Chapter Ten
Kinzer injected himself with his serum to prevent him from being tracked, then tied Hayde’s wrists to the bedpost.
The head of his dick brushed across the grooves in Hayde’s defined obliques as he scooted back. He slid under the covers and rested his head on a flat pillow.
Before stopping at the motel for the night, he’d swung by a home improvement store to get some more rope to secure Hayde for the night.
“This isn’t the most comfortable position,” Hayde complained, adjusting cattycorner on the pillow under his shoulder, the back of his head pinned against the bedpost.
“I don’t give a shit,” Kinzer said. He rolled away from Hayde and tucked his arms against his chest.
Hayde groaned, an obvious attempt to make his frustration known. Kinzer considered adjusting the rope to make Hayde more comfortable, but he worried doing so would make Hayde think he was weak, and likely to resist his authority.
As Kinzer pursued a restful night, a nagging thought slithered through his mind—one he knew would only intensify and prevent a peaceful sleep. Hayde likely couldn’t alleviate his discomfort, but permitting the thought to sit in his own mind would only invite it to grow and haunt his dreams.
He had to bring it up.
“How long were you and Janka together?”
“None of your fucking business,” Hayde snapped.
Silence.
Hayde shifted, a spring in the mattress squeaking beneath him. What should have been a subtle sound filled the room. It relieved Kinzer, because if Hayde did try to make an escape during the night, he’d be easy to catch.
“Just after the War,” Hayde whispered.
His response surprised Kinzer, then his abdomen tightened as he felt the sting of betrayal.
Had they begun their relationship with Janka at the same time?
“During the restoration.”
After the War, restoration teams were created in Heaven and Hell to repair damages that had been sustained. Though neither had completely recovered, the number of restoration teams had radically dropped… perhaps because all parties knew that full recovery from such a dramatic catastrophe wasn’t possible.
“One of my restoration teams' first tasks was the Almighty Cathedral, which had been raided by Morarkes.”
Kinzer was fully aware of the Almighty Cathedral, for it had been the grandest of constructions in Heaven, one Kinzer had assisted in building. It was targeted during the War, because the Leader knew destroying one of the Almighty’s greatest buildings would tear through higherling morale, leaving them feeling vulnerable and defeated.
“We disposed of the rubble. Back then, it was even worse for flits. We’d fought side-by-side with higherlings in the War, and though they didn’t respect us, knowing that we were there to help, they were far more tolerant of our existence. After the War, though, higherlings treated us more cruelly than they’d ever consider treating mortals. I think it was because we seemed to them too lowly to be in Heaven. We were slaves, created only to serve their needs. This was surely why they didn’t mind taking us whenever they liked.”
Disturbing as those words were, they brought Kinzer some relief. Perhaps Hayde’s vulnerability around that subject wasn’t just a performance after all. Perhaps there was something authentic buried beneath all that bravado and rage.
“At the cathedral, I had a mundane responsibility, collecting stones and dust and transporting them to a waste station that was being handled by Teleporters. It was trivial, but it was hard.”
Kinzer knew the truth of that. The stones of Heaven weighed far more than anything on Earth, and carrying the boulders of the Almighty Cathedral would have been a challenge for even the strongest higherling.
“We’d work for so long,” Hayde continued, “without any rest. I’m sure you know that flits don’t have the stamina of higherlings, but higherlings didn’t accept that. They’d work us till we collapsed.
“One day, I was so tired, dizzy, practically stumbling in line with my flit peers along the path to the waste station. My arms were frozen in stinging pain, like nails being driven into my biceps. My legs had been in pain for hours, but they were starting to go numb. I tripped and spilled my collection. One of my superiors came up to me. He was a massive creature… twice the size of any flit, with engorged muscles that made him appear to be made of rock. He demanded that I get up, grabbed me by the back of the neck, and pulled me to my feet. I tried to stand, but I couldn’t, and fell back into the rocks. He kicked me in the stomach, slammed his elbow into my face. The other flits, carrying their own rocks, swept right past us. They didn’t so much as toss a gaze our way—most likely because they feared the sort of trouble they’d be in for interfering with a higherling.
“He kept shouting and fussing. I couldn’t tell you what he said, he just kept laying into me. He picked up one of the cathedral’s rocks, one that I’d dropped, and shoved it into my face, digging it into my cheek. That’s where the scar’s from.”
He snickered. “Funny. You would’ve thought I’d have gotten it from the War, from all those battles. But no. It was from one of my own… at least, someone that should have been one of my own. He pulled the rock back and was about to strike again. I wondered if he was just going to kill me. It would have violated the Almighty’s law, but He wouldn’t have even found out. Not if the higherlings worked together to protect him, as they usually did with cases like those.
“White wings flashed before me and I blacked out. When I woke—probably Earth days later—I was surrounded by white sheets, in a massive bed. Janka greeted me, asked me how I was doing. It was the first time a higherling had ever been kind to me. And it didn’t stop there. He pulled me from the labor. Let me join his work. He saved me.”
Hayde’s story cut Kinzer. This sounded like the good Janka that he’d remembered, a higherling of kindness, of compassion. Yet it was hard for him to feel too much sincerity in Janka’s actions, considering he knew that this story took place when Janka was supposed to have been faithful to him. He was furious with Janka for all his betrayals, but he couldn’t help but empathize with Hayde. Put in the same position, he would have fallen just as madly in love with Janka. Surely, he would have taken advantage of whatever love he could get, even at the expense of another’s affections. But this empathy wouldn’t let Hayde off the hook, for no amount of logical reflection could shake the instinctual antagonism that birthed and grew from the thought of Hayde and Janka fucking, reveling in Kinzer’s oblivion.
