Chapter 54 Zion
ZION
My favorite knife slid through Ezra’s ear so smoothly it made me wonder if enjoying grilled meats too much could make the cartilage more…doughy. Because Ezra’s was exceptionally buttery. Perfect for my games.
His howl tickled the base of my spine as I admired the scarlet swirls on my blade. The blood seemed to be alive: the ever-changing pattern of drops rushed across the steel to drip off the edge.
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 met him.” 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.
“You call your brother names?” We had no way to confirm if Gedeon and Ezra were related, but still. Family was off limits. “That’s not very nice of you, is it?”
Ezra bared his remaining teeth. “He’s a pig, not my bro—”
A scream replaced his scorn as I wiped my blade across a clotting laceration in his armpit, right along a crease, his coarse hair crusted with his life essence. Crimson drenched my knife, quenching its thirst, beckoning my core to coil.
And coil.
And coil.
To the point the zipper of my stained jeans grew painful.
At first, toying with our friend-turned-traitor had soured my mood, but him agreeing to play my little game had turned this into a particularly enjoyable experience.
Electrifying. I buzzed every time he refused to speak, as I got to remove a piece of him.
“Say something like that again, and you will boast a forked tongue.” I dragged the steel along the contour of his bottom lip, slicing the sensitive tissue corner to corner. “It doesn’t need to remain whole to work.”
A hard body pressed to my back, and I tightened the grip on my knife.
Embracing me, Gedeon hummed. “You have no idea what seeing you this wound up does to me.”
His low tone zapped through me, the force so overwhelming I felt alive.
“Ezra insulted you.” Leaning into Gedeon on pure instinct, I threaded my fingers in his hair so smooth you could mistake it for water.
“The jab is not what I care about.” He caught the hem of my red-smeared t-shirt, lifting it to bare my torso.
The combination of high humidity and low temperature attacked me—
“It’s that you threatened him.” Calloused palms glided down my abdomen in search of that sensitive strip of skin above my low-slung pants.
My pelvis twitched.
“That you want to protect me.” Gedeon gripped my bulge over my jeans, and a hiss slipped past my lips.
“That I’m what’s on your mind.” As he rubbed my hard length through the thick denim in smooth strokes, my cock jerked in response.
“I’ll never forget the evening you fell to your knees for me.
” He peppered kisses up my neck, underneath my jaw, behind my ear.
“How beautiful you looked.” His murmur ghosted over my skin like sunshine.
“I learned a lot about you that night. How you tasted. How you felt in my hands. How you overloaded my senses. How I feared my heart was going to explode from how fast it pounded.”
He massaged me harder, rocking into my ass simultaneously, spurring my imagination to go off the rails as fantasies unraveled in my mind, conjuring image after image. My legs verged on giving out.
“And then, three months later, you slept in my arms for the first time.” Gedeon nipped my earlobe. “You tore my world apart, Zion.”
His admission swelled in my chest, overfilled it, the liquid born from his words filling the gaps between my ribs.
Holding on to his upper thigh, I tugged on the ends of his locks. “How does it feel to live in the ruins?”
He gripped my throat. No throttling, but the intention was clear. The land of debris and rubble, wrecks and relics, had no rules.
He compressed the sides of my neck. “Thrilling.”
His fingers burned their shapes into me, the scars as permanent as all others. The decrease in oxygen intake leached my strength, beckoning me to yield, to enjoy the approaching dizziness.