“Fuck.”
Kinzer’s eyelids flitted open as he came to.
A haze of white and gray came into focus.
White sunlight poured through a rectangular window with chain-link fencing drilled into the frame, scattering the light across bare, cracked, concrete walls.
Kinzer’s face felt swollen, like it’d taken a good beating. Blood dripped from a cut in his upper lip, and the taste of iron filled his mouth.
His naked pecs and abs, covered in bruises and welts, stretched across a sheetless mattress.
Kinzer moved to get up. His arms and legs stuck in place, as if he were being pinned down.
He rolled his head back.
A knee in gray slacks pressed into the corner of the mattress. Their owner, a man—his face speckled with liver spots—closed a padlock around two links in a set of charcoal colored chains that wrapped around Kinzer’s wrist, binding it to the side of an iron-framed headboard.
Kinzer tugged at his other arm.
It didn’t budge.
He tossed his gaze to a matching chain that tied it to the other side of the headboard. A glance at his ankles revealed another chain, locking them together and trailing off the end of the mattress.
Shit.
Conscious as he was, Kinzer couldn’t make sense of where he was or how he’d ended up there.
“I was a little worried you wouldn’t pull through.” The liver-spotted man gazed at him through oval-shaped glasses. A patch of sunlight sparkled across his naked scalp, framed in stringy, white hairs. Vertical creases streaked across pale lips. “Glad you did. You cost me a pretty penny, but not too shabby for that cock.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Kinzer’s biceps pushed streaks of blue and purple veins forward as he struggled with the chains.
“No point in resisting, now. You’re not going anywhere.” The man stepped off the bed and walked alongside the mattress. “Jerry’s the name. Your…friends…tell me you go by Kinzer.” He sat by Kinzer’s hip, his eyes scanning his prisoner’s form as if he was taking mental notes. “Doesn’t make much difference. You’ll go by a lot of different names here. Right now, Jason seems to be popular. But you look like a Brock or a Rocky.”
“You just gonna keep me chained?”
“For now.” Jerry fondled the mattress, his wrinkled fingers moving over the sewn grooves in the fabric. “Don’t want to give you the opportunity to try a first escape. It’s a common problem, as you can probably imagine.”
“Escape from where?” Kinzer asked.
“That’s not important. You could be anywhere, and your duties will still be the same. I’ll send one of my guards down. He’ll help you get cleaned up, feed you…show you your new living quarters.”
“And I’m just supposed to go along with this? Are you fucking kidding?”
Jerry’s fingertips moved from the mattress, tickling their way up Kinzer’s side, trailing across his abs.
“I’m not a humorous man, Kinzer. Just straightforward. So I want to be clear. As long as you’re here, I control your fate. I control how you are used, how you are abused. I control how much fucking you can handle. I control how good of a shape you’re in.” He pressed his finger against a black bruise.
Kinzer ground his teeth.
“That said, I recommend you be as courteous as possible. Obedience is very important to me. If you don’t obey, you will be punished.”
Jerry stared into his eyes. Offering a pleasant smile, he rose and left through a door on the other side of the room.
Kinzer tried to contemplate his current predicament. He figured he should be trying to plan an escape or at least thinking about what this Jerry guy had in store for him, but he was preoccupied with a flood of memories that rushed through his mind in an instant.
“Oh, Kinzer,” Veylo said.
A lock of his brown hair fell to his nose, obscuring an eye. He stood over Kinzer, a bloody broadsword in hand. “You think you’re suffering now?”
Kinzer lay on red-stained concrete, naked, covered in blood and black feathers…his own feathers. He cried out in agony.
Veylo pressed the end of his sword against Kinzer’s bruised cheek. “When I’m done with you, you’ll know what it really means to suffer, traitor!”
Kinzer imagined that Veylo had thought this would be a great punishment, but he doubted he’d realized that stripping him of everything and torturing him a thousand times over could not have hurt worse than losing his dear Janka.
At one time, Kinzer had resented Janka—the captain of his task force.
In the golden days of Heaven, before Kinzer and many other higherlings had fallen, Janka was privileged, granted all that he desired from the Almighty. He’d been one of Heaven’s most desirable creatures. He was doted on, loved, adored. It left him, like so many of the Almighty’s elite, filled with a natural conceit. When Janka gave orders, Kinzer resisted. He fussed and barked. He wasn’t going to listen to a higherling, especially not one that had been afforded such luxuries, unlike anything he or his peers had ever experienced under the creator’s rule.
Such willful disobedience put the lives of the members of Janka’s troop at risk several times before he let his issue with Kinzer be known. They fought it out Kinzer’s way—with fists of rage. They weren’t just fighting over his disobedience. They were fighting over the inequity of Heaven. Kinzer wasn’t known for going down in a brawl, but Janka’s superior place in creation made him stronger and a better fighter. Kinzer received serious injuries that left him immobilized for weeks. Janka tended to him, cared for him. Again, Kinzer resisted. He didn’t need Janka’s help. He didn’t need anyone’s help. Janka refused to yield to Kinzer’s attitude, and gradually Kinzer allowed Janka into his life…into his heart…into his body. They’d spent many nights, lips locked, limbs woven together in a satisfied embrace. Kinzer came to know Janka as his one—the only one that could complete him. Their work as soldiers took them away from each other frequently, and as they became spies for the Leader, their proximity to one another became constantly threatened.
A year earlier, they’d taken advantage of a chance to be close. The Leader had tasked them with infiltrating the Raze, a secret organization charged with assisting the Almighty in bringing about the end of the world. Janka and Kinzer were responsible for collecting intel and reporting any progress on the Almighty’s planned apocalypse.
All that had gone horribly awry.
Someone ratted us out, Kinzer thought.
It was the only explanation. Someone must have told Veylo that he and Janka were spies. Someone on the inside.
Veylo was the leader of the Raze. When he’d discovered their true allegiance, he’d personally executed their punishments.
Kinzer wasn't sure who had exposed him and his lover, but all the Leader's Allies were potentially at risk of being revealed. He had to get out of this shithole and warn them.
How was he going to find them, though? To protect their identities, the Leader's Allies were intentionally kept uninformed as to each other's whereabouts…in case something like this occurred. Each had a contact they could alert if they were outed. Unfortunately, Janka had been Kinzer's contact—the only one who could have warned the others. With Janka dead, Kinzer was without a connection to the other members. He was going to have to find someone who could get news to the others.
Dedrus.
That name stirred painful memories. Dedrus hadn’t just been a friend and ally. Before Janka, he’d been a lover—someone Kinzer had envisioned himself spending his eternity with. They’d fought in battle together. They’d steadily become each other’s greatest confidants. For a time, Kinzer thought Dedrus felt the same, but he had been wrong. The pain of losing Dedrus had been so severe that he was sure he’d never fall in love again.
Until Janka.
Kinzer tried to think of someone else—anyone else. Dedrus was the last immortal he wanted to turn to for help, but he was the only one he knew he could find. He was the only one he knew wouldn’t be secretly in league with the Almighty.
But how was he going to get out of this place?
It wasn't going to be easy. Since Veylo had clipped his wings before placing him in whatever trafficking operation this Jerry guy was running, he was weak. He wasn't any more powerful than a mortal.
It didn’t matter.
He had to find a way out. If he didn’t, the Leader's other allies were dead, and the Almighty would be that much closer to bringing about the destruction of all mankind.