Chapter 17 Slade
Slade
The sudden realization that I’m feeling, and have been for several minutes without spiraling into chaos, hits me.
Then the roar of the screams starts, and I feel like my body and mind are being separated.
More emotions rush to escape from the locked box—more anger, but the worst of them are guilt, shame, and regret because I couldn’t save the Numbers, and that Number Fourteen had to die in order for me to live. I don’t deserve to live and draw breath; I should’ve died with the rest of them.
Images of their torture and deaths assault me.
I need to repress, to smother and destroy all these feelings before my mind completely severs from reality.
I attempt to do just that, but then Bane is lunging at me. His tall, broad, solid body is coming at me—he’s a god of war, lethal and beautiful and made to bring the world to its knees.
I don’t think; I just react.
I drive my elbow into his sternum in a blow meant to stun and create space. The tactic provides me with two options: retreat or execute a follow-up maneuver. I don’t retreat.
Instead, I use a palm-heel strike, which he deflects, saving his nose from being broken. Then I hit him with a knee strike to the outside of his left thigh. Ideally, I would’ve liked to hit him in the torso, but the big bastard is too tall. He’s all thick, long legs and broad upper body.
His grunt of pain makes me smile as I bounce back, staying light on my feet and out of his reach. His hazel eyes are filled with fire, and his stupidly handsome face is unreadable as he comes at me, trying to take me down to the mat.
I pivot to stay out of his reach, then do a jumping side kick, my heel slamming into his ribs like a battering ram.
His grunt of pain is harsher this time, but he grins. The smug bastard grins.
“Game on, dickhead,” I say through clenched teeth.
His grin widens. “Bring it. Baby.”
“Don’t call me baby.”
Then I go on the offensive. We spar continuously, endlessly. Sweat drips off both of us.
I haven’t felt this alive in years. Maybe ever.
It ends with both of us heaving for breath, and Bane face-down on the mat after I used a move called an arm drag to rear control, which was a particular favorite of the guy who trained Granger, Sam, Axel, Camber, and me.
I was always the smallest, and my friends had years of training compared to me, so I had trained obsessively so I wasn’t the weakest link in my found family.
Because the secret criminal activity we had thrived on was laced with real risk and danger.
I get off Bane, clambering to my feet and wiping my brow with the back of my hand. Bane rolls over and jumps to his feet, with a quick agility that shouldn’t be possible with his large frame.
“Next time I want you to actually fight me.” I wipe more sweat off my forehead. Bane had only tried to grab and control me, but hadn't actually hit me back.
“Next time… I like the sound of that.” He tilts his head while looking at me with those hazel eyes that feel like they see right into my soul. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”
Reality slaps me across the face.
I’m a fucking idiot.
In my instinct to defend and protect myself when he charged toward me, I hadn’t fully processed the ramifications of my actions. I had revealed some of my secrets to him.
I had been too lost in the hand-to-hand combat; I had been enjoying it too much.
Enjoying it… As in happiness. Joy. Feeling.
I had felt the entire time without spiraling. I was strong—and not just physically, but emotionally and mentally.
And that’s a bucket of ice water reminding me of my cold, harsh reality, and that starts the screams in my mind again.
I push everything down, repressing it all.
Bane steps toward me, his smile falling. “Don’t, Slade. Don’t shut it off.”
I shake my head, unable to speak as my demons assault my mind. I desperately try to regain control once again so I can have the blissful, yet cursed, numb nothingness.
“Please.” His plea nearly shatters me as much as the tormented, tortured memories I’m working so hard to push back.
But it’s too late.
Silence falls within me as the screams stop, the images disappear, and the numbness returns.
Bane is having none of it, though. He pulls me flush against him. Gripping my head, he tilts my face up to his, his eyes darting between mine with such a heated intensity that I feel my skin burn.
“Baby.” He looks pained. “Don’t do this. You can feel. Please, Slade.”
I could stay flush against him forever. It feels comforting. Right.
But then I remember Number Fourteen’s broken, tortured body lying on Antwane’s table of horrors, and Antwane drilling into his shin.
I remember the Vanderalls, who are powerful and well-connected, and out for blood.
Sam and Axel had accidentally overheard them swearing to hunt down Antwane’s killer, the one who’d brought shame to their family.
They vowed to find me and make me, and everyone tied to me, suffer.
“I need to leave,” I say flatly and pull away from Bane.
I take a step back to put more distance between us so I don’t make the mistake of touching him again.
He makes me want things that are impossible, things I don’t deserve.
And my staying here only holds the hangman’s noose over his head, along with my brothers, Ash, and the entire Havoc Guardians family.
“I need to talk to Ash. He needs to let me leave, Bane.”
Frustration and anger vibrate off his large frame, and he fists his hands. “No.”
The word is said with absolute finality.
“He needs to be convinced—”
“The Council voted, Slade.”
I go still at his words.
“It was unanimous. You stay.”
He takes a step toward me, and I stumble back as the shock rattles the metal walls that cage everything within me. Walls that feel fragile, ready to explode as the pressure within me surges like a catastrophic tidal wave.
“The decision is Council-sanctioned.”
His words—those horrible words—blast apart the metal box so forcefully that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to come back from it.
Everything assaults me at once. Every single horrendous emotion. Every single damning memory. And the screams…
Oh my God, the screams.
I clutch my head in agony. It’s physical agony, but the mental anguish is so much worse.
I’m back in that cabin, chained to the wall, clinging to life even though my mind craves and pleads for my end.
Like a horrendous movie reel, every single death—except for Number Thirteen’s—plays before my eyes.
I once again have a front seat to reliving all the terrible, evil things Antwane did to those poor people.
Then he’s before me, and I relive every cut and slash he made on my body as my punishment—my penance—because I lived while they died.
Thirteen cuts in total, because he never got to cut me after Number Fourteen’s death.
Rage and hate swell within me—potent, toxic, and total. It’s all I am. It’s all I feel now as it drowns the guilt, shame, and regret.
I relive burying the knife into Antwane’s throat and feel the warm stickiness of his blood that covered me with gruesome spurts.
I relish in the shock on his face, his choked, gurgling sounds.
Then I want him to live—I’m craving it—so I can kill him over and over again.
I want to be his worst nightmare, doling out the pain, misery, and terror that he inflicted on us in that cabin of hell.
I want him to feel it a hundred times worse.
I want to gut Antwane like a pig and pull his intestines out and choke him with them.
‘We don’t always get what we want… Take, for example, I’ve always wanted to choke one of my enemies with his intestines, and I haven’t had that come true yet.’
Bane.
Bane said that.
His rugged, handsome face and those intense hazel eyes fill my mind, replacing the gruesome scene with Antwane. Bane… Bane, the man who makes me long to be the person I once was.
“Bane,” I whisper, barely able to get the word out past my frozen lips and my closed, dry throat. “Bane.” This time it’s a plea, begging for him.
“Come back to me, baby.” His voice is faint and so far away. “You can do it, Slade.”
Sensations return to my body as my mind and body are reconnected. I’m pressed against something big and solid, something that feels safe. Powerful bands are around me, but I don’t feel trapped, caged, or restrained.
Clarity forces its way through the mayhem and chaos in my mind, and I feel Bane’s hands grip my face.
I force my eyes to open, struggling to do so like I’ve been drugged. I see him, feel him pulling me from the depths of my internal chaos and hell, and my strength returns. My strength to turn it all off and repress everything and lock it all back up.
“Don’t.” Bane’s eyes dart between mine.
“I have to.” My numb nothingness begins to return. My blessing and my curse.
Don’t feel. Shut the emotions off. Stop the screams.
That was the mantra I repeated when I was chained to the wall in Antwane’s cabin of hell.
Bane’s hands tighten on my face. “You’re safe, Slade. Feel. Feel with me. I’ll help you. You can control it. You can have both.”
“I can’t.” More numbness fills me, and I breathe a silent sigh of relief as the chaos dies down.
“I’ll help you. Together, you and me. We can do it.”
I don’t know if there’s any truth in that, but I don’t have time to ponder it further.
Because I lurch, turning away from Bane at the last second, and projectile vomit all over the mats.