The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (5 page)

I slunk down, feeling my head go hot under his stare. Never more did I feel like a dirty, out of place flea in a world I was quickly realizing I didn’t understand.

“You will not be leaving this base.”

I was too devastated to even cry. I managed a small nod before I stepped away from him to let him pass by me. Even though the hallway was big enough for him to walk around.

I pressed myself up against the beige walls, needing something to support myself as the reality of Biff’s fate sunk in. At what point will my fat cat realize we wouldn’t be coming home? At what point would he feel the first pang of hunger when his bowl ran out? How long would it take for him to die, wondering why we had trapped him inside.

I started to whimper, I held my hand to my mouth to stifle the tears. I realized as I tried to hide my face, that Elish was still staring at me.

“I’ll be needing make an appearance in Aras; I was planning on doing it after my stop in Skyfall. However, if Mr. Nevada is familiar with the area and is of sound state of mind, I will go there first and allow him to gather a small amount of –”

I wrapped my arms around him. I have no idea why. It was one of those things you wonder many many years later just what the heck was wrong with you. I think I was just frazzled and had mentally reached my limit. Any sort of good news felt like the world to me at this moment.

If hugging Reaver was like embracing a rock at times, hugging Elish was like hugging the planet Pluto. I was too far into it now to recoil and run though, so I finished hugging him and pulled away.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

I felt an awkward hand pat my back. “It is of no consequence.” Elish’s tone didn’t waver, but I saw a flicker of perplexity in his gaze that quickly diminished with an upturn of his eyes. I saw he was looking at something; I turned around and saw Jade staring at us, looking just as perplexed.

“Is Mr. Nevada ready?” Elish gracefully walked past me and started walking back to the garage with Jade

Jade gave me a fleeting glance before he turned around and followed Elish. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I walked with them. I wanted to ask Reno to pick up several more things from the basement anyways.

I jumped into the plane and got my satchel bag. As Jade was helping Perish fuel the plane I started writing down things I wanted him to bring. Before they were ready for takeoff I had handed off the list to him. Biff, Reaver’s gun, Reaver’s drug suitcase, the black bag he had of ammo and explosives, my guitar and our clothing. I felt badly making Reno get all those things, but I was sure Elish would help him.

With a few more tears on my part I said goodbye to my friend, my heart heavy and full of anxiety. I stood back and watched the platform rise; when it lowered the plane was gone.

I was alone now, with my dead boyfriend, the chimera who had kept me prisoner... and Elish Dekker’s yellow-eyed cicaro.

“I’m going to put Reaver in his freezer now,” Perish said. He had Reaver slung over his back. “Killian, I will help fix up your wounds when I am done.”

I gripped the door frame with my hands, feeling the sickening realization that I was all alone with these two. The chimera’s pet and my crazy scientist... I didn’t want to ask, but I hoped Reaver’s... ‘emergence’ would happen sooner rather than later.

“I think Reaver’s boy should just sit on the couch and watch a movie.” Jade’s tone was on the verge of mocking, for a brief moment I felt like taking a swing at him. “It looks like he’s about to go Freddie Krueger on all of us.”

I guess I was pretty transparent.

“Hah! I know who that is!” Perish said gleefully. I heard him start to walk down the hallway. I thought Jade had gone with him, but I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Snap out of it, kid. You and Reaver are safer here than you were in Aras; Elish doesn’t fuck around with these hidden bases.”

I didn’t turn away from the now lowered platform. I felt queasy, and tightly coiled like a spring. I had no idea how I hadn’t lost my mind yet.

“Okay, well, I need to close this door... we’re letting the heat out. You can stay right there though if you want.”

“I... I...” I broke my gaze from the garage and took a few steps back. “I want my Magnum...” My hands went to my belt but it was gone. Jade had taken it when Elish had grabbed me, probably knew I was on the edge of shooting both of them.

The pet stared at me for moment, the door to the garage closing with a click. “Well, I don’t think that’s the greatest of plans, you’re a bit serial killer right now. None of us have guns –”

“You have those teeth.” I took another step away from him, in the distance another door closed. Perish was bringing Reaver somewhere but where? I wanted to be with him. “I... I need something... to...”

I was all alone with them... alone with Perish who had once wanted nothing more than to have sex with me, and this pet who had once told me I would ‘taste good’. Those impressions alone made the acid rise to my throat. Without Reno or even Elish here to put down some authority on these two I felt extremely vulnerable. They could do anything they wanted to me right now.

I wanted to go home... back to Reaver’s basement, back to my cat.

“Killian... you don’t need anything,” Jade said slowly. “Elish brought you two here to keep you from Silas. You couldn’t be any more safer –” The pet looked behind him and I think in that moment he also wished his master was here. “Why don’t you sit on the couch, I’ll give you a knife or something if it’ll make you feel safe, and you can have something to eat and drink.”

Whenever he opened his mouth I saw the flashes of metal. He had implants in his canines to make them sharp, cat-like almost, and behind them I could see smaller ones laid out in his mouth. Even with a knife that cicaro was a weapon himself. He could rip my throat out in a second...

Though I wanted to huddle up next to this door until Reaver woke up, I knew I had to eventually move.

“Okay, why don’t you go have a shower then? Get the ash and blood off of you. The door locks, all the doors in this place lock. How does that sound?”

I kept staring at those teeth, but with a defeated sigh I gave him a small nod. “Yeah, I can do that.”

Jade nodded and gave me a wide berth as I walked past him down the hall; I guess he didn’t want to spook me. I walked into the living room and looked around. Everything was clean and decorated with new unblemished furniture.

I found the bathroom and walked in, before making sure the door could lock. I tested the handle a few times before, with a forlorn sigh, I started to undress.

My mind was going to explode at any second... and I didn’t know what was going to happen when it did. I needed something to help me through these events; I needed something to calm me down.

And there was only one thing I had available to me right now.

Chapter 2

Jade

I sat down on the couch and brushed my bangs away; the sweat dampening my hair was enough to get them to stay back. Once that blond kid was done with the bathroom I would be next. I showered every day back in Skyfall and I wasn’t about to change now. Especially since I was completely covered in chalky ash and drying blood. I smelled like a corpse. Elish was going to have to dispatch a dozen sengils to steam this place once we left. It was going to be crawling with dirty little greywasters and their fleas.

I got myself some tea and placed it down on the wooden coaster. I reached over and grabbed the remote and turned the window on.

That was an odd word for it, but I didn’t know how else to describe it. I took a drink and got up as the walls separated with a low whirring sound, revealing the vast and breathtaking landscape before us. It was like the council room back in the blacksands house but better. I always loved me and Elish’s getaways here.

Sheared slices of granite framed each side of the bare grey crags around us, encompassing us like a horseshoe bowl. Only when the grey rocks joined with the haze of the sun did I lose where the dead and muted grey would go next. We were a hundred miles from the bottom of the cliff, three windows that looked invisible from any solid ground but to me they felt like the eyes of a god, or a great king looking out onto his burnt land. I always felt empowered when I stood so tall in front of the massive picture windows. I had asked Elish one night if he felt the same.

‘Power is the greatest illusion, Jade.’

But the illusion of power was all I had ever had. So I didn’t discard the feelings of being regal and refined, on the contrary, I enjoyed pretending. Even if I knew as well as the next heartbeat that I was nothing, in all respects my boots still had slum grime stuck to them.

In the slums, when I had been walking side by side with my old boyfriend I had been the king of thieves. A regal light that, at my beck and call, could get me any illegal and smuggled good in all of Skyfall’s districts. Now I reigned over no one, not even myself.

Though over the years my chains had become my comfort, a fact that still in the depths of night made me question my own sanity. I had been free in Moros, now I was bound in Skyland, but I was bound to Elish and that truth no longer bore down on me with thousand pound weights.

The shackles were ours, we were joined together and together we faced all those who would want to hurt us. Over a year ago it was King Silas looming his threats over us, driven by jealousy and hatred over Elish’s attachment towards me.

Now he had shifted his eyes to another chimera, a chimera Elish had been following since before the boy had taken his first breath.

When he had gotten the call that Lycos had been captured it was as if his anger had extinguished the very light in the room. I had been helping Luca organize our plates for dinner and the action had made both of us quake in our shoes.

Something was wrong... and out of all the things to go wrong, something going badly with the secret in the greywastes was the most devastating.

Silas had Lycos, Silas knew, he had known for months.

Asher Fallon... that name stung my lips, and it burned my master’s.

Now more than ever I was reminded just how much we had at stake going against Silas like this, once again he had blindsided everyone with his intelligence. Not only had he himself found out that Reaver was alive, he had snuck into Aras and duped everyone just to get a good look at his long lost partner.

I had, selfishly, wanted Elish to abandon everything right then, if only to keep my master safe, but to him there was no going back. The time had come now to harvest the seeds he had planted.

I just wanted Elish to be safe. It was like we were harbouring bombs within our walls.

Did my master really know what he was doing? Or was he scrambling to pick up the scattering balls that had fallen as soon as that phone call went through.

I pursed my lips as the questions started to sting my mouth like turpentine. The burn of the tea washed it away, and what confused thoughts remained the scenery helped distract me.

It was empty here, a desolate shell, so much rock and the ground here... a bowl of ash littered with loose rocks and chunks of concrete from buildings long since burned or dissolved in the rains. This area was completely void of humans, mostly since there seemed to be nothing to scavenge. It was a void, even of abandoned buildings.

Elish had told me the stories Silas had shared with him about life before the Fallocaust. It was after our hours of love making had died down, when I was in his arms, the darkness around us only broken by a faint warm light, when Elish was mine and no one else’s. Where he would tell me stories, answer my questions and even ask me ones in return. I ached for those times with a thirst that no other sensation could quench.

It hadn’t happened in a long while, since this all started.

I remembered one such night, when I had thought he had fallen asleep. Only then could I gather the courage to ask him. He was behind me, with his arms wrapped around my chest and my naked body pulled tightly to him.

“What did he tell you it was like, when he ended the world?”

And with the smallest intake of breath he had painted me a picture. Ash that stung your tongue like poisoned snowflakes and breaths of air that burned your lungs without fire. To this day those cities were uninhabitable. Nothing but graveyards of charcoal and ash, pounded to sediment under the hammer of time.

Then he would tell me of the fire. Of a world where everything was covered in white hot ash. From the cinders of thousands of burning buildings, to the bodies of already dead men baked in their carbonized skin. Some of the sestic radiation had been so concentrated it had made whole cities erupt into flames.

The hounds of hell had descended from a sky baked red from whole cities, twice the size of Skyfall, erupting into a white inferno as far as the eye could see. The heat was so powerful coming from the cities that they melted even the metal frames of skyscrapers.

When the fires finally cooled twenty years later nothing remained but pools of melted steel. Soon ash covered these phantom remains and now their locations changed from traveller’s tale to traveller’s tale.