Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (84 page)

“Everything wrong with that man is my fault. I feel such agony when I’m around him, so much guilt. Look at the shit I said to him, look at how weak I’ve become under this stress. I’m falling apart and I’m king, Elish, I cannot fall apart,” Silas’s face tensed in self-derision. He shook his head stiffly; he looked livid with himself. “I cannot fall apart right now, Elish,” he said again.

“Perhaps you should take a few months leave,” Elish suggested. “Spend some time in one of the vacation blocks in the greywastes or perhaps spend some time in your old hometown. Take a vacation and let me be king. I’ll handle Irontowers, I’ll handle Sanguine…”

Elish stopped when he saw Silas’s face darken, a caustic sneer appeared, quickly sweeping away the weakness that had been so fleeting.

“No… I cannot pass off my problems like some sort of child,” Silas said in a tone that reflected the expression on his face. As his tone and body language shifted, the king rose off of Elish’s lap. “I cannot let you clean up the mess I made. I have to be involved, I have to fix this.” Silas turned from Elish and clasped his hands behind his back. “I need to stop whining. I need to stop blaming myself and fix this.”

“Master…” Elish said, his voice cooled but still kind. “You said yourself you are tired, you need a break from all of this. You may be a born immortal and the most powerful man on earth – but, love, even gods take rest. Let me take the burden for now.”

“No, all of this has happened because I’ve been complacent,” Silas said staring at the white brick wall in front of him. “Because I have been too kind.” He turned around, Elish saw the green fire start to return to his king’s eyes. “I have let too many people walk all over me for too long. And you know what, golden boy?”

Elish remained silent for a moment, before forcing his tone to remain kind. “What, Master?”

Silas’s eyes flashed dangerously. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cigarette tin, he brought a cigarette to his lips before lighting it with the tips of his fingers.

“I’m about fucking done being nice,” he said, every word seemingly dripping acid. “I’m done being a whining bitch about this. I’m done being tired; I’m done fucking crying. And I’m done letting those failures of chimeras walk all over me. Ludo is dead, Valen is gone – who remains?” Like someone had replaced the sobbing king Elish held so close to him with a completely different copy, Silas pushed the metal door open and stalked out of it. His robes flowing swiftly behind him and a trail of silver cigarette smoke.

Elish stood in the doorway for a moment and admired his king walking so swiftly and confidently down the hallway. Though the dark corners of his mind were annoyed he wouldn’t be able to be king like he had wanted; there was the swell of pride he felt by seeing Silas pull himself out of the toxic swamp he had created for himself.

King Silas had his moments of weakness, but they were few and far between, and they never lasted. After he had himself a breakdown and got it out of his system, my phoenix always rose from the ashes better than before.

And more dangerous than before.

One day we will rule this world together – one day I will be king beside you.

“The ones remain… Artemis and Apollo, Cepherus, Rio, Felix, Jack, and Sanguine,” Elish responded. “Ludo has been confirmed dead. Nero and Ceph retrieved his burned bones from the building we had directed Jack to burn.”

Silas nodded and roughly pushed open two metal doors. He walked through the hallway where Jasper was still being kept and passed the two guards Elish had dismissed earlier.

“Open the door,” Silas said to the two guards. “Open the door and leave us.”

Elish crossed his arms and smiled an amused smile inside of his head. Jasper was about to meet an entirely different king, and Elish was quite looking forward to how this was going to play out.

Without hesitation the male guard to the left opened the door, and after an exchanged nervous glance with his work partner, the two of them quickly walked down the hallway, the same direction that Elish and Silas had come in, and disappeared through the metal doors.

“You’re back?” Jasper snarling voice sounded. “Sami used to stare like an idiot for days. You –” Suddenly a strangled choke cut off the man’s scathing words. Elish quickly walked into the room and bore witness to an astounding sight.

Silas was standing in front of a struggling Jasper. The king’s face was as cold and blank as the arctic tundra but his eyes were two infernos of black fire.

And not only that – energy was emanating off of the king, an almost visible wave of swirling darkness that seemed to hold no colour, on the contrary it seemed to suck the light from the room. It was an incredible sight to behold, one that made Elish stop in his tracks and stare in awe.

Jasper on the other hand appeared to be in pain. The greywaster was grasping his head with both hands, his fingers turning white from the intensity of his own strength. His eyes had rolled back into his head and his entire body was trembling like someone had started shaking him.

No expression graced the king’s face as he stood in front of the writhing, screaming man. He seemed to watch Jasper with an indifferent yet burning expression on his face. There was no smile of enjoyment, no sinister laugh or even a scathing last remark. Elish watched with continued awe as Silas seemed to destroy the man right in front of him.

Elish had seen his king do it before, but it was rare – and as a trickle of blood fell down Silas’s nose, Elish was reminded why.

Silas had incredible mental powers but they came at a price. If he did them for longer than the short period his mind allotted him; he died under the stress of his own abilities.

But King Silas didn’t seem to care. As Jasper screamed, his hands now tearing out his long dark hair, Silas’s eyes only narrowed further, followed by another almost tangible pulse of energy.

Then the man became silent, his hands dropped and his body became limp. And when Silas lowered his hands Jasper collapsed onto the ground, his eyes glazed over and his mouth open and slacked.

Silas looked down at the man before nudging him with his foot. Elish walked over and dabbed the king’s nose with his kerchief.

Silas jerked his head away from Elish’s touch, the energy still not dissipating even though Jasper, still alive, was nothing but a twitching heap on the ground. The king turned from Elish, and without a word, he walked out of the room.

Elish shadowing his footsteps, wondering just what his king had planned now. The mind of Silas Dekker was a fascinating one indeed, a wonderful and yet scary thing to behold.

It was almost like he was a mental shapeshifter

Yes,
Elish said to himself.
He’s like a mental shapeshifter.

The king confidently swept past the legionaries who had gathered out of curiosity to see what all the noise was. All of the uniform-clad men and women were watching their king in awed respect. For some of them this may have been the first time they had laid eyes on King Silas in person.

“Would you like me to call Nero to prepare the plane?” Elish asked. He stepped outside of the base with King Silas still two paces ahead of him, and followed him down the paved strip of road which led all the way to the harbour; green grass and grazing animals surrounding them. The Falconer was parked in a parking lot just beyond the concrete walls.

“No,” Silas answered back. The mental shapeshifter’s tone was as confident as Elish had ever seen it. He felt a jolt of intrigue despite of his usually placid emotions.

“Are they feeding the lions?” Silas asked.

“Yes,” Elish replied, a smirk started to crawl onto his face.”Nero and Felix are.”

The king nodded and took a narrow side path that cut through the green field. Several grazing deer and a horse looking up at them as Silas and Elish walked past them. In the distance they could both see chain-link fences and as they got closer the sound of Nero and Felix laughing.

The two brute chimeras were standing over a wooden shelf that wrapped around the chain-link fence. The two of them were hanging off of it with a white bucket beside them full of various human body parts. Below them ten large lions were hovering around, looking up at the two chimeras with their tails flicking back and forth. The lions had blood stained on their muzzles and were standing over chewed bones with meat and skin still hanging off.

Nero looked over at Silas and Elish and immediately his smile disappeared. Felix who was standing beside him had a different reaction. Though his smile also vanished upon the realization that the king was watching, it wasn’t replaced by concern like Nero, the soured look he had on the plane returned.

“Are we leaving, Kingy?” Nero asked, dropping a strip of flesh he was holding back into the bucket. Both his and Felix’s hands were streaked with blood from picking up the flesh inside of the buckets.

Then to everyone’s shock – Silas smiled.

“Why would we leave, amor?” Silas said through his smile. He casually flicked his blond hair back and held out his hand to Elish. Elish helped him walk up the stairs and onto the wooden walkway Nero and Felix were standing on. “You’re not done feeding my lions.”

Nero’s eyes nervously shot to Elish, but if he thought his brother would offer him any reassurances he was sadly mistaken. Like Silas, Elish had also seemed to snap back into his norm. The soothing words and affection had been left back in the room inside of the base.

Nero forced his face to smile. He picked up the chunk of meat he had just dropped back into the bucket. Below him several lions chirped, their nails scraping against the concrete slab that stretched out several feet until the grass took it over.

“Oh, I cannot get my hands dirty, lovely,” Silas whispered to him. He reached out a hand and gently stroked Nero’s muscled arm. He traced his fingers over the large bicep and eyed the flesh that seemed to be from a similar area on the human they had been feeding the lions.

“Why don’t you give it to Felix?”

Nero’s expression dropped; his pupils retracted making the blacks almost drown inside of the indigo irises. He turned around and looked at Felix, who had turned several shades paler.

“Give the meat to Felix,
bellua
,” Silas purred, using Nero’s own special pet name. Something that Nero and the other chimeras knew could either be a reassurance of their own safety or a condemnation.

Nero’s adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. He did as he was directed and handed the piece of flesh to Felix. The young chimera took it with a steady but cautious hand before turning around and throwing the meat into the lions’ pen.

In an instant the heavy tranquility was broken up by the sounds of vicious fighting. Like their alley cat comrades the lions snarled and screamed at each other, claws and fur flying as they fought over the small chunk of meat.

“Hand him another one,” Silas commanded. “Look how hungry they are. My poor babies, so many lions and so little food to go around.”

Nero picked up a foot and calve, shreds of flesh and snares of veins hanging off of it and resting cold against Nero’s skin. He once again handed it to Felix who was looking more nervous than ever.

“What is… this?” Felix said lowly. “I’m not playing this fucking game with you, Silas.”

But Silas only smiled at him, before tightening his jacket around him. It was a warm day, winter was leaving, but there was a certain chill on the air – an uneasy bite that everyone could feel stinging against their skin.

“Throw the meat over the edge, Felix. Feed my lions. There are too many of them – and if they’re not well fed – they will start to consume one another,” Silas said in a voice dripping sweetness. He raised a hand and swept it over the lions’ den. “They’re hungry, my lovely little brute. Feed them.”

“Fine…” Felix mumbled. He turned to the front of the chain-link fence and tossed the leg down. Once again the pen echoed with the sounds of snarling, roaring cats as they argued and fought over who would get the piece of meat. It was a worse fight this time, a smaller male got a hold of the leg infuriating the large dominant male. The alpha, with a thick black mane, advanced on the smaller male, his tail high in the air and his front paws shaking the ground as he charged him. The smaller male shrunk down with a snarl, cornering himself in a corner of the pen.

And as Felix watched the commotion right below his feet, Silas’s eyes locked with Nero’s. They burned into his, emerald slaying indigo again and again, before he nodded at Nero and said in a low voice:
“Do it.”

Without a moment’s hesitation Nero whirled around and grabbed Felix, one hand on his underarm and the other one grabbing his belt. Before the dark-haired, brute chimera had time to defend himself, or utter a single pleading word, he was thrown over the fence and into the lions’ den below.

The screaming rang across the yard like the ringing chapel bells, and as Silas walked to the edge of the chain-link fence and gazed down at the grisly scene below, a new, demonic smile appeared on his face. One that made even Elish’s heart jump.

Silas took in the scene, Felix on his back struggling and screaming as the lions tore at him with both claws and teeth. His eyes were wide open, the whites showing through the glistening red blood pouring from the deep lacerations on his face. Though soon, like his pale skin, the white was covered, until nothing but deep reds and soon the various shades of his innards could be seen.