Chapter 18 #2
Screams echo in the dark along with painful groans and shocked yells, something heavy dropping all around me, and a weird smell floats in the air. I just blink and blink, hoping to adjust my vision to the dark to understand what’s going on.
Seconds trickle by as more screams fill the air, and then someone must have knocked the operating tables as well because the devices fall on the floor, a knife sliding right to my cage.
I quickly reach for it and twist the lock on my ankle chains, opening it up and freeing myself so I can practically glue my nose to the bar, trying to see despite the hurt rocking off me. Every movement is a chore.
More time passes, and the light finally brightens up the space around me again. I wince and blink as blood is everywhere.
On the floor, on the furniture, on the walls, and all around the dead bodies scattered over the perimeter, the men’s insides practically hanging out.
Some of them have their heads cut off, and I hold back my gagging reflex, too mesmerized by John and his men, all tied up, sitting right in the middle.
The wounds on their bodies are oozing blood while the doctor is lying on the operating table, a silver sword piercing his stomach as he struggles for breath and cries out in pain.
“Please,” John begs, and his tortured voice brings joy all over my system. His arms lie at a weird angle, so they must be broken. “Please kill me,” he begs the man standing above him, and that’s when I finally study him.
An angel of death himself, I think.
He’s wearing a black turtleneck sweater, black jeans, and boots, with his dark hair falling slightly below his ears.
His mouth curves in a smile at this, and he flips the knife dripping blood through his glove-covered fingers and clicks his tongue.
“Ah, no. Death would be too easy for the likes of you.” He kicks Dylan, who breathes through his broken nose.
“I killed all your staff, which amounts to what? Around fifty to sixty men? They participated in all this shit willingly, but you…” He places the knife under John’s chin, tilting it up so he couldn’t look away from him.
“You and these four created this fucked-up ring, and you have to suffer for years, and even that won’t be enough to atone for your sins. ”
“Who are you? We can pay you—” Whatever he wants to suggest ends in an agonizing scream when the man stabs the knife into his cheek, dragging the blade across it and creating a scar that will never heal.
I should know, I have enough on my back to attest to the fact.
“I’ll let them all deal with you. You think you’re suffering now? You haven’t seen anything yet.”
I shift a little in the cage, and that gets his attention as he turns to me and zeroes his emerald-green eyes in on me.
He cocks his head to the side and slowly walks up to me while I just gape at him, because no matter who this man is…he just saved me from death.
He crouches down in front of the cage, and asks, “What’s your name, little one?
” I stay silent. “All the kids are in a different room. Had I known you were here, I would have asked you to close your eyes.” I shake my head, because what?
I so wish I had seen him doing all the bad things to them.
Their suffering is my right! “Hang in there. They’ll be here in about ten minutes and help you.
All this—” He swirls his finger in the air.
“—is over. You’ll finally be free.” He gets up.
“Oh, and if you can? Tell Lachlan that Rush said hi.” He leaves as swiftly as he came while the man who tortured me for the past two years struggles to breathe and moans in pain.
* * *
And true to his word, the powerful men come in exactly ten minutes.
They take the bad men away, free the children, and put them in some special cars, and promise to help me while trying to get me out of the cage, but I refuse.
I don’t trust them and expect them to hurt me.
Instead, though, they accept my wish and keep me in the cage as they get me outside.
All these men who used to hit me, withhold food from me, or keep me in a tight grip while the clients touched or beat me up lay on the grass with birds pecking at their dead flesh.
For the first time, my heart stirs with happiness so strong I barely resist the urge to laugh.
What a beautiful sight it is to watch all these dead bodies.
They put the cage in the van, taking me somewhere far away, and in this moment, I couldn’t care less because I survived.
Thank you, Thor, I whisper to the van’s ceiling.
All the while I think about the dark-haired man named Rush who came to the rescue.
What is it like to be…just like him?
Have all the skills, strength, and power to kill all these men?
And is there a way to make them suffer more…to prolong the torture…prolong the begging and cries?
* * *
They bring me to a fancy mansion and leave me in a huge room with sunlight, offering me water and food.
I refuse it.
They talk to me, reassure me they can help, and call in the nurse, which only increases my panic, because no!
Nurses and doctors usually looked me over to either give me painkillers or prepare me for the sick perverts.
Everything hurts, and I bite on my lip some more, resisting the urge to ask questions or ask for help, even if they seem better than John.
There are around seven of them, and from how they talk, I catch a few names or nicknames.
Arson, Callum, Madman, Micaden, Psychopath, Sociopath.
Such weird names, but somehow they fit. Compared to them, John’s men seem like clueless idiots.
I hear deep voices accompanied by heavy footsteps.
They all left me around thirty minutes ago to do whatever.
“Aileen won’t be a little girl forever, Lachlan,” a blue-and-orange-haired man everyone calls Arson mutters as he enters the room with a man wearing a perfectly tailored three-piece suit that fits him in a way John’s suits could never.
I swallow at the power radiating from him, showing me, in all its glory that I could never best him in anything, and while every other man made me curious…this one inspires confused emotions like awe and fear.
His cold blue eyes focus on me, and I pull at my torn clothes covering my dirty skin, despising to look so weak and broken in front of him for some reason. His blond hair glistens under the light, and his ruthless expression makes me sit up straight.
It almost pains me to be unworthy of his attention, as I know it’s inevitable that all men hate me for merely breathing, and he wouldn’t be the exception.
So this is the mighty Lachlan.
A man everyone fears.
He steps closer to me, so I scoot back, hitting the bars, blinking, and hoping I give nothing away.
My body still trembles, too exhausted and starved to play along with me, but I try my best to seem brave.
I freeze when he says, “Their death needs to be long, agonizing, and never-ending.” Satisfaction flashes in Arson’s gray eyes while something wicked crosses his face, and that inspires more curiosity in my confused mind.
Would he do something horrible to them like Rush did? Can I watch?
“They’ll wish they were never born.”
I always knew the cage is small. Next to Lachlan, it shrinks even more as it reaches his hips.
His nose twitches, and my cheeks heat. He probably must smell the urine, as John wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom anywhere else, and I couldn’t hold it in for more than twenty hours.
This cage is my safe space still despite everything, and if he takes me out of here…what would happen to me next?
“Hi,” he says to me, his voice deep yet gentle in a way no one else has ever used with me, and I blink, fisting my hands even more before hitting the bars again with my back, breathing heavily.
All this is too confusing. It must be a game.
“Maybe he can’t talk?” Arson places his hand on top of the cage. I look up and dig my teeth more into my abused lip. Will he shake it like Dylan until I barf all over the cage to force me to talk? “There must be a reason they found him defective and took their anger out on him.”
Oh. They think there was a reason they didn’t treat me like the other kids?
“Not defective enough to kill him. We need to get him to the hospital. These wounds might get infected. Plus, I don’t like how his elbow sticks out, and his hand has become red.
They must have broken it.” Lachlan wants to help me?
That’s so weird. I thought he’d hurt my arm some more so he could force me into doing whatever he wants.
“Call the doc to meet me at the hospital so I won’t have to answer any questions.
And work on his paperwork. Once the doctor assesses his age, we will have to create something. ”
Doc? As in like John’s surgeon? No way!
“How are you planning to get him there in a cage?”
“Easily. You think all of you have been a picnic in the park?”
My brow furrows at this. Does this mean they were once like me, locked in a cage, and that Lachlan saved them too?
I don’t have time to dwell on it much as Lachlan opens the cage, hunches down, and presses his knees to the floor. He extends his hand to catch me.
Instant revulsion fills me, and a piercing scream rips from my throat.
No touching, no touching, no touching!
Since it doesn’t stop Lachlan, I scream again, kicking his hands away, but instead, he catches my ankle and drags me toward him as I thrash on the floor, trying to escape.
My skin burns from all the touches. It’s worse than my broken arm or any beating anyone could inflict on me.
I spit in his face, knowing how it used to work in the past because the men would drop me in frustration, then beat me some more, but they wouldn’t touch me.
Lachlan ignores it all, though, and marches toward the door, withstanding my kicking, screaming, and thrashing as we pass his men who watch us.