The Suicide King Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 3)

by Quil Carter

  And at this, I slid down off of the rock and my boots slammed down onto the compacted dirt and yellow grass. Kiki jumped down to my left, and Killian to my right. All three of us started walking down the ridge; Killian’s hand in mine to help him see in the darkness, and Kiki’s shoulder brushing against my own.

  I felt like howling to the moon. I felt like running in there with my gun in hand and shooting everything that moved. Claiming this place as my own and sticking my flag into the green grass that I could now smell sweet on the air. I was the clone of King Silas and Sky Fallon, the men who destroyed the world, one of them now ruling it. If I was no longer going to take Silas’s throne, I could at least stake my claim on a small oasis in this dead world. The greywastes should be happy this was all I was asking, because if fate had turned out differently I would be demanding much more than this.

  “Kiki,” I said to him. “You stay–”

  “No,” Kiki cut me off, his voice low. “I’m a chimera. Nero never lets me do anything; he’s too overprotective. If I’m going to live here with you, I want to have a hand in taking this place. I owe Mantis for what he did to my master and Ceph. Let me come.”

  I could respect that. “Get your gun out, shoot whoever you see. If they matter, they’re immortal anyway. Understand?”

  Kiki nodded, and when I looked at Killian, he nodded back with a serious yet excited look on his face. Fuck, did he ever look beautiful under the glow of my night vision. If I could just channel his new attitude into shit like this… I’d love this new side of him.

  The three of us skidded down the rest of the hill and landed on the grass with three muffled thunks. We all got behind a large tree and started digging through my pockets.

  But Kiki held up a hand to stop me.

  “If you will…” Kiki said quietly. “Mantis shares a similar affection for a certain animal. I know how to lure him, or any chimera in there, outside.” I gave him a puzzled look but Kiki only smirked back. He swallowed before, to my amusement…

  He meowed like a frightened cat. A long, mournful howl like Greyson and Leo’s old siamese cat made when she forgot which room we were in. I shook my head at the kid, despising myself for quickly growing fond of the little shit, and drew my M16. Killian followed suit and so did Kiki, and all of our focus was on those sliding glass doors.

  Kiki meowed again, and his howl hung in the air before it was swallowed up by the silence. I realized then that I couldn’t hear a generator, not even the muffled hum of one in a noise-proof shed like mine and Reno’s in Aras. This made me even more excited to take this place over. If it was energy self-sufficient we’d rarely need to go into Melchai, and by the time we needed to, we’d have convinced those losers that we were their new gods.

  Two hearts on either side of me jumped when we saw Mantis look out the window. His face was creased with confusion and his hands were at his hips. He looked like a suburban dad in that moment, he was even wearing a purple robe that was done up at the waist.

  Mantis disappeared for a second before he came back with a tin. He opened the sliding glass door and stepped outside, slippers on his feet, and started shaking it. It rattled, undoubtedly full of cat treats.

  “Kit-kit-kit-kit kitty!” Mantis sang. I rolled my eyes, and if we didn’t have to be so quiet I knew there’d be several snickers coming from us. We stayed quiet though, frozen like statues and just shadows behind this large tree. Admittedly, we could’ve been hidden better, but I knew the lights from inside would blind Mantis, his night vision wouldn’t be working and his normal vision would render the backyard nothing but black.

  “Tommy!” Mantis called. Oddly, he looked up at the trees and shook the tin again.

  My heart spasmed when I heard a snap above us followed by the heavy sound of beating wings. My eyes shot to Mantis to gauge his reaction and saw a smile on his face before he took a step back.

  A black creature flew down. A giant bat, I think? It dropped from the tree its wings spread out, then it landed in front of Mantis. It folded its leathery black wings behind its body and stepped into the light.

  It was a fucking cat… a cat with wings.

  Holy shit. I had completely forgotten. Killian had mentioned these little fuckers, last year before we went to Donnely. He’d read that book to me and commented that Skyfall had them, but their wings were more bat-like than the fluffy wings they had in the book.

  Sure enough, Killian nudged me gently. I nodded, watching this cat’s tail stick straight up in the air as Mantis opened a silver tin of treats. My ears were so in tune to the activity around us, I picked up a low purr as the excited cat waited patiently for its treat.

  I almost forgot why the fuck I was there.

  As Mantis turned around, the cat on his heels, I raised my M16, got Mantis into my scope… and I pulled the trigger.

  A sharp bang echoed off of the ridges surrounding us, and though I braced myself for the recoil, my back still hit the rock behind me. I watched as the bat-cat jumped a mile high, and as Mantis was thrown off of his feet, the top of his head getting blown off and brains and blood shooting out of him like a cherry bomb had detonated inside of his head, the cat skidded into the house.

  Mantis fell hard, the tin crashing to the floor with him. I hissed with success, but when Kiki motioned for us to run into the house, I held up my hand and waited to see if anyone else was around.

  My eyes were fixed on the light behind the blue curtain, and I watched it to see if I saw any movement. There was none however. Mantis lay still, blood pooling behind his head, and with the spilled tin of cat treats all around him.

  We waited and watched, and during that time the flying cat came back, with three other winged friends, and I watched with amusement as all four of them, ignoring their dead master, polished off every single treat that surrounded him. A big grey one, a tom cat considering he had nuts the size of marbles, even took several licks of Mantis’s blood before trotting back inside the house, nonchalant as fuck.

  I analysed the scene, and tried to tune out the boys’ breathing to hear if anyone was approaching, but it seemed like Mantis was alone.

  After watching the body for several minutes, I decided to slowly approach it with my blade drawn and my ears focused on what was around me. I knew chimeras could be quick though, and who knows what kind of enhancements the born immortal had.

  Unfortunately my hearing wouldn’t pick up what was inside the house, only the outside, so I kept a firm hold on the blade and trusted that the boys would be two more sets of eyes.

  I stood over Mantis, and tapped the remains of the piece skull that had blown off, and picked up a chunk of his brain.

  I popped it into my mouth and ate it. I heard Killian hiss at me but I waved him off and picked up a bigger piece. I hadn’t had fresh arian in forever, and it was a huge no-no to eat brains because of kuru. Now I was immortal and didn’t have to worry about prion diseases, so I started eating the bigger piece without care and started sizing up the rest of his body. That would be one way to make sure he resurrected slowly. If Mantis had cold storage, which he undoubtedly did, we could hang him up, age him a bit, and eat good until fall. If we found Angel Adi, all the more fresh arian.

  This was shaping up to be a good–

  “Reaver!” Killian suddenly shrieked. At that precise moment I felt a back-breaking impact on the back of my head. I fell to my knees, the lights getting knocked out of me, and flattened myself against Mantis’s body knowing what was coming next.

  And I was right, a second later gunshots rang through the air. I heard a bellow behind me and I lizard crawled out onto the patio and stood up when I was out of the boys’ range. I looked to see what had gotten me and saw the red-haired one, Ceph, on the ground.

  Killian and Kiki ran towards the sliding glass door, but I barked at them to stay put. I sprinted over and picked up my dropped combat knife and watched Ceph intently.

  I watched and waited, and sure enough, the worm I knew was inside of Ceph tried to e
scape. At first it was just a flicker of shadow in one of his nostrils, then it slithered out and began flapping back and forth as if trying to free itself from inside of Ceph’s body.

  I pulled it out and sliced it in two, then I rolled Ceph onto his stomach and motioned the boys over to me. As they approached, I stabbed Ceph in the back of the neck and made a good gouge, and whistled when I saw strings of black pulsing from the wound I’d made.

  “An important note apparently,” I said, glancing up at Killian. I started slicing the worms and pulling them out; feeling their coiled bodies retracting as I did, like I was grabbing a snake. “They either breed inside of them, or others come and infest them too.” I handed the pieces of still wiggling worms to Killian so he could give them a few more slices. “It doesn’t look like Mantis was infected, but we know for sure Nero is.” I looked over my shoulder. The dimly lit living room looked like something out of a museum, one of those classical houses that sophisticated serial killers live in, and there were bookshelves everywhere, telescopes and electronics too. “We know Nero’s in here, but that’s it. Watch out for each other. I was infected by one of those things and I can tell you… you won’t even know it’s in you. Come on.”

  “Do you think the cats are infected?” Killian asked. His face was a strange mixture of brave and terrified.

  “No. Unless they’re immortal cats. I don’t think it takes long for the animals to die from the parasite… and then it seems like they use their own bodies to control the person, like a puppet.” I looked down at Ceph. “He was walking normally, but maybe they’re there to control immortals after they die.”

  “So if we get infected… we’ll awaken still under their control,” Killian said grimly.

  “Yep.”

  We walked from the living room to the open kitchen which had two lit hallways branching off of it. The first one just had more closed doors, but the second looked like it led to an open area.

  I was right. At the end of that hallway, adorned with a red rug and black recessed lighting, was the main entrance to the house. Right in front of us was an oak staircase twisting up to the second level, and to the left, double doors which were reinforced with metal and had the same cardkey activation that Perish’s laboratory had.

  I paused when I walked into the heavily decorated room. Every part of this mansion that I had seen before was ritzier than the last, and it was obvious that someone with art sense had gotten a hold of this place.

  The entrance room I had walked into was painted coffee brown, with panelling that started halfway down the wall and the red rug I’d seen previous was covered in swirling little designs. As I looked around to take everything in, I saw intricate paintings hung up on all four corners, the ones that looked to have been made in the old-old times, and statues pressed against the walls. One of them was almost as tall as me. It was a statue of a curly-haired man, made of white granite or another type of rock, and below it a taxidermy of a grey wolf with its lips peeled back in a snarl.

  Then I saw something near the staircase reflecting in the dim lighting, and decided to walk to it. I was fascinated to see that the table had a glass top, and inside were rocks with crystals growing out of them, or clustered inside. Some of them were white, others purple, and all of them were sprouting from the rocks like beautiful little tumors. They were also laying on purple cloth that looked good enough to eat; it was all purply and velvet.

  These things were all just unwanted distractions though. I told myself I would have all the time in the world to look at these things and motioned towards the stairs with my head. “I’m going up there,” I said. I knew there was someone up there from the light I had seen. “Killian. I want you to have my back. Stay and guard the stairs.” When Killian nodded, a dead serious look on his face, I turned to Kiki. “Where’s the lab you said you saw the guys emerge from?”

  Kiki turned around and walked to the wooden door beside the stairwell. I drew my gun and pointed it over the cicaro’s shoulder as he pushed the door open, in case there was someone on the other side, but it was empty.

  Which door led to the lab was obvious. Exactly like the doors in Donnely, and the ones I had seen in Sky’s lab. It was metal and without windows, and there was a keycard slot with a red light beside it.

  “The other two doors, one is an office, one is a bedroom,” Kiki said, and he pushed the door all the way open so it would stay. “Be careful, Master Reaver.” The cicaro inclined his head to me; I ignored the twitch I saw in Killian’s eye.

  I squeezed Killian’s shoulder before I turned from the two and started slowly walking up the flight of stairs. My other senses strengthened with every step, but the one I was most focused on was my hearing. If there was someone upstairs they would’ve heard my M16 go off. Silencer or not that fucking thing was loud, and the steep ridges that surrounded this mansion would have the sound bouncing off of them like a pinball.

  My eyes were fixed on the top of the stairs, but I saw nothing. Unfortunately the light on the second level was buggering my night vision, but I could make out the gold frame of a painting that was hanging over top of a wooden table full of flowers and books. That was it, no brother holding a big gun or a parasite whipping around in search for a living host for it to penetrate.

  I reached the top of the stairs and looked in both directions. I saw the faint glow of light from underneath one of the doors, and channelling all of my knowledge on being quiet and stealthy, I walked towards the door. My ears were filling with static at this point, the only other noise was my own heartbeat which I was trying, unsuccessfully, to block from my chimera hearing. I kept on straining to hear something, anything, to tell me if there was someone in that room.

  Perhaps this was Mantis’s bedroom, and he had the light on before bed? I should’ve asked Kiki where Mantis’s room was.

  Suddenly an ear-shattering noise ripped through the tense air; the deafening sound a thousand times more loud and painful with my hearing fully tuned. Unable to help myself I yelped and jumped, and quickly slammed my M16 down on the table so I could cover my ears. I gritted my teeth, the pain temporarily disabling me, and when I’d retracted my enhanced hearing I realized someone had turned a music player on in the bedroom. I swore under my breath and picked up my gun again.

  Then I heard a surprised yelp from downstairs. I whirled around and started running towards the stairwell – but something grabbed my arm and whipped me backwards.

  I saw a bare, muscular arm locked against my own for a fleeting second before I was yanked towards him, then past him, and thrown against the wall. My M16 dropped from my grasp on impact and landed onto the floor with a thunk, and my face met the painting. Stars burst into my vision and I stumbled back, my balance lost in the confusion.

  But before I could fall, my mind snapped into action. I purged myself of all senses of confusion and pain, and I went into survival mode. In what seemed to last minutes but in reality was only seconds, I regained myself and whirled around to face the person who had grabbed me.

  It was Nero. In front of me was Nero.

  He was smiling at me with a manic grin that split his face like a deep throat wound, and his mismatched eyes were sparkling and vivid gems in the recessed lighting above us.

  For a moment, just one small – fucking – moment, I was frozen, my feet rooted to the ground. There was something inside of me, an automatic conditioning, which rendered me incapacitated when I was finally faced with him. Something was stopping me from doing anything but being that trapped dog tied to the bed; that victim awaiting the next brutal assault on his body.

  But my nature made me proud. That survival mode snap, the same one I’d experienced moments ago, rushed to me and pushed that conditioning out of the way, then screamed at me to prove I was in control and that I had no weaknesses.

  And I was in control. I reached to my belt, drew my combat knife, and started backing away from him.

  Nero kept grinning, his eyes brightening and an obvious window into his th
oughts. I could practically see the movie playing in his mind. I knew he was seeing me naked and bloody underneath him. I knew he was reliving the times he successfully broke me, the times he made me scream in pain. Or the times he forced me to cum. I knew Nero, and I knew him well, worm infested or not, at his core he was still the same asshole.

  But I was no longer chained and bound, and though I still had hairline cracks all throughout me I was actively finding ways to repair them. I might have my issues, but I was the fucking Reaper. I was the killer of immortals.

  And he was in my fucking world now.

  “Hello, Nero,” I said, keeping my voice as steeled, as level, as I could. I felt a smile break my own lips, through a jaw locked tight, and I forced it into a grin. “You’re far from Skyfall.” I took another step back, not wanting to make it obvious I was backing away from him, and kept my eyes locked on his. There was a hope inside of me that our fixed gaze would dissuade him from realizing what I was doing.

  But it backfired. Nero mock advanced on me, and to my own inner resentment, I flinched. Nero let out a barking snarl at this and his head lowered.

  When he lowered his head, however, I saw it. A brown scab at the nape of his neck, one that blended in almost perfectly with the slight curls of his, now longer, black hair. It was about the size of a Dek’ko token and in the middle of healing. It was almost in the exact same area that my own had been when I’d been temporarily infected.

  That was my target.

  My back hit the wall at the far end of the hall. I looked to both sides and saw the open door of the bedroom I’d seen from outside and another closed one. The bedroom I could dash into to jump out of the window, but I wasn’t going to run from him. I needed to get him to turn around and give me access to his neck.

  But how would I do that without him breaking my damn arms? I had to think quickly.