by Quil Carter
Julian looked up at me and smiled sadly, his eyes were drowning with unshed tears. “It brought this on but… I stood up for myself at least. All because of you.”
All because of me.
It was this bad… my friend was beaten to shit… all because I’d given him the strength to fight back. Because, like me, Julian had drawn strength from our new, exhilarating friendship, and like me… we’d used it as strength against our abusers.
But Julian wasn’t me, and his father wasn’t Silas. They were both normal arians who had to obey the king and obey chimeras.
“You’re not going back there,” I said coldly. “You’ll never see him again.”
I was dismayed when Julian’s face dropped. “I… I have to take care of my mom. She’s bedridden…”
I attempted to resist the rage searing my throat, but the words had already been formed. “She’s useless,” I snarled. “She’s sitting in bed gathering dust. If she cannot even protect her own child, what good is she?” And I meant that. I’d never had a mother, but I always assumed that if I had… she’d have protected me from Silas. Just like Cristo had.
Julian’s eyelids lowered and he shifted his weight. “Elish… he’s my dad… she’s my mom. I… I’ll just make sure not to piss him off…”
“This is twice this has fucking happened, Julian,” I snapped. “Twice and it’s been a little over a week.” I threw the towel down and rose to my feet, Julian cowering below me. “I will not stand, as the fucking Prince of Skyfall, as the man who may well be my fucking boyfriend gets abused by someone not even worth my fucking spit.” I kicked the suitcase across the room, and as it slammed against the wall, I realized I was rapidly losing control.
I had no control over my own fucking life in Alegria… I’ll be damned if I don’t have control over my life outside of it.
I turned and stalked towards the door, my jaw clenched and my breathing ragged.
“Elish?” Julian cried after me. “Elish… please come back.”
“I’ll return in an hour,” I said to him. I shoved the door open, the force making it slam against the wall. “It’s time I took care of a few things.”
He knew better than to follow me, but whether that was from respect or fear, I didn’t know. Julian was left behind in the apartment either way, and I was stepping back out into a dark Skyland with more rage inside of me than I had when I’d entered.
And a house in mind that I knew was only a block away.
A blue house on the corner of Kellen and Johan. What had been an innocent off-hand comment had stuck inside of my mind. I knew where Julian lived… and I knew who I would find there.
I may be helpless against Silas. I may be helpless to defend myself against his constant abuse… but even though Silas pounded me down, rung by rung, I was still high above this piece of shit arian who had the audacity to injure something that would soon be mine.
And he will be mine. Never more than in that moment did I feel that compulsion.
Julian would be mine. He’d be my first real boyfriend. I would protect him, just like I would protect Finn, and I will kill every person who tries to harm him. He was my will to live; he was something I would draw strength from. I now had someone to protect, someone to learn how to love… someone I could get out of bed for, leave my room for… touch the ground for.
I turned the corner and inhaled fire when I saw that blue house, only half a block up with the living room lights making the brown curtains glow. This was Kellen street, and that house beside that road… was Julian’s.
Or at least it was.
My running slowed as I approached until my movements were just a fast walk. I was surprised to find that I’d outran my anger, the hot steam that had replaced my blood had cooled to an eerie calm. I walked in tempered silence now, like a Grim Reaper who’d been doing this job for thousands of years.
I crossed the yard, the sweet smell of grass springing up from the soft ground with every boot step, and my frame fully in shadows as I skulked along the side of the house. My movements were stealth, and the black coat I had on hid me perfectly.
There was an open window near me. I tuned my hearing and immediately picked up the tones of a television and the movements of someone nearby. I think the second noise was someone in a bed, that must be Julian’s parents’ bedroom.
From that assessment, I could get an idea as to the layout of the house. Or the important parts anyway. I’d assume the father was watching television, and the useless mother was in bed.
I walked along the rest of the house until I found another open window. This one had no movements coming from it and the interior was dark. Perfect.
I grabbed onto the ledge of the window and swung my legs forward. Thankfully there was nothing blocking my way inside of the house, I barely had time to gauge the room before I landed on the soft carpet.
And as soon as my feet made contact, I froze, as did my breath. I listened intently, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, but heard nothing.
This bedroom… it seemed to be a storage room. I was half-assuming that it would be Julian’s but that definitely wasn’t the case. There were cardboard boxes around me and furniture with crap piled on… it seemed from the size that this house couldn’t hold three bedrooms but perhaps Julian lived in the attic or something.
As I walked to the door, my eyes caught something. I smirked as I picked up what looked like a panama hat, a black one, and put it on my head.
Then I kicked open the storage room door and walked out into the living room, just as an old man with a bald head and a beer gut, stumbled to his feet with a startled cry, his eyes bulging out of their sockets.
“Stay where you are, old man,” I snarled.
The man, in only a stained undershirt and a pair of grey sweat pants, put his hands out as he walked backwards. “Take what you want,” he stammered as he pulled a half-finished cigarette from his mouth. “Take what you want and leave.”
I could smell the beer on his breath, and the fear was pouring off of him like rot on a carcass. It was a tantalizing smell, and it made my mouth fill and my body twitch towards him.
“Oh, I’ll be taking what I want,” I said lowly. I stalked over to him, plucked the cigarette from his fingers, then flicked it at his face. I turned from him then and walked to the fireplace. “But first you’ll answer one question for me.”
I picked up a black fire stoker leaning against the rough red brick and turned around with a smile. The man had his back up against the wall now, his hands feeling around the wallpaper as if hoping a magical gun would appear.
I loved the expression on his face, the fear so deeply imbedded in each fat-lined feature. Standing here in front of him, the assassin and the mark, I could feel myself transform into someone different.
Someone powerful.
“W-what question?” the man stammered. He looked from side to side, his breathing rough and wheezing; I could see and smell the sweat now gathering on his temples.
“You don’t happen to know a man named Julian… do you?”
His face dropped.
And I smiled.
“Jules?” he whispered. His gaze dropped before his eyes slowly rose, and this time when they fixed on me, I saw a realization come to his face, before it was swiftly consumed by terror. “Elish.”
His realization of just who I was.
But it was too late for him. I had nothing more to say, and he could give me no further information.
With that smile cut into my lips, I walked towards this man. He began to plead with me as I raised the poker, and by the time I’d retracted my arm all the way, he was screaming.
No. No. No.
Prince Elish… NO!
The fireplace poker making impact with his skull filled the room with the most beautiful of sounds. It wasn’t just any noise, no singular pulse to one of my five senses, it was more than that. It was a physical manifestation of the power and control that I was finally feeling, that out-of-reach golden
rung that I’d never been able to grasp. That noise signalled the biggest move I’d made to date, to take back what Silas Dekker had taken from me.
It was the sound of me taking yet another life. But it was also the first of many internal bells being rung. After fifteen years… I was taking the first, smallest, step out of this darkness.
But that would be something that would come to me later, years later. Right now, in the reality I was in, bloodlust had reached its tendrils through every vein in my body, and there it was grasping me, controlling my body like a willing puppet.
And it was making me deliver blow after blow down on this man’s skull, raining blood and brain matter on my face and my body until his head was a ruin of red flesh, with only a single judgemental eyeball staring lifelessly up at me.
I leaned against the wall panting, the dead man at my feet and adrenaline still holding the reins my mind had given up willingly. The heavy smell of beer and cigarette smoke was no longer in the air, this room around me was now aromatic with the perfumy scent of blood and terror, a mixed bouquet that the world had been inhaling since the beginning of life.
My boot pressed against what had once been this man’s jaw and I nudged it several times for mostly curiosity’s sake. I had seen my share of dead bodies now, two of them I myself murdered, but this was the first one I’d ever been able to truly examine. It was fascinating to be honest, perhaps I should increase my studies in med-
All of a sudden a gunshot ripped through the air, and at the same time, I heard a loud ping that made my arm, fire poker in hand, fly forward. I dropped the poker out of reflex and was puzzled, during the brief nanoseconds as I was whirled around, just why a strange vibrating pain was coating my hand.
But when I turned around, my curiosities about this strange sensation drained away from me. There standing in the hallway, was a woman with shoulder length brown hair, pink pajamas… and a shotgun.
She took one look at me and her terrified eyes became all the wider. “Prince Elish?” she cried, the gun shaking in her grasp. “Why? WHY!?”
I held out a hand. That gun was pointed right at me and she was close enough to have a high chance of hitting me. “Put the gun down,” I said coldly. “By order of the king, you will put that gun down, woman.”
“I have the gun asshole. I make the demands!” she screamed, tears rolling down her face. “Why did you kill him? Why did you kill my husband?” Then her face twisted. “You… don’t tell me you killed Jules too. Is that the rules now? Is that how it works.” She closed her eyes and let out a sob, her face set with pain.
And I took advantage of those shut eyes. I closed the distance between the two of us, silently and without noise. Then, as her eyes snapped open and she let out a panicked scream, I wrenched the gun up and grabbed her neck.
The shotgun went off again, the bullet hitting the ceiling which sprayed chunks of drywall down on me. I removed my hand, the gun slipping from her fingers and falling to the floor, and I grasped her neck with that one as well.
And then I strangled her. Not only did I strangle her… I watched her the entire time. I watched her eyes balloon from their sockets like they were being artificially inflated; I watched her face turn as crimson as the morning sunrise, and I watched when she opened her mouth to unleash a muted scream through bloodstained teeth.
I watched her… and she watched me.
At some point, her hands grasped mine, and nails with red polish raked my skin, leaving red lesions in their wake that quickly filled with blood. Then, as they clawed desperately, she began to kick and thrash, the sounds of slippered feet thunking against the hallway’s laminate adding to the crescendo of death sounds.
Her eyes rolled back into her head, but the garrotes that were my hands remained iron traps that did not weaken. She was only unconscious now, her desperate heart was still clinging to the last vestiges of life, the blood still rushing at full speed through her veins, on a fool’s mission to try and deliver blood to her brain.
And then she died.
It was difficult to remove my hands from her neck, they were stiffened into claws and stuck in that position. When I removed them however, I was interested to see that her neck was deformed, bruised and red. The strength from my hands must’ve done it; I hadn’t even felt the crunching in my state.
Slowly I rose to standing, the house around me returning to its normal sounds. The television was still on, the brick fireplace still crackling, time continued without a hitch, uncaring of what transgressions had happened in this living room.
The only witness to such macabre things… was me.
I picked up the fire poker, glanced around the room to make sure I hadn’t left any obvious evidence behind, then turned and left the living room. There was nothing for me here; I had done what I needed to do.
Julian’s father would never hurt him again. And he would no longer feel burdened to look after his mother.
I had severed his ties to his old life.
So now… I could welcome him into mine.
I left through the window, crossed the dark backyard, and walked to the street. It wasn’t until I was on Sebastian Street, the street that Alegria and Julian’s skyscraper apartment were both on, that I realized I was still holding the fireplace poker, and the black panama hat had remained on my head.
I examined the tip of the fireplace poker and smirked when I saw shining blood on the curved ridge and the skewer. I resisted the urge to lick it, arian blood really had nothing on chimera blood.
That led to the question though… I wonder what Julian’s tasted like? I’d have to find out one day.
And at this, I smiled. I knew it was a horrible moment for such things, but I did. I was feeling… incredible. Every inhale filled my lungs with helium it seemed, I was light as a feather and floating through the air instead of walking.
It was just…
… so great to be alive today. There were no claws crushing my chest, no backbreaking world pressing down on me, no green-eyed demon king on my shoulders to pick and taunt me, nip me and dig at me when I was content. I was outside and I was free – and I had tasted power.
No… no, Elish. That’s not the word for it.
I tasted dominance.
And I liked it.
When I walked into Julian’s apartment, the expression on his face rivalled that of the victims I had just claimed.
But the source of that look wasn’t what I thought it was. “Are you hurt?” Julian cried. He ran to me and framed my face with his hands. I watched him with a smirk while his eyes scanned mine, searching for any hints of pain or discomfort.
Then he looked down.
Julian gasped when he saw the blood that drenched my clothes; he took a step back with shaking fingers cupping his mouth.
“I took care of it,” I said simply, finding myself unable to take my eyes off of him. Since walking into this room, he’d been different to me; he looked different, walked different, talked different. There was something about him that had changed. It was as if… he’d been repainted but with brighter colours. I swear I was seeing this perfect creature for the first time.
And I wanted to see more of him.
“You…” Julian’s face paled. The trembling travelled from his hands, up his arms, before spreading across his body like snake venom. “You… killed…”
I grabbed Julian and locked our lips; he managed a single startled gasp before submitting fully to my advances. He allowed me to lead without complaint, and when I felt a hand grasp my backside… I knew he was liking it.
I led him to the couch and we both sat down on it, our lips immediately joining again. Julian straddled me, one knee on each side and we began to kiss deeply, our tongues soon slipping into each others mouths as the heat of the room got hotter and hotter.
He slid my jacket off of my shoulders, then unbuttoned the bloodstained shirt. I removed myself from both and felt lightning rip through me when he leaned down and took my left pec into his mouth.
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The warm mouth felt good, but it was Julian kissing my neck that made the warmth turn into burning. I was being roasted alive by this heat, and I loved it.
I wonder if he could taste his own father’s blood on my lips? I was covered in it.
“Touch me, Elish,” Julian said through his heavy breathing. My eyes opened at this and flickered down to his groin, and I saw the outline of it through his cotton pants.
I knew then, as the first sprouts of anxiety burst from the seeds Silas had planted, that I wasn’t ready to sleep with him. It was only a little over a week since Silas had forced himself on me, and even though I would be the dominant partner… I wasn’t ready.
“If I do…” I said to him, my fingers tracing the drawstrings of his cloth pants. I allowed them to trail down, and felt the heat coming off of his penis warm my hand. “I just… I’m not ready to go all the way. No matter how far we take this… I can’t.”
Julian’s eyes opened, eyes actively drowning in lust. He leaned down and pressed his trembling lips against mine. “There’s a lot of things we can do besides that.” He inhaled a lurid gasp when I slid my hand down his pants, then groaned as I began to rub him through his briefs. “A… lot of things.”
I took his dick out of his pants and let it stand rigid on its own. He had a nice cock on him, smaller than the normal chimera size but to me it was perfect. I knew that I’d eventually get to know that piece of him quite intimately, and I couldn’t wait to make myself more familiar with it.
I rubbed it, the hard rod twitching from my touch. I loved the moans I was getting from him as I ran my hand along the shaft; that was empowering in itself.
