Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller (30 page)

Unhappiness – Change – Equilibrium – Contentment – Boredom – Unhappiness (Repeat)

Life Equations:

 
Universal patterns of existence.

Crampton & Hall

I wiped at my watering eyes as I came around in the safe house. The plain white walls and sparse furnishings added to the feeling that I was in a sterile environment, even though it was a rented apartment rather than a hospital bay. I wondered if Doc had remembered to call someone about Coyle, happy that we had suitably humiliated him. He would have probably preferred death.

Surrounding me were implements, dressings, diagrams and notebooks; the functional and the necessary. The room smelled of antiseptic and was dust and personality free. Thick curtains were drawn across the windows and with the unforgiving lights that seemed to allow no shadows or darkness into any corner, I was clueless to the time of day.

The old, adapted massage table I was laying on was comfortable enough and I could feel an indentation in the pillow beneath my neck where people placed their faces when having spinal treatment. The stark lighting meant I had to squint and blink repeatedly to keep the room from swimming out of focus. Doc had his back to me. His white coat was neat and immaculately clean, a halo emanated from him and seemed to dull the hum of the equipment he had plugged in.

‘Your perceptions will be slightly askew.’

I nodded.

‘Your pain management is so comprehensive that I have had to bring you out of your sedation with a stimulant that can sometimes lead to disorientation or hallucinations.’

I shook my head at both of him.

‘Drake. Can you hear what I am saying?’

I swallowed warm air down my sandpaper throat. An icy chill spread throughout my guts.

‘Yes. Yes, I hear you. Thirsty.’

‘Listen carefully. I am about to remove the bolt from your trapezium. You are prepped and ready. I need to know if you are under the influence of any other medication.’

‘Coyle?’

He checked his notes, ‘I followed your instructions. Got your stuff from the bath panel in the motel bathroom too, the one next to where you stayed. There was someone in the motel room but I just told them I was a Doctor and…well I got it, just like you said.’

‘Drink,’ I rasped.

‘Not possible. Now, did they give you any medication at the …the … he looked at his notes again....wherever you just were?’

‘No.’

‘The laceration to your chest was a mess, deep, I have stitched it.’ He paused to read his notes. ‘The contusion to your knee is iced and compressed. Your shoulder wound needs tending now, Drake, do you understand?’

I nodded. Flinched again at the pain.

‘You have lost some blood, but not so much that this will be problematic.’

‘Who for?’ I asked.

Doc leaned over me, his face was a mixture of frustration and consternation; his breath smelled of antiseptic, or maybe that was my chest.

‘Drake, you asked me to attach the wings last night. Do you remember?’

I nodded. ‘They’re Newt’s.’

‘Yes. I know. I recommend we do this as soon as possible to lessen the likelihood of rejection.’

I smiled and sang something about flying.

‘I can do it whilst you are under anaesthetic for the bolt extraction. Kill two birds with one stone so to speak, do you understand?’

I nodded again.

‘I need to know you understand, Drake and want me to do it. I cannot rely on my notes for your consent.’

I began to close my eyes then a wave of nausea made me open them, searching the spinning room for something solid to hold on to, to orientate with. Tried to focus on a metal gurney in the clean white room. I grabbed Doc and a lucid moment.

‘Do it Doc. Do it well. Newt...’

‘Rest now, Drake, rest. And I will see you on the other side.’ Doc walked away, picked up a pad and read his notes. I heard the sound of surgical implements being checked off a list.

‘You can do this,’ Doc said.

I did not understand at first but think he may have been talking to himself. He slipped a cocktail of pain and sedation drugs into my bloodstream via the intravenous bag, and turned up the flow on the drip feed. And as the pain and room and everything retreated down the vastly imploding corridors of my vision, one thought echoed out to lead me down into the abyss of unconsciousness where even time does not pass:

Two birds, one stone.

Two birds, one stone.

First Newt, now me?

The abyss, it seems, knows pessimism well.

*

To me it felt like I had blinked; no sooner had my eyes closed than the world was swimming back into focus and I was beginning to wonder if Doc had not given me enough anaesthetic. I stared at the smooth surface of the tiled ceiling then realised I was laying on my front looking through a hole in the massage table at the tiled floor. I tried to raise my head but a horrible weight bore down on my neck, pressing my face back into the gap.

My wings.

The weight of them there, folded, at my back, like two heavy hands in supplication.

It was done.

Footsteps.

‘Stay still, Drake.’

‘I’m going nowhere.’ My voice was raspy and thick with sleep. I saw Doc’s feet appear in my small viewing window. His shoes were dark but I could still make out some blood on the toe caps.

I felt light tugs and prods as he inspected his work.

The ruffle of feathers.

I frowned.

Slipped away.

Slept again.

‘Kch’

‘Ake.’

‘Drake.’

Footsteps.

I awoke again, looked down and saw the same shoes, but clean now.

‘Doc?’

‘Brace yourself. We have to rotate you onto your side.’

‘We?’

‘You and I, Drake. The muscles and nerves need flexing, exercising. Necrosis is our biggest danger now.’

I felt disorientated. Too hot.

‘Hurts.’

‘I cannot inhibit your pain anymore, I am afraid, Drake. It is important you are unimpeded so that you may feel things, so your nerves can re-establish their old pathways and connections.’

‘Has it worked?’

‘There is no way of knowing until we see if the nerves and muscles have spliced. The wings still had the full range of movement when attached and calcification was at a minimum. The receptors were pliant and your nerve endings, where nubbed, were relatively open and, with some cutting, malleable enough to splice sufficiently. Rejection is highly unlikely, but we must still keep a watchful eye.’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘It’s a “maybe”.’

‘OK.’ I brought my left arm up to use a lever to raise myself up on the bed. I ached all over and the deep-seated pain on my spine helped to give me perspective for the problems with the bolt wound, my chest and knee.

‘You will still be groggy.’

‘No shit. Feel like I’ve been asleep for a hundred years. How long have I been out?’

Doc checked his notes. ‘Almost three days.’

‘Three days!’

‘Almost.’

I wondered how things would have been progressing in my absence, how many people were looking for me. How close they were. As if reading my thoughts Doc turned back a few pages in his book and started to read.

‘No visits from anyone, no day callers or people watching from the rooftops. You have not made the news and neither has Coyle. There has been no interruption to your recovery save one night of sleep conniptions where you ran a fever and shouted out a woman’s name half a dozen times until more heavily sedated.’

My head banged and felt as if it were full of sloshing Lowlands mud trying to find a level. I rubbed my eyes and head. ‘What did you use? A lump hammer?’

‘The word you are looking for is thank you.’

‘That’s two wor…’

I screamed as he surprised me by rocking me over onto my side, but went with it. It felt as if someone had attached a high tensile wire through my spine and was pulling at its core in the opposite direction every time I tried to move.

‘Now stay still whilst I examine my work under gravity.’

I closed my eyes and fought for a memory.

It was not superficial like trying to remember somebody’s forgotten name or an internal map to a road less travelled, no it was deeper than that. It was like trying to recall a loved one’s scent or the sound of their laugh in the night, long after they are dead and gone. It was there somewhere, at the centre of me, hidden away in the mechanisms and cogs of physical apparatus, a key to wind the clock, the intricate movement. I flexed my back, my shoulders, rode the pain at my collarbone and chest, stayed with it, pushed, but felt nothing.

Nothing.

No scent.

No laughter.

Just a noise filling my head with the sound of rushing water. The sound of footsteps again; fainter now, fainter still until they carried me down, away, into an ocean of all engulfing syncope.

I drowned.

We conceal more from ourselves, than of ourselves.

Hope Crescent

J.K.Munt

‘Junkies,’ Vedett muttered as he walked behind the three gang members who were each carrying a substantially heavy bag for him. He watched as they puffed and snorted from the effort, probably thinking the credits and fix he had offered them did not seem so generous now. They were not built for travel or heavy labour, nor any labour for that matter. To Vedett these men resembled the living dead, shambling along full of groans and whimpers, trying to remember what it was like to be normal and scratching along existence’s very narrow path to meet their own gradual and inevitable desiccation.

Having disembarked the balloon and paying the crew modestly to wait for their return journey, Vedett and his shuffling drug stoked entourage had walked the last mile across the Nimbus City rotting core to the library. The roads were mottled and deserted here, heaved tarmac and overgrown signs marked where nature was battling with civilisation, and winning. Greenery forced its way into and out of structures; invasive fingers finding weaknesses in roofs, bricks and architecture. The four came out into a small clearing near a gothic looking church and Vedett saw the library.

He had heard the old building was in disrepair, but its state of dilapidation still surprised him. He was wary of setting foot across the threshold in case his weight on the floorboards should start off some chain reaction culminating in the collapse of the walls and roof. Even his hired help seemed reluctant to enter.

‘Leave the bags there,’ Vedett said, pointing at the steps leading up to the main door. They dropped the bags and then looked at him, like lost children, expectantly, waiting for their next instruction. Eventually one of them was brave enough to speak.

‘Can we …’

‘Here,’ said Vedett and threw three small brown wraps into the overgrown brush and foliage to the front of the library grounds. ‘That should keep you busy for ten minutes or so.’ They scrambled after their fixes.

‘If you are not here when I have finished, I will leave without you.’ They ignored him.

He raised his voice to a shout: ‘And keep out!’ They all froze as if a gun had gone off next to their ear, then carried on rummaging through the undergrowth like nothing had been said.

Vedett made his way inside.

The cracked mosaic tiles crunched beneath his feet and he sniffed at the damp air of the library. Croel was sat on the curved reception desk and did not speak until Vedett noticed him there.

‘Come to pay your ‘books overdue’ fine?’

‘Where’s Mckeever?’

‘He’ll be along in a moment. He’s been playing with something downstairs.’

Vedett said nothing, turned and went back outside to bring in his three bags, it took him three separate trips.

‘Thought I heard you arrive. Are those our credits?’ Mckeever said as he came up the stairs. Vedett dropped the final bag to the floor.

‘No. This,’ he kicked at one of the bags, ‘is my contingency plan.’

Mckeever and Croel exchanged a glance.

‘So what has it got to do with us?’ said Croel

‘Everything.’

Croel crossed his arms and Mckeever stifled a yawn.

Vedett said nothing.

Croel broke the silence. ‘Look,
you
called us, remember? I thought you wanted us to lay low to await further instructions, wait a few weeks until some kind of D-Day; now you want to come and play Doctor on call with your home visits?’

‘I would not call this a home.’

‘And you would that freak show morgue where you live?’ Cut to the chase Vedett. Frankly we are tired of your games and my good partner and I are not accustomed to being kept waiting, our patience is thin.’

‘You should show some respect.’

‘Respect? You are in our house, our rules, you don’t like it, there’s the door, or there are a number of third floor holes in the wall I would be happy to escort you through.’ He fanned his wings to add unnecessary credence to his words.

Vedett was unimpressed. ‘I came to pay you the rest of your credits. Our work here is done.’

‘What?’ Mckeever stepped forward.

‘You. Heard.’

Croel dropped from his desk perch and hurried over to Vedett.

‘We wanted Drake. To finish off the Vanguard, send him the same way as his brother. That was part of the deal. It’s the whole reason we have been part of this operation.’

‘The Governor said I was to cut you loose and make sure Drake was not touched again; though his whereabouts would be of great interest to her, it is paramount that he is not harmed. She has another purpose for him.’

‘And when in the royal fuck did you care about doing what that stupid bitch tells you to?’ said Croel.

‘Since she pays the bills.’

Croel stepped closer to Vedett. ‘We were promised the credits, half up front, and we were told we had free reign to get Drake, to finish the job. You going back on the deal?’

‘I did not say that. I told you what the Governor had said.’

Mckeever lowered his voice, ‘And what do you say?’

Vedett pulled up an old plastic chair that had been red once, but now faded to a light pink-orange, dimpled and cracked on rust covered legs, it scraped a few more tiles loose as he dragged it noisily across the floor.

‘What if I were to tell you I knew where Drake would be at a certain time on a certain day?’

‘Yes?’

‘And what if I were to tell you to show up then if you wished to complete the terms of your, ah, contract.’

‘Vedett. You are speaking in riddles,’ said Mckeever, palming at his eye socket.

‘Here are your credits.’ Vedett took a large wad of bills from his pocket. ‘I will be in touch with the date and time for Drake.’

Croel took the credits and counted them out into two piles on the reception desk.

‘It’s all there,’ said Vedett, still amused.

‘If I count it now, then there can be no chance of dispute later.’

Vedett ignored him.

‘There is, of course, one more condition to this agreement,’ Vedett said.

‘There’s always a catch,’ said Croel.

‘Get rid of this.’ He kicked at one of the bags.

‘What is it?’ said Mckeever.

‘Not what. Who,’ said Vedett.

‘Your contingency plan?’

‘Yes. Turns out he was useless. Found him chained up in the garden of our good friend Doctor Carlow.’

‘Carlow? I thought Croel had decommissioned him years ago at Bethscape. He’s changed if he did this,’ Mckeever said looking at the bags.

‘I can have that effect on people.’ Vedett smiled. It was a sickly grin that smeared across his face. His lips were worn, thin and pink, like the chair he was sitting on.

Croel looked at Mckeever then tucked the payment into his belt and handed Mckeever his half. ‘If Drake is going to be in the Lowlands, we want some notice, we’ll be catching a balloon down in future; air’s thick with windsharks, rain’s brought more of them out lately.’

Vedett’s smirk stretched further.

‘Ok. We’ll get busy with
Mr Contingency
here,’ Croel flicked a casual backhand at the bags. ‘You keep your end of the bargain.’

Vedett stood to leave and stared at Croel a long few seconds before kicking the chair over and turning his back to go. ‘Though manners are a stranger here,’ he walked to the front door, speaking over his shoulder as he went, ‘you should both know this; I always keep my end of the bargain Blackwings. Always.’

He brushed the dust from the seat of his trousers as he left.