The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (75 page)

Because I was no longer in the sewer. I was locked in a shed with a single padlock, a crazed Crimstone with red hair keeping a constant guard, and Trig the cicaro, whimpering useless beside me.

I was shot, I was badly injured, and every time I woke up to this cold room I was surprised that there was still breath inside of my lungs. How I was still living I didn’t know, but I ran with it and kept the image of Garrett, Reaver, and Killian at the forefront of my muddled and hazy mind.

My sore eyes shifted to Trig, a small waif that the darkness had swallowed up long ago. He had his knees tucked up to his chest and his dirt-stained arms wrapped around them. The boy barely spoke anymore, and when he did it seemed he needed hours to recover.

And what would he speak?

Ares will come for me.

Over and over.

You poor little wretch, no one is coming for us.
I sighed and hated myself for the dark turn my thoughts had taken during the last several days, since we had escaped from the sewers. Where hope had once reigned and grown like well-watered weeds, only bitterness and dark conclusions could be found.

Reaver had come for Killian, as soon as he had realized the boy was missing he had gone out and into the greywastes to find him, vowing to not return until he had that boy beside him.

Before he even knew Killian, he had risked his life for that little blond boy. By the next day he was walking with Killian in his arms, his ear blown off and his back a shredded mess.

I was engaged to a chimera, a ninety-year-old chimera, the second born prince. Why hadn’t he come for me? Garrett had the world at his disposal and yet it had been weeks and here I still was. Beaten, tortured, raped, and now shot. Where was my hero?

There are no heroes... there never had been. Reaver had said that to me over and over and I guess he was right, but there were still lovers, still people who were supposed to care for you.

Did Elish tell Reaver I was missing? Maybe Reaver would come and save me.

No... he would never risk Killian here, and he for sure wouldn’t leave him in the greywastes. Killian was his sole concern now.

Not me.

I slowly inched my hand over and took the water bottle that Kerres had tossed for us, filled with irradiated sludge that made my Geigerchip vibrate over top of my collarbone. I brought it to my lips and drank down the cold metallic liquid before motioning it over for Trig to drink.

The kid took it with a trembling hand; his dark eyes glassy and his hair now dark from the dirt and oil stuck to his forehead and his neck. It made his ears stick out, but even they hadn’t escaped the shit we had gone through; his earrings had become infected and I could see pus leaking through the gemstone studs.

A silence crept back into the already void-like atmosphere around us, broken up only by the occasional mumblings of Kerres. The crimson-haired man was on the other side of the door, though what he was doing or what his plan was, was lost on me. He just sat out there with his gun, rambling on to himself about Jade and Elish, and how he would eventually get his chimera boyfriend back.

My back was leaning against the exterior wall of the shed we were locked in; we were almost back to back with each other.

I wiped my nose with a greasy sleeve and looked down to check the wound on my leg.

A cold trickle of dread formed inside of my gut as I saw the dried blood framing the black bullet wound. But that wasn’t the worst of it, my gut had started to darken and what little piss my body produced was rosy pink. During the escape the healing bullet wound I had must’ve ripped open inside of me and something was going wrong. My energy was leaving me to the point were every time I closed my eyes I wondered if I would ever open them.

“Ker? Do you have any food? It’s been days, man,” I said weakly, rubbing the back of my head as the splinters in the shed prickled the back of my head.

There was shifting before Kerres’s own rather weak voice responded. “I’m not going back inside of there, they’ll kill me. By now they’ll be looking for Meirko.”

“And... what did you do with Meirko? You know his meat is still good right? Bring me some Meirko.” My mouth salivated at the thought of some meat, even raw; I didn’t care at this point.

There was a pause like he was considering it, before he replied back, “He would’ve turned by now.”

Who cares?
“I’ve eaten some pretty shifty shit in my day, dude. I don’t care. Hack me off an ass cheek or something, that’s got some pretty tender bits on it.”

Trig’s eyes, barely visible in the dark corner he had shut himself in glanced up, his expression turning to one of distaste, though I challenged him to be picky right now. It had been the same amount of days since he had eaten too, and even then the Crimstones had barely fed us.

“I hid his body, in case the Crimstones came looking. He’s rotten and in the back room of a Burger King. We have no food,” Kerres replied back stiffly.

Even in my starving misery I felt a surge of anger course through my body. “Then what the fuck is your plan, Kerres? We’re fucking starving!” I snapped, and at my tone Trig started to cry.

I shifted over to Trig and put my arm around him as big tears ran down his face. I shushed him like I had seen Reaver do to Killian and pet back his hair. I had never had a soft type to do this to. I was the soft one in both my failed and never-was relationships, and with the man I was engaged to now. All I had to go on from experience was what I had seen Reaver do.

“What I am planning on...” he stumbled as he spoke and I realized then he had no fucking idea what his plans were. “...on doing is none of your fucking business, chimera lover.”

You love a chimera too, you fucking asshat.
Luckily, I wasn’t stupid enough to say that to him.

Trig whimpered, I tried to draw him further into my arms but my gut gave a jolt of pain. I settled for leaning his head against my shoulder with an arm around his back. I hugged him close to me and he seemed to relax under the embrace. I wondered if Ares had ever held him like that, he never seemed like the type.

There was silence after that, except for more mumbling from Kerres that seemed to intensify when the winter darkness fell upon us. Once it started to get colder, I lay down with Trig and held his body against mine, trying to get as much body heat as we could between us. I had no idea how we hadn’t frozen to death yet, sometimes during the night I swore the kid had died he was so cold.

But we didn’t die... not yet anyways. I was still very much alive when, in the middle of the night, Kerres opened the padlocked door and jumped inside; an air of desperation around him.

I tried to rise myself, giving the red-haired Crimstone a look of confusion as he quickly shut the door and pressed his back against it. His wild brown eyes were shooting off in all directions and his chest was heaving.

“Wha-” My own voice cut itself off when I saw the first flashlight glare sweep through the cracks in the shed.

Garrett? Oh please, oh I am begging you, please be Garrett. I fucking don’t think I can make it through another night... please, please...

“The Crimstones... they’re looking for us,” Kerres’s voice was thin and strained; he looked stricken with a fear so vivid it was radiating off of him. “Be quiet, you have to be quiet or they’ll kill all of us.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, the greywaster mentality seeing a fault in him I wanted to exploit. “So what? We’re going to fucking die here; why not take you down with us?”

Kerres’s eyes shot down to me. “Because they’ll rape and murder you in front of the entire city of Skyfall, that’s why. Do you want to get raped again, Trig? Huh?”

The young boy let out a wheezed whine. “No.” His voice was small but full of desperation.

I ground my teeth as another flashlight beam illuminated the boy’s deathly thin face. His eyes were so big I could see that he would rather die than go through that again, and I knew my heart felt the same thing.

Yes, it might not be much but being in this room was a step up from having a gun to my head and a cock in my ass inside the sewers.

And I could... yes, I could overpower Kerres; he was a wreck right now.

But a dangerous wreck, the bullet wound in my upper leg was a testament to Jade’s ex-boyfriend’s current mental state.

Another flashlight beam, when it swept over the crumbling plaster and loose wires of the interior of the shed I saw Trig’s eyes well. He started to cry so I put his face into my chest to muffle him.

“Shh, shh... it’s alright, they’ll be leaving soon,” I whispered to him. “Just be quiet, that’s all you have to do.”

The boy whimpered. I squeezed him tighter, wondering how good of a boyfriend I would’ve been to Killian if Silas had taken Reaver. I think I would have done alright. Maybe it would’ve given me a bit more balls to deal with situations like this.

“Maybe it’s Ares?” he whispered.

But before I could open my mouth to respond, we heard a muffled voice in the distance and it didn’t belong to a chimera or any legionary. I recognised the voice as one of the Crimstones though his name was lost on me. He had beaten the snot out of me a few times, that I did remember.

Sure enough, Kerres’s eyes widened. He slid his body down to the floor and put his arms behind the back of his head. He let out a groan and shook his head back and forth.

“I’m never going to see my baby again, they’ll fucking hang me for killing Meirko,” Kerres whispered, in a surprising moment of lucidity. “Then kill you two fucks, they’re too deep in this ransom now. They want out. They’re strong but they’re a bunch of fucking cowards when they feel like their leverage is gone.” But then his face darkened and his eyes narrowed. “It’s too bad we couldn’t have kidnapped someone important. Reaver or Jade, or even Juni, they would’ve given into our demands. I would’ve had Elish. Not you two worthless pieces of shit. Garrett doesn’t even fucking care does he? Or Ares”

I shook my head, feeling like I had just seen with my own eyes Kerres’s mind switch from calm to crazy. It seems the brainwashing technique they did on some of the members seemed to come and go.

“Ares will come for me,” the small voice murmured, still nestled into my chest. I continued to stroke his hair, too scared and too weak to tell him that no one was coming for us.

No one.

Kerres buried his face in his hands before wiping them down his face. The Crimstone looked weary, defeated – he looked done.

“Kerres... let us go,” I whispered to him. “You can run, just let us go.”

He shook his head, staring at the floor. I didn’t think he was going to say anything to me, but as the sweeps of the flashlight stopped and the voices got lost in the distance he spoke in a silent whisper.

“I love him so much, Otter. I loved that boy, my heart aches for him.” A sad smile appeared on his dark features. “I would give anything to hold that boy to my chest again, to see those yellow eyes fixate on mine. I... I couldn’t handle him when he came back to Moros but I could now. I could make it work. I just...”

He paused, before his lips disappeared into his mouth. “I can’t live the rest of my life seeing him on the television, proudly standing behind the man who raped, abused, and tortured him until Jade had no choice but to succumb to him...” There was another pause before Kerres whispered under his breath. “What kind of boyfriend would I be... to give up on him like that? To let Jade spend a lifetime with that monster? I could never look at myself in the mirror if I gave up on him.”

That gave me pause. I turned his words over in my head and watched the Morosian boy, staring at the floor with his shoulders slumped.

I think I saw Kerres for the first time there.

The former boyfriend of Jade Dekker, before he became a Dekker and a chimera. The man who had taken care of Jade for years, only to lose him to an intimidating and powerful chimera. Jade had been captured, and during his captivity as a pet, he had fallen for his captor, leaving Kerres with nothing, absolutely fucking nothing.

I understood him... and though my thigh hurt like it was on fire and my gut was a twisted mess of gnawing pain, I felt my heart break for him. Kerres had nothing. His boyfriend was now the chimera husband of Elish Dekker, and Kerres was still just a boy from the slums, unable to let go, unable to give Jade into the evil he saw the Dekker family as.

“You really love Jade, don’t you?” I whispered to him.

Kerres looked up at me, and I saw his eyes were full of unshed tears. He nodded and as he did, the first tear broke free from its prison and slid down his cheek.

I wanted to wipe that tear from his face in that moment, and give him a hug like I was hugging Trig. It was in my nature to soothe, to kiss and make better, it was what had made me me.

Kerres’s heart still and would always belong to a man that belonged to another, and in a way mine had belonged to another too. But through a lot of internal tears I had let my evil greywaster go, because I saw how happy he was with Killian. I saw how much of a better person Killian made Reaver, and it made me feel good to see that happen to him.

Kerres didn’t have that in him though, and maybe it was because he didn’t see the best in Jade get brought out by Elish, or at least what Kerres would see as the best in him. He saw Jade become the ankle biting little serial killer he was now. A chimera with pointed canines, a dangerous attitude, and an arm always hanging off of his blond, elegant master and protector.