my reflection again in the shards. Eyes the color of darkness stare back at me, and if no light will ever come for me, then it’s in the darkness I’ll stay.
The shard is slightly bigger than my hand, and I pick it up, the base wide and getting smaller and smaller, coming together in a sharp point at the top.
I grip it tightly in my palm, the rough edges digging into my skin. Blood trickles down my wrist, the edges of my vision blurry and chaotic.
Make it stop.
Then I’m standing to my full height, methodically, controlled, like a demon rising from the depths of hell, with only one thing on my mind. I’m hungry. Starving. But not for food.
It needs to stop.
The edges of the room start to close in on me, a dark haze at the corners of my eyes, blood rushing between my ears.
Everything else fades away as I walk into the other room.
My eyes make contact with the man and woman who’ve been my captors, my tormentors.
I see their naked bodies moving, hear their grunts and voices, but they don’t see me, they don’t even hear me. No one does. No one ever will.
My head cocks to the side, taking in their appearances.
Dirty bodies, stained with yellow and black marks all over their skin.
The man stumbles backward off of her, his eyes going wide as he points at me, his mouth moving as if he’s yelling, but I don’t hear a single thing.
My head cocks to the side. All that exists the rush of blood between my ears, my steady heartbeat.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Make it stop.
My arm moves of its own accord, slashing and stabbing.
Deep crimson splashes across the filthy walls, my face, the couch, and the cage.
By the time I’m done, I’m covered in blood.
Dripping the essence that kept them alive.
Kept them alive to instill their hatred against me.
But it’s silent. And dark. And there’s no more cage.
But still I rock.
I hack at his skin with my knife. Counting out the cuts in my head. Out loud. I don’t know anymore. All I know is the feeling inside me needs to combust, needs somewhere to go.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
I don’t stop until I’ve pulled the skin from his entire arm and separated it from his body, leaving nothing but bloody muscle and veins behind.
When I drop his skin glove to the ground in front of my patch brothers, I finally see Garrett. His head hangs limp, but his chest is still rising and falling. I don’t know when his screaming stopped and he passed out from the pain, but hopefully it wasn’t too soon. I wanted him to feel all of it.
“Wake him up. We’re not done.”
I’ll never be done.