“Two…”
“I don’t know anything, okay?!” Fehrin shouted.
“Three…”
“Seriously, stop!” He jerked around in the stock. Kinzer assumed it was his body’s desperate attempt to escape.
“Four…”
Tears rushed from his eyes, collecting with his sweat as they dripped off his face.
“Please… please… I don’t know!”
“Five…”
Hayde’s eyes were dead as he shoved the sword into Fehrin’s hole, stabbing about carelessly, without regard. And yet Kinzer could tell by how he held back that he didn’t want to kill Fehrin… just torture the shit out of him.
“Fuck! Fuck!”
Hayde twisted the hilt and continued penetrating the sadistic higherling.
Blood poured onto the concrete between his feet.
“I… don’t… know…” Fehrin forced past his lips between screams.
Hayde finally pulled the blade from Fehrin’s ass and turned to Kinzer, his face covered in blood that had shot from Fehrin’s hole.
“I don’t think he knows.”
And Kinzer had to agree. Or at least, if that wasn’t going to get it out of him, he couldn’t imagine what they could do that would.
Fehrin panted and whimpered. “I don’t fucking know,” he repeated several times, seemingly an automatic response to protect his ass from further injury.
“Well, fuck,” Kinzer said.
But there had to be something that could help them.
“Where do you keep the supplies?” he asked.
“Downstairs. In a couple of rooms beside the Sunday school classrooms.”
Kinzer urged Hayde to the door.
Hayde stepped beside Fehrin, curled his arm around his neck, and sliced the sword across his throat.
Fehrin gargled as blood pushed past his lips and through the slit in his neck, collecting on the floor before him.
Hayde looked at Kinzer without remorse.
Why’d he done that? Had he been worried Fehrin might disclose more information?
“What?” Hayde said. “Should I have left him so he could have told Veylo we were coming?”
His logic was reasonable, but he was still working to understand Hayde’s ulterior motive. He knew there must have been one.
Hayde spit out of the side of his mouth so it landed on Fehrin’s forehead. He and Kinzer headed for the door.
***
