The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (60 page)

It used to be that only when I slept did I see them. Now they were a constant companion to a mind that didn’t know how to cope with a reality that didn’t seem like a reality at all. I didn’t know what was happening in that lump of tissue behind my eyes, I just knew inside of it I saw Garrett, Reaver, Killian… inside I saw Aras, my mom and dad, my siblings, and sometimes I even saw Asher.

Mostly I saw my three boys. I forced them to support me in my own mind, but even my delusional self turned their confident praise into worried glances.

I thought chimeras were supposed to protect the ones they loved?

I had two chimeras who I loved and where was I now?

Locked away like a quarantined rat, though it was because I was too valuable to them to kill and too violent to expose to light.

All alone. All alone and now I knew they were no longer looking for me.

Kerres had made sure of that and Meirko too. I had met Meirko the other day. They had shown me the news station, happily reporting on Grant Dekker’s newest factory in the borderlands. They would be making Dek’ko brand chocolate bars now.

I had gotten replaced by chocolate bars.

They were going to be called SnapBars, and the mint flavour: Snap-Mint.

Congrats?

There were no more twenty-four hour promos on us. No news reports, no media attention... it was like we had never gotten kidnapped in the first place.

Had Garrett forgotten about me? Had he given up?

My eyes closed and I tried to imagine I was somewhere else, perhaps doing something fun. I did this often. My imagination was my life now.

Sometimes I imagined my mouth tasting the soft flesh of Shale’s dick, though it didn’t salivate like Reaver’s did at the irony taste of blood. It soured and grimaced, wishing for something better, even if it was just a drink of muddy irradiated water.

Sad kind of, why couldn’t I be some smuggled chimera black-market baby? I was just good dependable Reno… who now ate rats and licked the brick walls of my cell to get water.

The president of Skytech’s fiancé Reno Adrien Nevada, brick licker, rat eater... dick biter.

Heh.

I couldn’t wait to tell them what I did. I bet they’d be proud of me.

There was shifting outside of my door, light scratching of the rats making their way through corroded pipes. Small little claws that made a noise that had been my background music for as long as I can remember.

That and screams… Nico’s screams, I think Trig was dead.

I knew Kay was dead, or at least paralysed, getting shot in the spine would do that to a boy.

Maybe since the important ones were dead, they had abandoned their search. I wasn’t that important... I was new after all.

This thought made my lower lip tighten; my eyes started to well. I didn’t like where my emotions were going but I was starting to cruelly tell myself that Garrett had abandoned me. That I was too much trouble.

It wouldn’t be like an immortal being kidnapped... I was just an idiot greywaster...

A tear rolled down my cheek but I wiped it away and even though I was all alone... I told myself it was just the sweat stinging my eyes.

No media, no news... no search parties. All quiet.

No one was looking for me anymore.

My eyes took me to a greasy rat, just a shadow of movement out of the corner of my eye. I froze my body and slowed down my breathing as it sniffed around the door, where his rat friends had been scratching.

I was leaning up against the damp brick, my clothes clinging to my body like a second skin. I had lost a lot of weight already and I was hungry as fuck. So I watched him through the greasy silver hair that fell over my eyes like I was a starved cat, and waited for him to come closer.

Then with a flash I had him, I wrapped my fingers around him and as he whirled around and sank his filthy teeth into me I dug my finger into his neck and snapped his spine away from his skull.

My own teeth then found his head and I ripped it off, without wasting time I drank the still warm blood from his body, cringing at the taste, before pulling his loose fur from what little meat it had.

I was more animal than Reno now, but I had been raised in the greywastes and it was nothing I hadn’t done before. Though radrats made a better meal than their miniature counterparts.

So many things in this world were called rats: subhumans, big rodents, little rodents. I had even heard Lyle refer to Jade as a gutter rat... was I a greywaster rat?

My eyes squinted as the door opened and even though I was still holding the limp rat in my hand I looked up to see who was coming to beat on me next.

To my surprise, or as much as my mind could still feel that emotion, two people were thrown into the cell with me. They stumbled and fell to the ground, their arms shackled behind their backs.

My eyes travelled to the crimson-haired man in the doorway. I opened my dry mouth to ask the bitch for some fucking water when he turned around and stiffened his stance.

“I did, shut the fuck up or I’ll shut you up!” Kerres snapped. He threw a brown sack into the hallway and slammed the door, but the conversation could still be heard from outside. “I don’t care what he says, and I’m not scared of him. Tell him to fucking talk to me about it if he has a problem with how I’ve been handling this.”

There was muffled yelling.

“And they aren’t fucking looking at all now, are they? I didn’t hear any news segments did you? They don’t fucking care about them anymore. I told you we should have fucking waited until we could kidnap Jade again.”

Rub it in a bit more Kerres... rub it in a bit more...

“– No, we aren’t getting Elish for these fucks. I know that now. And no I –”

A shifting of clothes and a groan distracted me. I looked down and saw Caligula’s little soldier boyfriend Nico and beside him: Trig.

So the fuckers were still alive?

The angry voice of the red-haired fuck faded, and as it did Nico shuffled to a sitting position and leaned up against the brick wall. Trig seemed dazed; he only lifted his head and let out a whimper.

I extended my hand and offered Nico a bite of rat.

Caligula’s boyfriend’s face was filthy and his angular eyes were dull, but he looked at the rat and took it with one of his hands, before bringing it up to his mouth and ripping off a bottom leg.

“Thanks,” he croaked before handing it back. I offered it to Trig but he shook his head.

“Even rat tastes good right now,” Nico grumbled.

I tried to smile but my lips felt like lizard skin. “If we were chimeras this would probably fucking taste like chocolate.”

I tipped the rat above my head and tried to wring some more blood out of it. A few cold drops spilled into my mouth which I swallowed

“If we were chimeras they would’ve found us by now,” Nico whispered bitterly.

Like a thousand needles those words pricked all of my sensitive, raw places. The fact that he shared the same sentiment I had made it all too real.

I lowered the rat and started peeling the skin off of it. Putting a hand down on Trig’s shoulder to give it a rub; the kid’s whimpering had only gotten more pronounced since Nico’s omission.

“Nah man... that’s not it. They’re looking for us.” I didn’t believe my own words and Nico knew it.

Sure enough, as I glanced at him, I saw his expression was hard.

“Do you know how replaceable we are, Reno?” I lowered my head as he said this. “All of us, especially you and Trig. Mortal pets to immortal beings. They don’t give a fuck; I fucking don’t even know what they did to Kay.”

That’s right, only I saw the news station that showed the shootout between the Crimstones, and Elish and Silas. “They shot Kay, he’s dead.”

Nico only nodded; his chest rising and falling over a blue jacket, half the seams torn and frayed, covered in rust-coloured blood and who knows what else. Like me his fancy Skyland clothing had fallen to the state of most greywaster attire. I wish they made me feel more at home but I just felt sick over it. I wasn’t in the greywastes... I wasn’t home.

I hadn’t even figured out where home was before all of this shit went down.

My cheeks puffed as I let out a tense breath, absentmindedly I kept rubbing Trig’s shoulder. The kid was a typical cicaro, thin-boned and skinny, submissive and polite. Not like Jade at all but I guess Elish liked them bitey.

This kid though... he reminded me of a weaker version of Tinky, and I say weaker because Killian had come a long way since Reaver had first pointed him out to me. Killiboy was fucking bad ass now. This kid... not so much.

With the conversation at a lull, or perhaps our energy just drained, I leaned back and chewed on the small rat bones, trying to get as much of the marrow as I could. Though there wasn’t much there to begin with.

When Trig was finally able to right himself, he shifted between me and Nico and brought his knees up to his chest. Sniffing every once in a while to stave away the damp which seemed to make our noses either congest or run.

“Kerres says the media stopped reporting on us – do you think it’s true?” Nico asked after a while.

I didn’t want to but I nodded. “Yeah, he showed me on the television. It’s all silent and the Legion has apparently pulled back all their forces.”

Nico nodded, no expression on his face. He waited a solid minute before he made direct eye contact with me. “We’re escaping tonight... just so you know.”

I paused, the rat with its skin peeled down like it was a banana, halfway up to my mouth. I had been savouring every bite of the little rodent.

“What?” What the fuck else could I say to that?

Nico leaned his head back before looking over at Trig and me. The kid was staring at the metal door, his hands wrapped around his knees and his chin resting on top of them. It didn’t even look like he was acknowledging what we were saying.

“You were a greywaster right? I am General Zhou’s son, who’s keeping those scum Aras residents in line after they sold you out to Silas.” The man’s voice dropped at this omission, right as mine was rising in my throat.

My old home... no, no, I can’t feel anything regarding Aras, like Nico had said they had betrayed me; they had tried to fucking kill me and Killian. I had almost died from that gut wound. Fuck all of them, even my own uncle had sold me out.

“You know how to live out there, you know how to survive – not to mention you’re Reaver’s best friend, right?” Nico let this drag, before I saw him glance down at Trig. “But if this little shit slows us down, I’m slicing his tendons.”

Trig looked up at him before lowering his head down to his knees. “They’ll come for us.”

“No, they’re not, and Meirko is telling Kerres to execute us. We’re too hot for the Crimstones. Too much press has already been reported on us, and too many eyes are out looking. They want to kill us and abandon the mission. Elish isn’t getting handed over for anyone and they’re finally realizing that.”

A queasy feeling was quickly replacing my depression. I tried to force down the dread this information brought but it only seemed to fuel it like gasoline.

Instead I analysed Nico’s face, and saw no fear on his odd features. In return he gave me a look that told me there was a reason he was a chimera’s boyfriend. I stared back and mouthed the words slowly. “And how are you planning this great escape then? We’re in a fucking sewer; we’re locked in a room with nothing.”

Nico rose to his feet before sitting down with his back to me. I watched with curiosity as he flexed his back, making several bones in his back pop. “Every legionary has a shiv implanted in them, mine is in my shoulder blade. I can’t get it out. Get it out and give it to me and I can get these handcuffs off. We’ll escape while Kerres is distracted with Meirko.”

“Why can’t you get it out?” I lifted up my own shackled hands and helped him take his jacket off. I knew the answer as soon as I saw it.

His right hand had been taped with duct tape. I hadn’t noticed it before.

“Like any soldier worth their salt, I use my body as a weapon. They have had first-hand experience with that,” Nico replied.

I put a finger on his shoulder blades and immediately felt the small hard piece of metal resting underneath an inch long silver scar.

I tried to pick at it to see if I could get an edge but Nico tensed his back. “Just bite, chimera style, bite through the skin and then withdraw it.”

Geh, that was the last thing I wanted to do. I was really getting tired of being reminded how much of a chimera Reaver was. I wonder of my sweet loving Garrett had this side to him.

Instead of bitching though I held onto the small glimmer of hope that Nico had given me and pinched the scar between my fingers. Then I lowered my teeth to it and bit through the tight piece of skin.

Nico grunted and swore. I felt my teeth connect with each other and the sensation of something square and hard, I withdrew my mouth, spitting out the blood that had started to trickle. Then with my fingers I drew out a small flat piece of metal and handed it to Nico.