AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“But he won’t sit in it while I’m in command of the Wolves. The same way you will pick one of your country estates to remain at until your bones are ready to be buried.” Shock, disappointment, and fear cloud her eyes. “You’re a dowager, and it’s time that your social and living arrangements reflected that.”
A hysterical laugh bubbles from her, causing my hands to fist tightly around the gun and the knife in my hands. For years, she’s controlled everything and everyone. My father allowed her too much influence, and it’s how we’ve ended up here. I won’t make his mistakes.
A scream echoes from the theatre attached to this room. The deep timbre is cracked through with an agonised shrill.
“You’ve lost your mind,” she tells me, grasping Simon’s hand tightly in hers. “Is this how you plan on governing this society? Killing and maiming and…and banishing anyone that stands in your way?”
“No, Mother. I will kill the enemy, and I will maim traitors. I will only exile those that are so deeply insignificant that their existence doesn’t matter to me. Whether you are dead or alive, you have no use to me.”
“Your father would be ashamed.”
“My father is dead because of you.” The bellow of my voice ricochets around us. I’m so sick and tired of her accusations and manipulations. I just want her out of my sight. I want her gone before my rage demands her blood too. “You are dismissed,” I tell her as I face Julian. He’s stoically watching everything unfold without so much as a whisper. “Show the Princess and the Earl out.”
He nods, ushering them out of the room as I turn to go back inside the theatre, ignoring her fit of anger. The air in here is arctic, and the sound of the music in the background welcomes me again.
“Are they talking yet?” I ask Ryan as he puts the dermatome down and shakes his head. “Not yet. I think it’s time to switch things up.”
I’m not sure how many layers of skin he has taken from Warren’s chest, but he’s not bleeding yet. However, when he spritzes the area with ice-cold water, he screams so loud that Mary pulls at her restraints on the surgical table.
There’s only one question they have to answer, and I’ll put them out of their misery. But until then, I’ll keep cutting, and Ryan will keep skinning.
Until I know where Charles Chapman and the rest of his cunts are hiding, there’ll be no mercy or humanity from me.
“Do you have something to tell me?” I ask, standing over her bleeding form as I pick up the bone saw and turn it on so that the shrill sound cuts through the music. “I’m bored of the scalpel, Mary. I’m bored of watching your blood drip slowly.”
“Go to hell,” she spits up at me.
“This is hell, Mary. Mary, Mary…Mary.” Holding the saw over the superficial cut along her sternum, I hover down to her belly before I touch the blade lightly to the skin. The sudden spray of blood spatters up into her face and over my hands as I hold it in the same place. The heat from the blade burns the skin and flesh, with the acrid scent filling the air. “Well?”
Tears stream down her temples to her bloody hair as she shakes her head vehemently. “Fuck you,” she chokes on her sob.
“I don’t fuck whores.” I blow out a breath, guiding the saw lower. “But I do cut them. I cut them open—” I press the saw deeper, watching it slice her open like the carcass of a deer. “—I cut them apart…”
The mulching of the blade sawing through her flesh chews through me. It’s an ugly sound, but it makes my blood sing. My pulse thrums eagerly in my veins the louder she cries, begging for her father to save her.
“So much skin…” I tell her, bringing the blade away and dragging the flat over her thigh so that it shreds the top layer of skin before I slice through the outside of her leg. “So much flesh. Oh, Mary, Mary…Mary…”
The sound of the dermatome vibrating to life brings on Warren’s snivels.
“You seen this, Sloane?” Ryan nudges me with his phone, holding the lit-up screen in my view. “Skin has three layers. Says here that the second layer has blood vessels and lymphs…” he says as I’m reading the message from Casper.
We have the boy and the girl.
I didn’t want to resort to this. Eve will be upset that I’m about to use the boy she calls her friend to lure his father out. But it’s a means to an end. They hurt her to get to me; I’m going to get all of John Chapman’s children in one room, and if he doesn’t come out of the shadows with his big brother, he won’t have any left.
Warren screams when Ryan harvests another strip of skin. Tiny globules of blood build up as the blood vessels are torn, like red beads of sweat bleeding together to run down his chest to his shrivelled cock.
“How long do you think it would take to bleed a grown man dry this way?” Ryan muses, running the dermatome down the other side of Warren’s chest.
“He doesn’t know anything,” Mary pants through another deep drag of the saw through her shin.
She bleeds like a beauty as her flesh peels around her bones. I wonder how loud she’d scream if I sawed right through them a joint at a time.
“Do you love your siblings, Mary?” I ask, putting the saw down and grasping her pale face. She’s lost enough blood that she’s trembling. Shivers wrack violently through her body, making her bleed more as the puddle drips onto the floor and the music in the background repeats again and again.
I’m not Jesus. I’m not Jesus.
I will not forgive.
