Chapter 7
Pure, unfettered pain pulsed through Kinzer as he came to. Not an unfamiliar or unexpected feeling. In his lifetime, he’d experienced plenty of pain, but the sort he’d experienced at the hands of Quintz had trumped any of his previous experiences. He truly was a master tormenter, and Kinzer was surprised he hadn’t caved. He felt as though he’d been shredded open with knives. His back still stung from the whip Quintz had used on him. And his cock, or what was left of it, was throbbing to the point where he felt nearly numb to it.
Kinzer forced open his eyes, still swollen from the beatings he’d taken, and glanced around a room. Like the one he’d been trapped in before, fluorescent lights showered across the cement walls and floor. A few tin cabinets were placed along the far wall, and adjacent to where he lay, Quintz faced away from him, picking up and inspecting various vials and syringes off a tray on a stand in front of him.
Kinzer glanced himself over. He was on some sort of cot, his arms over his head. A towel covered his crotch, soaked with blood. He teared up at the sight, some innate reaction to what he knew was underneath it…or at least, the disturbing mess he could imagine. As he looked back, he saw his wrists locked in cuffs to another loop mounted to the wall. Beside the cot, an IV fed a drip down to his arm. Healing him so they could torture him again, he was sure. That was the way of bastards like these. But after what they’d done to him, he didn’t know how much worse they could make it on him.
As Quintz turned toward him, Kinzer closed his eyes and steadied his breathing.
After everything that had happened, he felt like he should have given up. First he’d been stripped of his wings, and now he was stripped of his masculinity. It was too much for any immortal to bear. How had he done it?
He knew something within him encouraged him along, but he didn’t know how it could be strong enough to have gotten him that far, considering he felt weaker than he’d ever been before.
As he pretended to be asleep, he felt a weight press down on the cot beside him.
“Kinzer, I know you’re awake,” Quintz said. “And I wouldn’t bother trying to escape. That would be rather useless, actually. I’m healing all your injuries. That’s all.”
Kinzer opened his eyes. Quintz sat beside him, a vial and cloth in his left hand. His eyes were framed in a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. Since he hadn’t worn them during their previous encounters, Kinzer wondered if they were functional or merely a fashion accessory.
“Yeah. I know how this goes down,” Kinzer said. “You patch me up and start this all over again, so you can keep torturing me.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Quintz said. “I’m going to go ahead and save you some grief and tell you that you still have your dick.”
Quintz removed the cloth over his crotch.
Kinzer thought it might have been some sort of twisted mind-fuck, but once he saw his cock was still there, he breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he said, his face trembling before his eyes released fresh tears of joy.
“Yes, the pain makes it very believable, doesn’t it? Certainly anyone experiencing that kind of sensation would think that they were losing their dick. Don’t you agree?”
“Considering it felt like it was chewing off my fucking balls, I’d say so.”
Quintz smirked. “Yes, very convincing. That wasn’t actually designed by the Almighty, as I said earlier, but by me, which is why you’d never heard of it before. We’ve found it to be incredibly persuasive when trying to get information from immortals. Not you, though. I’m kind of stunned. Most immortals break with the whip. I never even have to attach the creature. The mere threat is enough once they see those nasty teeth it has on it.”
“I don’t imagine this means the questioning is going to stop.”
“Kinzer, this is not what it seems. I’m not aligned with the Almighty. I’m on your side, with the Leader. I have been for a very long time, much longer than even you have been sided with the Leader. I’m part of a special operation of very close-knit allies with him. We call ourselves Siege.”
“You work with the Leader?” Kinzer asked skeptically.
It was a lie. It had to be. Some sort of trick he was using in hopes of collecting intel from him.
“Whether you want to believe me or not, it’s true,” Quintz continued. “I work very closely with him. Not as close as some, but certainly closer than others.”
“I assume you can guess what I’m thinking about this bullshit. If this is another trick, I’m not just going to start rambling off names because you say you’re with the Leader.”
“Yes, I think that’s a wise move, and I assumed this is how you would react. You have every right to be skeptical, but I would encourage you to do your best to trust me right now, because I seriously could have ripped your cock off myself if that’s what I’d wanted to do.”
“Then this whole torturing the shit out of me thing when I work for the Leader…?”
“I had to test your loyalty, Kinzer. We have been watching you for a very long time, and you have certainly proven where your allegiance lies. However, we had to put you through what is our very standard, most basic test, to see if we could allow you to work directly with us as our operative.”
Kinzer still didn’t buy it, but the thought that it could be true pissed him the fuck off. “A test? This was all some fucking test to see how loyal I am when I have done nothing but—”
“Surely, after everything you’ve been through, you can respect the need to be cautious when trusting anyone. Look at everything you’ve experienced with Janka. Janka was very well trusted, and part of a very sensitive operation. To find out he was a traitor was devastating. Who was to say you weren’t doing the same thing?”
“When you say you were watching me, does this mean through all that shit with Dedrus and Maggie and Kid?”
Quintz nodded. “Yes, we know about all that.”
