Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (26 page)

I swung my arms trying so badly to get at him but I just barely grazed him. He was only a half-fucking-inch from my face and I couldn’t get him. Crow and I couldn’t get him.

“Make it a fair fight!” I suddenly snarled, feeling Crow’s bravery inside of me again. I was so frustrated I thought I was going to explode. “Make it a fair fight, Jasper! Unchain us!”

Jasper laughed which infuriated me more. I pulled as hard as I could on the chain around my neck and screamed so loudly it was all that I could hear, all I could feel. My own manic and crazed voice boomed throughout the basement and sunk into my bones. I was losing it, I think I was…

I was finally losing it.

“Come closer!” I screamed, tears starting welling in my eyes. I was so frustrated, so angry. I don’t know what set me off, whether I had reached my point and I was finally fighting back – or if it was seeing Juni hurt for doing something I asked of him. “Come closer, you fucking coward!”

Jasper’s laugh pierced me, his laugh felt more like rape than the very act itself. Jasper got almost nose to nose with me and sneered. “You fucking animal, look at you. You’re nothing but a useless, fucking monster. I should get a reward for chaining you like the demon-dog you are. Who are you today, you pathetic lunatic. Crow? Sami? Are we Sanguine today? Who’s the one I fuck, huh? Did you name him? Because I just call him my little bitch.”

“FUCK YOU!” I shrieked, more tears spilling from my face. “Fuck you!” I tried to swing at him again but I only got air.

“Stay by the door, boys,” Jasper said, turning around. I looked behind him and saw three pairs of eyes staring at us, shocked and stunned.

Jasper walked over and picked up one of the wooden table legs, one I had played with as a child and hit myself with as a teen. I ground my teeth and glared at him as he smacked the wooden leg against his hand and shook his head at me.

He turned to the boys. “This is what happens if you disobey me – this is what happens if you piss me off.”

Suddenly Jasper whirled around and swung the table leg. It hit me right across the face, filling my mouth with blood and knocking out most of my senses.

Desperately I tried to grab onto my quickly unravelling mind so I could fight back, but everything was crashing around me. My head felt like a thunderstorm, everything was roaring, everything was loud
I felt another hit, this time on my shoulder.

My mouth was open as the blood poured out. I took in a sharp inhale to try and fill my lungs but only breathed in my own blood and saliva. The world was fading into dark around me, darkness and the smell of copper – old friends of mine.

Then I saw Jasper trip – no, he didn’t trip – as Jasper fell on top of me I saw little hands on Jasper’s back. I looked and saw a flash of blond for a split second before my mind shot back to me.

I was weak but having Jasper in grabbing distance awakened the person stirring inside and around me. Like a crocodile feeling prey brush its jaws Crow came. Crow came and filled me with the energy and drive I needed to fight back.

Crow looked on as I grabbed Jasper’s shoulder and sank my teeth into the fleshy part of his underarm. I clawed and held onto his jacket and thrashed as much as I could. Like an animal I threw my head back and forth as I growled through my locked teeth, trying to take as much of him as I could.

I tore the flesh away and went back for more, needing more… needing every inch of his body near me so I could eat him alive, and I would. I would devour him; I would destroy him. I would… I could… I…

Without me realizing what he was doing, Jasper slipped out of his jacket, the one I had been grabbing onto. I threw it aside and lunged at him again, his strip of chewed skin dropping from my open mouth, but he was already out of reach.

Then to my horror he picked up the wooden table leg and turned around.

The three boys gasped and tried to run up the stairs but Jasper chased them. He grabbed one of the blond ones and yanked him back and swung him so far he skidded across the dirty floor and slammed into the wall by the window.

“No, no it wasn’t him, it was me!” one of them screamed. The older one ran back down the stairs, tears streaming down his face. “I did it, it was me!”

Jasper’s eyes were blazing; his chest heaving up and down. He was in an insane rage I had never seen him in before.

Jasper glared at the boy and brandished the wooden table leg at him. “You did it, huh? You think you’re brave? This is what happens to brave boys.”

“NO!” I screamed as Jasper swung the table leg up over his head and with all of his force, he struck the younger of the boys. It hit the side of his face, dislocating his jaw and smashing his gums to the point where I saw the fissure open inside of his mouth.

A roaring filled my head, a burning deep inside that drew me into desperate insanity. I screamed. I lunged at him. I clawed the air as Jasper lifted up the table leg again and smashed it down on the boy’s head, opening up the fragile skull just above the ear, spraying blood all over the concrete wall, him, me, and the little boy’s older brother.

The violent emotions boiled me alive. And the frustration of being the chained beast that I was, was driving me further and further to the brink. With Crow egging me on I threw myself against the chain again and again as Jasper beat on the boy’s now dead body, all for the pure pleasure of hearing his older brother scream and cry.

Again… I lunged… and again. I lunged and lunged until the breath left my throat and the screams became manic howls. I tore at nothing and achieved nothing. I was helpless – I was helpless.

Jasper, panting from the effort of murdering the young boy, looked at me and sneered his face like he was smelling something awful.

“Juni, start helping me bring the box down I have strapped to the trike,” Jasper said darkly, glaring me down with a smug look. The same expression any coward had when they were looking at a dangerous, but chained, animal. “I think Sami has had enough freedom.”

I growled at him; I didn’t turn my burning gaze away.

Jasper looked behind him. “Juni!” he snapped.

Levi was crying by the door frame but he wasn’t moving… and Juni wasn’t there either.

“Juni!” Jasper screamed, his voice insane with anger. He made a frustrated noise before turning back to me.

He swung the table leg hard, cracking me right over the side of the head.

And I blacked out.

When I woke up, I was inside of a box and I could barely move.

It was locked with several air holes beside where my head was laying.

It was dark and I was trapped, in complete mind-numbing darkness.

All alone.

All alone in what I knew was my coffin.

With
Daisy Daisy
playing beside one of the air holes.

Over and over

Over again.

Nero

Nero stepped into the remains of what used to be a mall and placed a large spotted cat, about the size of a small cougar, onto the ground.

The cat, a crossbreed of a serval and a ocelot called a kitner, smelled the air; its striped tail swishing behind it. It flexed its big bat-like ears and looked behind it for its signal.

“Search for Sanguine,” Nero said to it, a cigar in his mouth and travelling goggles on his head. With a fleeting glance at the big cat he leaned up against a row of dusty payphones and took a long inhale of his cigar.

This mall was in good condition, the roof was solid and the only debris on the floor was the push paneling from the roof and a few broken florescent lights. Though everything was covered in dust, it was undisturbed dust, suggesting that no one had been here since the Fallocaust.

But that was expected, Nero was so far north he was rubbing shoulders with the plaguelands and this place had only recently became safe enough for humans.

He dashed the cigar ash onto the ground, before he started walking around the vast and open building. Shops lined the walls on the first floor, and behind a kiosk full of brittle papers and old cell phone cases, he saw a double escalator that led to a second floor with even more shops and kiosks. There were even the remains of a fountain though it was stained black now and had an old pay-per-use massage chair in it.

Nero walked over to the chair and made it upright. He sat in it with a sigh and leaned back.

He saw Ceph looking in an old video game store, his own cigar hanging from his mouth.

Over the last seven years that boy, now very much a man, had become his significant other and now the greywastes weren’t the same without his auburn-haired partner by his side.

“You look so stressed, puppy,” Ceph said, his voice held sympathetic tones that he used only on his partner.

Nero shrugged and glanced over at the kitner cat, named Pickles by young Drake, and saw the spotted cat slip quietly into one of the mall shops. He said nothing but the expression on his face told Ceph volumes.

Ceph walked over with a smile, and caringly rubbed Nero’s shoulders.

“Every year… I see your shoulders slump more and your hope slip…”

“You’re seeing things, my hope hasn’t fucking ‘slipped’, stop talking like Elish,” Nero said annoyed. He got up and roughly tossed the massage chair back on its side, then stalked over to an old Kodak store. He started roughly routing through it.

“Nuuky…” Ceph sighed, calling Nero the nickname that was his and only his, and also a nickname Ceph didn’t dare use with any of their brothers around. “It’s been eleven years…”

“We talked about this already, shut up and help me look. If you’re not going to help me look, go wait in the fucking plane,” Nero snapped. He picked up an old camera before throwing it onto the ground. After sneezing from the dust he stalked over to the back room and started kicking around boxes with his feet, looking for any sign that someone had stayed there.

Even if I find evidence that is years old… it’ll be something.

It will be something.

Why can’t I find something?

“He’s dead, babe.”

Nero whirled around and balled his fist. He was tempted to punch Ceph in the mouth, but he had been trying to control himself around his boyfriend since breaking his jaw last year.

So instead Nero threw a few more cameras at the wall.

“Just keep looking, okay?” Nero chucked an old camera lens at the mall windows, though the windows had broken under a warped frame so it flew right through, eventually landing beside the cell phone case kiosk. “I take one damn month a year to look for him, I’m not asking the world.”

“I know,” Ceph said quietly. “I’m sorry… I just hate seeing you like this. Every year I’m watching you get more and more sad during these trips. I don’t fucking like it, okay?”

Nero walked out of the Kodak shop and was about to look into an Orange Julius restaurant but Pickles was already coming out of it so there was no use. The kitner knew Sanguine’s scent and he would tell them if Sanguine had been here.

“He’s a chimera… he’s alive,” Nero said in a firm tone. “He’s just… I don’t know, the greywastes are big. He’s probably shut up in a house with five hot guys getting his cock polished every night.”

Ceph chuckled and rubbed Nero’s shoulder. “I can’t believe the little tiger would be nineteen now.”

“
Is
nineteen,” Nero corrected. “He
is
nineteen…”

“Yeah, Nuuky, he is nineteen,” Ceph said with a sad smile, though behind that smile there was still the churning oceans of doubt. Like their master King Silas, like Elish, Ellis, everyone who knew about Sanguine there was no longer a hope that the red-eyed chimera was alive. King Silas had even started talking about making a new clone of him though he had smartly decided to not mention this around Nero.

Nero had been encased in concrete for three months four years ago for attacking Silas during a heated argument about Sanguine. Nero had lost it on him like he did every few years over his decision to send the boy into the greywastes. Finally it escalated to the point where Nero laid a punch right to the side of the king’s head, killing him. And for his punishment Nero spent the next several months in cold isolation.

It was worth it,
Nero said darkly to himself.
I am loyal to my king but like all of us – sometimes things had to be said and sometimes they had to be said with fists.

After an hour Nero copped this mall up to time wasted. He walked out into the greywastes with Ceph behind him and Pickles sniffing an old concrete planter, now just a shell full of greyash. They walked towards the Falconer parked beside a shopping cart coral, kicking rocks for the cat as they did.

When they were up in the air Nero pulled out an old worn piece of paper and carefully unfolded it.

He smirked at the drawing of him and Sanguine with the celldwellers. He had kept it in his wallet for eleven years now. It was dog-eared and faded but it was still his connection to the little red-eyed brat he had grown attached to.

I had only known him for a few hours but… but he was family. He might fade into the background for eleven months out of the year but once a year – once I year I took time off and looked for him for the entire month.

Since no one else was fucking looking.

And Nero was immortal now, forever stuck at thirty-three, he could look for the next seventy years if he wanted to.

I’ll stop looking when he’s died of old age… how’s that?

“Well we have a couple more days but this day is at an end, want to stop at Melchai for a drink?” Ceph asked. He was flying the plane high over the greywastes, the darkness falling on the both of them.

“Yeah, they have a great meth supply there too…” Nero mumbled. “I think I need to get high tonight and fuck you for a few hours. I’ve just been on edge all day.”

“Really? I couldn’t tell.”

Nero gave him a dirty look but Ceph only smiled at him back, before leaning in and puckering his lips.

Then the young chimera closed his eyes and made a pursing sound in such a comical way Nero had to hide the smile.

What an ass… well, he’s my ass
. Nero grudgingly leaned towards his boyfriend and kissed him before smacking his cheek with his hand. “Now fly the plane, dipshit.”

Ceph smiled smugly and gave Nero a grin and a wink. “Wanna kidnap us a nice perky little teen and give him some post traumatic stress?”

Nero laughed at this and shook his head. “We’ll see what the meth does to me. I might just send you out to get us a boy though, rough-fucking screaming fifteen year olds is a good stress reliever, isn’t it?”

Ceph nodded vigorously. “Fuck, I don’t think anything will top fucking Ares and Siris though. How old are they now?”

“Almost eleven, we have over four years before we can start stalking their footsteps. I’d die if we can break them in but something tells me Silas would have my head if we took twin virgins from him. Though if I know our family they’re probably going to break each other in first. Apollo and Artemis were pros with each other before Silas even got a taste of them.”

“Those two are so hot!” Ceph groaned. “We should call ‘em over when we get home. Why don’t we fuck them more often!?”

Nero snorted. “We can fuck them whenever you want, puppy. I’ll bring you anyone you know that. Well, except Elish… you’ve seen him at our family gatherings, he never bottoms. He’ll fuck all of us once he’s got some ressin in him but I think he only lets Silas top him and that’s only cause he has to.”

“Yeah, but you have before right?”

“Before the stick up his ass stopped me.”

Ceph burst out laughing to the point where Nero wondered if he should take control of the plane. Though eventually the auburn-haired chimera gathered himself, however he had to wipe several tears from his face.

He had become quite the handsome guy that was for sure. Cepherus Dekker had grown out of his Hawaiian shirts and cowlicks (buzz cut now) and usually dressed in a normal t-shirt and cargos like Nero did. With his burly, muscular body and a firm, square face, he was every inch a brute chimera, but had retained his teenager-like attitude which Nero found refreshing.

Ceph wasn’t trying to be someone he wasn’t. He never tried to be tough and he never tried to hide what he was feeling. In the Legion it seemed everyone was putting on a show of being a hardass, but Ceph was just Ceph and perhaps that’s what had caught Nero’s eye.

And his full acceptance and encouragement of ravaging teenagers, even if that involved kidnap and rape, didn’t hurt either. He was a wonderful little sadist with a bloodthirsty streak that made Nero’s cock throb. Though they only had eyes for each other there was an agreement that if the opportunity presented itself, have a good time with it and if you can… bring some home for daddy.

They landed the plane in the same abandoned park they always used and walked out with Pickles on a leash to keep him from eating the residents’ dogs. Though instead of drawing a crowd and demanding where Sanguine was they walked through with only a few sideways glances from the newcomers. For a month every year they spent their nights in Melchai or some of the other surrounding blocks and free towns. They knew the mayor and the important residents and they expected them every year now. Nero spent money on hookers when kidnapping a twink was too much effort, plus they bought all their supplies and alcohol from the shops and bars, so they were treated like the royalty they were when they were in town.

Nero glanced over and saw a small boy with black hair rooting through a trashcan.

He’s Sangy’s age when I first saw him
, Nero said to himself. The skinny boy with dirt on his face and an obvious wound on his forehead was a sight to be seen, obviously half-starved and in need of a good meal.

But he wasn’t Sanguine, he was just another grubby greywaster kid, so Nero moved on.

Though he noticed the kid was watching him. Nero glanced over and gave the boy a hard look.

“Got something to say, son?” Nero asked in a cold and authoritative tone.

The boy flinched at Nero’s words before shaking his head and disappearing behind the house he was scrounging in front of.

Nero and Ceph, with Pickles behind them, went into the bar and ordered themselves a bottle of vodka each and a pitcher of greywaste beer. Greywaste beer tasted like dog piss mixed with cat piss but it was better than nothing and it got the job done. The two of them settled in with their alcohol and sent the waiter to the restaurant area for some rat meat sandwiches and a half-case of Dunkaroos they saw advertised.

“I’ve never had Dunkaroos. What are they?” Ceph cocked an eyebrow.

Nero chuckled. “They must’ve found a box in a building or something. It’s just cookies with icing for dipping. I’m sure the icing tastes like stale shit but that’s all they have here… whatever they scavenged that week.”

Ceph looked intrigued, and when the six packs of Dunkaroos came he looked downright mesmerized.

“We have to make Apollo invent these again,” Ceph said, tearing off the top of the blue package. He looked down at the cookies and the container of white icing with rainbow bits and his eyes lit up.

Nero smiled though he tried to hide it. He watched his boyfriend eagerly dip the cookie into the icing and pop it into his mouth.

Ceph beamed. “This shit is good! Let’s force Miky to make us some of this. I mean that little ball buster can make cookies and icings cupcakes so let’s combine the two? We’ll call ‘em Cepharoos.”

The laugh became a suppressed chuckle. Nero took a cookie and popped it into his mouth. “Alright, puppy. We’ll harass Apollo once we get home and make him invent Cepharoos… you fucking wing nut.”

“Fucking sweet,” Ceph said through a mouthful of cookies. In a classic chimera manner he washed the cookies down with a shot of vodka and shook his head with a satisfied gasp as it disappeared down his throat.

“No beggars inside here, get lost, kid.”

Nero and Ceph looked towards the voice and saw the bartender giving the doorway to the pub an annoyed look. They craned their heads farther and saw the same black-haired boy standing awkwardly beside a jukebox.