by Quil Carter
I couldn’t hear what Reaver was saying so I started to move closer. Reno tried to stop me but I pulled myself away from his hand. He let out a hiss as I stepped away from him. I wasn’t afraid of my Reaver. I had stopped him from shooting Leo and a few others when we got back from Donnely; I could do it again.
“Please, Reaver… just talk to him. This has gone on long enough.” I was surprised at the level of emotion in Leo’s voice. It was pleading and desperate. “He’s apologized, he knows about the trideath scare…”
“You are trespassing on my property.” Reaver’s tone could cut steel. “And I suggest you hightail it out of West Aras before I send you back full of holes.”
“Reaver!” I gasped. I started to walk towards him but froze when he gave me a very frosty glare. I stopped and stood back, my body not willing to move an inch further.
“Yeah, I know… West Aras.” Leo gave him a tired nod. He looked behind him towards where he had used to live and I saw his jaw tense. “All I’m asking is five minutes, can’t you give him five minutes?”
“Have you? You’re still separated, where is that five minutes?”
Leo hesitated, he stared down at the tuffs of dry grass that covered Reaver’s front yard. I could see the anguish on his face. That was explanation enough. “Our… our issues go farther than just… that incident.”
Reaver clicked the small lever on his M16 and raised the scope to his eye again. “And so do mine.”
Jesus, Reaver… he’s your adopted father, he saved you from being a chimera. I looked at Leo, and pursed my lips. The secret I had been holding onto for a month now. That no one knew I knew but me. Reaver should give them a chance, so we could move on and not have it hanging over us. I didn’t like what Greyson had done and I resented Leo for not defending Reaver more but… if Greyson was going to apologize shouldn’t Reaver at least give him his five minutes?
“Reaver…” Leo sighed, his eyes still fixed at the ground. “We’ve let you do this West Aras thing for long enough, it’s time to just… put things to–”
I jumped and let out a startled shout as Reaver shot the M16. A thunderous crack broke the cold air around us, echoing into the distance.
Leo jumped back a mile high as a bullet lodged itself into the ground a foot from his own boots, throwing a chunk of dead grass four feet up into the air before landing beside Leo with a thunk.
Leo stared at it for just a second before sinking to his knees in defeat. He looked positively devastated. I could see his shoulders shaking under his own grief.
When he spoke his voice was wobbling. “I lost him… I don’t want to lose my kid too.”
“I’m not your fucking kid!” Reaver snapped, immune to any feelings a normal person would have when witnessing such a strong man fall from grace.
There was another ear-ringing gunshot and a second bullet hit. “Get out of my town.”
I’d had enough. I ran over to Leo and kneeled in front of him. I put my hand on his shoulder. I saw a single tear drip down his cheek which he quickly wiped away.
“Get the fuck out of the way!” Reaver shouted at me. I felt a rough hand on my shoulder trying to pull me away. I yanked it back and gave him a poisonous glare.
“Stop tormenting him!” I yelled, daring him to put another hand on me. “He didn’t do anything to you, have some fucking compassion. He left his husband of twenty fucking years over this, the least you can do is give Greyson five minutes.”
“He’s no better than that piece of shit.” I was shocked with how angry my boyfriend sounded. “If you want to deal with him… fine. Get him off my fucking land or the next bullet is hitting someone’s flesh.”
“REAVER!”
I jumped as I heard something I had never heard before… Reno angry.
I watched as Reno stalked towards my boyfriend. “Give me the fucking gun. You don’t threaten to shoot your fucking boyfriend. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Reaver looked on the edge of murdering everyone. To my surprise though he let Reno take his assault rifle, and without another word he turned and disappeared behind the house.
“Let’s go.” I put my hand on Leo’s shoulder and started walking to the street with him. I turned my head briefly and smiled appreciatively at Reno. He nodded back, looking really pissed at Reaver. He followed Reaver behind the house, towards the basement shed.
I continued to lead Leo away. I didn’t take my hand off his shoulder, so he would know I supported him. I really didn’t know what else to do, I felt helpless. I couldn’t just let him be alone in his torment though, especially since I understood things that no one else did. I felt responsible; no one else was going to be there for poor Leo. Not even his husband.
“Is he… how is he?” Leo asked weakly, after we were out of sight of Reaver’s house.
I put on a smile, trying my best to be uplifting. “Good… we fixed up Asher’s house and made a greenhouse,” I said. “He seems happy to me… but I know he misses you two.” I didn’t know that at all, but I felt like I should say it.
Leo let out a small dry laugh, probably not buying my fib at all.
“I think he’s happy… without Greyson always putting pressure on him. I think he’s happier… right?”
I nodded. I guess he needed a lot of reassurance. “You mean with Greyson saying he gave up on him being a mayor and his protégé? Yeah, you know Reaver… he’s got to be his own man.”
Leo nodded, then he sniffed and wiped his nose. “He is, he is happier. Greyson wanted him to be someone… he just couldn’t be. I couldn’t… I couldn’t watch it anymore but… he’s free now.” Leo gave me a half-hearted smile. His lips were thin and his eyes tired. “Even if I never speak to him again, he’s free from his burdens and living his own life how he wants it. He’s safe.”
Another sigh, and a flash of hazel eyes heavy with sadness. “That’s all I ever wanted for him, Killian. Safety, and for him to just be Reaver. Whoever Reaver wanted to be… not… not what they wanted him to be.
“It can be put to rest now. Greyson understands that. He finally understands that.”
I eyed him curiously. I had a sinking feeling there were a lot more layers to what he was saying. “Reaver will eventually come around,” I said supportively. “He’s just hurt. Eventually he’ll talk to Greyson and everything will be back to normal.”
Leo fumbled with a cigarette. He tried to light it but the wind was making it hard. I motioned over to an abandoned house and we made our way inside to shelter the flame. I wouldn’t mind a smoke.
Leo leaned against the door frame and lit the cigarette. He looked out at the cold evening and was silent for a few moments. I had never seen Leo as anything more than our mayor, but suspecting he was a chimera made me look more carefully at him. He was in his late thirties and had lived as a waster for a long time, but underneath the grime we all had under our nails, he was quite attractive.
He had the look of someone who had endured a lot of pain during his life. You could see the lines on his face caused by stress and sadness that seemed to weight him down. No amount of grooming or newer clothing could cover up the turmoil I knew was in his head.
I wonder what his life was like growing up with the other chimeras; with Silas over-seeing all of them. I wondered how fucked up his life must’ve been to flee with Reaver. Or maybe it wasn’t that bad? Maybe he had just fallen in love.
I puffed on my own quil. I felt uncomfortable with the silence between us. I had the urge to say something so I just asked the first thing that came to my head. “Do you think… the thing between you and Greyson is going to be permanent?”
Leo dashed his cigarette, his lower lip stiffened. “We’ve been through so much worse…” he began. There was a pause before he continued. “He wants me home, says he finally did what I had wanted for the past twenty years… but I can’t get the picture of him strangling Reaver out of my head.”
Of course, you’ve been together for twenty years, Reaver’s almost tw
enty. They had met while Reaver was incubating. It wouldn’t be a wild guess to pin Greyson on having a large part in the plan to kidnap Reaver.
Leo continued, “I think I realized that if Reaver wasn’t going to be his… protégé as you called it, he didn’t want him around.” Leo threw the cigarette into the gravely rocks outside of the door. A spray of red embers illuminated the darkness before dying on the cold ground. “It didn’t matter that we had raised him, it didn’t matter that Reaver was a person who deserves a real life. Greyson never saw him as that. He just saw him as someone he could mould, and eventually –” His eyes hardened. “No one sees the comedic justice in that more than me.”
My ears listened more intently than Leo could’ve guessed. Greyson had wanted Reaver to take over as mayor, this we knew. Had he seen a genetically engineered chimera being the perfect future mayor? Maybe that was Greyson’s plan all along.
“I did everything… everything to raise that boy right, and I did. He treats you nicely doesn’t he?”
I snapped out of my inner thoughts and gave him a nod. I decided, though it made me a bit embarrassed, to add, “He really wasn’t… forcing himself on me when you and Greyson walked in on us. It was good up until the last two minutes. He just got carried away. I think he was too into it to hear me but I would have gotten his attention soon.” I could feel my ears go hot. “I encouraged it; I just didn’t realize what I was doing. He gets rough when he’s been killing things.”
“I know,” Leo said. He got out another cigarette, “I would’ve been surprised if… if he wasn’t that way.”
“He’s very loving, just not when people are looking.”
“That…” he began, “that’s what I had always hoped for. Greyson thought him being with you would help him have some compassion for others but it seemed to just be isolated to you. I had hoped though but –” Leo shook his head rapidly as if dismissing an unspoken thought. “No, it’s over now. It’s over. Reaver’s safe and happy. This is over now, I won… Reaver won.”
He looked at me and gave me a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, Killian. I know a lot of this doesn’t make sense.”
A lump formed in my throat. “It makes more sense than you think.”
Leo let out a dry chuckle. He scraped his boot against the dirty wooden floor. “If only you knew, Killian.”
And then I lost myself. I don’t know what made me say it, the heavy atmosphere around us, or the mood I was in, but I said it.
“I know who you are.”
I was expecting a kind of shocked reaction, but instead Leo gave me a confused look as he blew out the cigarette smoke. “Who I am?”
“And Reaver too.”
Leo’s half-smile disappeared. The shocked look I had missed just a moment before appeared on his face, though words seemed to have escaped him.
I reached into my satchel and pulled out the photo. I held it out to him and he took it with an unsteady hand.
“I found the photo… and I found your Skytech lab coat,” I said slowly. I didn’t know if I should make eye contact or look away since I had been snooping, but I decided to be a man and look at him right in the eyes. “Reaver’s a chimera isn’t he?”
I watched the cigarette drop from his fingers onto the grainy floor below, his pointer and middle finger still in the same position as when he had been holding it.
Lycos looked at me like I had just grown horns. His hazel eyes widened with every passing moment as the realization that I knew sunk in. That his twenty year secret had just been exposed.
I started to feel foolish for telling him I knew, the back of my neck felt hot.
“I promise I won’t tell him,” I said hurriedly, regretting my slip with each tense moment. “I just wanted you to know that I understand. You fled from Skyfall with Reaver, and brought him to Aras and hoped Greyson would accept him as a son not as a protégé – I understand why Greyson’s actions hurt you.” I realized I was babbling, feeling the calm atmosphere around us becoming frigid. The last thing Leo cared about right now was Greyson’s thoughts towards him. That was nothing compared to the bigger secret I had just exposed. Oh god, I had to stop talking, but my mouth felt like a crashing car, and all I could do was watch it speed down the ravine towards the gas plant.
Leo’s face darkened as I rambled; his jaw was clenched tight. “You know who I am?” he said finally. I could sense the caustic acid on his tongue.
I shifted away from him, feeling my instincts start to tell me I was in trouble. “Lycos… you… you’re a chimera scientist… like… Perish,” I whispered, feeling my chest clench so hard it physically hurt.
Before I could react Leo grabbed me. I gave out a surprised yelp before I felt myself being slammed up against the wall of the abandoned house. A spray of decayed drywall rained down on us.
I felt a cold hand wrapped itself around my neck and then Leo’s hostile and intimidating face near mine. It was twisted in an anger unsuited to his features.
“Did Reaver see the photo?” he demanded. I was surprised that his voice had a tone of desperation, not anger. This did nothing to calm my fear. Desperate people do desperate things.
“No! No!” I said quickly. I started to struggle but Leo slammed me against the wall again. I felt my heartbeat rise as the panic swept through me. I started looking around for a way to escape, or at best something to defend myself with. I didn’t want to have to pull my Magnum on him, but I would if it came to that point. I wouldn’t have a choice.
“No, look at me! LOOK AT ME!” Leo hollered. His face was a strangers… no, it was a chimera’s. “Who else knows? Who else knows?” Before I could even defend myself his voice became angry. “TELL ME!”
“No one!” I stammered. “No one, I’ve told no one… I promise.”
Leo dropped me and I fell to the floor right on my ass. The chimera grabbed his head and swore, then he turned to me again, his face twisted in anger. I crawled myself into a corner and tried to make myself as small as I could.
“I just fucking got this laid to rest, Killian!” Leo continued yelling. “What do you know about me? What more do you know? What did you find? Why?! Why did you go snooping, Killian?”
“I… I just wanted to know who his mom and dad were,” I said, my voice wobbled.
Leo gave out an angry snarl at my welling eyes. “I wanted to know who he was… and I found the box and I went into the attic. You hid him for two years because they were looking for you, didn’t you? Why did you run with him? Why did you steal him?”
“Who is he, Leo?”
I brought my sleeves up to my eyes and wiped them, only a couple tears. I was getting better at not crying over things.
Leo knelt down in front of me, or whoever was in Leo’s body, it wasn’t the kind mayor anymore, that much I knew. I saw the chimera he was in those blazing hazel eyes, ones that seemed to want to eat me alive. The only chimera I had ever met besides Perish was Elish, and his calm, cold demeanor was the opposite of Leo’s unhinged anger. He looked like a trapped beast in a pit, crazed and unpredictable.
I moved backwards until my back was pressed up against the wall. My hands felt my Magnum loaded in its holster. I rested one on top of the cold handle. I was shaking.
“If you ever speak a word of this to anyone…” Leo’s voice was a hollow growl, a tone that told me more about the consequences than any threat could. I tried to move back further.
“I will silence you.”
“What?” I exclaimed. I froze. Not from fear, but from pure shock that he would even take it this far. “Like kill me? What the fuck is going on? Who is he? Who are you?” I was the desperate one now, desperate, threatened, and confused. I just wanted to get out of there. “I won’t tell anyone, especially not him. I won’t hurt him. You… you don’t have to threaten me.”
As if he needed to make his point clearer, Leo held up his pistol and put the barrel up against my head. My hand fumbled for my Magnum but his hand grabbed mine. He squeezed it hard.
“If Reaver ever finds out about this photo, or who I am, or who he is… he will not stop until he knows the truth and the truth will kill him,” Leo whispered. “It’s been twenty years. If so much of a whisper of his existence hits Silas, he will find him and he will destroy him.”
I gasped as he squeezed my hand harder. It ached as he aggravated the old sprain.
“Reaver will stay in Aras forever, and he will be safe, do you understand? I just got Greyson to give up on the foolhardy dreams he has for that boy, and I won’t let you ruin everything. Do you understand me, Massey?”
I tried to look away but he roughly grabbed my neck and squeezed it, forcing my head up.
“This goes beyond Greyson’s dreams now, Killian. This goes deeper than you, and deeper than even Reaver. No one can know who I am, or who he is. If you have to become collateral damage, don’t think I won’t hesitate to silence you.”
Suddenly my chest started to vibrate and by the quick change in expression, Leo’s had as well. We both looked to our left and saw a shadow in the doorway.
The deacdog had his head lowered and his hackles up, a flash of teeth visible under his snarling black lips. His yellow eyes were focused on Leo, a small vibration showing under thin grey fur as he continued to growl.
I had never seen him show an ounce of aggression.
“Stand down, dog!” Leo demanded.
Deek didn’t flinch. If anything our chests started to vibrate more. Leo wasn’t the deacdog’s master anymore… I think he thought I was.
“Deek, stand down,” I said quietly. The dog stopped growling but his head was still bowed. I got up, and quickly walked past Leo.
Leo grabbed my arm. “I meant what I said,” he said threateningly. “Keep your nose where it belongs, and nothing leaves this house.”
“I know.” I jerked my arm away and quickly walked out of the structure. I pulled my hoody over my head and tried to wipe away the tears, but I was so filled with shock and confusion they kept on coming.
