by Quil Carter
“I – I was just requesting–”
“Requesting or manipulating him?” My voice continued to raise. “You just barge in there and start making requests of him without even asking me how he’s doing, or if it’s a good time? I told you he was at a low point.” With a flare of my temper, I glared at Garrett and then the other three on the couch. “From now on, anyone who wants to talk to him has to go through me first. Understand?”
At precisely the same moment, I got three dropped looks that quickly turned hostile, Ellis especially. And when I looked to Garrett, I saw he was standing still like a prey animal trying to blend in with the scenery.
“Your fiancé is getting a bit too bold, Garrett,” Ellis said coolly. “Telling me when I can and cannot see my own father?”
“If you want Silas to give you permission to get back Sanguine and Nero, barging into his bedroom when he’s having a rough morning isn’t going to do the fucking trick,” I said to her. My tone was authoritative and firm, but inside I was fucking shaking and my ears were boiling hot.
“He’s been having a rough three months!” Ellis hissed loudly and pointed to the door. “When he gets like this, Elish steps in and then Silas has all the time in the world to find himself, but Elish is gone, Nero is gone. We need at least one of them here!”
I understood that, and I didn’t want the Crimstones to start causing shit, so I raised my hands. A part of me wondering where these big balls had come from. “Okay. Give me a day, give me twenty-four hours. I’ll talk to him about it.”
“We need Caligula to start looking for Nero a soon as possible,” Ellis sighed. “And Sanguine. Sanguine will get those fucking Crimstones, and as horrible as it sounds, if Crow’s fully taken him he’ll be just as effective. Dad can fix his mind when the Crimstones are dead.” Ellis got to her feet and took a shot of some brown alcohol; Luca was standing out of sight with a tray of shots and cigarettes laid out. “I need to do as much damage control as I can. Garrett, did you want a ride back to your office?”
Garrett looked at me. He looked dejected from me yelling at him, but unfortunately I needed to be alone with Silas. I pecked his lips and squeezed his hand. “I’ll call you for our nightly chat when it’s time. I need it to just be me and him if you want this to work.”
Garrett let out a breath through his nose and nodded. He kissed me back and took a shot as well, then let out a hiss from the taste. “Okay, let’s go. I look forward to tonight, lovely Otter.”
And with several tense goodbyes, I was alone with Silas once again… with yet another weight added onto my crumbling shoulders.
I opened the door and saw Silas sitting on the edge of the bed, his elbows resting on his knees and his head slumped. I stepped in, but recoiled with an ouch when I stepped on a shard of porcelain. I raised my socked foot and swore. Nothing was sliced, it had just jabbed me.
“I liked that lamp,” I said to him. “You broke the lamp I liked, jerk.”
Silas raised his head and gave me a hollow look. “They can do whatever they want. I just want to be left alone,” he said, his tone deader than ever. He deflected his gaze and laid back down on the bed. “You succeeded. Goodbye and lock the door behind you.”
My head tilted to the side. It took me a minute, since I wasn’t that bright, and I found myself feeling pissed. “You fucking think I’m here to try and get Sanguine and Nero back? Fuck off. You know me better than that, you dumb prick.” I disappeared and picked up the tray of drinks, cigarettes, and on closer inspection, a little white bowl of powder and metal sniffers, and walked back in.
“I suppose I was the one to summon you first,” Silas said in a low tone. He picked up one of the shots, whisky I think, and looked at it. “Why are you still here then?”
I got myself a sniffer and just took some right out of the bowl. I wasn’t sure what it was, but the back of my throat wasn’t going numb, so it wasn’t coke. “I don’t know,” I said. “You know I’ve always liked making people laugh and shit, and make them feel better when they’re sad. You’re pretty sad, so you’re kind of like… a happiness project for me. I want you to be happy again.” I realized I could ask him the same question back. “Why did you ask for me to come here?”
Silas reached over and grabbed the sniffer from me. Doing drugs together was this family’s thing, I’ve learned. It was the same as having a cigarette or a drink with them. Funny enough, Reaver had always been this way, long before he knew he was a chimera.
“You’re the only man who treats me like a normal person,” Silas said as he stared at the metal rod. He started weaving it between his fingers. “No one here does. I’m their king, their father, their papa, their master, or to Reaver I was something to despise and hate. With you, however, there’s no layers of film you look through, distorting your perception of me like the others. You see me as I am, the good and the bad. You have no idea how difficult it is living a life where no one treats you like a person. My time in Aras was the best time I’d had in years… because I was just a normal greywaster, and I was treated as such.”
I gave him a funny look. “You fucking acted like you enjoyed it at the time, walking around like you’re gliding, and that silky, condescending voice. I’ve seen that smile as you’re torturing your chimeras. You fucking almost had Sanguine kill me when you were trying to figure out where Reaver was, and you would’ve done it. You were happy as shit being a king, master, all of that.”
Silas was quiet the entire time I said this, the sniffer still twirling in his fingers. Then he dropped the sniffer and laid back down on the bed. “None of it matters now that Sky’s gone.”
My mouth twisted to the side. “Silas… Sky’s been gone for… how many years? Like way over a hundred, right? I know you loved him but… he’s been gone for a really fucking long time.”
Silas’s face dropped. I hated my big mouth; I don’t think I should’ve said that. “I’m coming in too, move over.” I laid down beside him, and as his eyes filled, I put a hand on his head. “You told me he was a monster, that he tormented you. Why has it been over a hundred years and you’re still like this? That you let your family fall apart because of your obsession with cloning him? Why him?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Make me understand,” I urged. “Come on… tell me a story this time. Make me understand.”
Silas took in a deep breath. I was sure he was going to just fall back into silence, but to my utter astonishment… he started talking.
“Sky and Perish created Skytech and the two of them worked on just creating sustainable food for the people and also how to protect living creatures from the sestic radiation, which eventually would become the Geigerchip. When Sky died I shifted almost all of our focus on creating clones, genetically engineered humans which would eventually become my babies, but for me personally… I wanted to clone Sky. So I could put his O.L.S into the clone and it would be like he was back.”
I nodded and started stroking his upper arm.
“It turns out that my DNA and mutations were easy to clone, but I didn’t want a born immortal like me, I wanted one of Sky but his genetics were different… hostile almost. The child would die, his heart would stop and he’d die. I only had a finite number of tries from Sky’s salvaged brain matter so I decided to put the matter to rest.” Silas’s eyes darkened. “Then Perish found some old files referring to a lab. An above ground one where our research from Germany had been transferred to when the Second Cold War started. He repaired a plane with some other men, and went on a trip. He was successful and my babies came several years later.”
Silas smiled faintly. “Having my babies was such a breakthrough. It fuelled my belief that cloning my Sky was right around the corner.” Then the faint smile faded and his lips stiffened. “When someone dies, you grieve them and eventually… you find yourself moving on. Even when in the throes of mourning, when you don’t think you’ll ever get over the pain… eventually you find yourself thinking of them less and l
ess, and living your life. Is this correct?”
As much as it stung me because of my own recent loss, I nodded.
“But what if you could never move on because you were convinced you could bring him back? Not just a fool’s hope… but you genetically engineered children with yours and his DNA. You had babies living to the third trimester who were identical to him. It was worse, or better, when my science chimeras grew up and the research accelerated. I always had Elish beside me, telling me just a few more years, just a few more years… so I never have that acceptance and that closure. Sky is always just several years away,” Silas said. “And it became an obsession for me. The more time that passed, the more videos I watched, pictures I saw of us together… the more I missed him and yearned for those times with him. Then I just fucking spiralled, it got out of hand…” Silas reached behind him and grabbed the charmander and clung it to him. “It got so bad I couldn’t stand Perish anymore, or his voice. He sounded just like Sky, that raspy, gravelly voice that was so unique to those twins. I altered his brain trying to make him as different to Sky as I could… and I got desperate enough to implant that poor man with Sky’s O.L.S to try and make him my Sky. Perish was never the same since, even after it was removed.”
I patted the charmander. “Was this dude Perish’s?”
Silas nodded. “He loved his Char Char. Almost three hundred years old and he had loved that damn thing.”
“Wait…” I raised an eyebrow. “I thought you guys were like twenty-four when the…” My voice dragged and Silas chuckled dryly.
“No. It was a miscommunication I suppose. I stopped aging at twenty-four and people just assumed that’s how old I was when the Fallocaust happened, and I just went with it. It’s easier that way and once you’re as old as I am, age doesn’t really matter anyway. They don’t know I was created, not just someone with a random genetic mutation. I was created in Germany during World War Two, with a handful of other boys. We were supposed to be living bombs, immortal weapons who could take out entire cities at our whim. I was a part of a splinter group designed to have the mental abilities I have. I was one of the best,” Silas explained to me.
I was in awe as he spoke this, and I realized with even more shock, that I might be the first person to hear this in centuries. “The war started in 1950 and went on for many years. During the war, we were smuggled to Canada and it was there we stayed when the war ended. But what we didn’t know, was that our next prime minister was a sympathizer. So, yes, the war was over, but really, nothing was the same after that, things changed. It was so gradual at first that only the conspiracy theorists clued in, but the next thing we knew other countries were rising up, experiencing the same problems as us. Insane government control, human experiments, corruption. We didn’t know this was going on, and we’d later realize no one knew because they were controlling the media.
“Years before the Second Cold War started, I was homeless after leaving an abusive boyfriend and I was drawn back to a town I had lived in, in my younger years. I met Sky there one evening at a convenience store. He took pity on me and brought me home to where Perish was. We didn’t know the other ones’ secrets, but we should have… born immortal attraction,” Silas said. It looked like he was completely lost in recollection. “We eventually found three others living in a remote cabin a few miles inland. When the war got bad we took shelter in there… until all at once we started getting bombed, the world started collapsing, and the few born immortals the government had been able to find and capture, were destroying cities left and right.
“And then came Gage. Sent from the government to hunt us like dogs.” Silas’s level tone started hovering over dangerous. I waited for him to say more, but he was silent after that.
Curiosity got to me. “Who’s Gage?” I whispered. “Why did the government want to hunt you guys down? Because you guys can explode and destroy stuff? Did he catch any of your friends? Or you?”
Surprisingly, Silas tensed up at the questions. “I will only forgive you once for asking me these questions,” he said, and there was no mistaking the warning tone. It froze up my chest like it had been coated in liquid nitrogen. “If I find out that you have told any of my chimeras, including Garrett, or any soul about what I have told you… I will not just kill you, for I know you wish for death at times like me.” Silas looked right at me, and those glaring green eyes pushed past my own eyes and into my brain. I wonder if he realized just how much he’d told me and regretted it. “I will make you immortal and I will put you in concrete, and you can spend an eternity in that darkness. Do you understand me?”
And there was that hammer being swung at my frozen chest. I nodded. “I know when stuff goes way beyond what I should be talking about. You know I’m good for it.”
Silas’s peering eyes narrowed, and he tilted his head to the side. “You’re telling the truth to me…” he said slowly.
I looked at him dumbly back and cocked an eyebrow. “That’s nothing new. I don’t think I’ve ever lied to you.”
Silas stiffened and nodded. I think more to himself than me. He slowly rose and nodded at me to get up as well. “Come with me to the living room,” Silas said placidly. “I must take care of the home I worked so hard to build.” Silas, with his shoulders slumped and his head hung low, entered the living room and picked up his remote phone.
“Bring Sanguine home. Find Nero.” That was it. Silas pressed the end call button on the phone and his chest slowly rose, and fell, with a long sigh. “And we can now see just how well they function without me,” he whispered, and the phone slipped from his hands and fell onto the carpet. “They have no use for me, Reno. They’d be better off without me.”
“Si,” I whispered. I walked to him and took him into my arms. “I can’t stop you from believing that… all I can do, is suggest that maybe we can think of ways we can get them to love you even more. Think of ways we can repair the wounds. Garrett and I have been planning on a holiday for the entire city, maybe we can create a couple more babies to get some good press too? Everyone loves babies.” I thought for a second. “Any chimeras wanting to marry partners besides me and Gare?”
Silas sniffed. “A few.”
“We can marry them, hook a few more up with some soul mates, have lots of get-togethers and those famous chimera orgies. Why don’t we put our heads together and do a bunch of awesome things for the family and Skyfall. That’ll make you feel good inside, and everyone will see that you’re just fine and still Mr. Badass.” Then something occurred to me. “We can focus on Moros too. Throw some benefits at them, so when the Crimstone asshole holds his rallies he will have a few less followers.”
I patted and rubbed Silas’s back, and after a few moments, I felt him nod. “It usually makes me happier to exert my power over them, and control them with an iron fist. But I suppose we can try it your way.”
I chuckled and pulled away from him, then I leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “You’ll love seeing your chimeras happy because of you, instead of miserable, I know it. You’re a good guy, Silas, and I’m going to make you see it.”
Silas’s hands raised, and he put one on each side of my face. He stroked my cheeks with his thumbs before, to my surprise, he leaned in and pressed his lips against mine. Not just a quick peck either, he closed his eyes and instinctively I did too. I opened my lips, a heat collecting at the top of my head, and when I felt his tongue slip into my mouth I welcomed it. We kissed deeply, our lips moving and shifting to take each other in, in as many ways as possible, and I felt his hands on my cheeks travelled down to my neck, then grab my backside.
“We’ll see, amor,” Silas whispered when our lips broke apart. “We’ll see just what you can draw from me.”
Chapter 32
Jade
Physically the house in front of me was like any other decrepit, single-level structure in the greywastes, but when I stepped off of the Falconer and onto the greywastes ash, dry and crunching underneath my boots, I could feel a dar
kness that seemed to radiate off of this unassuming building. It was bulging with fetid liquid, nose-curling stenches that embedded themselves in your nose, and yet in the naked world, without my empath abilities amplifying these feelings, it was just another broken building, long dead and succumbing to the slow, yet steady, elements of nature.
For the first time in my life, I was not alone in feeling these heightened senses. I heard another pair of boots hit the fine, but compacted dirt, and a moment later, the spike of an anxious heart followed by an audible gasp. I looked to my side and saw Gage’s wide eyes staring at the house as if it was a monster about to eat him up.
“Bad things happened here,” Gage said in a hushed voice. He looked around and his pupils retracted. I looked too and saw three crows sitting on a tractor coated with rust. “Horrible things.”
I walked away from the Falconer and to a flat area in front of the house. Glancing up, I saw three more crows, one on the roof, and two more perched on a shed that had been reduced to a heap of refuse.
“All I know was that a man held him here,” Theo said behind us. He jumped out of the Falconer, and glanced around with his copper eyes. “It’s a family secret which has been kept close to the hearts of those who lived during that time. They only tell us it is a place of Sanguine’s nightmares.”
“And Silas sent him back here?” Gage stuffed his hands into his jeans and started walking around the front of the house with me, the unease was weighing down his shoulders; they were slumped but at the same time, tense.
Theo kicked what looked like old tracks, but on closer inspection I realized they were drag marks. I started walking to the porch, not wanting to admit I was dreading what I would find.
“Silas is in a deep depression right now,” Theo said.