Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (76 page)

“But, Silas, forgive me but…
this is pretty damn damaging
,” Nero protested, though his words were small and submissive. Ceph was still in the chasm and he knew a single toe out of line would condemn his fiancé to even longer in his watery darkness.

“If it’s a chimera, yes…” Silas said. “But Sami isn’t a chimera. They have no proof that this was done by a chimera it could be any sort of mad man or serial killer. Nero, tell your contacts to run the story but I want it heavily implied that this isn’t the work of a chimera. The rest will write itself. We’ve had serial killers in Skyfall before and I’ve seen more than enough of them before the Fallocaust. The people love a good active serial killer and the media will eat it up like candy. This will distract them from the invasion and that is what we want right now. Yes,” Silas said and nodded again. “This is a brilliant plan.”

“But Silas…” Jack said worried. “Sanguine – Sanguine needs to come home.”

Silas gave him a warm smile, but it didn’t help the fear that had already cannibalized Jack’s other feelings. If anything the king’s deceptive smile fuelled the anxious feelings.

“Sanguine needs to do what chimeras do, love,” Silas said, his voice was gentle but it was deceptive, like a wasp hiding inside a rose. “He needs to kill and make himself feel better. Perhaps when he’s killed a few people it will be easier for me to explain to him the nature of the chimera. The very reason he ran away was because I left out some of our family’s… more darker facets. No, Sanguine will be fine and he’ll come home when he’s ready. Until then the family will make use of his bloodthirst.”

Make use of his bloodthirst? More like make use of the misery he’s in!
“That’s bullshit!” Jack suddenly yelled, surprised more than the others at his sudden outburst. “He’s in turmoil right now! He needs to come home!”

“Jack!” Ellis and Nero both snapped at the same time.

“NO!” Jack rose to his feet, feeling the corners of his eyes burn. “He needs help; he needs his family not to be used to push that stupid rebel agenda! This is a load of shit. I thought you coming back would mean we’d find him, not the fucking opposite!”

Though the rage he was feeling was clinging to his bones like a tight glove, Jack still shrunk down when Silas rose to his feet. And when the king’s green eyes burned into him Jack took a step back, and nervously crossed his arms over his chest.

“You will not raise your voice to me in my own home, Jack Anubis.” The room around Jack seemed to get darker as King Silas’s cold voice enveloped him. A tone that sucked the light out of the room like it was a black hole.

“I’m – I’m sorry,” Jack whispered. He nervously wiped his nose and stared at the floor, feeling like a small ant in the presence of a great dragon. A small useless insect that only survived being around the powerful being because he was too small to be noticed.

“Look at me,” Silas said coldly.

It was the last thing Jack wanted to do. He wanted nothing else but to turn tail and run as the dark voice creeped into his ears and seeped into his brain. Jack’s body seemed to scream at him to get as far away as Silas as he could, but fleeing was never an option, even though that was the prey’s only instinct.

So Jack lifted his chin and looked at him.

“You may look for him, and only you,” Silas said slowly, “and if he injures or kills you. I will feel no guilt.”

A flood of relief and gratitude overwhelmed the silver-haired chimera. The feeling was such a contrast from the terror he had just experienced his mind temporarily stalled from confusion. All he could do was nod dumbly at this king.

Then a sudden knock on the double oak doors. Jack sighed with relief and quickly sat down, his heart pounding and his brain aching from the constant barrage of anxiety and stress.

Kinny skittered towards the door but the moment he opened it he was pushed out of the way. The sengil stumbled back with his eyes wide with surprise as Ludo and Felix walked in, both of their faces stony.

Silas, who was already edging a foul mood from Jack’s outburst, gave them both a narrow look. “Did Mantis not warn you during your therapy not to approach me with this again?”

Nero got up and sat down beside Jack, before nudging him with his elbow. “Watch, this is gonna be good.”

“You have the family out looking for some greywaster retard and you won’t let any of us look for Valen!” Ludo threw his hands up into the air before letting them fall to his side with a smack. His silver eyes looked like a moon rising over lavender hills, the permanent circles under his eyes never more prominent than when he was upset.

“Don’t pester me with him.” Silas’s eyes flashed dangerously. “And don’t you dare speak to me in that tone. I’m growing tired of snippy teenagers trying their teeth on me.”

“He’s your creation!” Felix interjected. He stood over a foot taller than King Silas and twice as thick, but even the brute chimera looked like a shadow under the king’s piercing glare. “Come on, King Silas. I know you fucking hate him but he’s just a fucking kid.”

“Felix!” Nero shot up and quickly got between Silas and Felix. He took a step towards the brute chimera until he was nose-to-nose. “You will stand down and speak to your king with respect.”

“No, it’s alright, Nero.” Silas put a hand on Nero’s shoulder and gently directed him away from Felix’s face. “Let the child throw his tantrum. It’s amusing to see just how quickly my creations fall into insubordination with my four month absence.”

Silas stepped in Nero’s spot and, like Nero had done, he stood right in front of Felix, though unlike Nero he had to look up at the brute. “Both your attitudes are quite amusing. Tell me, Felix, what makes you think you can speak to your king so? And in front of your older brothers, your sister, and Jack? Does that defective specimen mean that much to you? I thought you had a boyfriend, hm?”

Felix’s eyes shifted over to Ludo, who wasn’t standing nearly as tall as he was a moment previous. Ludo didn’t look back; he seemed to be second guessing whatever their plan had been.

“I mean no disrespect, Master,” Felix said slowly, his chest visibly shrunk as he let out what looked like a tense breath. “We’re both confused as to why you’re sending so many chimeras out to find that Sami person… when your own chimera is missing.”

“Sami is a better person than that shit eater will ever be,” Jack snipped. He glanced up at Felix and Ludo before taking another verbal bite. “You’ll be seeing a lot of him, and with how Sami is hell-bent on killing Valen, you’ve probably seen the last of that – oh what did you call him, King Silas?” Jack’s own eyes flashed as Felix and Ludo’s widened in anger. “Oh yes:
defective specimen
.”

“You shut the fuck up you motherfucking faggot,” Felix suddenly snapped. Then, in one fluid motion, nothing but a blur to the others, Felix reached into his pocket and flung a pocket knife at Jack.

And though it was sheathed, it was still a made out of metal. The objected flew past Silas’s head, past the coffee table, and towards Jack’s face.

Jack ducked, the projectile coming so close to his head he could feel the air tickle his ear. And though it missed Jack it didn’t miss the large mirror hanging up on one of the support beams of the apartment. It hit the middle of the black-framed mirror and with a loud crash it shattered and fell to the ground.

The shock that Jack felt was quickly replaced by blazing anger, with a scream of rage he drew on the wellspring of confidence that had been growing since he had met Sami – and lunged at Felix.

Then, drawing on those same instincts, the ones Jack felt imprinted on his genetics and his being, he opened my mouth and clamped down on Felix’s jaw and right ear. He held his hand to Felix’s head and clenched it like he was a cat pinning down a bird, and with all his strength, with all of his might, he bit and clawed. And when he could feel bits of Felix’s flesh inside of his mouth he devoured it and sunk his pointed teeth back into the hot and bleeding wound, desperate for more.

Then Nero grabbed him and started pulling him back. Jack clamped his teeth together, and when he grabbed hold of Felix’s ear, he didn’t let go.

Felix yelled and howled as Jack snapped his head back, Felix’s ear firmly clamped in his jaws. He only dropped it when screaming and spitting threats became more important that holding the ear between his teeth.

Everything around him, audible and visual, had become a blur, everything but Felix who was grabbing his face and staring at Jack in surprise, ribbons of red falling down where his ear used to be, before becoming gems on the carpet below.

Jack didn’t stop – he couldn’t. In his rage he spat threat after threat, swearing on anything and everything the danger they would be in if they ever threatened him or Sanguine again. As he shouted he could feel a burning inside of him, a different one than before. It was like he had stumbled upon an untapped oil well, and someone had had the misfortune of throwing a match down the hole.

Something is snapping inside of me – something is changing.

Jack tried to wrench himself free of Nero, ravenous to taste the blood that was leaking from Felix’s face. He wanted it so badly his mouth watered, and something else… something else was happening.

He was getting aroused by it.

Surprisingly Nero laughed, and his grip became a hug, then there was a kiss on Jack’s cheek which seemed to draw Jack down to earth. As he descended down from whatever cloud of madness he had stepped onto he heard Ellis’s booming voice followed by the quick exits of Ludo and Felix. Ellis left with them, her face red with anger and her fists clenched.

“He works! He works, Silas!” Nero laughed kissing Jack again. The silver-haired chimera felt a low rumbling in his throat and he realized he was growling like a tom cat who had just spotted another male in his territory.

“We got two stealths!” Nero raved, shaking Jack back and forth. “He just needed to fall in love, that’s all! Aww, I’m so proud of him, look at his cute little face all growly.”

Silas was beside the snarling chimera. As soon as Jack felt Silas’s cold hand brush his cheek the growl left his throat. He swallowed as the sanity started to trickle back, and tried to catch his breath.

“He does… finally. Look at him,” Silas said in a hushed voice. He drew Jack’s soft cheek towards his face. “I was worried we had failed with you, but no. Just hear the blood rushing through your veins. You finally stood up for yourself, and for your family.”

Then Silas smiled, not the dark smile that held behind it a thousand nefarious thoughts and plans, but a genuinely happy one.

“You’ve become a chimera today, Jack Anubis,” Silas whispered. He leaned in and gently pressed his lips up against Jack’s. “You have truly become a chimera and a Dekker. Welcome to the family, love. Today you have made your king proud.”

Jack’s body filled with pride, he wanted to dive into Silas’s arms, no… he wanted to take him to the bedroom and ride him to his peak again and again. But strangely that seemed like something the old Jack would do, the immature teenager, not the new chimera he was seeing finally break out of his cocoon.

So instead he stood tall and proud, but still smiling as Silas stroked his cheek.

The king then leaned in and kissed him again, his time separating Jack’s lips with his own and slipping his tongue into his mouth.

Then, with a low groan, Silas pushed his hands down Jack’s pants and grabbed his stiff penis.

Nero kept his hold on Jack and watched; Jack could hear his brother’s breath quicken as he watched Silas draw the hard member out of Jack’s jeans.

“I have a wonderful plan…” Silas said in a seductive voice. His fingers gently traced the slit before he drummed the pads of his fingers against the tip of Jack’s dick. Jack started to feel light headed under the building pressure of his king’s touch.

“I want you to not only help find Sanguine…” Silas said. “I want you to give the media something to write about. I want you to find your king some abandoned buildings… and I want you to burn them to the ground. And if a few Cypressians or Morosians happen to be in there at the same time… so be it.”

Jack stared at Silas but said nothing, the alluring and seductive pleasure doing its work on the chimera’s mind. He found it surprising that he felt no inner objection to Silas’s order, on the contrary, the thought excited him.

Feeling his approval Silas nodded. He wrapped his hand around Jack’s penis and gently tugged the head. A moan fell from Jack’s lips soon after.

“My Sanguine seems to love starting fires.” Silas leaned in and whispered into Jack’s ear; the heat of his breath touching Jack’s soft nape drove him wild. “So set his world on fire, Jack. Create an inferno – that not even Sanguine’s psychosis can resist.”

Jack nodded, and at his nod Silas turned his touch to the seductive pleasuring static that made a slave of every man who felt it. Jack let out a high pitch moan and started grinding his dick into Silas’s hand.

“Good boy,” Silas said, then his eyes flickered to Nero, then to Garrett. “Let’s welcome Jack to our family the proper way, shall we? Today he sits at the top of his generation – and I do want to see just how well he fucks now.”

“Have a good night, crows,” I said happily to my crow friends as I walked inside of the abandoned office building.

“Good night, Sanguine.”

“Got any food?” “Come here, crow.”

I smiled through the cigarette locked between my lips and gently closed the door. My crow friends always knew where to find me. It hadn’t taken them long to find my newest home. They were loyal beyond belief, and I loved them for it.

I walked down the concrete steps one by one, descending into the darkness with a severed head swinging from my right hand. The blue ember of the cigarette hanging out of my mouth was nothing but a white orb in my vision, brightening and blinding me every time I inhaled the soothing smoke.

The temperature seemed to drop a degree with every step but soon I would be warm. I had responsibilities now to keep my friends comfortable so I had bought a heater with the money I had stolen from my corpses’ wallets. They had no need for them anyways, I had even asked as I watched the life fade from their horror-stricken eyes.

I flicked the ash from the cigarette and felt my boots hit the dirty floor; they scraped and scratched as I made my way through the narrow hall, crumbling grey brick on either side of me. The hallway was so close together I couldn’t stretch out my arms without brushing the musty brick, it was closed in, tight, restricting, claustrophobic – it was home.

Yes, this was my home, and never more than now did I feel safe in this basement that I had claimed as my lair.

I pushed the door open and walked inside. Immediately a rush of heat hit my face, and my vision temporarily went white as my eyes adjusted to the yellow halogen lights that I had bought last month.

“Sanguine’s back!” Sir said, his tenor voice happy and jovial.

I squinted and opened my eyes, while my vision focused I saw my little friend Sir jumping up and down. My other friend Noodles was beside him also jumping up and down. He had cat ears on his head, orange ones that matched his orange striped hair. He reminded me of Drake but he spoke in an English accent – not sure why.

“Did you bring us something, Sanguine?” Teddy, Barry’s younger brother took the bag from me and looked inside. To my left Barry took the head from me and sat it down on the floor. As I handed the kids the bag I glanced down at him and saw he was holding a new stuffed animal, a mouse. “I got a head and found that stuffed mouse. We’ll use the head to bring Fingles back and I’ll go out tomorrow night. What do you think we should name him?”

Barry held up the severed head, strings of tendons and veins hanging off of the stump like the arms of an octopus, though the red ribbons reminded me of pasta more than anything else. My friend held him up by his ears and gave him the once over.

“I’m not sure. Did anyone see you?” Barry asked cautiously. I heard the kids’ squeal over the snack cakes I had got them and I went to the heater to crank it up. I was siphoning electricity from the store beside this building. They hadn’t noticed the plug and I had made sure it was hidden. Anyways, if they found out I was borrowing their electricity I would make sure they didn’t mind.

I had my ways.

The kids were distracted with the snack cakes in my black bag so I grabbed the head, a long skewer, a strip of leather, and a knife. I sat down on a mattress I had bought secondhand and started carefully cutting Fingles’s old head off. There was always that guilt there, cutting off their heads, but it was worth it once they became real. Fingles was my last cat and he was Noodle’s brother except he was gray with a white mask on his face and white paws.

The person I had killed had red hair and green eyes; I think he was in his early twenties. Unlike a lot of the men I killed he had fought me, I was sporting a welt on my shoulder from where he got me with a brick.

I sucked on my teeth and felt a large bit of skin in my mouth. I chewed on it and swallowed then continued to stitch his head onto Fingles’s body. Then, getting a great idea, I wound Barry the bear’s butt and made him sing the Daisy song as I worked.

Of course my friends loved it. They laughed and hollered and chased each other around as the song echoed through the warm and welcoming basement. It was about twice the size of my living room apartment but not as clean. The floor still left black marks on my feet when I walked around barefoot no matter how many times I swept. There was also dusty boxes in the corners, stacked one on top of each other, the cardboard so fragile it was slowly collapsing under the higher up boxes’ weight. A few nights ago Fingles and Noodles were horsing around. One of them made a box fall onto the ground. I had sprung to my feet, my heart slamming in my chest like an unwanted visitor banging on your door. I yelled at those two until my throat was sore, but apologized for it in the morning.

When I was finished I admired my handiwork and picked up Fingles and walked him to a side room that was through a metal door. It was where the other repaired stuffies were.

The smell of pungent rot mixed in with the smell of decaying buildings hit my face like an invisible wall. I pushed through it and held the door open with a loose brick and smiled at my friends hanging from their hooks.

Sir, Patches, Noodles, and Fingles were hanging off of contraptions that I’d made myself. They were coat hooks dangling from ropes I had tied to the ceiling joists. I hooked them through a hole I’d made in their scalps and made it so their feet were touching the ground. Little stuffed animal feets and paws, so adorable and cute but most now stained with brown and buzzing with fat flies.

I had to make these contraptions for them. Since their heads were so much heavier than their bodies this helped them see what was going on. Though I knew they couldn’t see; I had set them free.

I brushed my hands carefully over each head, some with faces red and purple just starting to form the first beads of putrid-smelling liquid, others like Sir and Patches now green and grey; their eyes eaten by rats and their mouths slacked open and full of wiggling maggots.

I wished the maggots and rats hadn’t come but that was life and I had accepted it. They had chewed a lot of their faces though and some of the fabric. I could see the maggots wiggling around in the synthetic cotton, wiggling back and forth like squirmy wormies.

“This is Fingles,” I said to them, and grabbed onto a hook I had already prepared. I poked my tongue out of the corner of my mouth as I stuck the hook through the thick skin of Fingles’s scalp, and when it poked out the other end I slowly retracted my hands to make sure he would stay.

Fingles didn’t move. He stayed still and his white paws just barely touched the ground. He looked like centaur kind of. It would’ve been interesting if they had come back to life that way.

“He’ll be here to keep you all company,” I said to them, patting Fingles’s red hair. He would become real to me the next morning, that’s how it usually worked.

The bodies of my friends didn’t answer back and I knew they wouldn’t. They had been set free and were eating snack cakes in the main area of the basement.

When I was finished I pushed the heads aside gently and went deeper into the second room. The smell of rot became almost unbearably strong on my nostrils, to the point where I could feel vomit in my throat. I was no longer used to the stench of decay, even though I lived in it as a child.

I approached the back of the room and was greeted by the previous victims’ bodies. They were also hanging on hooks, though these ones were meat hooks hanging off of rusted chains. I had been eating my prisoners though the meat had been turning. Thankfully I had a new man for us to consume. Before I had brought the head I had carried the man’s leg down here and what I could carve from his ass cheeks and face cheeks. I stashed it in the back where it was coldest, my mouth watering over the anticipation of what he would taste like.

In Alegria we still ate arian meat, but it was previously carved up and cooked. That was okay but there was something about carving off your dinner from a cold, dead corpse that made my throat tighten and my brain light up like a flare. It was something that I had deeply missed.

Oh if only I could go back to the greywastes and live how I used to. I missed that, and now that I was older –I knew I would rule that greywaste. Me and Barry, we would become kings in our own right.

That night I ate dinner with my friends and watched them put on shows for me. We had no television down here but I did have a Game Boy and some books I had found. Mostly though I found myself watching my friends, sometimes for hours and hours. They loved to entertain me and act out scenes from my books or movies I had watched. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed them.

There was no meth down here and no opium and since I had chewed that red pill that Human Mouse had given me I had no desire to smoke meth or do any other drugs besides a weed joint I had found on one of my victims. I realized as the days went on that the meth had been fuelling my paranoia of my family.

I still knew they were out there, but I no longer suspected my crows of being spies, or that they knew where I was. Though the meth had opened up my mind to a lot of things I had been oblivious to, I was able to sort the realities from the fantasies.

As I laid down to sleep that night I wondered if Jasper had come to the same realization when he was off of meth. I wonder if he realized the Legion was never after him.

Or that the night the legionary came, when we were burying Cooper – that they had been looking for me.

If I’d listened to Crow and sat up in that grave – I would’ve been found that very night.

“When do you think it will be spring?” Barry asked the next day. I had been preparing to go outside to find a head for the new mouse stuffed animal. His name was Ralph, named after a book I had loved when I was younger.

“A couple months I think. Not soon enough.” I said back. I picked up my clown mask and tucked it halfway into my jeans. I wouldn’t be bringing my satchel until I had made my kill, it would only get in the way.

“When you wear tshirts everyone’s going to see the ugly scars on your body,” Barry said. When I looked at him he grinned; he was sitting in a pile of gnawed-on bones. I had eaten a lot last night, that man had tasted good.

I ran my hands up and down my arms. “Jack didn’t mind them…”

“Jack probably thinks you’re dead,” Barry said nonchalantly. He picked up a bone, with red meat still clinging to the joints. He twirled it around and put the end of it in his mouth. I saw a flash of pointed teeth as he gnawed on it and sucked the marrow out of a broken tip. “You’re such an ugly little fuck. The older you get the uglier you get.”

My lips pursed. I turned away from Barry, a dark smog descending on my previously decent mood. It was funny how easily I forgot how Barry was. How he was always pushing me to –
“You should cut yourself.”

I whirled around. “You should shut the fuck up,” I snapped at him. The kids scurried away at the booming sound of my voice, made only louder by the gutted ceiling above us. They hid behind the boxes and even behind the metal door where the bodies were kept. They hated it when I yelled but I was already getting sick and tired of Barry always putting me down.

“You can stay here tonight while I go out hunting.” I booted Barry the bear over towards the bed and walked through the door towards the narrow hallway. “And if you keep this up I’m replacing you with Noodles. I’m a damn chimera and I don’t need to take this shit.”

“No, you’re a meth addict. You’re Jasper,” Barry’s snarling, his taunting voice called after me. “Crazy fucking meth-addicted Jasper. You hang out with kids too. Do you let them watch when you grind your cock against your pillow at night?”

His words struck me like a physical blow. I stood there stunned and silent, feeling the light get sucked out of the room.

I turned around slowly.

“D-don’t ever… say that again,” I whispered to him, but as my eyes scanned the entire room… I realized he was gone. All of them were gone; the room was entirely empty save for the faint buzzing of flies and the hum of the space heater.

I turned my back on the empty room and closed the door. Like I had stepped from one world into the other the cold darkness hit my burning face, and cooled it in its frozen embrace. Immediately I felt relief in the pitch black, and because I craved the anonymity of night I closed my eyes as I walked down the hallway, and while I walked I stretched my hands out and let my fingers run over the rough, crumbling brick.

Then, unexpected to even me, I suddenly let out a loud, agonizing scream. A thousand feelings suddenly burst from my brain like a skewered abscess and sprayed its pus across my entire body. Unable to contain the overflowing emotions ravaging me inside and out, I turned to the only blunt object I had in my range.

I punched the brick with my fists, letting scream after scream roll from my lips unabashed and uncontrolled. The ferocity of my emotions throwing me into temporary insanity, urging me to get out as much rage as I could through both physical force and my maddened screaming.

I didn’t know which straw broke my back, I just knew they had been collecting for a long time now. Whether it was Barry’s poisoned words or just the desperation and loneliness I had been pushing down I didn’t know. The only lucid thought inside of my head was that I had to get some of that pent up rage out or else I was afraid I would physically burst.

The last angry scream erupted. I felt the ground against my legs as I collapsed onto my knees.