Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller (18 page)

‘I hate Slayers,’ whispered Croel.

‘Croel?’

The name echoed along the tunnel walls and sounded like a dull orchestra tuning up.

The quarry waited until the noise had completely stopped before speaking,

‘Please not hurts me. Please,’ it said, ‘I have credits.’

*

As the cab cruised along in neutral, I was impressed with the physical speed of the driver. He was quicker than I could have hoped for and he was even pleased with the coat I’d thrust at him as he wriggled through the gap between the two front seats to sit in the back. He pulled it on quickly as we swapped places. Seems he dressed how he drove.

I asked him to wait before he left, making sure we were going slow enough so he didn’t break any limbs, or give away his unprofessional landing too badly. I also had to be in the right place so they could see it all play out from overhead.

‘Jump when I say, and leave the door open.’

Despite his uncertainty and worry about who was chasing me his eyes were bright and alive as he leapt from the cab.

I wondered how much longer they would stay that way.

I accelerated back to my place.

*

Stones crunched under tyres as the shush of the rain added whispered applause to my arrival home. Neon tubes above brooding shop windows emitted low hums, and the sheen of water amplified their glow, giving the street and the ripples of fat raindrops an otherworldly lustre, where things looked clean and promising and fresh.

Nothing like the real Lowlands slums at all.

My place was squat and hunkered between two taller buildings. Shimmering grey stone, doused in the deluge, caught the artificial glow and it gave the building a dreamlike feel, like it might disappear if I left the cab and tried to approach.

There was no point hiding the car. The Blackwings either knew where I lived or didn’t, so time spent moving it and running home would be time better spent on more pressing matters. I grabbed the credits, climbed out, welcomed the cool splash of rain on my face and stopped.

Turned my face to the sky and closed my eyes.

The rain slid over my hot skin and gave me relief; it tugged and loosened at the coagulated blood on my forehead, made my tired muscles even more stiff and sore. The aches and the stresses of the previous few days weighed heavier and I allowed the water, the sensation, everything, to wash over me. It brought a sharp- edged respite that was both cloying and yet cathartic. It felt natural, like some base part of myself was being satisfied. With every raindrop, I felt like I weighed more and more, like my feet were roots taking hold in the cracks of the pavement.

The platitudes about war, and service and honour had never seemed more obscure. I craved a stop, a haven from all noise, pain, lights, thoughts and motion; strange that I found it on the miasmic greys and blacks of the familiar yet entirely unremarkable causeway outside my own front door.

I opened my eyes, looked furtively left and right, then went inside.

From love to loved;

The saddest added ‘d’.

Past tense,

Future Misery.

Suspenses in Tenses (excerpt): Old Lowlands Love Poem

H. Holmes

It was morning now and I needed food and rest.

The brief respite I had snatched at Pan’s had only ever been fleeting, and every second I had spent there had been backlit by the burning fires of her betrayal and the eventuality that they, whoever they were, would be coming for me. And I had not been disappointed. But Blackwings? I had not expected or dealt with them since Bethscape Field, and whoever had hired them, assuming it was not some personal vendetta of the Blackwings themselves, must have some serious clout and credits.

I realised I would have to save my questions and soul searching for later. I had to grab some essentials, set the trap and get out. I could not linger, that would be playing into their hands. It was a one bedroom apartment, I could be out quickly without having to waste time moving from room to room.

I needed to change my clothes to make it less easy for them to track me and to make it easier for me to get a decent room later. I removed my shirt, wet it in the bathroom and caught sight of myself in the mirror and surveyed the damage. Bruises were already beginning to darken along the ridges of my ribs, the nubs where my wings had been were red and tender, probably from my landing in the alley. My thigh had a flat dark patch of yellowing purple where the needle had obviously penetrated to the muscle and my eyes were nothing but two dark, rescinding circles, retreating into a sleep deprived and under-nourished skull. I saw urgency there too, and purpose.

I used my wet shirt to dab the blood from my scalp and face and threw it onto my bed for later, I pulled on some dark jeans and plucked a clean black T-shirt from a drawer. It would hide any new blood stains. As I pulled it over my head stained glass fell from my hair. All of my clothes occupy one chest of drawers and four hangers in the built in closet in my room. Clothes are functional, I am often bemused by the colours, designs and flourished appendages I see men strutting around in, like cocks, heads bobbing back and forwards on thin collar bound necks, chests out and guts in. Their clothes shout messages: of money, inadequacy, insecurity and conformity, but I never listen. I wear plain, practical and durable, leave colours to women, poets and nature.

The fresh clothes felt good against my tired, clammy skin. A shower would have to wait. I did not have long. I moved purposefully around the sparse furnishings, reached inside the walk-in closet and grabbed the military issue carry bag, removed two crossbows and sat them on the thick wooden posts of my headboard. I then shucked out a coil of high tensile cable and a much thinner trip wire. I ran the cable around the crossbows triggers and tethered both loose ends to a near invisible trip that I ran just beyond the arc of my door.

I tested the tension by running my finger and thumb either side of both cables, the length of its course, and when I was happy, seated two barbed bolts in the bow’s housing, and cocked them both.

I filled the remaining minute by loading some more essentials into my bag, bread and small twist bags of dried fruit, clothes, weapons, remaining credits (less the driver’s cut), ID and water.

I grabbed my now pink and soaked shirt from the bed and used it to remove the bulb. The wet cloth sizzled on the heated glass. The room went darker.

A dull morning hue percolated through the curtains throwing wan light over my place and belongings. It looked like it was frozen in amber. I took a large, exaggerated step over the trip wire, carefully squeezed through the door, pulled it to and left the building. I would return to check the trap tomorrow.

I left via a fire exit on a landing of the floor below, pushed it gently closed then cut into the alley that ran adjacent to the apartment block then climbed a high, barbed fence into another alley that ran at ninety degrees to that. At the alley’s end I climbed an external set of stairs, jumped the rail halfway up onto a set of low outhouses and pulled myself up onto the larger building’s flat roof, checking the skies for anything or anyone as I did. I got up from my stomach into a crouching run, skirting back the way I had come to the roof’s edge, crawled under a hooded vent and looked over the low-walled gable to the street below. I was fifty yards away, had a perfect view of my own front door and was hidden from anyone approaching from above. I felt cold, the warmth of Pan’s whisky and robes a million miles away.

I set my mental clock for one hour then hunkered down in observation mode, resolutely scanning the milling pedestrians below whilst taking every care not to let a single part of my body protrude from cover. I allowed my mind to wander as I watched, highly attuned to the rhythm and personnel of the area, aware that any deviation from the norm would register, and I would be in motion.

I thought first of the danger I had placed Doc in, but knew that to go to him right now would only serve to jeopardise his safety and life further. I felt like I had escaped from more than just captivity, the flush and grab manoeuvre they had used was military in execution and was not meant to take me unharmed. They had not been playing or manipulating me this time. There was a directness that made things much more sinister. Despite what Doc had said, I had underestimated them. I would not do it again.

I then remembered what he had said and tried to empty my head of preconceptions and motives. This trouble was not something I could anticipate as I had no idea of its origins or who was propelling it forward. I could only prepare and react.

That was all a good soldier did anyway.

My breathing slowed and I felt a deep exhaustion trying to settle into my body. I was low on reserves and, worse than that, anxious that I did not have another fight left in me. I could not afford to get caught again. I shook my head and resolve awake and ate the bread quickly, in big uncomfortable swallows then washed it down with some water. The dried fruit followed.

The rain fell heavier now, fat drops hopped and pinged from the metal vent canopy and started to run along the cambered roof where I was prone. I ignored the damp spreading across my elbows, knees and stomach and started to think of Pan.

I tried to think of her objectively and leave sentiment and vitriol to one side. Her austere beauty made her unapproachable, not because of any inherent sternness, but because any man making a league table assessment of her would always find themselves coming up short. It was not a cold beauty either; it burned warmly so that men would always throng to her and yet contradictorily it would instil in them doubt that they would ever have a chance.

It was the kind of face that made you forget the beginning of a sentence and the limits to your talents.

I had almost allowed myself to like her, in spite of the backstabbing, the profession she had chosen, in spite of the circumstances. Like a painting behind glass: the scratches, textures, swirls and eddies of oils, the ridges and points of the pallet knife’s embossing, all visible and tantalising, I wanted to reach out to touch them. But they would always be a fraction away, perfection caught behind the gloss, glass and veneer. She was untouchable, strong, independent and selfish. I realised I wanted to save her and that she would never allow that. That that was one of the things that made her different, that made her Pan. And I had never met another woman like that.

Like me.

*

After what must have been a couple of hours I woke up with such a start, that I banged my head on the metal canopy. I could see no signs of anyone near my front door or moving in the apartment building so I rolled out from under the vent, brushed the worst of the gravel and water off and made my way back down to the alley. Two hours was long enough, if they were not here by now, they never would be. Besides, it was impossible to conduct any kind of successful stakeout through closed eyelids. I was certain I hadn’t missed anything or anyone, but still took the precautionary measure of leaving by an alley that ran out onto a different street. I craved sleep and warmth, a deep rooted, bone-screaming ache permeated my very core and I sought out an anonymous taxi that sped me to one of the Lowlands seedy motels, where people in my state do not get a second glance.

The man at the desk did not even give me a first glance. He accepted my credits, selected one of the many keys still hanging in the key-safe and grunted something about the vending machine being broken, and that if I wanted company, he knew a man...

In the Lowlands, everyone
knows a man
.

When I got into my room, I did not undress. I dropped my bag on the floor and it was not until I had cocked my crossbow and tied another trip wire from the door handle to a glass on my bedside table, that I fell on the bed and succumbed. My entire body sighed into the mattress.

As I drifted away I realised I had been thinking about Pan in the past tense, and the last thought that carried me over the precipice into the abyss of total slumber was neither sentimental or vitriolic.

Just as well
, I thought.

Experience is ignoring that secret voice in your head just after it has said ‘fuck it’.

The Wrong End Of The Whip.

Madame Ouzio

Her jaw ached.

Pan had had one of the worse nights of her life and, in the grand scheme of losers and abusers that had passed through her door and ruined her night, that was some accolade. She kept replaying the Angelbrawl Arena fight, how she had seen Drake almost overcome the odds, and then go down, still swinging. That was partly for me, she thought. Since that moment she was regretting her choices but seemed stuck on the tracks regardless. She could have told him, but at what price? He might have discarded her, or worse. Or, if he had just let her go, then the faceless goons who had hired her could be the next through the door, and her life would be over anyway.

In a way, she had done nothing, just be where she was supposed to be and do as she was told. It sounded like the CV for the last ten years of her life.

It gave her little comfort.

She cursed herself and her own stupidity and refused to acknowledge the guilt pulling at her conscious thoughts.

She made herself busy, got the windows boarded up.

The Mudheads had come and gone quickly enough. She had said some random had gone berserk in reception then come upstairs to get it on and that she had stayed in the kitchen whilst a fight between rival gangs unfurled. The police, like most men, liked to believe in male superiority, and when she demurred or deferred, they only saw it as confirmation of a pretty woman’s subordination. Pan pleading helplessness was all too easily believed. Besides, no-one cared about a fight in a whore’s apartment or a dead, fifty-something ex-junkie receptionist with wonky teeth.

She had played her role well, batted her eyelashes, and they had played theirs by being full of machismo and sadly predictable. They even moved one of the unconscious goons from her hall like they were doing her a favour. They left soon after.

Case closed.

Jacques-Yassar, her pimp, had called her earlier saying how important it was to get ‘straight back on the horse’, and that her recent night 'off the books' was causing a backlog and resentment among the other girls. He expected her ready tomorrow, or he would have to pay a
personal
visit to check on her welfare. The last one of Pan’s colleagues who had had a check on her wellbeing by Jacques-Yassar, had ended up never working, or walking again.

‘I’ll be ready’.

‘Good girl’.

‘Jay Yay, can I have someone straight forward? I’m not looking good and…’

‘I got just the job. Real classy. Real, real classy. Paying top whack too. I know there’s not normally no difference between rich and poor uns, in needs, wants or perversions, but at least their cocks usually taste of more expensive soap.’

‘Anything else?’ Pan said in a dead tone.

He was quiet for a while and then hung up the phone.

She had understood.

She removed her shoes and clothes and placed them in a laundry basket in a small cupboard opposite the front door that housed brushes, cleaning fluids and other cleaning equipment. She slid the concertina door closed and in her underwear, walked through her flat, stopping to get a small glass of water to take to bed. She looked at the boarded up window at the end of her landing as she moved from her kitchen to her bedroom.

The seraphim was long gone. The significance of that was not lost on her.

As a girl she had thought that guardian angels were real, that everyone had one; someone who would swoop in to rescue her when things looked bad or lost. She looked at the thin wooden ply hammered into the window frame and choked back a tear.

Me? A guardian angel?

She walked to her bed and placed the glass on the bedside table. She folded her arms and looked outside into the wet morning beyond. The rain washed down and made everything shine outside, pavements reflected twisted neon and steel, occasional cars plumed mists as they went, people hunched over and hurried about their business anxious to get work on time or get somewhere dry.

The hitching in her breath came slow at first, then fell the tears. Once started they did not stop.

Not even in sleep.