Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (96 page)

I walked to Silas, and probably to try and defuse the tension in the air, Garrett gave a whoop and started clapping, soon everyone followed suit and I got my first ever round of applause.

Silas held up a hand and the applause stopped. “Sanguine was raised an orphan in the greywastes. It has taken him almost a year to become strong enough to be welcomed into this family, but he has surpassed his difficulties and has become a rather impressive chimera,” Silas said as he laid a hand on the small of my back. I looked at the audience, nothing but rows of eyes, some of them reflecting in the dim lighting and others not. I couldn’t make out their faces or who was who, but they were all staring at me and King Silas. “He is my fifth-in-command and he has earned that place in our family. You will all accept him as your brother and love him as I do.”

I smiled awkwardly, not knowing what else to do.

“Sanguine’s time in the greywastes was troubled. He came to Skyfall a broken man, driven to psychosis and insanity due to intense mistreatment and abuse, not only at the hands of the parasitic greywasters but at the hands of a man not worthy to even gaze upon my Sanguine.” As Silas said these words my stomach clenched and started to twist into tight knots, a nervous heat started to rise, starting at the back of my head and slowly moving to my ears and face. I didn’t like where this was going, and I wracked my brains trying to find a way to stop him from saying further who Jasper was and what he had done to me.

Surely Silas wouldn’t say it in front of the entire family…

“This man kidnapped Sanguine when he was eight years old and held him for eleven years in a rotting basement, void of fresh air, sunlight, proper food, and freedom.”

My heart sank to my knees, and I think I knew what was next.

“This man, named Jasper, started raping Sanguine at eight years old and it continued until Nero found and freed him at nineteen.”

I dropped to my knees, my hand over my face. The dimly lit room around me, a buzz with voices, swirled around like I was on a rollercoaster. I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t move.

“Why are you telling them this?” I rasped, though my voice was muffled by my hands.

But Silas didn’t care. Though I heard the sound of a scuffle in the audience. It was Jack, I was sure it was someone stopping Jack from coming to comfort me, to take me away from this.

“Jasper has been being kept prisoner on the Dead Islands,” Silas’s booming voice grated against this festering wound in my soul that he had just ripped open. I winced from his words, my hands now shaking as they clasped my mouth. I was still on my knees, the room was still spinning, I was sure I was going to throw up.

“He has been confined and still allowed to live – until today.”

I looked up at Silas in shock, and saw the king with the light shining on him, look back down at me. A dangerous smile spread on his face that hinted to an inner plan that I couldn’t discern. He put a hand on my head and petted my hair. “Bring him out, Kessler.”

Bring… him out?

A scream ripped through this torment that was physically weighing on my shoulders. I found my head rising and my hand falling from my mouth as a strong-looking chimera in a high-ranking legion uniform appeared in the doorway, leading a scrawny man with a burlap sack over his head.

“No…” I shook my head back and forth, my eyes fixed on the man being led towards me. “I don’t… I don’t want to see him… I don’t want to see him…” I scrambled to my feet but all I was able to do was shuffle backwards, my head shaking back and forth.

“I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to see him,” I kept saying as he came closer and closer to me. The room was full of talking, the heartbeats slamming against my ear drums to join the blood rushing behind my eyes. The dizziness intensified and my empty stomach gnawed at me as if my body was attempting to eat itself alive to spare me this horror that was now stepping onto the stage.

The memories of when I was locked in that basement were all coming back to me. Memories I had locked away, stuffed down and hidden. Memories I had just started to forget. Jasper’s meth binges, painting the crows on the walls, watching him fuck Juni, Levi, Lyle.

And Cooper… I had killed Cooper to spare him.

I pushed my hand over my mouth to stifle the cry as these memories ravaged me. It felt like Jasper was fucking me all over again. I didn’t want to go back there. Why was he doing this to me? Why was be putting me back in the basement?

“SILAS!” Jack screamed, but he didn’t even manage Silas’s full name before someone muffled his voice. I just sat there on my knees, my back pressed against the back of the stage, shaking my head back and forth.

Kessler roughly pushed Jasper onto the stage. My captor stumbled but he didn’t fall. He was dressed in a grey jump suit, his hands were shackled. But it was him. I had memorized every inch of that body during my imprisonment with him. I knew the hands that used to hit me; I knew the chest I stared at when I was little, then as I grew up I looked at his collarbone, his neck, and then his face. I knew that skinny, meth-ravaged body, and I knew the face underneath that bag.

“And here he stands,” Silas said darkly, his voice plunging back into those dark and dangerous tones; tones that were not only sharp, but laced with a lethal poison. “Here stands the man who raped and held captive a prince, my chimera.”

Silas looked behind him, and when he saw me cowering against the wall I saw his eyes narrow in anger. “Get up, Sanguine.”

I shook my head.

“GET UP!” Silas snarled. “You are no child cowering in the corner anymore, Sanguine. You are a chimera, you are powerful!”

I shook my head. “Just kill him already, don’t make me rip open these wounds, Master – I just – I just healed them. I was just starting to become okay. He’s not worth the trouble, just kill him and be done with it.”

I expected him to laugh at me, that seemed to be the state he was in. A cruel state that cared nothing for what I was going through, he only wanted what was best for him. The man who was a thousand people in one body as Nero had said.

Perhaps Nero had been right.

Instead though Silas didn’t smile. With Jasper being held towards the audience by Kessler Silas turned his back to me and looked towards the crowd.

“Many of you have seen my Sanguine at his most powerful. When he gives in to a different personality that he calls Crow, when he gives up control to these voices he becomes a chimera to be reckoned with. He killed Ludo under this psychosis, and murdered quite a few Skyfall residents as well in the most morbid of fashions. All to appease the voices in his head, the personalities he submits to,” Silas said.

I sniffed and looked up at him, feeling my heart crush inside of me. I wanted the caring Silas, the attentive king that I knew was in there somewhere.

Did Silas have his own voices he was slave to?

But I – I had defeated mine. When I had resurrected – they had all gone away. I had been healed.

“Now the trouble with Sanguine listening to this psychotic side of him, was that he became uncontrollable. He became a raving, rabid monster without restraint who could kill friend and foe alike, and not only that – my Sanguine was miserable. My creation was taunted and tormented by these voices to the point of madness, and as his king, I couldn’t bear to see him in such a state.” Silas started pacing again. I watched him, my breathing starting to quicken to the point of hyperventilating.

“And yet when he listened to Crow…” Silas turned to me. “He was beautiful – oh was he ever a force to be reckoned with. Look at him now… look at how weak he is when faced with his past. He’s happy without the voices, yes, I do love seeing him happy.” Silas started walking towards me, a horrible smile on his face. “But then again… I also love seeing his beautiful – alluring – madness.”

Silas leaned down. I pursed my lips and looked away from him; he raised a hand and took my cheek and turned me to him.

“Why not have the best of both worlds, lovely?” Silas purred. He leaned in and kissed my trembling lips slowly, then rose back to his feet.

“In Silas’s Fallocaust.” Silas raised his voice as I sat on my knees, feeling lost, confused, and scared. “We can have the best of both worlds can’t we?” Silas started walking towards the stage, and, oddly, several chimeras started pounding on the tables.

“Can’t we?” Silas said louder as more chimeras started joining in to the rhythmic drum beats, one beat after another, getting louder and louder until the room echoed with its tribal noise.

“CAN’T WE!” Silas yelled. He spread his arms out in a welcoming gesture and the pounding quickened. I found my hands covering my ears, and the first shots of what I knew was going to be an anxiety attack.

“YES – WE – CAN!” I heard my brothers yell in unison. “YES – WE – CAN!”

Silas laughed. When he turned around I saw he had a small device in his hand. He held it in his left hand and grinned at me.

“I agree.”

Silas pushed the button.

Immediately my neck snapped back as an electric current ripped through my brain. I screamed and tried to grab my head but the electricity had welded my limbs to the floor. Instead I closed my eyes, feeling the current course through my body, it was so strong I could feel it in my teeth.

It was painful, it hurt so much I screamed again, but on the heels of that scream I could see a dark cloak start to descend on my head, a dark cloak that was covered in black feathers. It covered my brain and seemed to focus the electricity inside of it. In a way it was even comforting, it was warm, inviting. It was… alive.

Pulsating.

Moving.

It was… talking.

Daisy, Daisy… give me your heart to do.

“SAMI?”
Barry’s voice rang out like a chorus.
“SAMI! Kill Jasper. Kill Jasper.”

“Kill Jasper, Sami.”

“SAMI!” The voice started to change, it started to become lower, gravelly and dry.
“Sanguine… Sanguine, my mihi, my mihi. Kill him, or will you cut yourself again? Or will you jump from another building again after raping Valen bloody?”

“Why are you standing there scared? My mihi, my Daisy Daisy – why won’t you give in to me?”

I opened my eyes and looked around the stage, the sounds were muffled but I could see them still. It was odd, the sounds were images, auras almost, rippling and surrounding the room.

Then I saw him inside of my head.

Crow was indeed back.

Silas had control. He could throw me back into psychosis at his whim.

He had done something to my brain while I was resurrecting.

What had he done to me?

My gaze turned to my Crow. He was standing tall and confident with his close-mouthed smile. He was dressed identical to me, all the way down to the red bowtie. His hair was down to his jaw line and as black as a crow’s wing; his face pale and healthy and his burning red eyes squinted and bright.

I looked like him.

Crow had started out as a boy with fuzzy bear ears, brown hair and black eyes, he called himself Barry. Then as I got older he had slowly started to change, each transformation suited to the person I needed him to be. Perhaps I had been my best friend all along?

Was that it?

I slowly rose to my feet, my mind quickly darkening, like Silas’s button had pressed an off switch; it was fading into the abyss, so fast, I couldn’t grab hold of it again. I couldn’t reach it.

The psychosis was back, Crow was back.

I was back.

And the sounds of the room came rushing back to me with a force that threatened to knock me off of my feet. The pounding of dozens of fists against tables matching the beating of my heart, the heavy and electric atmosphere of the room that cradled and exploited these mind numbing noises, the intangible feeling of excitement, intoxicating and aromatic.

And the smell of fear.

My eyes turned to the skinny man standing hunched over, behind held by Kessler in a firm grip. He was on display to the audience like slave set up for auction to slavers, with many pairs of glowing eyes drinking in this play they had been treated to. I saw their movements, their pounding fists and as I rose to my feet the sounds sped up, and when I smiled the entire room exploded in excited noises. They were like starved dogs when their master came to feed them, my brothers were animals, eager and excited to see just what kind of food I had brought them.

Well, I had never been one to disappoint.

I did love an audience.

“Take off his hood,” I demanded, my voice was raspy, it was dry. I didn’t sound like me but there wasn’t a fiber in my being that didn’t enjoy that fact. My body was soaking in this wonderful feeling of confidence and power and though I was well-aware that this was brought on by something that Silas had done to me – I didn’t give a fuck.

Kessler, a young chimera legionary that had a square face, a thick neck, and short dark hair looked at me, and smirked. He raised a hand and ripped off the hood that had been covering Jasper’s head.

And when I saw that man, the man who had kept me prisoner for over eleven years, raping me, abusing me, torturing me, my smile only widened, then, unable to contain my amusement…