Chapter 4
A burning sensation raced through Kinzer’s veins. He assumed it was lingering discomfort from whatever that immortal had injected him with back at the warehouse.
As he opened his eyes, he glanced around the chamber he was in. The walls were made of concrete blocks. A black metal door stood on the other side of the room, opposite him. When he tried to move, he realized his wrists were bound over his head, and upon inspection, he saw they were restrained in cuffs linked to a chain that tied them to a metal loop mounted into the wall behind him.
His jaw ached like it was being stretched, like he had a massive cock in it. He tried to close it, but there must have been something in it, gagging him. At first, he figured it was to keep him from calling out for help, but by the looks of the place, it was unlikely anyone would have been able to hear him even if he had been able to call out. It wasn’t likely that much sound could penetrate through those walls. But perhaps the gag wasn’t to obscure his screaming as much as to fuck with his head.
He continued taking stock of his predicament, noticing he’d been stripped naked, his body bruised from his encounter with the fuckers who had ambushed him at the warehouse. Along with those, he had plenty of scars from his recent tussles, scars that were more like those mortals had to cope with, reminding him of what he was steadily losing and that part of him that was gone forever.
He struggled with his restraints to see how secure they were, if he might be able to find a way out of them. But after a few moments, he surrendered. He wasn’t getting out of them anytime soon. So he waited…uneasily…impatiently…his thoughts racing.
Who were those higherlings who had come for him? Who were they employed by? And what did they want from him?
Too many immortals were out to get him—and had plenty of reasons to hold him prisoner. The Council, the Almighty, Janka…and surely more possibilities than that.
As he waited to learn who was responsible for his capture, his thoughts drifted through the past few weeks…months.
He recalled being trapped in a similar chamber—one he’d been kept in before he was brutally tortured and mutilated by the fallen of the Raze, who stripped him of his dignity, his pride, his wings. They’d left him without his powers…his ability to defend himself against other immortals. Had he still had his immortal strength, he would have been able to take on those three higherlings back at the warehouse without any issue. But being as weak as a mortal, he had to rely on a different sort of strength—one from within. The strength that kept him going, kept him pushing forward even when the world seemed to constantly throw obstacles before him.
How long he could persevere, though, he wasn’t sure. Not when he found himself constantly on the losing side of the war, when he kept realizing Janka was always a step ahead of him.
He couldn’t be pessimistic, though. That never led anywhere good. Only left him cynical and skeptical.
Even as he stood there, chained up, scrambling to figure out who was responsible for his imprisonment, he had to find faith that he would discover a way out. It was the only way he could sustain the will to keep on fighting.
After what seemed like several hours, Kinzer heard footsteps outside the door. It sounded like one set. If whoever was out there was alone, he had the chance of disarming them and potentially making an escape.
The door creaked open, and a higherling nearly as high as the doorway—probably close to seven feet—entered the room. Kinzer recognized him as the tallest of the higherlings who had attacked him at the warehouse—the one who had first come at him with a sword, the one he’d nicked in the cheek. He looked even taller now that Kinzer could see him in the overhanging lights. Dressed in jeans and black leather boots, without a shirt on, allowing his wings to hang out, he strutted his impressive physique stacked with muscles like those of a mortal bodybuilder who’d been juicing up for years to obtain that sort of muscle mass. His hair was cut short—some sort of crew-cut—but it had clearly been done by an experienced artist, who created a couple of well-defined dips on the sides of the cut, which moved across to the back of his scalp.
The higherling approached and unlocked something that created an opening in the loop, allowing him to pull the chain free. Then he unlocked the cuffs around Kinzer’s wrists.
Kinzer didn’t waste his chance. He lunged forward, the chain falling to the floor behind him. The higherling reacted quickly, seizing Kinzer’s wrist before flinging him across the room like he was weightless. No wonder he had been so careless in freeing him. He certainly wasn’t concerned about being overpowered by some clipped immortal.
Kinzer slammed into the wall beside the entrance and dropped to the floor. He tried to curse, but the gag in his mouth obscured the “fuck.”
The higherling walked across the room and bent down. He grabbed Kinzer by his neck. Kinzer tried to throw a punch, but before it had a chance to make contact, the higherling tossed Kinzer against the adjoining wall so that his shoulder hit the concrete on the same side as the first time the higherling had tossed him against the wall.
Despite how painful the blow was, Kinzer didn’t imagine the higherling was exerting much energy in his attempts to hurt him. And as he reflected on their combat at the warehouse, he suspected the guy’d been going easy on him all along. Putting on a show, really. But Kinzer knew, despite the hopelessness of being so weak in comparison to this monster of a higherling, he couldn’t give up.
The door beside his nemesis was wide open. It was his only chance…his only hope.
Out of desperation, he attacked the higherling again, but as soon as he did, the higherling snatched him by his throat and lifted him off the floor.
Kinzer struggled to breathe, which was already difficult with the gag in his mouth. He grabbed the higherling’s arm, trying to get him to release his strong hold around his throat.
“I’m going to enjoy beating the crap out of you, you fucking fallen,” he said, his thick dark eyebrows arching as he looked Kinzer dead in the eyes. His lips curled into a smile, like he was getting some sadistic pleasure knowing how much more powerful he was than Kinzer.
“Enough,” another voice came from the door.
Kinzer looked over the higherling’s shoulder, to a higherling who wore a bandage on his neck. He was the beautiful blond, his physique closer to Kinzer’s size than the other’s. He could have actually stood a chance one-on-one with him.
Kinzer noticed how manicured his dirty-blond hair and scruff were, as though they’d been designed by the same person who had cut the bodybuilder higherling’s hair. Unlike his companion, he wore suit pants and a button-up with the sleeves rolled up, the collar undone.
He approached Kinzer and his attacker. “I’m sorry, Kinzer, but my colleague, Brock, can get a little vicious. You can set him down now.”
Brock obeyed the higherling’s instructions, dropping Kinzer on the cement floor.
As Kinzer got to his knees, the blond knelt beside him. He reached around and unfastened the gag in Kinzer’s mouth.
