The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (14 page)

Garrett laughed and clinked the glass back. “You are a funny little thing. I remember Elish saying you were funny, but I didn’t know what I was expecting once you arrived.”

“You have to have a sense of humor when your best friend is Reaver,” I said with all too much honesty. Inside I felt the pull of longing for my friends even though I was giving him a jab, but I was doing this for him.

That gave me a bit of a nudge to put on the charm, though I was finding myself not forcing it nearly as much as I thought I would. This guy seemed alright. “So far you aren’t like your brothers. You are actually nice.”

Garrett looked up at the ceiling as if he didn’t know what I was talking about but when I smiled he did too. I liked his smile. I could see it in his eyes, unlike Elish whose smiles seemed like a door to more sinister scary thoughts.

Ugh, fuck you, Elish, you were right or at least your little empath pet was right.

“When you say Elish told you about me... when was that?” I asked.

Garrett swallowed a bit. I didn’t think this was a loaded question but he seemed embarrassed by it. “Um, well, almost three years ago since he first... well, told me about you.”

Holy crap, I’ve been being stalked for that long? “Three years? Wow, you’ve been waiting three years for me?”

Garrett’s ears went red, which I thought was kind of adorable. “It seems outlandish, yes, but his pet said we... well...”

“We’re a good match?” The embarrassment on Garrett’s face made him look like he was in emotional agony. It was cute.

The suave chimera nodded slowly. “Yes, I well... I saw your photo, of you holding some man’s head. I loved that smile.”

My head blanked for a second before it slowly started processing again. Lycos had taken a photo of me for records. How did it end up in Elish’s... ugh, that chimera knew everything, what a stupid question. “Bridley? After Reaver killed him? Wow, I was just a little kidlet back then. Elish is some sort of mastermind, eh?”

The mood of embarrassment hovering over Garrett seemed to break; he chuckled and nodded. “You have no idea.”

I moved myself a bit closer and leaned over to pour us more alcohol. I heard Garrett mumble something under his breath, before a hand traced my scarred arms. “You’ve had a rough life haven’t you?”

I paused and out of reflex I retracted my hand. The scar he was talking about was obviously from being tied at the wrist unwillingly. It had been from Bridley. I had been tied in his house for days, naked, covered in every body fluid available, broken and helpless.

“You probably already know what that’s from too,” I said quietly.

Garrett shook his head no. He poured the liquor for us instead and gave my wrist a sympathetic rub, then a smile so overflowing with kindness it made my heart swell.

Because I wanted to be a good pet, I decided to steer away from the solemn subject. I put on a smile and swallowed the horrible memory down with the liquor. A routine that was not new to me.

“So tell me, what does a pet of Garrett Dekker do? Because if you don’t tell me I’m just going to start meowing randomly and scratching your furniture.”

Another laugh, I felt relieved I had turned the conversation.

The alcohol gave me an excited prickle in my stomach. I was starting to like his attention towards me; he looked at me like I was the only guy in the universe. Usually it was Reaver or Killian getting all the attention, I was just well... Reno the friend. It wasn’t like I was neglected or anything, I loved my buds, but they had each other; I had never had a boyfriend. I was always, well, I had been waiting for Reaver to come around before Killian came in. Then I had held hopes for Asher, but we all know how that turned out.

“Well... nothing like you’ve seen between Elish and Jade.” Garrett tipped his glass for the clear decanter I was holding. There were three of them that sat nicely in the middle of his marble coffee table almost forming a flower; each one half full with liquid, two brown ones and a white one. I was looking forward to trying all of them. I hoped he wasn’t against drugs because my body itched for them.

“You seem to already be rather social and delightful, so the training isn’t needed. I’d rather have someone with some personality who doesn’t just agree with everything I say.”

“I completely agree with you,” I said with an honest nod.

“Thank you... really when Elish said –” Garrett stopped as his brain clicked together the joke I just made. He playfully jab me with his shoulder. “You are a funny one; I really was expecting someone...”

“Feral and untamed?”

Garrett gave a small nod of his head. He put his glass down and reached over to the coffee table. I saw he had a stack of playing cards.

I watched in amusement as he pulled up the table and started dealing me Crazy Eights. “Unless you’re hiding a darker nature, you aren’t what I expected which is... well, good.” He dealt the rest and handed me the cards. I wondered how he knew this was my favourite game, but I remembered that Elish seemed to know everything about me. No doubt this guy had been briefed on me. I wondered what else he knew.

“If I can skip the bitey feral part, I will. Elish came to our council meetings more than once with a bites, scratches, and bruises. It was fun to tease him about them, especially the chimera love bites.”

I laughed at the thought of Jade being ballsy enough to attack Elish, and picked up my cards. “I like biting, so... don’t skip too many steps.”

That night after many drinks and many games of Crazy Eights, we both sat with our cards in hand playing Crazy Sevens. Why? Because screw you that’s why, we were drunk as hell.

I slammed my card down, a jack of spades; it fell off of the couch. I tried to get it up but I gave up after about three seconds.

Garrett laughed; his green eyes glassy. He leaned down instead and put the card on the table, before reaching his hand out to gently taking the rest of my cards from me. “I think we should go to sleep before we pass out right here.”

I agreed and rose to my feet, I stretched and yawned before I lost my balance and stumbled.

Garrett caught me and kept me steady. We had been talking for hours by now, and I felt completely comfortable around him. The entire night I hadn’t seen a single hint of malice in his handsome face, every smile was melting my heart.

“I like you.” I looked up at him and poked him in the shoulder; he started walking me towards my bedroom.

The chimera, suave and classic in his little 50’s niche, gave me a full smile back. “I like you, when you smile it’s like you’re a little otter.”

Then in a bold impulse, fueled by liquor and drunk-induced loneliness, I leaned in to kiss him.

Garrett’s face turned, I recoiled back with my face flushing and pulled away from him. My ears went hot with embarrassment. I felt like an idiot.

He grabbed my hand and pulled me back with a playful protest. “Not with us so drunk. I won’t sell you short.” He smiled. His finger traced my lip. In that moment the way he looked at me, I thought he was going to kiss me anyways. But with chimera restraint, he only rubbed the corner of my lip before he led me to my bedroom.

“Can I sleep next to you though?” Garrett hovered in the doorway after I had walked in and taken off my slippers. “Clothes on, I’m too drunk to attempt to change.”

I beckoned him over with a sloppy wave, and flopped down on the bed. “Alright, but I’m too drunk for covers, come ‘ere.”

I was in, I was in his pocket. I was doing everything Elish asked... and so far I couldn’t be happier.

God damn, Jade might be on to something here.

Garrett laid down next to me and he turned the light out. I felt his hand slip into mine, and that was the last thing I remembered.

Chapter 6

Reaver

That cold voided darkness. The kind that burned with fire whenever I drew an invisible hand out to touch it, like lava before it had been cooled to shining obsidian. It was all over me, wrapping its ethereal self around the glowing white core with the comfort of a blanket.

But it constricted, the void tensed and retracted until it coated my dead frame like a full body mask. My muscles spasming and twitching with pain that made me scream in agonizing tones I didn’t know my voice carried.

The fire became smoldering, but it still remained, it burned in my throat and seared away the saliva, I could feel the skin of my mouth slough off and fall to my tongue. I tried to swallow but it was a piece of meat trying to slide down sand paper.

Time did not exist in this excruciating limbo, I had accepted many times in my torment that this was eternity, but in the next moment I was screaming and taunting death that he would never have me.

Then an icy chill, the first notion of temperature, a sensation I had all but forgotten. In the next moment, or perhaps the next year, I did not know, I felt the slow thrum of my heartbeat. A desperate low beat at first, but the longer I listened the stronger it got. It beat to a tune of a song I never heard, but every time I heard it, it seemed like an old friend greeting me on a sun bleached porch.

With a hand out stretched, I reached out my own; he laughed and pulled it back. I wasn’t invited, not this time.

The man smiled, and as he did the corners of his eyes creased, he looked back at the house and said something to me. In a voice I had been hearing since the day he pulled me out of my artificial womb.

I opened my eyes.

I was staring at a wall of deep brown, with a warm halogen light illuminating the room. It smelled wrong, and it looked wrong. Everything around me; what I felt, what I smelled, and what I saw was alien.

The engine in my brain struggled to turn over; I felt a prick of anxiety and confusion as I tried to raise myself. This place smelled like the things in it. An odd way to say it, but that’s how my mind processed it. I could smell the mattress, the bed, the lamp... in my basement I smelled myself, I smelled damp, gyprock, and cigarettes. I smelled the greywastes. This place was new; it wasn’t touched by over two hundred years of rot and decay. It was... Skyfall.

I tried to sit up, I felt sounds around me but they were a garbled audio, a broken tape. I shifted my body so I was sitting up. The room spun.

“Reaver, love, stay lying.”

I heaved my body up at that voice, my eyes fixed on the image and as I stared he came into focus.

Killian
.

A deep and unsettling feeling built up inside me filling my dry mouth with bitter liquid. The boy was giving me the softest, most relieved of smiles but past his facade of calm I saw his fear. Behind the cut sapphire eyes I saw the stitched railroad tracks in his hairline and lips, crisscrossing like a crack through marble. With it I also took in the fading bruises on his face, neck and any place his shirt didn’t cover. Like spots of black mould I saw them, healing but still prominent, still breaking up the white.

My eyes squinted, trying to erase such an uncomfortable realization from my groggy mind, when I opened them again I heard a different voice.

Like a homing device my eyes immediately shot to the direction of the voice, they focused like a scope and pulled him into view.

The pet!
I felt my eyes blaze, my head lowered and I felt my teeth start to grind together.

“Jade.... Jade get out of here,” Killian’s voice said hurriedly. I felt hands on my chest trying to push me back into a laying position. “Reaver... Reaver, it’s okay. We’re at Elish’s.”
“Don’t tell him that!” Jade eyed me nervously. He stood his ground, but as soon as I swung a foot off of the bed, he turned and ran.

The prey started to run.

My eyes tracked him and immediately my brain told me to peruse. He was my only tie to the fucks that had killed my fathers and captured my boyfriend and myself.

The pet was toast.

I shot to my feet ignoring the hand that grabbed my arm in desperation. I found a snarl rim my lips as I yanked my arm away and burst out of the room.

My eyes scanned the area like a computer trying to recognise its location. I caught a flicker of black out of my eye, and felt another rumbling growl move the back of my throat. I put my hands to my pants to try and grab my combat knife, only to realize I wasn’t wearing anything but boxer shorts.

No matter, I’ll choke him. I’ll rip his windpipe out with my hands.

“Reaver! No!” I heard Killian scream. He grabbed my arm again.

The swirl of intense emotion filled my head with burned anger, but when boiled down my mind knew I was acting out of fear and confusion. But what faint trickles of realization I could hold onto slipped through my hands, all I felt was unhinged anger and the need to take it out on the people who hurt me, and killed my family.

And it was that anger that made me grab Killian and throw him to the floor.

With my shoulders hunched over and my chest heaving I stalked towards where I had last saw the pet. I ran up the steps two by two and into a hallway with four doors, all of them open but one.