Chapter 79 Kane
KANE
More guilt is added to my shoulders when I see Scarlet sitting on top of my car with the children. Daigon pushes Ruby back into the house. The gravel clinks together around the snakes slithering over the rocks. Not one or two. Fucking hundreds of them.
I hold Ruby back while Delilah stands at my back, peering around me.
Daigon steps forward with one foot firmly planted on the small stones, stretching his arms out, attempting to reach for them as his son cries.
Softening his voice, he coaxes, “It’s a game, buddy.
Auntie Scarlet is going to throw you. I’ll catch you. ”
“Dad?” the girl says, leaning over the car. “Can I keep one?”
“No. Help your brother.”
She sits up on her knees as Scarlet holds the boy under the arms as she crawls to the back of the roof. The hissing vibrates through the air, making my skin crawl as Ruby runs to the kitchen.
“Was Delilah worth it?”
“Shut the fuck up,” I grit.
“Who are you talking to?” Delilah asks with tears in her eyes.
There’s too much noise. From the gravel moving beneath the cold reptiles, their hissing, a father trying to settle his crying children, to Ruby running towards us, metallic scraping. It’s all too fucking loud.
I catch a glimpse of her dragging a broom and take it out of her hands, so she doesn’t get hurt. This is my fault. I accepted the sadistic bitch took my arm, so it was over. But it wasn’t—isn’t—because they’re never fucking satisfied.
Using the metal stick of the broom, I move the snakes away from Daigon’s foot as he remains rooted in place. The children are too scared to move and he shouldn’t risk death because I fucked up.
Delilah hates me, she’s disgusted, so there’s nothing left for me anyway. I carefully walk in the cleared path, the snakes promptly closing it up behind me. They don’t attack or touch me until I stop at the trunk of the car, then they slither over my booted feet.
I can’t hold the children and the broom.
“Because you gave your arm for Delilah when she’s not worth it.”
Tilting my shoulders as a snake winds up my calf, I tell Scarlet, “Put them on my back.”
She sits the boy on my shoulders then lightly taps the girl’s back. “Climb onto your uncle. Hold on tight.”
I’m an uncle when I don’t have any family.
The girl wraps her legs around me, tightly holding my hoodie in her fist as she winds her arm around my neck to make sure her brother doesn’t fall.
The extra weight, being choked, and the snakes coiling around my legs make me slower.
I try to move the reptiles with the bottom of the broom, but they hiss louder.
Fuck, if they sink their fangs into me right now, I’ll drop.
The boy doesn’t help matters as he clings to my head, slapping his small hands on my forehead, nearly toppling me. But he calms when his sister whispers, “It’s okay, Micah. They’re just really big worms.”
Daigon widens his legs, pushing his foot through the gravel to draw the snakes to the noise.
He keeps one foot behind him on the step in front of the door, stretching his arms out to lift the boy off my shoulders.
Seraphim stops choking me as she holds the handle of the broom with both hands, helping me balance the weight.
I don’t walk forward though, I turn as Ruby takes the boy, tightly hugging him to her chest.
“Grab her,” I say as the snakes get closer, joining the fucker coiling tighter around my calf. Once she’s safe with her parents, I turn to Scarlet. “Your turn. Think light thoughts for me.”
She weakly laughs as she crawls forward, sits on the edge of the roof and fucking kicks me as she attempts to wrap her legs around me.
Delilah’s tears fall, dripping down her cheeks to form darker spots on her hoodie as it soaks them up.
But there’s no hate in her eyes. She looks at me like she used to—before all this shit, when I still had hope.
I rock forward when Scarlet indelicately propels herself at my back, wincing as the snake tightens around my leg.
The head is right behind my knee, but I manage to stop myself from crumbling, so it doesn’t unhinge its jaw to attack as my foot goes numb.
I can’t balance the broom well enough to create a gap between the cold body and my limb.
Instead, I lean forward so my back is straight, tapping Scar with the bristle edge of the broom. “Crawl up so you can reach him.”
“Walk, you idiot. You’re going to fall.”
“I will with your fat ass on my back. Move.”
Daigon pushes his foot deeper into the stones as Delilah steps forward.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I rush out.
She flinches at my tone, but I didn’t go through all this shit for her to fucking kill us. I’ll take death, welcome it with the knowledge she’s safe with her sisters, but I can’t be the one to watch her die.
I have to grit my teeth as the snake continues crawling up my leg. It’s getting close to Scarlet’s foot, so I hit her harder with the harsh bristles. “Move. Now.”
Digging the rounded edge of the broom into the ground for stability, I wait for her to crawl over my back. She stretches out, allowing Daigon to drag her the rest of the way as she presses her feet into my spine.
“Get the hose.” He drops her at the front door as he warns me, “Don’t move.”
“No shit,” I scoff.
Staring at the ground full of snakes is disconcerting when I can’t feel my leg. The one crawling up my body is hissing as it stretches its head around my thigh to fucking look at me. But Daigon leans over and carefully presses his fingers under the tail at my ankle, repeating, “Do not move.”
My foot tingles from the restricted blood flow as he carefully unwinds the snake.
The head is still right fucking there but it loosens.
I don’t think I’m breathing. My heart isn’t even beating as he manages to free my leg then throws the snake into the field, away from the animals that have run to the distant fencing.
Slowly raising to his full height, he takes the hose from Scarlet, adding the clicks to all the noise as he sets it on the highest pressure before spraying a harsh line at my feet, clearing the path as the snakes quickly slither away from the water.
I leap forward with the broomstick pushing deeper into the ground and my dead leg dragging behind me. Without thought, breath, or fucking sanity, I wrap my arms around Delilah. She clings to me just as tightly, her fingers digging into my spine, muffling her cries in my chest.
After leaving Ruby’s house, we stay in the penthouse of someone Daigon knows.
I can’t remember the drive with Delilah on my thigh and my face buried in the crook of her neck.
Or anything other than the million ways I’m going to fucking kill Helene.
Everything comes back to her. There’s not a single point of my life she’s allowed to be untouched.
Even my conception was hijacked by her twisted ways. My childhood, shaped by the fear she instilled into my only mother. There wasn’t ever going to be a choice about how I’d turn out. It was always going to be in this filthy, perverted world she created.
The others are all in their rooms after Scarlet sent me away when the withdrawals fully kicked in. It hit me then, my wife throwing up with her hair falling into her path, and I couldn’t hold the strands back while holding her.
I look down at my limp left sleeve as I stand on the wraparound balcony.
Is this what it’s always going to be like?
I’ll have moments when it physically hurts not to be able to do something.
All those little things that have meaning, like holding my wife’s face with both hands, holding her hand while I drive, feeling her warmth on both palms. I’ll never experience them again.
The worst part is that every single fucking time I’m reminded of it, I’m forced to remember the pain of not having my wife, being trapped.
It’s not an injury with a physical recovery.
I’ll adjust over time, the phantom limb syndrome should lessen, but the mental shit? That’s not fucking going anywhere.
Smoke is still clinging to the air as I take out a fresh cigarette and lean forward to cover the flame of my lighter with the partition to light it.
Straightening up, I look at the starless sky as I take out my phone.
This is another thing I can’t do one-handed.
But I try, uncaring about the ash falling onto my chest as I dial Sasha’s number.
The line trills for too long before the beep comes.
I whisper, “Hey, little one. I miss you. I’m fucking scared.
Your crazy ass better be alive, or I’ll kill you myself.
Do me a favor, call me back. Please. I just need to know you’re okay. ”
Walking to the corner of the balcony, I lean against the wall, holding my phone to my ear with my shoulder so I’m not mumbling around the toxic stick in my mouth.
“We’re going to travel the world, remember?
Even though I hate you a little for leaving me.
I’ll forgive you when you come back. Just come back.
I don’t want to lose you too.” I drag in a deep breath.
“Have you had anything to eat? Where are you sleeping? Fuck, you can’t answer me, it’s a voicemail. Answer your fucking phone.”
I end the call before my anger can fully take over and go back to watching the deep navy-blue sky as I add clouds to it. Life has a way of continuously fucking with me by only ever allowing me one thing at a time in the most distorted way possible.
While my parents were alive, I thought they hated me. I didn’t give a fuck when they were dying, but now they’re dead, I know it wasn’t true.
While Asher was alive, I wanted to have a brother.
I wanted a family, but I didn’t realize how twisted he was until I was older.
A six-year-old only knows their experiences as normal, so I thought everything was happening like it should be.
I was the problem because it hurt when he dismissed me. But he died and I—
“Got me fully.”
Then I finally had Delilah to myself, only to be fueled by misplaced hate.
I had her again, she hated me. I have her now, she’s not really here.
There was a moment when I was pretending to be Asher that I doubted my plan.
It was after she left the hospital. I showed her the photos I’d doctored to sell the lie of our life, where I imagined becoming him to get our chance to be together.
If I’d done that, we’d still be in that house.
The adjoining building would be her art studio or some shit to keep her happy.
I look over the balcony railing, wondering if I should leave now. The common denominator in every situation is me, so if I literally take the plunge, it goes away.
“My wife is allowing you to stay,” Daigon says as he steps out onto the balcony.
I go back to leaning against the wall. “Thanks.”
He slides the door closed and asks, “Were you a mask or a subject?”
“How do you know about them?”
“Mask.” He points at himself as my throat constricts.
Rowan would call the guards his masks. Not a mask which strips them of their personhood, but his masks. As though anyone who entered belonged to him.
“Me too,” I manage to force out.
He leans his forearms on top of the railing enclosing the balcony, staring straight ahead as he says, “You have to separate those things from everything here. You’re lucky because you know it all already. You don’t have to teach yourself this whole world you never knew existed.”
I laugh as I pull in a mouthful of smoke. “Doesn’t feel like that.” Letting it out in a harsh line to disguise the fear in me, I whisper, “Those months feel like a lifetime.”
“Perspective. You’re forgetting it wasn’t a lifetime. You had a life outside of it. We didn’t. We were born in it.” He smiles without any warmth. “You’re not going to be much use with one hand if it’s still healing.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Or I can help you.” He sighs, pushing away from the railing.
“Why?”
“Wives. As soon as you put a ring on their finger, they take control of you.”
“Not wives,” I correct. “The Leroux effect. The only ring they need is someone wrapped around their finger.”
“You don’t look unhappy about living there.”
“It’s home. I’ve been living for Delilah’s every whim since I was six.”
Truer words have never been spoken. I’ve belonged to her from the first moment.
All those little memories, how she’d laugh, or the most inconsequential detail has been catalogued.
I spent my entire sentence reliving those moments with her.
From her walking into me, telling me a stupid joke, school trips no child gives a fuck about, to her laying in my bed.
They were on a consistent loop I was never able to escape.
“You’re going to have to wait for your stitches to heal,” Daigon says. “Then we can go. But I kill Lizbeth. You can have Harkin to practice on.”
“Deal.”