Chapter 68 Kane
KANE
Imanage to crawl into the church, leaving blood smeared on the thick wooden doors and a trail of red from my punctured leg.
But I don’t pull the shard of glass free as I hold the cobweb-covered walls to stop myself from falling.
Soft orange lights flicker from the lit candles resting on the ornate stone sconces, casting the center of the empty large hall in shadows.
“Where the fuck are you?” I scream into the fucking void, begging for it to shout back.
The only thing greeting my ears is my own voice echoing off the high ceiling.
Sweat coats my back, sticking my t-shirt to me as the hot pain of the smallest amount of weight being on my leg nearly folds me in half.
I keep staring, searching for any sign of life.
The large, stained-glass windows don’t offer anything other than mockery.
Neither does the pulpit, or the empty pews, or the crucifixes adorning the walls with thick layers of dust clinging to them.
“Pray,” Asher offers. “Although, God might not listen to you since you committed the first sin.”
“Fuck. Off.”
“Thou shalt not covet thy brother’s wife.”
“It was you!” I scream, nearly falling on my ass as I face him. “It was you. Not me. I didn’t take shit that belonged to you. She. Was. Not. Yours.”
“Nor his female servant,” he says with a stupid fucking smile on his face. “That’s what she was. My slave to abuse.”
“FUCK YOU!” My curse bellows out of me while he laughs, but it’s only my voice reverberating through the church. There’s a soft click breaking through the residual screams, and I turn on one leg to see the white light above the confessional booth.
The tiered booth feels like climbing a mountain as I step up onto the dusty carpet, ripping the door open to an empty chamber.
With the dim lights behind me, I can barely make out the architrave joining the walls to the ceiling.
Different religious symbols are fixed on the corners, keeping everything contained so there’s no way to climb over it to get to the other side.
I grip the door as I slowly raise my hand, feeling beneath the tight trellis obstructing the window between the two chambers, but there’s no gap to tear through it.
“In the name of Power, Sacrifice, and Rebirth,” the woman says. “What choice did you make?”
“Fuck you,” I grit as dust particles fly up in the dark box from the force of throwing myself onto the cushioned bench.
I cough while this fucking bitch continues, “My, aren’t you disrespectful? In the house of the Lord too?”
“I’ll do something else,” I rush out, battling my need, anger, and pain. “You didn’t give me choices. You gave me nooses.”
“They are choices, aren’t they? After all, you could have chosen a noose tied around your pet. Or you could have chosen to put it around your relationship.”
“I’ll give you whatever the fuck you want. Pick something else, have it. My life, money, anything.”
“Now, why would I want to kill you? That wouldn’t be satisfying, would it?”
Why the fuck is nothing ever simple with these fuckers? First Lennox’s riddles, now this dumb bitch. The booth is suffocating with the dark, dust—Asher’s fucking unwelcome presence haunting me.
“She wants you to fuck her, like you made deals with Rowan too. My baby brother—a dirty slut.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t think. Pain usually makes everything quiet but there’s too much inside of my head that blood could flow like a river, yet I’d still be tormented.
I beg, “Please. I’ll do anything else. You want my heart on a platter?
Done. Just tell me where she is first and then, when she’s safe, I’ll give you it. ”
She doesn’t say anything.
All of my rage is channeled into my fist as I punch the wooden panel separating our booths.
“I said I’ll fucking kill myself. I’ll sacrifice my life. Tell me where Delilah is and where the island is.”
“The saying ‘I’d give my left arm for…’ is an interesting one, don’t you think?” she muses.
“It’s a saying,” I force out through clenched teeth.
“Yes, but why the left? Why not the right?”
“Because most people’s dominant hand is the right.”
“I enjoy the way you think,” she says, a smile audible in her voice as I narrow my eyes to see through the small crosses in the panel. “Would you give up your dominance?”
I can’t see anything with it being dark like my side is. “You want my arm? Take it.”
“Again, there’s no satisfaction in that.” She sighs. “Leave. Walk to the altar to await your instruction.”
“Tell me where she is,” I demand, refusing to move. “Then you can cut my arm off. I don’t give a fuck. Take my legs too. Take my head, any organ, whatever you want.”
“You were told to leave,” she says coolly. When I don’t move, her voice hardens. “Once you have disobeyed by refusing to make a choice. Do not make that mistake a second time or you’ll face the consequences, Mr. Kobalt.”
“Another punishment,” Asher says, like I don’t know about them.
I slowly limp out of the confessional booth, my body aching now it’s having to take my weight again. Peering around the back, I wait for her to leave. But there’s no door on either side as I drag myself around it, pressing my fingers to the ornate trim where a fucking door should be.
Keeping Delilah at the forefront of my mind allows me to keep moving until I hobble up the stone altar steps to the pulpit.
The stone has worn away at the edges from the lack of use, spiders making their homes in the keyhole design of the curved pulpit covering my legs.
I lean against the crumbling edge, uncaring if it falls as long as the weight is off my leg, then rest my foot on a dusty box as I wait for the bitch to continue with her ego trip.
The large wooden doors creak as she enters the church. Fucking cryptic cunt. She wasn’t in the confessional at all. She was testing me. I understand why her family was involved with Helene now. They’re all the same with their trickery to feel like they’re in control.
“Like you did?” Asher asks. “You did the same with Delilah when you were pretending to be me, didn’t you? She thought I was sleeping beside her while you put on your little mask. Or how you recorded a conversation with yourself, pausing so it would make her think you were listening to her reply.”
That’s different. I wasn’t hurting her, not really. If I wanted to, I could have trapped her in her parents’ house.
“Really? You weren’t hurting her? She was taking antipsychotics for an illness she doesn’t have. She was terrified, because as soon as she felt safe, you sent me away to scare her again.”
He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I do. I silently watch the woman in the obnoxiously clean white coat, her heels clicking against the floor as she walks in the thin line of the shadows, her face centered so I can’t see her features.
“I will lose my patience with your defiance if you choose not to listen to what you’re told,” she says as she continues on that thin line.
Stopping at the back pew, she dusts the wooden seat before she sits, crossing one leg over the other.
The low light glimmers off the metal toe of her heels, forcing my attention on the snake design as she rocks her foot.
“I did what you asked,” I say, breathless. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You are,” she says softly as though I have any free will. “As a show of good faith since we share the same history, I’ll allow you to keep your dominant hand. Remove the left.”
“With?” There’s no knives or surgical equipment lying around for me to do it and the stone isn’t exactly sterile.
“You may be rewarded for ingenuity.”
I look around the space, starting at the top where the candles sit above my head. Wax won’t help me. Moving down the wall, I take note of the sharp stone which barely breaks my skin when I press the tip of my fingers to it. Finally, my eyes land on the box my foot is resting on.
“Dad had one like it.”
I nod as I grit my teeth, bending down to pull the plastic clip securing the lid.
The outside is filthy as fuck, but the tools inside are all clean.
I know better than to assume it’s luck when everything in my life has been orchestrated by these fuckers.
Helene, the Wards, Delilah’s fucking family—they’ve all been ten steps ahead while we struggled to cope.
I wouldn’t put it past the cunt to have picked two things I’d be incapable of just to lead me to this fucking moment.
“Do you remember when Dad made a planter box for Mom? She was so happy. I don’t think I’d ever seen her smile like that before.
He even let us mark the lines for his cuts, but we kept doing them too short.
” Asher recalls the nostalgic items as I lift the shining handsaw and boxcutter.
“But she was still happy because her boys had made her something. Then she painted our hands so we could put our handprints on the side. Dad started dancing with her while we stood on his feet. We were what, four? But she never smiled like that after that day.”
I think it’s the only memory I have of us being treated equally. He forgets the peace didn’t last for long after he painted over my handprint, screaming when he saw my name was there too.
He shuts the fuck up as I remove my belt, fashioning it into a tourniquet around my bicep before I lay my left arm on the stone lectern. I blow out a steadying breath while trying to imagine the bones in my arm I’ll need to break.
“You’ve done this many times, Mr. Kobalt,” the bitch interrupts. “Or is the issue that you’re doing it to yourself rather than mutilating the body of those you killed?”
Fuck!
She set me the fuck up.
“Xandros,” I correct, extending my voice to reach the cunt. “My name is Kane Xandros. Not Kobalt.”
“Kane,” Asher whispers. “Break your arm first. You won’t be able to cut through the bone otherwise.”
I can use the saw, which he’s ignoring as he gestures to the cracked sconce above my head without a candle.
“You’ll pass out. Just break it. You won’t fuck it up then.”
I carefully set the other tools down, stretching up and twisting the heavy piece of stone from the metal notch it was sitting on.
Holding my breath, I raise the sconce above my head with a shaky arm.
I have to let out all the air in my lungs on the way back down.
My arm tries to move away from it, so it only clips the side.
My hand continues moving in a blur, smashing the stone closer to my forearm on my next attempt.
I keep fucking doing it as little pieces of stone break off.
The crack of it successfully breaking the bone as pain shoots up my arm to my shoulder makes me scream in frustration.
I don’t think or stop. If I do, I’ll lose the last thing I have left to get my wife back.
Instead, I hold my breath as I lift the box cutter.
The zip of the blade shooting up through the notch is the only noise to break up my heartbeat pounding in my ears as I look out into the shadows, digging the blade into the middle of my swelling forearm.
“Your weird hobby of cutting yourself finally has a use.”
“Fuck. Yourself,” I force through gritted teeth as I dig the blade further into my flesh until the pain intensifies.
My hand spasms. I can’t fucking cut a ring around the limb.
I’ve done this countless times without any struggle.
Not even the first time, when I saw 15 had a tattoo with music notes wrapping around her forearm, reminding me of Delilah.
My sadistic audience of one doesn’t utter a peep as she remains in her pew, watching me fight my instincts to slowly cut through my arm.
I have to do it in short bursts as my stomach rolls.
When the white flesh folds backwards under the flickering candlelight, I fall forward and manage to throw up away from my exposed flesh.
The splatter of it hitting the floor is thunderous as it bounces up to desecrate a house of worship more than it has been.
Spitting the rancid bile out of my mouth doesn’t help, so I scream as I force myself to move.
Gripping the metal box cutter in my fist, I continue screaming as the pain intensifies.
I dig the blade further, blood flowing over the stone pulpit, dripping onto my shoes while Asher says, “At least your leg doesn’t hurt now. ”
My scream echoes around the abandoned church where no mercy will be found as I roughly drag the blade through my arm.
It’s not deep enough to reach the bone, but it forms a half circle.
The blood on my hands makes it even more difficult to hold the metal casing tightly enough to cut through the thick rope-like tendons.
I can’t fucking do it. The pain has overloaded my body, depleted my energy.
I throw the box cutter as I scream, “FUCK YOU!” I’m not capable of stringing together anything other than two words as I continue screaming them.
The pain I craved has taken over, successfully shutting me down.
Only it hasn’t made my mind numb like I’m accustomed to.
It’s made it feel too much. Overwhelmingly so.
She waits until I stop screaming and calmly asks, “Are you choosing to reject our help?”