The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (20 page)

Another fucking crash! I whirled around in alarm as I heard a gasp and a yelp, before suddenly something big and black fell from the roof. It landed right into an open dumpster with a crash that sent several cats dashing off into the darkness.

I stared. I stared because I recognised that yell…

A smile crept to my lips. I sighed as I walked over to the dumpster. I peered in and saw none other than Garrett struggling to get to his feet.

“You’re the worst chimera in the world,” I said to him, still holding the smile. “Reaver stalked Killian for months and I don’t think that kid knew he was there most of the time. You were clanking around like you were wearing a pair of lead shoes.”

Garrett was flushed with embarrassment and looking flustered. He started stammering and stumbling over his words which made me laugh.

Then he paused, I saw his lips purse together.

“I missed your laugh,” he said quietly.

I shifted my eyes away from him, remembering why we were apart in the first place. I shone the flashlight beam on the ground, knowing it would be more blinding with his vision than helpful. “What are you doing here anyways?” I replied.

“I miss you?” Garrett said with a half-hearted shrug. “I love you? I owe you an apology and I couldn’t just… make Elish tell you for me? I… had to tell you in person.”

I helped him out of the dumpster and dusted him off. He was still wearing a suit and tie, horrible greywaster attire. “Are you hurt? That’s a good ten feet you fell.”

Garrett looked at me, that kind of look that tugged on every heartstring you had. I had erected many walls inside of my mind since I had left Skyfall, but I swear those green eyes always seemed in the process of tearing them down.

“You care?” he said back, a hint of confusion in his voice.

Do I care? Who did he think I was?

“I… I don’t hate you, Garrett,” I said. “I just…” I glanced behind me to the end of the alley, only a faint bluelamp on the other side of the street lighting our way. I turned the flashlight off and put it inside my jacket.

“I just had to help him.”

Still the shy boy, with self-esteem lower than my own, Garrett nodded and started to walk out of the alley.

“Where are you going?” I asked him quietly. I started following his steps as he quickly made his way to the street, his head lowered.

Garrett kept walking. I sprinted up to him and grabbed his arm. “You came all this way… did you really just want to follow me around for a while?”

“I’m… my apologies I just wanted to make sure you… you were alright. I’ll go home. I, ah…” He rubbed the back of his head. “I left you some more money in your hotel room… it’s under your bed. Also, Sanguine is here and he will do some repairs on your quad and… ah…” His voice was starting to wobble and with each shaky octave I started to feel more and more guilty.

What had I done to him? My poor little Garebear.

The guilt welled inside of my chest as I saw his eyes shift around uncomfortably; his lower lip had disappeared into his mouth with his teeth firmly clamped down on it. His eyes were so wide, and though it was dark, I could see the faintest glisten to them.

He was… such a horrible chimera, look at him.

I laughed as I thought this, and when he gave me a crushed look I opened my arms. “Come here, baby.”

Garrett’s face fell; he gave me one last heart-wrenching glance, a glance that held ninety-one years of sorrow, before he walked into my arms.

As soon as I heard him start to whimper I lost it too. Together in this dark alley that smelled like trash and piss I held him in my arms and we choked back tears together. Looking like lunatics to all that were watching, though the biggest spectators were our own crumpled up emotions.

I sniffed back almost all my tears but one as I held onto him; his suit smelling like fresh laundry soap. A smell so fucking foreign to this place, it made me miss home.

“I love you, I’m sorry,” I whispered to him. “I was being an insensitive asshole. Can you forgive me?”

Garrett pulled back, his face reading a look of shock. “You? You’re sorry? Lutra, I… I mistreated you. I am the one apologizing. I should have helped like I promised.”

Look at him, such a silly creature. Or maybe I was the silly one, or the idiot anyways. One look from him, one single pure emotion and all of my feelings for him came rushing back.

I brushed back his hair and kissed the corners of his lips. “You came here for me, that’s all the apology I need.”

Then his lower lip stiffened before it disappeared as he held his hand to his mouth. “I… I have to apologize for something else as well. I promised I would do it as soon as I saw you.”

I raised an eyebrow and when his eyes got a bit wider, I narrowed my own. “What did you do?”

Garrett shifted his feet around, his hand still covering his mouth. “I’m sorry… Reno, but…it was me who made Jesse avoid you. I scared him a bit.”

For a moment I just looked at him, probably with a blank look on my face. Garrett withered under my gaze.

That was the reason why Jesse wanted to get as far away from me as he could. Garrett had fucking threatened him!

Which meant…

I swallowed my own guilt but it shot back up my throat and filled it with a lump of cold regret. “I… I’m so fucking sorry… I was lonely and…”

He held up a hand and the corners of his mouth raised in a smile. “I don’t care… I fucked him bloody in the adjacent room as soon as you passed out, so we can just call it a threesome.”

My mouth completely dropped open.

“Are you fucking serious…?”

Garrett glanced up at the stars above us and moved his pursed lips over the side of his face.

I hit him on the shoulder my mouth still open in shock. “You manic fuck! You are a chimera, I knew you were! You’re fucking nutso!” When Garrett saw I was smiling he grinned and tried to fend off my repeated assaults.

“You raped that poor kid?”

“I was angry at the time!” Garrett protested holding up his hands as I kept up my onslaught of domestic violence. “This way you won’t feel guilty for doing it! Right? We’re… we’re even! I was jealous! And well… now you don’t have to feel guilty. Really, love, I did you a huge service. I knew you would feel terrible for doing it.”

I laughed, wondering if I myself was starting to become a chimera since I found his confession kind of funny, in a morbidly-disturbing-yet-endearing way.

“You’re… you’re crazy, that poor kid,” I chuckled.

I lowered my hands and smiled at him. Garrett smiled back and I could see the relief pouring off of him. His actions reminded me of something Reaver would do, and I hated to admit it but… I liked that.

“Come on, psycho chimera…” I rested a hand on his face and stroked it. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. I hate this fucking town. You have a plane right?”

“Really?” Garrett said. His head tilted towards my touch. “You… you want to go back to Skyfall?”

I smiled and nodded, then I took his hand and started pulling him out of the alleyway. “Well, I certainly don’t want to stay in this shithole, and Aras is pretty much fucked too. Where else would I go? The only time I’ve been happy over the past several months has been when I was with you.”

Garrett gave me a shy smile and let me pull him off the road. We started walking towards the hotel room. “I didn’t expect you to welcome me back… I thought I would just be following you around for the rest of eternity.”

Like how Reaver would just follow Killian? I wonder if that was a chimera thing; always the silent stalker out of the corner of your eye. A constant thing in your life until you want to look upon it.

But this chimera was different. I let out a long breath and opened the door to the hotel room. We walked upstairs and I started packing everything. The more I shoved my dirty clothes into that bag the more I realized I was anxious to go back to Skyfall. I don’t know what that meant in the long run, but I knew right now… I needed Garrett and he needed me.

I think this entire time I had thought he was being the jerk, but now that I look back on it… I was the one being a complete and total prick.

I looked over at Garrett. Unaware I was watching him, he was quietly folding my dirty shirts and placing them neatly into a bag. His lips tight and his eyes still welling; I wish I could hear his heartbeat.

He came here to get me. Garrett might not have broken the Morse code, he might not have busted me out of the shack in Cypress… but maybe I was a dick for expecting that from him. If he was that type of chimera, I wouldn’t love him the same.

I loved him, because like me – he had his faults, but fuck he always tried to do the right thing.

“Gare?” I said.

He looked over at me and like every time I called to him, his eyes lit up.

“I love you… you know that right?”

Garrett stopped, clutching my old Iron Maiden t-shirt in his hand. I thought he was going to tear up again or say it back, but instead he replied quietly, “Then why did you leave me?”

My heart gave a guilty jolt. “I… I was mad and still fucked up from the Crimstones,” I replied honestly. “But… I did a lot of thinking here and I realized I was expecting you to act like Reaver, and you’re not Reaver.”

I didn’t realize the weight my words held until I saw him stiffen. “I am not Reaver, or Elish… far from it.” He picked up my bag and put it over his back. “Come on, love. Sanguine has the plane… let’s get you home. I can smell that wound inside of your mouth and your face is so bruised.” He reached out and gently touched my cheek, the crater that was once my molar still raw and aching.

I gave him a look. “Which can also be blamed on you.”

Garrett gave me a guilty glance and an apologetic mumble before he turned and grabbed my last bag.

I chuckled and shook my head.

We both walked downstairs and I said a fleeting goodbye to Grandpa who gave me a wave. Happy Days was on the television and even if a talking bear walked through the door and asked him for a cigarette he would just give him a wave. I loved that old man. If I could pull it I’d ask one of the chimeras to deliver him one of those giant fucking televisions and really blow his mind.

We walked back into the cold night, hand in hand. Garrett was leading me to the east part of town, an abandoned area much like the old West Aras, covered mostly in half-cleared streets and debris from fallen structures and broken roads.

It was quiet until we turned a corner, a metal sign with spray paint telling us this area was off limits to children. Behind the sign I could hear the rumbling of a Falconer and the higher octave motor of what sounded like my quad.

“I guess when a guy with red eyes and pointed teeth ask for a quad you give it to ‘em,” I said amused. Sure enough, I saw the outline of a slender figure, Sanguine obviously, steering the quad up a lowered ramp. His tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he tried to keep the tires on the shoddy slab of metal.

Garrett nodded and gave Sanguine a wave. “Well, yes, Sanguine is a better tracker than I. He was raised in the greywastes after all. I wasn’t sure if you would go to Anvil or Tintown. Jack is having a nice time in Anvil doing his paintings. We will pick him up on the way back.”

“You sent out the dogs, eh?” I said. Sanguine jerked the throttle on the quad and with a roar it sped up the ramp. I saw the plane shift as it hit the other side and then an echoed laugh.

Garrett looked embarrassed. “I had to make sure you were safe… though we did a rather bad job since you did get hurt. I… well, I think I may have been drunk in the plane when that happened.”

“I deserved it anyways,” I said with a shrug. Sanguine closed the plane door and disappeared into the cockpit. I walked over to sit down on the bench, still seeing the faint bits of blood from my injury months ago. It was kind of sobering and sad in a way that it was the same plane, the last place I had seen Killian and Jade.

But Garrett grabbed my hand and led me to the front of the plane, then sat me down on his lap and put his arms around me. I felt him lean his chin on my shoulder with a relieved sigh.

“Never do that again, ever,” he mumbled. “I was so worried about you. When Elish said he had you… I can’t explain to you the relief I felt. You’re mortal, love, please remember that.”

“Normal people are mortal, Garrett.” I felt him kiss behind my ear. “Normal people die sometimes…”

“Not you, never.”

I smiled at this. “Are you going to make me immortal like Elish wants to make Jade?”

Garrett stopped kissing me. “Why would you think I wouldn’t? Once Elish is king… he has promised us we will all get our partners. I choose you.”

I get to be immortal? I shifted myself on his lap so I was sitting more length-wise. “Can you do chimera surgery on me and make me all fucking badass Super Man?”

Sanguine chuckled from the pilot’s chair; his blood-red eyes purple as he checked on the Falconer’s control screen.

Garrett nodded and traced his finger along my jaw line. “I’ll do whatever you want. If you want to have the enhancements you can. Though I don’t think we have ever put them in a non-chimera since Mantis. Have we, Sanguine?”