Chapter 23
Iason coldly stared at the two unconscious pets hanging from the ceiling, and his sleeping redheaded Overseer strapped down on a metal table. He could hear Raoul, Mikhale, and Gideon’s quick and heavy footsteps as they made their way to him.
He made no move to touch the young men, knowing his brethren, in their state of mind, would react violently if he touched their abused lovers. So, he stood back as the three Blondies entered. He watched as Gideon released Riki’s son from his bonds and was held tenderly in Gideon’s arms. He watched as Mikhale growled with rage at the obvious signs of his pet having been molested, by the tyrant who had imprisoned him. He watched as Raoul softly called Katze’s name and kissed the redhead on the forehead.
He watched.
Because that was all Iason could do. In their agony, his brethren looked to him for support, for strength. To give them anything less than the imposing figure they were used to seeing, would unleash their fury upon innocent bystanders. Iason had already floundered once in his control, and the result had been the takedown of the section of Ceres they had invaded—much to his brethren’s delight.
If he lost complete control over his emotions… There was no telling what the Blondies would do now that they have seen the devastation brought down upon their lovers.
However, he knew exactly what would happen if Riki had suffered the same fate as that of Orphe’s mongrel. Mercy was relatively new concept to Iason, one he did not care very much for. If Riki had fallen victim to the same horror as Violet—or any of the mongrels they had found so far—no one would be safe from his wrath.
His soldiers continued to search every corridor in this underground labyrinth, but other than evidence of the Platinum’s madness and cruelty, Riki was still nowhere to be found. Interrogating the Platinum for Riki’s location was impossible. Until the unknown Elite healed, they would get nothing out of him.
Rio had been thorough in his vengeance.
Removing the Platinum had also been prudent, not just to save the Elite’s life, but to insure he continued to breathe. The further the med team took the Elite out of his reach—and those of his Blondies—the higher chance at life the Platinum had.
Besides, Iason smiled, the things he wanted to say to the Platinum would entertain him the most if the Elite was in full health.
Iason’s smile dimmed. His thoughts of what he planned on doing to the Platinum fading as he watched the Blondies hold their lovers in their arms.
“Riki…”
His heart clenched painfully in his chest.
Where was he?
It was clear by the looks of Riki’s son, Mikhale’s pet, and Katze, there had not been time to do anything other than restrain them. So, where was he?
How much more did they have to endure before they found peace?
What if—
Iason quickly removed the thoughts of his mongrel’s death from his head. Riki was strong, clever, and too stubborn to die. For once Iason took comfort in Jupiter’s interference in tampering with Riki’s genetic makeup. The alterations she forced upon Riki added to his chances of survival. Despair would do nothing but hinder his mind from finding his dark mongrel, as would his fury.
Turning his back on the happy reunion behind him, Iason returned to his search. His mongrel would have a great deal of explaining to do once he got his hands on him.
Aisha watched silently as Iason walked away. He glanced in the room, looking at his fellow Blondies as they tenderly held their pets in their arms, before he too strode away. He tried not to hate them for having found their lovers—for being happy.
However, with each empty room they discovered, the harder it had become in containing his fear, and his shameful resentment of his brothers who had found their end to their torment. Never had such emotions raged inside him before. He had always played his cards close to his chest, pretended to be the carefree Blondie everyone thought him to be.
Unlike the others, he never found the need to use his power to intimidate. Being a Blondie already gave him everything he could ever want. He’d grown bored with his life and the ease in which everything came to him. He had tried to find a way to hide his discontent with parties and pets, but nothing had really interested him until he had met Sky. The mongrel was an enigma he could not explain. One that had shattered his mundane life and had introduced excitement he had not truly known he had been missing.
The mongrel had been a mere object to study at first. A simple curiosity that had changed to desire and a fierce need to protect, possess, and keep at his side. Some called the sentiments he felt love. He knew not what love was. Aisha, of course, had read about the human feeling, but from the mortal examples he’d seen, it had seemed like an weak and pathetic emotion. And what he felt for Sky could be described as anything but weak.
If he had leashed his fascination for Sky. If he had walked away and not looked back, he would not know the fear that held him in its unforgiveable claws, tearing at his insides. His mongrel would not have met the fate he was currently in, and would be living…
Aisha frowned.
No.
Regardless of the pain he was suffering, he would never have turned his back on Sky. His curiosity and need for Sky too great to do such a thing. His mongrel was baffling, domineering, sadistic, and hid his fiery soul under an icy shroud. However, Sky would have meet an even worse fate if Aisha had not taken him as his own. Mongrels were feral creatures; prone to attack a helping hand rather than take hold of it. It wouldn’t have taken long before Sky met a foe too strong for the mongrel to protect himself from.
Despite his calm exterior, his mongrel was every bit as wild as Riki and—if not more—dangerous than Iason’s black-haired lover. And, from all he’d learned so far about Sky, Aisha had a sinking suspicion his mongrel had somehow assisted in the bomb attack on Eos so many months ago.
“This is ridiculous!”
Aisha eyed his closest friend, Marcus, growling impatiently at his side. He’d never seen the Blondie this enraged before, not even when Iason first brought Riki to live amongst them. Marcus’s disgust for the Ceres mutts hadn’t lessened. If anything, Marcus’s revulsion for the slum rats has reached new levels—revulsion the Elite wasn’t shy in expressing, except when it came to his own mongrel. Aisha knew the Blondie only tolerated Sky because his twin was Marcus’s lover.
What made Marcus’s mongrel happy, made Marcus happy.
He wished he could convey his fury the way Marcus did. He could feel the heat of Marcus’s rage. Aisha had felt everyone’s eyes on him when they had all gathered, as if they had expected him to be the livewire instead of Marcus. He had growled and snarled in the beginning.
And yet…
Aisha could not logically explain it, but the moment the severity of Sky’s situation hit him an ice-cold veil had fallen over him. In his mind he had calmly began to plan ways of ripping Ceres from the seams, if he found Iason’s methods of punishing those responsible ‘unsatisfying’.
Playing the game of ‘Death and Sabotage’ held no interest to him like it did his other brethren. Killing those weaker than him never appealed to him, and it took very little to discourage Elites of lower ranks to desist in trying to smear his name for entertainment. However, regardless his distaste in killing, he had taken delight in picturing those responsible of taking Sky from him and crushing them—pictured what it would feel like to bathe his hands in their blood. The image had only grown when Niko had come rushing toward them, and when they had found Jared’s strange blonde pet, and the physical horror that had been done to them.
And his thirst for vengeance only seemed to worsen as the seconds passed.
“Sir.”
Blinking, Aisha glanced at the soldier who appeared next to him. How long had he been trying to get my attention?
“Yes?” Aisha ignored the glare Marcus shot at him.
The stocky soldier lowered his gaze. “We have located a new room ahead, Sirs. I have been ordered to keep you away until our team has safely opened the hatch.”
Aisha’s eyes narrowed.
“What are you not telling us?” Marcus demanded.
Aisha watched the soldier’s Adam’s apple bob as the man nervously shifted from foot-to-foot.
“This is the last, Sir.” The soldier licked his lips. “The tunnels have been cleared, and after securing this last cell, we will be at a standstill in our search…”
“You—“
Aisha moved to block Marcus from grabbing the solider when a blast rocketed throughout the tunnel. The ground quaked with such strength it slammed Aisha and Marcus against the wall, and the soldier to the floor. The sound was deafening. Aisha shook his head, attempting unsuccessfully to stop the ringing in his abused ears. Dust and bits of stone rained down on them. Alarming fractures webbed the ceiling. Panting in excitement, Aisha shoved himself away from the wall and ran towards the screams.
Men lay moaning under broken concrete. Soldiers rushed to aid those bleeding while others swiftly worked to stabilize the integrity of the tunnel, to keep it from collapsing further. Aisha didn’t care if the world was about to explode, he shoved men out of his way, picked up a foolish soldier and threw him when he stupidly tried to keep him from the wreckage.
“Sky!”
Aisha—with Marcus’s assistance—cleared a path to the twisted metal doors imbedded into the wall of the tunnel.
“Sky!” Aisha desperately shouted. Terror clawed his soul the closer he got to the heart of the explosion, the devastation horrifying when he saw the contorted Syndicate uniformed bodies half buried in the rubble.
“Aisha…?” A muffled voice weakly called out from within the room, the entrance blocked by a thick sheet of broken concrete.
An indescribable feeling of rapture slammed into Aisha, nearly bringing him to his knees. Deaf to the shouts warning him away, Aisha slammed his shoulder into the ragged edge of the concrete wall obstructive his way to his mongrel. His biceps straining, stone and wire pierced through his clothing and into his shoulder as Aisha thrust the barrier out of his way, and stumbled into the room.
“Sky! Where are you?!”
Dust clouded the small space. Tables and medical equipment were scattered around the floor. The overpowering stench of strong chemicals burned his nose, and the light swung and flickered overhead. Aisha eyes desperately searched for his mongrel. “Sky!”
“Here… I-I’m here.”
Dashing across the room, Aisha slid on debris as he rushed to the overturned metal table in the corner of the chamber. Relief made his hands shake as Aisha gently tried to unearth Sky. He exhaled a hiss of breath as the pale, bruised, face of his lover was revealed. Blood, fresh and old, stained Sky’s beautiful long hair, and a groan escaped pass Aisha’s lips when Sky whimpered. However, the hands that reached out to grip the front of his coat held more strength than Aisha would have thought possible, considering what his mongrel looked like.
“Y-You gotta find him,” Sky rasped. “Find him, Aisha. Find him.”
“Find who, sweetling?” Aisha whispered, rage curdling in his gut as he uncovered Sky completely from the cubby of metal furniture. His mongrel’s body was a mass of wounds, almost identical to those he had seen on Niko and Jared’s pet, and that of the two unknown mongrels rescued, and rushed to Eos Medical Center. His legs…his mongrel’s sexy legs were strapped to sprints, and with every slight movement of his broken, bloody limbs, Sky tried to bite back a cry.
Aisha kissed Sky’s forehead and tried to calm him down. The mongrel struggled to sit up, only to cry out in agony and release him. Aisha caught Sky as he fell back, and cradled his head in the nook of his arm.
“Leave me and go and find him, Aisha,” Sky implored brokenly, blinking his haunted eyes, trying to keep from passing out. “Please, please, find him.”
“I will,” Aisha promised, knowing there was only one person his mongrel would plead for. “I’ll find your brother.”
“He took him from me. My fault. He disposed of him, he said,” Sky mournfully sobbed. “But it’s not true. It’s not. He’s not gone, I would know.”
“What did you say?”
Aisha stiffened and glared over his shoulder. “Not now, Marcus.”
The Blondie growled and moved aggressively toward them. “Do not stand in my way, Aisha. I want an explanation and I will get it from him. What did he do to Keita!”
Aisha gently put Sky down, and stood. “You are not thinking clearly, Marcus. I would suggest moving yourself away from us. Now.” His body shook with barely contained fury as his old friend ignored his warning, and strode forward until their chests touched.
“It is you who needs to move aside, Aisha,” Marcus hissed.
He didn’t know what happened. A fierce need to protect filled him. His desire to get Sky to safety overwhelming. One moment he was looking into Marcus’s narrowed gaze, and the next his fist throbbed and Marcus stood a few feet away, whipping blood off his bottom lip with his thumb.
The damage he inflicted shocked him, but the guilt for striking his brother was fleeting. Marcus was an obstacle, one that threatened what was his—what gave him reason to continue living. However, Marcus was his closest friend, his brother. No other Elite came close to the kinship they shared, and because of that, Aisha forced his instincts to eliminate the threat Marcus posed and ordered the Blondie to step away.
Marcus rubbed his blood between his thumb and forefinger, staring at it before responding to Aisha’s order. “You do what you need to, Aisha, just as I will. He claims responsibility for Keita being disposed of. If this is true, then he owes me a debit for harming what is mine. And I will take my payment now.”
Aisha widened his stance and raised his fists. “Then you will have to go through me to get it, brother.”
“With pleasure, brother,” Marcus sneered.
Falling, Riki stared up into the darkness as the underground hell he now lived in rocked and vibrated from some unknown explosion above. Bits of stone fell harmlessly around them, but whoever set off the blast, it did nothing to help them in get out of the abyss.
“Sky…” Fidget mumbled, and Riki could only hope that it had been Sky to cause the quake.
“Shit.” Riki rested his forearms on his knees and tried to catch his breath, the drama unfolding up top signaling his other two companions that it was time for a much-needed break. Because, no matter where they went, crazed mongrels would jump out at them from the dark. The damn lunatics didn’t seem to care if Julius or he had weapons. He and Fidget took them down by the dozen. Julius slit throats with as much emotion as one would have cutting an apple in half.
Riki had no problem knocking bitches out, but it was never ending… The mongrels that escaped Julius’s blade would limp or crawl back into the void, but they never stayed away for long. The three of them would get five—ten minutes max—of rest before they were back on their feet, fighting for their lives.
“Why the fuck do they keep attacking us?” Riki asked, wincing as he stretched his aching muscles. With the flickering flames of their torches, Riki looked down at his body and grimaced at how his chest and abdomen, and how they were riddled with scratch marks. “Fuck… I look like someone who lost a fight with a cat.”
Fidget burst into laughter, startling Riki. But, when he looked over at the mongrel, Riki saw it wasn’t he that Fidget was laughing at… he didn’t know who or what the mongrel thought was funny, but it was he. Riki’s chest tightened at how far Fidget sat from them, and the miserable way his friend rocked back-an-forth with his bloody arms wrapped around himself, staring into the dark.
Convincing Fidget to join their little fucked up band had been harder than Riki had thought it would be. When they had approached Fidget, on his fucked up mountain of bleeding bodies, Fidget had looked straight through him… Riki had had to coax him from his perch, and it had not been easy. Riki had taken a few punches to the face before he had gotten a solid grip on the mongrel. He was still amazed at just how nimble Fidget was. The fucker hit hard too.
But, it wasn’t been the first time Riki had had to slap some sense into Fidget’s head. The both of them had been kids still living in Guardian the last time Riki had to beat Fidget back to sanity, but it was a method that still worked. Only… Sky had been the lock that kept Fidget from slipping back into madness…
“Landon’s serum excelled something that normally would have progressed slowly,” Julius replied, sitting a couple feet away with his back facing him. “He has yet to perfect his little cocktail, and still has no clear understanding of why some lose their minds and why some do not. What you have seen so far, are the results of his failure.”
The results of Landon’s failure? Riki grimly looked out into the darkness, to the general area where the bodies of the mongrels he had helped play apart in killing. In the dull light of the dwindling torch, Riki could faintly see the outline of their corpses.
There were so many of them…his people.
The numbers the Slum gangs gave him, of mongrels stolen, was nothing compared to the numbers he’d been pitted against in the last hour.
All those lives lost…
The blood.
He could feel the disgusting stickiness of it all over his body. His and theirs.
And Riki knew many more lives would be snuffed out, and more blood would be shed before they found a way out of their new corner of hell.
“Like you said, Riki,” Julius said softly, “everyone is broken. But, the mongrels out there are beyond damaged. The men they once were are gone. No one can help them. No one but us.” Julius pointedly twirled his blade between his fingers.
“We don’t know that for sure,” Riki said, glaring at the mongrel’s back. “Fuck, for all I know, Raoul might be able to—“
“There is no cure,” Julius cut in. “Of this, I know with certainty.”
Riki’s eyes narrowed. “How the fuck would you know?”
Julius glanced over his shoulder. The copper-flecks in his dark eyes glowing eerily in the torches light. “I know,” he said with confidence. “When did you know Guy could not be saved?”
Riki stiffened.
“When did you come to terms with the fact that you had to put that mad dog down?” Julius continued, turning back around. “You killed him because you knew he could not be saved in this life, and sent him on with hope that he would be in his next one. Why can you not see that these poor souls need that same kind of ‘rescuing’?”
“Who the fuck are you?” Riki asked. He didn’t want to talk about Guy. Didn’t want to remember the agony he had felt when the shard of glass he had used had slid between Guy’s ribs, or the warmth of his once beloved friend and lover’s blood bathing over him.
“Someone who’d been trapped his whole childhood in the grip of a madman,” Julius mumbled. “Unlike you, I’m a half-breed bastard who has always had to hide in the shadows and ghost—” Julius chuckled—“through crowds; training forced upon me to better keep her from finding me.”
Her?
Riki stilled. There was only one bitch he knew who would make a killer, like Julius, hide. “Why the hell would Jupiter be after you?”
“Why would she be after you?” Julius countered.
“From all the shit you’ve been sproutin’, you seem to fucking know the answer to that,” Riki said tightly.
Julius stood and turned to face him. “I do,” he said somberly. “The question is if you really want me to answer them.”
Growling, Riki shoved his tired body off the ground. “Of course I want to know, asshole.” Riki curled his lip when Julius stared at him. About to yell at the prick again, Riki’s words stilled in his throat when Julius spoke.
“Do you really?” Julius quietly asked. “What if what I tell you will tear you and your Blondie apart? Would you still want to know?”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Riki asked.
“Telling you what I know might shatter your peaceful little life with your lover.”
Riki snorted. The past years with Iason had been anything but peaceful.
“There will come a time where you’ll have to choose, Riki,” Julius said softly, almost sympathetically.
“Choose what!” Riki growled, sick and tired of the cryptic crap spewing out of Julius’s mouth.
Julius turned his back to him. “Your people or your lover.”
Riki reached out to grab Julius’s shoulder, but yanked his hand back when the shadows around them began to move. “Discussion isn’t over, Julius,” Riki growled as he shifted to a better defensive position, and snapped his fingers till Fidget’s crazy ass turned in his direction and moved to his side.
Fidget’s eyes captured his, true clarity shining in those grey eyes for the first time since Riki saw the mongrel. As the shadows shifted closer, Riki tenderly rested his hand on Fidget’s head, ruffling the mongrel’s long tangled mane. “He’s coming,” Riki said for Fidget’s ears only. “Hold on for him.”
Riki mournfully watched at Fidget’s eyes glazed over and removed his hand when the wild flames of Fidget’s insanity stole the mongrel from him, and his friend put distance between them.
“This is going to be a bad one,” Julius warned as the torches outlined the amount of mongrels circling them.
Raising his fists clenched around his shivs, his body tense and muscles quivering in anticipation, Riki glared at the mongrels and grimly smiled. “Let them fucking come.”
Serum – Chapter 22 ★ ～☆ Serum – Chapter 24
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Doin' it, and lovin' every minute of it 