Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (27 page)

“I’m… I’m not a beggar…” the boy said in a small voice.

“You got money on you?”

“No…”

“Then you’re a fucking beggar, now get lost before I call the warden,” the bartender said angrily.

Nero went back to his beer when behind him the little voice said, “I need to talk to the legionaries.”

Nero and Ceph exchanged glances before they both turned to the kid.

“Maybe he wants to become a legionary?” Ceph said with a bemused tone.

“They pay so they don’t have to deal with grubby–”

“Let him in, Dorian. Hey, fucker, you wanna Dunkaroo?” Ceph called out. Nero turned around and gave him a look but Ceph only smiled, shaking a Dunkaroo container at the kid like he was tempting a cat with the treat bag.

Dorian the bartender stepped back with a soured look and the kid shyly walked over to them. As soon as he saw the Dunkaroo pack he ripped it open and started shovelling the cookies in his mouth.

“Jeez, he’s starving… he’s not even eating the icing.” Ceph chewed on his rat meat burger. “What do you need, kid? You wanna be a legionary too?”

The kid didn’t answer them and though Nero would’ve clapped him upside the head for not answering a legionary’s question he realized that the kid was on the verge of starving to death and his brain was probably still in instinct mode.

Finally when he was done the crackers he put the plastic container down, breathing heavily since it seemed he had forgotten to breath while eating. He looked up at the two of them and cowered down.

With a swallow, he shifted his feet. “I need help… please, I… I need help.”

Nero took a drink of his beer before tearing off a piece of his rat burger for the kid. The small boy eagerly ate it in one swallow like he was a fucking duck.

“With what? I’m the Imperial General of the Legion and this is my partner and second-in-command, if some fucking dude smacked you around that’s a bit below our duty,” Nero said. He didn’t have that much patience. It had been a long day and he just wanted to do some drugs and hammer a tight ass for a few hours. Not feed starving boys, and the possibly of having to play big brother.

“There’s a man… northwest of here, he murdered a little boy right in front of me and he’s killed others. He has a monster chained in his basement and he’s starving the monster, and he’s… he’s doing bad things to all of us,” the boy said in a small voice. “My friend Levi, he – he’s in there, back there with him.”

Nero stared at him and shrugged. The kid’s face fell.

“Look, it’s been a long day, kid. Just be happy you got out of there alive, your friend is probably dead there anyways,” Nero said. “That’s the greywastes, buddy, friends die and they die a lot.”

The boy’s large eyes stared at Nero and he could see them glisten. “He’s going to lock Levi downstairs with the monster. He says Sanguine’s already killed–”

Nero didn’t hear the rest of the boy’s words, his ears had succumb to a roaring noise that filled his entire brain with a hot red haze. With automatic movements he grabbed Pickles’ leash, took the kid by the shoulder, and started leading him outside.

“He has a monster in his basement?” Nero’s voice was twisted. He couldn’t believe what had just come out of the kid’s mouth. Did he hear it right? What if he had misheard… he had already had a few shots of vodka.

“Yeah,” the boy said. “Are you going to help Levi?”

“This monster… is he a monster because he has red eyes and pointed teeth?” Nero asked. Ceph was jogging in front of them with the plane’s keys in his hand; he had said nothing to Nero, he knew not to talk to him right now.

When the kid nodded Nero felt his face go hot. Without a word he picked the kid up and started running down the street towards where they had parked the plane.

“Call Silas,” Nero yelled to Ceph but as his boyfriend turned around he saw he was already on his remote phone.

They jumped onto the plane and Nero set the kid down on the co-pilot’s chair. He leaned back as Ceph put the keys into the ignition before starting the plane, keeping one ear open to listen to his boyfriend’s conversation with their king.

While Ceph was talking they rose higher into the air, the black-haired kid looking out the window in shocked awe, seeing the twinkling lights of Melchai become smaller and smaller.

“What direction? Where’s he?” Nero demanded. “What gate did you come in from?”

“South, the south gate…” the boy stuttered; he looked stunned but that wasn’t important. “It took me a week to walk here… it’s been two weeks since I was there, no one will help me.”

“South gate…” Nero murmured. “We had the Legion check the south years ago…” What would one week walking be compared to a Falconer?

“I need more details, kid. Where’s his house?” Nero asked harshly, making the boy’s eyes widen. Though he didn’t care, if the kid was scared he would have to deal with it.

“It’s a farm. It’s all out in the open but I passed a Esso gas station and I passed a big white truck that had red spray paint on it…” the boy replied.

Nero’s jaw tightened, all of this was well and fine but they were flying a plane and the greywastes were swallowed up in darkness below them.

“Okay, Silas is still overseeing the repairs on Cardinalhall. We’re lucking out he’s bringing the Charger plane,” Ceph said, handing the remote phone back to Nero. “He’s already got a location from the Falconer’s tracking chip and he says to land now and he’ll find us.”

Nero’s hands clenched on the throttle of the Falconer and he swore under his breath. “I don’t want to fucking wait for Silas, I want to go now.”

Ceph put a hand on his shoulder; they all felt the Falconer start to descend. “The Charger’s fast and it has the night vision and heat sensors on it. We couldn’t find the house in this darkness. Cardinalhall isn’t too far away anyways, I doubt he’ll take more than half an hour.”

“He… he just bought some bosen,” the boy said suddenly. “He bought two of them. He has a meth making place inside of his barn and he uses that money to buy us and the big cows.”

Ceph snapped his fingers. “That’s it, that’s how we’ll find them. The bosen will show up on the heat sensor scope.”

“Lots of greywasters around here have bosen…”

“Yeah, but if we know there are only two…”

Tension and frustration was starting to eat Nero piece by piece, there were so many things that had to go right tonight and even more things that depended on either shoddy information or the memory of a kid. He felt like lashing out and finding something to shoot, but he had to remain calm.

So Nero landed the plane and lit an opiate cigarette, no one spoke as he took deep inhales.

The lights of the Falconer shone onto the greywaste ground, to his left Nero could see the outline of a store and some parked cars now shells from the elements. Everything else was darkness, not even his night vision helped him; as soon as artificial light got to a certain point his enhanced sight switched off.

Finally they heard the Charger plane overhead. Nero grabbed the boy’s arm and the kitner, and all four of them walked out of the Falconer and into the night air.

The Charger’s engine slayed the dead tranquility of the greywastes, filling everyone’s ears with a roaring noise so loud Nero felt the boy cling to his hip. He looked down at the little black-haired boy and made a face of annoyance, though it was endearing in a way so he put a hand on the kid’s head.

The lights inside turned on as soon as the plane touched the greywastes. Nero opened the door and was met with Silas and a legionary solider.

Silas’s face was stern; he was in king mode. He looked behind him and nodded at the legionary who immediately got off the plane and onto the Falconer.

Nero handed him Pickles’ leash and turned to Silas.

“We’re all going together,” Silas said authoritatively, before his eyes travelled down to the boy. “What’s your name?”

“Juni,” the boy replied in a small voice that was barely audible over the planes’ engines.

“And you’re sure? Lying to the king is punishable by death… you say his name is Sanguine? He has red eyes and pointed teeth?” Silas asked him.

The boy nodded, still clinging to Nero with weak but determined little hands.

Silas’s face darkened and the lines only deepened when he made eye contact with Nero.

“He’s been locked in a man’s basement,” Nero said, trying to mask the coldness his own voice was carrying. The wounds he had been nursing for years over Silas’s decisions regarding Sanguine were slowly being torn open.

“Then let us get him, love.” Silas smiled before turning around and re-boarding the plane, leaving Nero to seethe by himself.

He turned to Ceph, looking to him for some emotional backup, but his boyfriend’s smiling face offered little in the way of sympathies. Ceph was just happy that they had found Sanguine but Nero couldn’t get past the conditions the boy seemed to have been staying in.

That was a thought for another day though, first things first they actually had to find the boy. So Nero, with Juni’s shoulder in his hand, got onto the Charger plane with Ceph and soon they were in the air heading northwest.

In front of the control panel was a seven inch television screen showing the greywastes below them. Everything that had heat showed up like a brilliant light and the objects grey shadows. Right off the bat Nero could see orbs of radrats and croaches, and as they drove over a small neighbourhood, he even saw a hunting carracat with her kittens.

Juni was leaning beside Silas’s chair and was staring intently at the screen, everyone was quiet as the boy looked, holding their breath for the moment the kid saw something he recognized.

“I walked past that!” the boy exclaimed after five minutes of flying. “That’s the Esso, just keep going straight from the back of the building, I walked to the back of the building keep going straight.”

Kids give such shit instructions
. Nero’s eyes narrowed. He sat in the edge of the co-pilot’s chair and wiped his hands down his face.

Then a cigarette popped into his vision, already lit, he took it with a muttered thanks to Ceph and started immediately smoking it.

“You’re probably the first little boy in all of the greywastes to fly in this plane, son,” Nero said to Juni. “Bet you can’t wait to tell your family that, eh?”

Juni looked surprised that Nero was talking to him. “Levi will get to fly too, he’s my only family.”

“You’re a slave, right?” Nero asked.

Juni nodded. “I wasn’t born a slave though. Jasper killed my daddy when Dad was trying to steal his meth. He took me after. Levi’s a born-slave though.”

“No other family?”

Juni shook his head.

Past him Silas smiled. While he pressed several buttons on the Charger’s screen he said to the boy, “I am your owner now, young one. If you are indeed partly responsible for bringing us to my beloved little creation you will be well-rewarded with a good life. Would you like to live in royalty?”

Juni looked like he didn’t know how to answer that question. “In Skyfall?”

Though before Silas could answer, the boy pointed to the screen. “That… that’s Jasper’s barn. See? See there? His house is… there it is, that’s his house, that’s Jasper’s house.”

“Ceph… start loading us up some guns.” Silas’s tone suddenly dropped, like a hot ember landing in cold arctic waters Nero could see the bright fire inside of his king switch to a cold, emotionless, slab of ice.

There were no more light conversations and no more questions. Nero got up and walked to the back of the plane, and started loading their assault rifles.

“Okay, little man,” Ceph said when the plane was starting to land. “We’re going to keep the plane on and you’re going to be the pilot until we get back, alright?”

Juni’s eyes widened and his face paled in a way that suggested he was taking Ceph more seriously than he should.

“You’re going to take this handgun and protect this plane from the bad guys… but don’t fucking step a foot outta this plane or we’ll leave your little ass behind, gotcha?” Ceph handed the boy the handgun, the boy’s wrist buckled under the weight.

Nero helped Ceph strap on his combat armour, though his boyfriend growled at him when he put on the helmet. But unlike Nero, Ceph wasn’t immortal, so his complaining was in vain.

“Ready, Kingsly?” Nero called as they all piled outside. By now the air was full of electricity, an invisible current that every chimera could feel brush up against their skin.

“I want him alive.”

Nero looked to his side and saw Silas’s face, cold as granite but his eyes were bright. He looked over at Nero and nodded. “Don’t kill him, love. That will be too easy, are we understood?”

Nero nodded and so did Ceph, and with that the three of them started walking towards the house.

There was a middle-aged man with curly black hair standing on the porch, but the moment he saw King Silas, Nero, and Ceph he turned and ran back inside.

“Get him, Ceph!” Nero barked and on that command Ceph’s heavy boots could be heard even over the plane’s engine. The brute chimera jumped onto the porch and immediately went inside. Nero and Silas quickly followed.