by Quil Carter
And the next text to appear after made my heart plummet. King Silas Announces Elish Taking Extended Leave of Absence.
Then Olympus disappeared and I saw Garrett on screen with Reno beside him. Both of them were dressed in suits and fully done-up to look as official and in control as they could. I could see past the suit and tie and the good hair though, I saw the sadness in their eyes, especially in Garrett’s. He was doing his best to hide his emotions but I knew him.
Then the remote got snatched out of my hand, just as Garrett opened his mouth to speak and Kerres pointed it at the TV and shut it off.
And I lost it.
“Turn it the fuck back on!” I suddenly yelled. And as Kerres looked at me stunned, I took the remote back and gave him a hard push. “You’re not my master, and you don’t fucking tell me what I can and can’t watch. That’s my fucking family!” I turned the TV back on, my entire body trembling with rage. The emotions were rushing through me, and I felt myself unable to control it. I had to get to him and get to Elish. If I had to kill Kerres, fuck, fuck I swear I would. I just had to get to my master, I couldn’t let him go through this.
I started walking towards the door, when a voice made me stop in my tracks.
“Yes. I’m afraid Elish is no longer in Skyfall,” I heard Garrett say.
I turned back to the TV, my mouth open and a cry forming in my throat.
“We are unsure when he will return, but Skyfall will run as normal until that time. King Silas will be ruling Skyfall behind the scenes, and until further notice, it will be me and my fiancé doing all public appearances and running the council,” Garrett continued, and I saw Reno nod beside him. “As I have previously stated, it was an accidental release of sestic radiation by King Silas after he fell into illness and he has since recovered. No other comments on the incident will be made.”
Elish… he wasn’t in Skyfall anymore?
“Jade’s funeral will be held tomorrow as Apollo stated. Is Elish expected to attend?” a woman’s voice asked.
I saw a pull on Garrett’s lip, and, ignoring Kerres’s whimpering tears, I leaned towards the television, hoping beyond hope he would say he was.
“No. Elish left immediately after the incident with Olympus, and he is not expected to return for some time. Even for Jade’s funeral, I’m afraid.”
Oh, Elish…
I did everything I could to fight back the tears, but they were spilling from my eyes and running down my face. My heart had never hurt this bad before, there had never been so much despair inside of me, and empathy for my master. Knowing that he left Skyfall the night of the accident shone a heartwrenching window into his mental state.
Then a flare of anger took me unexpectedly, and I shot an accusatory look towards Gage. “Why couldn’t you control it?” I found myself yelling. Gage winced like I had just struck him, and shrunk down. “Why did you let that happen?” I inhaled sharply as my sobs took away my breath, and started crying into my hands. “You took everything from us. How could you?”
Gage stared at me but his gaze deflected. “I’m sorry… I’ve… I’ve been having trouble regulating my emotions. I can’t… we couldn’t, we couldn’t stop it.”
“Then that’s why fucking Silas locked you up!” I screamed before doubling over in hysterical sobs. I put my hands over my head and let out a mournful cry. My world was crumbling all around me, and I couldn’t hold back the devastation I was feeling. It was consuming me and eating me alive. I felt frantic and desperate, and my breathing was coming in short and rapid puffs. I couldn’t be here. I had to find him; I had to find my master. Our life was in ruins but we still had each other, and I knew we could get through anything together.
I got up. “I need to go,” I said, my chest shaking from my grief. I felt like a battering ram was hammering against my rib cage, and with every hit it was knocking my breath out of my lungs. “I have to–”
Suddenly I heard a loud bang, like someone had lit a firework and thrown it into the living room. I jumped up into the air and turned around quickly; my eyes wide and my already taxed heart in the process of being destroyed from anxiety.
And it was only going to get worse. Because in the corner, by the packs and the duffle bag, was Kerres… and he was holding the assault rifle I’d just seen, in his hands.
“He’s not cured!” Kerres suddenly shrieked. His face contorted right in front of me to that of a monster maddened with rage. His brown eyes were wide and boiling in their sockets and his entire body was trembling with instability.
His burning eyes shot to Gage who was shrunken in on himself. “You told me he was fucking cured! HE STILL LOVES HIM!”
“I’M NOT BRAINWASHED!” I screamed at Kerres. I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye and saw Gage run to the door to outside.
Without a glance back, he then opened it and disappeared.
I was too angry to chase after him, instead I walked up to Kerres but as I did he kept taking steps back, the assault rifle raised and pointing right at me. “I love him! Don’t you understand?” I said as loudly and as clearly as I could. “I love him!”
I pushed Kerres into the kitchen table and slammed my fist down on it. “I am in love with him and I have been for years. I’m not brainwashed, Kerres!” I slammed my fist down again, with so much force this time a stack of boxes fell to the floor and spilled their contents onto the ground.
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry but you need to get over me. You need to move on, Ker.” I held up my hands and clenched them, pleading with him. “It’s been over three years now. You need to find someone else and stop this. I’m a Dekker now; I’m Elish’s husband, and if you saw how well he treats me, you’d understand. He doesn’t hurt me anymore. He loves–”
I ducked as Kerres raised the assault rifle and tried to move out of his way, but I was still too weak from my recovery, and still too slow. Kerres struck me on the head with the butt of the gun and I spilled onto the ground.
“If I have to brainwash you into loving me… I will,” Kerres’s broken voice said, a weak whimper but one of crazed determination. “If I have to do what Elish did to make you love me. I will. You’re mine, J – and no one else’s.”
And as the world spun around me, and red dripped down my vision, pooling underneath my eyes. I heard the rattling of chains, and saw my ex-boyfriend with the thick chain of a dog’s leash in his hands.
Chapter 21
Elish
Elish slowly woke up to the sound of a fly buzzing around him. It was faint at first but it became louder as he faded in and out of consciousness, and soon it was flying in circles around his body.
Then the buzzing stopped. Elish opened his eyes and saw the botfly on his folded up jacket, cleaning its wings and its antenna and skittering around the grey overcoat Elish had been using as a pillow. It flew back up into the air when Elish moved, and once again, the buzzing continued, sounding like a little race car driving in circles.
Elish squinted and sat up. He looked around the covered wagon he had fallen asleep in, until he spotted his bottle of wine, half-empty, but the rattling to his left reassured him that he had another crate waiting for him. Not only that, beside it was a smaller wooden crate with bottles of rum, painted black to conceal its contents from any curious greywaster.
Elish reached past it to the crate and grabbed a fresh bottle of vodka, then got up and jumped off of the cart.
“Good lord, James, vodka isn’t breakfast,” Robyn said, sounding exasperated. “Are you serious?”
Elish unscrewed the cap and brought the bottle to his lips, and at this, the leader of Broken Road Caravans chuckled. She reached a hand out as Elish swallowed down the burning liquid, and when he was finished, he handed the bottle to her.
Elish looked out at the road in front of him. He could see two mercenaries taking the lead, all of them with automatic rifles on their backs, ammo belts across their chests, and weapons tucked into holders on their waists. Behind them would be two more merce
naries, and Robyn’s son who hung around anyone who would tolerate his presence.
Elish retrieved his vodka and took another drink, before lightly tossing the bottle back into the bosen-pulled cart. He then grabbed himself a bottle of wine, tucked it underneath one arm, then lit himself a cigarette.
Ignoring Robyn shaking her head at him, he walked to the front of the caravan to see what lay ahead.
Though he wasn’t expecting to see anything new. The greywastes rarely changed, and the only thing interesting that broke up the many different shades of grey were the occasional crucified corpse, green and bloated, or spray-painted buildings which would mean a hard turn in the opposite direction to sneak past the cluster of ravers living inside.
Sometimes he hoped for the ravers to find them, just so he could see if any of them were Jade’s, but he didn’t wish for the caravan to be overrun and destroyed. Travelling with the caravan meant he could get drunk and high and still make good time. If he was travelling alone, by three o’clock he would be stumbling around, and after that he’d be lucky to make two miles before he passed out on the side of the road.
He was in the North now, taking the same road that he and Reaver had taken on their way to Mantis.
How he’d gotten this far north was not something he was proud of. He had wanted to get as far away from Skyfall as he possibly could without anyone knowing where he was. He was left with the puzzle of how he was supposed to achieve that without stealing a Falconer which he didn’t want to do. So he ended up enlisting a thien that Caligula had previously complained about giving him trouble, then offered him a silver flask of vodka as a thanks with instruction to go back to Cardinalhall. The flask of vodka was poisoned and within ten hours the thien would be dead.
So no one knew that Elish was in the North, which was exactly what he wanted. No one here knew he was a chimera and no one would know. He was James the greywaster, however with how he was acting he was more like James the drunk. At least this drunk had a lot of money at his disposal, carried with him in a locked metal box he kept inside of his backpack. He had already cautioned everyone around him that if they dared touch his things that they would not live to see the sunrise, and so far that threat had been respected.
Everything he owned now was in that backpack: several pairs of boxer briefs he stole from Kessler’s room in Cardinalhall, along with wool socks, a blue button-down, several books he’d also stolen from Cardinalhall, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a razor and a bar of soap, a drug stash Reaver would be proud of, and also… a Cilo guitar.
There was nothing else to his name, everything had been destroyed in the fire, and what things might’ve been saved in the lower levels were unimportant, just items in storage that held no personal value. All things that had meant something to Elish had been cremated.
Fire has always been my enemy, and now it has taken everything from me.
Everything.
Elish looked down at the bottle of wine and noticed his knuckles had paled from gripping the bottle so hard. He looked ahead at the grey landscape, scattered black trees with their long branches reaching out in all directions around him, and put his hand over his left upper arm. He felt Jade’s collar, still securely wrapped around his arm, and felt a painful lump in his throat, one that spread to the back of his eyes and filled them with a stinging burn. Elish closed them tightly and raised his head to the grey sky, as if trying to enlist the help of gravity to contain them.
My husband burned alive, unable to move.
“E-Elish?” Jade’s voice echoed inside of his head.
But conscious enough to call for me.
He called for me, and I left him.
My Jade…
Elish opened the bottle and took a long drink, then wiped his mouth before the pain inside of him made him take a second. He lowered the bottle and stared into the clear glass spout and let the alcohol do its work. As he walked he felt it warm his ears, and like a tide coming in to rocky shores, it gradually travelled down his neck, to his chest, and fully coated his body. He topped off the falsely soothing feeling with an opiate cigarette, and tried to ignore the additional sting when the blue ember flared up below his butane lighter.
“Share the wealth, James?” Robyn’s son said behind him. There was scraping of boots on dirty pavement and a shadow to Elish’s right. He handed the boy the wine bottle and continued to smoke the opiate cigarette.
The sound of lips breaking a seal were heard. Max was fifteen years old, but like most greywasters he looked older, nineteen or twenty. He was tall with respectable muscles and a short trimmed beard and a buzz cut. Fair on the eyes but the boy got bored easily, and when he was bored he pestered people. If Elish was half the man he used to be he would’ve got it across early that he was not one to be bothered, but unfortunately he had too many thoughts plaguing his mind to intimidate the boy.
“It looks like you found the perfect caravan to tag along on, huh?” Max said. And after taking another drink of Elish’s wine, he handed the bottle back. “The one carrying all the liquor.” He chuckled and squinted his eyes as he looked to the east. From where the sun was, it appeared to be late in the morning. Elish had never been a fan of sleep, but now it was all he did. “I’m hoping Vince snags us some meat tonight. It’s summer, and a baby deer will be big enough to make a good meal.”
Elish said nothing, he only exhaled the silver smoke from his lips, not bothering to take the cigarette from his mouth. Max continued to scan the east, already used to Elish’s silence. “I was thinking of scouting in some of those buildings once we stop to rest the bosen. You want to join me? Change of scenery?”
Elish slowly sucked in another lungful of smoke. He looked at the highway in front of them. Before the Fallocaust the four-lane highway was separated with medians, and in this area those medians had stayed in place. They were placed one after the other in rows, previously put there to keep wandering traffic from going into the opposite lane. Now they did nothing but make it more difficult to lead the bosen if there was a large vehicle in their path, but since this road was well-travelled by merchants and caravans, every road block was accompanied by a way around, usually a median pulled out of place by a bosen so the carts could pass by safely.
Elish’s mind was on this particular stretch of road because he remembered walking down it with Reaver. And he remembered what Reaver had said off-hand when they passed the very buildings Max was pointing to.
“They’ve already been scavenged many times over,” Elish said, echoing Reaver’s words. However Reaver had been complaining because he hadn’t come across any good scavenging and he was seeing it as a personal failure. The boy had been sensitive to failure at that specific time. “There would be no use. It could be used as shelter for the night, but that’s about it. You’ll find nothing there.”
Max made a disappointed noise and Elish looked to see him kick the ground with a sigh. “We don’t usually go on this route,” he said when he saw that Elish was watching him. “It’s usually just going back and forth from the five brothers.” The five brothers, large towns in the northwest with a dedicated trade route; one so popular the roads were monitored by the Legion to make sure they were safe. “This is supposed to be my adventure, man.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets and let out a huff. “Mom won’t even let me go hunting with Vince.”
Elish tried to ignore the boy and took another drink of wine. He wouldn’t admit it but he didn’t want anything to do with fifteen-year-old boys. That was the age Jade had been when Elish had claimed him as his own. A boy as green as the emerald grass in Skyland, with an attitude that reflected his slumrat upbringing. He was a foul mouthed, hot-headed brat who was impulsive and over-emotional, and when Jade did find himself at his emotional peak, he’d go to any length, even if it meant hurting himself, to be heard.
Many times he injured himself to get Elish to listen to him, and in the beginning Elish only saw it as the boy being manipulative. But as he got to know Jade, and started to ques
tion his own dismissive nature of the boy… he had learned that that was Jade’s last resort when he desperately needed Elish to take his emotions seriously.
I jerked a gun out of his hands milliseconds before it fired; it had been pointed at his head. I grabbed his arm and yanked him as he leapt off of my balcony. I even looked down at the greywastes in horror when he jumped from the Falconer after I told him I’d be leaving him in the greywastes with Reaver. How I hated in the beginning that that boy would go to such extremes for me to listen to him, until I realized it was me who needed to be taught different methods.
I had always prided myself in knowing my own mind inside and out. It was because of this knowledge that I was able to become the person I used to be. When I know what I react to, I can then proceed to cauterize and shut off those catalysts and steel myself to them. Over the years I took everything that had drawn out those negative or vulnerable feelings and I destroyed them. It was a golden age for me. Oh, was I ever at my prime.
Then Jade came and I hated him for how he made me feel. I hated him the moment he asked me to read to him aloud… because my heart, for a brief moment, softened at the request. I had found it endearing.
And I despised him for that, because I was Elish Dekker, I was a prince and he was nothing but a pile of dog shit deposited in my study. How could such a disgusting little flea make me feel endearment? And then worse… worse, the moment I smelled his blood my mind flared like I’d inhaled fireworks. All of a sudden I had to have his body, and though I had many fit and attractive chimera men, even ones his age, at my disposal, I felt myself lusting over this gangly, injured wretch. He had Ares and Siris’s cum visibly dried down his inner thigh, and he was staring at me like I had just betrayed him in the most horrible of ways, but I fed on it, and with my own groin throbbing, I stripped him of his brash and snarling attitude and made him dissolve into my hands.
He collapsed into my arms, his body heaving and his hips thrusting as he climaxed. He moaned in my ear and it was tantalizing music. Then when I got home, I called Sanguine, and in his words, ‘gave him the most roughest, wildest night he’d had in years’. I fucked him in the darkness and in my head I was fucking that hard-nosed brat.