The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (59 page)

Jack quietly followed Tiberius down the long concrete hallway, passing legionary with their heads bowed and generals and sergeants alike who gave them their customary nods of recognition. That had always been a rule when there was a chimera in their presence, the family was royalty after all and no one dared not show the upmost respect, especially those with a more... intimidating appearance.

Jack ran his tongue along his serrated teeth and smiled wryly to himself. Though Sanguine had always had internal issues with how King Silas had created them Jack had embraced the fear he stuck in the hearts of the common man. He quite liked that every non-chimera seemed to be absolutely terrified of him.

Tiberius led him through several long hallways, until they passed three legionary guards holding assault rifles. As soon as they saw the silver-haired chimera and the Imperial General’s husband they nodded and took a step back. Jack let Tiberius enter the room first.

“Well, bullet wounds do heal quickly I am surprised they didn’t put you out of your pain... are you going to put in a request to make Caligula immortal after this?” Jack closed the door behind him with a light click; Tiberius already making his way to his husband’s bedside.

He turned around to see Kessler laying in a hospital bed, staring forward; his grey eyes hard and his face stone-cold and emotionless. In that moment Jack decided to back away from his immortal brother. The Grim was never one to sympathise with those who suffered from a death in the family, perhaps he was a bit desensitized to it all after so many years. Still though, Kessler was family and the man did love his sons more than anything.

“He made me choose... I didn’t see it in that moment, Jack, but he did,” Kessler said quietly, his eyes not moving from their locked position. “I realized... this was no act of a scared legionary, unwilling to die for his king... this was the clone, Jack, this was Reaver’s work. I know this because Silas would have done the exact same thing.”

It was the clone? Interesting... but Kreig was hundreds of miles from Aras, how could that be possible? It had been a couple months, yes, but still, this clone was shaping up to be quite the incredible specimen. Jack was looking forward to meeting him, to be able to get a taste for who this born immortal was. Surely he was a magnificent beast for his own king to be so enamored with him.

A killer of all things...

“You know what I also realized?” Kessler shook his head; he wiped his face slowly with his hands. “There was this sniper near Aras, we called him the Raven. For the last five years he would roam around and snipe our men... that was him too I bet.”

“To think that Lycos was alive this whole time,” Jack replied with a smirk. “I would give him a round of applause if he still lived. To have hidden our little dark chimera all this time? It’s too bad how it ended. I would have wished for Silas to have tried to rehabilita – what are you doing?” Jack blinked as Kessler rose to his feet, pulling the IV out of his arm and grabbing a thick wool sweater that had been slung over a hospital chair.

“Kess!” Tiberius exclaimed but with a hard look he was quiet.

“We’re leaving, Jack, this is personal now. Reaver killed my son and has been terrorizing my men for years. Elish will try and stop me and I will have none of it. Come with me. Tibbs, stay behind and try and delay Elish from following us – now, Jack.”

“But the creatures –”

“Are nocturnal and the sun is already rising.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. Though Elish ranked higher than all of them, his own duties technically ranked first, and collecting Timothy’s remains was Jack’s job. Though he did wish his brothers didn’t boss him around like some sort of sengil. But what was there to do? Being the silent observant type that Jack was affected how his brothers treated him. If it made the chest thumping chimeras happy to order around their Grim of a brother, let the babies have their candy, it was easier that way.

But on the other hand, Jack did love to stir the pot, if only to passive-aggressively poke and prod.

“Elish will not like this,” Jack responded in an almost sing-song voice, and with that he smiled. He almost liked the chaos this move would cause; it was a break in the monotony and the dreary gloom that had been on the family. Watching the heated exchange that would undoubtedly come with Kessler’s actions would be an absolute joy to witness. Especially since Jack had done nothing wrong personally.

A brother getting disciplined was such a delight.

Kessler let Tiberius stick a couple more bandages on his wound before Kessler batted him away. “Elish is in charge of Skyfall, the greywastes are mine. Let’s go, good luck dealing with him, Tibbs, as I said, try and delay him as much as you can.”

“I am not looking forward to it... but okay, for Tim.” The stoic-faced general nodded solemnly. “Just bring our boy home...”

Once again carted from one location to another.
Jack sighed internally but followed his brother to their plane.
Juni is at Olympus having relations with a cute little blond sengil and here I am dealing with family drama.
Oh, the life of a sengil, it definitely isn’t all bad, is it?

This time, to his drowsy relief, Jack was able to sleep on the next plane ride. By now he had been up almost all night, only catching a cat nap here or there. Once he got home he planned on rewarding himself with an entire day in his tower, ordering his favourite food and perhaps ordering some new paints and canvases. The greywastes did not offer much but their grey-black rolling mountains and twisted trees always inspired his imagination. He could give the painting to Apollo perhaps; it was his and Artemis’s birthdays soon.

Jack heard muffled sniffing. He opened his eyes to see Kessler gripping the steering mechanism for the plane hard. He was holding back his emotions as they flew over Kreig, and Jack could only hope he could keep it together until he was dropped back off at Cardinalhall... it was always so awkward when they cried; especially the more brutish ones who usually kept their emotions in check. Jack never knew what to do with himself so he usually just ignored it with every fiber in his body.

With a yawn he rose once the plane had been turned off and checked the device imbedded into his wristwatch. Every other chimera that had the death-trackers planted in their brains were alive, so after this hopefully he could go home.

“We... we left him on the street off to your left,” Kessler said quietly, his voice thick with emotion.

The both of them stepped off onto the cracked concrete; the street Kessler had parked the plane on holding three-storey structures on each side. All of them intact but their siding had been stripped, revealing the bones of steel beams and mortar stained a hundred shades of grey. This street must’ve been in the industrial part of the city, or a lower-income one. All the buildings were full of gaping windows, open and declaring their defiance to the elements. A perfect place for these so called
reptile men
to hide in. What a wonder Perish’s splicing was, to think they survived off of small vermin, water, and radiation. Though perhaps the water had allowed the growth of fungus or something similar. Irontowers’ sewers were full of fungus, most of the prey radanimals there lived off of it.

Jack glanced around, scanning each window for any movement, but as Kessler had said these creatures seemed to be nocturnal. So with that putting his mind at ease he followed behind the Imperial General, now scanning the long double-lane streets, not for the splices but for this clone he had yet to meet.

“Oh look, moss... interesting, it seems they have a fair water source,” Jack remarked, running his hand up a still standing light pole. He looked at his hand as he retracted it and rubbed his fingers together. Wondering what mixture of green and brown paints he would need to mix to make such a colour. “This place has so much water, the town will decay faster now but perhaps one day you can turn this into a block.”

Kessler didn’t answer. He was several paces in front of Jack; his head bowed and his shoulders tight. Dressed in only a wool sweater and a pair of thick cloth fatigues, he didn’t look like the Imperial General he was. This made the silver-haired chimera a bit put off; if the clone was watching them he certainly wouldn’t get the right impression of his family.

Jack followed and checked his watch again. He pressed several buttons to pin-point the location of the death signal he had received. To Jack’s surprise he saw the small red dot flashing to his left, down a small street they were about to walk past.

“Kessler... the street to the left is where I got the signal, not this one.” Jack jogged over to the small single-lane street, void of the tipped over rusted cars and debris; it turned onto the suburbs from the looks of it.

“I can see where we left him and he isn’t there... fuck, I hope he didn’t try to crawl to safety... I can’t believe I actually –”

Jack didn’t need to ask why Kessler had suddenly stopped talking; the reason was right in front of both of them, half a block down the street.

Strung up on a light pole.

Kessler gave out an anguished cry and broke into a run. Jack stared for a few moments longer before following him, his eyes going in all different directions trying to figure out if this was an ambush or not.

As Jack got closer he found his steps start to slow, until they stopped altogether. He stopped and stared at the scene in front of him, and even though he had been collecting the dead for decades Jack felt a cold nausea in his chest he had rarely ever felt.

Tim Dekker was hanging off of the street lamp, his chest exposed and the cavity empty of nothing but his dry ribs; though it was not rope that had been used to dangle the young chimera over the lizards, he had his own intestines wrapped around his neck. Semi-dried coils of peach-coloured guts, with black flecks that were flies buzzing around to lay their eggs in his brutalized and mutilated corpse.

Tim swayed there in the windless city, his chest cavity open to the flies and his calico-coloured eyes staring off into oblivion, the young teenager’s pasty chest a ruin from quick knife-work and eager teeth. Tim’s entire body had been brutalized in the most beautifully artistic way.

Then as Jack took a step closer he could see a pool of Tim’s innards below his feet, already drying and sticking to the cracked concrete. The Grim tapped the pile with his foot and with that gesture a cloud of flies flew up into the air.

Good, dependable greywaste flies, not even winter stops them from consuming the dead.

The smell was interesting, the same stink of a freshly butchered corpse about to turn under the cold winter sun, the noise was even more interesting but not unique in the least. It was the noise of thousands of insects buzzing over a soon-to-be disappearing meal – and of course Kessler muffling his own agony.

What a beautiful scene, breathtakingly beautiful.

Yes, this man is King Silas. Reaver’s not just sending us a message; he made us an exquisite sculpture while he was at it.

Jack took a step closer and reached a hand out to touch the boy’s boots. “Ah, yes, this would be the work of our clone wouldn’t it? Silas will be happy to hear tha-”

“I’LL FUCKING KILL HIM!” Kessler suddenly screamed. He whirled around and took several steps away from Tim’s dangling corpse before whirling around and dropping to his knees. The Imperial General let out an agonizing scream before slamming his hand down on the pavement; tears falling from his downturned head and staining the ground.

This would make a unique painting... I shall remember this scene.

Sanguine’s birthday is in the spring, maybe I will give it to him.

No… no, I want to keep this one.

“He could have saved him... he’s... these are not fatal bites... Reaver killed him. LOOK! He, oh fuck, did he take his heart?”

There was a sickening thunk as Kessler pulled Tim down to the ground and with a moan the Imperial General put a hand on Tim’s chest.

“It wasn’t cut out... his heart was chewed out of his chest. What kind of fucking clone is this?” Kessler groaned. He shook his head and sniffed, before raising a hand and brushing it against his son’s cold, dead face.

“Well, they call him the dark chimera for a reason... he is Silas’s clone after all,” Jack answered back calmly, looking around just to make sure this clone wasn’t peering at them from one of the crumbling buildings. It would be in his nature; Silas would have done the same thing. He got a grand amount of pleasure watching people experience the pain he inflicted on them.

“Silas was not born evil; Reaver’s worse than he is. This isn’t the work of a fucking chimera, he’s... he’s something else.” Kessler’s tone dropped. “I do not know what Lycos created... but I will see him encased in concrete for all eternity for this.”

Then the Imperial General rose to his feet, a new fire inside of his eyes. As Jack looked on, his hands folded behind his back, he watched as his brother got out his remote phone and after a few buttons pressed Kessler put it to his ear.

“I want Tiberius here, and I want every legionary we can fit into the planes scouring the city and towns surrounding. Reaver Dekker did this and he cannot be far.”

Chapter 21

Reno