Chapter 6
Two guards probed the nude Kid for weapons. He had been concerned about abuse and mistreatment, but they didn’t take advantage or harass him. If anything, he could tell by the way they turned their faces away from him as they performed their inspection, they just wanted to get it over with, like they were so disgusted by having to place their immortal hands on his disgusting mortal body. He was probably lucky that was the case.
When they finished their inspection, they led him through a hall. He was still naked, reminding him of how he had to walk through Jerry’s slave racket.
As they came to a wide entryway, Kid struggled to imagine his fate.
Before he’d escaped Jerry’s with Kinzer, he wouldn’t have been able to imagine most of the things that had happened to him, and he suspected this immortal prison would be no different. Surely, it wasn’t a bunch of higherlings and fallens running around in orange jumpsuits.
As he passed through the entryway, he stepped into an auditorium. Naked immortals, some with their wings out and others not, sat on stone benches at tables around the space, chatting. A few immortals flew from holes alongside the walls, scattered about seemingly at random. Kid assumed the corridors led into the building.
One higherling exited one of the holes and encircled the auditorium, keeping close to the walls, which were covered in wire like the kind he saw in the room where the guards had inspected them.
Now he understood why they called it the Nest. The way the wire encircled the room, wrapping around the walls and the ceiling, made it look like some sort of giant tower of a nest.
One of the guards gave Kid a quick shove forward, urging him into the auditorium.
“Welcome to your grave,” the other said.
As Kid noticed immortals around the room glancing his way, he knew the guard was probably right.
A few immortals cringed.
Kid recognized that look. It was because of his rank odor to immortals—that he smelled not only bad for a mortal, but worse than most.
Kid searched for his Trey, and when he found him, in the back corner of the auditorium, relief washed through him. He knew it was a false sense of security. Trey was severely outnumbered, and Kid knew there wasn’t anything Trey could do to protect him when he was surrounded by an army of immortals—not just any immortals: criminals. And he could only speculate on the sorts of crimes that could have led a creature to being imprisoned in such a place.
Trey pushed to his feet, scanning the room for the immortals who continued noticing Kid. He started toward him.
A higherling seated at a bench near Kid turned and sniffed, eyeing him with contempt before whispering to an immortal next to him. A few benches down, an immortal rose from his seat. Dark hair and chiseled features, his body stacked with muscles. He had to be at least twice the size of most of the immortals present. The dips between his rigid muscles were deep.
“Well, well,” he said. “Look at the noob. Smell the noob.” He glanced around at his audience, who laughed at Kid.
Kid started through the benches to meet Trey halfway, when another immortal hopped up and seized his arm.
“Let go of me!” Kid shouted.
Trey raced across the auditorium. Several immortals leapt from their seats to stop him, but Treycore threw punches and shoved them out of his way. As he neared Kid, the immortal who had Kid by the arm released him and stepped up to Treycore, seemingly to challenge him in a fight. He was taller than Trey, but Trey didn’t let that dissuade him as he lunged at him and threw a punch that knocked the higherling to the floor.
No sooner than he’d impressed Kid with his victory, two immortals rose and snatched Kid by either arm.
Trey turned to them, flashing his teeth like some kind of animal before charging toward them.
“Come any closer, and we’ll tear his arms off,” one said, though Kid could tell by the expression on his face that he was terrified that, even if he did get Kid’s arm off, Treycore would rip him apart right after.
Trey locked his legs in place.
“Relax,” said the mighty immortal who had announced thenoob. He walked around his table to Kid and Trey. “Trey, Trey, Trey. Unfortunate that word of your affair with this mortal has spread so quickly among the Nest, between guards and prisoners. Makes all our appetites for him that much stronger.”
Trey growled.
“Oh, don’t be so feisty. We’re not going to take your mortal and rape the hell out of him. Not that we haven’t been thinking of it, right, boys?”
The room erupted with laughter and a few whistles and shouts, all of which made Kid feel disgusting. Like when he was back at Jerry’s, being taken, objectified, violated by people who knew they could do whatever they wanted to him.
“But I like him, Rand,” an immortal piped up from one of the benches.
“You’re not the only one, so step in line,” said another, as though he wanted to be clear in case the other was trying to lay some sort of claim on him.
