33. Kyle

CHAPTER 33

Kyle

T here were no more bullets. But the next night a bottle with a flaming rag stuffed in its neck was tossed at House Epsilon's front door, showering it in flames and necessitating a renewal of the warding runes. The third night resulted in Mish walking away with a black eye after being assaulted in the foyer – but at least he had walked away. The man masquerading as a prospective client had been wielding a knife, and it was only Sanjay's quick reflexes that had saved Misha from suffering a blade to the gut instead of the wild haymaker punch as the attacker had fled.

That had led to Kyle and Master Epsilon agreeing that no new clients would be allowed entry to the House until this all resolved itself, both of them pointedly ignoring the issue of how it might be so resolved and that the number of clients willing to visit a seemingly accident-prone brothel was quickly dwindling. They were losing credits at a sickening rate, even with Kyle staying obediently away from the monetary side of the business, and the House's working capital could only keep them afloat for so long.

This morning, Kyle had woken from fretful nightmares with a realisation that had since crystallised into fierce determination.

This can't continue.

He hated being the reason why House Epsilon's staff hurried fearfully to and from its doors each night, and why they nervously twitched whenever there was a loud noise or the power went out. Why the shadows under Akira's eyes grew longer, his face more haggard, and his exhaustion more obvious.

Where would it end? With friends injured or killed in the nightly attacks, or thrust into poverty when the House was forced to close its doors for good?

The solution was obvious, if terrifying. All you need to do is hand him over, the note had said, and while the loyalty of his colleagues in refusing to act on that was endearing, there was nothing to stop Kyle from turning himself in.

He wasn't usually one to give up so easily. It rankled that giving Miles Mackenroth what he wanted would only reinforce the Uppers' already arrogant sense of entitlement, but Kyle couldn't see another way out of this.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Perhaps Miles would get bored once he'd done what he wanted to do to him, and then he'd let Kyle go. Kyle could put up with a few weeks of demeaning and unsatisfying sex if that was the cost of protecting everyone he cared about, right?

But frustratingly, the note hadn't mentioned how anyone could take the Mackenroths up on their demand for surrender. It hadn't included any runepad dialcode or address, and when Kyle had gathered enough courage to call the general line for the mayor's office, he'd been redirected through a dozen auto-recorded prompts before being dumped into a voicemail he doubted anyone ever listened to. He'd thought about trying to take the nearest elevator to the surface, but there was no guarantee that the arresting police officers would believe that Miles Mackenroth had all but invited him up there, and he could instead end up being thrown into the city's prison.

Kyle had also considered asking his cousin if there was an unguarded way up to the surface that only Xerxes' Engineers knew about, but one look at her pissed off expression when he'd arrived at her apartment – Akira had forbidden him from attending public places like their usual café with that fierce don't mess with me, bitch attitude Kyle wasn't brave enough to defy – and he'd discarded the idea. Indira's old friends at House Rho had filled her in on the happenings at his own House, because confidentiality in the sex industry seemingly didn't mean shit when it came to gossip about the workers themselves, and she spent over an hour lecturing him about the utter fucking stupidity that it would require to even think about handing himself over.

Kyle expended the same hour protesting that no one had suggested he would, so she should really stop yelling at him. Which then made asking how one could hypothetically go about such a thing rather contradictory and unacceptably dangerous, especially with his cousin's runing wand lying threateningly on the kitchen counter between them.

Her husband, Bensen, had just given Kyle a helpless shrug from the couch. It was the same shrug he always offered when Indira became riled. Sometimes Kyle thought about his cousin's impossibly bossy and forceful nature and feared she might push her husband around too much, but whenever he'd broached the subject with Bensen, the man just laughed and said he wouldn't have it any other way.

It had been good to catch up with them, even if Kyle felt more conflicted than before as he trudged home in the dark with half an hour left before his shift began. Indira looked a lot happier now she was a full-time Runic Engineer and away from whoring, although from the way she spoke, it seemed the job came with demanding hours. But at least she and Bensen could spend their nights together again.

It wasn't easy being in the industry and in a relationship.

Kyle was only a block away from House Epsilon when he heard a cat's yowling scream. It was a noise of anguished pain rather than annoyance, and it cut through both the air and Kyle's heart like a knife.

He didn't hesitate. He sprinted down the dark alley it had echoed from with his eyes frantically scanning the filthy ground.

The emergency lighting was unable to make its way into the narrow crack between the towering buildings, and Kyle was forced to use the screen of his runepad for its paltry light. The alley had once been home to someone: a torn blanket and plastic sheet were stretched across the concrete, and a chewed polystyrene cup held a handful of discarded cigarette butts. Offerings too pitiful to have been scavenged, but which may have once represented the grand total of the unfortunate Xerxian's belongings.

Kyle's head swept from side to side until he reached the dead end of the alley, marked by a solid brick wall and a grey dumpster bin that came up to chest height. Expecting the cat to be hiding or trapped beneath the bin, Kyle crouched and peered into the dark corners, yet couldn't spot the animal that had been in so much pain. He straightened with a frown. Maybe there was a grate or drain he'd missed back along the-

Something solid collided with his back, sending him staggering.

Disorientated and winded, Kyle didn't realise his arms were being grabbed until he found himself bent over the dumpster bin, chest and face pressed to its grimy surface.

His runepad was torn from his hand and darkness descended back over the alley, rendering him blind. Kyle tried to yank his hands free. But whoever had hold of him wasn't letting him use the advantage his weight could have otherwise given him, pinning his legs against the bin with their own and twisting his arms painfully behind his back.

"Where's the cat?" Kyle demanded.

"What?"

His assailant's voice didn't sound human. It had the mechanical buzz and unnatural evenness of a modulator, those identity-obscuring devices like deflectors that were only used by the dodgy or the rich.

"The cat," Kyle hissed at whoever it was that had hold of him. "The one that's hurt! We have to help it!"

There was a slight pause from the dark shadow behind him. "It's dead. It had served its purpose in bringing you to me."

Kyle felt hot and cold all at once, shivers rippling through him at the flat, uncaring way the modulator delivered the words.

"Stars take you," he cursed, renewing his struggles. "You're a fucking monster!"

The grip on his arms shifted and for a moment, Kyle dared believe he'd gotten through to them.

And then cold metal snapped tightly around his wrists.

"I suggest worrying less about the creature and more about yourself," the voice told him emotionlessly. "My employer is very eager to meet you, Randall."

Kyle went limp in the handcuffs.

"You didn't need to kill an innocent animal for that!" he bellowed at the darkness, tears pricking his eyes at the thought of what the cat must have suffered at this bastard's hands to have screamed like that. Hands roamed roughly over his body, checking for weapons that weren't there. "I was going to give myself up."

An odd sound echoed around the alley, like an irregularly spaced alarm tone. He realised it was the modulator transforming his attacker's laugh.

"Give yourself up?" they repeated. "Are you as dumb as you are pretty? Do you not know what Mackenroth intends to do with you?"

Setting his jaw, Kyle stared at the blackness in front of his face. He could barely make out the shape of the bin he was slumped across, let alone any details of the person holding him.

"It's better than letting people I care about get hurt."

"Keep telling yourself that," they agreed. "As you're being starved, beaten, and raped more times than you can count, remind yourself how wonderful it is to play the hero." They paused. "But if your body wears out before the Mackenroths are done with you, and your cousin and that twink friend of yours are fetched to serve in your place, will you still think the same?"

Kyle raised his head and had it carelessly shoved back down, his skull ramming painfully against the metal lid of the dumpster.

"You leave them out of this!" he yelled, fury surging through every syllable. Stars, don't let them touch Indira or Misha. "It's me they want!"

"Do you think the mayor gives a shit about your noble intentions? It isn't going to stop when he gets his hands on you, Randall. He'll just get more creative in how he hurts your family. Your friends. Your little kitty-cats." Kyle felt gloved fingers dip underneath his t-shirt and scrape across his ribs, pressing hard enough to bruise. It was a reminder that this small amount of pain was only a taste of what was due to him.

Fear clogged his throat. For himself, for Havoc, Mayhem and Chaos, for everyone that he knew. If it was true that even with Kyle at his mercy, Mackenroth would still try to hurt them...

"Now," his captor began, tugging ruthlessly on the cuffs that bound Kyle's wrists while holding him in place with a firm hand pressed down on his back. "You and I are going to the surface. The mayor has told me how much he's looking forward to watching all his men gangfuck you one after the other, Randall, until you're nothing but a bleeding, broken mess on his floor. Then I expect they'll fuck that, too."

Kyle flinched.

"I'm sorry, am I being too graphic for you?" the voice asked tonelessly. "For someone who seems intent on enduring such things under the guise of selflessness, I had assumed that merely hearing it would not pose a problem."

"It's not…I'm not…"

"What? Quite so willing to give yourself up?"

"Fine, yes!" Kyle cried into the darkness of the alley, hoping someone would hear him and knowing that they wouldn't. And even if they did, no one in Xerxes would be foolish enough to help. "Is that what you want to hear? That I'm fucking terrified?"

Gloved hands tightened around his arms. "So you've learned your lesson?"

He grimaced. "What lesson ?"

"To listen to your Master once in a while," they said.

Kyle went very still with the realisation of who it was that had hold of him.

"Red. Red! Fucking red!" Kyle yelled, and the pressure immediately disappeared from his arms and back. Ice froze his veins and a roaring filled his ears. He rested his cheek against the cold metal of the dumpster as the handcuffs were removed from his wrists, feeling tears running freely from his eyes. "You absolute prick."

Neither of them spoke for a long moment. Kyle couldn't find it within him to be grateful for it, but there was a certain amount of relief in the silence: if Akira had tried to say something or stars take the man, attempted to touch him, Kyle feared he'd have collapsed to the ground and never gotten up again. So he lay bent over the dumpster where he'd been left, shuddering and shivering as he thought over everything that had almost happened…and everything that had happened.

"That was unnecessary," he whispered when he'd recovered enough to uncurl himself and straighten up. He flinched again when a soft light lit Akira up where he stood a few feet away, a runepad in one gloved hand and the voice modulator and handcuffs hanging from the other.

The man's mouth was pinched into a formidable, thin line.

"Not when I suspected from your behaviour lately that intended to turn yourself in. And it seems I was right."

By the stars, after everything he'd just done to him, how was he able to make Kyle feel so guilty? He'd accuse him of going to extremes, but that was Master Epsilon all over. A callous bastard who didn't pull his punches.

Akira glowered. "We talked about how you would leave the Mackenroth problem to me."

" You talked about it," Kyle countered. "With lots of demanding words that didn't exactly form a two-way conversation."

"Stop being difficult. You'll swear to me now that the giving yourself up nonsense is behind you."

"And if I don't?"

"Then you're going right back in these cuffs where I can keep an eye on you," Akira told him darkly. "I'll keep you locked up in the House if I have to."

It wasn't a bluff. Akira was standing between Kyle and the only exit from the alley, and after the rough way he'd handled him just now, Kyle held no misconceptions that affection would stay his hand.

Kyle exhaled. "Fine."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

Akira's expression was of open suspicion. "Repeat after me. I, Kyle Randall, will not do anything that puts myself at risk."

"I, Kyle Randall," he recited, scowling, "think you're a fucking ass."

Then he pushed past him and didn't look back.

-

He managed to avoid speaking to or even looking at Akira for the next three hours while he worked. But by the time their lunch break rolled around, Kyle knew he couldn't live in wilful evasion forever.

So he marched into the Master's office up on the top floor of House Epsilon, refusing to let himself soften when Akira's face visibly lit up upon seeing him. He was not going to allow the man to win him over with smiles, damn it, even as rare as they were. He'd done something entirely unforgiveable.

Akira made to stand from his chair but Kyle impatiently waved him back down. "Don't go offering yourself to me again," he snapped.

"I have no intention of doing so," said Akira. "In your mood, I expect you'd break something."

"Yeah," Kyle agreed. "Your face." He dropped his eyes to between the man's legs where the shape of him was subtly hinted at by the lines of his suit trousers, and let his lip curl. "Or something else."

"And as a result, you will remain on the other side of that desk," Akira said mildly, and returned to his paperwork.

Kyle stared at him. "How can you sit there so calmly after what you fucking did ?"

Akira sighed, closed the ledger he'd been working on, and stood. Circling the edge of the desk, he moved closer until there were bare inches between them.

"I've done many terrible things in my life," he said softly, his brown eyes seeming to reflect some of those horrors for a moment. "Protecting you will never be one of them, Kyle. I do not regret it."

Kyle gaped at him. Seriously?

"That's what you call that? Protecting me?"

Akira cocked his head, considering him.

"Yes," he said simply. "Kyle, I adore your huge heart, but I live in constant terror that it will get you hurt. If you really were foolish enough to give yourself up to Benedict and Miles Mackenroth to try and save the House, there would no relief for you, ever . You'd be kept drugged out of your mind, a thing to be abused at will and tossed away when you sickened and died."

Kyle swallowed at the reminder of what had been threatened in the alley. "You're being dramatic."

The Master exploded, snarling his next words in his face. "I've seen it happen, you ignorant fool! I used to attend the parties that those in Mackenroth's circle held. I saw what they did to the poor souls they acquired for their own sick pleasures ."

"Attend their parties?" Kyle asked, faltering. "As a guest, or…?"

Akira gave him a withering look. "No. On my fucking knees, Kyle."

Oh.

"I whored for that crowd for a long time," Akira told him, not breaking eye contact. "I let them fuck me, and beat me, and pay me for the privilege. And every time I walked away I thanked the stars that I got to do so, and that I wasn't one of those unfortunate bastards they'd set their eye on. That they didn't want me."

"Everyone wants you," Kyle muttered.

That didn't seem to have been the right thing to say. Akira just got even more pissed, bringing his palm down onto the desk with a startling thud.

"Fine. You know what I was grateful for? That I had a Master who wouldn't let that happen to me. Theta ensured all the cocks filling my mouth and ass were only there because of my job , and not because I had nothing and no one left to me. Not because I was a slave to the whims of richer and more powerful men, who thought they could take and discard human beings like fucking trash. So you will keep yourself safe, Kyle Randall, and all the stars in the universe won't be able to protect you from my wrath if you attempt to disobey me."