The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (92 page)

“Jade? Perish?!” I looked over and saw Hopper and Churro’s heads, both trying to pull themselves up on the leaning carport not ten feet from us. Churro had a knife in his hand, a large chunk of flesh missing from his wrist.

“They’re fuckin five... five... inside, FUCKING HELP US!” Hopper screamed. Behind him I saw two large male ravers closing in on them. Their boney fingers outstretched and clawed; a wild, crazed look on their scarred and now earless faces.

I was frozen from fear, only able to watch as Jade turned his head away from the chaos and sauntered up to the carport.

Help them, Jade...

The cicaro flexed his fingers as he beheld the sight in front of him, Churro desperately trying to climb up on his injured wrist and Hopper trying to push him up.

“What the fuck you lookin’ for! HELP!” Hopper screamed. He looked behind him and let out a desperate noise, then looked back. “Get Churro first. Get Churro first!”

I saw Jade shake his head once, then to my horror he withdrew his combat knife... and stabbed Churro in the hand.

Both the slavers screamed and as Jade withdrew the knife Churro fell onto the ground. Hopper let himself fall beside him, grabbing Churro’s jacket to try and drag him to safety.

But it was too late. I watched in horror as the two male ravers attacked Churro. Sinking their broken and shattered teeth into his neck and his face, chewing and biting as the slaver’s skin shredded in their mouths.

The screams were horrific, the scene more morbid and heinous than I had ever witnessed.

Churro was crying out. Hopper was silent, his face drained of colour but his body grabbing the raver in a desperate attempt to get his teeth away from Churro’s face. He wrenched the raver’s head away and tried to stab him with his knife but ravers couldn’t feel pain.

Spurts of blood squirted from Churro’s neck, gushing into the raver’s mouth as his chewed, shredding the slaver’s clothes apart with his sharpened fingers, revealing tallowy, white bone underneath that soon became coated with blood.

Then Hopper. The slaver leader was screaming his despair, but not a moment later his pain was ended. Filled with a bloodlust of his own, I watched my own dog jump on his back and rip Hopper’s head off with a single, vicious bite.

I turned at that moment, unable to watch it anymore.

But no sooner than I had torn my gaze away from the carnage below me, my eyes went to Jade’s face.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

The Shadow Killer’s eyes were fixed forward, blood running down his nose and mouth. But it wasn’t just blood; it was also drool and snot. It was trickling down his face and down his neck, a slippery river that drenched the entire front of his jacket.

I had seen that look before... I had seen those glassy eyes.

Immediately my eyes shot to Perish. He was standing behind us, his gun in his hand, watching with me, the scene below us. He was even-faced, calm, and collected.

“You gave him scopa...” I whispered to Perish. “You made him do this, didn’t you?”

Perish’s eyes darted to mine and he looked at me.

My mouth went dry. I watched as he stared me down, his ice blue eyes cold like the snow falling around him.

Then I saw Perish’s features subtly change. His tense face softened, his brilliant, crazed eyes focused and the hyper-manic Perish that I had once known disappeared. He was now replaced by a doppelganger, though in my heart I knew it was the doppelganger that had left his mind.

“How did you find that O.L.S, Perish?” I asked.

The born immortal, quite possibly the oldest man in the world, smiled. A smile that drew with it a sinister grimness, a smile, so dark and foreboding it made me want to jump off of the roof and run.

It was no manic smile of a crazed scientist, it was one of a shifting spectre; a man with such an eerie darkness to him I felt my knees weaken. It was darkness. It was a phantom. It was a man broken apart, who had just found the final piece to put himself back together.

“It was beautiful, wasn’t it?” Perish said quietly, gazing back at the horrors below us. “Did you enjoy it?”

Then he looked over to Jade and walked up to him. I watched as he put a hand on Jade’s back and rubbed it in an almost caring manner. “And you... well, I don’t have any more use for you now, do I?”

Suddenly I saw a flash of black. I screamed and put my hands out to stop Perish as he raised the fire poker and swung it at Jade.

It connected with Jade’s head with a sickening crack and the cicaro went down. His body twitching and his chest gasping like a fish out of water; a pool of blood quickly appearing behind his head.

I screamed and ran to him.

Jade’s chest was rapidly rising and falling, his glassy eyes seemingly transfixed to the sky. There was so much blood coming from his head. I petted his hair back, my mouth opening in a soundless scream.

“He was too dangerous to keep alive; his powers are extraordinary,” Perish whispered behind me. “We really had no choice.”

I kept petting Jade’s head, not knowing what else to do; all I could do now was soothe him.

“And now we must go, we must leave these greywastes,” Perish said behind me. “Let’s go, Killian.”

I jerked my head around, almost unable to talk under my own agony. “You fucking killed him! Perry... Perry I know you’re in there somewhere. You need to... you need to fight your way out.”

But Perish only smiled at me, before drawing up his hand.

He was holding a slave collar.

Chapter 34

Reaver

I swallowed the warm water as Kiki brought it to my lips. His hands shaking so badly it spilled over my mouth and neck, mixing in with the blood and leaving rosy stains on the sheets underneath me.

The young chimera stared at me like I was an atomic bomb, a row of stitches starting from his right lip and ending by his dark sideburns. Twenty stitches, all of them with dried blackened skin stuck to them. They were unbandaged and showing off their gore to the world; though the wound on his neck was heavily bound.

When I was finished he pulled the glass away quickly and ran into the shadows where he had been since he had returned sometime in the past.

I no longer knew what time was, there were no windows here and Nero came and went on a sporadic schedule. It must have been weeks though, but it felt like years.

I took in a long inhale, my blackened chest forever protesting for more air. I had four broken ribs that had been unable to heal. Death had not reached me yet, not during this session.

It had been seven times now that I had woken from the death Nero had put me in, well, six from him and one from Kiki once he returned. He let the boy cut off my dick and balls, then they watched me bleed to death as they fucked on top of me.

I no longer cared. I no longer had the capacity to care anymore.

When I first woke up here, he raped me.

The second time he literally raped me to death.

The third time he suffocated me while he tried to make me give him head.

The fourth... the fifth... sixth, and seventh…

All just... images that swirled one into the other, patterns without patterns, loose thoughts and partial memories that all blended into one never ending string of pain. Pain and humiliation, that was my existence now. What I had been outside of these walls nothing but a badly painted picture that currently lay crushed underneath Nero’s boot.

Perhaps I had been here for a year.

Maybe I had never left and this had always been my life.

Like a tracker my eyes followed Kiki as he refilled the glass of water for himself. He gave me a cautious eye and took a sip.

I moved my wrists in my binds, the thick scabs chafed against the metal. Thick, brown shells that wept fluid freely as they cracked under my constant movement. I stared at my wrists before I looked back to Kiki.

The boy never took his eyes off of me, orange eyes that peered at me from the shadows like the alley cats in Aras. Nervous and forever shifting, wondering if I was nearing the time when I would snap these chains off of me and bomb this entire mansion.

When I am king I would spare that boy though. I had too many chimeras on my kill list and many of them deserved fates worse than death. That little thing still had redeeming parts to him, his submission mostly. He could be my sengil. Perhaps I would give him to Reno.

Reno... I wonder if they got him. I wonder if Killian –

My brow creased as I immediately pushed their faces and names from my head. I purged their memories and hardened the areas that they had softened. Thinking of them would only cause me pain and I was in enough pain as it was.

Sometime that night I felt the weight of the bed beside me and some fleeting taunts and insults from Nero before he commanded Kiki to adjust the chains holding my legs, then he proceeded to fuck me like he so often did.

My hands were on the iron rungs, holding me up, my body rocking back and forth. The sounds of chains knocking against the iron drowned out Nero’s moans. I tried to focus on them most of all.

It was all I could do not to lash out and try to kill him. Not to jerk my head back and try to take in any bit of warm flesh I could grab. It was useless and all it would do was drain my energy; he was waiting for me to attack him.

That’s what he wanted after all. My captor wanted a reason to kill me again and I was done giving him one. I was immortal and from that immortality drew patience. I would get my chance and when I did...

It would be wonderful.

So instead I pushed down the fire and brimstone that crackled underneath my surface and stared at my shackled hands. The scabs now worn through, loosened and ripping away from the red flesh underneath. There was white tendon showing through, I had worn the shackles into my skin so much they were starting to sever my hand from my wrist.

Severing my hand from my wrist.

Severing my fucking hand from my wrist.

Nero groaned and I felt his breath on my neck. “You break so easily, I’m disappointed, Reaver.” I kept staring as he licked my earlobe, before thrusting himself into me several times to finish himself off. I felt his cum inside of me, mixed in with the blood. Even the smell of it made me want to throw up.

I hadn’t been able to shower or bathe myself. The only time I was cleaned was when Kiki bathed me with a sponge and a bucket of soapy water. I let him without trying to tear his face off. I felt filthy and disgusting, I felt like an animal.

I was an animal.

Nero rolled off of me and stretched out on the bed, naked and baring it all, blood staining his half-hard cock, glistening with sweat and his own remaining cum.

I lay down too and as what had now become the norm he lit me a cigarette. I took it without complaint, not to be obedient but because it was the only highlight of my day now. I took whatever he offered me whether it was the muscle relaxing ciovi, mind numbing heroin or the bumps of cocaine he enjoyed taking off of my back.

Mostly it was the blue-embered cigarettes, the fancy Skyfall kind. I had a taste for them now.

Nero watched me smoke; I saw he was smirking at me. “If I could trust you not to chew my face off I’d have real sex with you. I bet you fuck like a steam engine.”

The blue ember brightened as I inhaled. I ignored him as I so often did.

I guess he wanted me to answer him. He hit me right across the face, the cigarette getting smacked from my lips and falling onto the bloodstained sheets. It started to smolder.

“I told Kessler you escaped, just so you know. So if you think he’s going to come and throw you into a comfortable cell away from me – think again,” Nero said. He wiped the blood from my lips but I still didn’t move.

This made him laugh. He motioned to Kiki and I felt him unchain my legs. “Stunned and dead to the world. It’s always amusing when they get to this state. I can just feel the mania seep off of you. It makes me wanna fuck you again.”

He picked up the cigarette, which had now started burning a hole through the sheets and put the ember out on my cheek. I still didn’t flinch, even though my legs were unshackled I didn’t swallow his bait.

Once again this made him angry. He was a man who thrived off of reactions; I had seen how much he enjoyed tormenting Perish and had seen first-hand how much he enjoyed tormenting me. So to appease his thirst he proceeded to beat me and to top it off, before he left, he fucked me once again.

I didn’t move, I didn’t scream, I was too numb. The world was far away, out of my grasp and out of what had become my own inner reality.

He left unsatiated, the door closed with a bang and Kiki following close behind. I was surrounded by snuffed out cigarettes and cigars. All of them put out on my face and what was between my legs.

When I was convinced that he wasn’t coming back I shifted my sore body up to the sitting position a fresh streak of red blood following my movements. These sheets had been changed so many times but my body was like a paintbrush. Forever painting and contaminating everything I touched.