The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (77 page)

“Yeah, someone’s in there! We fucking found them!”

No, no!!!!
I squeezed Trig harder, ignoring his hand clenching and digging my side. I rocked the boy back and forth to keep him quiet; he was so loud but his sobs muffled as his face pressed into my chest...
Shut up, Trig, shut up, Trig!!

They won’t find us... they won’t take us back there... Oh fuck me... no... no.

Please, no. What did I do to deserve this? Where was my house on the hill? Where was my Reaver? My drug nights in the basement?

I cried out when I heard them rattle the door, and kissed Trig’s forehead. He had stopped struggling, he was limp in my arms. The poor kid had resigned himself to our fate just like me.

He had no fight left in him, and neither did I.

Then the door was kicked open and a wave of winter air rushed in. I looked up and saw the silhouette in the door, with a blue embered cigarette hanging from his mouth.

“Hah! Looky here! Mother fucker!” a happy voice sounded.

I stared, not believing who I was seeing.

It was Ares.

“What, seriously?” Siris appeared beside his twin brother. His eyes widened and he let out a barking laugh. “Well, holy fuck! He has Trigger too! Hey, Tiggy-Wiggy!”

My mind went blank and with my mind my body drained of its last reserves of energy. I felt my arms go limp and with that I released Trig from the protective hold.

His body fell limply to the ground and for a moment all I did was stare at him.

Trig’s eyes were open and so was his mouth. A soundless scream on his lips, and eyes seeing nothing but the gates of oblivion. An expression on his frozen face of pure unaltered fear.

Trig was dead.

I had smothered him.

Chapter 28

Jade

“Get up! Fucking get up, you god damn...” I was fast asleep which was saying something considering I was having a fuck load of trouble falling asleep recently. Well, they didn’t give a shit about that because I was being yanked out of my bedroll.

My instincts kicked in though and I pushed whoever it was away from me. “What the fuck?” This is the second time this had happened, but Reaver was off charging the Ieon and the remote phone so who was pissed at me now?

I looked at his grubby fingers, with dirt-caked into his untrimmed nails before yanking my arm away from him.

It was Hopper, what the fuck was up his ass?

“What the fuck? What the fuck!” Hopper yelled. He pushed me backwards so hard I almost lost my balance. “Jimmy is fucking dead that’s what! What the hell... that’s it... I’ve had enough... get out, get out of my caravan and if you dare –”

I had barely woken up; if I couldn’t smell that damn slaver I would have assumed I was still dreaming.

I shoved him away and, as my slum-pride dictated, I advanced on him with my arms spread wide. “I didn’t do shit, Hopper! And I didn’t kill that old man either.”

Hopper shook his head; his lip clamped down over his teeth. “Look, fucking chimera shit...”

“Did you see me? Did you fucking see me!?” I snapped. My eyes went towards a strip of daylight that suddenly shone on me. I was cautiously relieved to see Perish coming in, one of our guns strapped to his back. Mine was beside me, but if I needed it –

“What’s going on?” Perish blinked and looked at the two of us. “What’s everyone upset about?”

“The dark-skinned dude is dead and apparently this is all coming back on me,” I said angrily to him. “I was sleeping the entire time. I didn’t kill anyone.”

“He ran off the damn cliff!” Hopper’s eyes were wide, and though when he was at his best he was a calm and charismatic soul, now he was pissed off and frustrated. I knew we had overstayed our welcome now, even if it wasn’t me.

I picked up my AK 101 still in its holder and belted the strap around my chest. “Well, instead of fucking assuming it was me, why don’t you actually try and find out who did it?” I said bitterly. “I didn’t kill that old man, and I didn’t kill Jimmy.”

“I just want to get the fuck outta here and you can leave too.” Hopper glared at me, all three of us walked out of the tent. Sure enough, I could see Churro and Tabbit talking in hushed but rapid voices, their own arms crossed over their chests. They were standing beside a median and below their feet I could see skid marks.

No doubt, like the old man, Jimmy had been chased.

When they saw Perish and me they gave us the most threatening glares I could imagine, ones that told me they would crucify me and burn me alive if they weren’t so fucking scared of us.

Though Reaver wasn’t here anymore...
I swallowed at that realization. Maybe we were no longer safe with these slavers. Perish wasn’t threatening at all and I was still only seventeen years old, at least for a little while longer.

“We aren’t leaving...” I looked over at Perish and saw his unfocused eyes looking from Jimmy to the tent I had just emerged from. “Reaver and Killian will be coming soon and we must wait for them.”

“You can wait for them...” Hopper said lowly. “I’ve had about enough of having chimeras for guards. Obviously you little mutants can’t control your urges. We’re done, deal’s off.”

I suppressed a growl and looked over to the tunnel that we had camped beside. We had been trudging uphill on a cracked road all day yesterday, and it had taken a lot of work getting the caravan through some of the fissures in the road. Hopper had been right it had been slow going but we made it.

“That’s not going to happen.”

My head snapped towards Perish. I almost wanted to do a double take at the serious and rather unmanic look he was giving Hopper. The scientist, dressed in a black duster and Garrett’s bowler hat looked every bit a greywaster right now. He had changed a lot over the past several weeks. He even had a thin brush of facial hair over his face and no longer spent hours grooming himself like he used to.

Hopper raised his hands and let them fall. “It ain’t up to you! This is my caravan, buddy. I hired ya and I can fire ya.”

I rubbed my head as those two fought; it was pounding with a headache now. The only thing I had to try and dull the pain was some of the pain killers Reaver had in his drug suitcase. He’d left it behind but had left out the combination of course, so I just had what he’d left me.

“You hired us to help you get to Falkvalley and we are. If you have any proof that Jade did this, I’d like to see it.” Perish glanced at me. “Is your head aching, Jade?”

I nodded, giving it more of a rub, though of course it never helped. “Yeah.”

“Come, come, pet... we’ll get you food.” Ignoring Hopper swearing at the two of us Perish lead me back to the tent.

“We’re having a meeting,” Hopper called as we disappeared into the tent. “All you guys, come to the covered caravan and we can decide what ta do.”

I ignored him, not giving a shit about their meeting and sat down on my bedroll. I glanced down at my fingers that had been scratching behind my head and scowled at them.

My fingernails had dried blood caked into them. I scratched again and this time I could feel the scab on the back of my head.

This wasn’t really anything new though. I once had over a dozen small pock mark scabs in my skull from the surgery to prevent me from using my empath abilities but they had healed long ago. As long as my ears weren’t bleeding I didn’t worry too much about it. I knew when I was in the danger zone, it had happened to me before.

“There you go, eat it all.” Perish presented me with a bowl full of canned peaches. I looked at them hungrily, my mouth giving me a sour jolt as if anticipating the flavours.

“Thanks, Per.” I wasn’t used to the scientist treating me nicely. He usually reserved his affection for Killian but maybe that meant he was on my side. He would’ve seen me if I had snuck out of the tent.

Though it wouldn’t be that hard for someone to come into the outskirts of camp. We were short for night watchmen since Reaver had taken off, it was just Perish doing patrols.

I played with the idea that perhaps he was the murderer, but watching that guy sit down and stare off into space as he chewed on a piece of jerky made me reconsider that. Perish was a scientist, he wasn’t a fighter, just like Lycos never was a fighter. Science-oriented chimeras excelled in brains not brawns; I couldn’t see that guy doing any joy-killings. Even if he technically wasn’t a chimera he had still jumped into the role of one for the past seventy years; he just didn’t have that bloodthirsty nature in him.

I finished off my peaches, noticing Perish’s eyes continuously looking through the empty tent flap. No doubt watching for Killian and Reaver even if we were miles from the dirt road they were supposed to be using. Dude seemed devoted to that kid; I wonder how Reaver could stand it. Anyone who showed any affection to my master was on my shit list, it already annoyed me that Elish had been nice to Killian.

Eventually we emerged out of the tent and saw everyone packing up their stuff, most of them giving us weighted glares as they did.

I shook my head as I heard the crunching of boots behind me. “I don’t know, Perish. We’re at a high elevation now, far away from Kreig. Maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal for us to just go off on our own. We’re dancing a thin line with these fucks now.”

Perish wrung his hands. He leaned up against a rusted out car and looked up over the rim of his hat. “No, we should stay with them. A few more nights maybe.”

I didn’t like the idea but the only person who could override that decision would be Reaver. Then again, he was the first guy to pin these murders on me.

Maybe I should just branch out on my own... eventually Elish would find me. I still had my tracking chip imbedded in my head.

No... not only would Elish kill me and never trust me again with a task, I couldn’t leave the remote phone and the Ieon behind.

I stayed near Perish as we continued up the pass. To my left was a rough cliff, completely crumbled and blocking off the road in some areas. To my right was a sheer drop off, where Jimmy’s crippled remains were.

So who had killed Jimmy though? I had been so worked up defending myself that I never stopped to have a think over who it could’ve been. When the old man had died I just assumed he had made a mad dash for freedom or something, as dumb as that sounds. Now that Jimmy had made his leap of death – who could it be? I know it wasn’t fucking me that was for...

My hand lifted absentmindedly and I scratched the back of my head, where I had felt the blood. I started to move my fingers over the scab.

“What a pretty view,” Perish said happily beside me, rubbing his hands together as he looked to his right. The drop off was fifty feet down but it led down to a valley below us. Off in the distance we had rolling hills speckled with trees and yellow brush, acres and acres of black tree forests, coated with the blowing grey ash to make it appear like a sand-washed painting more than an image in front of me.

My eyes travelled to Perish and for the first time I looked down at the bag he was always carrying.

Perish never had any possessions before. Of course Leo and Greyson had given him none when he was captive; everything he had on him now was borrowed from the lab in Kreig.

“Have you ever been up here before?” I asked him not taking my eyes off of his rapidly jerking eyes, always trying to take a thousand things in at once but only a quarter of it was ever processed in his brain.

Perish shook his head. He bent down and picked up a rock before throwing it over the edge of the road, it flew into the valley below never to be seen again. “No, no, I haven’t, but I may afterwards. This is such a quiet, nice place. I can’t wait to show Killian.”

I drew up his aura as he talked, the fractured aura with thousands of small cracks, each one holding behind those fractures little splinters of his –

Holy shit.

No. I peered in deeper watching him like a hawk as he picked up another stone to throw over the edge.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The cracks were almost gone; it was like they had knitted themselves back together. This wasn’t the same aura I had seen in the greyrifts apartment... it was repairing itself.

But how? I know I had seen who he was before that brain piece had gotten cut from him and put into the O.L.S, but we weren’t in Falkland yet, there is no way this could be happening to him without the god damn piece.

The realization came to me slowly but once my mind even hinted to the fact it started to become more and more a reality. I found myself looking at my hands, at the blood crusted in my fingernails and the scabs behind my head.

As Perish jogged ahead, climbing up rocks and walking on top of medians, I reached into my own bag and pulled out the velvet case which usually held the claw rings that were my trademark weapons. Something I wore to my battles, or when I felt like I needed extra protection.

I watched the scientist and opened the case.

The colour drained from my face, and I could feel my knees start to wobble like they had been turned into jelly.