Page 13 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

“Another godsdamned headache.” I had to get this done, migraine or not.

“Honestly, I’m beginning to get bored with this one,” he sneered. “Want to play yourself? Let your headache out on him?”

A hammer striking my head summoned my gaze away from the scab of dead skin hanging on his top lip and to the naked man sprawled across the steel table in the center of Zion’s workshop.

Scarlet drops grazed the cement floor below the mortuary table’s wheels, falling all over each other in a competition to reach the bloody stream running down the drain first.

“You sure you did not start having a different kind of fun with him?” Zion’s jeans were obviously stretched around his hips uncomfortably.

“Thought about it, but I’d enjoy finishing on your face much more than on his.” As he licked his lips, I smothered the need to mimic him, giving him a dirty look instead. He raised his hands in defeat. “You know I’d do it only if you asked.”

Gasps filled the air as the tied-up man took his first breaths in the last few minutes. The assistant who’d developed the new security system for the city. He shook uncontrollably, most of his body covered in red from Zion’s blade’s caresses. From the years I had known him—slow ones.

The sole patch of untouched flesh was between the man’s thighs. Not for long, anyways. Zion liked to finish on a high note.

I crouched closer to his swollen lips, a small cut in each major crinkle. “Do you recognize me?”

“Y— Ye?—”

“Good,” I interrupted his faint mumbles, not wanting to waste any more precious moments of the clarity my migraine drawing back into the corners provided.

“I will give you a choice. Tell me what I want.” I paused. “Or I will leave you here for days and nights, and weeks will turn into months, maybe years, depending on my generosity. I will shove a tube down your throat to force-feed you, hook up a saline IV drip, so you do not dehydrate, and let Zion use you as his entertainment as often as he wishes.

“But when he tires of you, I will come down here to deal with you myself. You see, he gets off on inflicting pain on rats like you. And because biting your tails off gets him hard, he will play around but not kill you, not when you openly give him so much pleasure. But that is not the case with me. I indulge in different games. For example, I am a big fan of those shiny bones in your body. I like to take my time admiring them in the harsh light hanging above your head. The red specks on the ivory surface…Mhm.

“I am especially fond of carving them out with my name and sticking them back in, just to see how long until the wound gets infected and begins festering. So when I am particularly furious, such as when you change the city’s security system, causing the deaths of my people, I may search for a release. A way to ease my frustration. I wonder how many bones I could pluck and carve before you bleed out?”

Steel banging against steel reverberated in the expanse as he rattled his restraints, his chest heaving—a painting of my story veiling his vision. The clinking sound was like a sledgehammer hitting the back of my head.

I patted his cheek, clammy from his sweat and tears. “Do not look away from me. Explain to me the changes in the number of patrols, the new security system, and how to get through it,and I will let you die. Because if Zion terrifies you, you will piss yourself once you meet Eislyn.”

The assistant—whose name I had put no effort in finding out, as his life was about to expire—relaxed, his limbs spread out wide on the mortuary table, so far containing all of the two-hundred-and-six bones making up an adult’s skeleton.

He was about to spill out all we required. No doubt, Zion was very effective in these matters. But sometimes a different technique was required.

The poor guy closed his eyes, as if the lack of sight imbued him with the strength to speak. “They haven’t finished installing the new system. It’s why they doubled the number of guards around the gates. They can’t function properly until the final tests are cleared.”

“Yes?” I raised my eyebrows expectantly. That was not nearly enough.

“We’ve crea—” He cleared his throat at my obvious disapproval. “I’vecreated a biometric system controlling all the entry points and alarms. We’re implanting our officers with microchips. To get in or out of the city, you will need to have them embedded in you.” Again, he shut his eyes.

Did it help him to forget where he was? He was not walking out of here. Unless you counted being carried out in a box as a sort of a last walk from this world.

“Where?”

He rattled the chains again, his wrists scratched raw from writhing in the steel cuffs. “The purlicue,” he admitted in surrender. “The doctors bury it under the skin between your thumb and the forefinger.”

“No codes needed to pass the system anymore?”

“No, just the implant with the personal identification number connected to it. All barriers will fall if you hold it close to the scanner.”

“When will the tests be finished?”

“I—” His neck stretched out as he searched for my second-in-command looming in his blind zone. “How many days have I been here?”

“Three,” Zion stated.

The man shuddered from Zion’s voice reaching him, unable to locate the source. “They’ll have it ready in two.”