by Quil Carter
And I had many secrets.
However, tonight I was inhaling fire, and I found that quickly I was able to vanish the knee-jerk fear that came whenever Silas was confronting me in such a way. I’d just taken the lives of seven people, either inadvertently or directly. I’d convinced gun-wielding greywasters to kill their fellow man, when they could’ve just as easily murdered me.
I was no longer nothing; I was…
I was no longer helpless.
“I suppose you can say… I’m growing up,” I said with an artful smile. “I’m becoming a chimera, Master Silas. I’ve tasted the blood of those who wished me harm, and have found myself quite enjoying it.” I looked to Finn, and my left eye squinted as I gave the boy, still looking horrified by my injuries, a crooked smile. “I believe I’ve found myself an outlet.”
But he saw through that easily.
“What’s his name, Elish?
My teeth clenched through my forced smile.
“Elias? What’s – his – name?”
I prayed to the universe that he didn’t see the twitch in the hinge of my jawbone. I couldn’t lose this one; I couldn’t.
So I wedged my teeth apart and regained the smile – and I bullshitted.
I turned back to Finn, then I grabbed the sengil by his shirt collar and kissed him hard on the lips.
“Finneus,” I said when my lips broke from his. The sengil stared at me with shocked look, the colour draining from his face. “Having someone who actually cares about me has done wonders for my self-esteem.” And I decided to throw Silas a paper tiger. A distraction to turn the king’s attention to somewhere else, far away from his sniffing around my private life. “I’ve lived a long time completely alone, depressed, and suicidal… Finn, he’s made me want to live. And not just live… he’s made me feel worth something.”
Every word I spoke I was speaking about Julian. I did have a lot of affection for my sengil, but my words belonged to my boyfriend.
Silas was quiet, and though at first my eyes were only on Finn, not wanting to look at Silas, eventually the silence weighed on my shoulders and my head turned towards the king.
I didn’t think a single look could wipe that smile from my face, but when I saw those diamond hard emeralds burning into me like a hand dunked into hydrofluoric acid, my heart jumped into my throat and the moisture was sucked out of my mouth.
“I see,” Silas said in a harsh whisper. “Well, Elish. I’m overjoyed to see that you’re finally happy with your life. The years you spent as a useless piece of shit moping around like a kicked dog has soured me towards you. Perhaps you’ll redeem yourself yet.” The king turned his back to me and began to walk back to his bedroom.
Say something. Don’t let him know he’s rattled you. He’s already suspecting something is wrong. You have to swallow the sword completely, Elish, if you want to throw him off the scent and protect Julian.
No, he knows. And you know he knows.
He knows, Elish.
No, he doesn’t. If he knew… Julian’s head would be under his foot.
I was smart, I can hide him from Silas. My confidence is from Finn, and there’s no evidence to prove it otherwise.
But he knows you’ve been going out for walks… he knows you’ve been going somewhere. For all you know, he’s been following you. For all you know, Nero has told him.
For a moment, fear gripped me, and it seized my heart with a hand made of ice. That cold feeling swept me, and underneath the frozen icebergs, I felt that… perhaps I had taken my new-found attitude… too far.
NO! I had every fucking right to be happy.
He won’t find out about Julian. I’ll… I’ll hide him. I’ll get some money and rent him a house.
He won’t find out, and fuck him, I’m not going to let him ruin this night. The night… the night I finally fucking became a man.
Not just from taking Finn for the first time, but because I’d finally tapped into my inner chimera, because I finally realized I was something to fear, something to respect.
And I’ll be fucking damned if that man will take this away from me.
The door of Silas’s bedroom closed, and all that was left in the living room was the heavy scent of blood, and Finn’s thrashing heart.
I turned to the sengil, and when our eyes met I saw dread. Not for himself, but for me. “Elish…” he whimpered.
For the second time since I’d walked into this apartment, I grabbed the sengil and kissed him deeply, even urging his lips open to taste him. Finn let out a small groan, and his body buckled from the intensity of his feelings for me.
Or so I thought.
Finn pulled away from me… and the boy’s legs gave out from under him. I grabbed Finn just in time to prevent him from falling, but to my confusion… he began to sob, alarmingly hysterical sobbing.
“What’s… what’s wrong with you?” I stammered. I glanced towards Silas’s bedroom, the door closed, and knowing I had to get Finn down to my bedroom, I picked him up and quickly sped towards the hallway stairs.
I’d just matched wits with Silas and had remained calm the entire time, wanting nothing to spoil this evening that was mine… but I found the moment I saw that something was wrong with my sengil, the thousand-foot-tall feeling disappear.
And just like that, I became only Finn’s master.
I brought him to my bedroom and had to skillfully turn the door handle to my room with my hip. Then I walked in with the sobbing sengil, shut the door with my foot, and sat down with him on the bed. I knew that if I asked he’d let me put him down, but he had thrown himself into such a state I just wanted to get him inside of my bedroom as quick as possible.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him. I was cradling him in my arms like I did my baby brothers, except this baby was only a few inches shorter than me and his body was spilling from my constricting hold.
Finn looked at me, his tropical blue eyes drowning in tears with the sides stained red. But as soon as we made eye contact a fresh wave of despair seemed to hit him and he dissolved into sobbing.
I put him down on the bed and dug around in my nightstand for the tin I kept my drugs in. I fished out a blue Xanax pill from the bottle, and also pinched an opiate for myself.
Finn was sitting up when I turned back to him. He gave me a gracious look and took it from me. “Put it under your tongue,” I said to him. “It’ll taste gross but it’ll work faster.” I got up and locked the door, then took off my shoes, the cape, and my blood-stained shirt which would be thrown away because of the bullet wound.
But as soon as my blue shirt fell to the ground Finn made a strange noise. His teeth clenched like he was trying not to scream, but instead he made a noise that sounded like a siren.
Oh, I think I know what it was… That poor boy. I think seeing me shot had scared him.
You know… it was strange. He was fifteen years old, almost full-grown, with a deep voice, albeit a bit higher than a normal man of his age, and facial hair. Yes, he looked young for his age but he was still a man.
But the way he acted… it was obvious to me just how much a sengil’s upbringing shaped their personalities. I was seeing the same thing on Kirrel, Tyler, and Keela. They were sensitive, their feelings easily hurt, compassionate to a fault, and fiercely loyal to their masters. Finn especially had maintained this boyish innocence to him, a trait shared by the others but in varying degrees. Keela for example was tough and could hold his own. He had a lot of sengil qualities but he was chosen to be Nero’s sengil for a reason.
Finn… he wasn’t like normal men his age. Finn needed taking care of. He couldn’t defend himself and he did rely on me for a lot of things. This sweet boy was as innocent as they came, just a genuine unsullied creature that I felt a strong compulsion to protect.
So I didn’t judge him on this overreaction to me being hurt. Perhaps it was a stretch to even say it was an overreaction… I was shot at, and I could easily have died. I just found that, quite frankly, I didn’t fear
death. I’d resigned myself to suicide many times, and that solemn resolve had made me more careless about my own safety. Though tonight that resolve had come in handy.
I shushed Finn, surprising myself with the affection I was showing my sengil. I didn’t feel judged in his presence; I knew that my actions wouldn’t have an effect on how he saw me. He wouldn’t translate this tenderness as weakness on my part.
Finn’s sobbing began to quiet, before it was reduced to sniffs and hics. When I looked at his face, I saw that his eyes, although filled with tears, appeared calmed but tired. “Are you feeling a bit better?” I asked him.
The boy’s face scrunched like a crumpled up piece of paper, then he buried it into the crook of my arm. “You almost died tonight, Master Elish. That… that foolish taunting from that man… almost got you killed.” His hand brushed along my bullet wound, cracks now appearing in the dried blood like the fissures in mud baked hard by a desert sun.
“But I’m fine,” I reminded him. “I’m a chimera, Finn. And standing up for myself… it’s made me feel more alive than I ever have before. It’s… exhilarating.” My pulse quickened as my mind brought me back to that scene that had just played out in front of me. I could smell the blood, so thick it saturated the air like a fog; its aroma so intense it stuck to my clothes, my skin, my hair. I could hear their screams reverberating off of my brain like a choir inside of a cathedral; I felt consumed by it, possessed by those lurid, satisfying thoughts.
I leaned my face down and kissed Finn, but his lips remained stiff, turning me away at the gate like the guards of Troy to a second Trojan horse. He knew what was hidden inside of that kiss, and my obedient sengil was having none of it.
“Master Elish…” Finn said quietly. He wiped his eyes and sniffed. “I’m scared you’re in danger.” His voice wobbled and he nervously licked his lips.
“I’m safe, Finn,” I said. “I told you… this is my life. Silas has been… wanting to make us immortal eventually. But until then, this is my life, Finn, and I’m not going to be a coward who hides from his duties. Silas commanded me to take care of those greywasters…”
“Who rallied to hurt you!” Finn cried. He grasped the sides of his head, blond threads sticking out from between his fingers, and he clenched them. “They rallied… they were talked into hurting you. They… FUCK!”
This boy was losing his damn mind over what had happened to me. It was as if his own thoughts were devouring him from the inside out. I could understand the initial concern, but Finn seemed like he was actively losing this mind.
I didn’t understand it. And honestly, I didn’t know him enough to know if this was just a part of an underlining neurotic personality… or if he was mentally unstable.
Then I heard him whisper under his breath. “I must do something…”
I swallowed my opiate pills, finding myself now needing them just as much as Finn needed the Xanax. And when Finn saw what I was doing, fresh tears came and stammered apologies. “I’m not crazy, Master Elish!” he cried. He must’ve read my mind, or perhaps the expression on my face was that obvious. “I’m just…” My sengil threw his arms around me and began losing himself into my bare arm, the uninjured one at least. “I’m terrified, Master Elish. I’m terrified.”
But why? Why, Finn?
I was exhausted, fatigue hitting me and making up for the adrenaline I’d used up during, not just the incident outside, but taking Finn hours earlier. There was nothing left in me to interrogate the sengil to get him to divulge the reasons for his odd breakdown, I just wanted to sleep.
No more questions were asked. I slid Finn off of me and wrapped some gauze around my wound to keep it clean until I saw Dr. Liam, then I stripped down to my boxer briefs, Finn taking the hint and doing so as well, and I turned off the light.
When we had both settled into bed, I heard him lightly hic’ing and sniffing. Feeling my heart pull towards him, another perk of Julian’s presence, I took the boy into my arms and held him to me.
But as sleep took me, trouble plagued my thoughts. Even though I would like to cop it up to Finn’s instability, his breakdown had me wondering…
… Was he hiding something from me?
CHAPTER 41
“So they’re sure that this was a car bomb?” I asked.
“Yes, Prince Elish,” Talbot said. He had a thick brown cigar clenched in his teeth and aviator sunglasses on to keep out the sun’s glare. Ellis was beside him wearing a thien uniform, an authorative look on her face that was rarely seen inside of Alegria.
We were standing in front of a burned out car, one that had been parked only two blocks from Alegria. In the middle of the night, someone had planted a bomb inside of it, and this morning the unsuspecting woman had turned on the vehicle to go to work and had been blown to bits.
“And the woman?” I reached my hand and took the paperwork Ellis held out to me. I looked through the woman’s printed off A.C.L file and scanned it for any useful information. “Olivia Graham. She was… she was a school teacher at Cloverfield middle school and did one-on-one tutoring with Skylander children.” I closed the file and handed it back. “So it was most likely a disgruntled student.” I turned back to the car, a blue Mazda that now had a crater in the center of it, and that charcoal center was surrounded by a ring blackened, skeletonized metal, with the shiny, unblemished outside of the car entirely untouched to an almost jarring level.
I ran my fingers along the twisted side door, the bloodstained driver’s side window shattered into thousands of individual breaks that still held form, but that form sagged from the window frame, its body wavy as if it had melted instead of broken. “I thought for sure it was those parasitic greywasters.”
“Dad did too…” Ellis said, her voice trailing. “They already have three greywasters going to Stadium on Saturday. The entire family is going. Were you going to join us?”
I walked along the burned out car, the three of us inside an area cordoned off with yellow tape. Behind that tape were thien vehicles and a handful of thiens talking to neighbours and keeping the curious Skylanders from wandering too close to the scene. The body had already been removed, but there was blood and tissue everywhere; I believe I could see a piece of Mrs. Graham’s scalp where the windsheild had once been, the windshield itself seven feet away lying on the pavement. “No,” I said. “You know I don’t usually go to those events.”
“I know,” Ellis replied. I stood back as one of the thiens began taking pictures, and decided it was time for us to leave. I was only here because it was now my job to witness these events. Silas personally attended every murder in Skyland and gave his insight and opinion if he decided to have one. He also did it to raise public opinion for himself and show whoever had committed the murder that he wasn’t afraid of them. It was a power thing for him, and lately, it had become my job.
Ellis followed behind me. “I was just thinking that since you’ve been so much happier lately… maybe you want to come to more family things.” She smirked at me and nudged me with her elbow. “Maybe bring Finn too?” My only sister grinned at me and her eyes brightened. “Or is he your boyfriend yet?”
I rolled my eyes at her, however inside I was thankful this was still the explanation within the family. That would mean Julian remained safe and hidden, and if I played my cards right… I think Silas would take it as reality as well.
It was a shitty plan, but it was all that I had at the moment. One thing I knew though, I had to move Julian out of that skyscraper apartment and someplace safer. If Silas ever found out, Julian would be screwed, and I would be forced to come forward in order to save him from punishment.
At least it seemed that I didn’t have to worry about Nero; surprisingly my little brother had been good on his word. He’d mentioned nothing to my siblings, or Silas, about Julian. Nero was currently preoccupied however, he was now dating the man that Silas had called the brown-noser’s son and was floating on clouds.
And me?
In so man
y ways I was great, but the threat of my secret being exposed, of Silas finding out about Julian… it was continually taking nips out of me. Small bites that pinched away at my flesh, not enough to be severe, but enough for me to always be aware of its presence.
Slowly, slowly it ate at me… that and the growing realization that if I wanted this relationship to continue… one day I was going to have to come forward to Silas, and tell him about this man that had made me so happy.
But now was not the time.
Not at all.
“We’re home, Dad,” Ellis called as the two of us walked through the doors and into the apartment.
Silas looked up at us, he was sitting on the day bed with the twins. Both twins were lying side by side on his bent knees, and I realized as I walked in, that Silas had been reading to them. He was holding a paperback in his left hand, and the right was gently caressing the babies’ cheeks. Silas would make his touch warm whenever he was trying to calm us when we were children. Admittedly, and this was something I didn’t want to admit, it was a bit endearing seeing him do the same for my littlest brothers.
“Who did it?” he asked her. Kirrel came over at Silas’s beckoning and took both twins off of his lap. I removed my shoes and tried to discreetly retreat to my bedroom. I was working on a plan to find Julian a house without drawing attention to myself. It wasn’t anything revolutionary, I just skimmed a few thousand dollars from a factory town’s budget. I’d created an imaginary expense called ‘feline maintenance and spay/neuter’ for several factory towns that didn’t have any stray cats or had another similar expense that took care of their needs. Whoever would be distributing these funds wouldn’t look twice at an expense regarding cats. Silas was nuts about his cats and money was given to the districts and factory towns all the time to make sure the fuzz balls were taken care of.
