Page 66 of Savage

“I have to go,” Kick whispers. I open my eyes to find he’s standing in the pew beside me and the church has emptied, save for us. He bites the piercing in his lip. His gaze locks onto mine, and I see so much buried there that he can’t say. He’s torn, and somehow so much older in this moment. He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Everything you’re feeling right now, use it. Channel it into something useful because if you don’t, this opportunity escapes us forever, and I can’t live with that.”

Neither can I.

Without another word, he leaves through the main doors. The blade pressing into my lower back is cool against my fevered flesh. I take a minute to breathe, and then I remove my heels and my wig, and I unbutton my top and fold it, stowing my belongings under the seat, so I’m left in only my black singlet and pants.

And then I wait.

It feels like an eternity before the plump, sweaty altar boy comes striding back in, and the Priest follows. He doesn’t seem surprised when he sees his church is not empty. “You go on home, John. I’ll take that,” he says to his protégé, holding out his hand for the processional cross he raped me with. “Please tell your mother I said thank you for the biscotti.”

“Thank you, Father, I will. Good night,” John says and hurries out of the church. The Priest walks over and closes the doors, sliding the heavy wooden bar across them.

The sound is so final, so weighty that it’s deafening. I’m completely alone with my rapist. I try channelling my fear and rage into something useful like Kick told me, but honestly, I can’t make up from down. I don’t feel numb like I did before the Cop put his gun to my head. I feel everything.

“I knew you’d find me,” he says, sitting down in the pew beside me. “I’ve been waiting for you, Kayla.”

I cringe when I hear my name on his tongue. The whole time I was locked in the warehouse, I’d believed they had never known it. They’d certainly never used it; they referred to me only as the whore. I’d thought I was just some random girl they’d plucked from the streets, but now I realise just how dumb that was. They chose me because I looked like I belonged to somebody. Someone would report me missing, and they would know exactly where to go if I ever escaped.Had they done that with the other girls?

“The other’s failed God’s mission, but not me. I am his light, his beacon in the darkness of this hell we call earth, and I will not fail, because I shall be called into the arms of the Lord.” He leans towards me and his cologne—no, not cologne, it’s the scent of sandalwood and myrrh, the smell of this church—infiltrates my nose, it invades my mind, and memories rape me. The Priest places his big hand on my knee. I flinch.

“Shh, shh, shh, you serve a greater purpose than you know. You are the key to redemption, Kayla.”

“There is no redemption for you, you sick fuck,” I say and pull the knife from my back. I slash against the arm holding my leg. He gasps and yanks away, and then I’m racing down the aisle toward the altar. His robes whisper as he casually follows me.

“That’s something you don’t know about me, Kayla.” His booming voice fills the church. I feel it boring into my eardrums, scratching, clawing, and settling into my bones. “That I love to hunt. We never got the chance to play that game, you and I, but I think now is as good a time as any to begin. Don’t you?”

I run past the pulpit, past the altar, and reach the door on the right side of the room, but it’s locked. Panic seizes me as I realiseI have the wrong door. I glance at the Priest, and then at the opposite side of the church, to the vestry.

He smiles. “Will you get there in time or won’t you, Whore?”

I bolt for the door, but only make it as far as the altar before he is on the other side, taunting me with which direction he’s going to move in. I knock over the goblet of wine and a handful of other sacred objects. The Priest sees red and lunges across the marble table at me. I sprint for the vestry, but he yanks me back by the hair and throws me on the ground, my head smacking against the marble steps of the altar. I scream as he bends over me. He works the knife from my hand, slamming my wrists repeatedly against the marble until I let go. He presses the blade to my throat. He can cut me, he can slice me open any way he wants to, but I know something he doesn’t.

“Time to meet your maker, motherfucker,” Kick says, cocking the pistol before he shoots him in the back of both knees. The Priest screams and drops to the ground beside me. Blood is everywhere, pooling out of his body as he trembles in shock. Kick offers me a hand, and I climb to my feet with his help. He pulls me against him with one arm, keeping the gun in the other hand firmly trained on the Priest’s head. “You okay?”

Of course, I’m not okay. I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay again.

“You’ll burn for this … the two of you will burn,” the Priest says.

“Shut the fuck up.” Kick fires another shot into the Priest’s shoulder. It’s fitted with a silencer, but guns are loud. The Priest’s screams are even louder. The church isn’t in a residential area, and that’s maybe the only reason we could pull this off, but I still cringe with the way the sound bounces all around the room with the acoustics.

“Hold the gun.” Biker hands me the gun, and I point it at the Priest. I still have no fucking idea how to use one of these, but I’ve seen Kick do it enough.

I just stare as Kick binds the Priest’s hands together, stuffing the tie in his mouth. He screams as we move him to the altar. If Kick had a stronger partner, it might’ve gone easier, but we both wind up covered in blood. Biker pulls the long stretch of rope from the garbage bags he brought in through the vestry. He ties him to the altar with a series of complicated knots. I don’t ask how he knows how to do that. I don’t want to know, not really.

I stand beside the Priest’s head. The darkness in his eyes has returned, but there’s fear in there too. The human mind is such a fragile thing. We can feel so powerful one moment, and so small the next.

“All this time, I’d built you up in my head,” I say. “I’d see you in my dreams, hovering over me, pushing into me. I’d feel your sweat. I could feel how evil you were, and each time you came inside me I wanted to die.” I level my gaze on him, feeling the shift within me. The victim takes a back seat. He feels it too. I see it in his eyes.

“I don’t want that anymore. You’re just a man, and for the first time since you took me, I’m going to sleep soundly tonight, because I got to hear you scream. I’m not afraid of you anymore. I found something bigger than you.”

He laughs. It’s a fake and showy sound. “Your biker?”

“No.Me.”

“And there’s the girl we were trying to find.” He smiles. “There’s the woman worthy of being called the sacrifice. If we hadn’t found you, you’d have never found that. You should thank me.”

“Oh, I plan to. I plan to repay every single scream that left my mouth.”

Kick shoots me a look, questioning whether I want to go through with this. I’ve never been surer of anything in my life. I nod. He hands me his knife—not the tiny one I cut the priest with before, but the kind you know is really a knife, with a wicked blade, sturdy handle, and a deadly sharp point.

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