The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (15 page)

The black oil of violent emotions filled itself in every crevice of my mind. Ignoring the yelling around me I threw my weight against the door. It broke open and slammed against the wall with a deafening crack. I immediately heard frantic commotion, flickers of black and white and a thick fear so intoxicating I stood there for a moment to drink from it.

The black pet. Dressed in fresh leather, and a tight shirt, with ebony hair that shined against opal skin. He was cowering in a closet, his eyes wide in terror-stricken consternation. His heartbeat was a hammering in his chest, his body trembling like a leaf caught in a breeze. Oh, the fear made my chest prickle with electricity. My mind filled with dark, disturbing thoughts that would later on unsettle even my desensitized head.

When I opened the door I felt his fear ravage my insides. I grabbed him without care and whispered a word to him I didn’t understand. In response he thrashed like a stray cat being picked up by the scruff, and he howled like one.

I dragged him out of the closet, but as I threw him onto the bed his pointed teeth found my arm. He sank them in and pulled out a chunk of flesh.

I backhanded him hard. He cried and fell onto the floor, a mist of blood staining the grey carpet underneath him. I slammed a foot against his back and picked him up by the collar. Without an ounce of restraint I dragged him through the hallway. He was kicking, screaming, and howling words that became garbled under his panic. The room an eruption of activity but my eyes only focusing on the knife block.

I withdrew a cleaver and looked at it with a smile on my face. The shrieking around me melted into a pool of nothingness. I saw my own eyes through the flat mirrored side of the knife.

I was a demon; I was a Reaper back from the dead. My eyes were onyx pits, framed by loose strands of black hair that had been twisted into oiled locks. My face was grey, my lips tinged white, and behind the black slabs of coal I saw nothing but my own madness.

I looked up at the boy I was about to butcher like a rat. I hadn’t even noticed I was holding him off of the ground by the collar. I saw his hands grasping and clawing at his neck to try and get breath, his eyes wide and bugging out of his face, burning yellow spheres.

I gave his collar a twist, cutting off even more air flow. I shuddered as I felt his fear soak into my skin; an intoxicating almost tangible feeling like the last minute before an orgasm. Only his hot rushing blood would bring me to my peak.

Then like a lightning strike a jolt of incomprehensible pain ripped through me. My hands snapped open and I dropped the knife and the boy, who fell to the ground with a scream.

I whirled around, and out of my throat came a snarl I would more likely hear on an animal than myself. I focused on the blond man I recognised.

A chimera... I was surrounded by chimeras.

“Reaver, gather yourself, you’re –”

I grabbed another knife and stalked towards him, my eyes looking up over my head. I was going to cut his hands off, cleave his pets head from his body and sew it into his fucking stomach. What would chimera flesh taste like? I would dine on him.

But no... he was immortal; he would come back.

I needed blood that would stay dead, that would rot.

So when something grabbed me, grabbed the arm that was holding the knife I whirled around, balled my fist and punched them right in the face.

The person fell, and I heard a gut wrenching scream that snapped me from my morbid reverie, erasing the snapping jaws of a confused insanity I couldn’t control.

My eyes turned with my body as I saw him kneeling behind me, holding his mouth, which was dripping blood. A sight that even the indistinct taunting of the dark shadows could not turn me from.

Killian’s eyes were wide open in shell-shock. It was the exact expression I had seen on his face before I had died. Those deep blue eyes, the kind of blue you don’t see in this world, unfocused, staring into the abyss; seeing something of such untold horror all he could do was scream in response. The look of someone who had just suffered the concussions of a reality his mind could no longer handle.

I dropped the knife and fell to my knees, not believing what I had just done. I had hit him; I had just hit my own boyfriend.

“Killi...?” I whispered.

He burst into tears and tried to shuffle away from me, but with every movement he made I shifted closer. Wanting nothing more than to hold him and take the pain away, the pain I had caused.

I didn’t know what was going on, or where I was... all I knew is he was hurting and once again it was my fault.

“Don’t cry,” I whispered to him. I reached out a hand to brush the blond strands from his eyes but I hesitated. In the same breath I was taken back to the night in his bedroom, when he was screaming from a night terror. I shyed away, feeling like I had never touched him before.

“You’re dead.” Killian’s voice was a whisper of agonizing loss, a strained tone that told of an inner struggle to even force himself to say those words. “You’re not you anymore.”

“I’m not dead.” I pushed down the confusion and madness and touched his hair, then felt the warmth of his soft face against my hand. “I’m here, I’m me. I’m okay.”

Slowly, trying not to scare him further, I drew him into my arms. I felt his frame shudder as I drew him into me, and a small noise of relief. I closed my eyes and rested a hand on the back of his head. I held him in my arms, his quick heartbeat threatening to burst through his chest and into mine.

I heard the voice of Elish behind me, then the mumbled response of the pet. After Killian’s heart had started to slow, I pulled away from him and wiped the blood from his mouth. He gazed up at me and I felt him search my face for any signs of hostility.

“Where are we?” Elish was here, the pet was here, where the pet was the master was and if you followed the chain of leashes eventually you found Silas.

“Elish saved us. He helped Leo disappear with you. He’s on our side; he hid us in the greyrifts.” I felt him grip my sides as if he expected me to lose it again. “We’re safe, I’m safe. Please don’t hurt them.”

My mind was still trying to uncoil the rat’s nest of information, but emotion-wise inside of me was a cold lake of calm. A still winter night with ice just freezing the edges of the frigid moonlit water.

I stood, and he stood with me. I kept my arms around him as I watched Elish slowly remove the pet’s collar, a ring of chafed red around his neck. The pet looked stunned into an almost stupor.

I felt a lump in my throat, a growing painful burr that grew as I scanned the room. It was only those two.

“They shot Reno!”
Killian’s voice was a strangled sob, breaking with every octave it climbed.

I tried to swallow, but the lump in my throat turned to ice. Everything was different now. Nothing smelled right, Killian didn’t even smell right but I knew that wasn’t his fault. It was like I had woken up in the Twilight Zone or something, maybe a different dimension.

“If this show is over and done with, please accompany –” Elish’s voice was annoyed and biting, but how he felt right now was far from the realms in which I gave a fuck.

Without another word I took Killian’s hand and pulled him into the first bedroom I saw. I slammed the door and grabbed a duffle bag I recognised, resting beside a side table.

“Help me pack the bag... we have to leave,” I said to Killian. My eyes shot in all directions looking for the door out of this place. I had already lost Reno; I couldn’t lose the last person I had. I had lost everything, I had lost my life, literally and figurative.

“No! We can’t,” Killian’s voice wobbled but I could tell he was trying to keep it steady. “We have to stay here, it’s safe.”

Wait for Silas to get me? What was this? A catch and release? My eyes tried to take in every strange and new object in this room. If I hadn’t spent time in Donnely I would be even more taken aback but I was used to seeing new architect, electronics, and furnishings around me.

“Don’t question this, Killian.” I raised my voice. He shrunk away. I could hear Elish and Jade’s muffled talking behind the closed door. “That blond-haired fuck is Silas’s chimera, he’s his second-in-command. He’s going to fucking hand deliver us to Silas, are you fucking delusional?”

“He saved us, Reaver. He saved my life.”

“To take all the credit himself... he could have warned us that the deal was going to go sour. He could’ve told Greyson that Silas was in that plane. Greyson, Leo, and Reno’s blood are all on his hands.”

Killian’s hand lightly rested on my shoulder. “Elish left with Reno, to get him medical attention in Skyfall, far away from Silas. He left to save Reno’s life. He was still alive, Reaver, Elish even rescued Biff.”

“He’s lying,” I growled.

“He had cat hair on his shirt when he came back, he described him to me, hun!” Killian put his arms around me and sniffed. “Please, just calm down... let Elish explain it to you. You knew him before as James, right? Doesn’t it make sense now? He’s been in on it the entire time.”

The prospect of trusting him filled my chest with malice, every shred of my hatred for Silas and the chimeras seemed focused on him.

But I couldn’t ignore what Killian was saying.

He squeezed me, his hands still wrapped around my back, clasped around my chest. I heard a sniff and then felt his head rest against my shoulder. “I missed you... I missed you so much.”

I turned around and we embraced, and the first trickle of warmth started to flow into my heart. I had missed him too, even in the voided darkness where only the white flickering flame could be seen. I had missed the touch I had once recoiled from.

“How long have we been here for?” I whispered, inhaling his scent, the soap smell he still had on him. Though that was no surprise, he smelled clean and this place was clean. All of it was pandemically clean, unlike my dirty basement.

“Over a week, your throat had been ripped out... I’ve been here with Jade, Perish, and Elish. Elish has been running back and forth to Skyfall. Silas is resurrecting now, Elish says it will still be several weeks before he’s back. He got massacred by the deacons.”

I pulled away looking puzzled, even though my brain had automatically assumed he would come back, I remembered what Greyson had said to me.

– before they killed him.

I pushed that reminder down, and looked at Killian confused. “Greyson said only I could kill him... I killed him I ripped his throat out. Shouldn’t he be staying dead?”

“It is not that simple,” a voice said behind me. I turned around and saw Elish in the doorway, his pet beside him with a red welt appearing on his neck. “As I was trying to say, before you decided to brutalize your boyfriend and attempted to murder my pet. We are overdue for a talk. Shower yourself and eat something. When you are done we will be meeting in my office.”

My brain told me to challenge this patronizing attitude he seemed to have, but I held myself back and kept my mouth shut. I knew enough of Elish Dekker, or James as he had been when I had met him a couple times in Aras, to know this was his character. Any other reaction would be odd for him.

“Where are we? Are we in Skyfall?” I said, not hiding my own cooled tones in my voice. I wasn’t going to just lie down and show this chimera my belly. Leo’s ally or not he was a chimera.

“No, we are a four hour Falconer trip from Skyfall, hundreds and hundreds of miles,” Elish replied. “Not a soul knows you’re here, they are looking for you in the blacksands currently, though since it is me hedging the search, the party consists of three recruits and an elderly deacdog.”

“Deek is here too, Reaver.” Killian pulled on my sleeve. He had a faint smile on his face though his cheek where I had hit him was already starting to swell. “And he likes them.”

“He liked Silas too.”

Killian’s face fell. I think he had forgotten that stupid retard liked anyone and everything; he was a shit guard dog. “But he grabbed Biff, and he got your M16... and look, all your ammo is in your pockets. Love, if he wanted to hurt us he would have... please... come have a shower and we can sit down with him.”

I didn’t want to sit down with him, I wanted some cigarettes, drugs, booze... something to help me handle this cold new reality that had been unwillingly thrust upon me, but until I demanded drugs I would clean myself off, like the boy had suggested.

“This chat can wait for tomorrow, right now I need to get my head back,” I said to Elish, who was still standing beside the doorway with his pet beside him.

The cold chimera nodded. “I suspected as much, Killian knows where the food is if you become hungry. You will be left alone.”

And he left, not a protest on his lips or a veiled threat. I had to give him that small plus at least.

I soaped my hair three times and scrubbed every orifice of my body. After I stepped out I noticed my cargo pants and shirt and a pair of underwear all folded nicely. If Killian ever had to become a pet he certainly wouldn’t be doing much different.

I smelled my cargo pants; they smelled like more soap, this house must be Killian’s dream. I put them on and buttoned them, feeling my pockets I realized everything was still there, down to my grenade. My pistol was here and even my combat knife. The boy had been right; the chimera hadn’t disarmed me.