The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (64 page)

I spared him a nod and moved my shoulder so Killian could wake himself up. “Alright, thanks for the meat. Keep your crew away from the house.”

The slaver nodded and with a creak of slowly rotting boards and the scrapes of greywaste dirt he was out of the house and out of my sight.

I saw Killian yawn and look sleepy beside the fire.

I yawned too, and raised my voice to call to Jade. “Wake me up in a couple hours, Jade. I want watch a few hours before sunrise.”

“Reaver...” Jade’s excited voice sounded from the deck. I watched as he ran inside holding the lit up laptop in front of him. “It’s connected. I don’t know how but I got a signal. It keeps connecting and disconnecting and it’s killing the battery... but I got it.”

Killian gasped and rose to his feet but I was already standing beside Jade. The cicaro sat down on his bundle of blankets and put the laptop on his lap.

I could see the little computer icon showing it was connected to the Skyfall Network, then a series of windows started loading. One of them was Elish’s personal email.

“I bet he’s already cheating on you,” I said with a smirk. “Look an email from... Juni. That’s a cute name maybe –”

“That’s Jack’s sengil and cicaro; he dictates Jack’s emails for him.” Jade shot me a dangerous look. “I’m just going to write him an email telling him we’re heading for Falkvalley. He’ll probably pick us up on the –”

“Reaver!” Killian suddenly exclaimed. He pointed towards the screen but as he poked it Jade smacked his hand away. The kid didn’t calm down though. “Look, read the subject... it’s from Ellis. She’s the Commissioner of the thiens.”

I leaned over Jade’s shoulder and my jaw hit the floor. “
Crimstone random video
? Click it.”

The little pointer thing scrolled over and clicked on the video. I waited as the swirly thing went in circles but became impatient. “What, is it fucking broken? Why isn’t the video coming up?”

“It’s buffering.”

“What’s buffering?”

“It’s loading.”

“Why? The Nintendo takes two seconds to load, make it fucking go faster!” I snapped. I leaned down and put my hand on the mouse and started clicking the video link again. Like he had done to Killian, the cicaro hissed at me and shoved my hand away.

“Because we’re hundreds of miles away from Skyfall, it’s a fluke we have a signal right now. Just be patient, Silas has like three satellites in the air now it takes a while.” Jade smacked my hand away again.

I growled but before I could complain more a video window popped up. I could feel Killian tense up beside me. I slipped my hand into his knowing that what I was about to see probably wouldn’t be good.

“Just... remember: he’s still alive. Elish would’ve told us if... you know,” Jade said quietly, before pressing the play button. “Don’t smash the laptop if you see something you don’t want to see. Meirko’s brother pulled my teeth out with pliers while Elish and Garrett watched.”

This gave me pause, but there was no time for those words to have much of an impact, as the last syllable left Jade’s lips I saw him.

He looked like shit... of course he looked like shit, that didn’t surprise me. My god though...

What the fuck had he done to his hair?

Killian whimpered beside me and I squeezed his hand harder, in that moment Reno looked up at the screen and I felt my heart give a jolt. I never thought I would see him on a screen, like he was on television or something... it still looked like he was staring right at me. His blue eyes bruised and glassy and a look on his face that was so... defeated.

What the fuck was happening inside of my chest, it felt tight... I suddenly felt uncomfortable in my own skin. It itched and I felt the urge to just jump out of it, keep running until I made it to Skyfall.

I had to fucking save my friend.

“I need to get him...” I swallowed a lump in my throat. I turned and went to walk out the door, not knowing where I was going just knowing I couldn’t watch this.

“My name is Reno Nevada from Aras...”

I closed my eyes, my teeth clenching with such a strength I could feel them squeak inside of my head. Desperation filled me, and even though Elish had told me what had happened to my oldest friend, it suddenly became very real to me.

“I am Garrett Dekker’s fiancé.”

“No you’re not!” I whirled around and snapped at the video. I stalked over to the laptop to shut it but Killian stopped me.

“It’s okay baby. He’s alive... he’s still alive,” Killian whispered. I could see his eyes were filled with unshed tears.

“He’s not his fiancé... if that fucker loved him he would have him... back. He would –” I put a hand on my head and clenched my scalp; my teeth grinding back and forth. My eyes shot to the screen and I saw it zoomed on his face. Fuck... he looked –

I would have never let this happen to him. I had been guarding that fucking dipshit since I was two. I would have never fucking let them kidnap him.

“Sit down... Jade turn it off...” Killian put some pressure on my shoulder, trying to get me to sit on our bundle of blankets, but I shook my head.

My eyes looked over at the screen, to Reno still talking. I took in a deep breath and tried to find the steeled resolve I had lost as soon as I saw my silver-haired friend. The Skyfaller Garrett had forced him to become.

But he wasn’t a Skyfaller; he was Reno Nevada, the field sentry and my best friend.

I kneeled back down beside Jade and watched him talk, watched his mouth move even though the volume was on low, watched the scared and defeated look on his face; every detail of my funny little friend. I missed him, I never thought I would miss that fuck, but damn... I was so far from home, so far from the world I had grown up in.

They had fucking guns pointed at his head... I swear the day I meet those mother –

“Wait,” I suddenly said.

Jade and Killian both looked at me. I motioned towards the mouse. “Rewind it...” I narrowed my eyes as I watched Reno’s face, every muscle movement, every blink...

I knew him more than anyone did, I knew his body language and –

Jade rewound the video to the very beginning and it started to play again.

Holy fuck.

An electric jolt went through my heart and I felt it shoot cold water through my veins. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I couldn’t believe that fuck was this smart.

He was blinking Morse code.

I looked around wildly, Killian and Jade giving me the most crazed look they could. I reached over and grabbed Killian’s bag and took out a folded up piece of paper.

“Pen... pen, Killian,” I said sharply and gave him the bag. I turned back to the video. “Rewind it again.”

“Why?”

“Do it!” I snapped. “He’s blinking Morse code; it’s where they’re holding him.”

Jade once again reset the video and as it started to play again Killian handed me a pen. I started writing down the Morse code he was blinking.

M Sewer.

“M? What’s M? I showed the piece of paper to Jade; my pulse was racing. I felt such an adrenaline rush go through me I couldn’t contain it. I felt like I could run to Skyfall right now and rescue him. I wanted to, fuck, I wanted to. Man, the look on his fucking face...

Jade grabbed the piece of paper and looked at me with wide eyes. “M? Moros sewers? It must be in Cypress where the sewers are more intact, that’s an abandoned district that bleeds into Moros. I... we have to get a hold of Elish before the battery dies on this thing.”

“How much of a charge do we have?” I demanded. Killian was rubbing my back in a pathetic attempt to keep me from flying off the handle but it wasn’t working. I felt such a rush at figuring out this message but in the same vein, I had never felt more useless.

Jade clicked off of the video and immediately started typing out an email. “The connection is coming and going. I’ll type this out and try to send it.”

“Hurry!” I rose and started pacing, feeling like a wild animal more than anything. I wasn’t used to feeling helpless and every time I did it drove me up the wall. I just wanted to scream at the top of my lungs right now. Not only did I have to see my best friend beaten with a gun to his head but now I knew where he was.

Leo and Greyson had hammered Morse code into our heads, mostly for radio though. None of these chimera fucks had noticed he was trying to tell them something... but I did. I knew him better than Garrett ever would.

I didn’t share my property...
My teeth clenched even harder.

“Is it sent yet?” I whirled around and snapped at Jade. The kid was hunched over the laptop, his fingers busily clicking away a message.

“No... not yet...” Jade replied. He rubbed his hands and let out a sigh. “It’s... buffering. The connection is really spotty and the roaming is sucking up our cell-”

Jade’s face went dark and a fraction of a second later the cell phone beeped its swan song.

“Did it send?” I couldn’t control the sound of my voice. Killian once again grabbed my arm and squeezed it, but a haze was starting to come. I yanked my arm away but he grabbed it again.

“I... no... it... it...” Jade’s face went pale. He was scared of me... scared of how I would react. Jade was afraid of me.

I tried to push down the frustration I was feeling but I felt the anxiety and desperation pool inside of my chest, gathering every stray strand of bad feelings I had inside of my body to cluster them into one pit, like a volcano on the fringes of erupting.

“We’ll find a town,” Jade said quietly, “one that we can charge the batteries in. If Elish doesn’t find us first.”

What about the lab? We could go back...
I sighed not even bothering to bring a voice to that option; the lab was crawling with legionary now.

“We’ll ask Hopper tomorrow,” Killian said calmly. He was rubbing my arm, soothing... soothing like Reno always had to do. He hated seeing me upset, they all did.

I felt like I was about to lose my mind.

“I... I need to go for a walk,” I said quietly and when Killian gripped my arm harder I shoved the emotions into the dark void and kissed his cheek. “I’m... I’m okay, at least someone knows where he is – It’s further than we were ten minutes ago.”

The kid looked at me suspiciously but he nodded and kissed me back. “Don’t be long.”

I was never one to have bad dreams... that was Killian’s thing.

But tonight was different.

There was chaos around me tonight.

Smoke, deacons, Killian screaming behind a wall of crumbled brick and burning ash but I couldn’t get to him.

I turned around and saw them, coated in grey ash that stuck to their skin and caked on the orifices they were bleeding from. They were looking at me pleading, begging for me to do something.

Do something, savior of the greywastes.

Greyson reached out his hand; his other one clutching Leo to his chest.

Leo was dead, he wasn’t looking at me... he couldn’t look they had cut out his eye, and the other one was closed in its eternal sleep.

“Reaver... help him. He’s your father... help him!” Greyson pleaded, his face dissolving into his own grief.

My heart jolted. I bent down and put a hand to Leo’s cold cheek and met my dad’s gaze with mine.

“Help him, Reaver.”

“I... I can’t,” I stammered. “I don’t know how.”

“He’s dead... Killian’s dead,” Greyson cried. He looked down as I gave him a confused look, before I looked down as well.

It wasn’t Leo anymore.

My little blond boyfriend’s eyes had been removed, and his tongue cut out of his mouth. He was lying motionless in Greyson’s arms; his mouth split open to make room for the tubes. Not a sound from his lips or a loving gaze from those two sapphires.

So blue.

The type of blue you just don’t see in this world.

“Killian?” I shook him. I put my hand on his chin and tried to shake his head but as soon as I put pressure on it his jaw started to come off in my hand. It broke away from his skull like it had been made out of plaster, crumbling between my fingers.

“One day... one day,
bona mea
,” the slippery smooth voice I would never forget hissed in my ear. “He’ll be dead, and once his last breath leaves his body... I know you will finally be mine.”

I gasped and jolted before I immediately felt a hand retract from my shoulder.

“You need to get up... don’t wake up Killian,” Jade whispered beside me. The fire was nothing but dying coals, the whole living room had grown cold. “We have company, but... don’t flip out, just don’t wake up Killian.”

Immediately my body turned to ice. I got up, making sure not to disturb the kid, and grabbed my M16. “What is it?”

Jade was holding his gun in his hand, and though his face was calm his heartbeat was not. “I heard voices and I snuck out to check them out. Legion came in from the west area of the town and they’re on their way to Hopper’s camp.”

Dread washed over me, we had to get out of here now. I turned around to wake up Killian and Perish when Jade spoke behind me. “I know you want to run but they have a Charger plane now, Reaver, which has heat censors on it. It’s off in the distance not near the town but if we run... there are no structures further north for us to hide in. We need to stay.”