Well, I have an inkling of an idea. Heisa Devil soldier, after all. I guess if he’s pulling in that kind of money, he’s got a lot ofblood on his hands.
10,000 dollars means nothing to a Devil soldier. Who knows why he paid for my hotel room? To get me out of the way. To keep an eye on me. To... sink his cock in me at his convenience.
All of those feel perfectly plausible coming from Quill.
I sigh, wrapping myself up in my thin winter coat. Quill is a monster, and though I have no proof, I just fucking know he did this monstrous thing.
But who told him to?
That’s what I need to find out at Devil Tower.
14
Quill
Sixteen years old
“Destroy. Obey. Kill.”
The words, repeated over and over by a classroom of teenage boys, are suddenly interrupted by the chirping of a kid whose voice hasn’t dropped yet.
“Uhm, excuse me? What’s the difference betweendestroyandkill?”
I exchange an amused glance with Dane and Liam. I have a feeling the kid who asked that question isn’t going to last long.
Sure enough, two soldiers immediately approach the squeaky-voiced kid, and one of them tasers him while the other one drags him out before the initiate even has time to realize what’s happened.
“A Devil soldier doesn’t ask questions. He obeys,” thunders Tragen. He’s the commanding officer of my unit, and he looks the part, with his firm features, his carefully trimmed moustache and explosive voice.
I repress a yawn. We’ve been standing at attention for the past three hours, and as always, I’m cursing Dad and his obsession with having me become a Devil soldier.
Okay, this will make me a lot of money. Okay, this will give me a lot of power. But do I really need to stay standing for three hours straight in the blistering sun?
I could be in a swimming pool right now. I wish Iwerein a fucking swimming pool. That’s what the other kids my age aredoing, instead of standing around while an officer drones on about obedience and death.
Isn’t sixteen years old a little young to decide what you want to do with your life?
Though I guess Dad decided it for me before I was even out of the womb.
Whatever. There’s no going back now. That was made very clear when I signed up.Sign your life away on the dotted line.
It might be a relief when I’m an actual Devil soldier, so I can channel my urge to kill the insect into killing actual bad guys, or good guys, or whoever it is we’ll be killing as soldiers. But I still have more than one year of boring drills to look forward to before I graduate from being an initiate to being a soldier.
Luckily, I made two friends at the start of the initiation, which has made things a little more tolerable.
“Brother soldiers. Bound by blood and honor. To betray a fellow soldier is to betray myself. To kill a fellow soldier is to kill myself. To love a fellow soldier is to love myself.”
I’m not the only bored one as we intone the words, repeating them over and over again until it feels like they’ve lost all meaning.
Dane makes a face back at me from the row in front, and I bite down on a smirk. It’s nice to have friends. I’ve never had any before.
Kids were usually put off by my swearing, and maybe I was a little quick to throw punches. Apparently, it’snotnormal to beat the shit out of your classmates when you’re in kindergarten.
I can’t count the number of parent-teacher conferences Dad’s had to go to over the years. And each time, he’d come home and tell me how proud he was of me for knowing how to throw a solid punch. Then he’d beat the shit out of me. Apparently because I was supposed to learn about consequences, or whatever.
I don’t understand Dad’s version of consequences half of thetime, and I’ve stopped trying. I’ve gotten kind of immune to the beatings anyway, and I guess that’s good because I have a feeling I’ve got a lot of beatings to look forward to in the near future.
The loud squeaks of the baby-voiced initiate, blending in with the pummeling of fists in the room next door, proves that.
