Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (101 page)

I walked into the apartment to Silas in a horrible state. His face was twisted in extreme anguish, his hands clutching his hair; he was pacing with wide and staring eyes as Elish stood beside the support beam that separated the living room and one of his sitting rooms.

“We will get it back,” Elish said calmly. “You heard Valen, he wants Sanguine and Jack dead and we can give him just that.”

“He broke one already,” Silas yelled, his voice seemed to start off as normal but by the end of his sentence he was screaming again. “He broke one… he broke one already. Did Nero really recover Adler’s corpse? Tell me they don’t have him too, promise me!”

Elish held his hands out to Silas, trying to calm him down. “I saw the baby’s corpse, love, the baby did indeed die. We’re guessing that perhaps you threw the briefcase out of the plane after it was hit in an attempt to save Sky’s brain matter. The rebels must’ve seen it and retrieved it.”

Sky’s brain matter? I stopped, several feet away from the door and turned around to Jack. “Brain matter?” I whispered to him.

Jack held onto my arm and we both turned our attention back to Silas.

“I’ll murder that little shit. I will kill him slowly!” Silas screamed, his eyes seemed to glow green like they had been coated in uranium. “I should’ve drowned that little bitch as soon as Garrett confirmed his enhancement had failed. I swear on Sky’s grave I will never put up with failed chimeras ever again!”

Silas let out a choke, before he stumbled forward. Elish caught him and the king completely broke down. He clenched his jaw, his eyes wide from inconsolable pain, but the king didn’t cry, he seemed so insane with emotions that no tears were coming, there was just inhuman, uncontrollable pain and sadness.

“I want my Sky back,” Silas screamed, though he seemed to snarl this at the same time. His hands clenched Elish’s robes and tore at it. “I want him back, Elish. I have to have him back. I can’t do this. I have to have him back.” Silas kept repeating this like a mad man. “I need to have him back. I need to have him back.”

He wants Sky back? But who was Sky? Was he a chimera that Silas had loved or someone before the chimeras were even created?

It didn’t matter, whoever Sky was his brain matter was inside those bottles. My master need those vials to make him happy and I was going to get them for him. I couldn’t stand by and see him like this, it filled me with such an anger that I was helpless standing here. And I was no longer helpless.

I grabbed Jack’s shoulder as Silas’s agonizing cries filled the room. I turned him to me.

“Can you fly a Falconer?” I asked him.

Jack looked shocked at Silas’s reactions, but he managed a nod.

I gave one more passing glance at Silas, his face stricken like he had shell-shock, his eyes seemed twice the size as they usually were, or perhaps it was the whites that were showing. Either way it was a jarring sight, it was like I was looking at a monster and yet, a fragile being at the same time; one I felt compelled to comfort. This man had ended the world; he had seen the terrors of the last world war. He was strong, but as I looked at that terrorized face I realized that behind those emerald eyes lay a deep and terrible pain.

A rage swept through me, but the rage wasn’t directed at Silas. It was a rage for the injustice I was seeing play out in front of me, because my king had been through enough in his long life and he didn’t need this. He didn’t need something so important to him, to his past, taken away.

Silas had told me last night when he had turned off that remote control, he had said that one day I would be his bodyguard. And I didn’t need to be in psychosis to do this job, I would get the vials back for him. I would bring them to him and be the person to put that smirk back on his face.

I loved my master, I owed him everything, my freedom, my sound mind. I was bound to him and he was to me, no matter how much Elish and Jack hated it.

“Let’s go,” I said to him.

Jack nodded. We turned from the gut-wrenching scene in front of us and headed for the stairwell. Though I was confused when Jack started going down the stairs instead of up to where Silas kept the family’s personal Falconer.

“We need guns,” Jack said simply when I inquired about this. “Nero has guns, lots of them. We’ll sneak into his apartment and grab some assault rifles, ammo belts, grenades, maybe some knives.”

“I like the sounds of this,” I said. The empathy I felt for Silas and the excitement of going to Irontowers to kill Valen was creating the perfect chemical reaction inside of me. I could feel the adrenaline bubbling and churning and it was starting to make my head light.

“We don’t even have to worry about dying,” I chuckled as we started on the last flight of stairs until Nero’s floor. “Sometimes I forget the reality of that. I still can’t believe I’m never going to die.”

“I try not to think about it; when I think about the reality of living for eternity it makes my stomach fill with butterflies,” Jack said as he picked up his pace. Though our boot steps were barely registering on the high ceilings of the stairwell, we were both trying to be quiet. Perhaps we were mutually afraid that Elish would bark at us to get our asses back to Silas’s apartment; no doubt he wouldn’t approve of us barging into Irontowers but I didn’t want to waste time planning. Valen had already shown he was willing to smash those vials.

The two of us entered onto Nero’s floor, and without knocking, I quietly twisted the door handle and peeked inside. When I couldn’t see anything or hear anything I motioned for Jack to follow me and tiptoed inside.

Nero’s place looked exactly what you would expect Nero’s place to look like. Purple walls and grey carpet, black leather couches and chairs, a giant television and sound system, movie posters and hot guys with their cocks hanging out on the walls, but hilariously enough some of them were posted next to framed paintings of people in Victorian outfits and groups of people in scenery, paintings that looked like they had been stolen from a museum.

Then I spotted it, a large metal gun rack with a glass front, ten assault rifles on display and underneath the rack, a table littered with miscellaneous ammo, pistols, knives, grenades, and… sex toys.

Yeah, this was Nero and Ceph’s apartment alright.

I walked inside.

“Come to steal my guns, eh?”

Jack and I both jumped. We saw Nero with his arms crossed, leaning against the door frame of his bedroom. Ceph was grinning beside them.

I sighed, they were both naked and Nero’s cock and public hair were glistening with lube. Didn’t they get enough last night?

“Did you hear Valen’s television announcement?” I asked. Since Nero knew why we were here I made a beeline for his guns and ammo and started putting on a holster for around my chest.

“Yep, we did, we were just finishing up before we called a chimera meeting. You two aren’t going alone, immortal or not,” Nero said as he started putting on a pair of green cargo pants. “Wait for the meeting.”

I shook my head. “No, we’re going now. Valen wants the two of us anyways so what’s the meeting going to be about? We’re going anyways. Those vials…”

“… hold Sky’s brain matter, I know,” Nero said as he belted his pants. “Si’s flipping out isn’t he?”

I nodded, handing the same type of holster to Jack. “Who’s Sky? Why is he so devastated over Valen having those vials?”

“Sky was Silas’s boyfriend before the war,” Nero explained. “He was madly in love with him and he’s been trying to clone an exact copy of him, but Sky had some special shit going on and it’s proven to be real difficult for the smart chimeras to do. The brain matter gets eaten up as he attempts to make a Sky baby so this brain matter is extremely valuable to him. You’re going to get major favours with him if you do manage to recover it.” Nero started buttoning up Ceph’s jacket for him. I turned around to ask Nero more questions when I saw a look cross over his face as he looked at his fiancé.

Then Nero stopped, he looked at me with his face lined in a deep scowl. “Lots of fucking favours… Silas would worship the feet of whoever brought that brain matter back to him.”

I started sheathing knives to my belt, including my favourite long dagger I recognized from killing Jasper last night, it was blackened. “Yeah, I’m not fucking doing it to get his praises, Nero. I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do.”

“Yeah…” Nero’s voice trailed. “You’re fucking noble like that…”

I looked Jack up and down, he looked sexy as hell. He had an assault rifle on his back and an ammo belt, and several knives on his belt and two grenades in his pockets. He was armed and ready and so was I.

I turned around to leave, but found myself almost running into Nero.

My brother and friend pushed past me and started handing Ceph weapons.

“What are you doing?” I blinked.

“Turn the Falconer on and get ready,” Nero instructed. “That’s an order. We’re going with you.”

“What!” I exclaimed. “You? Why? We can do this shit ourselves.”

Nero shook his head. “I need to come to do the trade off anyways. Valen’s obviously taking you so someone needs to get the five ransom vials. We’re going, we’ll break you out after, and when we get the briefcase we’re going to say Ceph got it back.”

“Why…?” I said slowly.

Nero looked at me, a rare look of heavy emotion on his face. His lip pursed and he glanced at Ceph who was zipping up a bullet proof vest.

“Because if Ceph brings Silas that briefcase… I think that’ll be what it takes for him to make Ceph immortal.” Nero’s voice softened. “He’s… made no mention of making him immortal, Sanguine. I’m… afraid he has no plans to do it.” For the second time today my heart started to clench, another stoic and strong family member of mine was showing emotion that was complete opposite of their personalities. “I can’t lose him, Sangy. I can’t watch him grow old and die… I love the little fucker.”

“Aww, Nuuky…” Ceph whispered.

I guess that was it then. There was no way I wasn’t going to let Nero do what he needed to do to make Ceph immortal. If there was someone out there that I owed more to than Silas it was Nero.

“Okay… we’ll warm up the plane,” I said with a nod and a faint smile. Then, without another word, Jack and I both headed towards the door.

I looked out the window of the Falconer and saw the impressive city of Irontowers below. It was large and had many tall buildings. Some broken and crumbling with piles of grey debris at their feet, others fully intact to the point where I was sure people could live inside of them. It had several skyscrapers as well, all of them standing tall though they held streaks of black stain that made the broken windows look like they were crying.

The roads were an interesting sight as well. Some of the paved roads were cleared off, though you could see the hairline cracks through them. Others held bumper to bumper cars; all of them rusted shells that stained the ground below them brown. These cars were packed like sardines on the main road and the double-laned road leading out onto the highway, people desperately trying to escape the bombs though it looked like a lot of them were unsuccessful. From an aerial point of view it looked fascinating, it was like the universe had pressed pause on their lives. Time continued to flow forward but the lives of these people had been snuffed right out.

And made everything grey… just like my greywastes, my home, Irontowers was nothing but a marble collage of greys, blacks, whites, and the occasional streak of rusted brown from the cars. It was a dizzying sight to see all of these buildings below my feet, hundreds of them and miles and miles of cracked road, and soon I would be stepping down on this pavement. My first time back in the greywastes in almost a year.

“We’re touching down,” Ceph called from the cockpit.

Jack looked down at the city, and I was proud to see that my boyfriend’s face held no looks of worry or concern. Jack stared down at the grey, broken buildings with an underlining energy about him that told me he was excited. But why wouldn’t he be? We were immortal and no matter what we would come home. Even if we had to take a few weeks to resurrect from our injuries.

“What’s on your mind, love?” I asked him. There was a shake around us as the Falconer’s engine switched and the wings adjusted. These planes could land vertically; they were one of the last military planes made before Silas started the Fallocaust, and Silas owned every one of them that the Legion had been able to recover.

Irontowers reflected in Jack’s eyes as the plane started to lower, the large Wal-Mart in plain view which was surrounded by a parking lot. Though as I inspected our destination I saw scorch marks on the ground and charred buildings, I had thought it was just normal wear from my aerial view but I realized it was from the legionary invasion I had missed during my first resurrection.

“I’m surprised at myself…” Jack said with a thin smile. “Because I really am becoming a chimera. I’m not scared at all; I’m excited. Immortality really is something else. The only thing I’m worried about is that if we have to resurrect for months… we’ll miss the kittens growing up and they may not remember we’re their owners.”

His face split into a smile as he said this, as if he knew it would make me laugh and, sure enough, it did. I kissed him and lightly stroked the back of his neck tenderly. “We’ll not only come back to our kittens, we’ll be the ones to make Ceph immortal.”

Nero whooped from the cockpit. Jack and I laughed again and exchanged another kiss. It wasn’t long after that the plane touched down on a street about a quarter block away from the Wal-Mart. It was in another parking lot surrounded by smaller single-storey structures; it wasn’t completely hidden but it was harder to get at from the main road which was packed with cars. So whereas we could leave in a whim, it would take a long time for their military vehicles to get to us if we were being pursued.

Armed to the teeth and Ceph in full combat armour and a helmet, the four of us started walking down the street towards the Wal-Mart in front of us. The lighter mood the four of us seemed to have had left as soon as that door had opened though. We were quiet and on guard, four pairs of eyes scanning and going over every exposed window in case we were being watched.

This place smelled like the city Nero and I had been in together, the ones with the celldwellers. It had the same musty and stale smell to it that just smelled like home to me. Though smelling my old home didn’t fill me with warmth, it immediately put me on guard and switched my mind right back into survival mode.

“No electronics…” I mumbled under my breath, the quiet whisper that all chimeras used when they wanted only our advanced hearing to be able to pick up our words.

“No animals either,” Nero mumbled back. “Perish has been releasing F4 carracats steadily here with the game animals, urson and deacons too. He’s been releasing them on the north side though, perhaps they haven’t made it this far yet. Or else the rebels have been shooting them.” Nero looked ahead, the Wal-Mart was quickly coming closer. I could see a barricade of sandbags and brick in front of the large building, and more freshly plastered brick which made up the front. They had been repairing this place to be a fort from the looks of it, but this was confusing. Why would they build their base in a place where they knew the chimeras could find them? Perhaps they thought since they had Valen we would be more careful about where our bullets went – if so they were idiots.

“You two are going to go quietly,” Nero instructed. Our feet had just hit the thinner pavement of the parking lot, the entire stretch of road so cracked and broken it resembled the bottom of a dry lake bed. There were even tuffs of yellow and, surprisingly green, grass poking out as well. Though I would bet the radiation was weaker here since we were so close to the radiation-free Skyfall and factory towns. “We’ll bring the five vials back to King Silas just so we know we have those ones safe. If you have the opportunity or you see they’re not as strong as you think – shoot and bite your way out and light a fire for us to find you. You have a day to get this done before the family comes to get you. How’s that sound?”

I exchanged glances with Jack and we both nodded. “We can do that,” Jack said.

There was silence after that but the silence wasn’t for long. As we passed an old shopping cart corral we saw the first signs of life emerge from the Wal-Mart. Two men dressed in military camo with a red and green band around their arms and large guns on their backs. They propped the doors open with bricks and a moment later, Valen walked out.

I heard an odd sound and glanced over. I realized that Jack was grinding his molars back and forth; he was glaring dangerously at Valen. I could practically see the chimera state coming to his black, pupil-less eyes. He looked dangerous; I loved it.

Valen spotted us, but surprisingly he immediately turned away, his arms crossed over his chest and his head hung low. This was the complete opposite reaction I had thought I’d see. Maybe Valen was only brave when he had a video camera separating him from his family.

What a fucking coward. We would shove a stick up his ass like a skewered pig and roast his body over the bonfire we’d make to signal the family. The entire Dekker clan could celebrate Silas getting those vials back with a big meal, maybe we’d even celebrate Silas announcing he was going to make Ceph immortal.

“Stay right where you are!” a booming voice suddenly sounded. The four of us looked over at a burly man with short blond hair. His face was creased in a sneer and he was ugly as fuck.

Not just that… I looked closer and realized that the entire right-hand side of his face had been burned and healed; it was covered in bumpy skin that looked like dried dough, much like mine had been before I’d become immortal. He was even missing his right eye which was clouded over and milky in its socket. He looked like one of the bad guys I’d see in the GI Joe comics I used to read as a child.

“We have Sanguine and Jack, we’re not here for small talk,” Nero called back, his voice dripping hatred. “Send the pink fuck over with the five vials. I want to see they’re okay.”

Valen, still huddled in on himself, looked up and immediately shrunk back. The little shithead looked absolutely terrified, just seeing him radiate such weakness turned my stomach. He was like a little mouse in the presence of cats, only around until one of them got hungry. He didn’t belong with these rebels, that much was sure.

The man turned to Valen and nodded his head towards us. “Valen is going to come over and handcuff the two mutants. If you make a move to kill him, we’ll destroy the vials and we’ll kill Valen for good measure too. Jack will go first and Valen will bring you the two vials, then Sanguine will come next and Valen will bring you the three. Then get the hell out of here until you have our military weapons and ammo for the remaining two.”

My brow furrowed at this and I saw Nero was scowling as well. Valen certainly didn’t seem that popular amongst the rebels but he definitely wasn’t a prisoner. He had no binds on him or anything plus he had his own gun. Maybe he was just low on the rebel totem pole.

“Alright,” Nero said, making sure to hide his confusion in his voice. My friend and brother was in Imperial General mode, and it was a fascinating thing to see. All of us had our roles and duties, and leading the entire legion army was his and Ceph’s.

Valen came over with a pair of handcuffs in his hand, strong-looking ones with links twice the thickness as regular handcuffs. He looked just as dishevelled and gaunt as he did on the camera, except he seemed even smaller now. I had always seen Valen dressed in bright colours to make himself stand out, purple vests, pink jeans, neon green shirts, I never realized it until I saw him in drab green and brown camo just how small and insignificant he was.

It looked like all Valen had been trying to do was stand out so the family… or someone… would notice him.

And as I looked at the sad and defeated expression on Valen’s face, I felt a dangerous feeling inside of me, I think I felt bad for him.

My teeth locked and I shook it out of my head.

Valen stood in front of me, and as soon as he saw I was looking at him his face twisted into a sneer and his shoulders squared themselves. A weak attempt to try and make himself appear strong and in control but it was written on his face. The little fuckhead was terrified about this exchange; if he thought I was dumb enough to not see that he was a retard.

“Put your hands out,” Valen said in a voice trying so hard to be authoritative and threatening. It was like when Mouse, my kitten, puffed himself up to try and appear threatening. In his head he was as big as an elephant, but to everyone else he was just something to laugh at.

“Are they keeping you prisoner?” I asked him in the whispered chimera tone.

But Valen didn’t answer me back, he put the cold cuffs over my wrists and started tightening them.

“He can’t hear you, his chimera hearing never developed. He’s actually half-deaf, Silas busted one of his ear drums,” Jack murmured to me. “You know he isn’t anyways, he has a gun.”

Valen dropped my handcuffed hands and looked up at me, before looking at everyone else in the group.

“I practically fucking raised you, your fucking crib was in my closet,” Nero said darkly. “I bottle fed you, you unappreciative little bitch. How could you do this to your–”

Suddenly Nero’s eyes glazed over and his mouth stopped moving in mid-sentence, next was Ceph and, to my horror, Jack’s eyes rolled back in his head, though everyone still remained standing.

I whirled around to attack Valen but when I looked at him I saw his eyes had turned from pink to black.

Then a moment of recall that hit me with so much force it seemed to have its own physical weight. I had seen his eyes turn black before, and right before a strange dark vale enveloped my mind, I saw something in my memories.

Valen on the ground screaming, blood running down his nose, his face full of terror. It was hot, fire was reflecting in his eyes and it was burning my body. Yes, his body, it was hot and sweaty underneath my own. He was tight, I could feel his hole tighten around… around…

I was… having sex with him?

No, he must be putting things inside my head or something. I wouldn’t do that, not after what has happened to me.

Then the cloak wrapped itself around my brain and everything became clouded and hazy. I was walking though, I knew I was walking. One foot in front of the other with my brothers on either side of me. We were all walking like robots, Valen in front of us with his head bowed.

What was happening? Was Valen doing this? The feeling inside of me was almost identical to the strange shrouded sensation that I got when Silas had flicked the switch on that remote. This feeling was stronger though, whereas the psychosis was suggestions, screaming demands, this was like someone was controlling my movements like a puppet master. All four of us were under this control.

But then…

It was gone.

The vale lifted while I was walking down a homemade hallway. It was made up of stacks of sandbags piled a foot higher than my head with boardwalks made of two-by-fours that stretched across the gaps. Everything was lit with bluelamps, casting a cold glow and haunting shadows on the barricades that surrounded us.

The first thing I wanted to do was grab Valen and break his neck but as I walked I saw several men with assault rifles, also in the rebel camo. So I decided to play along; I had Ceph to worry about.

Jack was to my right, his movements stiff and sluggish, his mouth slacked like he was completely out of it and gone. I walked like he did and also made my mouth loose, and kept on following Valen through this maze.

It was dark inside of here. I could smell sour must and the distinct aroma of a fire that was burning chemically-treated wood. Sure enough, in the distance I could see a haze of smoke and a stream of light for the smoke to escape. It looked like they had just started settling in, from the compact look of the sandbags and the dust collected around them I think these barricades had been made before the Fallocaust.