by Quil Carter
I saw Silas’s mouth twitch, just the faintest hint of a smile like last time. “So we’re scrounging around and Justin is following us, being annoying. And we find a huge score: a Barbie Power Wheels! Like one of those ones you could drive around, not working, of course, but the wheels move. Fucking Justin starts bragging about how his daddy is going to buy him a Power Wheels that does work, and it’ll be black with a red racing stripe. All of a sudden this has been going on for weeks, his dad saying this shit to him. We knew it was bullshit, fucking little liar. Anyway… Reaver’s getting real short with him. You know Reaver, and he was the same back then, he doesn’t like people talking his ear off and I knew unless I had shit to say, or a joke to make, I kept my mouth shut when we were scavenging. Reaver hates noise and he wants to hear what’s going on around him.
“So Reaver announces, all of a sudden, that we’re going to sail the Power Wheels down the ramp. I suggest going to the Slaught House to see if they had some diseased rat babies we could stuff in there, to make it like a Thelma and Louise type of thing, but he just says nothing and we go to the canyons. Justin is following us around, bragging and talking and not fucking shutting up.”
I paused and smiled when I saw that both corners of Silas’s mouth were raised. His eyes were heavy, but he was smiling.
“I know what’s coming,” he said to me. I nodded, feeling pleased and successful that I was making Silas happy.
“So we get to the top of the ramp and all of a fucking sudden Reaver looks at me and says ‘pin him down’. And I’m like ‘fucking what?’. ‘Pin him down,’ Reaver says. I obeyed since I was whipped even back then, and Justin gets frightened and starts to cry. I was a strong kid, and stronger than Justin, even though we were the same age. Reaver jumps on him with fucking zip ties he had stuffed in his pocket, and wrenches his arms back and fucking zips him! Worse? He pulls out a spool of fishing line and starts wrapping his fucking arms! He has this shit planned out long before. So then he slips off the kid’s shoes, which Justin also bragged about ‘cause they were new, and Reaver stuffs a sock in his mouth which he ties off with a bandana he had been wearing over his hair. He tells me to put Justin in the Barbie car with this fucking wicked grin on his face, eyes just so bright.” Silas was hanging on my every word, and now I did see he was smiling, it wasn’t a big beaming grin but it was a smile.
“The kid’s in the car and now he’s gagged, and Reav tied his feet and legs with fishing line. Then we fucking rob him! Taking his Walkman, his Magic cards he kept tied with an elastic in his pocket, and a fucking gold slammer and five fucking Pogs. A goldmine for us! But when I realize Reaver’s really going to send this kid off over the edge, I start to get so scared. Because I knew we would get in shit! Not even like banishment or anything, I was worried I would get a fucking spanking so hard I wouldn’t be able to sit down. Not even a mom spanking, a dad spanking which meant the belt. That’s when you knew you were in shit, am I right?”
Silas smiled wider. “I didn’t really have parents but… I know what you mean. Go on.”
“I start telling Reaver… ‘Dude, Greyson will beat you to death.’ Greyson was really hard on him, Leo was the mother of the two. But Reaver, in classic Reaverness, informed me that he wasn’t scared of ‘that shithead’, and with Justin’s muffled cries and his struggling, we start to push him towards the ramp. I keep saying ‘Okay, Reaver. We scared him. We scared him, Reaver. We should let him go.
“Reaver just glares at me and says haughtily: ‘If we let him go, he’ll tell on us and then we definitely will get a lickin’, which was Greyson for ‘spanking’. And with a flashy grin, and his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, he starts making a fucking speech!” I cleared my throat, fully riding this happiness that, even if temporarily, was vanquishing the depression and darkness that had rooted into both of us. “Since the beginning!”
“No way!” Silas said with a smile. “He didn’t start it off like that!”
“He did!” I exclaimed. “He said ‘Since the beginning, man has always wished for the flying car!” Silas put a hand over his mouth and laughed lightly, his eyes just shining. I went on. “We are here today to test out our patented flying pink car called the Justin Sissy Car! A very brave young man named Justin has volunteered to test this newest invention!” He then tells me to help him push it and by now Justin is howling and crying, thrashing himself around in the car and trying to roll himself off of it and the shithead is real close to doing it too. Scared he would run and tattle on us, I hit him over the head with a fucking rock! So now he’s really fucking howling, and I’m getting so fucking scared someone is going to hear him. So with no more speeches, Reaver and I give the car a huge fucking push and we let go.” I grinned and started making the motions of the car going down the ramp with my hand. “He fucking sails down the ramp, and he’s shifting back and forth trying to tumble out of it, but it’s too late… he reaches the end, sails in the air, and it’s like… AHHHHhhhhhhh!!” I made my scream fade, and with my pointer finger in the air to mimic the car, I trailed it down and made a crashing noise at the bottom.
“So Reaver and I exchange glances and Reaver starts to laugh, of course.”
“Of course.”
“We both look down and see the kid ten feet away from the Power Wheels, fucking wheels still spinning, and you can see the kid’s face is just bleeding and mush. We run down there to get a closer look, and holy shit, he’s beyond dead. His head is smashed and his eyes wide open in terror, fucking limbs all splayed wrong. Totally dead! Reaver fucking takes out a hunting knife he always had strapped to his side… and fucking starts stabbing him! Just for the fuck of it! When he’s done with that, I shit you not, he slits him from dick to neck, cuts open his rib cage like it was a rusty gate and starts pulling out his insides and identifying them!”
“That’s a chimera alright,” Silas chuckled. “Did he eat him?”
“We both did!” I exclaimed. “We ended up dismembering him and sneaking body parts into Aras, the guts, besides the liver and heart, which Reaver had to eat apparently, were given to the deacons, and we stashed his body in an abandoned house. We snuck out a hotplate and all the stuff we’d need and we ate as much as we could. Then when the search for him got too heated, we fed the rest to the deacons and no one ever fucking found out! Reaver told me once he was an adult that he knew that Greyson and Leo knew, but they loved their little monster. Makes sense now why they’d give him a pass. Fucking icing on the cake? Justin’s dad gave us a lot of his old shit, since we were his buds!” I laughed and then sighed, and as my story came to an end my heart started to hurt. This happy story was just a reminder that I’d never have those times with him again. They were lost in time, I was the only one to remember them for the next twenty years, not even Leo and Greyson could recount Reaver as a child.
That brought me down, completely down to the ground from the small shreds of happiness I had been feeling while telling Silas this story.
“He’ll be back,” Silas whispered. I think he noticed my change in expression. “I will find a way to cool the flames and I’ll bring him back… I’ll find a way.” His voice cracked and I shushed him and rubbed his side. “I will. I never fail.”
How can someone feel so much hope and dread from a single sentence. I found myself scared and Silas sensed this. He seemed to be able to sense my shifts in moods. I didn’t know if it was my facial expressions, heartbeat, or the head stuff he could do.
“Why doesn’t that make you happy?” he asked me. His eyes searched me. The all-knowing, piercing gaze that looked so far past what a normal man could see, stripped me again and made me stand bare and exposed in front of him.
And I knew with his hold on my mind, that I couldn’t lie. There would be no use in it, I could feel him inside of me.
“He’s going to be devastated.” My voice cracked and I shuddered. “Poor Tinkerbell…” It was my turn for my eyes to well. The world didn’t know just what they had lost when Killian d
ied. I think that boy was the last pure thing to walk this world, one that struggled every day to create light. He was a little ray of sunshine in the grey, a big smile and eyes that shone so brightly they seemed unnatural. Nothing alive was as sweet as him, and nothing ever would be.
When Silas’s face darkened I shifted away from him, tears stinging my eyes. All at once, the invisible strings that had attached themselves to my brain became weighted down with black oil; and I could feel its poison pickle my brain, erasing the positive feelings that telling Silas the story had brought.
And his face reflected that, Silas’s expression was of undiluted revulsion. He was the complete opposite of Killian, and that was obvious just looking at him. Silas was surrounded by darkness. He was both sadistic and masochistic, his inner demons switching from pleasuring each other to tearing each other to ribbons of flesh and pools of blood. Two creatures with black hearts to add to the endless demons holding masks to their faces. We had all heard the term mental shapeshifter by now, and the proof of that was in front of me as I saw the black flames burn behind the dark green eyes. Even the fire in him was a contradiction, clashing flares of energy that universally couldn’t coexist, but had somehow found a loophole in the time-space continuum to be both black and white, hot and cold, light and dark, the Ghost and the Immortal.
So many emotions hanging from this man, heavy emotions that bowed his back like they were attached to him from wires. He was the puppet master, and yet, he was the one with string wrapped around his wrists, his neck, his feet, all leading to two hundred and fifty-five years’ worth of living as King Silas Dekker.
Killian was a feather, light and innocent, but one that blew in the wind with no control over where he went or where he landed. He was used to having no control, so he took everything as it came; and though they stepped on him, crushed him, ripped the downy barbs from the quill, he still caught wind and floated on. Killian still floated on, and even at his worst, even emotionally crippled, that fucking boy still kept on flying.
Tears sprung to my eyes, and as my face dissolved. I made a break for the door and I quickly walked to it. I saw that boy’s face in my memory. I heard his laugh, his voice, higher than mine and Reaver’s, which was a stereotype of his innocent, shy nature.
No one realizes just what the world lost but me. Just like Reaver’s childhood, only I will have the memories of Killian and who he was – until his boyfriend woke up, and saw that the world was now darker, crueller, worse with Killian gone.
I left the room and sat on the couch, I had a good cry and smoked a cigarette. I didn’t want to go back into Silas’s bedroom. If he said anything bad about Killian, I might punch him in the mouth.
But when I eventually came back, an hour and three cigarettes later, I saw that he had gone back to being the sad, haunted Silas I’d momentarily chased away. I sat beside him and rubbed his shoulders to show him I wasn’t mad. I wasn’t sure if that was what I was feeling, maybe I was just lonely.
An hour later there was a knock on Silas’s door. I looked up, and then to Silas who hadn’t even flinched. He continued staring off into nothing, his eyes heavy.
“Want me to get it?” I asked him. I received no answer but when there was a second, more hurried, knock on the door I patted his shoulder and got up. As I passed the coffee table I saw his phone flashing, it must’ve been on silent, and my eyes widened when I saw there were ten missed calls.
I opened the door and saw Ellis, Garrett, and Teaguae standing side by side. Their faces promised me no good news, and my heart started to plummet.
“What happened?” I asked, dropping my voice to hopefully give them the hint to keep quiet too.
I stepped aside as all three of them walked in. They looked around trying to spot the king, and I saw Garrett’s apprehension increase when he realized that Silas was still in his bedroom.
“No… improvement?” Garrett whispered, his eyes looking to the closed bedroom door.
“There’s improvement just…” I hesitated. “Right now is just a low point. It’s up and down.”
Teaguae sighed and brushed back his hair, the same wavy golden blond as Silas’s but shorter. “Ellis… we need him. We need him,” he said. It took me off-guard to hear the rapidness of his words, almost bordering on desperation. He turned, and at the same time Knight walked in holding a briefcase. Ellis’s son looked around and his shoulders fell. “Papa’s still in his bedroom?” he asked grimly. “Mom, it’s worse than I thought. There were a hundred in attendance according to my source.”
“A hundred?” Garrett said faintly. He took my hand and pulled me to the couch. “Luca, we’ll all be needing drinks, smokes, drugs… you know where they are.”
Luca was here too? I looked behind me and saw my sengil friend. The bruises had healed but unfortunately the poor kid lost all of the vision in the eye Jack shattered; he had a white patch over it now. Still a trooper though, he gave me a polite smile and inclined his head, then he disappeared into the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” I said. My heart was already on the verge of having a heart attack, and I had to know before I passed out and died. I sat down with Garrett beside me, and Ellis and Knight sat opposite. Teaguae took the chair to my right.
“We think the Crimstones might have rallied again,” Knight said. “We think… I… Garrett, it couldn’t have been anyone else?”
I had to clamp my hand over my face to keep from swearing. The word Crimstone alone sparking an anxiety inside of me that seemed to now be conditioned.
But then I caught the last of Knight’s sentence. “It couldn’t have been anyone else? What happened?”
“There was a break-in in Black Tower yesterday, early morning. We didn’t find out until two hours ago when Drake resurrected. Two masked men tried to steal Jack’s body while Theo was out doing fuck knows what with one of the Falconers,” Ellis said. My mouth dropped open, and a chill froze my muscles. “We thought they’d taken Theo and the Falconer, but luckily they didn’t. Theo told Drake he was going out, but he didn’t say what he was doing. However, it’s because of Theo that Jack was almost taken. He was supposed to be guarding the library. Drake says he fended them off but he died of the wounds he sustained doing it. He doesn’t know who they were, but it was two males.” She shook her head. “Juni was out at the time, and we think that might’ve been what they were waiting for.”
“Jesus fuck,” I whispered. “So the only witness is Drake?”
Ellis’s face darkened. “Unfortunately. He’s adamant that Ares and Siris come and stay in Black Towers with him since he’s scared. They’ve agreed but I’ll be needing them to scout out what we’re seeing happen in Moros.”
That’s right, Knight mentioned a hundred people in attendance?
“So a hundred Crimstones now? Is that what you’re saying?”
Ellis shook her head, beside me Garrett got up and I saw him walk towards Silas’s bedroom. I felt pulled to go with him. I was protective of Silas and the close connection we’d been sharing; but I knew I had no authority to do so, especially not in front of the others.
“There’s a new ring leader but we don’t know who he is. The hundred were the residents of Moros who gathered at an underground rally three days before this happened. He’s recruiting, and he’s getting more supporters than we thought he would. The personal issues that the family is going through has dropped public opinion on us. Silas, Elish, and Nero were our power heads; they were our backbone. Garrett…” Ellis glanced to the hallway, and when she saw that Garrett had disappeared into the bedroom she felt comfortable enough to say: “He doesn’t have the same presence as them. He doesn’t have what those three have, and right now we desperately need that. We don’t even fucking have Kessler. We need to at least pretend this family isn’t limping along like a sick dog.”
Her teeth clenched and she looked to the bedroom door again. “We’re going to have to give him some tough love right now. We need Dad to snap out of this. We have to come back
at full force and squash this before it gets out of hand.” She paused, but in that silence I could see her gather her confidence, and several moments later I knew why she had hesitated. “We need Sanguine back and we need Nero and Ceph back. Caligula has the northern greywastes swarming with legionary trying to find Kessler, and we have to find him quickly. It’s been three months since he disappeared, three months since the explosion–”
Reaver and Killian have been gone for three months.
“– I already spoke with Caligula, and he’s on orders to start looking for Nero and Ceph as well. I’m going to send Teag into the plaguelands with Grant in case they went there and start making it known that Nero will be welcome home. I’ll use fucking skywriting if I have to. We’re going to need Nero either way; even if we do find Kessler it could be three more months before he fully resurrects.”
“Silas will never go for this,” Teaguae said, shaking his head back and forth rapidly. “You know he won’t, Ellis. Just like we know he won’t go and get Sanguine. He’s never gone back on his punishments. You know this, and if you ask he’ll just leave him there longer.”
“He has to!” Ellis snapped. She slammed her hand against the arm of the couch. “If he’s too depressed to run Skyfall, he has to let us bring in the family members who can do it with the iron fist that Skyfall needs right now. I love Dad, and I understand he’s going through a lot, but he can’t have both right now. A hundred, Teaguae, a hundred people were at that rally, and now that the Crimstones were able to waltz into Black Tower and almost kidnap Jack… they’re well-aware we’re weakened right now.”
Suddenly Garrett scrambled out of Silas’s bedroom. He closed the door right in time for all of us to hear something break against it.
I shot up angrily. “What the fuck did you say to him?” I snapped. Garrett looked at me surprised. I’d rarely gotten angry with him, but I realized I didn’t want to see Silas upset or under any more stress. I felt protective over him, like I was his guardian now or something.