The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (53 page)

“That’s Timothy.” Jade’s brow furrowed; he glanced behind him at the library before he watched the kreigers crawl towards the scream. “He’s Kessler and Tiberius’s youngest son.”

“A chimera?” my tone dropped. I grabbed my M16 and started walking across the parking lot. I wasn’t surprised when Jade grabbed my arm.

“This is how easily they can find you, Reaver, and they have bigger guns, more men, and advanced technology, remember that.”

I shoved his arm away with a low growl and continued to stalk towards the screams.

“What are you planning on doing?” he said behind me.

What
was
I planning on doing? I checked my bullets and patted my cargo pants for filled cartridges. I was armed and well-armed, enough to fend off the kreigers if needed be, but I wasn’t planning on them hearing me. I was dressed in black and nothing but added darkness to them.

“Hunting,” I said lowly.

Another scream broke the cold night. I jumped over a median and used it as leverage to hop the chain-link fence that partially surrounded the parking lot, and with the sound of shifting metal I could hear the cicaro brother of mine doing the same. I hugged the fence and kept my head down and my movements silent, only twenty feet from a group of kreigers quickly making their way to the road this chimera seemed to be on.

The closer I got to his screams the more I felt my chest fill with sparks of electricity, like a decaying heart renewing a dead heartbeat. There was no mistaking what I was feeling, the inner burn inside my heart that ached to kill, devour, and dominate, that demanded blood and the dying screams of the people who had done me wrong.

I could control it before, I had learned to control it, but now… now I couldn’t.

The chimeras would pay.

They would pay for everything they had done to me.

For everything they had made me feel.

“Your smiling… why the fuck are you smiling?” Jade’s voice said beside me, keeping the same pace as me.

I looked on, and felt the blood start to flow faster in my veins, lighting up senses that had lain dormant for months. I was breathing life back into the greywaster and handling emotions like I had done before.

With blood, with pain, and with terror.

I looked around at the kreigers but they were more interested in the blood curdling screams and pleas coming from the road I was about to turn down. With Jade silent and stealthy beside me they were either unaware of our presence or they just didn’t care. This filled my blood with even more fire, and in spite of the fact that the friendship had eventually soured, being beside someone who could hold their own like Asher could was only acting as an accelerant.

And Jade just wasn’t some random Morosian, I knew his past.

“They called you Shadow Killer in the slums, didn’t they? Did Elish beat your bloodlust out of you, Shadow Killer?”

I sprinted across the road before leaping onto a mailbox and springing onto an apartment ledge. I started to hoist myself up but was surprised to see a blur of black land beside me with a sound of boots on brick.

Jade turned around and helped me rise to my feet, giving me derisive smirk and a flash of cocksure bliss in his yellow eyes. “Are you trying to issue some sort of challenge towards me? It seems I am the one helping you to your feet.” The kid smiled, his metal teeth shining in the moonlight, and as if to show me just who the Shadow Killer had been, he clinked his claw rings together and looked past me.

“Tim is a bitch, a fourteen-year-old little shit who never lets me forget I am nothing but a pet, even if I technically outrank him considering I’m ‘Uncle’ Elish’s husband. If you stick with us, you’ll have him and more. I can promise you that.”

I didn’t want to hear about that right now, I wanted to kill. Without acknowledging what he was saying, I turned around and started walking along the apartment ledge before rounding a tricky corner to find myself on the street that Timmy was on.

Sure enough, as I looked ahead I saw the figure of a tall, gangly boy with curly brown hair, holding a gun, which I assumed was out of ammo, in his hand.

I could see the whites of his eyes, he was looking behind his back wildly like a nervous bosen, running as fast as he could towards where he assumed his father and brother would be.

With Jade behind me, the Shadow and the Reaper… we quickly sprinted along the ledge, when the building ended we jumped down to an alleyway, still behind the horde of kreigers.

I looked around for another ledge to scale but the structures around us had no small awnings or ridges to run across. Instead the two of us stuck close to the building entrances, using the cars, telephone booths, and other debris to block our silhouettes.

“They’re not interested in us at all,” Jade whispered as we practically ran past a kreiger making his way towards the swarm. “As soon as they focus on a wounded target everything else is invisible to them.”

This was valuable knowledge; if we ever got stuck I’d use Perish or myself as a bloodied sacrifice so the mortal boys could escape.

But if I was without those two… if I ever died in the greywastes, which would undoubtedly be more bloody and gory than a simple shot in the head. Killian would be alone and fending for himself until I came back.

Tim disappeared down another street, and on his heels a swarm of over fifty kreigers followed him, slow but determined they hissed and snapped, accumulating more numbers with every building Tim passed. Like the boy was a drain and the kreigers water they all honed in on him, bearing their green gums and continuing to advance.

I passed a dead kreiger, riddled with too many badly aimed bullet holes, and a few paces later a pool of blood that had the unmistakable aroma of chimera, almost like cinnamon. I glanced down and watched as Jade put his fingers to the pool and tasted it.

This kid was about as twisted as I was, though it seemed to be a chimera trait. Licking his fingers Jade’s eyes scanned the white wraiths climbing along the buildings. He opened his mouth to say something when a new voice filled the air.

“Tim? Tim?” My face darkened as I heard Caligula’s voice. I nodded for Jade to follow me before I covered the next two buildings and ducked into the third, not far from where I could hear Tim’s panicked breathing.

Jade was at my heels as I crossed the lobby ruins and ran up the stairs two by two. I got to an open door; dented and half blown off by what had once been an explosion, and sprinted down the junk strewn hallway, looking into empty room to empty room until I found the one that I liked. Two-storeys up, high enough that they wouldn’t be able to see us without looking but low enough to enjoy the carnage.

I had an idea, and that never boded well for the enemies within my line of sight.

I dropped to my stomach on the balcony and crawled over with my M16 in my hands. Without wasting time, before Caligula could spot him I raised the scope to my eyes and focused on the brown-haired boy in my crosshairs. I squeezed the trigger and felt the kickback, then a moment later a satisfying scream.

My eyes found him, on his knees now, his left kneecap blown out. I grinned and shouldered Jade who was lying down beside me.

“Holy fuck, Reaver.” Jade’s voice shifted to a higher octave, watching with me as the boy screamed for his brother as he dragged himself away from the kreigers.

Then one of them finally got brave or hungry enough to attack, it tensed back like a spring before it retracted its neck like a snapping turtle and grabbed onto Tim’s leg. The kid shot it back and kicked the kreiger in the head before struggling to get to his feet, panting and trying to yell.

Another one came from Tim’s right, leaping on his back and slamming him down onto the ground, and like it had opened a bridge of confidence for the others they started to move in on their kill.

To my disappointment though there was a crack of assault rifle fire, and the kreigers scattered off of Tim like vultures. They slithered back a few feet before they mock advanced, arching their backs and hissing. Then another series of gunfire, each in quick succession, before the kreigers scattered further.

Caligula, the chimera brother of mine, had his fancy M4 carbine up, raining clip after clip on the lizard men. They were quickly with a confident stance that radiated a powerful and authorative aura that only chimeras could truly wield. He carried himself as I would’ve expected someone with his upbringing, something his brother had failed to grasp.

My mind ticked.

“Dad? I found him, over here!” Caligula shouted, turning only for a moment before he ran to his brother, bleeding and gasping; the boy’s useless assault rifle lying forgotten beside him.

“You idiot, where are the others?” Caligula growled, grabbing Tim by the back of his shirt and wrenching him to his feet. He let go but caught Tim again as the boy’s leg bent like it was made from rubber.

“Dead, all of them are dead. Why the fuck didn’t Silas tell us these things were here?” Tim snapped, grabbing onto his brother for dear life. I could see his eyes were an odd brown orange colour, splotchy like some of the markings the cats at home had.

“I don’t know… Dad?” Caligula dropped Tim and started shooting off the kreigers who were starting to get bold and come closer. He turned around and bent down to pick his brother back up.

And I saw my opportunity.

Jade looked over at my gun but didn’t say anything. I wondered if he was worried about what Elish would think, or perhaps I had him wrong and he was disappointed he wouldn’t get to rip a throat out. Either way, I was doing this my way, and my way involved more than just teeth and flesh.

I focused my M16 again and shot Caligula in the leg, the soldier chimera shouted from shock and fell to the ground I aimed again and shot his other leg.

“Those kreigers will get to Tim before I’ll even get a bite.” Jade’s voice was amusingly bitter, like I had just taken away the sweetest of rewards. “I’ll never understand how you can get fulfillment out of guns. Teeth are just so… personal.”

You want personal, Cicaro? You must not know me well.

“Clig?” Timmy cried, putting a hand on Caligula’s shoulder, just as a kreiger started to bite and pull Caligula’s shoe. The kreiger jumped back and hissed.

The lizards were descending, becoming braver and bold as the man with the gun fell into a writhing heap, swearing his face off and holding his legs.

“Who’s fucking shooting at us!?” Caligula snapped.

“I think it’s Willis; I bait-trapped him. He’s fucking dead when I find him! I’ll rip him apart myself!” Timmy cried and with that omission I had to push down the laugh edging my lips.

“We’re both dead, you little shit.” Caligula gasped. His clammy face getting paler as the blood around his legs grew. Jade and I both flattened our bodies against the balcony as the chimera scanned the buildings for the mystery shooter, though his metallic eyes saw nothing but shadows.

Instead of panicking Caligula reached into his pocket for a handgun and gave it to Tim, just as the brave kreiger who had gotten kicked grabbed onto Tim’s leg.

Caligula rose up and shot the kreiger before he started to drag his bleeding legs down the road. His brother trying to pull himself away; his own leg a lump of awkward useless meat.

My insides stirred; my heart pumping wave after wave of grisly thrills throughout my body. It was overtaking me with such a torrent of murderous energy I didn’t know if I could hold back going down there to kill them myself. Jade was right, I don’t think just sniping them would be enough for me anymore.

“Don’t kill Clig, Elish will be angry. We’ll still need the Legion on –”

“I don’t give a fuck what Elish thinks.”

Why would he think I would? I wasn’t Elish’s slave and he wasn’t my master. This was my vendetta, my payback. Not just to kill a chimera but to pay Kessler back for all the hell he had caused Aras. Killian was almost killed because his legionaries wanted to make a couple tokens off of his liver.

I wanted to make him pay for everything.

“Clig? Tim?” Kessler called. We both looked up and saw the burly silhouette of Kessler as he burst out of an alleyway nearby, rifle in hand.

“Dad, our legs… Tim bait-trapped Willis and he got free. He’s sniping us from one of the buildings. We can’t fucking walk, where are the others?” Caligula tried to shout over the assault rifle fire but his finger seemed permanently pressed on the trigger. He was sitting now, with his back leaning against Tim who was on his knees firing the useless handgun at the two dozen mobbing them only ten feet away.

Kessler fired a sweep of bullets into the ones swarming on Caligula, before running in front of his sons with a threatening bellow, opening his arms and advancing on them in a futile attempt to show dominance to the descending kreigers.

The lizards did scatter when he did this but not a moment after he did they regrouped, crawling closer and closer.

“I’ll carry you boys, don’t worry, just cover my fucking back.” Kessler gave his carbine to Tim before he leaned down to pick the boy up.

“Is he immortal?”

“Yes,” Jade said under his breath.

I chuckled, and heard the cicaro suck in a breath like he almost knew what was coming. I looked into the scope again and found my new target, before firing off several rounds… I needed more than one bullseye for this to be effective.