by Quil Carter
“And you believe him?” Perish said amused.
My lips pursed tight. “I don’t have a choice,” I said, a bitter barb on my tongue. “The evidence is under lock and key and Silas has… Silas has…”
I paused, my eyes fixed and my fingers still fidgeting with the label. “I have to know,” I whispered.
“You know it was Silas… don’t you?”
My finger slipped and bumped into the beer bottle. I had to grab it quickly to prevent it from spilling.
“Silas wouldn’t have gone after me,” I whispered, my throat dry. “Silas wouldn’t have told them to shoot me. Julian… Julian wouldn’t either.”
The anger came at me quicker than a flash. I slammed the bottle onto the ground and rose. “He wouldn’t have ordered the sniper to fucking kill me, Perish!” I yelled. I ignored the pain that shot through my chest. “Julian wouldn’t have either!” That was the puzzle, that was the damn puzzle that didn’t make sense. I’d been shot. I’d been shot and those shots had kept coming…
How could it have been Silas or Julian? They would’ve never…
Perish put his index finger on the Ziploc bag and slid it towards me. “You’d be shocked at what Silas does under the shadows of darkness and secrecy,” he said to me blandly. “You would be a fool to trust any word coming from his mouth.”
I looked down at the baggy. “What does that have to do with anything?” I asked, motioning to it with my chin.
“I’d like to introduce you to a little friend of mine,” he said as I examined the bag. “Its name is scopolamine, but I call it scopa. But you’re already quite familiar with it. Silas used to use it on you during your, shall we say, mentally stunted years? It was in pill form mixed in with your nightly pills and when you took it… you were an obedient, slobbering little cum monster he could fuck into next week. Add a little ressin to the mix. You know that sex drug, right? Well, his golden boy would be begging him for more.”
My heart froze from his words, and my body followed suit, leaving me a statue with his eyes forever fixed on that bag of white powder. “W-what?” I whispered. I looked at him, and hated how that smile taunted me.
Perish took another drink, then leaned over and slid my cigarette tray over to himself. “I could go on for days about the horrible, degrading shit that Silas did to you, Elish.” He motioned to the baggy I was still holding. “That’s only the tip of the iceberg of what Silas Dekker did to you. Does that sound like actions that would come from a man who genuinely wanted to help you?”
Nausea joined the growing pit of rot forming quickly in my stomach. Those pills… the nightly pills. I’d stopped taking them after my mind had been returned to its normal state. I’d never tried to find out what was really in them, what Silas had actually been drugging me with every day.
“He’s…” I stared at the bag, bile rising in my throat. I was about to reassure Perish that Silas had changed. At least he’d changed when it came to me. But instead I ended up saying what was really on my mind. “What other things, Perish?” I asked, my throat dry.
But Uncle Perish only smiled at me, and as if he knew it was coming, there was a beep down the hallway. Mantis was here.
“Take that scopa with you, little nephew,” Perish said as Mantis’s voice, calling Perish’s name, rang out. “You never know when you may need it.” He stood. “Just remember: ‘a little pinch underneath the nose, makes the golden boy take off his clothes’.”
I glared down at the bag and felt the anger inside of me begin to grow. It threw itself over the rot and nausea that had been bubbling in my stomach and consumed it, using it as fuel to feed and expand.
Behind me I heard kissing and purred words. I stood, slipped the bag of scopa into my pocket and exited the dining room.
I walked past Perish and Mantis, both kissing deeply in the hallway, and grabbed my jacket.
“Oh, shit, you didn’t tell me Elish was here!” Mantis hissed. He ran a hand nervously through his dark brown hair then cupped it over his mouth. This lead to a stifled giggle, one that made his bespectacled grey eyes squint. “Shit! You can’t tell anyone, Eli!”
“I don’t care,” I said flatly. I put on my jacket and turned to Perish. “I’ll be returning tomorrow. I will be bringing a test subject.” I suppose I now had to go find another dying dog. I hated how the excitement for my newest theory was being dampened by Perish’s words… and my newest revelations regarding Silas.
He’d been drugging me… after feeling so fucking guilty over forcing himself on me during my first time, he’d continued to do it after putting in those implants. It was bad enough that most of the time I was passive and willing to let Silas fuck me, but all of those times… I wasn’t active, I just lied there and let him do what he wanted to me.
That wasn’t enough for him… he had to drug me into a willing sex partner.
What else had he done to me?
“No need to bring a test subject,” Perish said in a singing voice. He smiled warmly at Mantis, and my friend looked curiously back at him. “Mantis will be able to help me with that.”
He was the one who’d been bringing us the sick animals, more often than not. I nodded then, bid them both a curt goodbye, and left the Skytech laboratory.
Every step I took seemed to agitate the anger inside of me, as if a single hard bump could explode it like nitroglycerine. My fists were clenched almost as tight as my teeth, and the corners of my eyes were beginning to flash and shimmer with distortion.
I called a black car and soon I was being driven back to Alegria. It was clear that the driver knew I was in no mood for small talk, the ride to the skyscraper was one made in silence.
Something exciting and wonderful had happened today. I could very well have figured out the secret to immortality, but right now, all I wanted to do was strangle Silas with my bare hands.
“Hey, sweetness,” Julian greeted me as I walked through the double doors to my apartment. He walked towards me as I slipped off my shoes, then wrapped his arms around my torso. I could hear something going on upstairs. I recognized the chaos, it sounded like one of my siblings was getting hell from Silas.
Julian squeezed me to him. “I’m not sure what’s happening, but Silas is screaming bloody hell at Ellis and Nero, I think.” He purred and nuzzled his face into my shoulder. “I missed you. Where were–”
I walked away from him and his touch. “What’s wrong?” Julian asked.
There was no rhyme or reason as to why those two simple words triggered something, but it happened.
“What’s wrong?” I suddenly exclaimed, and the simmering anger inside of me mixed in with the slowly cracking mind, creating an explosion that had me bursting out with laughter. Yes, swiftly and without hesitation, I broke. “What’s wrong, he asks? Hah!” I tossed my jacket onto the chair and stepped out of my shoes. “Nothing is wrong, dear. I have so many fucking things going right!”
Julian just stared at me, and near the wall-to-ceiling windows, Loren had stopped as well.
“Baby…” Julian’s tone switched to one bursting with meek sweetness. He walked to me as I began to pace, my head racing, and tried to put a hand on my shoulder. “We told you not to go to that lab. It’s… it’s not good for your stress level right now.”
“My stress level?” I laughed. “You think the laboratory is more stressful than this mad house?” As I paced back and forth, I caught Julian mouthing something to Loren. My sengil nodded and walked to the hallway at a quickened pace. “You think living amongst spiders is a fucking cake walk?”
Julian held out his hands. “Take a deep breath, hun,” he said. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”
What’s bothering me? What’s bothering me? I’ve been living under the thumb of a man who tortured me for twenty-six years, who drugged and raped me repeatedly for eleven of those. I’ve been living with a man who… who…
Had my sengil shot in front of me because he wanted me to move on with my life. Because he wanted me to d
ate… to date…
Julian.
I paused, the last image of Finn before he was shot flashing through my mind.
Leave me, I’d told him. That’s an order. Leave me and run to safety.
No one came to help me. Apollo and Artemis hid behind a tree.
Another sweep of rage grabbed hold of the shreds of sanity I never had in the first place. I pushed Julian away and stalked down the hallway. I could hear Loren in the bathroom rooting around the cabinet, but I ignored it.
I raised my hand and banged it against Apollo and Artemis’s door, then opened the door and pushed it so hard it slammed against the wall.
Both twins stared at me with wide purple eyes. Apollo was sitting at his desk with a text book in front of him, Artemis was at the foot of the bed with his guitar on his lap.
The dumb looks they were giving me had me inhaling embers. “You fucking hid like cowards,” I suddenly screamed. I stalked to Apollo and ripped the guitar out of his hands and threw it. I heard it crash but I don’t know where, I was grabbing my younger brother by the neck and I was squeezing. “You two fucking hid like cowards when I was getting shot at. When Finn got shot. You sorry excuses for chimeras! You fucking weak, useless pieces of shit!” I screamed this in his face, wanting nothing more than to snuff the life out of the little shit. “You weren’t helpless! You weren’t fucking helpless and you still chose to let him die! He helped raise you!”
Chaos exploded around me like a volcano erupting. Artemis had both hands on mine, trying to pry my grip from his twin’s neck. Julian was there too, his calmed tone coming too quickly to hide the imbedded fear.
“Elish… Elish, let go of him.” “Elish, let go. Let go.” “ELISH!”
I glared at Apollo, his image becoming blurry from the tears filling my eyes. “You could’ve helped him,” I cried. My strength left me and Artemis ripped Apollo away. “You could’ve helped him.”
“Elish,” Julian cried. He was right behind me. “Elish. Baby. It’s not their fault. Baby, it’s not their fault.” A hand was placed on my shoulder, then another on my arm. “Come with me… please.”
“What’s going on down here?” Silas’s booming voice suddenly rang.
And the dark veil returned.
I turned around and walked out of Apollo and Artemis’s room. I saw Silas coming down the last step, his green eyes blazing with anger.
“What’s wrong with you?” Silas snapped, but when he saw the expression on my face, the anger weakened. “Elish?” He said it softer this time. “What’s wrong with him, Julian?”
I closed the space between the two of us, and with Ellis and Nero staring down the flight of stairs, I raised my hand and backhanded Silas, right across the face.
“You wanted me to fucking date him that bad?” I snarled. I grabbed Silas by the neck, just like I’d done to Apollo, and crushed it in my iron grip. “You wanted me to move on from my fucking sengil so desperately… you fucking had him shot?” I began to shake him, just as another barrage of hands tried to pull me away. “You fucking killed him! Admit it! Admit that you fucking killed him!”
Hands grabbed me and pulled me away from Silas, and Nero and Ellis grabbed Silas and managed to rip him from my grasp. I tried to break free from Julian, Apollo and Artemis holding me back, but my infuriated emotions didn’t translate to any advanced strength. My mind was gone, and my body was trembling so violently it was no wonder they so easily broke my grip on the king.
Silas’s green eyes flared, his lips stiff. “You think I killed Finn?” he whispered dangerously.
“He didn’t do it,” Nero cried behind him. “Elish, it wasn’t him.”
“Shut up!” Silas whirled around and snapped. “You three have already done enough.” I saw a sliver of Garrett by the stairwell, he was trying to camouflage himself.
Silas turned back to me, tears were still running down my cheeks but my anger was drying them up to a stiff film. “After everything… after I cried with you? Supported you?” His voice was rising to strangled, his composure was dripping away. “You think it was ME?”
The last part… the last part was screamed.
“Who else could it be?” I cried. “You have them… you have them as your fucking puppets. Nero, Garrett, and Ellis… you’re the only one capable of stopping them from giving me that evidence. You never had any fucking intentions of showing me that video. Admit it!”
Nero’s face fell, Ellis’s eyes flooded with tears, and behind them… Garrett sunk to his knees.
Reactions that drove more nails into this coffin of consensus.
“Elish…”
Garrett walked down the stairwell, a ghost of himself, his hands were trembling worse than mine. “Elish, we’re sorry. We’re sorry.”
But still when Garrett said those words – my mind locked up like an engine void of oil.
“We were worried it would kill you,” Nero spoke next. “We’re worried if you knew it was–”
“It was me,” Silas suddenly said.
The entire room went quiet.
“W-what?” I said, my own words strangling me.
“Dad!” Ellis cried. “Don’t you fucking–” Silas raised a hand, and she put her own hand over her mouth.
“I killed him,” Silas said quietly. His chin rose, and as my brothers and my sister turned away, their shoulders shaking, he took a step towards me. “I wanted you with Julian and there was no other way to make sure that happened.”
It was only when my lungs began to burn, did I realize I had stopped breathing. There was no movement, even the tremble that had been taking my body, had disappeared with Silas’s admission.
You killed him?
You killed my Finn?
“I was shot,” I whispered.
“Indeed,” Silas said. “He missed the first time, but once he checked his accuracy… he got the job done.”
He missed?
Then I remembered something, a detail that my mind had glossed over.
He was right.
Finn had leaned down to pick up the cat ears after they’d fallen. When he’d tried to put them on my head as a joke.
Silas was right – he’d ordered Finn to die… on my birthday.
“Unless you wish for me to activate those implants again…” Silas said coolly, his stance that of a man prepared for battle, and his eyes two burning gems. “You’ll get over it and accept it. I did what had to be done for you to move on with your life, and as your owner, your master, I am entitled to do whatever I want to you.”
Your owner. Your master.
It was as if he’d reached into my chest and had grasped my heart with his clawed talons. But he didn’t rip it out of my chest; he didn’t hold the beating organ like some grisly trophy. No, he squeezed the dying, twitching flesh in his steel-trapped grasp, and crushed it into a powder that filled my body with poison.
It was worse this time. How could it be worse when he’d been doing this to me my entire life? Every one I love, he takes away. Why is it… I am so hurt?
I knew why.
“I loved you,” I whispered.
For a moment, a brief, fleeting moment, his chin tightened and there was a flash of sadness, but quickly his dark nature consumed it, leaving nothing behind but a shadow of who Silas Dekker could’ve once been.
“With your penchant for loving weak blond creatures, I take that as an insult,” Silas spat. He turned from me. “I’d have hoped shooting that stupid sengil in the head would–”
There were no more words from Silas. I lunged at him, I grabbed his neck with both hands and I activated my altered touch. I sent two shots of electricity into him, a bellow of pain erupting from my lungs and filling the room.
“How fucking dare you!” I screamed. I clenched my hands, my teeth locked and bared. “He was everything to me! He was fucking everything to me!” In front of me, Nero, Ellis, and Garrett cried my name in hysterical tones. But when the hands attempted to rip me away, I made my entire body a Taser
and they recoiled from me with frightened gasps.
I was going to kill him. I had to kill him. “I fucking loved you!” I screamed. “I fucking loved you!”
They grabbed me again; Silas’s muscles twitching and spasming underneath me from the currents shooting through his body. “You monster! You fucking heartless monster!” I was pulled off of him, and I fell backwards onto the ground.
Silas shot to his feet, then he spun around and glared me down.
I kept waiting for his eyes to go black. I kept waiting for the pain, the mind-destroying pain that felt like a thousand needles, razors, knives, stabbing and slicing the meninges of my brain.
But there was nothing.
“Your implants will be activated tomorrow,” I heard him say. “Every one of you leave him alone. Let him enjoy his last evening with his mind.”
“Silas…” I heard Nero whimper, his tone pleading. My eyes were on the ground, on my socked feet in front of me.
I heard Silas hit him, once, twice, three times. They must’ve been hard hits, I heard both Ellis and Garrett let out a sob.
Then there was nothing but the sounds of many people ascending the stairs to the top floor.
A door clicked soon after, and I was alone.
The silence that surrounded me was louder than any explosion, any scream. It pressed itself against my ears, finding the canal and infiltrating it with static and pressure.
I waited for the emotion to hit me, the horror of what my future now held, or the sorrow that came attached to these strings of realizations. I waited with solidarity for these feelings to overwhelm me, that guttural sense of horror knowing my life as I knew it was coming to an end.
But strangely, the overwhelming pain didn’t come. I felt… strangely cold.
And strangely alert.
I knew what I had to do.
I rose to my feet, my home empty of all people, and with my heart and my mind void of all feeling, I put on my shoes and I left the apartment.
CHAPTER 66
I slid my keycard through the slot, and when the red light turned green, I pushed the door open and stepped into the long white hallway.