The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (3 page)

A sour taste filled my throat. My mind’s tendrils drawing up the man I had known as Asher. His stalking and tormenting me suddenly made more sense. I bet he had that information too. The guy had known my every movement. I bet he had known where Reaver lived all this time.

My hatred for him boiled, and we were being hand-delivered to him.

Or were we?

In a casual motion, befitting only someone as crazy as Perish, I watched as he sat down on a metal bench and stabbed his collarbone with the scalpel. After a few smaller slices he dug his fingers into the small crater-like wound. Perish’s fingers pinched together and he drew out the small, blue tipped chip.

Wordlessly he handed it to Jade, who took what looked like dog nail clippers from the case and snipped off the blue end. He handed it back to Perish before tucking it back in. The casual air in which they did this confounded and angered me.

Then Jade walked towards me and held out his hand for the scalpel. “Want help?”

I stared at him, my head running through a thousand different scenarios. I had the scalpel... I had a weapon.

The pet stared back at me, before I saw his yellow eyes narrow slightly. “If you’re thinking of driving that thing through my neck, you should put more thought into it.”

I shifted away from him, feeling oddly exposed at him seemingly ripping out my own unconscious thoughts, but he wasn’t done. “You’re high in the air with three chimeras, Killian. Why don’t you just take that Geigerchip tracker out of you and stop looking at me like I’m the anti-christ.”

Anger swept my mind, though I knew it was just a disguise for the fear I was feeling. “What the fuck is going on?” I snarled, in a voice that was unlike my own.

Jade didn’t even flinch; he looked at me like I was a toothless chihuahua baring its gums at him. He took the scalpel from me and with his other hand he made the skin over the scar tissue of my last implant tighten. I let him; I had no choice.

I felt a pull, then a pinch and finally a snip of the dog clippers before he placed the Geigerchip back into my skin. Instead of stitching it like Perish had in Donnely he held the wound together with two strips of tape and an adhesive bandage. When Jade had patched me up, he wiped off his scalpel and disappeared back into the cockpit without another word.

“Are you going to tell me why he doesn’t want Silas tracking us, or are you going to hide all of this from me too?” I snapped at Perish. Taking my frustrations out on the only one who would give me the reactions I needed to please my indignation and fear. Though it was a low hit, I was running out of patience, and if I was about to be gang-raped and murdered by a family of mutants I wanted to at least prepare myself.

Perish cowered and started to wring his hands together. He looked towards the cockpit then back at me.

Don’t you dare.
The look I gave him could curl paint.

With a muttered excuse he got up and left me too. In my anger I tossed a few curse words his way that even made Reno say ‘
Killian!
’ in surprise.

Then the tears came. I hugged Reno to me and started to cry.

And he was comforting me... I hated myself. I felt Reno put a weak hand on my shoulder. The blood-soaked into his t-shirt leaving rusty paint strokes against my lap. “It’s okay, babe. Let’s just live minute by minute, okay?”

I sniffed and nodded, wiping the tears from my eyes. I put the pressure back onto his stomach. This was the second towel I had had to get for him, but at least it hadn’t soaked through. I think the wound had stopped bleeding, but if not at least it had slowed.

“You’re not sleepy, are you?” I asked. I desperately tried to remember everything that Doc had taught me, but it was buried under the weighted debris of everything that had happened this morning. My mind was so shot, all I could see whenever I tried to pull something up was Reaver getting his throat torn out. Or the lifeless bodies of Leo and Greyson, completely blanketed by chalky dust, one slumped over the other.

Reno shook his head. I shifted him on my lap so I could start wiping the sweat and dust off of his face. His face was littered with small cuts and bruises from the mob that had taken us. Reno had defended me to the end; he took those bullets for me.

It had been horrible... a scene I never thought I would see, in a place I had always felt safe. The townspeople, with Redmond and Hollis leading, had found us. The deacdog trackers finding us as easily as a cat found the scent of meat. Reno and I had made it to the quad before they spotted us. The dogs barking, the mob yelling like they had when Reaver had held the town meeting to burn the convicts. It had been terrifying; I had felt like an escaped prisoner, being hunted like a raver in my own town. Only blocks away from my house.

I couldn’t believe it when they opened fire.

They had shot him... they shot their own resident, a man whose family, for generations, had lived here. The cowards sold him out at the command of their king.

I didn’t know then that Silas had killed Leo and Greyson.

I whimpered again and closed my eyes, refusing exit to any more tears. I was a man now. Any kid that still stirred inside of me had been killed the moment I saw Reaver get partially decapitated.

I would have to be an adult now for what was about to come. Take it minute by minute Reno said, but I couldn’t help but fear the short future ahead of us.

Reno stood a chance, I knew myself that I was doomed. Silas would never let me live, he would torture me for sure to get Reaver to obey him. Reno though, he hadn’t done anything to make Silas mad. On the contrary they had slept together. It was a small chance, but maybe he would get medical care and be released into one of the districts. It wouldn’t be Aras but he would be alive. With his charisma and charm, eventually he would be okay.

We wouldn’t be though, especially Reaver. His newly discovered immortality only meant he wouldn’t be able to escape Asher’s clutches. The love of my life was damned to an eternity of misery and slavery.

Instead of the tears running down my cheeks, they seemed to recess inside of me. Burrowing down as a burn in my throat, a smoldering ball of fire that scorched me whenever I tried to swallow. My heart clenched so hard into my chest I gagged. I tried to internalize the pain but it only made my shoulders start to shake from my internal grief.

“Five... little ducks... went... out... to play.”

As Reno tried to soothe me I lost it. I held my injured friend close to me and completely lost my head.

For the next several minutes I was nothing but a crumpled heap of sobs and choking gasps. The only sensation I felt in my state was Reno’s hand gently stroking my arm, sticky from his dried blood freshly wetted by my tears. I cried for Reaver, for Reno, and I cried for Leo and Greyson. I cried for my former life, now as fleeting as the dust we had left encompassing the north gate.

My lungs were on fire by the time I had cried myself to exhaustion. I didn’t have a single tear left in me; I had been wrung dry.

“If you can gather yourself for a moment, it is time we spoke.”

That voice...

I looked up and saw the towering figure that was Elish Dekker. With his long golden-blond hair that fell past his shoulders showing off a strong square cheek bone, and very unemotional purple eyes.

The cold countenance of the blond chimera’s face cut into my raw and bleeding emotions. I felt myself angry at him. Like when Jade had challenged my biting tone earlier, no one seemed to care what was going to happen to us but me, and it was driving me crazy.

Then I remembered the day I had first met Elish, the calm visage he had given off, the impassiveness of his voice, the cool and placid demeanor. I bit my tongue as I remembered that this was who Elish was. To show emotion on his face was a rare thing, and rarer still to show someone sympathy.

With that knowledge I gathered up my courage and pressed down my wounded feelings. With Reno’s help I slipped him off of me. I gave him a blanket from the pile Jade had thrown us and rested his hand on the towel with the right amount of pressure.

“There is no reason for private quarters. Mr. Nevada will be involved in what will happen once we land.”

I glanced out the window, the greywastes in full view below us. It was a breathtaking view in all respects, stretches of nothing but small black trees resting on rolling hills, houses, and layers upon layers of every colour grey you could imagine, swirled into one another like mixing paint. I had never seen such a view, and probably never would again.

“What’s going to happen to us?” I stood up tall and squared my shoulders. I tried to look intimidating like Greyson had taught me. My instincts to do something to help our situation temporarily winning out against the earnest reality that I was helpless.

Elish stripped down my armor with nothing more than an apathetic look. My shoulders slumped and, like he had many years ago, I let him look over every inch of my body with those frigid eyes.

“I have a house deep in the greyrifts; you will be staying in there while Reaver heals. Jade will be tending to your injuries, and Perish’s as well.”

I stared at him for a moment, not believing my ears. “We’re...” Jade had been telling the truth? “You’re not bringing us to Skyfall?”

“No.”

I didn’t buy it... but I had known about Elish back in Tamerlan, he had never been the kind of person to lie. He never had a reason to lie. He was Elish Dekker.

I couldn’t take that risk though. “How do I know?”

Surprisingly, Elish’s eyes travelled to Reno, half laying on me. “Reno has met me several times before, and my cicaro. He can assure you of my allegiance with Greyson and Lycos.”

There was a tense pause and I felt Reno shift around. “He’s right, Tink. He was quite cozy with the mayors.”

My mind exploded. A million theories and thoughts rushed through them like a stampede of bosen. Each one more crazy than the last. I felt like I was going to black out again. How much more could I take?

I wanted to sink down to my knees but my body seemed frozen right where that cold look had left it. I stared back at him, my eyes unwilling to focus on anything else.

His gaze was captivating, those purple shards of ice drunk my body whole and took me in without discussion or consent. I felt powerless as I stared back, but in a way that did nothing to quell my confusion, only amplify it.

There was something in those eyes that made my heart want to trust him.

Or perhaps I was just grasping at scattering straws, looking for whatever solace I could find in this flurry of fear and confusion.

No... it was more than that. It was everything that had happened leading up to this very moment. It was Jade dragging Reno towards the plane. It was Elish passively shooting the black deacon off of Reaver, before grabbing his corpse and carrying it into the plane like he was packing flour.

It was Elish walking over to me, his face unwavering at my strangled, choking sobs. He had picked me up by the nape of my jacket like I was a kitten and calmly told me to stop crying. He told me Reaver wasn’t dead, not permanently dead anyways. Though that deep, cutting voice held no pity for me, he had told me to not grieve for someone who wouldn’t die.

There was hell on earth all around me, right down to the panicked screams of people being ripped apart by the devil’s dogs. All of this madness was hidden through billows of thick smoke and raining ash from the fires, from the explosion Reaver had detonated and the burning buildings around us.

It was in the cover of fog and ash that Elish took us, cloaking his calculated movements from the scrambling chimeras who were trying to shoot the deacons off of their king.

I almost heard the puzzle pieces click together, deep in the recesses of my brain. It was obvious now.

“You didn’t kidnap us, did you? You rescued us.”

The words left my lips and hung heavy in the air. For what seemed like hours Elish did not respond. Not even Reno had a smart, ice breaking remark to say back. I think he was staring in disbelief just as much as I was.

“The word for it is of no consequence. Call it what you will,” Elish said finally. During the moments of silence I didn’t see a single waver in that statuesque face. He was surely a man to be respected and feared. I had never known anyone who commanded such a presence. Though I had known Silas as Asher first, and I knew his inner mongrel, Elish presented himself with the air of a king, or even a deity. Without a single word you knew to bow, and bow deep.

But he was still a chimera... my Skyfall-taught respect for chimera authority only took me so far. He was still Silas’s creature. I made a note in my head to never forget that. No matter what help he had given us.

“What about Reno?” I asked. I glanced down at my friend. Sure enough, he was looking up at Elish with both wariness and respect. I think he was just as blown away that we weren’t being hand-delivered to Silas.

“I will be dropping Reno off at my skyscraper in Skyfall tonight,” Elish said in the same passive, cool tone.

“What!” I cried. I felt my hands clench around each others. “You can’t take him away from us. He needs me.”

My strangled words bounced off of him like toothpicks against the Hoover Dam. Elish glanced down at Reno, giving the stained towel we had pressed against the wound a passing sweep of his gaze. Elish looked at me, his lips a thin line and his eyes as indifferent as ever. “Unless you are as skilled as my personal physician. Which considering your age and the tremble in your hand I am assuming you are not. Your friend will perish sometime in the next four days. Two if you try to extract the bullet so snugly nestled against his liver.”