The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (44 page)

“Yes, I see that now. Reaver, this means Killian is alive, remember that,” Elish said quietly.

I whirled around and heard a low vibration start to sound in my throat. I took a step towards him, my fists clenching.

“Perish fucking raped him, in this fucking spot!” I suddenly screamed. In an instant I felt all my restraint and control fall from me like a shedded snake skin. I let out a scream of frustration and rage and took a step back, knowing that if I didn’t I’d attack Elish.

I slammed my fists against the back of the wall, raining powdered gyprock on top of me. “How long since he was here? It could have been a month, Elish!” My voice broke, my brain automatically tried to make me inhale but I ended up choking on it. I scanned the room like a cornered animal, not knowing what to do, just knowing I had to do something.

I felt like I was going to explode.

“Yes, Reaver, but Killian – is – alive. He’s alive,” Elish spoke calmly to me. Such a perfect fucking statue of calm, that fucking piece of shit was, but I saw his true colours I saw the worry when Jade was in danger.

But no, no more worrying for that asshole. He got his partner back but where the fuck was mine? Getting raped every night by that fucking maniac of a scientist?

I couldn’t handle it… I was helpless, I couldn’t be helpless, not when it came to Killian. It was my job to protect him; it was my fucking job to make sure this shit never happened to him. I had failed.

I had failed to protect my dads. I had failed to take over Aras. I had failed to find out how to kill King Silas.

I was a failure, a failure.

“Jade, you will take the raver and the dog… and wait for us at the edge of the town. Now, Jade.”

Right here, in this spot Perish had raped Killian. My Killian, my boy who had just started getting his mind back after being tormented by those fucking chimeras.

Tormented by MY family.

Another squeak and a crunch as I broke another tooth but my jaw kept clenching. My hands kept clawing at the wall trying anything I could to get rid of this burning pain inside of my chest. It was filling me with heat, an overwhelming urge to do something.

I had to do something.

Then Elish’s quiet voice, “Run, take the dog, tell him to continue on Killian’s trail and run, Reaver. I have no one for you to kill to stem this rage you feel inside of you. I have nothing to give you. So run ahead, kill whoever or whatever you –”

“I don’t need you telling me what to do!” I suddenly roared. I took a step towards Elish and to my surprise he took a step back. “
I am
the fucking Reaper, Elish.
I am
the clone of the man who destroyed the world. I give
you
orders not the other way around!” I snarled, not even aware of what I was saying, or understanding why I was saying it.

“You are MY creation!” I yelled, feeling a heat start to come to my hands. In an instant the same heat travelled up my arms and started gathering in the middle of my chest. “I own you! All of you! Every-single-fucking–”

The words kept flowing from my mouth, rolling off of my tongue like they were made of oil. Each one formed perfectly before spilling from my lips like a rockslide. I had no control over what I was saying; I was babbling I knew I was…

Then a roaring inside of my ears. No, a buzzing… a buzzing around me. It came with the heat that I felt coat my body like a bad sunburn. It smelled… familiar, a stale almost chemical smell I recognised from when I would walk past Dek’ko dump sites, it made my chest burn. I didn’t know…

“REAVER!” Elish suddenly roared. He grabbed me but suddenly recoiled away like I was burning hot. I heard him swear and look around for something.

I kept talking; I kept walking towards him as my lips moved. The deafening roar inside of my ears seemingly splitting my mind in half. The lights started to go out, one by one, places inside of my head that Killian once lit with his lantern snuffing themselves into darkness.

Only white haze and the building of pressure on my temples.

So much pressure.

I felt like I was going to explode.

Elish grabbed the only thing in his reach: his assault rifle on his back. He quickly took it into his arms and without hesitation he pointed it at Reaver.

The man, full into his madness, was nothing but a radiant illumination, a brilliant white light that every surviving person before the Fallocaust had seen before their death. A light that contained in it a blinding fire, that could melt steel like it was soft rubber. A fire that swept the terrain, burning everything to cinders for miles around. Where the fire did not reach, the radiation did the rest, dooming all that once lived to death or equal madness.

A light that had killed the world.

Elish pulled the trigger. Reaver’s head snapped back and a spray of blood suddenly painting the crumbled wall behind him. All at once the light faded – but not the danger.

Without pause, even though the boy was still pouring out the last remains of the sestic radiation, Elish picked him up and ran out of the house.

He spotted Jade, the half-raver, and the dog walking down the road.

“RUN!” Elish suddenly yelled. “Get out of the town. RUN!”

Jade turned around in shock, immediately he took a step to run towards Elish but with a quick shout of
NO!
Jade turned around and started to run as fast as he could out of the small cluster of buildings, the half-raver and the dog running in front of him.

Elish’s chest burned as each boot slammed against the dry earth. Mentally scanning through all of his lessons about the sestic radiation, trying to figure out just how long they had. It was instant in some stories, on others it took minutes, all he knew was that he had to get the boys out and quickly.

Then a flash. As the sestic radiation pressed into the wood, into the metal and the pavement, it reached critical mass. An explosion behind Elish sounded and then a burning heat that made the assault rifle on his back become boiling hot.

‘When it is concentrated it will explode into white fire, burning everything around it to cinders. Though in those ashes my radiation will remain to preserve the world and make it grey. That is what I was born with; that is what is inside of me.’
Silas had once said.

In front of Elish the black trees, the telephone and light poles suddenly became illuminated, a washed out light like an overexposed photo. They glowed and blinded the chimera to the point where he had to hide his eyes.

Then the explosion, the explosion that Elish knew was the house he had just run from. He lowered his head, and kept on running as the debris flew past him, white fire eating every last shred of it alive.

Chapter 54

Reno

Garrett was chain smoking again and I was right there beside him. Our ashtray was overflowing to the point where Chally had two out for us now. It seemed like all we had been doing for the past several days was smoking and stressing out.

My fiancé had told Silas that Sky’s O.L.S was inside of Perish’s brain, that was a hard thing to swallow but I didn’t know enough about Sky or the chimeras to know if that was a bad thing or not. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on; I had to trust that Garrett did.

I just knew that Killian was in grave danger, that though Perish might love my friend, he wasn’t really Perish anymore. He was, as Garrett put it, two mismatched puzzle pieces being forced together. Perish was out of his mind, and with the radiation inside of him, he was literally a time bomb.

So we had been trying to get a hold of Elish, dialing his remote phone over and over trying to find him. Both of us had been taking turns, we dialed that damn number at least ten times an hour even when Garrett was suppose to be sleeping for work.

King Silas was out of Skyfall, in Cardinalhall where he was probably busy torturing Nero.

Sanguine had saved our asses with that.

“He isn’t on our side though, not fully,” Garrett murmured to me. I had just commented on the demon-chimera’s clever distraction when Silas was getting ready to send out the cavalry to find Perish. “Elish made that clear, but he agrees with me that we cannot kill Silas. He would also not sell out Elish, this I know for sure.”

I took an inhale of my cigarette; drug powder, loose smokes, and half-empty boxes of food surrounded us. Chally was in the kitchen trying to clean up after us, but the stress around the apartment was apparent. We were calling in Luca tonight to help the kid; we were both acting like pigs right now.

There was another faint dial tone and a long sigh as Garrett put the remote phone down.

“How are you so sure he won’t?” I asked. “You guys all seem to have so much trust in one another and yet everyone is so fucking underhanded.”

My fiancé considered this for a moment. He tapped his cigarette against the ashtray before resting his chin on his hand. He blew the silver smoke out of his mouth before dashing it again.

“Elish and I see it as an advantage to know each and every one of our brothers. He recently has become even more skilled at this with his empath husband. We know our brothers and we know which ones we can trust and which will deceive us. Sanguine might be slippery but he will never betray us.” Garrett’s eyes travelled to the window. It was dark out now, another day had passed without us reaching Elish and Reaver. “Jack is the one we have to worry about the most. He’s close to King Silas and loyal to his king and his job. Unfortunately for us, he’s Sanguine’s ex-lover and they still fling it around when they’re bored. I don’t trust Sanguine not to slip information to him and quite frankly, I don’t trust Sanguine to not do this prematurely.”

“Sounds complicated,” I mumbled. “How does your mind not explode? Aren’t you like… tired?”

Garrett laughed and I smiled, not because what I said was funny but because I still loved making him laugh.

He leaned over and kissed my cheek before leaning down and taking a hit of the china white. Yeah, we had been doing that a lot too. I had corrupted my fiancé. He might do a bump of coke here or there with the liquor but influencing him to do the drugs was all me. He had kicked his own habit years ago apparently.

So I got my fiancé back on drugs.

Oh well, I never said I was a fucking boy scout.

“Yes, my head does hurt from time to time, it is a lot to remember,” Garrett remarked then gave out a long sigh. Once again he picked up the phone and dialed the number and once again the angry tone thanked us for our failed efforts. “Oh, lutra… I’m so worried. Elish is either going to praise me or wring my neck. I… just… this is serious, so serious. Sky is dangerous, I know you do not understand this, but Sky is…”

I looked at him before giving his leg a loving rub. Garrett wiped his face with his hands and shook his head. “Sky could kill a lot of people, Reno, including Killian. I had no choice. Please understand I had no choice. Silas knows Sky. He loved Sky dearly; he can handle this better than we can. I’m afraid Lycos’s deception plunged Elish to dark waters. I fear he’s over his head with this new development.”

I took some more of the powdered china white and leaned back. I put my head on Garrett’s shoulder and watched another plume of smoke escape from his lips. “So what is Perish trying to do? Or Sky anyways? Is he just wandering around with Killian?”

Garrett was quiet for a moment before he rose and picked up his laptop. I watched as he started clicking folders and searching documents. Eventually he put the laptop on his lap and started pointing out things I didn’t understand. “I don’t know. I just know with that O.L.S, he is a crazy person right now. Stress is what releases the radiation, stress and sestic radiation have an odd and unique relationship. When the host is stressed out he can release it without being aware of it. Silas has his under control, and after the first and some of the second generations, he took out the genes he isolated that gave us that ability.” Garrett highlighted some text, but it might’ve well been Mexican to me. “Perish is unstable and at any point he could explode.”

Something suddenly occurred to me. “Wait, you’re saying he could start another Fallocaust?”

When Garrett shook his head my shoulders slouched from relief. I didn’t even realize I had tensed up.

“No, Silas was able to concentrate his sestic radiation when he killed the world. He was able to concentrate the radiation into a small area, no one knows where. He released it until the area he was in was full to the point of bursting, then, as the legend goes, Sky pressed a button and all of the concentrated radiation exploded. Not just Skyfall Island, not just what was British Columbia, the entire world was coated in it.”

“But he saved Skyfall?” I asked. “How?”

“Because born immortals can clear it away too,” Garrett responded.

Well, that was new. “They can?”

Garrett nodded. “Yes, Silas can absorb small amounts back into himself. It may kill him but he can. He cleared it away from Skyfall hundreds of years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if Perish and Sky helped him do it as well.”