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

by Quil Carter

  I swallowed hard, my eyes laser focused on his. Nero stared back with the same expression of mild concern and fatigue, a look that was drawn out from his concern over Kiki. It had nothing to do with me and I couldn’t show him that my own expression had anything to do with him.

  LOOK AT HIM!

  “Calm down, Ducky,” Nero said and he pointed to the beer beside me with his own. “Have a drink before you start another fucking Fallocaust. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Not going to hurt me? Not going to fucking hurt me?

  Without even realizing I was nearing the edge of what my mind could handle… I exploded.

  “Hurt me?” I snapped back. I pushed myself off of the kitchen island and grabbed the bottle of beer. I stalked up to Nero, who put his own bottle down with a clunk. “You think you have the fucking capacity to hurt me now? Do I fucking look tied up to you?”

  Nero’s eyebrows raised and I pushed myself into his space and put my face near his. Anger stole my breath and there was a pounding in my head like someone was beating a slab of sheet metal with a sledgehammer. “No, you mustn’t know me well, Nero. Because the only fucking reason you were able to do that shit to me was because you had me chained like a fucking animal,” I snarled. My body was trembling with the earthquakes of rage rumbling through it, percussion after percussion rocking me from my head to my toes. I didn’t like this; I wasn’t in control – but I couldn’t stop. “You think you can fucking best me now? You fucking want to try and dance with me now, you cowardly fuck?”

  Nero kept his stance, no sparkling lust inside of his eyes like what I’d seen when he’d been infected. He looked at me before waving his hand like he was swatting a fly. “Get out of my face, Duck. Stop puffing out your chest. I don’t want shit from you.”

  “Want shit from me?” I bellowed. I pushed his chest, the spout of the bottle dangling between my fingers. “Want fucking shit from me?” The more I got worked up, the more I felt myself losing control. The darkness would soon descend over my vision, and take my sanity with it. But there would be no Elish to restrain me and talk me down. The only man who was able to keep me from plunging over the edge was long gone.

  “Well, I fucking have shit for you, bro!” I hissed, dropping my voice; the words were flowing out of my mouth like I’d taken a hit of coke. I wanted to smash, kill. I wanted to expel this energy that was electrocuting me alive. “I have a fucking lifetime of shit for you. You fucking think it’s bad with Silas? Just wait until I take over Skyfall, puppy. I will make you fucking sing like a canary.” I pushed him again.

  And when he did nothing but stare down at me with dismissive, cold regard, I cracked.

  I clenched the bottle of beer and swung it as hard as I could over the side of his head.

  It shattered on impact and Nero recoiled. He dropped his own bottle onto the floor, which broke against the hardwood, and stumbled backwards. I watched as he tried to steady himself as his legs wobbled underneath him.

  “What the fucking–” Nero was abruptly cut off when, unable to stop, I grabbed him by the t-shirt he was wearing and pulled him away from the counter.

  I shoved him towards the island. Nero slammed against it with a grunt and a curse, sending a toaster and an empty water glass sailing to the floor with a loud crash that reverberated throughout the mansion.

  Nero grabbed his head, blood pouring out of the wound I could now see glistening in his black hair. He looked up at me angrily, but when his mouth opened to say shit I didn’t fucking care about hearing, I dealt him a hard blow to the face; one that snapped his head to the left and sent him off-balance and struggling to keep himself from falling over.

  “This is only the fucking beginning,” I growled. I grabbed his ear and wrenched his head up, trying to force him to look at me. “You’re going to wish you stayed encased in concrete, my friend.”

  Nero’s remaining purple-blue eye drifted up to mine, streams of blood running down his face, travelling in the creases and collecting on his facial hair. He stared at me, and slowly removed his hand from his bleeding neck.

  Then, to my own overwhelming fury, he laughed. “I really fucked you up, eh? Holy shit. I like… permanently damaged you, didn’t I? You were so laughy and taunting with Kess and now look at you. You’re broken. Where’s your confident swagger?” He chuckled, my blood fucking boiled at that laugh. I found myself too stunned and infuriated at his words to speak. “If I knew you would get this damaged from being raped, I would’ve gone easy on you. I thought you could handle–” I suddenly heard a scream. Not a normal scream, but one drawn from the bowels of hell. A scream that could only be made by someone who had been through the worst kinds of torture, and was still being actively tortured. It had so many different octaves of pain, it was as if it had been handcrafted from the souls of the dead world.

  And it was coming from me.

  With the darkness enveloping my mind like a swarm of bees, distorting my vision and controlling me like a willing puppet, I grabbed Nero again. But he was ready for me this time. In slow motion, I raised the shattered glass bottle but Nero reached up and locked his hand over my wrist and dealt me a punch to my face. I didn’t feel it, or acknowledge it, instead I raised my free hand, made it into a claw, and drove it towards his last remaining eye.

  But before I could gouge out his eye, I felt a hard impact on my stomach. The force of it made me stumble back, and when Nero grabbed his bottle of beer and pommelled me across the face with it, I flew, and landed on the floor.

  I coughed, the wind getting knocked out of me, and saw little white shards spray onto the floor. In my dazed state I stared at them dumbly, before realizing they were my teeth.

  My mouth was gushing blood. I ran my tongue along my teeth and realized the entire bottom row were shattered, and the top row was almost entirely shards. I spat and inhaled, then started violently hacking blood and bits of tooth.

  I saw brown loafers. I tried to rise but collapsed, my stomach throbbing with a dull ache and my feet slipping out from under me whenever I attempted to get up.

  Then I saw the brown loafers themselves slip, the feet they were attached to wobbling. I looked up just in time for Nero to drop to his knees, red pouring from a scalp wound so deep I saw a flash of white skull.

  Nero keeled over with a wheeze and glanced over at me, or at my stomach. I saw blood coming out of his ears and I knew he was as done as me.

  But what was he looking at? I looked down and saw my shirt was ripped. This was my favourite red shirt and he fucking ripped…

  No. I wasn’t wearing a red shirt.

  I put my hand over the rip in the fabric and blood squirted through my fingers. He’d stabbed me. Sometime during this he’d stabbed me.

  There was a thunk and the floor shook. My body was getting weak and my head was starting to swim in its own juices, but I managed to look over at Nero. He was lying on the floor now, and what white skin I could see in this world of blood was ashen and grey.

  “We need to find a way to – to get along, D-Duckling,” Nero rasped, a bubble of blood appeared between his lips as he spoke before it burst. He took in a sharp breath; his lungs gurgling and popping like he was burning dry kindling. “Kill each other after…”

  “… after the boys are safe,” I finished, my own breathing getting increasingly difficult with every inhale. It looked like a serial killer had gotten into the house; the two of us were bleeding out together, side by side, in the kitchen.

  Nero nodded. “You got big issues now ‘cause of me, don’t you? Bet that’s really fucking you up, eh?”

  I stared at him but I was dying. I had no biting words for him or oaths to make over the organs shutting down inside of me. A glare was all that was allotted in this time, that and a shred of honesty I could utter before the white flames took me.

  “Yeah. It’s been fucking me up,” I admitted to him bitterly. My chest jolted from panic as my brain realized I couldn’t get enough air. My survival instincts still didn’t
know I would come back; they still filled me with the primal thirst to survive. “And I’ll destroy you for it, and I’ll destroy your fucking husband too.”

  Nero looked at me, a serious expression showing through the blood. “I can help you, brosy. If you let me… I can help you. I can help you make all your weaknesses your strength. I can do that for sorrys, since we’re both fugitives now.”

  “I’ll be fine once you’re back in concrete and your little cicaro is fucked to death by me and my boyfriend,” I growled, my eyelids slowly drooping before I caught myself and my head jerked back up to try and keep me conscious. “I keep promises, Nero. I told you in Cardinalhall, you’ll be the f-first… to – to die.”

  My eyes closed and I could see the white flames burning the corners of my vision like the smouldering rays of the sun. But before the inferno of immortality took me I heard Nero chuckle, and a hand sloppily pat my knee. “I know, baby. I know you’ll kill us all.”

  That was the last thing I heard.

  Chapter 25

  Reno

  “You look like a prince, love,” he said to me. I saw his smile in the reflection of the mirror, but when he made eye contact with himself there was a pull on his lip. Even he didn’t believe his own smile anymore.

  “I’m not one,” I said. My voice was a husk now, something hollow and full of holes. Whatever love or light I’d let in would quickly spill through those holes, and it would then be carried away like so many of the good things in my life.

  “You will be soon,” he replied. He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed me to him, his large green eyes brimming and filled and that fake smile that only had itself to fool now.

  I had stopped believing his words long ago. It hadn’t taken me long to realize most of the things he was saying were things he himself didn’t believe.

  I remember when I first met this man, I held every syllable from him close to my heart.

  Now my heart was just… shut down, closed for business, stripped down to the studs.

  “Yeah, I know…” My eyes swept the reflection of my body. Garrett says I look like a prince, but the only reason I’m in front of this mirror is because I once again couldn’t fit my own clothes. They were falling off of me now, the belt had run out of notches, the button-down shirts hung off of me like liquid. Nothing fit so… it was another trip to the sengils for re-suiting.

  Garrett turned me to him and straightened my collar, gently folding it over the black blazer before he adjusted my tie. He put his hands on my arms and rubbed them, still that fake smile… still that fake… fake smile.

  Why don’t you give up like the rest of us?

  “Well… let us go see the king then,” Garrett said with a pat on my arms. He took my hand and we walked from the apartment that we shared to the elevator. “My prince seeing our king. My Prince Reno.”

  Second-in-command Garrett Sebastian Dekker… but he’d been making a note to call me a prince. Thinking, what? That it would make me feel happy?

  Prince Reno. What would the residents in Aras say to that, or my family for that matter?

  They wouldn’t recognize me, and I’d tell them with a sad smile that I no longer recognized myself. So they can make me whoever they want me to be. I would be clay in their hands. I honestly no longer cared; I had died with Reaver and Killian.

  Yeah, I wasn’t crazy; I knew Reaver would come back in twenty years when the flames cooled. But I knew the man who would eventually open his eyes to whatever was the greywastes and Skyfall, wouldn’t be Reaver. When he found out that Killian had been dead for two decades, he wouldn’t be my friend.

  So in my mind… Reaver was dead.

  “Oh, thank you, Chally,” Garrett said hurriedly when we were almost out the door. Chally was handing him a lit cigarette, and he had one in between his fingers for me. Garrett liked having a smoke while he was being driven to his destination, and Chally knew this. The former slave had become the perfect sengil, and his gratefulness towards Garrett and me for adopting him and letting him live in luxury, showed through his dedication to making our lives as easy as possible. Chally apparently had been a houseboy in the greywastes as well to some rich asshole who owned a gas refinery. He’d been constantly abused, and used as a sex toy at a disgustingly young age. Ten, I think. Once he’d turned twenty, he’d been replaced by a younger model and sold to a slaver named Hopper. The same man who’d taken in Reaver, Jade, Killian, and Perish as mercenaries and cooks.

  What I would’ve given to be beside my friends during this time. I belonged with Reaver. My place had been beside him.

  Chally caught my gaze. He reached over and grabbed my hands and squeezed them; then he let go and signed smile to me, basically running his hands along his lips and smiling.

  I tried to smile but my lower lip quivered, so I had to purse my mouth to hide it. Chally clucked and gave me a hug.

  “Oh, muffin,” Garrett whispered when Chally pulled away. He took my hand and held it tight. “You can have some leave for the evening, Chally. Perhaps you would like to check on Luca?”

  Chally nodded and signed I would like that. Thank you.

  Ten minutes later we were in the car being driven to Alegria. There was no feeling left inside of me to be worried about what Silas wanted for us, or why I had to come along. In the dead of night when I couldn’t sleep, I felt worried for myself. I used to be so full of feeling. They used to say I had twice the emotions to make up for Reaver’s lack of them, mostly in the sense of morality and empathy.

  Now I just felt nothing. My love, happiness, and humour had died with Reaver and Killian, and my empathy had burned brightly before fizzling when I saw the crushing look of despair on Elish’s face. The chimera I had hated so passionately, for decades of mistakes leading up to that night, for putting his pride and his stupid plans ahead of the safety of my friends and his husband, had such an expression of anguish it had destroyed the venomous contempt that had been burning inside of me.

  And with those emotions pulled up from the root and killed, I now was void of both positive emotions, and negative. I was just a walking dead man, waiting for my body to get the drift that I was done with living.

  This inner barrenness was shown when I heard Garrett sniffing and didn’t even look at him. I kept staring out the window, watching Skyland go by. All of these people in their summer clothing, bright colours which were in fashion right now, going about their business. Some smiling with friends, others walking with briefcases and stern expressions, no doubt going over what they needed to do before returning to their nice apartments and their family. None of them had any idea just how in shambles the Dekker family was. The SNN was reporting Jade’s death and Olympus’s destruction, and they knew Elish was gone, but that was just the tip of an iceberg that went down for miles. They had no idea that all of the strong members of the family were wraiths, shadows of the men they once were.

  If the Crimstones were alive somewhere, they’d have used this opportunity to attack, but I think they were all dead.

  Garrett’s hand rested on top of mine and he tried to hold it. I let him but there was no strength in my grip. He clenched it anyway, and eventually brought out a kerchief to dab his eyes.

  He was King Garrett right now, I guess. He was leading Skyfall since Silas was in no state and Elish was gone. So one day I’d be a king?

  All I ever wanted to be was Reaver’s sidekick. Once I wanted to be his boyfriend, and all of Aras was waiting for it to happen too, but that ship had sailed; and then the island I had watched it depart from, had sunk.

  We were in the hallway now, the double oak doors closed. Garrett was directing me with his hand in mine, towards the door.

  He knocked, and we waited, and when no one answered Garrett opened the door and peeked in. Since we had an invitation I guess it gave him leave to walk in without someone answering the door. Drake was gone; Sanguine somewhere being tortured by his own madness from what Garrett had tearfully told me, so no one was here to let us in but
Silas.

  I didn’t care about Sanguine. He shouldn’t have arranged our abandonment in the greywastes.

  I followed Garrett inside of Silas’s apartment which was frigid compared to the blistering heat outside. Good ol’ skyscraper integrated air conditioning. A part of me was expecting the apartment to be trashed, or covered in dirty dishes and garbage from him not having a sengil to clean everything; but it looked like the living room and his sitting room to the right had been left untouched. Not completely clean, however; there was an obvious bloodstain on the carpet behind the couch.

  “Silas. Lovely?” Garrett called. He led us to the hallway and towards Silas’s bedroom, the door half-closed and showing a dark room. “I’m here with Reno.”

  We both paused when we heard shifting in Silas’s bedroom, the sound of blankets being moved around. Then the door opened, and I had to hide the surprise on my face when I saw Silas.

  Silas’s face was hollow, ghostly grey, and with circles so black the king looked like he’d been punched in both of his eyes. His blond hair was messed up and greasy, and his clothing, just a grey sleeveless undershirt and matching baggy drawstring pants, were stained. I had lost a lot of weight, but I was healthy compared to him; his ribs were showing below his collarbone, and his cheekbones jutted out.

  “Oh… lovely,” Garrett sobbed. “Why are you doing this to yourself? Reno, love, get him some food. How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

  The expression on Silas’s face was of a man who was lost. That look of hopelessness, of fatigue. Maybe it wasn’t lost, I think it was a look of a man who was searching for something that no longer existed… and he’d finally realized he’d never find it. There was so much distance in his eyes, and pain. And when his eyes travelled up to ours, I saw a disconnect that made me wonder if he was fully aware that we were actually present.

  I turned away from him. I was glad Garrett had given me a request, so I didn’t have to see that haunted look. I walked into the living room and opened the fridge, but I closed it with a grimace when I was assaulted with the smell of rotting food and plastic containers that had held in them a cornucopia of different colours of mould.