The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (58 page)

He was worried.

I had never seen Asher Fallon or Silas Dekker worried. Perhaps that was what was unsettling me about this. I could see times where it was like he was forcing himself to match me, but for the most part his mind seemed to be in outer space just like my own was.

All of this made me uncomfortable. I felt like I was walking on dozens of face-up glass bottles, all shaking underneath my feet. I didn’t like it because I didn’t know how to handle it. If we were anywhere else doing any other thing, I would have exploited it and used it to satiate my need for revenge; a need now baked and embedded in my bones.

But it wasn’t about me; it was about getting to the lab where Perish was keeping Killian.

I didn’t answer, I just kept walking.

“I punished him, you know,” Silas said behind me. I could feel the heat on my neck from his eyes. “He will be gone for as long as you wish. I will let him out when you say it so.”

I turned around, the heat on my neck quickly becoming a burn, an uncomfortable feeling that made my insides squirm. I wanted him to shut up; I needed him to shut up and just... act like Asher, not this... this whatever he was. Yeah, the Fallocaust could happen again and maybe the reality of that was lost on me, but I needed to find Killian, that was my only purpose here.

“What do you mean he’s gone?” I asked slowly.

Silas’s face was blank of expression; he had a stance of someone casual but his voice and his eyes gave him away. That was where the worry started and I knew those roots were deeply imbedded in him.

“It’s how I punish my disobedient chimeras. The immortal ones,” Silas explained, sliding his hands into his pockets. I was happy that his eyes flickered away from mine. He started scanning some of the bigger piles of melted debris. “I encase them in concrete tubes. I give them air holes and I leave them in there to resurrect, only to starve and die again days later. I have some who have been in punishment for decades.”

That was twisted. I enjoyed hearing that and picturing Nero experiencing the same fate.

“I gave Nero a space so his hand can stick out. Just so his little pet Kiki can have something to hold. I didn’t feel like giving him a voice.”

“He deserves it,” I mumbled. I turned away from Silas and started walking up some of the mounds of metal, I didn’t know what I was looking for but I wanted to do something anyways.

“Nero is different... he’s my third born. He can handle rape, pain, and physical torture so I didn’t bother with that. Oddly though he hates being alone. He gets lonely, which is why I always gave him a cicaro to dote on.”

“You like giving finely crafted punishments don’t you?” I said. I skidded down off of the hill and landed back on the pavement with a thunk. “I’m looking forward to taking a page out of your book when I punish you.”

Silas’s face held not even the most fleeting of expressions; he remained calm and almost robotic. Still it was in his eyes though.

“Oh? And how will you punish me, Reaver?” he asked with a cool almost casual tone.

“Where would the fun be if I told you?” I gave him a passing glare before I disappeared behind another long, almost tree-like twist of metal.

“Yes, true,” Silas murmured. “Tearing each other emotionally and physically limb from limb is much more important than just admitting you were created for me. That not even Lycos and Greyson could –”

“Don’t even fucking say their names! And don’t call him Lycos, he was Leo!” Red suddenly burst from behind my eyes. It was like his flaming words had unexpectedly found a spring of oil.

Just the mention of my dads...

My dads.

Their memories weighed painfully on my shoulders, on my heart. I turned from Silas with my teeth clenched, holding back the emotion I could feel rise in my throat. Every time I swallowed the inflammable liquid rose.

He had shot him.

Why are you walking with a man who killed your fathers right in front of you?

You fucking IDIOT!

No! No!
I shut my eyes and stalked forward, knowing that if I even looked at him I would whirl around and attack him. I would rape him until he screamed for mercy; peel his skin from his body.

Reaver, Reaver, what are you doing? You’re no Reaper. No Reaper would walk beside the man who had caused all of this.

No, I couldn’t lose control; that side of me couldn’t win. I had to find Killian and he was the only man who knew how to get to the lab and get inside.

Bury it inside of you, Reaver. Push it into the void.

“I let them share a cell.”

I froze on the spot.

“Greyson sang to Leo, to soothe him. Leo cried, apologizing for getting found out. It was... so sweet. I remember the song too. I always enjoyed it.
Of all the money e’er I had, I spent it in good company
–”

I spun around. And as I lunged at Silas, I left the restraint behind. I left the mature chimera that I had tried so hard to be, behind.

I had tried. I had tried but I could only be pushed so far. The void was bursting, overflowing, and filling my body with a toxic adrenaline. The same burning fire that turned my blood into gasoline and my body into an atomic bomb.

Greyson had sung that song to me when I was small, and it was because of the realization that Silas was telling the truth that the last of my control had been consumed by flames.

Silas was expecting it, but even when he made his entire body boiling hot to the touch I had not a care to give. I fell with him to the ground and with tears stinging my eyes I started strangling him with all the strength in my hands.

My lips pursed, my hands became vices; his touch turned to an electric current but still it only strengthened my grip. I squeezed my hands around his throat as the tears dripped onto his face.

He killed them; he killed the two men who had loved me no matter how bad of a kid I was. He had killed them in front of me with cruel indifference. My own fathers.

I would find him on my own; I would find Killian on my own. I would...

I had to kill Silas. I had to kill all of them.

Blood vessels started to pop in his eyes; his body was gathering electricity and shooting it into my bare hands but still I squeezed the life out of him.

Tighter... tighter...

Suddenly everything became white.

Out of shock my hands snapped away from Silas’s neck, or they felt like they were. I couldn’t see anything, my entire world was white, like the signal had been lost on a television set the world had just ceased to produce colours and textures.

Then the sound. A low rumbling like a deacon’s growl. Though instead of my chest vibrating, my entire body was shaking and thrumming like an earthquake. Only this quake was imbedded in the atmosphere around us. The very air was quaking, the electricity surrounding us was being scrambled; the light was being eaten alive and yet it was all around me.

We were too late.

The Fallocaust was happening again.

“Killian!” I screamed. I tried to run though I was blinded. I made it several leaping paces before I tripped over something and fell.

I struggled to get up and tried to shield my eyes with my arm.

My arm was almost see-through. The light easily penetrated my skin, making my flesh glow red. I could see every small vein and an outlined shadow of my bones.

I held my hands out in front of me, my fingers looking like a colour x-ray.

He couldn’t survive this... he was gone. Even in the midst of the world ending around me, the roaring consuming all of my body in its noise, I dropped to my knees and stared forward.

I was too late.

I was too late.

Then, like a suction, I felt every part of my body start to pull. It was like someone had grabbed my skin and was slowly tugging it away from my bones.

I saw a flicker of my dark brown hair out of the corner of my eyes as this vacuum started pushing all of the energy it had released back to its source. I rose to standing and stumbled forward, ignoring a strange needle-like feeling that was starting to envelope my body.

Then the light left.

I stood there in shock as suddenly everything returned to normal. I looked around, my eyes dazzled, and my mind in a state of shock and confusion. I didn’t know what was going on, as quickly as the strange blinding light came – it had disappeared.

Nothing was on fire. Nothing was melting or burning. What was going on?

“SKY!”

I whirled around and was taken aback as I saw a look of absolute agony on Silas’s face. He was shaking; his green eyes a glaring beacon of fear and anxiety. He looked at me for a second and then behind me.

Without a word he ran ahead of me. I followed him, keeping his speed.

Did this mean Killian wasn’t dead? The questions painted their dark pictures on my mind, of finding the boy dead, of finding the laboratory in flames. It coated my faint hopes in black ink and extinguishing the light of the lamp Killian held.

The lighthouse, my candle in the darkness, you always were there. Please, no, don’t take him away from me. I can’t live without him... not even when he is a hundred years old can I let go of that little fifteen-year-old boy I had seen walk into Aras.

Don’t do this to me. I know I am not a good person but fuck, I can’t handle it.

“SKY!” Silas screamed an agonizing scream of both desperation and horror. It knocked against the dark void and fell lifeless to the ground. I had no sympathies for the Mad King; he just needed to take me to Killian.

Though that sparked a new realization inside of my head; that Silas had never given a fuck if the north greywastes were wiped out. He just wanted to get Sky’s O.L.S back into his possession.

I followed him; the strange needles all across my body, blanketing me in a hive of energy that trapped in every agonizing emotion I was feeling in that moment. In my own desperate madness I thought I would start another Fallocaust on my own. The energy trapped inside of me was starting to leak out, like water to a derelict building, it was searching for cracks and weaknesses for it to exploit and destroy from the inside out.

I will give up everything for you, Killian.

I will give up revenge.

I will give up hate.

I will take you and find a small town and I will live with you forever, letting you win every argument, letting you bring home as many fucking stray cats and stray boys as you want.

Killi Cat, just be alive.

I don’t want to be the Reaper; I just want to be yours.

That was all I was ever wanted to be.

I followed Silas, my own thoughts slaying me a thousand times over. After an hour of running without rest Silas stopped abruptly. He turned left and disappeared behind a large mound of twisted metal almost entirely covered in dust and debris.

I turned too, ignoring the pain inside of my lungs, and saw an open door and Silas disappearing down a metal rung ladder.

His eyes were wide, staring forward with the same shell-shocked expression he had once permanently plastered on Killian’s face. I followed him down the ladder, our panting breaths echoing in the cold room, and jumped down as soon as I heard his feet hit the floor.

Without acknowledging me he covered the distance from the ladder to a metal door across the room. I followed him and realized I was now stepping on carpet.

My breath caught. I swallowed down my own fears but they nagged me like needles in my throat. I wedged apart my clenched teeth and managed to say his name.

“Killian?” I screamed it, unable to control my own voice I ran into the living room and looked around.

They had been here, they were here...
“Killian!?” I saw Silas run into what looked like a laboratory and quickly followed him. My heart was hammering, and my lungs twin fire pits from the exhaustion of getting here.

Both of our boots echoed and squeaked on the laminate; our breaths matched in their laboured rhythms. He was still several paces ahead of me, and as soon as I had thought I was gaining on him, he turned a hard right and disappeared.

I turned around the same corner and saw him standing beside a door. I quickly pushed him aside and I opened the door.

And there he was.

There he was.

There was my angel.

“Killi...” I whispered.

I walked up to him. He was staring at the floor, his eyes dazed and his mouth moving back and forth like he was chewing on something. Immediately I knew he wasn’t in his right mind and immediately I knew how to approach him. Slow and without fast movements, like you would an injured animal cornered in a pen. I had learned that from our experience in Aras.

“Killi Cat?” I slowly raised a hand and rested it on his cheek. In response his eyebrows twitched like he was confused, before a moment later he raised his hand and put in his mouth the last bit of what he was eating.

I watched as his mouth moved up and down with a small smile. I didn’t care if he never spoke again, he was alive. I petted his cheek and shushed him, taking in this boy who looked half-dead, with the solemn knowledge inside of me that he had never looked more beautiful.