Treycore’s glare transformed from condescending to curious. He undid the buttons on his shirt, pulled it off, and tossed it aside.
The dip in his back ran down to a peek at his ass crack.
“Finally!” Maggie exclaimed. “Just rape me and get it over with! Fuck, it’s not rape with those abs. Jesus!”
Treycore closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Feathers shot out from between his shoulder blades and expanded until they filled just over half the room.
“No fucking way!” Kid exclaimed.
Maggie’s mouth dropped open. “Shit. What am I on?”
***
“Anything?” Treycore asked Dedrus. He held his cell to his ear. He leaned against a doorframe, his blond hair in a swirled pattern created by Maggie’s frenzy. His shirt, only buttoned halfway, exposed the grooves down his chest. As he looked at Kinzer with disdain, his wince intensified.
You’re such an asshole, Kinzer thought.
Kinzer hated that wince, which made Treycore appear as if he was disapproving of everything his gaze beheld. Did Treycore make this face because he found himself constantly disapproving of creations lower than himself? Or, had the Almighty crafted the expression to compliment his beautiful features?
Before the Fall, Treycore had been one of the Almighty’s most prized creations. He’d been free to delight in whatever he desired. After the Fall, he’d sided with the Leader. Still, Kinzer couldn’t help but despise the span of time when Treycore had basked in the fruits of Kinzer and other inferior immortals’ labor.
“No,” Dedrus replied, his cell also against his ear. With his free hand, he pushed a brown lock of hair out of his eyes, curling it behind his ear. He knelt between a couch and a coffee table. He weeded a plate and bag of Oreos from between the couch cushions and added them to a pile of TV dinner trays and magazines on a side table.
“Sorry about the mess,” he said, his eyes scanning the room for more debris.
Dedrus’s panic about his and Treycore’s wreck of a place reminded Kinzer of how adorable he could be. He’d always been messy and wildly ashamed of it. During the war, he’d dig through piles of hoarded garbage, searching for his shit. His cot had always been covered with so much crap that it looked like he was trying to make a nest. It was a habit that, even after all this time, Dedrus hadn’t been able to overcome. He was clearly ashamed of that, but Kinzer found the hoarding—coupled with Dedrus’s embarrassment about it—charming. It was part of what Kinzer had fallen in love with.
Kid stood before a wooden rail to the stairwell that led to the second floor, where Maggie’s room was. His gaze flashed to Treycore.
Kinzer figured Kid was smitten. Treycore’s physique was impressive, even to immortals. He could only imagine how it affected a mortal.
“This is bullshit.” Treycore shoved his cell in his pocket. “Where the fuck is everyone?”
Dedrus ducked beneath the coffee table. He rose, his hands filled with white cracker bags. He set them on the table.
“Dedrus, seriously? Are you gonna keep cleaning, or are we gonna figure out what the fuck we’re gonna do?”
“Voicemail,” he said. “Maybe someone already warned them.” He pressed his thumb against his phone screen and set it beside the cracker bags.
They’d been attempting to reach their contacts, Donna and Krimson, for the past half an hour. Anxiety rushed through Kinzer. Something was up.
“Yeah. They’d warn them and not us?” Treycore said. “Doubtful.”
“We need to get her out of here,” Kinzer said. “If the Raze is on to the Leader’s Allies, they could come here.”
“No way.” Dedrus, still kneeling, picked up wrappers and Styrofoam coffee cups off the floor and added them to his collection on the table. “All our work is tied to another location. We don’t use this house for any transactions. Not with the Council. Not with the Leader’s Allies. There’s no way they can find us.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, we’re sure.” Treycore stepped toward Kinzer, broadening his shoulders like he was trying to intimidate Kinzer. “You think we’re morons?”
“Not both of you,” Kinzer said.
Treycore’s face flashed red. A ripping sound filled the air as his biceps flexed against his sleeves. He balled his fists and marched at Kinzer.
Dedrus leapt up from the floor and wedged between them, as he’d done back at Dick Dongs. “Are we seriously gonna do this all night? Treycore, Janka’s dead. Give him a break.”
Those words pained Kinzer. They made him want to tear into Treycore, not because of anything Treycore had done, but because he wanted to beat the shit out of something—anything.
“Whatever,” Treycore said. “We’re done with this shit. I’m gonna go to bed.”
“Good,” Kinzer said. “Let the grown-ups handle the planning.”
“Kinzer,” Dedrus hissed.
Treycore shoved Dedrus’s shoulder to the side as he headed across the room. He slipped by Kid and started up the stairwell.
“Will you get Kid settled?” Dedrus asked.
Treycore stopped halfway up the stairs. He rolled his eyes and turned his wince to Kid.
“What am I? A babysitter?”
Dedrus didn’t respond. He just eyed him until Treycore finally said, “Get your ass up here, smelly.”
Kinzer thought it was harsh to call a mortal smelly. It was true, but it wasn’t their fault that the Almighty had been so sloppy with their creation.
Kid turned to Kinzer, his eyes filled with concern, as if he was psychically saying, “This guy’s not gonna kill me, right?” Kinzer tossed his head to the side, indicating that he should follow Treycore.
Treycore was an ass, but he wasn’t going to hurt him.
Kid’s jeans flashed behind the wooden rail posts as he made his way up the stairs.
***
“Again, sorry about the mess,” Dedrus repeated.
A lamp from a nearby desk illuminated a bookshelf before him.
Stacks of books covered rows of shelves that lined every wall. Crinkled wads of wide-ruled paper surrounded the base of a desk covered with a mix of potato chip bags, Hershey's wrappers, files, and books.
Had Dedrus known he was going to have immortal company, he would have tidied up—especially if he’d known it’d be Kinzer.
“It’s fine.” Kinzer stared off, apparently not noticing the mess. The cleft in his chin and the divot in his nose hid in shadows created by the lamplight.
A wave of Dedrus’s dark bangs obscured his view. He tossed his head back, jerking the clump behind his ear. Standing on his toes, he pulled a book toward him. The bookshelf swung open, revealing a secret compartment.
Dry, glistening tissue that had grown over the cut on Kinzer’s lip expanded with a smile. “Glad you’re still putting that brilliant mind to use.”
Dedrus blushed. No one appreciated his handiwork anymore. No one ever saw it. During the golden days of Heaven, his inventions had been adored. His craftsmanship had been praised by the most ingenious of his higherling peers. They’d held ceremonies in his honor, praising him for his innovation. Those days were so long ago that memories of them seemed more distant than the blurred images of a nearly forgotten dream.
Not his memories of Kinzer, though.
Those were vivid. Being an engineer for the Almighty, Dedrus was a member of an elite higherling class. Kinzer had been a laborer, a builder. He pieced together, with millions of other builders, the magnificent visions that the elite conjured up to satisfy their vain tastes.
Had the realms divided based on loyalty rather than hierarchy, Dedrus would have fallen as well, for he had actively worked against the oppressive institution that exclusively served the Almighty’s most beautiful of creations, leaving those perceived as less remarkable at the bottom of the order. Though an insignificant creation to the Almighty, Kinzer wasn’t unremarkable. Not to Dedrus. When the war came and he and Dedrus had joined the Leader’s fight, they worked
together, defending the Leader during the Siege of Hell and fighting the Morarkes when they turned against their creator.
Kinzer wasn’t a leader. Just a soldier. A hardworking, passionate soldier. Dedrus had fallen in love with his passion, not just for the rights of all higherlings, but for life—a better life than the Almighty had ever promised his lowliest of creations. Kinzer and Dedrus shared a tent. They’d lain in cots as Kinzer read the Leader’s philosophies on equality to Dedrus. They’d spent nights discussing the troubles of Heaven and the promises of Hell. Kinzer wasn’t a great philosopher. His arguments were weak, emotion-based, and devoid of logic, but they were passionate. It was that passion Dedrus had fallen in love with—the same passion that stirred the fire in those sparkling brown eyes.
“I can’t have you walking around without any protection.” Dedrus pulled the bookshelf open like a door, revealing racks stocked with swords, daggers, and knives. He reached in, pulled out a sword, and handed it to Kinzer. “Recognize it?”
Kinzer smirked, his eyes on the hilt—on an emblem of a dove in flight. It was Dedrus’s emblem. “You took out a lot of Morarkes with this guy.”
“We did.”
The Morarkes had been designed to defend Hell and attack Heaven. When they turned against the fallen, the immortals formed a task force known as Feint to destroy the beasts. Morarkes, having been created with an incredibly narrow focus that forced them to isolate their assaults to higherlings, were incapable of multi-tasking. Their attention fixated on their victim higherlings until their mission was accomplished. Members of Feint used this weakness against the monster. Working in teams of two, one immortal drew the attacking creature’s attention. The other attacked its weakest point. Dedrus’s swordplay was vastly superior to Kinzer’s, so Kinzer always acted as the distraction while Dedrus acted as the attacker.
With Kinzer’s assistance, Dedrus had slain hundreds of the menaces.
“I’m not gonna take this,” Kinzer said. “It’s yours.”
“You pissed off the Raze. You need a sword.”
Kinzer had to have an immortal weapon, one created from the minerals of heavenly realms. The weapons of Earth were insignificant against immortals.
“Not gonna do me much good,” Kinzer said, “now that I don’t even have my strength. Or my gift.”
His gaze drifted across the blade. He sighed.
Dedrus knew he was reminiscing about more than the loss of his strength or gift. He was reminiscing about the war. About his days with Janka. As supportive as he wanted to be, he couldn’t stifle the spark of jealousy that stirred within him. He hated himself for feeling it. Janka had been a good friend. They’d worked together on the Almighty’s heavenly empire at the dawn of creation, combining the skill of Dedrus’s engineering with the craft of Janka’s architecture. They’d built a kingdom worthy of the Almighty’s precious creations.
As much love and reverence as Dedrus had for Janka, he had never been able to shake the sting that surged in his chest, reminding him that Kinzer could never be his. His resentment stemmed from his initial courting of Kinzer, interrupted when Janka became a captain with Feint.
At the time, an affair between Janka and Kinzer seemed impossible. Despite Janka’s siding with the Leader, he had never been one to care for the plight of the lower class. He’d only ever expressed disgust for them. However, a change of heart left him caring, not only for the lower class, but mortals as well. It was a dark day when a fellow soldier whispered rumors of Janka and Kinzer’s relationship to Dedrus. The sting he’d felt became a surge of rage that overwhelmed him. He’d been livid. He’d had to isolate himself for days as he abused desks, chairs, and even books, leaving them ripped and tear-stained. What could someone as compassionate as Kinzer see have ever seen in the vain whims of Janka? Dedrus spent many nights in fits of anger, consumed by jealousy. What was he to do now that he’d found the one creature in the uncountable span of time that was the only one he could ever love?
“I appreciate it.” Kinzer gripped the shaft of the sword. “So how have you and Treycore been holding up in this mortal rat hole?”
“What? You don’t love the place?”
Kinzer smiled. “Not exactly the flash of your castle in Heaven.”
Dedrus had been spoiled with one of the greatest castles in the Almighty’s kingdom. He and Treycore had once lived the most luxurious of lives, basking in the great pleasures of the elite. Now, they opted to live in squalor among the mortals in their work as liaisons.
“It’s easy for Treycore. Attention is attention, and most creations have always been beneath him, so he adores it regardless of where it’s from.”
“And you?”
“Hard to choose where I’d rather live out my lonely existence.”
Stop being pathetic. Dedrus chastised himself. He was just trying to get Kinzer to pity him.
Kinzer’s gaze shifted around the room, as Dedrus recalled him doing when he’d attempted to convey his affections for him long ago.
“But this place is so wonderful,” Dedrus said, in an effort to lift Kinzer’s discomfort, “sometimes I forget I’m not in Heaven.”
Kinzer chuckled. His eyes lit up.
There’s that gleam, Dedrus thought. Stop thinking like that!
This wasn’t the time to be swooning over Kinzer. There were serious matters to tend to, and most importantly, Kinzer needed time to mourn the loss of his Janka…the immortal that had ripped Dedrus’s love right out from under him.
“I’d kill myself if I had to be around Treycore every day,” Kinzer said.
“He isn’t the easiest immortal to live with.” Dedrus gestured, presenting the room to Kinzer. “As you can see, I’m not either.”
“I guess when you’ve spent eons with servants waiting on you hand and foot, it’s hard to adjust to cleaning up after yourselves. How is his verse these days?”
“Time hasn’t improved his talent, but that’s what happens when the Almighty prioritizes aesthetics over intellect.”
“Well, I gotta hand it to him. He’s given up a lot. Of all the elite that have joined the cause, he had the most privilege.”
“When you’re on a pole in a thong, feeding the shallowest of mortal impulses, it’s easy to forget you ever had privilege.”
“Not such a big fall for an immortal like me. But Janka probably felt the same way.”
There was that name again. Dedrus hated himself for cringing at it. He’d loved Janka. He considered him a brother—a brother he loathed for taking the only thing in all the Almighty’s realms that made eternal life worth it.
“You never should have both been sent into the Raze,” Dedrus said.
“I insisted.” Kinzer gazed off.
He was clearly thinking about all that had happened. He needed to talk about it. Get it off his chest.
“Here,” Dedrus said. “Come on. Let’s sit down.”
He passed Kinzer, heading into the adjoining room.
Frozen dinner trays, water bottles, and unopened bills covered the table by the couch.
This is so embarrassing. At least it’s better than before.
He approached the couch and motioned for Kinzer to sit.
Kinzer did. Dedrus made himself comfortable in the corner, relaxing his triceps on the arm of the couch and angling his legs over the side. His distance from Kinzer was calculated. Though he wanted to wrap his arm around him, to hold him close and ask him to tell him everything, he knew that wouldn’t be appropriate. Even worse, he wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to take things further—to a place that would take advantage of Kinzer in his moment of weakness.
“You want to talk about it?” Dedrus wanted to be there for his friend in whatever way he could, but he questioned his motives. Did he want to help out of the goodness of his heart? Did he secretly want Kinzer to notice his kindness and come to appreciate him as he’d come to appreciate Janka? Surely, both elements were present within his intentions, but he hated himself for the part that self
ishly wanted to use this opportunity to get closer to Kinzer—to pick up where Janka had interrupted.
Kinzer leaned back on the couch, his fingers massaging the edges of the sword. He stared forward, as if he was looking through the wall on the other side of the room. His eyes no longer reflected the gleam that usually enchanted Dedrus.
“Veylo’s mad with power,” Kinzer said.
Dedrus shook his head. “He was always that way. His mind is too close to the Almighty’s—in a way that breeds corruption. He can create powerful, mystical technology. He can give life to inventions that no other immortal could conceive of. That power breeds arrogance. When I worked with Janka, Veylo trivialized our work. He saw us as limited, narrow-minded. Whereas we would work to use the tools that surrounded us, Veylo worked to create new tools that took creation to another level. I’m not saying he’s not a genius. He is. Veylo could do more with the elements of the heavenly realms than any other creation I’ve ever known. But that power…there’s something dark within it. Something twisted. It lacks ethics. Morality.”
“That’s him in a nutshell.”
“The only reason Veylo ever fell was because he thought he’d have more power in Hell. Fortunately, the Leader was too smart to give him any. The Leader knows he’d use it to usurp him. I remember how upset Veylo was when he wasn’t allowed in the weapons division. I think Veylo wanted to work on the Antichrist Project. What great mind didn’t? Kamin, Erisar, Vegir…there was something alluring about the idea of working against the creator. But even those immortals knew that creation without hesitance would bring about annihilation. Hesitance has never been Veylo’s strength. I take it you don’t know what he was working on?”
“Whatever it was, it was big. Veylo said it would have the power to end all the realms. Sounded like the next Morarke. I just don’t get how someone can work to create something so destructive and be proud of it, especially after all we went through during the war.”
“You’re sure he wasn’t talking about the Christ?”
“I’m sure. Janka said it was more powerful than that.”
Clipped (The Clipped Saga Book 1) Page 6
