Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (31 page)

The television I was enchanted with. I turned it on and when an image appeared right away I tried to extract the tape in the disc player but there was none in the tray. This was a television station which was fascinating. I turned it a few channels until I found cartoons. I hadn’t watched cartoons in years and I had a lot of catching up to do. So I watched it and it kept my buzzing and overactive mind from taking me to places I didn’t want to go.

Eventually though I started to get hungry. I had been starved half to death at Jasper’s and I had no intentions of starving here. King Silas, Nero, and the others were all healthy with well-toned arms and perfect bodies. All of them ate well so there must be food somewhere.

I opened the door and looked out, and when I saw it was dark I slipped into the main area of this big apartment and started quietly walking towards the kitchen.

The crisp vision I had always enjoyed at night coated everything in a cold blue glow. Like the LED lights we had in the bluelamps it helped me plan every movement I made to make the least amount of noise.

Cautiously I crossed the large dining room and felt my bare feet hit carpet. My ears were so focused towards any noise I felt them start to fill with static. I pushed it down with the apprehension inside of me and made my way towards a separate room which held the kitchen and most likely – a fridge.

I stepped onto the wooden flooring of the kitchen and tested it for any squeaking or noise – but it was silent.

Then my nose twitched, I looked up and took in the kitchen in for the first time.

It was so big, with dark wooden cabinets and stainless steel appliances. The counter tops looked like the marble floors in the lobby of this skyscraper and there were so many knives and utensils with no rust.

I swept the room with my gaze and stood there in a state of awe, everything was so clean with no dust and no age. It looked so unworldly I couldn’t believe Jasper’s disgusting house was in the same dimension as this place. It was foreign to me and though I knew I was in reality it made my gut quiver and my pulse race. I felt uncomfortable and I wanted to leave.

But I had smelled something… what did I smell? I followed the smells and spotted something covered in a dome of thin metal. I walked over and lifted up the metal plastic and felt a wave of dizziness.

I was a real chicken. It was half-eaten but it was there and there were other things too. I opened up another metal sheet wrapped thing and found vegetables.

A rush came through me. I picked up the chicken and stacked the other metal-wrapped things on top of it and ran to my bedroom. I stashed the food under my bed and on tiptoes I ran back out and opened the fridge.

Another rush. I was so excited as I gazed upon all of this food that my hands started trembling. No one who’d never been starved would understand the feeling you got when you found more food than you thought you could eat. All of it was just sitting here, unguarded, there was no Jasper to come out and beat me, I could eat it right now.

I started taking things from the fridge, a bottle of soda pop, a container full of something red and white, maybe spaghetti, a foam packaging filled with noodles and vegetables. I took all of it back to my room and hid it all. I hid some in my closet and under the bed, in my dresser drawers and behind the night table. I stashed all of it before, once again, going back for more.

Then I found it.

I found it.

I stared at the entire cake, a white cake with pink flowers, for a brief moment before I plunged a hand into it and brought it up to my mouth.

As soon as the sugar hit my tongue the darkness around me and the apprehension about being out in the open disappeared. I took the cake, some more noodles from a foam container and some pieces of chicken, and sat down on the floor. I surrounded myself with the food and started eating it as fast as I could. My mouth was never empty, I couldn’t get enough of it. I had never in my life tasted anything as good as fucking cake and my survival-mode mind wasn’t letting me stop eating. Every time I told myself to stop my fingers were reaching in to grab another handful of the delicious cake or grabbing at another piece of fried meat.

Then suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder and my world turned dark again.

Out of surprise and fear – my mind snapped.

It was like a dark shroud coated me, hugging every inch of my body and becoming a second skin. A dark covering that, once affixed onto me, became my master. I was nothing but a puppet on strings to it – and the longer I was in Skyfall the less awareness I had when it came.

I whirled around and snarled, and in a flash before my mind could calm down I attacked the person who had made the mistake of sneaking up on me and Crow.

I grabbed his left shoulder and dug my fingers into his flesh, then sank my teeth into the victim’s neck and bit down.

‘BITE! BITE! BITE!’
Crow snarled, commanding my movements like the puppet I was. ‘
DO IT!
’ he yelled, his voice so loud it hurt my head. ‘
KILL HIM!’

My serrated teeth clamped down and I waited for the rush of blood to coat my mouth, but as I adjusted my jaw I realized in my crazed state that it didn’t feel right.

Stars sprung into my vision as I felt a blow on my head. In response I tightened my grip as the flesh I’d bitten into jerked back. I realized, as another light but forceful smack hit the side of my face, that the person had been faster than us. I’d bitten not a neck, but an arm.

I thrashed with a snarl and whipped my head to the side. I heard a loud voice telling me to stop, and telling me he didn’t want to hit me harder.

But I couldn’t stop – Crow didn’t want me to stop.

If I stopped Crow would be angry at me.

And I didn’t want to make him mad.

‘BITE! BITE!’
Crow screamed, he was manic, out of control. I couldn’t disobey him.

Then light… light; the light was too bright.

‘Shut it off!’
Crow snarled.

But I maintained my stance and looked around, feeling dazed and dazzled by the bright lights above us.

Then I saw movement.

Nero was there, naked, and Silas in nothing but a robe. I held the piece of flesh I had ripped from Silas’s arm and looked around frantically, still stunned by the lights.

“Sanguine, Sanguine… it’s okay, calm down.” Silas held up his hands in a
calm down
manner. One of his arms held a laceration that went down to the bone; it was dripping blood onto the wooden floor. Everyone was closing in on us, everyone was there, even Ceph, the boyfriend of Nero, was in the background beside the light switch.

Too many people, too many people
. I bared my teeth at them, looking and looking for a dark place I could hide in. They were on all sides, me and Crow were trapped. Crow told me we had to escape, we had to run.

“Do we have any sedatives handy?” Nero asked as he glanced over at Silas. I glared the chimera down, my neck aching from the continuous growl that was vibrating in my throat.

“No – more – drugs!” I yelled grabbing my tangled hair. “You won’t drug us; you won’t drug us!”

Oddly, this made Silas’s eyes brighten. “Us?” he whispered.

He reached out a hand as if wanted to touch me, his eye were intense. “Look at that, Nero. He’s insane, fully in psychosis. I bet he doesn’t even–” Like a cork popping under pressure I crouched down, and in a fluid steady motion I cleared the counter island in front of me and knocked Silas to the ground. This time I hit my mark. I sunk my teeth into Silas’s neck.

Then a different shroud covered my mind, one that brought with it a soothing melody that drew out of me the remaining wisps of reason I had managed to hide from the demon below the surface. The colourless darkness captured the ravaging anger and in its cold embrace it calmed the beast. Then, the moment the monster inside of me let its guard down… it snatched away our consciousness and plunged me into darkness.

I saw a hand appear, it was holding in its gentle grasp a piece of fresh bread with a spread of white, solid grease-type stuff on top of it. I could also smell something that had sugar in it, but I wasn’t sure just what that was. He hadn’t slid it to me yet.

I took it and quickly popped it into my mouth then waited for the next bit of food to be handed to me.

I was under my bed again, where I had been for several days now, not too sure how many. I had woken up in my bedroom with no new wounds on me but still my mind told me I was unsafe. My safety was where it was dark and where no one could reach me and that oasis had been found underneath the large, four poster bed King Silas had in this room.

Three times a day Silas came to feed me and bring me things to drink. Then he would slowly feed me, I guess to make sure I didn’t wolf it down like I did several days ago.

To my own distain they had quickly discovered my food stash and I got the joy of watching Silas and several sengils remove all of my hidden, stashed food.

My back was aching from the awkward position I was in underneath the bed. I was on my stomach but whenever Silas came to feed me I scrunched myself against the wall and watched him with a growl inside of my throat. I didn’t trust him, but there was a spark of excitement inside of me whenever he came. I never knew what sort of food he was going to bring and that drew on my survival instincts.

Though it was bland food.

“I’m sorry about only giving you bread and margarine. You’ll throw up if I give you rich things. You don’t remember but you threw up for hours after we dimmed your mind when you were going food crazy that night in the kitchen,” Silas said as if reading my mind. He handed me another torn piece of bread, this time with a shred of half-raw meat on it.

I tried to snatch it but he pulled away.

“You’ve had five pieces so you’re not famished anymore. Can you please take it nicely from my hands?” Silas said in a half-amused voice. “Show me you know you’re not going to starve anymore. I would appreciate it.”

I paused and swallowed the growl that was crawling up my throat. I could only see his black pants and his elbows which were leaning against his lap. I could picture King Silas watching the edge of the bed with his chin resting on his hands. Though I wasn’t sure that was what he was doing.

A fresh wave of wonderful smells reached my nostrils as he tore something else in half out of sight. I watched with anticipation wondering what it was, trying to force my nose to recognize the smell but I had never smelled anything like it.

Then his hand appeared again and I saw it was a disk-shaped bakery thing with black chips inside of it.

I went to snatch it but Silas once again pulled his hand back.

I growled a warning, and reached my hand out further trying to find where he was stashing this food but to my own anger he laughed at me.

“Just take it nicely! Is that so much to ask? You don’t need to have a growl about it, my god,” Silas chuckled. “Take it nicely from my hand and you can have two.”

I suppose that wasn’t too much to ask. He had been patient with me living under a bed in his apartment. So I relented and retracted my hand and waited patiently.

When the bakery thing came back into view I fought down my survival instincts and gently took it from his grasp. Though as soon as I had it I crammed all of it into my mouth and started to chew.

Whatever this food was it was made by the hands of a god. It was sweet, but it was a less-potent kind and the texture was amazing. It melted inside of my mouth and flooded the inside of it in a lake of sweetness. Immediately my brain commanded me to find more and I reached my hand out in hopes of getting the other half.

“That’s a chocolate chip cookie and you can thank my grandson who has a sweet tooth larger than me.”

I blinked and gave him (or his crossed legs anyways) a confused look. “But you’re…” This made absolutely no sense to me. Everything I had heard about King Silas, all the conversations I had eavesdropped on, had led me to the confirmation that King Silas was gay. All of his chimeras, me included, were gay and that he had been gay since well… forever.

“You have real kids?” I asked quietly. I pulled my hand back and was happy when he slid me the other half of the cookie. It disappeared quickly inside of my mouth.

“Like a biological child created with a female? Of course not. That’s… ew,” Silas said with a laugh and I found myself smiling at that comment. “You’ve met her before, my daughter is Ellis. My lovely Ellis Arwen Dekker. She was an unexpected twin from Nero, and we assumed she would be male so we kept the twin. Though she split soon enough from Nero that she missed out on the Y chromosome and here I was with a female chimera. I could’ve aborted her but, well, I was curious. I raised her as a daughter and she gave me a grandchild four years ago. Knight is a half-chimera, half-arian and he loves his cookies.”

I swallowed down the cookie and rested my chin on my arms. “She was kind to me when I met her as a child. Does she know you found me?”

“She has been wanting to see you since you came,” Silas explained. “Nero more so. He wants to talk to you in a more… calm setting. Not so much when you’re in those states.” He paused. “I have not told my other chimeras about you, Sanguine. Only my first generation and Ceph know you’ve been found. It would be overwhelming for you. We are close-nit to a probably unhealthy level but that just means our family ties are strong. They treated you well when they saw you?”

Even though he couldn’t see me I nodded before sneezing. It was dusty under here and my nose didn’t like it. “Nero and Ellis were my first alive friends,” I replied. “They’re… they didn’t care I was a monster. They only wanted to help me be safe…”

I was puzzled when I heard him sigh. I stared at my hands and started going over every scar I had on them. I think I had memorized every one of them by now. I spent a lot of time staring at my hands.

“They knew I was your chimera…” I said in a small voice. “Nero knew–”

“– that you two were brothers? Yes, Sanguine, he did,” Silas said back.

“Why did it take eleven years to find me?”

The silence that descended on the room weighed heavily on the both of us. It centered on my shoulders and pressed down with a weight that told me I would’ve been brought to my knees if I was standing. And like a physical weight, with every passing moment the pressure only gathered until I found myself unable to stand the silence.

“Was I a failure?” I asked.

“No!”

I jumped under the sharpness of his voice. Immediately I backed away from the edge of the bed until my feet hit the back wall. I crushed myself against it and watched him intently.

I saw him shift around. “You’re no failure and you never were,” Silas replied in an odd tone. I couldn’t put my finger on his mood, I just knew I was uncomfortable with it. “You’re perfection and now that you’re in our family you’ll soon reach your potential. We’ll build you up, repair you, and make you better than you ever were before. Sanguine, you’re a chimera, a Dekker, a prince. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise, not even your own self-degredating thoughts. Do you understand me?”

“He’s wrong.”

My eyes shot to my left, to the far corner of the wall.

Crow was laying on his side, with a hand resting on his hip and the other one holding up his head. He was giving me a wide smile that showed every single one of his pointed teeth. The look he was giving me was dripping transgressions and nefarious, dark thoughts. In every way he looked like a sinister monster under the bed but… so was I.

We were one of the same. We always had been.

“Do you really think so?” I asked Crow. “He’s… being kind to us.”

Crow’s shining red eyes narrowed, and he glanced over to the edge of the bed where Silas was sitting. He stared at him for a moment, still and silent, before I saw his hand grip his thigh. “How can you be this ‘perfection’ when the family abandoned you in the greywastes without even checking in on you? No, he’s fooling you. There must be something that he wants, perhaps you should find out what he wants.”

I looked at the crossed legs, and then the crumbs that were all that remained of the cookie Silas had given me. “He has everything. What could he possibly want from me? I have nothing to give him.”

“How is that a good thing? It means we now have to watch out for everything,” Crow said. I saw his mouth twitch. “Has there ever been anyone in your life who only wanted to help you because they just wanted to help you? Even Nero and Ellis only helped you because they knew you were their sibling. No, beware of him, mihi. Life has taught you that. Life has taught you to be on your guard. Everyone wants something from you, even if it’s just your body. Don’t forget what Jasper taught you.”

I stared at him, feeling sadness swell inside of my throat. “I will,” I said slowly. “I… will.”

“Sanguine?”

I looked and saw Silas’s legs shifting, then another piece of cookie appeared, being held gently in Silas’s grasp. “Can you see Crow when he speaks to you…? Or is he just a voice inside of your head?”

Running on the unease that Crow had filled me with, I hesitated to answer, but with the cookie in my sights I couldn’t resist. I took it gently from his hand before replying, “I see him. He’s in the far corner under the bed with me.”

“What does he look like?”

I didn’t see any harm in answering this so I glanced over at Crow and got a good look at him. “He has long black hair that is shiny and clean. He wears black and red, usually a leather jacket and black pants. He… looks like me, his eyes are red and he smiles all the time. But I don’t smile.”

“Does he tell you to do bad things?”

“They’re not bad things,” I replied. “He tells me how I can help myself deal with… my situation.”

Another piece of cookie was held out for me. I took it carefully and ate it. I didn’t like feeling like I was being rewarded for talking to him like I was some sort of dog, but I ignored it.

But in truth, though I didn’t trust King Silas and had no plans to start, I hadn’t had a conversation with an adult in a long time, not since I was a child.

Jasper… Jasper didn’t count. The only time we had conversations was when he was on meth and that was pretty much like talking to a child.

Silas paused for a moment. “I would love to talk to you further. I have had the sengils cover all of our windows since I know you dislike sunlight right now and it is only the two of us. Will you join me in the living room?”

I shifted away and shook my head. “No.”

“Come on, Sanguine… must I bribe you with more cookies and cakes? You know my second born, Garrett, is coming later with a wonderful gift for you. He’s very non-threatening and a kind man… will you receive it?”

A gift? This drew up an interest in me, but what if it was a trick? A way to get me out from under the bed to… to…

King Silas had been nothing but kind and patient with me. Not only did he look past my food hoarding and the mess I made in the kitchen, he had been personally feeding me and trying to ease me out from under the bed. Though time had made everything soft about my personality worn leather, I still recognized kindness when I saw it.

Though the thought of coming out from under the bed made my hands clench and my breath become short. I was nervous about it, but if he said the windows were covered…

I took in a deep breath and looked at Crow for help. Barry had told me to go with Jasper but Crow wasn’t Barry. Crow erred on the side of caution and if things went sour I had my teeth. King Silas might bring with him a presence of being superior and put together but physically I was taller than him and he had no pointed teeth.

When Crow gave me a small nod I turned back to where Silas was sitting and drew in a long breath. One that only fanned the flames of anxiety smouldering inside of my gut and threatening to tear open the wounds that every other man who had taken advantage of me had left.

“Okay,” I said quietly.

Silas’s pulse jumped… I had made him happy. I watched as he shifted away from the bed and rose to his feet.

I waited until he was by the door on the other side of the room before I crawled out from under the bed. Immediately I folded my arms over my chest and started analyzing the room. Making sure no one was hiding from me, waiting to ambush me or something worse.

My gaze only shifted back to Silas when I heard him take a sharp inhale. I looked at the blond king quizzically and realized his mouth was pursed and his jaw tight. There was also a glimmer in his eyes, a light but obvious look of sadness when he looked at my body.

“Those scars…” Silas whispered. Immediately I put my arms behind my back, making sure the sleeves were drawn down as far as they could. “You’re trying to kill your greatest enemy aren’t you?”

I looked away from him and took Barry. I wanted him to go with me to the living room. I had nothing to say back to Silas so I didn’t reply to his observation. I knew what he meant: that I was my greatest enemy and since he knew and I knew… why say anything?

“And you’re just so thin. You’re going to be spoiled and pampered for a very long time, my red-eyed beauty. I’ll make up for the life you have led so far,” Silas said in a tone full of sadness and regret. I saw a sad smile draw from his thin lips but it only seemed to make him look more solemn. There was something to that man… a heaviness like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.