by Quil Carter
Down to his chin, pooling at the bottoms… then a single drip fell to the sheets gathered by his chest. A black drop in a crumpled sea of grey linen pushed up against his body.
“Killian?”
I felt his hand on my bare shoulder and then him pulling me back down to the bed. Cold warmth wrapped around me as his skin pressed against mine.
“Close your eyes, I’ll stay awake. I’ll be able to hear anyone who comes in here, okay?”
I still couldn’t keep my eyes off of the shadows in the room, but I let him draw me close to him.
“Close your eyes.”
“Don’t go to his house tonight.”
“I won’t, just close your eyes. Just for a few minutes.”
“Okay.”
Chapter 46
Killian
We both paused in front of his door, or maybe Reaver felt my hesitation.
I felt him squeeze my hand, and as I looked at him, I saw my strong sentry; his stoic countenance as dangerous-looking as he had been the first time I had seen him.
“Who’s that?” I had asked Greyson. Mom and I had been speaking to Aras’s mayor about how our ration cards worked. Mom had more questions.
Greyson glanced behind him and he made a guffaw. “That’s –” The guffaw turned into a dry chuckle. “That’s someone you would do well to stay away from. That’s Reaver, my best sentry and my boy. Steer clear of him and you’ll do just fine.”
My mother looked to where I was looking. I felt her hand squeeze my shoulder. “Does he always skulk around like that?”
Greyson, still chuckling, nodded. “I don’t even think he knows how to walk properly.” Greyson clapped me on the back and we started walking towards Greyson and his husband Leo’s house. “Don’t be afraid of him. He won’t bother you if you don’t bother him.”
Even then I didn’t like how Greyson talked about him. I turned around to get a better look at him.
He was dressed in all black, his alabaster face staring down at the square below him, his pink lips a thin line and his body so still he looked like a statue.
His hair looks black, but when the sun catches it… I think I can see brown, rich dark strands, like the rings that form under your coffee cup.
“Let’s go home,” Reaver whispered.
He had a faint smile. I felt him squeeze my hand.
I reached out and turned the knob, and as it turned I pushed the door open. I walked inside.
Immediately I gravitated towards the bedroom. Reaver had started walking towards the living room but when he saw the direction I was going in, he stopped.
“Hey, wait up.” Reaver took a few quick steps.
I opened the door, but paused as the smell hit me.
Blood, semen, lubricant.
Reaver swore and he fell behind. I kept walking in, pushing through the memories the smell lit up in my mind. No time to panic about them, I had to get that recorder. I was stronger than that, I had to be. I had to grow up.
The room was as we had left it, but dark under the closed blinds. I reached to the window and drew the blinds up, flooding the bedroom with daylight.
Reaver groaned as the light brought a sickening reality to what had been my own since yesterday.
The corner of the room was where the most activity was. My blood from him sodomizing me had been left to stain in dark brown streaks, mixed in with loose pills that had dissolved to a chalky pink. To the left, behind the dresser, I could see the large dildo, covered in blood and what dirt had stuck to it after he threw it.
The bed, where most of my abuse had been inflicted, looked fine on the surface but it smelled of its own torment. Semen, saliva, and lubricant. I had fucked him on that bed, the look of drunk lust as I drove it in and out of him was something I wouldn’t soon forget.
“Let’s go…” Reaver’s voice was empty. He turned to leave but instead I got down on my knees and started to shift myself under the bed.
There it was, the black recorder. I looked around for the other one but I could only see dirt, pills, and more darkness. I moved myself out, grimacing under the pain, and held the recorder in my hands.
“What’s that?” Reaver asked curiously, but I pushed past him. I walked quickly to the kitchen and before my mind could convince me not to I put it on the counter and started hitting it with a frying pan.
Reaver just stared at me as I slammed the cast iron pan again and again on the voice recorder. The plastic bits shattered and flew all around the kitchen in shards. I felt tears spring to my eyes as I pulverised every single piece, until the last of it shot underneath the old refrigerator. Reaver was quiet the whole time, only moving once to dodge a piece that had shot right towards his face.
When I was done, I was exhausted. I put the pan down and leaned against the counter to catch my breath.
“I need to find the other one,” I mumbled and started to walk past him.
Reaver stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “What was that?”
My breath caught in my throat. What would I tell him?
I heard him sigh. “Never mind, I can tell you’re already thinking of a lie.”
I lowered my head and kept on walking back towards the bedroom. I had to find the other one. It had to be in this god damn room somewhere.
“The cache we brought back is ajar…” Reaver said behind me. I was flat on my stomach under the bed again. Did he put it in the box? He had it, he could have, he must have. I wiggled out from under it and saw him lifting the lid up.
“NO!” I cried. I shot to my feet and pushed the cache back down. I had to look first. “Get out, get out!”
“Killian?” Reaver looked surprised but he let me push him out of the room. “What’s wrong with you?” I slammed the door and locked it. “Killian… what do you not want me to see?”
He tried to open the door again but I held onto the knob. I realized I was starting to get desperate. “Stay out, please. Please.”
I heard him sigh. “Okay, Killi… I trust you. You… you just tell me if you need me.”
I drew the blinds again. They fell onto the window frame with a heavy bang. I turned the bluelamp on and lifted up the cache.
My heart dropped.
Where was everything?
I… I had seen so many things.
Electronics, one with a glowing screen, papers, papers with paperclips or staples attached, wires and… things, things…
There was some clothing, a battery charger, and a bag with a drawstring.
I looked in the bag, and my eyes widened.
I picked up the black stick of tar, about the size and shape of a pack of cigarettes. I brought it to my nose and smelled it.
I could feel the hair on the back of my neck raise, then a wave of adrenaline filled me with anxious nerves.
It was black tar heroin, the same kind my father got in Tamerlan. Without a second thought I stuffed it into my pocket and kept looking.
Needles, and a tie off… Asher had been a heroin addict this whole time? No, it didn’t look used, perhaps he was waiting for Reaver’s drugs to run out.
“Are you okay?” I heard Reaver rap lightly on the door.
I held the bag to my chest and looked around. I hid it in my satchel. I didn’t want Reaver to see what was inside of it. There were more drugs in there, and I wanted to see what they were first. Dek’ko drugs were potent and dangerous, more potent than the scavenged pain killers Reaver found, or the coke they had found in compacted tight bricks in the bank vault. They had meth in Skyfall, crack, ecstasy, and LSD, and drugs the greywasters had never heard of.
These were my drugs now; I’d hide them in my house if needed be. Where Reaver would never look.
I looked back into the cache, there was no voice recorder, there wasn’t anything. Where had everything else gone? He hadn’t had time to move everything, did he? I tried to replay the moments in my head, but many of them were too painful to analyze.
I closed the cache and started looking around th
e room again. I put a shirt over the dildo just so I wouldn’t have to see it.
After tearing the bedroom apart for god knows how long, I still hadn’t found it. It wasn’t in the bedroom.
You idiot, it’s probably in his pocket.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, but though it knotted my insides to not personally be able to destroy the second recorder – at least it was in a place where I knew no one would look.
“Killian? If you don’t open the door… I’m going to force my way in.”
I looked to the door. I hadn’t realized it until my brain finally decided to register his voice but he had been calling to me for the past several minutes.
I rose, ignoring the jolt of pain through my backside, and opened the door.
Reaver mouthed something to me, but I wasn’t listening. I tried to walk past him but once again he caught me.
“Killi… please? Where is it?”
“Where is what?” I whispered, looking back into the room.
“The-the thing he used on you.”
I felt cold. “I put the black shirt on it.”
Reaver nodded. “I’m going to bring it to the incinerator in the Slaught House. Everything else Reno can clean out.”
“Reno?”
He held my hand. I knew it wasn’t because he wanted to be affectionate; it was to keep me from wandering off.
“I’ve asking him to stay in Aras with us this winter. He’s going to stay here, in Asher’s old place. Leo is bringing Vegas back from Anvil to replace him as field sentry.”
“Why?”
Reaver was quiet for a moment. I realized it was because of me.
“Sometimes it gets icy, and we might slip on the rocks when we’re visiting him, or when he comes down here. You want to see him more this winter, right?”
I nodded, not wanting to argue. As we left the house I turned around again. The bag of drugs was carefully hidden in my satchel.
Where were all his other electronics? I had seen them… I know I had seen them.
Had someone been here before me? No… Reaver would never allow it. He said Matt had been here all night too. He had only left a few hours ago.
Maybe he had stashed them while Reaver was chasing me. Perhaps he knew after Reaver raped me, he would have to lie low. Or maybe he was planning on taking Reaver and leaving.
The attic? No… the shed? I sighed as we walked from the house, the cold air the only indication that we were now outside.
I turned around again, my mind playing with every excuse I could find. I brought my gaze to the bedroom window.
Asher was in the window.
His neck had thick, angry bruises where I had tightened the plastic bag. His eyes were rimmed with black circles, like he was wearing dark eye-shadow, so deep into his skin it made his green eyes sink into his skull.
Because he was dead.
Asher’s black lips hooked in a smirk, pulling back to show off his white teeth.
I screamed.
Reaver came running. I hadn’t realized he had been off to check the shed. I screamed again.
“He’s in the bedroom, he’s in the bedroom!”
“What!?” Reaver sprinted over to me in five strides. My eyes shot desperately from him to the bedroom window.
He was gone.
“He’s in the bedroom, Asher’s in the bedroom!” I sobbed, pointing.
Reaver left me and ran inside. I saw his silhouette in the bedroom as he looked around.
When he came back, he had an odd glint in his eyes.
I don’t think I had ever seen that look on him.
“Killibee… no one is in there.” His voice was gentle, the same voice I used when I talked to Biff. He put a hand on my side, I cringed but he kept it there.
“Let’s go home.”
Reaver
“Well, isn’t that cute. Finally showing some affection in public, huh?” Doc quipped. Donny was always good for a joke, even if this particular one made me want to punch his teeth out.
I had walked into Doc’s holding Killian’s hand, firmly. If I didn’t he wouldn’t follow me properly. If I didn’t he would wander off in his own little world. If I didn’t as soon as he realized I wasn’t near him he would panic.
The worry that was just a small trickle at first had turned into a waterfall.
“Yeah, yeah, I need to see you privately,” I said. I squeezed Killian’s hand but he was looking out the window. No doubt looking for Asher. “Why don’t you say hi to Matt? He’s become like the clinic cat. Give him a scratch behind the ears.”
“Watch it, I bite,” Matt called from his corner of the recovery room. He was looking better, as good as you could look after becoming raver chow. I still owed him a couple bucks for hanging out outside of Asher’s place. Eh, I’d do it later.
When I had planted Killian beside the very attention-starved Matt I pulled Doc into the small private room he had off of the recovery area.
“Something’s wrong with him,” I said, leaning against the door so I could hear if he was listening in. “He barely talks and when he does it’s simple one or two words. He’s not just freaking out that Asher’s still out there, he keeps claiming he sees him in Aras but as soon as I run in… nothing.” I motioned to my face. “The first night he woke up screaming and clawing my face. Last night he bit me because he thought I was holding him down not just holding him while we slept. He’s…” I swallowed. “I’m worried.”
Doc put his hands out. “I can see you’re worried but you have to look at this from Killian’s perspective. Asher is technically still out there, and he did have some very traumatizing things happen, not long after coming back from Donnely; and before Donnely was the factory. You and your papas have been overloading that kid’s head. I’m surprised he hasn’t had a stroke.”
“What can I do to make him stop?”
Doc gave out a dry chuckle. I guess I could have said it better. “Just do what you think Reaver would do, and then do the opposite.”
My brow furrowed at him, even though that was what I had been doing.
“Time will help him, and you can help make that time shorter. You have Xanax, Valium? All your drug stuff?”
I nodded.
“Use it, but carefully.” Doc nodded. “Now… I wanted to share something else with you. I suppose it is a good idea to have him out of earshot. I was able to put your blood to those Dek’ko drug tests.”
This caught my interest. I wanted to see just what sort of shit that asshole raticater had been pumping me with.
“Reaver… congratulations, you are the very first person I’ve known to have been on scopa.”
“Scopa?”
Doc nodded. “Mind control drug, also known as Devil’s Breath.” I saw him reach into his pocket. “Never seen outside of Skyfall, and it is now banned there. Extremely banned. I have no idea how Asher got it.”
Well, he had told us in secret he was from the Moros District of Skyfall, the slums. “How does it work?” I asked.
Like he was waiting for it, Doc quickly withdrew his hand from his pocket. Pinched in his fingers was a white substance. Before I could even blink he opened his fingers just a bit and blew.
I flinched away but I could already smell it in my nose. This was cocaine though.
“You’re now my slave,” Doc said. “Just like that, no time to kick in, no nothing.”
He went on. “If I want you to give me all your money, you will. If I want you to kill, rape, torture, or fuck me, you will. No hesitation, no argument.”
“Did Killian have the same drug in him?” The notion made me nervous.
Doc shook his head. “Nope, but you also had in you what I found in his tests. A very popular drug amongst the elite, mostly the ones keen on owning cicaros, arian pets. It might explain why Killian is rattled as all hell. It’s ressin. It’s a… well, in some circumstances it is extremely fun.” Doc scratched the back of his head. “It makes you sensitive as all hell and horny enough to fuck a
nything you fancy, again and again without rest. You both were positive, you especially. It must have taken a few doses to get you up and at ‘em.”
“I didn’t fuck him.” My voice hovered on a dangerous level.
Doc raised an eyebrow. “Would you remember if you did?”
I really hated that man sometimes.
“I’m sure I would have…” All those times I came back from Killian wanting to have sex with him, I had thought it was just me being drunk and stupid. I guess not.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Reaver. No one can control themselves around those Skyfall drugs.” Doc paused and lowered his voice. “Not you, not Killian, no one.”
I walked out with him and saw Killian sitting quietly beside Matt. Matt was telling him some bullshit story that probably wasn’t true. I clicked my tongue and motioned him to the door with me and we were on our way.
That night he woke up again, but I was ready for him. As soon as he went for the face, but before he could fully wake up, I slipped him some Xanax with the water I offered him. He fell back asleep, and, hopefully, would stay asleep.
Like I had been doing every night, I slipped my clothes back on and grabbed my M16 and started patrolling outside of Aras.
I know I had promised him, but I couldn’t just let Asher go, and the dirt bike made good time. Each night I found myself getting farther and farther from Aras, but I still managed to make it home before Killian woke up.
I had stashed the dirt bike in a crevice on the large rocky crags where Reno lived. Every night I snuck out of the north gate and spent the next six hours looking for Asher. So far I hadn’t turned up anything. It was a cold trail. Wherever Asher had run off to, he had done it with his usual stealth.
It was like I was tracking myself. I remembered how much of a living shadow he was when we would patrol together, or when we tried to outmatch each other’s agility. He was as good as I was.
Perhaps it was a fool’s mission but I had to do something. Killian slept more than I did, and that meant a lot of time idle in the basement. I’d go crazy if I didn’t have some way to occupy my mind. It was the only thing I could do to not think about it.
