Page 136 of Kings Fear No One
I flatten my hands on the floorboard and push myself to sit up. My body screams in protest. The palms of my scraped up hands burn. The ribs on my left side creak like they’ve been snapped in half. I lift myself into a half upright position, using a podium that’s behind me as a prop.
Just that little bit of movement has me panting from exertion.
I’m a bloody, mangled mess.
“Excellent. You’re awake.”
The voice, cool and aloof, slithers out of the silence like an invisible snake. The man it belongs to emerges from the shadows a second after. Abraham is still the same pallid, icy-eyed man with sheets of white-blond hair that lay flat and lifeless.
But instead of the luxury robes he’d once worn, he’s in tattered threads. An old set of robes that’re torn and mucked up with mud and dirt.
He’s not clean and god-like as he’d once presented himself.
That illusion has melted away for a reality that’s less flattering.
I might be lying broken and bruised, but one thing I’ll never be again is deferential. Not to a piece of fucking shit like Abraham or his Chosen Saints.
“Finally showing your ugly face,” I spit out. “You alone or you got minions like the fucking coward you are?”
Abraham starts toward me, a limp in his step. Probably from where I shot him the last time we squared off. His expression’s emotionless and calm, a blank slate offering nothing.
Just indifference and loathing.
“Tell me, Believer Logan, how is it possible you’re lying on my floor bleeding out, yet still so rebellious? Still so disobedient?”
“Why don’t you tell me how you’re still a sack of shit first?”
His thin lips stretch into a wry smile. “You really have not learned your lesson. It seems we will have to teach you. Saints, I am in need of your assistance!”
He’s calling out to someone unseen. A second drums by before I learn who—two of his guards enter the worship room on cue, clutching rifles, looking as disheveled as Abraham. It’s obvious their latest accommodations haven’t been as luxurious as the previous compounds were.
The broad-shouldered, twenty-something chickenshit I recognize as Amos. The second guy I recognize too, though he wasn’t a saint when I knew him.
“Hershel!?”
He ignores me, too locked into Abraham to pay me any mind.
It seems in the time since the Steel Kings raided the original compound and now, he’s been promoted. He’s gone from believer to saint.
I’d once thought of Hershel as a grandfatherly figure. That perception disintegrates into nothing. If he wants to side with the tyrannical cult leader, so be it. His blood will be spilled by the end of tonight too.
…assuming I’m able to get the upper hand somehow.
“Yes, Leader?” Amos answers like the obedient fuck he is.
“Pick Believer Logan up and put him on the table. It’s time to prepare for our latest ceremony. Sacrifices are to be made. Unfavorable souls must be purged from our midst.”
The pair march over to drag me off the floor as instructed. I spit at their feet and curse at them.
“Touch me and be prepared to lose your fucking hands!”
My threats fall on deaf ears.
The pain that’d been agonizing moments ago takes a back burner as my temper snaps. I jerk and twist against their grip, doing what I can to fight them off. A few broken ribs, deep bruising, bleeding cuts and scrapes, and a throbbing skull pose limitations.
I’m in no condition for a physical confrontation. I’m running on fumes after being thrown however many feet off my bike.
Amos and Hershel each take an end and hoist me up on the table. Rope is used to bind me down. The rough texture burns against the many open scrapes I already have. I grunt at the new flavor of pain, refusing to let them know how much it hurts.
