Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller (42 page)

The other Blackwing let go of me quickly, cast me to one side and dove after Croel, he was strong and fast, probably the most adroit flier I had ever seen. He cut through the wind and distance and went after the loose end of the wire. I just saw him catch it before the lower strata of clouds engulfed him. It snatched him violently down, like a small man being snatched into the ocean by a whale on the other end of a flimsy fishing pole; and they both disappeared.

I beat my wings as much as I could, saw the Zeppelin clearly, like a bright beacon, my own sun at the centre of this cloudy universe. Someone was waving at me from the landing platform, two, maybe three people. I had to make it.

I was flying into the wind; it did its best to stand me up, buffeting me, making me circle and dip to make any kind of headway. I looked up and saw I was hardly any nearer to the landing platform than when I had started. They were manoeuvring toward me but they would never make it. The skies were cold here, the colour of the blue heavy and tinged with rain, there was a bleakness to the wind as it stirred the ceiling and floor of rolling clouds into ambivalent motion and night moved in. I felt cold, the barb in my side stung water free from the tightly closed corners of my eyes. My brother’s wings beat on, the names at my back propelled me forward, kept me aloft, I needed to get safe, to get back, to get home.

I was closer now, close enough to hear they were shouting, beckoning with flapping hands, three of them, the youngest hanging off the bar, reaching out for me, even though I was still a hundred yards away. Willing me on. Why? And why so urgently? I did not know these people. They knew nothing of my plight or recent events.

Then I heard it.

The drone of the Cessna.

I looked over my shoulder as it banked sharply out of a turn, dropped beneath the cloud-line then exploded up noisily, angling straight towards me.

*

‘It’s heading straight for him, he’s not going to make it,’ said Loopes.

Bronagh tried to finish loading more cable so he could to attach it to another harpoon, ‘Even I won’t get this thing loaded again, in time.’

Beaugent did not comment, just kept shouting for the Slayer to hurry up.

Bronagh clicked the heavy reel into place with a kick, attached another harpoon to the winch and lined the gun up. He swung it out over the edge of the platform and pointed it towards Drake as he desperately tried to winch the firing cord string back far enough onto its ratchet. He shouted to be heard above the wind.

‘I could fire this past him, hope he catches the line.’

‘No,’Beaugent said, ‘You might hit him, or tangle his wings. Especially in this wind.’

‘He’s not going to make it,’ Loopes said again. ‘We have to help him.’

Come on
, thought Beaugent.
Come on
. He watched as the Slayer altered his course, the plane followed, dipping and turning to keep in line, struggling against the steering and elements, to head directly at him.

Then he saw it.

‘Oh no,’ he whispered, so softly that no one heard

‘Oh no.’ Again. Quieter still.

‘Hurry up and get that thing loaded!’

Something broke the cloud surface a few hundred feet below.
 

*

I tried to fly up, but the plane adjusted and came at me on the new angle. When I dropped; it dropped. It was heading straight for me and there was nothing I could do about it. I could not fly faster. My wings could not take another dive; I would never be able to stop or pull out. I would never be this close to safety again. This was my only shot, yet I was still too far away. I would never make it. The muscles in my back felt like they were imploding, curling in on themselves, dead from the fires of effort and loss. My side burned and my mind emptied; of thought, of action of any reason or forward motion. It hurt to breathe and the pain in my chest and lungs seemed to bloom brighter on every inhalation.

Enough
, I thought.

Enough.

 
I closed my eyes as the sound of the plane got louder. I braced for impact, let the pain go. I slumped forward into the blue.

My wings beat no more.

*

Loopes looked on as the Slayer gave up. Watched his head drop and his wings stop beating. He started to fall. Loopes’ eyes cast down, started to fill with tears.

He turned to say something to Beaugent but saw his skipper looking off to the lower clouds, his eyes wide and filled with fear. Watched as his mouth fell slack and followed the line of his gaze.

The windshark exploded upwards like a missile. Its sleek body whipped in muscular flashes, propelling itself up at great speed. The cloud fanned out from his exit point, into a firework splash of vapour. It did not look like it was flying, it looked like it had been launched.

‘It’s the blood on the wind,’ said Loopes.

They watched as it whipped into a jack-knife turn and headed for Drake.

Its brutal jaws slacked open revealing an array of razor-sharp teeth that seemed to be too numerous for its mouth. Its dead black eyes rolled white and then black again as it kicked its tail violently and shot forward even faster, its sleek dark silver wings reflected a dusky blood red, soundless as it brought the storm.

‘It’s heading straight for him,’ said Loopes.

Then, at the last moment it jack-knifed again, its huge, torpedo body cut back left and it headed straight up. Its mouth gaped further wide, ready to devour and obliterate.

It caught the plane by its tail, snapped it clean off as it chomped down on the polymer fibre resin that coated the rusted internal frame. Splinters of everything flew. For a split second it seemed as if the windshark had the entire weight of the aircraft in its mouth, as if it was going to shake it to death like a Lowlands terrier would a Deadlands rat. Then it finished its bite and the remaining two-thirds of the plane dropped away. Loopes recognised the two women through the broken glass of the windscreen, eyes wide with terror. The windshark’s body horseshoed and it angled down after the falling wreckage, trailing the black smoke, tumbling wood and screams.

‘It went for the greater threat, the bigger bird.’

Loopes was speechless, looked at the Captain then hugged him.

Beaugent shook his head in exasperation.

Loopes blinked back at him. ‘Do you think those women…?’

‘Loopes, I’d be surprised if even one of their little pinkies hits the floor.’ They both looked out into the sky and saw the Slayer look up, confused, panicked then renewed his attempt to stay airborne. He swatted listlessly at the damp air, like a sodden moth trying to escape from a waterlogged sill.

There was a noise of the bow being fully drawn, then ratcheting back as the harpoon was notched home.

‘I’m taking the shot,’ said Bronagh.
  

Loopes looked at him pleadingly. ‘Whatever you do don’t hit …’

He took the shot.

Help is like unrequited love; easier to give than receive.

A Woman's Word Is Never Done

Catalina Shaw

I was inside and on my back, looking up at the vast curved internal structure of the Zeppelin. My hands burned from catching onto the harpoon’s tensile wire, but they were still tied and at my side, though the steering column had gone.

The young one pulled the door shut and the wind immediately went from wail to minor complaint.

‘Cap, that is the most amazing thing I have ever …’

‘Loopes,’ Cap said, and made a zipping gesture across his mouth. ‘Fetch the medikit and a blanket, the sky jeebies will be settling into his bones soon. Got to keep him warm.’

‘Aye Cap,’ said Loopes, who ran off excitedly, like a child delighted to be fetching his newest and most favourite toy.

‘Bronagh, get this man a drink,’ Cap said, ‘and bring the good stuff.’

‘It’s all good stuff,’ Bronagh said, then left.

The captain knelt down next to me.

‘You look pretty beat up, but I have got a feeling you’re faring better than the rest of the five hoop circus that was out there.’

I tried to smile but winced as the barbed hook in my sides seemed to embed itself deeper.

           
‘Reckon we can get that out of you on the ground. We’ll head to the nearest hospital, get you patched …’

‘No. I have to get to the airstrip.’

‘What airstrip?’

‘There’s one on the edges of the mangroves. It’s where the plane came from. Head for the sulphur swamps, you’ll see it.’

‘What about getting you patched up?’

‘That can wait,’ I said, ‘There is a story needs telling, and it needs telling now. Get me down there. Now. Please.’

The Captain still looked doubtful.

‘Please,’ I said.

Bronagh helped me prop my head up and I took a big swig of rum. It seemed to open the swollen passages of my nose and clear my head for a short while, then settled its deepening warmth down the dry scratchy channel of my throat.

‘Bronagh, set course for the Lowlands, bring us down in a wide circle by the sulphur pits, let’s see if we can find that airstrip. Oh yeah, and Bronagh?’ He left the question hanging until he had his full attention. ‘Good shot.’

I grimaced as the coppery taste of blood mixed in with my second belt of rum, and was careful not to shudder or elicit a devastating cough.

‘Thanks for the drink,’ I said.

‘You know, I heard you Slayers were as hard as brass. Now I know why,’ said the captain.

I rested my head back on the floor and closed my eyes.

‘Ex,’ I said, and smiled.

Salvation cannot be found in the heavens. It can only be found in knowing you did the right thing, or accepting that what you did was wrong. It is about honest internal dialogue.

 
And faith or God has fuck all to do with that.

Sergeant Whark - Vanguard Training

The journey down was blissfully uneventful. I slept a short while, glad that the Zeppelin’s descent was slower and more even than the plane’s take off had been, despite the jostling of the wind.

When I awoke, the burning in my right side, where the bolt was still lodged, was unbearable. The edge that had been slightly dulled by the rum now burned fiercely with a vengeance; each inhalation made me flinch. I questioned myself, that I may be delirious as I even found myself longing for Doc’s green painkilling concoction.

Doc.

I tried to stay as still as possible, only moving when the Zeppelin landed and encouraged by the Captain to get myself ready to be stretchered off. I thought about making a run for escape as soon as we alighted, but my muscles refused to even entertain that notion. My mind screamed at me to get moving. There was something I had to finish.

‘I need to talk to the camera crew first. I have things to say.’

‘You need to get your priorities straight, Slayer,’ Bronagh said. 'We don’t even know what kind of reception we will be arriving to.’

‘I’ve got to try,’ I said.

‘Doubt you will be able to blow me a goodnight kiss without doubling up, the way you’ve been stuck, it’s a wonder you can still hitch a breath at all.’ The captain nodded to the other two and they unfastened the floor anchors, lifted the stretcher free of its deck moorings and carried me out of the Orca.

Just the act of being carried, the shift in my weight and situation, sent me woozy and light headed. Or maybe it was the rum. They carried me off the Zeppelin and into the shelter of the hangar. The captain was armed and surprised that we had not been greeted by hostile parties, had not been assailed upon our descent, not been jumped the moment the door had opened. There was no one outside.

I was confused.

As I rounded the corner of the hangar’s edge I looked beyond the struggling Loopes and saw the explanation: Bleecker.

He had lined the Governor’s troops up in the centre of the hangar and was barking orders that echoed and troubled the rotting curved shell of the hangar; and the guards were doing nothing but listening. It was hard to do anything else when he spoke; actually scratch that, it was not hard, it was impossible.

He looked over at me, almost smiled, almost, then carried on with the barrage and made one of the young distracted soldier’s flinch, stand straighter, avert his gaze, adjust his bow and lift his chin.

I still had one thing left to do; one thing that I could not afford to tell anyone about, could not risk it. I had to get off the stretcher, get free somehow. I did not know exactly how I could get out of here but I knew that every second counted.

I tried to rise from my rolling makeshift bed but my arms were still bound, I could not get up. I raised my head.

I noticed someone at the far side of the hangar, in one of its more exposed corners talking to the camera crew. He was consulting his notes and laughing, and sunlight that streamed through a chink in the storm’s armour somewhere, front-lit him, his silhouette defined and vivid on the screen of the dilapidated hangar.

It could not be.

Laughing.

He turned, looked at me, his smile instantly dropped away.

He started to run.

I felt Bronagh and Loopes lower me.

Felt the cool floor through the stretcher’s cloth, and it felt good.

The world swam out of focus as I fought to hang on.

The cool arms of sleep were pulling me down, sending me to the dreamless dungeon where the selfish belonged.

I cursed the cruel hallucination.

Doc was dead.

It was a ghost, his ghost.

A figment of my drunk and pain addled, exhausted mind.

A mirage.

Then the mirage shouted for someone to pass him a field medikit.

And Doc’s face slid from worry to mortal concern.

I blacked out.