Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (102 page)

“Is the demon-looking one fully under your control?” One-eye asked. Valen nodded, and One-eye continued, “I want to get his DNA before he goes with the others.” I stayed still as the leader turned my face towards his and pulled my upper lip. He whistled at my teeth before raising a hand and slapping me across the face.

Inside of me I was boiling alive, but I didn’t flinch and I didn’t move.

With a rough yank he pulled me down a different barricade maze and into an open room with a sandy linoleum floor. It was only a room because it had been closed in with the store shelving and more sandbags.

I immediately saw a woman with blond hair and green eyes. She was cutting open what looked like a severed biigo head with a scalpel.

“Oniks… we got him,” One-eye said, and immediately my heart jumped. I had heard that name before, she was the undercover agent for the family. I gave an internal sigh of relief as the woman rose to her feet and walked over to me.

“He’s conked right out…” she mumbled. One-eye laughed and gave me a slap upside the head.

“Sure is,” he said. “Check out the teeth on him, and those eyes. If we can hack into their system again and collect more of their chimera research perhaps one day we can make one of those for the Crimstones to use. An entire army, eh, my dear?”

Oniks’s eyes narrowed, obviously not too keen on being called
my
dear
. She lifted up my lip like One-eye had done and shook her head in amazement. “If Valen wasn’t masking his brain those teeth would be around our necks. I can’t believe this worked, Valen is indispensible.”

How was Valen doing this?

“Not just Valen.” One-eye laughed dryly. “Your informant on the inside is twice as valuable as he is. If he didn’t tip us off about the king flying overhead on that Falconer we would’ve never gotten a hold of such a priceless thing to ransom. Who would’ve known the king would be that obsessed over brain matter.”

Inside my heart dropped to my stomach, but I didn’t have time to process the information. It took every bit of restraint inside of me not to flinch as Oniks stabbed my arm with a long needle, so deep inside that I could feel it scraping against the bone.

And she didn’t stop there, she moved the needle around in my skin until blood rushed into a vial attached to the top of the needle. When she was done she withdrew the needle and nodded to One-eye.

“Murphy can do the rest, he says he wants a day with this one and the others before we can kill them. We’re going to tie a few rocks to Nero’s neck and dump him in the sewers to drown until they find him,” Oniks said as she held the shining red blood up to the light. “Take him back to Valen. I don’t trust his abilities when he’s so far away and I don’t want to fucking be near this one if he snaps out of it.”

No more words were exchanged. One-eye walked me down the maze of sandbags into what might’ve been the manager of this store’s office by the metal desk and the look of the place. Though now it had been transformed into a dungeon-like prison. There were shackles and chains on the walls and half of it was enclosed in the same sandbag barricade. The wall to the left had been blown open as well but I couldn’t see what was on the other side, it was too dark.

I saw Valen sitting on a chair, a rag held up to his nose; he looked weary. To my right, as I walked into the room, I saw Ceph, Nero, and then Jack who was standing beside the doorway. All of them looking like mindless drones.

“Can I have some food? Using the abilities takes a lot out of me…” Valen said in a weak voice. He wiped his nose and I saw a streak of red on his finger, just like when I had seen his eyes go black in that flashback.

Why didn’t I know Valen could do this? Did any of the chimeras know? Did Silas?

“There’s some ramen packs in the bathroom.”

“You said… I could have some of Kimroy.”

I heard a smacking sound before a person stumbled and fell, it wasn’t Valen though – the one-eyed man had kicked Jack.

It took everything I had not to whirl around and attack that man, but I didn’t. I kept the blank look on my face as Jack slowly got up, dirt covering his front and a large scrape on his face. He rose to his feet, still inside the vale, and stood beside a filing cabinet.

“Deal with it. Go tie them up in case your trick fails. Oniks already collected his blood.” Then the sound of boots scraping against sandy ground but no more words were exchanged. I heard Valen sigh and more scraping boots that faded as he walked further away.

I looked around at my brothers. All three of them were standing like statues, staring into oblivion with dull expressions on their faces. As I watched them I was dismayed to see that our guns had been taken away while I had been in that temporary disconnection, all I had was the long knife I’d used to kill Jasper strapped to my ankle.

And I’m cuffed…
I sighed and tested the chains. It looked like we were both deep inside of this building. If Ceph wasn’t with us we could make a break for it even if we did get shot, but that was out of the question unless we were going to sacrifice Ceph.

So even though I was conscious – I wasn’t sure what I could do about it at this moment. If Valen was some worshipped member of these rebels, or Crimstones as One-eye called them, I could hold him ransom, but it looked like he was still lower than dirt.

Valen came back into the room with a hot plate, a kettle sloshing with water, and a Cup-a-Soup ramen cup. He sniffed, looking miserable, and put the kettle on the hot plate. Then he pulled up a chair and put his sleeve against his bloody nose.

Not too long after I saw a tear drip down his cheek, before he buried his face into his hands and started to cry softly to himself. He cried and cried until the kettle started to boil, then, with shaking hands, he filled up his soup cup and curled up on the chair. His face was red and his lips trembling.

Then he looked at the four of us and wiped his eyes. As if we were an afterthought he got up and walked towards me. He grasped my handcuffed hand and picked up one of the shackles.

I pulled my hand back. Valen jumped and gasped, and when he looked up at me I saw his pupils retract like a wilting pink flower. He knew I was aware now – and he looked terrified.

But I had no madness for him, and no threats.

“You don’t want to do this do you?” I said to him in a level tone.

Valen stepped back and I saw the black cloak his eyes, but I found myself able to actually push the vale away from my mind with ease. I wasn’t sure how, or why I could do it but the others couldn’t, all I knew is that I was immune to this power Valen now had.

I shook my head. Valen stepped back again, the pink coming back to his irises, then he turned to make a break for the door.

“Get me some ramen… I’ll eat with you,” I said, then I decided to call his bluff. “Or else I’ll uncloak Nero, Ceph, and Jack’s mind and I’ll let them handle you.”

Valen skidded to a halt, his heartbeat was revving like someone was flooring a gas pedal on an engine in neutral. I saw his hand clench the frame of the door before he turned around.

“How?” he asked, his voice just as weak and defeated as he himself looked.

“I have my ways,” I said to him. “Now get me one of those Cup-a-Soup things. I’m hungry and it looks like we have a lot to talk about.” He stepped back as I moved towards the hot plate. I pulled up a chair that had been collecting dust in the corner and sat down. “Go on, go.” I nodded towards the door.

Valen just stared at me, the confusion was so palatable on him I could taste it. I enjoyed seeing him confused, in a way I myself was confused over how I was handling this, it was uncharacteristic for me to be this calm when faced with such dire circumstances. My darker, more derisive half told me I was just being cocky since I was immortal, but the nicer side of me told me I was growing up and I recognized that if I played my cards right – we could get everyone out of here safely.

I couldn’t risk Ceph… I’d never be able to look Nero in the eye if I got Ceph killed, after all of this was my idea.

Valen came back with another of the styrofoam noodle cups and filled it with hot water. The entire time he was giving me nervous glances as if he expected me to attack him. He was used to dealing with chimeras of course, and I was used to acting like one, but I was seeing too many chinks in this kid’s armour not to try the civil and safer approach.

When the second noodle cup was filled and had a fork resting on it, he handed me the fork he had been carrying around and his cup which had been simmering long enough for it to be done. This interested me, he was feeding me first even though he had told the one-eyed guy that he was hungry. What was with this kid?

I opened up the cup and stirred around the noodles. I had found a twelve case of these once when I was little and ate like a king for a week. Even though there was next to no nutrients in them they were pretty fucking good. I took a few bites and eyed the kid who was just staring at his shoes.

“Are they keeping you prisoner?” I asked him.

Valen shook his head. “I went with them willingly, when I was gone for weeks trying to find and kill you I met them in a bar.” He let out a long sigh. “I hung out with them and learned Silas was awake. Then I learned that not only was the family looking for you, that once again no one gave a shit where Valen was, no one cared about me once again. Story of my life.”

“You’ve always been a pretentious, snobby little shit to me, maybe you’re part of the reason they don’t give a shit about you,” I said, completely forgetting I wasn’t trying to piss off the guy who had me in handcuffs and my friends and boyfriend under his mental control. “My first day of college when I ran into you you immediately treated me like dirt and started flaunting your chimera status like some sort of pampered prince.”

Valen’s mouth downturned. “When someone with no control over anything, no power over anything, and a family that hates them, has a chance to bully some dumb arian below them – you run with it,” Valen explained dully. “Or at least that’s what Mantis always told me. I didn’t know you were a fucking chimera. You were just some dirty greywaster that was getting more attention from Jack and the family than me.”

I mulled this over for a moment and ate a few more forkfuls of noodles. “I could see why that would piss you off, but was that really enough to betray the family?”

Valen’s fuchsia eyes glared at me. “Don’t flatter yourself, it wasn’t you that made me do this. It’s an entire lifetime of Silas’s constant abuse, constant reminding that I didn’t develop correctly, that I was a failed chimera. I was supposed to be his cicaro, did you know that? I was supposed to have one of the most honourable positions in the family – but he never gave me a chance. And when Silas started treating me like garbage, Elish followed, and after Elish the entire family started treating me like the lowest of the low. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be hated because you were born wrong? To have your family hate you because of something you can’t help?”

This struck me. I paused, and lowered my fork. “Actually, I do,” I said to him. “I was a red-eyed, pointed tooth monster in the greywastes. I got crucified, burned, chased out of towns because of how I looked. I know what it’s like to be punished for something you didn’t have any control over.”

Valen sniffed and picked up his styrofoam cup and peeled off the lid. “Then you came to Skyfall and now the entire family is kissing your ass. And what do I get?” Valen swept a hand around the room. “I thought joining the rebels would be my chance to take control of my life, but in the end I’m still treated like shit and if I step a foot back in Skyfall Silas will kill me in an instant.” His lips pursed. “I don’t even have a single friend there anymore. I read the bulletin this morning… the death announcements for Felix and Ludo, that on top of you killing my other three friends… I’m all alone.” Then his expression got hard. “I have nothing left to live for but to take as many of you fucks down with me as I can.”

“But wait…” I said. I glanced behind Valen at Nero, Ceph, and Jack. All three standing like mannequins staring into nothing with dead eyes. “How did you do that shit then?”

Valen didn’t even look up, he just twirled his noodles around on his fork. He stared at them for a second before dropping the fork back into the steaming up. “I guess trauma was the key to unlocking my empath abilities because… I was able to finally do it… while you were raping me.”

There was a clunk as I dropped the almost empty cup of food. My blood turned to ice as his words sunk into me but I found myself desperately shaking my head.

“I… I didn’t do that…” I said slowly. I started to feel nauseas.

Valen laughed dryly. “I guess you wouldn’t remember. I shut your brain off and Jack’s while he was holding me down for you. You went limp, still inside of me, I had to pull you out and push you off of me. The buildings were burning from the rebels’ missiles, and I left you two there, hoping you would burn in the inferno. I guess I wasn’t that–”

“I didn’t rape you,” I stammered, my words coming too quickly as the sick feeling rotted my gut. “I’ve – I’ve been raped hundreds of times. I wouldn’t… I’d never–”

I put my hand over my mouth, the emotion over this reality overwhelming me. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

Valen shrugged; he took another bite of his food. “I’m worthless, Sam. I deserved it and worse. I was standing outside of your underground lair with a couple rebels with guns wanting to shoot you two when you fled the smoke. I’m not going to lie and play the victim, I’m too far into this shit to care what you think of me. I should be thanking you for making me discover my abilities.”