I resisted her hand. “Why? He is not royalty.”
“He’s Slash Artery.”
The dumbest name.
“So?” I tried to get comfortable on the concrete floor. “He is not royalty.”
“His father was a god.”
“That makes him celestial, not royal.”
“Bow!”
“You have still not given me an adequate reason to.”
Upon his throne, Slash clicked his fingers.
The woman quickly skated back into the crowd.
Slash leaned into his throne, crossing one leg over the other and sipped from a wine glass that someone had placed in his hand. He looked down at Dig and I, grinning like a clown.
“Dig!” He slapped the arm on his throne, his palm smacking the top of a skull. “We are on day nine. I thought you’d come and see me sooner.”
“Fuck off, Slash,” Dig said. “I got important shit to do. Let me go.”
Slash cackled manically, his voice went deep and then shrill like a badly orchestrated song. “Have you given much thought to joining me?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“Nah.”
Those black predatory eyes of his glimmered and his smile twisted in on itself, growing ugly. “You’re in restraints Dig, at my mercy. I think you should change that answer of yours.”
“Nah.”
Slash laughed again, but this time there was no joy in it.
I nudged Dig with my elbow and whispered, “I think he wants to be friends with you.”
Dig twitched his nose, his impatience easily mustered. “I got enough friends.”
“I don’t think you have any friends.”
“I’m not following this goat cheese.”
“He’s a serial killer,” I reminded him. “A very serious serial killer, didn’t he—”.
“Yeah, he did.”
Slash Artery—the dumbest name—loved his infamous Soulless father so very dearly that Slash took it upon himself to walk in his father’s shoes. Known as being a troubled child, he grew into a troubled adult. He knocked on the door of Haver prison and asked to be arrested and for entry into its rust bleeding walls and the Execution Battle. He had trained for it, learning death while others were learning taxes, and joined the Battle with blazing splendour, slaughtering and butchering with hysterical laughter.
“Slash wants to kill you?” I asked Dig.
“He wants me to join him as a follower.”
“In his cult?”
