Clipped (The Clipped Saga, 1) by Devon McCormack (11 page)

“Come here to kill us, did you?” he asked.

“When else do I get to see you?”

“How’d you find us, cunt?”

“I knew something smel ed!” Mika cal ed from upstairs.

Kid tumbled out of Treycore's room, into the upstairs hal .

Mika stepped out behind him. “Who's got the mortal fetish?”

Kinzer looked to Treycore, his eyes ful of disapproval, as if

psychical y projecting to him, “What did I tel you?!”

I’m not his fucking baby-sitter
, Treycore thought.

“I've got this,” he assured.

“
Clearly
,” Kinzer said.

“Vera,” Treycore said. “What do you say you and your goons

get the fuck out of here before I lose my shit.”

Vera smiled. “That's what I always loved about you, my

Treycore. Gumption. You real y think you can take on three

members of The Raze?”

It was ambitious, but Treycore was confident. He’d taken on

more than that during the war. But few were as skilled and

apprenticed as the members of The Raze.

101 Devon McCormack

“Bring it.”

He recognized the boldness of his statement. It was three

immortals against an immortal, the foulest smel ing mortal he’d ever encountered, and the fucking clipped. Not very promising.

Mika headed down the stairs, twirling his daggers at his side.

Craetis, still nursing his bleeding neck, stomped around the couch.

Treycore held his sword out in front of him.

“Treycore!” Kinzer cal ed out. “Look out!”

He knew what was up. Because he knew his Vera—a

Teleporter, who’d sneak up on you like a snake in the grass.

He didn’t have time to react.

She was at his side in a flash. Clasping her hands together,

she rammed them across his face.

He tripped over a side table and fel back.

Before he’d hit the floor, Vera drove her heel at his face. He

maneuvered his sword so that her heel ricocheted off it. The

momentum threw her at a nearby chair. Grabbing its back, she

flipped over it. Treycore bounded at her, sword-first. As she landed on her heels, she lifted the chair. Treycore’s sword drove through the seat, slicing it in two. One half col apsed to the floor. Vera tossed the other at his face.

~

Kinzer had forgotten what impressive fighters Treycore and Vera

were. He could only imagine how they used to fuck.

CLIPPED 102

Mika threw himself into their fight, juggling his daggers

about.

Treycore’s swordplay was fast...fast enough that it kept both

Mika’s daggers occupied. But Craetis was on his way to join in, and Kinzer knew there was no way he’d be able to handle al three.

Grabbing a lamp off a table by the couch, he smashed it into

Craetis’s head. Maybe he couldn’t do any serious damage to Craetis, but he sure as Hel could piss him off enough to distract him from Treycore.Craetis shook it off, grabbed Kinzer by his wrist, and hurled him across the room.

Kinzer’s chest slammed into the edge of a shelf.

Fuck!

It felt like his ribcage was about to burst open and spil his

immortal intestines across the floor.

Craetis continued to Treycore.

Didn’t fucking work like I planned
, Kinzer thought, paralyzed on the floor.

Kid popped out of nowhere. He leapt on Craetis’s back and

wrapped a belt around his neck.

“The fuck?” Craetis asked.

Craetis reached over his shoulder to get a grip on him. Kid

wiggled about, evading his stubby fingers while tightening the belt around his neck.

Kid, what the fuck are you doing?
Kinzer thought.

Craetis could easily rip Kid in two. Kid still didn’t

103 Devon McCormack
understand how powerful immortals were, especial y one like

Craetis.Vera flashed by the couch. She swooped down, gripping the sword Dedrus had given Kinzer. She disappeared.

Treycore was going to have to take care of himself. Right

now, Kinzer’s only concern was Kid.

~

Treycore kept up with Mika’s daggers. A sword rushed him from the side.

He caught a glimpse of Vera.

Another sword came crashing down on hers, effectively

detracting it from its course.

Fuck, that was close
, Treycore thought.

“Dedrus,” Vera said. “So good to see you again.”

~

Dedrus eyed Vera with contempt. “Not a very fair fight, is it?”

He’d snuck through the front door, having instructed

Maggie to slip through the woods behind the house and hide-out at the nearby gas station till they were finished handling their current The Raze predicament. He had no intention of letting Treycore and Kinzer handle this on their own.

“Now it is,” Vera said. She disappeared.

CLIPPED 104

Oh, here we go
, he thought, acknowledging how fast his

attacks were going to have to be to keep up with Vera’s advantageous gift.

As Vera appeared on the opposite side of him, Dedrus

whirled around and struck at her with al his might.

“So predictable,” he mocked.

Their swords clashed again.

~

Maggie crept through the woods.

A chil bit at her exposed arms and cheeks. The dim

moonlight sparkled off branches and trunks as she navigated her

way through the foliage.

What am I doing?
she thought.

Everything that Kinzer had told her had been insane—the

ravings of lunatics.

They had to be. There was no other reasonable explanation.

She didn't even believe in God. And even if she did, she wouldn't have believed that He was evil or that He would have impregnated someone like her with His child.

A hal ucination
, she thought. That must've been how she'd seen the wings. She'd hal ucinated plenty of times, writhing in the intoxicating sensations of pleasure and dissatisfaction of her most familiar drug of choice. They must've given her some earlier. It was just a big, long, terrible haze that she was going to wake up from.

105 Devon McCormack
Although, she felt more lucid than ever before. This wasn't like the days where she'd met Kirk so that he could slip her some dick and G. Then, things were blurry. Days and nights would pass like

moments, like days as a child when she'd woken and fal en asleep repeatedly in a night, surprised by the intervals that time seemed to pass in. And yet, despite their brevity, the most vivid of the

moments she experienced were those of enchantment, of delight, of magic, those moments that she so desperately reached for. A night in the back of Kirk's car, her body trembling in the cold, could be better than any night she'd imagined that she could have had

anywhere else in the world...or even wrapped in the warmth of a

heater or a body.

She'd wanted to give it up when she'd discovered that she

was pregnant. She'd wanted to do the moral y responsible thing, as society would have preferred. But she just couldn't bring herself to release the habit. Besides, she hadn't even wanted the thing. She'd never wanted a kid. And based on her calculations, which could

have been flawed considering her brief stint with public education, it could have been one of any number of the boys Kirk had lined up for her. And if it was going to grow up as disgusting as its father, what was the point of existing? Rather than quitting the habit, she had hoped that it would in some way expedite her ultimate goal.

And yet, her bel y continued to grow, bloating to the point where Maggie was of little use to Kirk, who by way of fist, had even been so obliged to try and assist her in releasing the parasite on several occasions. To their disappointment, it hadn't helped.

CLIPPED 106

She'd remembered Kirk introducing her to those two men,

who'd gone by different names than they cal ed themselves after

they'd abducted her. She'd remembered them giving her something

that they'd said would give her an incredible experience—a new

drug that would rapture her in delight and pleasure beyond

anything she'd ever experienced before. She should have known

better. She'd heard the same thing from Jesse Williams when she

was sixteen when he'd wanted to show her how much fun it would

be to break her hymen—something that had obviously been more

pleasurable for him than for her tear-stained experience.

After attempting this al egedly mystical y drug, she'd woken

tied to that bed. It wouldn't have been the first time. She'd had a similar experience with two of Kirk's others, who'd gagged her and killed cigarette butts on her breasts for three days before abandoning her in a motel near Taco Cabana. But these two men hadn't fucked her once, which led to her assuming their motives were far more

sinister. Surely, they got their thrills from watching the eyes of their prey deaden, not from rushes from their own cocks (unless the

former resulted in the ladder).

But they didn't kill her. They'd tied her to that bed, and

given her so miniscule doses of her luxury that she thought, even with it rushing through her veins, she was going to die. She needed more. She always needed more. But Kirk never came. Just these two, surely sadistic men. What kind of bastards would abduct a pregnant woman and force her to get clean? But regardless of her attempts at understanding their motives, she couldn't. They hadn't hurt her,

107 Devon McCormack
and they supplied her with plenty of food. Had it not been for

depriving her of something she felt she needed as much as water, the stay in their lovely little room would have been like cruising

through exotic locations. But considering the torment of her

deprivation, it felt so far from something so delightful.

Where the fuck am I supposed to go?
she thought.

Cracks harmonized with the crickets and frogs as Maggie

stepped on branches and twigs.

She didn't know where she was going or what she was going

to do when she got somewhere else. Would this Dedrus guy find

her? And did she want him to find her? He had to be insane. Al

those guys had to be. Didn't they? There was no such thing as God or Satan. There was no such thing as any of this!

CRACK!

She heard something nearby and started to turn. She felt

something snatch her by the arm.

~

Kid’s biceps were sore. His hands were red. And the juggernaut that he was on didn’t seem to be caving.

How fucking strong can this guy be?
he thought.

The mammoth man sped up backward, ramming Kid’s back

against the wal .

Dry wal exploded around Kid. His arm rammed into a

two-by-four.

CLIPPED 108

He screamed out, but he maintained his fierce grip on the

belt. It hurt like fuck, but he knew that if he let go, he was dead.

“You’re a little rodent, aren’t ya?” the juggernaut said.

Leaning forward, he reared back and slammed Kid’s back into the

two-by-four again.

“Fuck!” Kid cried.

“Get ready to die, mortal.” He leaned forward again.

I real y am going to die
, Kid thought.

As the man started to fal back, a basebal bat rammed into

his bal s.

He groaned and col apsed onto his chest.

~

Kinzer stood before Craetis, a basebal bat in hand. While searching for a weapon to help Kid, he’d managed to find it in a nearby closet.

“Say you like it,” he said.

Kid was stil on Craetis’s back, tightening the belt around

his neck.
Damn
, Kinzer thought.
Kid’s a feisty little guy.

~

Dedrus felt like they were back in the war.

Vera flashed in and out, al around him. But it was slowing

her down. She was breathing heavily, and her perfect hairdo was

109 Devon McCormack
lined with sweat. He knew that the more she teleported, the less energy she’d have, and the better chance he had at surviving her vicious swordplay.

Treycore and Mika fought just a few feet away, seeming to

be trapped in an endless tit-for-tat.

“Look at the sweetlips I found trying to get away,” a voice

said.

A fal en stepped in from the front hal . He was nearly as tal

as Craetis, with broad shoulders and eyes that sparkled in the

lamplight, even more than the other immortal’s eyes.

It was Deter, another of The Raze’s emissaries.

Fuck
, Dedrus thought.
Do they know it’s the Antichrist?

“It’s a mortal,” Deter said. “She was sneaking through the

woods out back.”

“Let me go, asshole!” Maggie snapped, slamming her fist

into his chest and tugging at her arm.

Vera’s eyes fixed on Maggie’s bloated bel y.

She must know something’s up
, Dedrus thought.

Maintaining her duel with him, her eyes shifted from

Maggie to Treycore.

Dedrus knew Treycore couldn’t bluff. She knew him too

wel . Any little twitch—any slight shake in his pupils would tel her al she needed to know.