Chapter Eight
“That was real clever,” Kinzer said.
Hayde smiled a conceited smile.
Kinzer had tied Hayde’s hands to a pipe, an idea he credited to their initial sexual encounter.
After waiting for an hour to make sure the higherlings still weren’t searching for himself or Hayde, he’d carried the traitor back to the car and driven a few hours before finding a place in the outskirts of Baton Rouge that clearly hadn’t been in use for years. As there was no power, he grabbed a few lanterns from the back of the car and set them up around the place. He didn’t plan on being there long. Just long enough for that asshole to tell him where the fuck those guys had taken Maggie.
“Clever?” Hayde asked. He snickered, cringing as he surely endured the pain of the injuries Kinzer had given him before he’d fallen unconscious. “You guys fell right into it. I didn’t have to do a damn thing.”
“When did you—”
“Tell them you were coming? Remember when I hopped into Maggie’s seat in the car, at that gas station? Did you really think I just wanted to have a chat with you?” He chuckled. “Please.”
“Well, you shoulda been a little more clever.”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Then why are you here right now?”
Hayde fell silent.
Kinzer grazed his finger across the blade of his sword.
“Well, you’re gonna tell me where Maggie is…”
“Or what?”
Kinzer pressed the tip of his sword against Hayde’s neck.
“I don’t know… I’m still deciding. Maybe I’ll just cut those balls off after all.”
He grabbed Hayde’s pants and yanked them down, exposing his ass and sac.
“But maybe I’ll just play with you for a few hours first… make you feel like the little bitch you are. Make you remember that the last chance you ever had to fuck was the most disgusting encounter ever.”
Hayde’s chin quivered, but his jaw tightened as he seemed to work to hide his fear. “You think rape scares me? How do you think we spent the War? Every night it wasn’t just a possibility, it was a question of how many dicks you were gonna have to take. You think higherlings cared if we liked it, if we wanted it? I’ve been beaten, tied, raped more times than I can even count, so if you think your foot-long intimidates me, you’re mistaken.”
As he spoke, he trembled and tears filled his eyes. As much as he claimed he wasn’t bothered by it, he clearly was, deeply so. And even though Kinzer had no intention of taking him like that, it horrified him what this flit, this asshole of a flit, had endured during the War. No creature deserved the harsh, enslaved life of a flit.
Hayde turned away, sniffling.
Was this a trick? Another way of getting to him. It could have been. Hayde had proven himself to be clever, but regardless, Kinzer decided he wouldn’t use the threat of rape to pry information from him. That was too heinous. Even for him.
“Then I guess I’ll just have to settle for tearing you limb from limb.”
Hayde chuckled. “Oh, you’re just full of great ideas, aren’t you? Pain? Creatures who were created to endure the pain of war? You think I’m scared of cuts and scrapes? You think the scars of war frighten me?”
Kinzer gazed into the flit’s asymmetrical irises.
“You’re right,” Kinzer said. “That was pretty stupid of me. Pain and death don’t seem to motivate you. No. Death’s almost an easy way out for an immortal, isn’t it? And for a flit, created to be loyal to your cause, surely you’re more than willing to die for it. But I’m fairly confident that I can override this sense of loyalty with something that stirs far more terror in any immortal than the notion of an end.”
He grazed the tip of his sword through the scar on Hayde’s cheek.
Hayde pulled his head away from the blade.
“Oh, the flaws of a flit,” Kinzer said. “The lines, the moles, the imperfections so commonly associated with mortals. As much as higherlings are disgusted by fallens, our transgression is only against the Almighty’s law. A flit’s transgression is against the aesthetic my generation demands. Do you think we fallens are so removed we don’t hear what higherlings say about your kind? We don’t know how hideous you are to them?”
