Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (60 page)

“You’ve been pissed for the past six weeks,” Kass replied, before making a kissing noise at Jett. I heard my kitten give him a half-meow, half-purr before scrambling across the kitchen for a thrown piece of meat. Jett liked Kass and I liked Kass as well. He wasn’t a part of the chimera family and once he had gotten used to my natural appearance he treated me normally.

“Jack’s still ignoring me,” I said irritated. “And I’m still ticked that Elish won’t let me be Sanguine.”

Kass brought me my newspaper-wrapped food, showing a slick of grease soaking through the newsprint like any good pub food. All of our pub food either came wrapped in newspaper or if you could afford the deposit: plastic containers.

I unwrapped the newspaper and started reading it as I devoured my burger, chocked full of shredded bosen meat, cheese, and bacon. The pub staff were well-trained, chimeras came to that bar often and we always got the best food. No rat meat for me and being a boy raised on jerky I fully appreciated it.

Though because I was in hiding I was forbidden from going in there flaunting my black card so Kass did the work for me. Technically I could get into trouble for buying the Gamegear but if Elish had that much time on his hands to find out it was me, he needed a hobby.

“
Irontowers Rebels Still Refusing Comment on Child-Sexslave scandal
?” I read the newspaper headline out loud and chuckled. I grabbed a fry before popping it into my mouth. “Why do they think being quiet will do anything? It’s just going to incriminate them more.”

Kass leaned over. He motioned to steal a fry but I gave him a growl. Though after seeing him retract his hand like he was touching caustic acid, I pushed a small pile towards him. I could always make him go get more so what did I care?

“That was pretty clever for you to think up. Though don’t you think that might’ve fuelled them shooting down Silas’s plane?” Kass asked. I had told him all of the details about what was going on with Silas and the family. I had no one else to tell and he knew he would be in my next sandwich if he dared betray me.

“Probably…” I said but narrowed my eyes. “I still think it was Elish though.”

Every time I brought up Elish being behind these things Kass gave an animated shudder. Like the name alone brought a winter chill into the room. I could relate, that man was a brick of ice and as cold as a comet.

Though that being said, I still respected him. Why did I respect him even though I believed he was behind King Silas’s plane being shot down? Because if I dared show hostility towards him, I knew he had the tools to have me killed, and me dying was an acceptable casualty if he had King Silas in his sights.

I might be just a greywaster and just a teenager… but I wasn’t stupid. Elish was king right now, and it would be incredibly easy for him to kill me and suffer the fallout from Silas once he woke.

So I was normal towards him. Nothing special… just normal.

“You know… before you came here it was really obvious to us lowly civilians that King Silas and Elish would eventually become involved. I mean it’s just too perfect,” Kass said.

I sniffed airily. “Silas likes me, and Elish is jealous.”

My eyes burned into Kass’s as he chuckled. He stopped as soon as he saw I was glaring at him.

Kass grabbed two fries and shook his head, then he reached down to the side table and grabbed the ketchup. “Your family is just something else, but I kind of understand. Actually I probably don’t but maybe that’s the point.”

“Probably,” I said and I continued reading the paper. “I hope Silas finally decides there is enough public support to finally bomb Irontowers. I’m getting tired of them being around.”

“Do you really think the chimeras will bomb them?” Kass asked. “Do they even know which part of the city they’re in? Irontowers is fucking huge.”

Yes, they have plants. But I didn’t tell Kass this. Instead I shook my head no. “I’m not a part of that chimera faction. That’s all Nero, not me.”

I took the remote and switched it over to the movie channel, just as the movie about the murdering clown was starting. “Why are people so afraid of clowns?” I shook my head. “There’s a lot more scarier things going on in the greywastes than men with face paint.”

“Nero hasn’t told you anything though?” Kass said, watching me as I leaned against the couch and popped the last bite of my sandwich into my mouth.

I shook my head. “Nah, we just bullshit then eventually after he’s had a couple drinks he just wants to talk about sex,” I said with my mouth full of food. I swallowed it. “Which basically consists of me saying ‘No, I haven’t fucked anyone yet. No, I haven’t touched myself yet. And no, you can’t take your pants off.’”

Kass laughed, I heard him hit his knee. “I still can’t believe you’ve never even played with yourself. Buddy, you’re almost twenty. I’m surprised you haven’t exploded.”

“Uh huh,” I sighed. I was tired of this topic. “I think I’m never going to do it just to frustrate and annoy every single one of you.”

“You know…” Kass said lightly. “Maybe if you made yourself cum, or just fucked someone for a few hours… you wouldn’t so uptight.”

“I’m not uptight!” I snapped, before grabbing the bottle of vodka. I saw Kass smirk at this but I decided to take a drink of vodka as appose to bashing Kass on the head.

“Do you have any real reason?”

I stiffened. I gave Kass a warning look before slowly shaking my head. In response Kass swallowed and nodding back then turned his attention towards the TV.

After IT was over and Men in Black came on I picked up my pack of cigarettes resting beside me and pinched the tip with my fingers. A red ember exploded and I took in a deep inhale.

“Can you light other things on fire besides cigarettes?” Kass asked beside me.

I kept the smoke in my lungs, and as I exhaled the smoke I reached my hand over and touched Kass’s bare arm.

My friend yelped before recoiling, a red patch the size of my finger starting to form and swell. Kass swore at me under his breath and pressed his glass of vodka and ChiCola against it.

“Can you make like… your hands burst into flames?”

Wouldn’t that be something to see? I smirked and shook my head. “No, but according to Silas we can alter the temperature. We can also draw out an electric current too, but I don’t know how to do that, just the burning one.”

I thought for a second about another altered sensation I had heard about from Nero and debated the intelligence of telling this to Kass, but he had never come onto me so I decided it would be fine.

“There is another one…” I said slowly.

To my surprise Kass’s eyes lit up and I saw his lips curl into an impish grin. “The slave touch?”

One of my eyebrows rose. “That’s what it’s called?”

Kass’s grin only widened and he nodded vigorously. “Because whoever the chimera does it to, is their slave for life. Willingly… because it’s supposed to be fucking mind blowing.”

“Hm.” I looked down at my hands and wiggled them. “Obviously I don’t know what one. Nero just said it’s like vibrating static and in the right places…”

“Knee-trembling, prolonged orgasms that will bring you to your knees,” Kass said with a dreamy sigh. “Too bad I’m too ugly to be a cicaro, too strong-willed to be a sengil, and too dirty to even be Skylander.”

I ran my hands over my arm and tried to alter my burning touch into something else but there wasn’t much use of it. I only succeeded in singing my arm hair; the smell was interesting.

“Okay, I want to try something…” Kass leaned down and picked up a carrier bag he usually packed around. I watched him root through it and to my utter perplexity he pulled out a yellow container with a blue cap.

“Is that lighter fluid?” I blinked. “You carry around…
lighter fluid
?”

“Oh be quiet, chimera,” Kass said. He grabbed my hand and held it palm up towards him. “Davers picked up a part-time job lighting the barrels in the indoor shelter for the feral cats down at the seawalk. Sometimes on the way to clean here I light them for him since it’s on the way. You chimeras are cat-obsessed so I’m sure you have no smart remarks for that.”

I let him rub some of the lighter fluid on my fingers before he retracted his hand and nodded at me. “Okay, flame on, good buddy.”

I gave my fingers another wiggle just for show before focusing whatever it was in my body that made this happen. Sure enough, to my and Kass’s amusement, my fingertips burst into small orange flames.

And to my surprise it didn’t burn me. I gave Kass a quizzical look before reaching my hand out towards his shirt to singe him. Kass jumped back with a laugh before hovering his own hand above my fingertips.

“Doesn’t it hurt?” Kass asked.

I shook my head and eased the energy out of my fingertips to quell the flames.

And
then
it started to burn me. I yelped to Kass’s laughing amusement and started shaking my hand back and forth. Once the flames were extinguished I put the burning tips into my mouth, tasting not only seared flesh but the sour, cold taste of lighter fluid as well.

“Once I turn off the flame-on, they start to burn though,” I said after popping the tips out of my mouth. Kass got up and walked towards the kitchen and I heard the tap run. “I should talk to Perish one day and see if he can design me a way to throw fireballs or something equally awesome.”

Kass handed me a glass of ice-cold water and sat down. “Well, chimeras are supposed to be weapons too, right? I’m surprised he hasn’t thought of something like that already.”

“Second generation is the experimental batch apparently,” I told him. “They range from partial success which I guess would be me and Jack, to utter failure which would be Mr. Valentine.”

“Valen…” Kass muttered. His oval-shaped face became hard, and absentmindedly he scratched his prickly facial hair. It looked like he was attempting to grow a beard but he was bad at it. “Fucking Valen and his bromance club. He was at the bar when I was there, you know? Flaunting his shit.”

“Valen is a piece of shit,” I said. “I’m going to knock out his teeth if I ever catch him without his chimera brothers. He’s a miserable fucking shit.”

“Everyone knows that. Jack has a good reputation in Skyfall, so do the silver twins, and Rio. Ludo is a druggy but he’s friendly too, Felix is a shitfuck though. Ceph is feared because of what he and Nero do, but everyone knows Valen is the black sheep. Do you know what he did in that fucking pub man?” Kass shook his head. “He goes into the pubs, him and his goons pick out the three hottest guys, gay or not, and they take them into the abandoned buildings near Cormorant and rape the fuck outta them.”

I could feel the blood drain from my face. Kass seemed shocked by this; he gave me a questionable look.

“H-he rapes them?” I stammered. Valen and the other chimeras had definitely tried that with me, but I assumed it was drawn from their anger of me storming into their apartment. “Innocent people? Not just… not just ones that might –” I knew it was the wrong way of saying it but I didn’t know how else to say it. “– might deserve it?”

Kass stared at me for several more seconds before his lips pursed. Then to my anger he burst out laughing.

“You sound surprised!” Kass laughed waving me off. “A chimera rapes innocent people? Of course, every single one of you do. I bet even Jack has. That’s a well-known fact of life here.”

Like my blood had been ignited with the same lighter fluid still stinging my hands, I angrily rose to my feet and felt my teeth creak as I clenched my jaw. Immediately Kass recoiled away, his eyes wide and staring, and his laughter gone with the night’s mood.

“My family doesn’t do shit like that,” I snapped. “Whatever you heard isn’t true, and I never want that shit to come out of your mouth again. My family doesn’t do that to innocent people.”

Kass held up his hands but to my anger I saw the slight curl of a smirk on his face. Bravery fuelled by alcohol but it might be the last vein of bravery he ever felt.

“You’ve seriously been sheltered, lied to, or both, Sanguine. It’s common knowledge here that your family can pick up and fuck any man they want, willing or not. Davers has been by Garrett just last year, and Chelsey’s brother got nailed by Nero and Ceph at–”

I raised my hand and hit Kass right across the face, as hard as I possibly could. The housekeeper’s head snapped backwards.

My entire body was shaking with rage; the dark essence that I had once attributed to Crow was soaking into me and coating my entire body. I could feel it slowly snake up my limbs, my chest, my neck, before pooling behind my eyes. I could hear an audible roar from the blood rushing through my head, and as it joined with the darkness my eyesight started to dim.

“Nero is my best friend,” I said, my tone dropping. “He knows me; he would never do anything like that.”

Kass quickly scrambled to his feet, with a quickened speed he walked past me and grabbed his jacket. “Bro… you’re my friend… I…” He put his shoes on. “You’ve been sheltered.”

“I – have – not!” I whirled around and screamed. “All of that shit is rumours, rumours you fucking peasants have started. My family doesn’t do shit like that.”

Kass turned around, looking angry. “And why the fuck would I lie? Ask anyone, Sanguine. Anyone. You’ve been in that family for no time at all. I was born and raised in Nyx. I’ve seen it happen, I’ve seen it accepted and ignored too. That’s life under the royal Dekker family.”