Metal clashing with metal reverberated off the damp walls of our underground as Ezra thrashed, but Ava had fastened the chains around his wrists and ankles so securely the traitor couldn’t lift his limbs more than an inch off the mortuary table. Or, as Gedeon preferred to call it—my game board.
The title did fit. The table was the centerpiece of my playground, after all.
“You know, wailing doesn’t count as talking.” I rocked on my heels. Ezra’s ear had successfully abandoned his head. “So for the next round of our little game, why don’t we move to your feet?”
“I—” He spat out a blob of saliva as crimson as his upper body. “Fuck off.”
Slicing the inside of his lips and his gums had been Eislyn’s idea. Her impressive array of scalpels had helped her to execute the task perfectly.
I kind of missed the tiny woman. For the first hour, whenever Gedeon bordered on snapping because of Ezra’s refusal to spill their plans, she would send me to placate him while she continued to poke Ezra’s pain points.
Without her, for the last sixty minutes, I’d had to juggle two jobs: dealing with Gedeon’s pent-up frustration and listening to Ezra’s strings of insults while I tried to make the bastard talk. And without Eislyn monitoring Ezra’s declining state, I was bound to accidentally open an artery or two.
So I’d created a game: one question for one body part.
“Thanks for the offer,Ezra.” I waved my knife at Gedeon leaning against the basement wall, his arms folded. “If that even is his actual name.” I tapped the flat of the blade against the stump where Ezra’s ear had used to be, ripping a toe-curling choke out of him. “But I’ll have to pass.” Crouching down, I whispered into the new hole, “You see, Gedeon doesn’t like to share. He hasn’t fucked me himself yet, so I’m afraid he won’t let you get into my ass first.”
Ezra’s nostrils flared, the horizontal lacerations along the length of his nose forming a ladder. “You’re too late. You can kill me, but it won’t change a thing.”
“We’re aware of it.” Pushing off the wall, Gedeon left the basement shadows behind him. “Actually, we are counting on it.” His steps were decisive, hypnotically so, as he crossed the forty feet between us. “I believe you understand that you will not walk out of here. But what you seem to have missed during your time with us is that we don’t kill without reason.”
Gedeon pushed the single light bulb strung up above Ezra’s stretched-out body. The streaks of yellow swung back and forth,illuminating the naked man and feeding him to the shadows at even intervals.
“Some people say there are fates worse than death, but they have not methim.” Gedeon’s knuckles glided down my neck, coaxing my pulse to skyrocket. “A nightmare few get to behold,” he said with such conviction I forgot where I was.
Looming over Ezra, Gedeon went on. “So as long as you don’t provide us with the information we seek, you will not feel the cool embrace of unconsciousness. Of peace and quiet. Of death.”
“I don’t talk with those who don’t care about the human population. You are—” Ezra fell into a coughing fit. His saliva sprayed in a mist of pink as he convulsed on the table, the rattle of chains echoing in the vast space.
The chill was a palpable presence tickling me behind my knees, and I scraped rust-colored specks on the cement floor with my boot. “He bores me,” I complained to Gedeon. “Do we really need his tongue that much? It’s taking him forever to speak.”
“Yes.” Gedeon’s lips briefly rested on my shoulder, draining the restlessness boiling inside me. I could survive on his touches alone. “That’s one of the few parts you are not allowed to remove.”
Twirling my knife, I surveyed the panting person who I’d used to smuggle residents out of Ilasall with. Being well-versed in anatomy had helped in prolonging our game, but at this stage, Ezra had already lost so many bits of his appendages I had no choice but to go after his feet next.
His dirty and stinky toes.
The trick was simple: you always began with the removal of smaller…elements.
A tooth or two.
Then the tip of their nose—a cute little button of sorts.
Then their nipples. Ezra’s had been different, one circular-shaped, the other resembling an oval.
Then the strips of skin from their inner thighs. Half a dozen from each leg, their surface littered with hair a shade lighter than everywhere else.
Then their fingertips—ten tiny half-globes.
Then at last, the ears. Here, the key was to remove only one. The shell served as a funnel to steer the sound waves toward their eardrums, so if you removed both appendages, your plaything might not hear you anymore.
And you couldn’t have that.
I dangled the floppy piece of flesh above Ezra’s face. “The rules are simple. Tell us what you shared with the city, and I’ll leave your toes alone.” I placed the cartilage on his sternum. Unable to resist, I poked the shell. So squishy. Someone should start selling these for fun. “Or I will flay you layer after layer. First the epidermis, then the fat, the muscle, all the way to your bones, so Gedeon can have some fun too. Did you know that it’s been more than four months since he carved his name into someone’s skeleton?”
“Fools,” Ezra sneered. A drizzle of bloody drool trickled down his stubble. “Who cares if people enjoy their lives. Survival of our species is what matters.” His bitter chuckle filled our underground, permeating the air with its heaviness. “You two, or should I say, three, will lose the war. You can’t change the outcome.”
I flicked the ear off his expanding and contracting chest. He didn’t deserve to bear my trophy. We’d heard the tale he spoke of too many times to count by now.
