The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (48 page)

His face fell but I had no sympathies for it. I had given him enough warning not to push me.

“Silas would have come anyways; he had your blood from Perish,” Killian said quietly.

“Well, it was their fault for needing to hide me from the census,” I snapped. “And their fault for making me have to be hidden anyways. I didn’t ask for them to use me in Elish’s fucking plot.”

“It was either freedom in the greywastes or slavery with Silas.”

“I would’ve been his king, not his slave. He wanted me as a partner not a cicaro, Killian.” As the words left my lips I realized just how wrong it was to say that. I didn’t mean it how it sounded… I meant it as… as…

Fuck, I didn’t know.

But I did know how my boyfriend took it, because he took one horrified look at me and walked out of the bedroom.

Then the tears.

When I touched his shoulder he shoved me away.

“Get the fuck away from me!” he shrieked, before rising to his feet and shoving my chest. “I’m so sorry Greyson and Leo stole you, so you couldn’t have been with Silas right from the fucking start. I’m sorry they saved you from what HE would have made you into. You two were best friends right from the start, and obviously it’s a horrible thing now that you two are apart.”

“Don’t even say shit like that, Killian.” My tone dropped. “All I am saying was they knew I was supposed to be his partner, not his cicaro or sengil. So don’t make them out to be saints, I wouldn’t have had a bad life.”

“But you would have been just as bad as him, they saved you from yourself.”

I snorted and from that outward expression I got a push in return. I was tempted to grab his hands to keep him from trying to start a physical fight but I refrained.

“I am just as bad if not worse, now I’m tired of fighting about this. You know how I feel about King Silas, and I am still going to kill him but only because of what he did to us. Not for some grand future plan. Just… I’m going to bed. If you want to be dramatic and sleep on the couch go ahead.” I turned around and walked back into our bedroom.

I got under the covers and a few moments later I felt the weight of the bed as he got in too.

When I heard his muffled crying I took him into my arms and let out a breath.

“I miss them,” he choked, before he turned around and started crying into my shirt. “And I miss Reno, and Biff. I miss Doc… I miss Aras.”

“I know you do, Killibee.” I rubbed his back. “I’ll get you Aras back, just for you, I promise. We’ll fill it full of stray cats and cicaros, anything you want.”

“Why didn’t Lycos recognise him? Silas was in Donnely, why didn’t Leo know?”

I had asked myself the same question, and I responded with the conclusion that made me sleep at night. “I assume it was because he was covered in dirt and blood. He was dirty and caked in shit when you met him right?”

I felt him nod.

“After that he was in West Aras and Leo was still giving Greyson the cold shoulder. I guess Asher just avoided him and Leo had too much on his mind.” And of course the Ghost could remain hidden if he wanted. “It’s pretty cool you killed him, right? My little murderer.”

He kept crying, and I kept holding him.

“Don’t let them take you, I know I keep saying it… but you’re mine, no one else’s.”

“I know, Killi Cat. I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“I don’t need to promise, it’s a fact.”

“Okay, I love you.”

“I love you too.”

I belted my M16’s leather strap over my chest and hooked it into place, purposely going slow and purposely drawing out the fact I was going outside without my boyfriend. I even went as far as to ask Killian if there was anything he wanted me to pick up, cans of food, perhaps some text books; by the time I was ready to go out I could feel the heat on the back of my neck as he glared at me.

Jade, sticking to the shadows, refilling our cartridges and tucking them into his jacket.

Finally, savoring every moment, I glanced over at Killian clenching the couch, his face as straight as an arrow and his eyes glaring.

I then said nonchalantly, “Are you coming or what?”

The boy looked at me, probably to see if I was talking to Jade. When he saw me staring at him, trying my best to hide the grin he said cautiously, “What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you pitch a fit saying you wanted to come? Well, come on, grab some ammo. You’ll be able to recognise maps more than I can anyways.”

Killian’s face brightened, before he scowled and pinched me in the arm. “Stop being such a jerk; you always torment me when you’re bored.”

“I torment everyone when I’m bored, so I’m going out to get unbored. Now grab your stuff and listen to everything I say.” I glanced down at the deacdog, who was now sporting an old thick clothed jacket Killian had chopped and mended into a cargo carrier. We had loaded the dog up with ammo, knives, and some food. “Find radanimals, alright, mutt?”

Deek looked at me with his stupid yellow eyes, but he was half deacon so I knew he understood me. One of the many vocal cues he was trained to respond to was ‘radanimals’.

I slipped the key card through the door and let him out first.

The deacdog slipped through, I waited in the doorway for a few moments listening for any sound. With only Deekoi’s panting echoing off of the walls I motioned for the boys to follow me, taking my M16 out of its holder and clicking it to automatic. If there was one thing I had learned about the kreigers, is that for every one you saw, there were three you didn’t.

Before the door closed behind them, I said under my breath, though loud enough for Killian to hear. “Guns out, no talking, no noise. Both of you are agile, use it.”

They nodded, but something caught my attention. I looked down and saw that Jade was holding Elish’s briefcase.

He noticed me looking at it and said quietly, “I won’t leave it, not in this chimera den, anything can happen. It’s too valuable and it has all the files that were on the hard drives.”

I would’ve rather he left it behind, but I understood his logic even though it was ridiculous. I didn’t argue, only nodded before leading them down the dark cistern, Killian with his hand on Jade’s shoulder to help aid him in the pitch darkness. Poor kid, a family full of night vision enabled vampires and in darkness he was blind as a bat.

There was a joke in there somewhere.

Besides the smell of sour, damp wood and stale water I didn’t see any signs of the kreigers, besides their papery, white shit (which I realized was the stuff that had been covering the shelves at the stores me and Jade had stopped in), and the occasional bone from the scavenged remains of the dead ones we had shot. The place sounded cautiously tranquil, only the faded but reliable echoing drops of water could be heard.

The dog was sitting beside the ladder and after leaning down and grabbing his collar I managed to help him climb the ladder, the next moment he was off to explore and mark every alluring building as his own.

The day was beautiful, though it could be pissing down acid rain and it would still be beautiful to me. It was funny to feel claustrophobic after the days I would spend in my basement but this was different. I felt like a tiger in a cage down there, forced to stay down as the rats above me danced and played. After what had happened in Aras and everything I had left behind it was starting to wear down my last nerve to be kept in that cistern coffin. I wanted not only to be outside and free. I wanted to be useful.

With a deep inhale and the click of my M16 back into its holster, I started walking deeper into Kreig. Killian and Jade behind me and the dog running around ahead; his nose in the air and his legs barely touching the ground as he bounded around like a puppy.

Still the distrustful, empty calm that Donnely had, though there was more grass and it seemed the taller apartment buildings were closer together. We were right in the heart of these buildings, and from the old cities I had explored with Reno I knew we were on the fringes of what could be called downtown.

Downtown meant there must be a map somewhere; this was a better bet than going to the areas behind the city in hopes to find a gas station. There had to be a corner store, a visitor’s center, a hotel or something that would have a proper travel map in it.

The signs were all worn-out, dried and cracked like their paint was a skin that had been pulled too tight. The only ones readable were the plastic ones, and even those ones were mostly remnants of cracked plastic and loose electric wires. Some even face planted outside of their respective buildings, committing suicide without a single spectator.

In front of us was an intersection, with bent street and stop lights bowing towards each other, weak under the weight of age and uneven ground. We weaved through them and spotted an old bank with the windows wide open and yawning, and a video store that under old circumstances I would’ve been all over.

Instead we kept going straight ahead, to a road lit with the grey sun and trimmed with yellow grass, so thick it was even crawling up the trees.

I watched Killian like a hawk, every move he made had my attention; more automatic than on purpose, but I didn’t trust the insides of these buildings. If there was one thing we all knew it was that somewhere deep inside those concrete caves were thousands of kreigers just waiting for the cold darkness of night. I wanted to wait until we had a good lead before we stepped foot inside any of those buildings.

We walked around for hours, and the few leads that we did have turned up nothing. Mostly corner stores and gas stations, I even got desperate and tried a library but the windows of the building, tall ones that stood the length of the walls had all been covered and welded shut. That was a last resort, I didn’t want to make noise bombing a wing open.

The sun was still seen between the imposing buildings when I decided it was time for us to slowly make our way back. My mouth moved to announce it when Killian pointed towards a small building, sitting in the middle of a large parking lot full of busses. A can of fruit cocktail he had been sharing with Jade in his hand. “Those are Greyhound busses; they might have a map in there to show people the routes they travel. We’ve seen more than a few busses on the highway when we were going to Donnely.”

I didn’t like the openness of the area, but then again if the lizards started to come out I’d be able to see them a mile off.

So I whistled for the dog, which to my amusement made Jade look around confused for a moment before he realized what I was doing. By now I had perfected Perish’s little whistle trick, I’d teach the kid how to do it later.

“Alright, the dog is a good enough sentry, both of you are coming inside with me, guns out, flashlights on,” I said in a tone I used to use with my old sentries.

There was a series of shuffling and metal against plastic before the boys got out the guns. I closed the distance between the fallen down chain-link fence and the parking lot and leaned up against one of the busses to listen and smell.

The stale smell of the kreigers was old and the air tasted fine. With that on my mind we walked up to the building.

It was a single-storey building, completely detached from the close-knit city that surrounded it. It had windows smashed open, or half-boarded-up with plyboard that had warped and bloated. The building wasn’t in the best condition but the roof had held its ground and that meant the papers below should be in readable condition.

Or so I hoped.

I put up my hand to stop the two from following me and kicked off the rest of the glass with my boot. Because my night vision wouldn’t work when I was still in daylight, even if where I was looking was dark, I stepped inside and blocked as much of the window I could with my body.

Beyond the window I was perched on I could see almost perfectly preserved linoleum and the ghostly outline of several kiosks, racks of dusty papers, and a row of glass doors past that. They looked like they lead to a partially-covered garage where I assumed most of the busses were.

After my ears revealed no imminent threats to me I jumped down with a crunch of boots against brittle linoleum tile and started walking around the cold, dark area. My nose teasing my brain with the stale and musty smells of home; that unmistakable aroma of over two hundred years of decay.

I first wiped off the layer of grime to have a better view outside. Through the windows I could see into a loading area, and to my unease a set of concrete stairs leading down. I didn’t have the luxury to explore those places for kreigers though, so I quickly mapped out the building in my head, mentally jumping from open door to open door to make sure there was no place for the lizard men to hide.

When my mind deemed it safe I clicked my tongue for the boys to come through the window, Killian remembered his cue and went through first, followed by the pet.

“We’ll each take one of the racks, put the useless ones in a pile.” I motioned to the two bigger racks and pushed them into the middle of the open room.

Jade took a row of pamphlets before tossing them to the floor. “We’re near, or in, the Okanagan, that I know. So look for anything touristy, bus schedules… stuff like that.”

I rubbed the rough and compacted dirt off of a magazine cover but it had become one with the paper years ago. Instead I opened it up and glanced at the still coloured pictures. Seeing brown hills and orchards full of fruit, boats with crystal clear lakes behind them and more brown and green mountains.