Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series) (128 page)

I pushed it in midair, and as I tumbled to the cracked pavement with Silas in my grasp, I heard the deafening explosions sound around me. Two on the left, two on the right.

My ears rang as the world became a teeth rattling roar reverberating off every bone in my body. My senses flash froze and as I saw Silas’s temporarily stunned face I knew his were too. The green slabs of jade shot off in all directions as I skidded to the ground, him pinned underneath me.

But he was guarded, even as the remains of the north wall of Aras fell around us like meteors, the brute still got a hold of me. Quickly I wrenched my hand away and pulled out my combat knife.

With a flash so quick it felt like I was piercing jello, I stabbed Nero in the eye. I turned as his blood squirted through his sliced socket, taking the blade with me. Without hesitation I turned my attention to Silas and in a single forceful slice, I opened his throat to the vertebrae.

The pieces of flesh underneath his chin opened like a slashed sack of grain. His blood sprayed between his stained, manicured fingers in his vain attempts to dam the flow.

Silas had that look on his face that I had seen grace many men about to die, fear and confusion flooded his perfect features. I rose off of him, my breathing a ragged growl suited more for a wild animal than myself.

I looked around and saw the madness around me.

Through the thick blanket of dust the explosion had made, I could see two massive holes where I had plated the C4. Blasting an open wound of rubble and rebar for all of the greywastes to infect and devour. Beside the gaping holes I saw Matt and Sadii in their positions. Turning a wheel together to draw up the ramp so no one could flee to the safety of the wall. They had followed my orders to the letter.

In all directions I saw people consumed to panicked derangement from the unexpected explosion, their faces covered by shielding arms, or unrecognisable with the blood and grey on their faces. I looked around with a smug smile as they scattered like croaches. Residents were screaming, their traffic coned boundary, once in their minds an impenetrable force field, fell like bowling pins as everyone fled.

I was only beginning.

My eyes were still bright with unspoken recompense, the smirk on my mouth only fading with a purse of my lips. I whistled the low, ear itching buzz, and shifted my vision towards the blown out concrete walls on either side of the north gate.

As I called them, the human insects ran in all directions, screaming and fleeing like the prey they were. They couldn’t  hear what I was doing, but soon they would know.

The black male peeked  his head around the gaping hole, behind him the white female and several others. Their yellow eyes were like burning suns through the thick smoke, their shoulder blades rising and falling mountains as two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and hatred stalked into the town of Aras.

I looked upon them, my heart brimming with a blood thirst that set electricity through my body. For the first time in my life, I realized what it felt like to no longer fear death. Not the bullshit you say to yourself to feel tough, or to offer as words of encouragement to someone dying. No, I was the second person in the history of the world to look death in the eye and laugh. I was invincible now, I will always be an inch away from death’s grasp.

I was no raptor, I was no machine...

I was the reaper.

Then it was like a flood. The first deacon lunged at Carson and tore his head off with a single jerk of his long, scabbed snout. He flung the head behind him and lolled his tongue in intrigue of his new situation. His eyes were lit like mine, a caged animal that for the first time in his life tasted freedom.

Freedom to run, hunt and kill. I looked at that muscled creature and saw myself. Two beasts who just grasped a power they never thought was possible.

The deacon looked away from me as an enforcer ran past him, the woman desperately clawed at the ramp to try and get up but to my inner maddened glee Matt and Sadii didn’t waver their gaze from what was going on below them. The two legionnaires that had been holding them hostage were crippled messes at the bottom of the north gate. With a single shortened scream and a flash of white patched fur, the enforcer joined them.

My residents and the enforcers might have turned against me, but my sentries would always be loyal.

I heard Killian scream.

I turned and as I did, like a cold bucket of ice water, my mind managed to crawl from the abyss of my own madness and drag its severed corpse to the reality happening around me.

The deafening screams stuffed every open part of my mind, as did the sounds of crumbling walls and snarling deacons. Ripping flesh teased the lower registers of my enhanced hearing and the thunderous sounds of engines revving to life.

Through the thick dust I saw Reno, he was being dragged by... by the pet? My friend’s black hair was grey with ash, and his face darkened with what blood had seeped through the soft powder. I saw two bullet holes in his gut that smeared a bloody trail as the tall dark haired pet dragged him deeper into the fog.

Then I saw Perish, his arms were wrapped around Killian, protecting him like a human shield. The boy’s mouth was open and screaming my name but his eyes were wide and unblinking like a child with shellshock. He was fighting Perish, but the scientist wouldn’t give him an inch of slack. He held him with a bowed head and cold determination, to protect my boyfriend from the onslaught at whatever costs. Deek wasn’t far away from the two, his haunches bristled and raised and his teeth bared. He was keeping the deacons away.

Killian and I made eye contact for the briefest of moments, I took a step towards him.

I only made it one step.

With the impact of a tank I felt myself get knocked side ways, I hit the ground hard, smelling sour rotting breath on my neck.

Then a vice of a thousand needles sank into my flesh, my chest vibrated like a loud speaker. The sound of ripping flesh filled every orifice of my body, then a coldness on my neck as the air was exposed to my wind pipe. I saw my own blood gush forward onto the black deacon’s muzzle.

The last sensation I felt was my body being dragged towards the sounds of the plane’s engine. The last voice to grace my ears was Killian screaming my name over and over.

Reaver! Reaver!

Then the darkness, void of any colour or sensation; and in the very root of my dead brain, the spark of life that refused to die even with death’s touch. In my demise it spoke to me, the obsidian void that cradled the radiant cold flame of my immortality. A frozen fire so buried in me that no one could touch it, not even death.

It said the only words it knew, over and over, and as I got closer, I realized the voice was my own.

I am the reaper.

I am the reaper.

The End of the Fallocaust Series. Book One.