Chapter 12 #2
“I can’t think of anything more cruel than to purposefully change something so fundamental about your life.”
He adjusts one of the pictures on the wall. “From what I understand, Blake’s cruelty knew no limits. He paid for all kinds of experiments. This was relatively mild in comparison.”
“Why do you think they kept the lab going after he died?” I ask, puzzling over the timeline. “I mean, aren’t you my age? I was born, like, five years after my dad killed him.”
I grimace, but Sy again waves off my concern. My dad killing his sperm donor thankfully doesn’t rate all that high on the scale of shit that’s fucked up about this situation.
“From what Jake can tell, he funded years’ worth of experiments anonymously, so they didn’t know he died. They just kept at it until the funding dried up.” Sy rolled his eyes. “He apparently gave them hundreds of samples of his sperm.”
“What an egomaniac.”
“That your official diagnosis?”
“Pretty much.”
Silas reaches out and touches my arm. I startle.
He steps away.
“Sorry,” I say, rushing to apologize. I should be keeping a clinical distance, but I can’t.
“It’s okay. I know I scare people.”
“Absolutely not,” I insist, desperate for him to believe me. “I’ve already told you. You do not scare me. It’s just… You deserved better.”
Sy shoves his hands into his pockets. “Also, we don’t know how old I am. The scientist destroyed a lot of my findings.”
I blink at that. “So you could be older than me. Or younger.”
He lifts a shoulder. “Jake suspects there were other labs.”
“So maybe he destroyed your results so the other labs…”
“…couldn’t recreate a monster,” he finishes.
I shake my head. I’m not letting that stand for even a second. “Stop calling yourself that.”
He gives a soft snort.
“What?” I ask, leaning to press my shoulder to his. “What’s so funny?”
“I don’t mean monster in a bad way.”
I lift my brow at him.
He pushes out his hands. “Or maybe I do, but that’s my right. People get to reclaim the words used against them.”
“So, you’re defanging the monster.”
“Basically.” He grins. “I bet I could scare you though.”
I bite the inside of my lip and consider for a moment any number of clinical questions I could ask him.
“Would you want to?” I keep my voice steady. Gentle. “Scare me, that is?”
His brows shoot up. The humor, what of it I can read in this low light, flees from his expression. “Never.”
“But there are people you want to scare?”
“There are people I do scare,” he says, his smile a slow-growing thing. “Quite frequently.”
“I didn’t see you scare anyone during the shootout.”
“I was focused on keeping you alive.”
“Thank you for that. Again.”
He dips his chin, so sweet.
Remembering our conversation, I ask, “Do you enjoy scaring people?”
His energy shifts, as subtle as a scream, from loose to vibrating. He likes this question.
“Very much.”
He says this with the barest tilt of his head, as if gauging my reaction.
You don’t scare me. I’m fascinated by you. Always have been.
I run my fingers through my beard, and his eyes, brilliant and precise, track the movement.
“How do you scare them?”
“Oh.” He huffs, like a chuckle, only drier. Prouder. “You wouldn’t wanna know that.”
“I do.”
His inhale is slow, deliberate.
A delay tactic.
Will I judge him?
“How many of my files have you read?” he asks, his voice like rough velvet.
Enough to know that they don’t have video of whatever it is you do in that kill room.
“You mentioned Edison worked with you when you hit puberty.” I give a small gesture. “So I read up on his notes.”
My eyes, now adjusted to the low light, pick up on a few more details, like the amused quirk of his mouth.
“But you didn’t answer my question, Sy. How do you scare people?”
I don’t particularly like to be scared. I dislike horror movies, and I despise a jump scare, but I suddenly need to know more about this aspect of Silas than I need my next breath.
“You’ve already seen it, actually.”
“Your eyes.”
“Yes, but… It’s more than that.” He sends me a furtive look. “Do you really want me to show you?”
I grab his forearm and his chest expands. “As long as it won’t hurt you.”
His Adam’s apple floats up and drifts down as if he’s trying to control his reaction. I like that I made him react.
He sends me a soft smile. “It doesn’t hurt me.”
“Okay then. Show me.”
“Last chance to back out,” he says, hooking his mouth into a devilish grin.
Hm.
“Do your worst.”
My mouth is possibly writing a check my body doesn’t want to cash, but something about this feels important.
He stretches his neck and nods, mostly to himself it seems.
The first thing that happens is the energy shift, a palpable something. Not quite the buzz of an electrical line… it’s more organic than that. Like the subsonic rumble before an earthquake. The way it raises the hair on the back of your neck before you know what’s happening.
Silas inhales deeply as if summoning this energy from the ground beneath our feet. My attention snags on his muscles and tattoos like a goldfish distracted by a fishing lure while witnessing the creation of the universe.
Remembering that I’m an adult, I refocus on his face. Then grip my chest, barely able to stop myself from stepping back again.
I don’t want him to see me pull away.
But his eyes. Jesus Motherfucking Christ, his eyes.
Just like in Mav’s initiation and in the shootout, they’re completely black. Shiny, reflecting the salt lamps, even his sclera…black.
Instead of the joyful violence I witnessed on those occasions, this look forces me to think of the things I’m most afraid of. The horrors I’ve read about in my research. Things I’d erase from my memory if I could.
I imagine what that man he killed in the dungeon did to deserve it.
“Y-you make them fill in the blank,” I stutter. “You, uh, you use their fears against them.”
He smiles and the energy reverses. His eyes shift like clouds, returning to the pretty icy blue.
“Why would Blake do this?” I’m equally fascinated and horrified. “Did he know he was doing this?”
Silas’s grim smile is all the answer I need.
“Have you ever heard of a black-eyed child?” he asks. “A BEC?”
“I…” Words die on my tongue as his eyes repeat the color change. “They said that when they found you, didn’t they?”
He nods.
“And you said something before about your father being inspired by an old fairy tale.”
But fairy tales are for children.
A fact which reminds me of the old joke:
A child’s laughter in the light of day is delightful.
A child’s laughter when you’re alone and in the dark is another thing entirely.
Silas, with his black eyes, is terrifying. Hellish. But a child with those same eyes would be a nightmare tattooed to the backs of your eyelids for all time.
Just like in the video.
No wonder Dad can’t let it go.
In his mind, Silas is the fairy-tale monster Blake paid some unethical fuck to create in a lab.
“Blake wanted to create a creature so violent it barely counted as human.”
“Blake failed.”
“Oh, he succeeded,” Sy says without any affect. He tips his head to the side, thoughtful. “But Ant and Erik, along with Edison, helped me give meaning to the monster.”
“And how do you live with this?” I ask, seized by the need to wrap him in my arms and never let go. “How do you manage your impulses?”
He sways on his feet.
“Sweat and meditation.” He gives me a sort of sideways grin. “I really love those old-school exercise videos. The ones where they yell at you like a drill sergeant. ‘No excuses, maggot.’”
My brain, unhelpful in the extreme, supplies a thought. And my mouth, equally useless, follows it over the cliff.
“Kind of like the way a titan of industry needs a Dominatrix to put him on his knees.”
Silas stills.
He doesn’t just stop moving.
He’s a statue, glitched. Eyes the color of lava rock.
Flat.
Predatory.
I start to panic, wondering if what I’d just said triggered him.
“I apologize. That was way off base.”
His eyes swirl back to blue.
“No.” Soft. Light. “It’s fine.”
Silas’s mouth moves as if he’s practicing the thing to say next.
I shut my big trap and wait for the words to unstick.
“I’ve wanted that for a long time.” Rare emotion sits right behind his admission. He’s speaking without looking me in the eye. “But I don’t trust easily.”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t.”
He blinks, and the shift goes up my spine.
“I trust you.”