Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series) (87 page)

His eyes glanced up at me and he blushed. “You’re making me mess up, mister.”

I smiled and turned the generator dial, flooding the whole basement den in light and soon warmth.

Killian squinted in the light, and so did I. We both preferred hiding out in darkness, or he did when I was around at least.

“Did you get a lot of work done?” Killian asked, leaning the guitar against the side of the couch.

“Lots.” I turned off his bluelamp and sat down in front of my desk with the broken hot plate. “I wanted to spend the next week getting Asher’s place up and our plant boxes done. We can use his scrap and the town house’s scrap as firewood too.”

I saw his fingers lightly drum the top of the guitar now resting beside him. He took in a small breath like he was contemplating saying something, but he stopped.

Well I had avoided it for as long as I could. If we were going to fight about Perish it was obviously inevitable. Though I knew, and I hope he knew too, that it wouldn’t solve anything. “You might as well say it.” I glanced up from unscrewing the bottom hinges. I waved some dust away from my face.

“I think he’s from Skyfall.”

So this wasn’t about Perish?

Killian paused like he was expecting some grand reaction. I shrugged and lifted the top of the white plastic plate. I was relieved this wouldn’t be a fight about Perish. At least if we were going to fight it would be a new topic. “So? So are you.”

“No, I’m from the outskirts of Skyfall in one of Dek’ko’s factory towns, they’re worlds apart.”

“You were born in Skyfall though weren’t you?”

“Well... yes... we’re all born in hospitals so they can register us.”

“Well then get the hell out of my town Skyfaller.” I reached over and pushed his head playfully. “What’s the big deal about him being from Skyfall? Didn’t all the Fallocaust survivors come from Skyfall? That’s how King Silas kept them from being killed by the sestic radiation pulse.”

Killian was silent for longer than usual, he looked a little green. “The... they are... I just don’t...”
I sighed and picked up my screwdriver. I gave him a flat look. “You’re jealous.”

Killian bristled, but he didn’t return my gaze. “I don’t like the way he talks that’s all. He’s not just any guy from Skyfall, he’s a Skylander, an elite class. Skylanders are... they’re very smart Reaver and sneaky, that’s why they’re upper class. You above everyone else need to be careful of them.”
“I don’t follow.”

Killian put his hand over mine and made me put down the screwdriver. I groaned preparing myself for a lecture. “It’s a class type. He calls the elites Skylanders and they live in the heart of Skyfall. Am I the only one who noticed Asher is very very good looking? His body proportions are perfect, his face is chiselled like Apollo and his voice flows like he’s fucking reading poetry. Skylanders need to register for breeding rights, there really aren’t many ugly ones.”

He was right about that, but why was that a problem? It just meant he wasn’t an uneducated moron like most wasters. That made more sense to me, not less. It explained why I enjoyed his company, the same reason I had enjoyed Killian’s. He was different, and smart.

“You’re the same, aren’t you? You’re beautiful, and you talk well. Why are we suppose to hate him for being a few miles from where you were raised? Why does it make a big difference?”
Killian opened his mouth but paused for a moment. He seemed to struggle with the next words.

“I don’t think he’s a raticater.”

The conversation was doing a number on his heart and breathing. He didn’t like this new kid. Did he really believe he was lying about his origins, or was this just a cover up to hide his growing jealousy. I could see where he was coming from, but it was unfounded. He should know me better than that. Cheating just wasn’t me.

I wouldn’t bring it up though, it was a sensitive issue and only time would prove he was wrong.“He has a grisly side to him, you haven’t seen. Or perhaps you did and that’s why you left when we were in his house. He’s a raticater, he likes killing as much as I do.”

“I don’t think that’s it.”

I sighed, tired of this conversation already. “Killian, lots of people get sick of being in Skyfall and they leave. Raticater is a good job for new comers, it’s not as dangerous as slaving and it puts food on the table.”

Killian went green again. What I’d give to poke a hole in that head just to look inside it.

“Keep an eye on him, please?”

“I already am,” I said, picking up the screwdriver again. “You really think I’m only spending time with him because he’s my new best friend?”

“No,” he said then gave off a defeated sigh, “I just don’t trust him, that’s all.”

I pinched out the last screw and got up. I walked towards one of my credenza type desks, and started picking out parts I suspected I would need for my now fully dismantled hot plate. “Good, you shouldn’t trust him. I don’t. Don’t trust anyone in Aras but me.”

“I think he likes you.”
I gave a light chuckle and tossed the screwdriver up in the air before catching it mid spin. I pointed it at him. “And now we get to the real reason you don’t like him. Like I said jealousy.”

Oh I got a glare that could melt steel. I think I had touched a nerve. Sure enough, when he spoke his voice was strained and full of emotion.“It took you three months to say hi to me, and you walk with him the entire night?”

I wasn’t in the mood to deal with his insecurities so I ended it as quickly as I could. “If you can’t see the difference between what I felt for you, and what I feel for some kid I just met. I don’t know what to tell you.”

Like I had suspected it did indeed shut him up. Killian picked up his guitar again and started strumming out a few cords before turning a page on his music book. I hoped that would be the end of the conversation.

“Play me something.”

There was a rustling of the music book, I glanced over and watched him put it away. He thought for a second and started playing a song on his old acoustic.

“Say hello, remain, close to me.”
Killian started to sing quietly.
“No good-bye suicide, mystery.”

I smiled at his sweet tenor voice, soft but still masculine, and went back to my hot plate. As I listened to him sing and play his guitar, I stripped a broken wire and started twisting it with its partner. I turned the knob on the hot plate and said a quiet victory under my breath. If there was one thing I was good at it was fixing shitty two hundred year old electronics.

I put the appliance down and leaned back in my chair to listen to him.

He sung quietly to himself and me, a song I knew I would request again. Apparitions he would later tell me it was called.

When the last cord was strummed on his guitar, and his voice faded with the music. The basement around us fell to a still silence.

“Just be careful, okay?” he whispered.

The nervousness in his eyes had no justification in my mind but I still didn’t wish him to suffer over something I knew he wasn’t old enough to control. Jealousy was an emotion for women and teenagers. He would grow out of it, or perhaps I would prove my loyalty to him in time.

Until then, I would say the words he wanted to hear.

“I will be.”

Chapter 36

Killian

Two weeks later found Reaver pulling me towards my old home in the cul-de-sac. I debated whether to become dead weight in protest but I decided to be a man and just get it over with. Though I had been having to swallow a painful lump in the back of my throat.

“You said we were going to do this tomorrow,” I sighed. I was holding in my hands Reaver’s tool kit. Reaver was carrying heavy boards. We probably looked like a stupid sight, he was gliding gracefully with the boards on his back. I was struggling with the clunky took box. My sore wrist pulsing with pain.

“Then you would make up an excuse to put it off,” Reaver said. “It’s already rained and it’s getting cold. We have to board it up, you’ll be fine.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, it seemed to stick half way down.

Reaver stopped and waited for me to catch up. He turned and watched me with his jet coloured eyes, patient with my weaknesses as always.

With my house behind him he looked like a screen shot from a horror movie. The pale and beautiful serial killer with the ominous shrouded two story murder house in the background. Stretching up to the metallic sky, gaping and open. Luring his victim inside to rape him, butcher him alive and make him into a pot roast.

I saw my boyfriend in my head cackling with blood spraying on his face. Raising a bloodied axe and swinging it onto the corpse below. The sickening sound echoing off the bare jip rock walls,
Shunk, shunk, shunk.

If only he had been carrying an axe instead of a stack of plywood.

“I brought xanax just in case.” I wondered if Reaver had noticed my head off in another world, or perhaps it was just a normal exchange of conversation. Either way I shot him a dirty look.

“You don’t need to drug me all the time. I’m not that bad.”

Reaver snorted, apparently... according to him at least, I was that bad.

I hoisted up the tool kit and tried to get a better grasp of it. Reaver was watching me as I fumbled and struggled with it. Probably laughing in his head that I couldn’t even carry a thirty pound box with a handle. Reaver was strong, hard and lanky. I was a scrawny mess.

There was a rattle as the tool box slipped. I had to catch it with my injured arm, which didn’t go so well.

After a sharp pain shot through my wrist I dropped it, it fell onto the pavement.

It stayed shut but the clank made every single cat around us shoot into the debris and houses.

“I’m sorry!” I cried, feeling the back of my throat burn.

Reaver only gave me a smile. He reached down and took his belt off. “It’s not your fault, your wrist is still buggered. I told you I would carry it.” Reaver drew the belt through the tool box and lifted it. He swung it over his shoulder before helping me stand.

I gripped his hand and rose back to my feet. “Please? Let me carry it.”

Reaver shook his head, knowing I needed a bit more love he kissed my lips. “I know it’s too much weight for you. I don’t mind. When your wrist heals and you get a bit older you’ll be able to carry it no problem.”

My face was flushed with embarrassment. What an even worse sight we were now. He was carrying everything to board up my house, and I was walking useless beside.

He was still watching me, with eyes that I always felt stripped me bare, but I didn’t return his gaze. I knew why I was feeling so incompetent and low right now.

Asher Fallon.

He was a festering boil in my brain that throbbed with every mental touch. A pretty, auburn haired blister that pused and rotted, spreading its infectious doubt in my already insecure mind. Every mention of him by Reaver drew in more and more bacteria, making it grow and spread.

At first the wound was small, but over the past two weeks my boyfriend had been feeding it unknowingly. Now it threatened to burst with every mention of his name.

My old faded sneakers stepped one in front of the other. Asher would have been able to carry the tool box, and the boards. He would be able to keep up with Reaver. Even now, a two weeks after his arrival he was almost walking normally. His gate was already more graceful than mine, his movements charismatic and swaying. With every day... every night Reaver came home from his patrols, I grew more and more distrustful of the raticater.

What was I compared to him? I was young, weak, naive and a coward. I had been sheltered in Tamerlan, I had been fed well my whole life and taught nothing of the greywastes. My mind was vulnerable, my movements clumsy and... and...

He was perfect.

Asher was beautiful, graceful, powerful, even dangerous. I had heard the conversations him and Reaver had had. About the ravers they would kill when they went to get his caches. His mind was a twist of sadism like my Reaver’s. What was worse was that he was charismatic and friendly, Reaver responded to that. That’s why they had become friends.

To everyone, Reaver was a cobra. Someone to tread lightly beside, someone to steer clear of. If you so much as looked at him he might bite you. I had learned this quickly, I had been scared of him before my parents had died. I respected his isolation and I kept my distance.

Asher hadn’t. He strolled right up to the viper and walked with him in the darkness.

We were at the stairs, Reaver was still looking at me. If he asked what was wrong, I would lie. My insecurities had been no secret to my boyfriend, bringing them up might cause a fight.

And I didn’t want him to be entangled in my own wild thoughts. Asher made him happy and he deserved to be happy.

If I said that enough times in my brain maybe my mind would actually believe that that was the end of it.

It was true though! I pursed my lips as Reaver started getting nails out of the tool box. With what happened between Greyson and him, and not to mention Leo’s secret. Reaver deserved to have a friend he could relate to, go and... kill things with. Friends and boyfriends were two different things... right...?

Right!?

“Killian?”

My inner reverie retreated back into my mind replaced by reality. Reaver was staring at me, one of his beautiful shaped eyebrows was raised.

“Why don’t you start handing me the nails?”

My cheeks puffed out as I let out a breath. I tore my attention away from my own self doubt and started helping him board up all my windows.

It took us awhile, and one stubbed thumb thanks to me distracting Reaver with my small talk, but we got all the windows on the first floor boarded up.

And now it was time for the hardest part... the second floor which he would do standing on the partial roof of the first floor. My chest gave a nervous bubble as we stepped back onto my old front deck.

My parents stuff was inside, my mom’s pictures, my dad’s clothing. The stains they left when they were sick were still there. What if the maggots had come back? What if I had left something out. It would be dark inside from the windows being boarding up. What if I heard a noise. Or tripped over something?