Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller (36 page)

Affairs of the heart and head can be all consuming, but they are relative.

And relative to survival,

They are nothing.

In Her Name

J.B.A Falconer

After helping load the van, Jackdaw watched Drake’s approach and landing; he pointed at the screen showing Drake on the Angelbrawl roof in the Arena’s Security room.

Vedett nodded to him silently.

‘Just like you said.’ Jackdaw tapped the monitor, a soft clink of his long fingernail on the glass.

Vedett sneered, ‘Drake could not have missed it, Lacroix pasted it everywhere.’

‘Think he will owe the television companies a few favours after yesterday.’ Jackdaw said.

‘Fuck them,’ said Vedett, ‘you owe me.’

‘Trust me, I will settle this score.’

Jackdaw finished his drink. ‘And wings too I see? He has been busy. It will be a more interesting match than I could have hoped for. I love an even contest.’

Vedett grunted, unimpressed by the showboating. ‘Just ensure he makes it to the Deadlands as discussed, and I do not care about his condition; alive or dead, makes no difference to me.’

They both watched Drake on-screen as he made his way across the vents and ducts to the rooftop exit.

‘Wish there was an audience,’ Jackdaw said.

‘I would love nothing more than to stay and watch the show, JD, but unfortunately I have one last drop off and then I am away. I will send you your credits tomorrow.’

‘Oldest lie in the book,’ Jackdaw cracked his knuckles, ‘along with,
of course I will still respect you in the morning
and
it was like that when I got here
.’

Vedett laughed, removed a stack of credits from his inside pocket and threw them onto the worktop. ‘There. Take them now.’

Jackdaw counted them then stowed them behind the monitor as a monochrome Drake was pictured prising an Arena door slowly open.

‘You can watch from here if you like.’ Jackdaw turned the other monitors on revealing multiple angles seemingly from every arch over the ring, including a few close up ones of the fighting cage, he tapped another monitor then left in a hurry.

Vedett waited a few seconds to watch Drake enter the stairwell, when satisfied their paths would not cross, he gathered Jackdaw’s money from behind the monitor, tucked it into his coat and left.

As he walked to the loading bay he heard a loud announcement over the Arena’s public address system.

‘Celebrities,’ he said to empty room, climbed into the van and drove away.

When feeling cornered, move the walls.

Stormy

Jo Kitchen

The painkillers were not sitting easily in my stomach and just seemed to add a feeling of nausea and deepen my unease. Taking so many had been a mistake, but not one I could afford to dwell on.

After coming out of the stairwell I found myself in one of the vast, circuitous corridors of the stadium that I had run before. I was struck by how quiet it was. The menagerie of ancillary staff usually evident in a large establishment before opening were conspicuous by their absence. No cleaners, no inept security, no one answering phones or neatly pressed managers jangling keys. I was heading for the ring, where I hoped Jackdaw would be, when a loud speaker interjected.

‘Attention! Could all dinosaurs please make their way to the Arena.’

Jackdaw.

‘Are you listening, Drake? I’m waiting.’

I thought about just leaving then, regrouping, not doing what I was supposed to do, what they wanted me to do. Waiting until the nausea and painkillers had worn off to come back later. Wait. Wait. Later.

But he had seen me coming, must have, so he needed dealing with now.

I needed to start the end.

I heard the sound of the microphone being dropped, feedback bounced around the curvature of the long concrete run. It was a loud shrill noise that focused my attention. I pushed open the nearest Arena doors and stepped inside.

 
My senses slowly drank in the surroundings. The large space. The silence. I focused on the Arena at the centre, the rest of the world happening in my sensory periphery.

I felt removed, distant, divorced of myself and quieted my thoughts.

This had to be done.

I watched as Jackdaw reached down to pick up the microphone, depressed the ‘talk’ button and spoke.

‘What kept you?’

His voice echoed in the vast empty space.

I did not respond, just bowed my head as I made my way down the stone steps and towards the Arena.

He shouted other puerile insults but I ignored them. I entered the ring through the cage door and sat on a stool in the corner, looking down at the old brown blood stains on the cream coloured, canvas floor. Collecting calm.

My hands hung loosely at my side.

I said nothing.

I flexed the wings at my back, they brushed the floor and steel meshed walls.

My seat was hard and low.

The lights went up, like a score of suns above my head and the space became a pattern of crisscrossed shadows and unbearable bright whiteness.

I blinked a few times and as my eyes became more accustomed, the crisscross shadow patterns on the floor pulled into focus. The glare of the lights still seemed stultifying but beyond the mesh, in places, I saw their brightness was illuminating a large, dimpled, curved roof and empty Arena. I had still not looked at Jackdaw since sitting down.

We had both been here before.

Only this time I was inside the cage.

The mesh surrounded me, latticed me in and did nothing to diffuse the piercing glare of the lights around the ring as I tried to survey the cages confines.

‘Well, if it isn’t the relic.’

I looked up at Jackdaw who was seated at the opposite corner on a low stool. He was grinning. His wings were extended as a Groundbounder would spread his arms in an overstated gesture of greeting or magnanimous self-promotion. He shoved his familiar black mouth guard in.

He looked bigger in the confines of the cage, like overweight people look more expansive when they stuff themselves into tight fitting clothes. I was diagonally opposite him, probably as far away as I could be in this wire frame, but his presence was still impressive.

Oppressive.

He loomed, backlit by some of the stage lights, a hulking mass like a silhouette of a storm cloud, blocking the sun. He flexed his muscles, pumped his biceps and chest out. A thin sheen of sweat on his skin reflected the glare in fibrous curves and obtuse angles. He was the same height as me but at least thirty pounds heavier, maybe more.

My back ached and I was not sure how much physical abuse my wings could take at the moment, it felt like with one hard pull or wrong twist they could pop clean out, like a Marsh Birds’ wing stuck in the hungry fist of some burly man at a barbecue.

This was going to be tough.

I looked up at Jackdaw as he checked the side and ceiling gates by which the fighters entered and exited; he engaged both the deadbolts. It was one of the features of an Angelbrawl, no easy way out.

I looked down again. The arc sodium brightness was severe, though it was succeeding in illuminating the shadows and casting the last remnants of introspection out of the dark corners of my mind.

‘WELCOME TO ANGELBRAWLING!’ Jackdaw shouted. He no longer used the tannoy - he did not need to. Clearly he loved theatrics and the sound of his own voice, and here was the evidence echoing off the curvature of the subterranean roof.

Squinting to filter the lights, and picking up white squiggling ghosts of retinal burn across my vision for my trouble, I got my measure of the exact dimensions of the cage. Knew its corners and limitations. Knew the battlefield. That would help with the fight.

I closed my eyes and controlled my breathing, reined it in, set the restless horses from canter to trot, made myself still. I imagined the dimensions of the cage, our positions within it, how it would accommodate wingspan and forward and lateral movement. The locked gate. The illumination. The game.

‘I WILL BE YOUR REFEREE FOR THIS EVENING,’ Jackdaw continued, ‘NO BITCH-SLAPPING, HAIR PULLING OR HEAVY PETTING.’

I dropped my club and bow through a hole in the mesh to the floor outside of the cage, they clattered on the concrete.

Jackdaw laughed and cracked his neck from side to side.

‘AND ONE MORE THING, DINOSAUR …’ he paused again.

Theatrics.

‘ONLY ONE OF US IS GOING TO BE WALKING OUT OF THIS CAGE.’

A klaxon sounded as he depressed a button on the microphone, dropped it through a gap in the mesh and punched his bare, empty fists together.

I raised my hands and started walking forwards.

It was on.

We met in the centre of the ring. The first transaction was clear, a tester, he jabbed at me with a fast right, it glanced my jaw. I returned a hefty body shot through his dropped guard and into his wide open stance, a gush of air ripped out as I connected. We had both proved we knew how to take a punch.

The hits had not really affected either of us.

They were not meant to.

They were tasters, allowing us to assess reactions, reach, counters and tells; giveaway signs like the flash of an eyeball or the twitch of a muscle that told you they were going to hit, from left or right, hand or foot.

His slow footwork had left him wide open to my body shot, his right handed stance meant quick strikes would come from that side of his body. His size was also a problem. I would use his lack of speed to my advantage. Most significantly, during our last exchange he had telegraphed his opening gambit with a tensing of his mouth. It came milliseconds before the blow, but it gave me the information I needed. His tell. All of this examination happened in an instant, and I knew he was doing similar computations. Sizing me up.
  

He was still smiling black, all over his mouth guard; it looked comical and sickly.

We both circled counter-clockwise.

I could feel the heat from the lights.

Jackdaw was confident and muscle-bound, breathing heavily through his nose, anger and amusement vied for position on his scarred, angular face.

I slowed my breathing down.

Canter to trot.

He jabbed again, I rocked left and stepped in to drive a rib-breaking fist hard up into his solar plexus. Only he was not there. He had stepped left and drove a sidekick into my stomach. I felt my glowing fat and muscle fold around the blade of his foot and the bellows of my lungs compressed, expelling air and spit as I doubled over. Winded, I flinched, expecting another blow but it did not come. Jackdaw was retreating to his corner. He turned and showed me his sickly dark grin again.

‘I am enjoying this, Mr Has-been, are you?’ His words sounded crumpled with the distortion of speaking around his mouth guard, but I understood perfectly. He was playing. He knew the fighting tricks and was using my knowledge of them against me. He was fighting in a structured, calculated manner, measuring tactics and responses. It was the way he knew, the way to please the audience, the way to draw out then win the bout and conclude with the fans’ approval.

His way.

He stood and started to run, then with two downbeats started to fly. He banked in one of the corners, turning at the last possible moment. His black feathers caught the mesh with a glancing, metallic twang as he turned to angle in towards me using every inch to gain momentum.

I squatted lower on my haunches, tucked my wings in and readied to pounce.

He came out of his bank bringing both feet out and towards me. The classic landing stance, though he was aiming to use my face as a runway. I rolled towards him rather than away from him, but he anticipated my move again, twisted sideways and used his forward momentum to land a meaty fist high on my forehead as he went by.

My neck snapped back and the lights of the Arena glowed brighter. I felt my consciousness start to slip. Breath jittered out of me in shallow coughs and tears burned in my eyes. I knocked my seat over. The world was swimming. I was trying to pull myself up using the mesh for handholds, clambered to my knees.

A rush of noise filled my ears, like crowds cheering. No. It was more the sound of a river rushing; the surge of the tidal pulse in my ears, heard my heart.

It was the noise of defeat and I felt fear.

It fluttered on the edge of my perception like a butterfly. I wanted to rationalise, ask questions and search for answers and reasons and … and … excuses. I wanted to shout my disgust that it had come to this. That it always came to this.

I wanted to curl up and meet my end.

I had been here before.

That was the problem.

I was thinking too much, treating this like a game of chess, gauging, calculating, giving rote responses to textbook blows. He knew which ways I would feint and bow, the diagrammatic pitches and yaws of my retaliation or defence, my training, my military encoding. He was fighting fluidly, organically, his fight was not linear or stimulus-response driven. It was changing, growing, evolving. He was fighting his way. He was picking his strikes and pulling my strings and fighting professionally, his way.

And he was winning.

A dark anger started to build in me.

A fury at everything.

Pan.

Doc.

My brother.

Everything.

A swirling vortex, a black hole spun at my core and every bit of logic, reason and light was being sucked into it; burning up on re-entry, disappearing, dragged down into the abyss and gravity.

My guilt, my apathy.

My selfish heart.

Obliterated.

All that remained was consciousness.

And rage.

‘You’re a fucking dinosaur, do you know that?’

Jackdaw was high on the mesh, clinging with his fingers and feet. He had not even hit the floor after hitting me. He looked like a hanging bat. His wings flexed in and out sinuously as he spoke.

Every second he spoke helped me get my breath back.

I heard something else about antiques and staving my face in and my brother.

It was all background noise, radio static to pulse filled ears.

He was goading me, pressing different combinations of all the buttons until I let him in.

He thought he was looking at a broken man.

I went as if to hit him and then sank to my knees again, shaking my head as if still dazed.

Let my wings drape across the floor.

My head bowed.

Jackdaw hadn’t even bothered moving.

‘Do you know something, for a Slayer …’

I threw the stool at him, surprised him. The use of objects, including seats, was not permitted in Angelbrawling contests and I knew he would not be prepared. He ducked his head and moved off centre, loosened his grip on the bars. I reached up and took hold of his wings, pulled down on them with my full strength and body weight. He shouted, came down on top of me, like a black veil and I pummelled nondescript fists and feet into every soft thing I came up against. He clawed out at me, used his manicured nails to rake three neat furrows down my right cheek. I hardly noticed the pain and sank my teeth into his left wing.

He noticed.

A high pitched yelp came out of him and echoed around the vast hall, he squealed as he rolled away.

Some of the dark feathers came loose and blood sprayed over both of us as he pulled back.

Now we both looked like we had been in a fight.