Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (34 page)

‘STOP HIM, SANGUINE – STOP HIM, SANGUINE! NOW, NOW, NOW!’

“No,” I heard Juni say. “Jasper kept us above ground because he said Sanguine was dangerous and because it was easier for him when he wanted his time–”

‘ATTACK HIM! SHUT HIM UP! SHUT HIM UP!’

“SHUT UP!” I suddenly roared. In an instant I was back on my feet, a snarl escaping from my mouth though when it drew sound it was more a cross between a scream and a roar. I jumped across the coffee table to get to Juni but I felt myself get pulled back.

“SHUT UP!” I shrieked again. I fell backwards on the couch and started clawing and digging my fingers into the scarred flesh of my arm. On all sides of me I saw movement, the hands that had pulled me back still grabbing me. Juni was staring in horror; his dark eyes wide and his gaunt face stricken with terror.

“Don’t you say a fucking word!” I yelled as they pulled me away. I could feel wet from my arms as I clawed and clawed. I kept grinding and twisting my nails into the skin to try and draw as much pain as I could but the adrenaline was stopping me from reaching my threshold. I needed more pain.

No, no, I had to shut the kid up. “Don’t you ever tell them!” I yelled, my voice breaking; a sob came to my lips. “Do you understand me? Don’t you ever tell him what happened!”

Juni nodded before Garrett picked him up and sprinted with him towards the door. Silas grabbing and pulling my arm, talking soothingly to me but I heard nothing but the roaring of my own blood rushing behind my eyes. Taking with it the seeds of calm that the evening had tried to plant inside of me.

I didn’t like his arms on me. No one was going to touch me again. So I yanked my arms away from Silas and brought them back to the now wet and sticky skin on my arms. Bumpy and warm and with the texture of ground rat meat.

“Sanguine…” Silas said calmly. “Lovely, stop hurting yourself. It’s okay, he’s gone.”

“It’s not okay!” I whirled around and yelled. Though I got no recoil of fear, I didn’t even get a glimmer of apprehension. King Silas was cold and calm; his face neutral and his movements planned and steady.

“Shhh… it is.” Silas’s voice dripped honey; sweet and reassuring. I scanned his face for deception but all I saw was the calm and control. “It’s okay. He’s gone, everyone is gone and it’s just…”

Suddenly a spurt of red shot from my wrists. I watched it shoot like a fountain from the deep gouge I had made in the soft veiny area of my arm and splatter against one of the paintings Crow had been looking at earlier. Another spurt came soon after and as I stared blankly at it, my pulse gave another beat and with it, another spurt.

Silas swore and clasped my wrists. “You hit a vein. My poor sick boy…” he said those words quicker than his usual controlled tone but I was too stunned at the power behind the squirts of blood. I said nothing back.

I pulled my wrist away from Silas’s hand, and because he was now busy grabbing what I knew was a phone in his pocket, I got my arm free and immediately brought my bloodied wrist to my mouth. Seeing, before it disappeared from my eye sight, the deep shredded gouge I had made.

The blood squirted into my mouth and I swallowed it. As Silas spoke hurriedly on the phone I took a step back from him, drinking my own blood, the excess dripping down my chin, making crimson droplets on the grey carpet.

The kitten came with his tail in the air as I tried to swallow the stream of blood shooting into my mouth. He smelled the ruby puddles and I saw a pink little tongue stick out to lap it.

I took a step away from him and stumbled, my head suddenly going dizzy and my body filling with the feeling like I was being drawn up into the heavens.

Then my legs wobbled before they gave in to the haze – and I fell to the ground.

Kirrel put the CT scan on the bright light box and dimmed the lights in the room. He motioned Silas over and let him take a good look at the scan of Sanguine’s brain.

Silas was quiet as his eyes analyzed the x-ray, seeing more in the light blues, blacks, and greys than even Kirrel himself.

“Brain damage,” Silas said simply. His eyes narrowed as the force of his own words sunk into him. “Look at all those dark areas on the edges, the grey matter is reduced, and his thalamus…”

Kirrel nodded, the light box illuminating every line in his face. “It could’ve been worse. From what I can see in this scan he’s only this high-functioning because he spent the first six years of his life with who he calls Nan. If he was in that basement from birth he would be feral and mentally retarded.”

Silas’s eyes jutted back and forth as he stared at the scan. “Schizophrenia? Multiple personalities? What is it? He speaks to this Crow like he is a physical person. He described him to me.”

Another figure, hidden in shadows, stepped forward. Elish crossed his arms and, like the other two, he looked at the scan.

“I would hesitate labelling him, Silas,” Elish said. He was wearing a blue dress shirt with a matching tie, and an open black blazer. “Mental illness was often mislabelled before the Fallocaust and with Sanguine being a chimera, I fear if we put a label on his illness we might end up with more problems than solutions. We don’t want to assume he has symptoms he does not.”

Though there may be dozens of emotions passing through King Silas’s head, none of them showed on his face.

“I agree…” Silas said slowly. “And unfortunately Skytech just doesn’t have the doctors yet to diagnose problems. Have you run all of this past Mantis? He’s our only skilled psychologist.”

“Yes, Kirrel has forwarded Mantis everything we have on Sanguine right now,” Elish said. “He is interested in sitting down with Sanguine. You said earlier Sanguine lashed out on the little boy they found with him?”

There was a rustling behind Elish as Kirrel put up another scan onto the light box. This one of a left side view of Sanguine’s brain.

“He was fine, well, as fine as he could be, until the boy started mentioning Jasper. I see nothing odd about that but what he was saying to the boy sparked my interest. He was commanding him to say nothing else about what went on in that basement and the little boy has clammed-up about it ever since,” Silas responded.

“And Jasper? Where is he?” Elish asked.

A frozen air entered the room as Elish said those words. Silas’s face became overcast and for a moment no one spoke.

“He’s being held on the Dead Islands.” The tone that came from Silas’s lips was a cold stream. A trickle of ice that froze everything it came in contact with. In the dark corners Kirrel visibly flinched.

“You can ask him what he did,” Elish replied.

Silas was silent again, his lips disappearing into his mouth.

“No, call it insanity if you will but I would rather it come from Sanguine when he is ready.”

Silas’s green eyes shot to Elish as Elish chuckled. Then with a glare that could peel fresh paint he said acerbically, “Do you have something to say,
gelus vir
?”

Elish shook his head slowly before saying in his own cold tones, “The guilt is too much for you right now, isn’t it?”

Kirrel swallowed beside Elish before a stream of light spilled into the room, it was promptly followed by the soft latching of the door to outside – Kirrel had made a swift exit.

The middle-aged man had first been a sengil before becoming a doctor – he knew when it was time to leave.

“You may be my golden boy but I would still watch your mouth…”

The blond-haired chimera gave him a glance, going over every line in his king’s face. He knew his moods, he knew his emotions. Elish knew his master more than anyone else on the planet and he prided himself in that.

“I think you know very well what happened in that basement and why Jasper had three little boys and a teenager that had been with him since he himself was a little boy. You just want to stay in denial for as long as you can,” Elish said. “That is your reality and I understand it as I understand you.”

When Elish went to put a hand on Silas’s shoulder the king jerked it away. He gave Elish a dangerous look. “I feel no guilt over what happened and what you’re implying never happened either. He was some stupid meth-addicted malinger-sadist who needed… who just wanted some fucking company.”

“Occam’s Razor, love.”

“Shut up!” Silas suddenly snapped. He stalked over to the lights and flicked them on. He glared at Elish, his eyes green fire and his eyebrow twitching. “Don’t you dare even bring it voice. Nothing like that ever happened to him and will never happen to any of my chimeras.”

Then Silas turned around and made a motion to go to the door… but he paused.

“We won’t label him with an illness but I need a plan on how we can repair his mind before his immortality.”

“His mind could repair itself during his first resurrection…” Elish’s voice trailed.

“Or it could not,” Silas countered. “We don’t know enough about it yet. What if his brain doesn’t see the damage as something that needed to be repaired? We now have… at least four years to repair him as best as we can, until his brain stops growing.”

Once again the king paused. He turned around and looked at his first born. “You would be proud of me, love.” Silas chuckled dryly. “You wouldn’t recognize me when I interact with him. I have never been this patient and kind with one of my chimeras.”

Elish put a hand on Silas’s shoulder and this time the king didn’t jerk himself away from the touch. With that small gesture, all the permission Elish needed, he rubbed it in a caring manner.

“You feel guilty, Silas,” Elish said. “And that is not a bad thing. You’ll be able to help Sanguine better with that guilt.”

“I have nothing to feel guilty about,” Silas said, opening the door to the white and blue hallways of the College of Skytech. “I put him in the greywastes so he could come back and be my bodyguard. And with the greywasters starting to cause trouble in Irontowers I have every reason for needing one right now. Though he’s a ruin as of this moment, it is only laying the foundation down for the man he will become.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Silas walked through the doors and made his way down the hallway. Various Skyfallers were roaming the halls, most young men and women with textbooks and binders in their arms.

“It’s a fact,” Silas said darkly. “I know my chimeras and I know…”

He was quiet.

“They’re stronger than that. Sanguine is stronger than that. He’ll be fine – he’ll be more than fine.”

Elish said nothing, but his mouth was pulling in a frown. There were some things he could discuss with his king but in the same breath so many things he knew he couldn’t. It would be fruitless to try and make Silas realize that Sanguine was a lot sicker than all of them knew. To even try to explain that to the king would be the equivalent to yelling at a brick wall.

So instead of taunting the cobra, Elish decided to be his support instead.

“I am sure Sanguine will turn out just fine, Master.”

Silas pursed his lips but said nothing else. The cloud of dark energy forever gathering over his head. Elish could practically taste it in the air. Silas was troubled, though how troubled he was Elish didn’t know.

Denial was a powerful and crippling thing.

“What will happen when King Silas finally admits to himself that Jasper was a pedophile? The fallout from that will be great. At least I’ll be near enough to help him when his reality comes crashing down on him. I’ll be his rock and no one else,”
Elish thought to himself.
“He will never forgive himself for what he let Sanguine be exposed to. This will be interesting.”

The two of them took the elevator to the second floor and walked into Elish’s office, an office adjacent to the large classroom where he taught Science. Everything from Genetic Science to Physics. He was also Dean of the college and ran the entire college with the help of his brothers Perish and Garrett.

“Though his reading level is that of an adult, I assume his basic education is slim to nothing.” Elish started gathering binders and stacking them on his office desk. A pandemically-organized oak desk with no personal items on it besides a photo of Silas holding Elish when he was three years old, and one of the entire family taken just last year. Both photos in simple black frames.

“Eventually I want him to start coming to the college once he passes elementary school,” Silas said. “By then he should be confident with going outside and the rest of the family will have been told he’s still alive. I want him in college. I want him to have a normal life like the rest of the second generation.”

“I don’t think…” But Elish stopped himself. He had a class to teach at the top of the hour and the last thing he needed was a bruise to show off to his students. Or even worse, for them to hear King Silas verbally lashing him for second-guessing his decisions. “Whatever it is he wants to do, the family will provide it for him.”

That was what Silas wanted to hear. Silas got the binders and tucked them under his arm. “I was homeschooled, I can tutor him myself. I think right now he needs to bond himself to someone and that person has to be me. It might take a lot of painkillers and Xanax but I’ll keep myself calm around him. Be a dear and come over tonight. I need to let out all the tension this chimera has been building inside of me.”

“Of course,” Elish replied, tucking another binder underneath Silas’s arm. “Are you off to see Ellis now?”

Silas shook his head no. “I’m going back to him. He’s being watched over by Kinny right now but he was staring off into space when I left him. He’ll do that for hours on end, just stare at the wall. He barely blinks.”

“Kinny?” Elish said with a hint of surprise in his voice. “You left a small sengil with him?”

Silas gave a wave and a scoff and at this Elish smirked. “He’s just a sengil. We have a hundred orphans at Edgeview right now and half of them will turn out to be gay. If he kills him we can replace him.”

Yes, King Silas’s sympathies rarely stretched past his family.
Elish opened the door leading outside of his office and was about to step through it when he suddenly was face-to-face with a young man. A man that Elish knew as his younger brother, Jack. With short silver hair, ebony black eyes, and a thin but soft face. He was a handsome chimera, though his clothing and style choice usually detracted from that in Elish’s view. Jack dressed in a more gothic-style, complete with black eyeliner, a total of nine earrings in his ears, and to set himself apart from his family: a pair of black rimmed glasses.

“Is there something you need before class, Jack?” Elish asked in an unimpressed voice.

The young man’s eyes widened as Elish said those words. In a way that suggested he was hesitant to say what he had come here to say. In response Elish raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms.

Jack’s black eyes shot past Elish and he paled further when he saw King Silas standing behind him, the binders still tucked under his arm.

“It’s nothing,” Jack stammered. He swallowed hard and turned around to make a quick exit, the nerve that he must’ve hastily gathered quickly leaving him as he was confronted with both the King of the World and the Dean of the College of Skytech.

There was a shuffling of chains and metal on metal as Jack tried to walk away. The chains hanging off of his tight jeans (women’s, to Elish’s further distaste), shifting and tinkling together.

“Jack?” Elish called in a flat voice. “Is this it for your issue? Because I am giving you one chance to tell me. If you think you can go back and forth and waste my time with your cowardice I would think differently. One chance.”

The young man immediately froze, as if Elish’s words had encased him in ice. Slowly he turned around, looking stricken with nerves like he was being faced with the prospect of torture.

Jack raised his arm and scratched the back of his neck. He let out a long breath and glanced up at Elish and Silas.

With one last look he gathered his nerves and walked into Elish’s office, closing the door behind him.

“You’re going to fucking yell at me for this…” Jack said slowly.

“The King and Prince of Skyfall have no reason to yell,” Elish responded coldly. “Now hurry up, Jack. Classes are starting soon.”

A silence fell over the three of them as two pairs of eyes locked on Jack’s. Nervously the chimera further itched the back of his neck before saying in a subdued and quiet voice, “Valen’s been harassing me… him and his stupid gang.”

Elish and Silas both gave him flat looks. The tips of Jack’s ears went red and soon his gaze dropped to the floor and there it stayed.

“You’re wasting my time because your brother is picking on you?” Elish said in a condescending tone. “Because your brother who’s a year younger than you – is picking on you with his group of polo-shirt-wearing sluts? A couple of who are chimeras?”

“They call me names…” Jack’s voice was barely audible; his shoulders slumped. “He’s been threatening to gang rape me…”

One wouldn’t believe that Elish’s face could become colder than its natural state but at Jack’s mumbled admission ice could practically be seen forming in the lines of his frown.