Clipped (The Clipped Saga Book 1)

  CLIPPED

  (The CLIPPED SAGA, BOOK I)

  By

  Devon McCormack

  Other Works by Devon McCormack

  Bastards Series

  Cheating Bastard (Bastards #1)

  Lying Bastard (Bastards #2)

  The Metropolis Series (Romances with Riley Hart)

  Faking It (Metropolis Series, #1)

  Working It (Metropolis Series, #2)

  Owning It (Metropolis Series, #3)

  Standalone Romances with Riley Hart

  Up for the Challenge

  Weight of the World

  Romance

  Still Your Guy

  Between These Sheets

  FU: Fixer Uppers

  Filthy Little Secret

  Tight End

  Young Adult Titles

  The Pining

  When Ryan Came Back

  The Night Screams

  Copyright © 2013 by Devon McCormack

  Cover Photography by Allan Spiers

  Cover Design by Shasti O'Leary Soudant

  Proofing by Heidi Ryan

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All products and brand names mentioned are registered trademarks of their respective holders/companies.

  This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  To Mom and Dad, who must stop reading now,

  &

  To Ashley and Karen, who were allowed to read further and did.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Other Works by Devon McCormack

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SNEAK PREVIEW

  Chapter One

  “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 t
o 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.

  Chapter Two

  “One, two, three, four…”

  Lift, pansy. Lift or you’ll be stuck here for the rest of your fucking life.

  Kid pushed the barbell up and lowered it as he took out one hundred sixty pounds of anger on his muscle-bound body.

  He was the youngest guy in the workout room, hence his affectionate nickname.

  Lift, you stupid fuck!

  Mirrors lined the walls. Benches, medicine balls, mats, racks, and weights clustered between two rows of support beams. Guarding one of the doors to the workout room, Marzo, a beefy man with a walleye, folded his arms and stared forward (and to the side) blankly, as if trying to dissociate from boredom. He was rumored to have been not so honorably discharged from the army. At the door on the other side of the room, Clive, a twig of a man with stringy arms and a gaunt face, who appeared to be the poster boy for an anti-Meth ad campaign, stared at his feet as he kicked the doorframe.

  Jerry stepped between a tray of dumbbells and a column near the wall. A pot-bellied boy nearly half his size, who couldn’t have been much older than Kid, walked alongside him. He scribbled frantically in a pocket-sized notebook. Jerry whispered something in his ear. Jerry had a stern, most-serious glare frozen on his spotty face. He and the pot-bellied scribe, who the boys knew as Robb, eyed a few guys doing sit-ups on mats on one side of the room. The Brazilians, as they were called. They were gorgeous, ripped guys who’d been lured to Jerry's under the pretense of working in adult films. Whoever had duped them had made a pretty penny off their asses. They were top of the line, except that they could hardly speak any English. Although, they seemed pretty good with “fuck” and “no” or a combination of the two.

  One of the Brazilians did crunches, sweat sliding from his mountainous chest into the sharp hills that swelled across his abdomen. A patch of fat couldn’t be found anywhere on his tight body. Of everyone in the workout room, he was by far the prettiest, with flawless caramel skin and blue eyes that glistened under the fluorescent lights.

  “Robb, keep our blue-eyed beauty on a high-protein diet. He needs more muscle. And get him on the bench press at least three times a week. I want a chest on him. Those abs are only gonna get him so far.”

  Jerry and Robb approached Kid, mid-bench-press, breathing heavily as his biceps, shoulders, and pecs contracted with his violent movements.

  Jerry’s serious glare transformed into a pleasant, even friendly, smile.

  “How’s it going, Kid?” he asked.

  Kid pumped away, sweat rushing like water through a canyon between his pecs.

  “Mmmm…That’s good. Real good. Just keep right on with what you’re doing.”

  Kid knew he was one of Jerry’s favorites. Not because he was particularly attractive or lucrative, but because he was obedient. Obedience meant almost as much to Jerry as money, so Kid's adherence to his rigid, oppressive rules made him one of the few recipients of Jerry's generosity—a decent meal and an occasional used book. Rare as they came, Kid would savor the books. Without access to TV or radio, they were the only opportunities that allowed him a moment of escape—to leave this cruel and unjust world behind.

  He kept them stacked under a cot in his room. Over the years, he'd collected novels by Dickens, Shelley, Conrad, Hawthorne, and Golding. Every night before lights out, he'd fish one out and devour it page by page, imagining that he was somewhere else—anywhere else. He didn't care that the protagonists were usually living in the most unpleasant of worlds. Any heinous life was better than his.

  At thirteen, Kid had wound up homeless on the streets of Atlanta. “Wanna fuck?” he would say to the pudgy, sad-faced geezers he’d catch leaving the nearest gay bar. He gave blowjobs and took it up the ass, sometimes for as little as twenty bucks. He didn’t need much. He just had to have money for meals. He didn't have to worry about shelter, because he squatted at an abandoned church with three other homeless guys. They were older and only one of them ever bothered him with sexual solicitations, which he'd endured on occasion to ensure he’d have a place to sleep.

  Kid had been cruising the streets, looking for his next meal ticket, when he'd been knocked unconscious and had woken up in Jerry's place. That was what the other guys called it. None of them really knew where they were—or what kind of building they were in, though several of the guys assumed that it had been an old school.

  Though he'd abducted Kid, Jerry was, in many ways, his guardi
an angel. Within the months that Kid had been on his own, he'd managed to pick up several STDs, which Jerry promptly treated, tending to Kid's health and providing him with reading material while he had recovered. Jerry had made it clear that Kid didn't have a choice but to stay there. In the beginning, Kid was fine with that. Better to have shelter and fuck under those conditions than to have to do it all on his own. However, he discovered there was a price to having so many things provided for him, and he grew to resent Jerry. More important than the security of his body was the security of his freedom, which he desperately longed for. He planned to have it again…one day.

  Lift, you shit.

  He built up his strength. One day, he'd have an opportunity to take on Marzo or Clive, and he'd crawl out of this dump and get the fuck out.

  He had plans that didn’t involve spending the rest of his life on the streets. He was going to get a job as a waiter or a clerk at a store. He was going to be a normal person, and when he got enough money together, he'd even go to college. He didn’t know if he’d ever finish, but he could at least take some classes, make himself a little smarter.

  Jerry and Robb continued their stroll through the workout room.

  A bead of sweat dripped off Kid’s forehead onto the cement floor. His muscles locked and his face turned red, the veins in his neck protruding forward as he pushed his arms to their last possible rep. He forced the bar over his head and set it on the bar rest.

  He sat up. Sweat drenched his light-brown hair and dripped onto the smooth flesh that dressed his rift-covered abs. He panted as he tried to catch his breath.

  The other guys were far less into their workouts than he ever was. They fulfilled their daily requirements, but that was it. None were eager to make their bodies more pleasing to potential johns.

  A man with vampire-white flesh, speckled with black and blue bruises, stepped through the entrance to the workout room.