Chapter 41 No One to Save Me
No One to Save Me
RIPLEY
Iwake up cold, my wrists bound behind my back, tied so tight that the ropes are cutting off my circulation.
I try to stand up, but my muscles are so weak I barely get halfway, everything made even worse by something heavy and metal attached to my ankle.
And then I realize I can’t see. They’ve got me in a goddamn blindfold.
“Fuck. Not again.”
How is it possible that I get chained to a floor twice in less than a year?
I jam my eyes shut, trying to conjure up the last thing I can remember. If I can do that, I might be able to figure out where the fuck I am and how I got here.
The church.
The killing, and all that fire.
Preacher on the ground, getting the shit beaten out of him.
Screaming for me.
I think I woke up at one point in the back of a van, maybe heard a radio?
But where the hell did they take me?
Bile rises up the back of my throat and I try to break down the reality of the situation.
No Preacher.
No Raphael.
No Wren.
No one to save me.
Just like when I was a little girl.
They say history repeats itself, but I didn’t think it would be this goddamn brutal.
I slump on the ground, letting the grief overwhelm me, not in ripples but massive tidal waves, slamming against me over and over again. I scream until I’m hoarse, crying until there’s nothing left.
I’ll die thrashing. Fighting.
But I’ll never beg.
Not even for death.
And then a voice cuts through my agonized sobs.
“Are you done? That was really annoying.”
“Wren?”
“Yeah.” She coughs. “Coming to you live from… hell, I guess.”
“They took you too?”
“Yep. Looks like they got a 2 for 1 special out of us.”
She gives a sardonic chuckle.
“Are you chained up too?”
“Well, if I wasn’t, I’d be trying to fuckin’ untie you, wouldn’t I?”
I grunt, wiggling around as I try to figure out a way to sit up. It takes a minute, but eventually, I manage to heave my body upward and use my hands to weakly push myself into a sitting position.
“Try finding a wall. Hurts your back less if you’ve got something to lean on.”
“I don’t know where the wall is, Wren. I can’t fucking see.”
“Yeah, you just woke up, it’ll take a minute for you to get your bearings.”
I blink, breathing slowly as I try to center myself. I feel nauseous, and my head is pounding, but I’m not sure if that’s from the gas or something else. Now that I think about it, the whole room smells like piss and unwashed bodies. That would make anyone want to vomit.
“I think they drugged me,” I rasp.
“Yeah, me too. Probably so we couldn’t figure out where they were taking us.”
“What happened at the church?”
“Someone hit Preacher in the back of the head when we were stumbling around like idiots. They beat the shit out of Raphael with the butt of a shotgun.”
“Did they make it?”
“I don’t know,” Wren mutters. “But we gotta figure a way out of this shit. I’m not dying here.”
“Where the fuck are we, anyway? Did any of them say anything?”
“An old police station. I heard one of them talking about it when they were carrying us—”
The sound of footsteps echoing outside our cell makes me freeze, and I can hear Wren’s chain drag along the floor, as she shifts away from the sound.
Keys jingle, and the door swings open, and moments later the blindfold is ripped from my face, and I’m hit with a bright beam of light.
I hiss, trying my best to turn away as my eyes struggle to adjust.
That’s when I hear his stomach-churning chuckle.
“There she is.”
Adonis lowers the light, towering over me in a black tank top and jeans, his pale arms covered in all the crude prison tattoos I remember.
He used to intimidate me, but now he just looks like a shitty knockoff of Preacher, complete with a lit cigarette dangling preciously from the corner of his mouth.
The only major change is a shock of white-blond hair. It was all black when I saw him last.
Maybe he dyed it to throw off the cops— you know, since some clever killer framed him and all.
“I told them to save some of this tight little pussy for me.”
“Your breath smells like someone took a shit in your mouth.”
He grabs me by the hair, yanking me to my feet and slamming me face-first against the wall so hard that I almost black out all over again.
His flashlight falls to the ground, lighting up the space around me and as he yanks my head back, and in my dazed state I find my focus drifting.
There are dull claw marks torn into the old brick, along with smeared patches of dried blood.
Suddenly, I know the smell I’ve been choking on is death.
“You think you’re so fucking clever framing me for what you did to Gabriel.
” He spins me around, leaning in close and licking the side of my face.
“I couldn’t believe it when I heard, his quiet obedient little bitch actually did something for once in her life?
Now I’m starting to wonder if it even was that you.
Maybe you got those two fucks back at the church to do it, paid ‘em with a quickie?”
I grit my teeth, swallowing all that rage.
“Doesn’t matter I guess, they didn’t put up much of a fight.”
I can feel my stomach lurch. Preacher wouldn’t go down that easily, it would take a tank and an army to kill that man.
“Nothing to say? I mean, I guess there’s not much of a story to tell.
After my boys beat the shit out of you all, we cleaned up the rest of those fucks with the guns real quick.
” He sneers. “If it helps you sleep at night, I want you to know those two you were with absolutely suffered. Left a couple of my best men and told them to make it as slow and painful as possible.”
I can feel the tears coming.
I know Preacher is alive. I know it, but the last time I saw him, he…
I snap myself out of it, spitting blood right into Adonis’ smirking face.
“You fucking cunt! You wanna know what happens to the bitches who fight back?”
He recoils, pulling his arm back and hitting me straight in the face.
Once.
Twice.
However many times it takes for me to barely be able to breathe, let alone see.
Don’t react.
Don’t give them anything.
“You fucking whore!”
He knees me in the gut, forcing me back to the ground, and my mind starts to wander, rattling off whatever facts it can relate to the current situation.
There are four ways human beings respond to threats.
Everyone knows about fight or flight, but some people freeze.
Others fawn and appease to avoid getting hurt.
I did that for years with Gabriel.
I’ll make the meal again.
I’ll do it all right this time.
If I try hard enough, I’ll finally be perfect.
Adonis wraps the chain around my neck while the sound of my sister screaming echoes in the distance like she’s miles away.
I can still feel everything, all the pain and the nausea, but it’s like I’m experiencing it through a lens; like I’m floating above my own body watching him choke the life out of me.
It’s the only real defence I can muster, aside from digging my nails into my palms to keep from crying out as the tears fill my eyes.
“I had the RCMP on my ass because of you. They said they found a finger…”
He chuckles, grabbing my hand and twisting it until I finally let out a strangled, choking wail.
“I guess it was this one.”
“Let her go!”
Wren lunges for him, but she clearly forgot about her chain, hitting its full length before being dragged back down to the filthy concrete.
“Shut the fuck up bitch, or I’ll put a bullet through your head and let my boys take care of your corpse.”
Adonis turns back to me, pure malice etched onto his face.
“I don’t know if he ever told you, but Gabriel owed me. I guess he’s finally paid up.”
I‘m pretty sure he keeps talking, something about all the torture he’s going to put me through, about how I’m going to wish I was dead, but I’m already miles away, his voice fading into the background again.
It's a tactic I picked up as a young girl, a fracturing of reality that allows me not to feel, or at least to feel less.
The disgust, the blood pouring down my face, the pain that feels like a thousand bullets ripping through me… it all begins to numb into nothing.
And soon, I’m not even here.
I’m back at the ranch with Preacher, eating breakfast, and watching him read one of his old books of poetry, his brows knitting together as he nibbles on his bacon. The sun is pouring in from outside, the dogs laid lazily at our feet, as Adonis’s skull sits in the middle of the kitchen table.
The perfect centerpiece.
I hold on to the image, to the pure, unadulterated joy it makes me feel.
To the hope that I’ll be able to live to see him again.
“I thought about killing you, but that’s too merciful,” Adonis whispers, his words cutting their way through my fantasy. “Now I’ve got something much better in mind.”
I close my eyes, keeping my focus on Preacher. On sunrises. On the way Wren and I laughed on the porch.
On the horses that galloped so freely.
I can be one of them today, even if it’s just in my mind.
Adonis doesn’t stop, but I take every hit, refusing to give him the reaction he’s looking for, and after a few minutes, I’m back to barely noticing the pain. In the haze, my eyes fall on my sister, tears streaming down her face.
All I want is to hold her.
I’ve never wanted that before, and there’s only one thing preventing it right now, one more thing I have to destroy to get what I want, and he’s right in front of me.
Adonis gets to his feet, taking a long drag before blowing the smoke straight into my face. I don’t even flinch, and he chuckles, shaking his head.
“You’re mine now, bitch. I’m gonna teach you that, one way or another.”