My fingers itched to kill more.
They better have some fucking answers to my questions.
The five assassins were roped and bound to chairs—each one slumped, bloodied, and trembling in the aftershock of failure. But it wasn’t regular rope that held them.
Reo and our men had clearly grabbed whatever was around them. Whips had been used to lash their torsos to the chairs. Coiled floggers wrapped like serpents across their chests.
One man’s arms had been strapped behind him with a braided red shibari rope, the knots tight and expertly placed, biting into the flesh.
Another had his ankles spread and locked to the chair legs with leather cuffs torn straight from a display cross.
A thick O-ring gag had been shoved between a third assassin’s teeth. Blood drooled down from the corners of his mouth.
One man’s face was swollen and purple, and I spotted the broken handle of a riding crop stabbed into his thigh. Blood seeped around the silicone shaft.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I put my view back on my Roar.
The assassin’s left hand was pinned under Reo’s knee. A blade glinted in Reo’s right hand.
“This man. . .” Reo stared at the five assassins and then gestured to the flayed body beside him, flicking blood from his fingertips. “He will be a prelude. A visual aid. Something to set the tone for us. A way for you all to understand my current state of mind.”
Kaoru snickered.
Yoichi and Satoshi went over, lowered to the ground, and held the man still for my Roar.
“Allow me to show you all what I mean.” Reo nodded toward the bound assassins, then turned back to his work with the cold grace of a man performing surgery. His blade kissed the assassin’s cheek and then he sank the sharp edge an inch deep.
The man’s body convulsed, legs kicking uselessly against my Fangs as they held him down.
However, the man did not scream.
He couldn’t.
Reo had already removed his tongue.
But he did go into a full-body seizure of disbelief like his nerves had only just registered that pain on this level was real.
Inch by inch, the steel glided through flesh. The sticky drag of blood-warmed tissue parted beneath Reo’s hand, exposing all that lay under the man’s skin—sinew and blood-slick muscle.
The man bucked hard against my Fangs, but it was useless. There was no escape from their grip or Reo’s knife.
One of the bound men pissed himself.
Another blinked rapidly, trying not to look, but failing.
Reo continued slicing into the man’s cheek. The skin curled away from the blade in a red translucent ribbon and the blade sang wetly with slow, sucking rasps.
Steel slurping up raw meat.
“The human face is remarkable.” Reo leaned in closer and cut more. “A thousand expressions. Smiles. Lies. Prayers. Fear. Hope. Rage. Rich. Poor. Black. White. We all spend so much effort pretending we’re different.”
I gazed at the man’s face. The exposed muscle pulsed wet and twitched with panicked breaths. It was a weeping red canvas of trembling nerves, dripping tissue, and white bone.
Tears spilled from the man’s eyes.
“Peel the skin away, and what’s left?” Reo looked to the bound men as if they would answer.
They just stared back in horror.
