The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (36 page)

And this one did land on his feet.

“Move now!” Killian yelled to Garrett, before running towards the rock Garrett was in front of. I took several steps back and before putting my hands over my ears.

I turned away as a burst of flame and black armor exploded into the cold air around us, then watched in bliss as the insect’s body parts flew everywhere in a mixture of yellow goo. Landing all around me and covering the ground in a mist that held the faint aroma of damp fungus.

The thunk took me back to the time I had bombed the factory, the body parts falling onto the ground. I loved these sounds, like the good ol’ days.

When the last part met the ground, I turned and walked towards the creature. It was dead as a door nail, the back of it completely blown off and strewn across the grey rock.

I shook my head at Killian and tsked. The boy looked up at me shyly before he looked away, probably expecting me to start beating him over the head with a stinger. Instead I flicked off a chunk of scorpion innards from his shoulder and kissed him.

“You’re the only non-chimera here and you’re the one to kill it? Where did you learn how to move like that anyways?”

The boy smiled and kissed me back. “Play to your strengths right?”

I was about to answer back when my ears picked up Garrett breathing heavily behind me. I glanced over and saw him, chest rising up and down in an attempt to calm the heart about to burst out of his chest.

Poor rich boy chimera wasn’t used to a little action.

“You two make quite the team, Reaver.” Garrett took a step past me and picked up both of our pistols. He wiped his sweaty forehead with his black blazer. Dude looked like he was a gay James Bond. “Stories about your heartlessness have been exaggerated it seems.”

I took mine from him and sheathed it back into its holder. “If you don’t find Reno those stories will seem like fairy tales. That I can promise you, Garrett.”

With fascination I saw his jaw tighten, he broke his gaze from me and with his head lowered he walked past me towards the plane. He wasn’t as hard to rattle as his blond brother it seemed. Elish had been right. He was a docile one. These chimeras were every personality type on the spectrum.

“Why are you here and not looking for the fucks that kidnapped him?” I called after him. I started walking back to the plane. Killian squeezed my hand to try and get me to stop but my mind was already souring to him again. “Why are you here?”

We both climbed the ridge; at the top I saw the saucer-sized eyes of Perish and Jade and the cold face of Elish Dekker.

Garrett pushed past everyone and started making his way back towards the plane.

“Now, Elish. Say your goodbyes now,” Garrett called without turning around. “Do what you need to do but I need you in Skyfall this instant.”

“Wait!” Killian, who had just grabbed my hand, jerked it away and sped after Garrett. I jogged after him, leaving the other three standing over the cliff shelf. “You’re not going to tell Silas are you?”

The chimera turned around. “I have more important things to handle right now. My loyalties lie to my fiancé.”

Killian stopped as he got nearer to Garrett. I saw my boyfriend put a hand on his shoulder. “How was he? Was he happy? Please… he’s our best friend.”

I watched Garrett’s face fall, I saw his eyes were tired and even swollen. Signs of despair that I knew Killian had picked up on. The boy probably figured it out as quickly as I did; that fuck head did love Reno.

“He… he spoke of you two all the time…” Garrett stumbled. He looked behind Killian and to me. “Stories… he’s proud of both of you… I…”

Garrett’s eyes shifted over. I glanced behind me to see Jade only a few paces away. “I see what you were doing, Elish. Bravo. This was so I would join your little rebellion wasn’t it? You’ve been stringing me along for three years not because you wanted me to find someone but to set me up to join you.”

“Do you wish I had never introduced the two of you?” My feet automatically took me a few steps away as I heard Elish speak directly behind me.

Elish had his arms crossed, his face still giving away no emotion but the smallest of smirks. He seemed pleased with himself.

“You played me like a fucking violin, and you played Reno too,” Garrett snapped, his thin moustache moved as his face twisted in an almost sneer. There had never been a man more unsuited for the greywastes. All the way down to his now dust-stained suit and tie. “And no, Elish, you and that empath cicaro of yours know that I don’t regret meeting him. I love him. Which is why I need you in Skytower by tonight. Now, I need you. Elish… Elish the whole fucking family is imploding over of this. The whole island is talking.”

“I will be right behind you, I already gave you my word,” Elish said, his voice crisp and biting. “I would think a thank you would be in order? I hand-delivered your soul mate to you.”

“Reaver Merrik’s best friend! The best friend of Silas’s fugitive clone?” Garrett exploded.

I snorted through a laugh, as I did I felt Killian’s hand clench mine. I couldn’t help it, it had just clicked with me. Elish
had
played him like a violin.

“It was never about Reno getting us that key card was it?” I chuckled and raised an amused eyebrow at Elish. “This was to get my best friend to bring the most powerful chimera to your side. You smart mother fucker.”

Elish spared me an icy glance before looking back at Garrett. The chimera in the suit stared at me for a second before I felt his blood start to boil.

“Ninety years and I still fall for this shit.” Garrett gritted his teeth together. “I don’t care if you have to make yourself into a fucking cicaro, Elish,
you-will-fix-this
. I swear on our dead brothers if Reno dies I will murder that little husband of yours, slowly.”

“Hey, don’t bring me –” There was a muffled
oof
as I think Perish hit Jade.

“Go back to Skyfall, Garrett. I told you I will be right behind you.”

The suited chimera gave him a stiff nod; he went to jump back into his plane when he turned around. Surprisingly his eyes turned to Perish. “It’s nice to see you well, Perry. I look forward to having our chess nights again; and you, Jade, I am pleased to see you’re well.”

The scientist beamed and rolled back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I do as well, Garrett. Congratulations, Reno was very kind to me when I saw him.”

When the plane took off I caught a momentarily relieved look from Elish.

“I’m assuming that went better than you thought it would?” I smirked.

The look disappeared like it had only been a phantom, replaced by the stern mask.

“Garrett is the easiest one to sway; your friend Reno did a fair job.” Elish passed a glance to Jade; the cicaro was untying Deek who was squirming to get to the scorprion carcass. “This ransom of the cicaros and Caligula’s partner was not planned and is something I need to remedy immediately. Though at least it’s a distraction from you; that is a silver lining.”

If it was anyone else I would have decked him for that quip, but I knew Elish and would expect nothing else from him.

“How far are we from Kreig?”

Elish started to walk towards the plane. I followed him.

“It is only a day, day and a half walk; you will see the shadows above the ridge to the east.”

I followed Elish onto the plane. “Am I the only one here with an automatic weapon?”

“I took out a crate of weapons for the others,” Elish said before handing me a briefcase. “My laptop is in there, remember to transfer as many files as you can onto it and bring me Lycos’s hard drives as well. Perish knows how to do that. What we need right now is as much information as we can gather regarding your creation. With Garrett’s help, once Reno is found, we can figure out just how to kill Silas.”

I took the briefcase and hopped off of the plane. “You’re not coming back until you have Reno?”

“That is correct.”

And that was that, we all stood back as the plane rose up in the air. I took Killian’s hand but was happy to see it wasn’t trembling. Perhaps he was happy to be on the road as I was. We were back in our element, even if we didn’t have a basement to come back to.

I gave his hand a squeeze and turned around as I heard a crate open. With an excited squeal Perish started taking out their assault rifles.

And onward we went.

Chapter 12

Reno

I would do anything for a cigarette right now. I would do even more to see Garrett again.

The only thing I was sure of was that I was in a sewer, everything else had been a hazy blur… actually the last several days had been. A hazy gathering of memories and half-remembered dreams that all seemed to swirl into each other like mixing paint.

I had slept a lot, and usually fell asleep to Kay’s crying. Trig and Nico were either silent or being held elsewhere. I could only hear the soft sobs of the little cicaro.

I inhaled the nose curling scent of radrat shit and stagnant water and shifted around to a sitting position. The scars from my first time being bound had been chafed and now the silver streaks were rubbed raw and split open.

During my time in cold and dark isolation, I counted water drops and listened to the radrats run the length of the pipes. I even tried out my imagination which was a light in this dark and damp seclusion. I had never been one to have imagination. Reaver was the introvert. I let movies and video games decide my imagination for me.

I imagined being with Reaver and Garrett most of all. Those two had never even met but in my head we were all best friends, even Tinkerbell was there. We would scout and sentry, kill legionaries and hang out and do drugs. I dressed my fiancé up in waster clothes and even mussed up that slicked back black hair he was so proud of.

Those thoughts warmed the chill in my bones and quieted the hunger eating my stomach alive. They fed me worse than we fed our rats. Just half a square of a hard cracker-like thing they called tact. I had heard that word from Garrett; he was the one who distributed them to the Morosians.

The District of Moros… I wasn’t sure if I was there but where else would I be? My captors had to be Morosians, if the crimson-haired one (named Kerres apparently) was Jade’s ex and Jade was a Morosian, well, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together.

My eyes burned as the door opened, light fucked my eyes in their sockets. I closed them and clenched my jaw.

As the footsteps clicked against the damp stone I braced myself to get the stuffing beat out of me again. Usually they raped Kay before they kicked me around but he had been quiet for a couple hours now. That poor fucker slept a lot; he was the youngest out of all of us and the most pretty.

The scraping of boots on brick stopped and I squinted my eyes to see who it was.

“Memorize this.” Kerres’s tone spoke to me like I was a piece of shit on his shoe. Reaver would’ve made short work of this retard. I was looking forward to the day where he would be my bitch.

The crimson-haired Morosian unfolded a piece of paper and slid it towards me. “You can read can’t you?”

I wanted to spit in his face but they had bound my mouth with duct tape, mostly because that was all I had done the first couple days that they had me. Almost got my jaw broken too.

I stared up at the fuck, an idiot with a glint in his eyes that radiated batshit crazy. I wasn’t sure what Elish had done to this asshole but he definitely had had his snow globe shaken.

My teeth grinded as he peeled the duct tape off of my mouth. “Read it, out loud and memorize it. If you don’t, I’ll shoot you.”

I snorted, not even glancing down at the paper. “Get your pampered little ass out of Skyfall and live in the greywastes, buddy. You’ll learn quickly that we’re not afraid to die. Though perhaps all that hair dye has soaked into your brain.”

Surprisingly Kerres narrowed his eyes at me. “Greywaster? Why the fuck are you Garrett’s whore if you’re a greywaster?”

Great, I wasn’t in the mood for story telling, but as much as I wanted to hock in this guy’s face again I decided to slip the knife and try and jimmy myself a door open. “My best friend is leading a rebellion against King Silas in the greywastes. I was shot, captured by Elish, and sold to Garrett, you fucking moron. We’re on the same side.”

The man’s face tensed, and he paused for a moment before he composed himself. He rose to his feet and kicked the paper towards me.

“Memorize this; I’ll be coming back for you in an hour.”

And with that he left, though to my surprise he left the door open, letting light into the damp cell I had been thrown into.

I looked down at the scrap of paper, crawled in shaky handwriting that rivalled that of a meth addict.

“My name is Otter
…” Well, he already had that wrong.
“I am Garrett’s cicaro. I’m scared, they’ve beaten me and the others badly and I’m in fear for my life. Whatever you have to do please surrender Elish over to the Crimstones along with 10,000 tokens. The drop will be made in Maple Park five days to the minute of this videos release. Failure to comply will result in the execution of the cicaro Kay.”