Chapter 65 Incurable Disease #2
“His trigger is fear and superiority over a parental figure—a mother. That’s what gets that asshole to travel.” Church stares right through me, working out an equation in his head. “I’m not sure he even needs the gore and theatrics to do it.”
“What’s mine? I have to get back to him, Church!” I choke on another wet cough.
“Don’t you see it yet? It’s love, Snow. You have to let yourself feel that protective, everlasting love.
Think about each time you’ve traveled! Your uncle sacrificed himself, using his own hands to guard you from being struck by the sword.
Your sweetheart did the same! It’s love!
Use it as a key and the compass to navigate where you’re going.
Command the Nightlung when you enter it.
Love is a motivating factor in your journey! ”
An epiphany tingles in my chest, trickling down to my fingertips.
That tremor deep in my bones comes alive.
A song that flips and spins within my veins, soaring to make contact with the Nightlung.
I can feel it open its eyes and look into my soul.
I think about Uncle Niles’s shredded hands as he blocked the attacks with his body.
A powerful comprehension opens inside me, lifting its head and absorbing the love that is produced from that memory.
I think of Dellilian saving us.
I think of Niklaus beating Albatross to a pulp when he had me strapped down to his bed.
I think of my mother burning the asylum to the ground.
It’s so close, I can feel its mystical fingers reach out to me…
“Good. It looks like you have brutalized one without my command. Now, you’d have your fun with Miss….” A slender man with dark gray hair, pinched smoker’s lips, and pale blue eyes flips through a few pages on a clipboard. “Miss Snow Abatora. Bring Dai to the front and eliminate this mock threat.”
I watch Church dissociate again. It’s quicker this time as the new alter is disoriented, looking around to catch himself back up.
“To which alter am I speaking with now?” the brooding man asks. I focus harder on his narrow face with aristocratic bone structure. He wears obsidian velvet and a tailored suit that drips of nobility and old money.
“Kane.”
I look back at my father with bulging eyes. They want him to eliminate me? What’s the significance of the alter Dai again?
“Thought so. It is time for Dai to front now, young man. Do this quickly, and we will put the Mind Phantoms away for a week.”
Dai…
My stomach collapses on itself. Dai. I remember Krimson and I eavesdropped on my mother talking about that alter with Uncle Warrose. Demechnef wanted an alter who would ruthlessly murder like an animal. They forced him to rip people apart with his teeth. That’s when Dai was split!
Holy shit.
I steady my breathing.
Part of his conditioning must be to bond with the women they bring in and then force him to tear them to shreds. It trains obedience no matter the emotional attachment.
Kane’s chocolate eyes dart from me, back to the man making commands.
“No, Mr. Demechnef.”
My jaw drops as I stare at the evil bastard who is Niklaus’s fucking grandfather.
“You remember what happened the first time you refused, don’t you? How painful that was for your system?” The tyrant of Demechnef is unblinking with eyes that look like preserved death.
“Yes.” He lowers his head.
“Defy me again, and I will make the punishment on your system last twice as long.”
My father flicks his hopeless gaze back to me once more.
“I can’t…”
“He said no, Vlademur.”
To my horror, I nearly cower and submit as Niklaus’s grandfather redirects his razor-sharp glare to me. And I am so much less than nothing to him. I am a woman. Property. Snake bait.
In my periphery, I can see that Vlademur’s hold on my father has profound roots. With this simple threat, calm and unfeeling—he was able to influence Kane with little to no effort. My father starts dissociating. It’s a survival disorder after all. He is protecting their system. All of the alters.
The trauma response is unstoppable at Vlademur Demechnef’s mercy.
“You don’t have to do this, Kane.” I ignore whatever this sadistic dictator will say next.
My father is all that I see now. “You are the smartest man in the world. There’s a reason that you’re the only one who could help me!
Vlademur can’t control you anymore. You and Dessin are far more powerful, and they know that if they lose control of you, that’s their death certificates. ”
Sweat drips down the sides of Kane’s face as he hyperventilates. Those pupils dilate. The muscles in his upper back clench and contract.
“Please. Don’t let them control you anymore. You are the puppet master.”
Vlademur waves a few gentlemen in to observe my demise. But I hold out hope that he’ll pull through. That Dessin will come to the front and take over. Please!
I rise to my feet, ripping the IV from my arm and back away. This isn’t a fight I can win. Not with my father. Not with this type of alter born of forced violence to protect any other alter from having to harm an innocent person who is used as bait.
Kane’s eyes are glassy, as if someone blew out a candle in his mind. His breathing changes pitch, no longer at a human rhythm. His spine arches, and he crouches to the ground with knuckles grinding into the floor.
“Kane…” I whisper, standing behind my chair, as if that could protect me now.
From his position on all fours, he lifts his head. Nostrils flare. Black eyes see right through me. Head twitches like an animal hearing sound I’m incapable of catching.
Through the fear, I try to remember what Church told me about time traveling. My trigger. That protective love. But it’s hard to internalize it when I’m staring my own violent, gory death in the face at my father’s hands.
What if I can’t do it? Like so many times I’ve failed myself, this would top them all. I can’t make it back to Niklaus if I’m dead.
That sensation to protect him pulses into my fingertips, and I can taste the windy, cold air of the Nightlung.
“Dai! You are stronger than them! Protect your alters by killing the enemy. Not me!” I scream as he shifts on his heels, moving to me like a predator stalking his prey.
The air around us is heavy and spiked with the ghosts of the innocent women who have died this way.
I look at what they’ve done to my father and choke on a sob for him.
He was a child before he was a monster. He was a child before he won the war with my mother.
He had only loved one woman his entire life.
He was a child when he met her. He was a child when they started turning him into this.
I wish he could see me.
I wish I could tell him.
I sob into my hand as the look in his eyes tells me there is no getting through to him. Nothing I could say. Nothing I could do. Tears pressurize through my sinuses, causing me to hiccup at his current state.
He’s a non-human alter. Trained to be this way. Abused. No choice but this disorder made for their own survival. I never put this much thought into my father’s disorder. But seeing it up close. Knowing what these adults had to do to him to give it life.
And the murderous, animalistic growls turn into a warning snarl before Dai leaps toward me, soaring over a coffee table and tackling me to the ground. Hands pinning my shoulders to the floor, snapping his teeth in my face as I scream.
“Daddy, please!”
Dai freezes over me.
“Attack!” an old man yells.
Though language doesn’t register with him. My words do.
Daddy, please!
They sink into his mind and penetrate that feral, inhuman subconscious. His lashes shudder, and his left eyebrow ticks. A breath is sucked in through his nose, slow and shallow.
And that’s the feeling. My heart implodes for my father. The feeling is dumped into my nerves, and a pair of phantom hands throws the door wide open to the Nightlung.
I hold this sensation of love for him so close, my nails draw blood into my palms. Tears don’t stop coming down my cheeks. I step into the tear in this reality the way one would step into a lake for a swim. But this time, as I enter its abyss, I tell it where I’m going.
I think of Niklaus in the Vexamen Prison.
I’m coming for you, my sweetheart.