Clipped (The Clipped Saga Book 1) Page 4

  Kid eyed the menu uncertainly. “Um,” he stammered. “I uh…”

  “What you got?” Kinzer asked, trying to help Kid out.

  The waitress set her hand on her hip and cocked her head to the side. Her purple-streaked bangs covered her eyebrow. “We got orange juice, milk, coffee—”

  “Coffee!” Kid exclaimed.

  “Cream and sugar?”

  Kid stared at her blankly.

  “Yeah,” Kinzer replied by proxy, “I’ll take a coffee, too.”

  “'Kay.” She slipped back behind the counter.

  “How long were you in that place?” Kinzer asked.

  “Few years.”

  “How’d you end up there?”

  Kid shot him a look that let Kinzer know he didn’t want to talk about it.

  “You gonna tell me about that scar?” Kid asked, mockingly emphasizing the word scar.

  Kinzer hesitated. There were rules against talking to mortals about immortal affairs, but at this point, Kinzer didn’t care. His world had been ripped out from under him, and right then, with his thoughts jumbled and disoriented, he desperately wanted someone to talk to. And given Kid’s circumstances, he didn’t imagine there was much that could shock him. He took a breath, recognizing the consequences of what he was about to do. That wasn’t going to stop him.

  “You believe in God?” Kinzer asked.

  Kid snorted. “You serious? Listen, I don’t need you or anyone else shoving their religion down—”

  “You want me to answer your question or not?”

  Kid eyed him skeptically. “Okay, okay. Go ahead.”

  “God’s a bad word. It means too many different things to too many different people. What I’m trying to say is, there is a creator of this world. A very powerful being that we call the Almighty. Before he created this planet, he created another set of creatures. People here usually refer to them as angels. We call them higherlings. These immortal creatures were his pet project, designed to imitate his most self-appreciated attributes.”

  “You trying to tell me you’re some sort of angel? I was actually curious. You don’t have to be a douche.”

  “Not an angel.”

  The waitress approached their booth. From a tray she carried, she set two white mugs with brown-stained rims before them. Black fluid waved against the white sides of the insides of the mugs. She placed a plate of sugar and creamer packets in the middle of the table.

  “You fellas know what you want to order?”

  “Fuck,” Kid said.

  “Can we have another minute?” Kinzer asked.

  “Whatever.” She went back to the counter.

  “If you’re not an angel, what are you? A demon?” His arched eyebrow assured Kinzer that he wasn’t buying it.

  “We prefer to be called fallens. Will you look at your menu before she comes back and gets bitchy with us?”

  Kid scanned it again.

  “Ooo! They have waffles! I haven’t had waffles in forever.” He sipped his coffee. “Mmm. That’s really good.”

  Kinzer tasted his. It was burnt. He scowled. Grabbing five packets of sugar off the plate, he ripped them open and emptied them into his mug.

  “Sorry,” Kid said. “You were saying? You’re a demon?”

  “A fallen.” Kinzer stacked a few of the creamer packets by his mug.

  “You trying to steal my soul? 'Cause I think you’re a little late.”

  Kid was so much giddier than he’d been at Jerry’s. Kinzer imagined it was his excitement over his new freedom.

  “You mortals have a pretty fucked up sense of what’s really going on. That’s not even close to how this works.” Kinzer peeled a packet lid back and poured the creamer into his mug. “After the Almighty created the higherlings, He fell in love with the one you guys call Satan, Lucifer, Prince of Darkness. We fallens know Him as the Leader. They had a fling. According to legend, they had some pretty great sex.”

  “God’s gay?” Kid asked. “Top or bottom?”

  “Eh. The Almighty’s kinda a hermaphrodite, so I don’t know if He’d be considered gay, but I think you can rest assured that He’s a top. Anyway, they were lovers for eons. During this time, the Almighty created a present for the Leader: the world. However, the Almighty was so disgusted by it that He tried to hide it. Eventually, Satan found the world, and when the Almighty explained that it had been intended as His gift, the Leader…Satan…thought it was pretty sweet. Not long after that, they split up.”

  “Why?” Kid’s eyes widened, as if he was surprised that he’d asked that.

  Kinzer figured he must’ve sounded like the nuttiest guy in the world. Maybe it was better that way.

  “The Leader and the Almighty always fought over the hierarchy of Heaven, which divided higherlings into different classes. The Almighty’s most beautiful and intelligent of creations made up the ruling class. His more usual creations, like me, belonged to the lowest class.”

  “Oh, you’re not usual.” Kid’s gaze lowered, clearly indicating Kinzer’s dick.

  “You’d be surprised. Anyway, the division and inequity enraged the Leader. He inspired a lot of us with speeches and writings about equality. After eons of social strife and protest, the Almighty cast the lowest class out of Heaven with the Leader, allowing us to form our own society in Hell. This was called the Fall. Part of the agreement between the Almighty and the Leader was that anyone who went with the Leader was banished from Heaven forever, and they had to char their wings as a symbol of their transgression against Him. He was very overdramatic about the whole thing.”

  The waitress re-approached. “You guys figured out what you want?”

  “Um…yeah,” Kid said. “Can I get three pecan waffles, two chicken parmesana omelets, and a chocolate pie? Oh, and hash browns covered in chili?”

  Kinzer and the waitress eyed each other.

  She turned back to Kid and smirked. “Hungry?”

  “Yup.”

  “And you?”

  “Just two eggs,” Kinzer said, “over easy.”

  “Be right out.” She dashed behind the counter.

  Kid pressed his thumb to his cheek. “So, God and Satan fuck. Breakup. And Satan and his peeps go party in Hell?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “That has nothing to do with your scar.”

  “I’m getting there. After the Fall, the Almighty and the Leader agreed to leave the world alone—to let it run its natural course. However, the Almighty went behind the Leader’s back and tried to destroy it. This started a war between Heaven and Hell, a very brief war that ended in far too much bloodshed. The Leader created powerful weapons, Morarkes, creatures with one purpose: to kill higherlings. To prevent them from attacking fallens, the Leader gave Morarkes a keen sense of smell to distinguish between higherlings and fallens. But the Leader discovered that he couldn’t control them. They turned against the fallens and wreaked havoc in Heaven and Hell.

  “For a brief period, the realms united and fought against the Morarkes. And fearing that another war would wipe out not only the world but Heaven and Hell, the Almighty and the Leader created a special assembly, the Council, to moderate any immortal activity that happened in the world. Like the United Nations for immortal realms. The Leader hoped that the Council would prevent God from trying to destroy the world again. The Almighty hoped it would prevent the Leader from creating another devastating weapon.

  “As you can probably imagine, if the Almighty doesn’t destroy the world, then He looks like the Leader’s bitch and like any immortal can walk all over him. So the Almighty is still trying to annihilate the world, but in a very sneaky way. The Leader has figured this out, and it’s turned into a massive chess game.”

  “So…when you say this kind of shit, do you know you sound crazy? Or do you think, ‘This is going to make total sense to someone else’?”

  Kinzer was relieved that Kid wasn’t taking him seriously. It meant he could ramble on without having to worry about him freaking ou
t about the horrors of mortals’ vain plight in the Leader and the Almighty’s petty feud.

  “In Hell, there are a lot of fallens who, for whatever reason, are trying to get in good with the Almighty again, to restore their place in Heaven. These fallens will do just about anything to get back, including helping to bring about the end of the world. One group is called the Raze. I’m with a special operative for the Leader, the Leader’s Allies. They sent me to investigate this group, to see what their plans were. But someone ratted me out. They clipped my wings, and I’m guessing their leader, Veylo, sold me to Jerry just to piss me the fuck off.”

  He wasn’t going to tell Kid about Janka. That would be too much for him. He’d lose control of his emotions.

  “Bullshit,” Kid said. “You’re telling me that shit on your back used to be wings? Like bird wings?”

  “No. Like fallen wings.”

  Kid shook his head. “Whatever. If you’re really some immortal demon, prove it.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t you have powers or shit? Don’t you do things different from people? Isn’t there some way you can show me?”

  “When they clip you,” Kinzer explained, “you lose your powers. And other than having unusually large genitalia, we’re pretty similar to humans. We’re actually the original model. But maybe if you get a closer look, you’ll get it.”

  ***

  “Where are they?” Kid whispered.

  Kinzer, his eyes closed, sat on the toilet, shirtless. He looked like he was meditating.

  Kid, crammed between Kinzer and the stall door, stared at his naked back.

  “We could totally fuck in here,” Kid said.

  “Shh!”

  The foul restroom stench filled Kid’s nostrils. He cringed.

  Oily marks—the marks he’d seen back in Jerry’s place—started to reappear, until they were black with tiny points protruding from them.

  Kid leaned down to get a good look. They were sharp, barb-like. He moved his fingers close, but just as he was about to touch one, several shifted together.

  “Holy fuck. What is it? A mutation?”

  “That’s where the wings used to be.”

  The marks were weird, but it was too big of a leap for him to believe Kinzer’s story. Kinzer was either lying out of his ass or bat-shit crazy. Either way, he didn’t care. Kinzer had rescued him from Jerry’s, so he would swear his loyalty to him regardless…even if that meant going along with all this nonsense about angels and demons and wars between Heaven and Hell.

  “Okay,” he said. “What do we gotta do?”

  “I gotta warn some higherlings.”

  Chapter Four

  “Dillon and Aaron on standby.”

  Pop music blared so loud that Kid could barely hear the intercom voice as he and Kinzer made their way through a smoke-filled bar.

  Kid was still chuckling at the sign outside. “This place really called Dick Dongs?”

  A dim, orange light illuminated a box of a stage where two late twenty-something guys rubbed their steroid-induced muscled bodies against black poles, posing with the music.

  The place was pretty empty, except for a few balding men—well into or beyond their fifties—who were tended to by shirtless gym-rats that looked barely legal.

  Kinzer had driven for nearly twenty-four hours without rest until they’d reached Atlanta, where he claimed his friends would be to help him. Kid still thought it was a bunch of nonsense, and now that they were in a strip bar, he was even surer of it.

  Kinzer approached the bar. An older guy—his broad chest covered in curly black hair, his love handles nearly nonexistent—set a crate on the floor and stocked beers in a chrome tub of ice. His shirt dangled from his back belt loop.

  Kid looked around uneasily. His eyes drifted to the stage. The less-than-enthusiastic steroid-ripped dancers bobbed around and dipped fairly low for wide-eyed frumpies that were slipping bills into their underwear. Kid saw the same look in the dancers’ eyes that he was used to seeing at Jerry’s. Sad, empty, defeated. He imagined that was what he looked like.

  Kinzer set his arm on the bar and glanced around.

  Kid finally asked the question that had been burning on his mind since they’d arrived.

  “I’m sorry. You said these were angels, right?”

  As much as Kid didn’t buy Kinzer’s story, he was still curious about how this all worked in his head.

  Kinzer nodded. “AKA higherlings.”

  “Um…what are they doing here?”

  Kinzer smirked. “Seems like God has a pretty fucked-up sense of humor, right?”

  The bartender popped up from the beer tub and approached the counter. “Hey, man.”

  “Jack on the rocks,” Kinzer said. “And can I change out for some ones?”

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out a wallet he’d lifted from one of Jerry’s clients, and handed some cash over to the bartender.

  Kinzer turned back to Kid. “Better to keep higherlings in places you wouldn’t expect them. These guys are liaisons for the Almighty’s secret organizations on Earth.”

  The bartender slid a glass of Jack across the counter and handed Kinzer a wad of ones. Kinzer curled the cash up and slipped it in his back pocket.

  Kid rocked his head to the pop beat. He smiled. “This is kinda fun.”

  He scanned the pack of trim bodies that pranced around the room in just jeans.

  A pretty-faced brunet, his chest pushed forward, his abs sucked in, approached Kinzer.

  “Hey, man. Wanna lap dance?” He winked.

  Kinzer shook his head. The brunet frowned. His chest sank in. His abs pushed out. He moved along.

  “So,” Kid began, “how will I know when I see one of these guys?”

  “Don’t sweat it. I got this.”

  The song faded out. An awkward silence filled the room, followed by the sound of a toilet flushing. The dancers hopped off the stage.

  “Dillon and Aaron on deck.”

  The orange stage lights shut off. Two black lights flipped on, illuminating both poles.

  At the back of the bar, a door opened. Two glow-in-the-dark thongs, one green and one pink, floated out and approached the stage. As the black light illuminated the physiques they were affixed to, Kid’s mouth dropped.

  The guy in the pink thong had a flawless body. Two veins crawled like vines up a deep rift that outlined either side of his belly button, which was so shallow it was nearly flush with his washboard stomach. Kid wondered if the guy’d ever had a carb in his life. Two locks of his blond, spiked hair curled inward like devil horns.

  The music started back up.

  The pink-thonged stripper grabbed the pole and swayed his torso—embedded with a deep vee, a seeming invitation to savor his package, which was so enormous that it was dangling out of the far-too-small thong. Kid was sure it had to have been nearly a foot and half long.

  Narrowed eyes and crinkled temples made the stripper appear to be perpetually wincing, lost in some deep thought, even while he was shaking his ass and wrapping his leg around the pole. Indented around his mouth were two sickle-shaped dimples that were so defined, they were visible even as he stood there, expressionless.

  His knees gyrated. His juicy, round ass jiggled. He was hotter than the other two dancers Kid had seen on the stage. More than that, there was something different about him. He appeared to actually be feeling the rhythm, caring about the beat, enjoying what he was doing.

  The dancer closed his eyes, massaged one hand down the pole as his ass dipped to the floor. He stroked his other hand across his thick pecs, which protruded so far from his chest that the dip between them had to be several inches deep.

  “You like what you see?” Kinzer asked.

  “Mmm hmmm.”

  Kinzer grinned. “You and every other higherling. Follow me.” Kinzer stepped toward the stage. As he approached the stripper in the green thong, Kid found himself inching toward the other.

  “
Kid, take a seat. I think it’ll be easier if I talk to him one on one.”

  Okay, crazy.

  He appreciated Kinzer’s suggestion. It gave him an opportunity to be closer to the other stripper. He made his way to a table between the two poles, so he could keep an eye on both his favorite dancer and favorite hero. Kinzer approached the green-thonged stripper, who was shaking his cheeks in the face of a bone-thin corpse of a man. The corpse eagerly stuffed a dollar bill in a glow-in-the-dark strap around the stripper’s thigh.

  Shorter than the other stripper, his muscles were less bulky, less defined. However, it was still a hell of a body. Dark-brown hair waved down either side of his cheeks, fanning out over his shoulders. Tiny hairs speckled across his plump face, indicating a fresh beard. Where the other stripper seemed confident in his place on the stage, this one seemed awkward, out of his element.

  The green-thonged stripper finished entertaining the older man and returned to his pole. He climbed and wrapped his legs around it, gripping on with his calves. He threw his body back, arching his torso so his abs pushed forward, tense, rigid.

  ***

  Not gonna make any fucking money tonight, Dedrus thought.

  He arched his back.

  He’d just finished entertaining one of his regulars, a nasty old man who was very generous with ones but never paid for VIP.

  While he’d been working the regular, Dedrus had noticed a young guy in his peripheral vision. Maybe he had some cash.

  He’d made his way over to the pole and performed his moneymaker move, hoping it would pay off.

  He tossed his head back and threw the guy a seductive glare.

  “What the—”

  His calves lost their grip. He plummeted to the floor.

  “Shit!”

  The stripper at the other pole, Treycore, threw him a concerned look.

  Dedrus couldn’t believe it.

  Kinzer?

  Was this a dream? He had plenty of dreams about Kinzer—dreams where his ex-lover returned to him and confessed his love. They’d make up and run off together. Was that why he was there? Dedrus knew better. He remembered the cruel day when he’d expressed his true feelings for Kinzer and he’d been shot down.