Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller (7 page)

Conversations are like dogs, lead them where you want them to go, but sooner or later you will just have to watch when they turn to shit.

One Side to Every Story

Biography of a Mudhead

Using the night vision goggles, I watched the guard’s eyes flutter open, his pupils broad and black in the perfect darkness. He tried to move, maybe to inspect his flattened nose and looked surprised to find his hands tied behind his back with thick carbonised wire I had found in the surveillance room. He was laid out on the cell floor, staring up at the ceiling, I suppose looking for answers or me. Prostrate in this way, it would be very difficult for him to rise from his position, and if he did, his legs would be stiff and his arms tied, numb and useless.

I could see him looking left and right, panic starting to spread across his face.

The time was right to talk. It would not take long to learn what I wanted.

It never did.

‘Boo.’

He flinched as if I’d slapped him.

‘Remember me?’

He said nothing and looked at me, or at least in my general direction.

‘This is what is going to happen. We are going to have a conversation and you are going to tell me everything you know and then I am going to leave you here: alive or dying, I do not care.’

He shifted his weight slightly.

‘If you try to get up I am going to have to remove one of your hands or feet, but feel free to try. You’ll bleed out and die where you lay. Eventually. As I said, alive or dying, either way, I don’t care.’

He froze.

Lit as he was to me through the one good lens of the night vision goggles, he looked like an ancient, green, petrified lump of stone; a toppled statue that once stood as a testament to desperation and despair.

‘I know who you are. What you are capable of. You’re that Slayer. The press conference.’

I said nothing.

‘Swear I won’t come to harm and I’ll tell you everything I know.’ He coughed and a dark bubble of blood and snot grew and then popped from his concave left nostril.

‘You are in a strange position to be bargaining,’ I said.

‘Give me your word and I will tell you everything I know.’

I paused giving him time to fidget and sniff and doubt his future.

‘OK. You have my word.’

It was his turn to pause, probably analysing the syntax for loopholes.

I took control of the conversation.

‘Now start talking before I change my mind. What am I… we doing here?’

‘We were told to grab you from the fight. Were given your seat numbers. Told you were muscle-bound, six foot one, dark hair, green eyes, mean looking. Told you would be with the slut too,' he looked around in the darkness, unsure if Pan was in the room, then decided it made no difference anyway. 'You both fit the bill.’

I stepped in closer. 'Be respectful,' I said

He closed his eyes. Scared.

‘How did you know I would be there? Who told you?’

‘At the Arena? It was in the press.’

'Our descriptions were not. Or that Pan would be there. You said you were 'told', so come on, who did the telling?'

He said nothing.

I did not ask another question, just left it open to see what he would say next, but he was not telling me anything helpful. His answers were terse and perfunctory, devoid of elaboration, withholding information.

Economically truthful.

I let my questions take on a similar format, deciding to fire closed questions at him, an archaic but ultimately extremely reliable form of interrogation. Though I had been trained in both giving and receiving torture in a series of corps exercises innocuously entitled ‘The Extraction and Retention of Information’ I did not have time for the psychological manipulation or button pressing that elicited the deepest, detailed response. Speed was paramount as Pan was watching the corridor with the good set of Night-Vis goggles, a crossbow and possibly a concussion. I had no idea where we were or if guard reinforcements were on the way. We had five minutes at best, maybe less, before I started to be the wrong side of comfortable.

Rapid-fire, closed-questions set up a rhythm of interrogation/response that offered up little time for consideration. This normally resulted in quick, honest answers, without embellishment or fabrication. In short, if the answer came straight away, it was the truth, if it missed a beat, it was usually a lie or an attempt at hiding something not mentioned.

‘Name.’

‘What?’

Slap.

‘Name.’

He panted, ‘Ghyll.’

‘Where are we?’

‘In a cell.’

Slap. Harder this time.

‘Where is the cell?’

‘Deadlands. Swamp.’

‘How many guards?’

‘Erm...three, including me.' Pause, he looked up, 'Others will be here soon though.’ Lie.

‘Keys?’

‘Two sets.’

Slap.

‘Oh. Of course. Wait… the master set is in the back room, in a small cupboard beside the monitors. You have mine plus one of the guys has the other set on him.’

Truth. I had found all of the keys exactly where he said they were. These were all answers I knew or could have guessed but they established the pattern. I wanted short, accurate responses and he now knew unsatisfactory answers would induce punishment. I kept the beat going and stepped up the questions. Three and a half minutes left by my reckoning.

‘He doesn't have those keys any more. Now, who are you working for?’

‘I don’t know.’

Truth.

‘Who paid you?’

He paused, missed a beat, ‘I don’t know.’

I pressed my thumb down into the squashy, tenderised bridge of his nose. He bucked beneath me and screamed. His breathing quickened into hitching dry rasps and he fought to get a different answer out.

‘We duh… d… didn’t get paid.’

Truth again.

‘Why not?’

‘They were onto us.’

‘They?’

‘Never met them. They sent us photos. Bad ones.’

‘Of?’

‘Us. Doing bad things to the slu… the women from the Angelbrawl.’

‘Blackmail?’

‘They had pictures of us all.'

I stayed quiet.

'Fucking. Stabbing. Laughing. Killing. I told the boys, I said….’

‘Did they threaten you?’

‘Wuh… What? Didn’t have to. That was threat enough.’

‘And?’

‘What do you mean…’

I pressed both thumbs down into the soft bludgeoned mass of his nose. He flinched and screamed again, this time it was higher pitched and went on for longer. I relieved the pressure and wiped my hands on his shirt.

‘F… Fuh… Fuh… Fuck. They said… uh… they would turn us in... that we would swing… uh, and gave us your picture, and seat number,’ he gestured towards the corner of the room where the door was, with his mangled face, ‘and ringside tickets to the 'Brawl.’

‘Instructions?’

‘To drug you both… bring you here. They knew we knew how, they had got pictures of us doing it before.’

‘They?’

‘I don’t know, someone high up the food chain. Connected. Didn’t say his name.’

‘Mudhead or criminal?’

‘Bad. Someone bad. Not Mudhead. Worse. Much worse.’

‘Then?’

‘Then? There was nothing else. We thought we would find out… later. Someone is due soon, I swear it.’

‘What is your name?’

‘What? You’ve already asked me…’

‘Name.’ I raised my voice for the first time.

‘Ghyll.’

‘What aren’t you telling me, Ghyll?’

‘Everything. I mean nothing. Nothing.’

I saw him close his eyes ready for more pain.

I did not move or make a sound.

‘Look. Listen. I’m telling you everything….’

He braced himself as if waiting for a slap. Perfect. I disappointed him and stayed quiet and motionless. Tears welled in his swollen eyes as he searched the room for me.

He continued talking, ‘Those pictures would have finished us. All of us. We were told to bring you here, intact, to not harm either of you and keep you here and await further instructions. That’s all. That’s it. All of it.’

‘So why did you ‘harm’ me?’

‘The drugs were meant to knock you out cold, they always work, we even doubled the dosage. It was like tranquilising a horse. It took ages. We nearly lost it. And got busted up in the process.’

‘You’re more used to girls, aren’t you?’

‘What?’

‘Girls come along more quietly, I suppose.’

‘This isn’t about them.’

‘Isn’t it?’

 
He was quiet.

‘Are there any more guards here?’

‘No, just us three, like I said. You put the others out of action.’

‘Good. Wait here.’

He closed his eyes and started to shake. His teeth were chattering.

I went to find Pan to make sure she was OK. I found her rubbing her jaw but still looking down the corridor with her goggles in place and the crossbow raised and aimed as instructed.

‘Time's up. Get ready, we are leaving. Go to the end of the corridor. Wait by the external door. Do not open it and go outside. I will join you in a couple of minutes. Stay alert.’ She didn’t ask any questions. Just nodded and made her way, zombie-like, down the passageway. The clip-clop of her shoes echoed like thunderclaps off the bare, dark walls. She was in shock and her value as an early warning system was negligible at best. I had to get moving and get us both out of here to somewhere safe.

I went back into the cell.

Ghyll had his head down and he was muttering something.

Maybe he was praying.

I did not care.

‘The girls,’ I said.

He looked up.

‘This
is
about them,’ I said. ‘All of them.’

‘But you gave me your word. You’re an Elite Vanguard Slayer.' He blinked and looked for me, trying to penetrate the tar veil of the blackened room to find some humanity or compassion or hope. His enlarged pupils looked like bottomless wells, brimming with black ink, starting to overflow.

I stared into his moral anomie.

If he could have seen me he would have shrank away from my gaze, wilted, finding nothing but confirmation of his own twisted damnation and end of days.

I removed the knife from its sheath.

It came silently into the room and made the blackness seem somehow darker; puncturing the atmosphere with purpose and a deathly intent.

‘Ex,’ I said.

How quickly the bad taste that business can sometimes leave in our mouths, is washed away with celebratory champagne.

Economics: The Elasticity of the Credit

E. Butler

‘You got the list?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Credits?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So we have just got to return this harpoon contraption, then we can go home?’

Croel did not answer. In his opinion Mckeever shared a female trait that had annoyed him in most of his encounters with the fairer, and if not fairer, then at least opposite, sex: that of stating the obvious.

‘I said…’

‘I heard what you said. It was stultifying and obvious. It was a question you already have an answer for, but you think it is easier to ask me for confirmation rather than dredge the thin, unworn ruts and furrows of your own short term memory. Yes. Yes, and fucking yes, are the answers. I’ve got Vedett’s instructions, I have got the money and after we have dropped that 'contraption' off, we can go home. I need my sleep. I need to think about the ramifications of the rest of this proposition and above all I need…’

Mckeever angled left and began his descent towards the large bright yellow Zeppelin where the Orca's crew were housed.

‘…fucking respite,’ Croel said through gritted teeth and followed.

Leaving the relative safety of the Edgelands and flying out over the rim always gave Croel a feeling of general unease, despite the early morning sunlight. He had seen windsharks in action, had seen their violence and ferocity first hand in a Blackwing/Slayer battle that had taken to the skies a few years ago. It had torn into the affray and made everyone forget sides and objectives and anything other than personal survival in a scream filled instant of shining teeth and spraying blood. Croel had peeled out of formation and watched on in horror as it had dismembered some of each side’s finest in a flash of black and grey shiny skin and crushing, obliterating teeth. The sight of limbs and blood spattered feathers falling to the Lowlands, hundreds of feet below, had featured in some of his nightmares and would continue to for the rest of his life. Mckeever seemed oblivious to the risk or, if he was mindful, showed no external signs of nerves as he careened towards the Zeppelin’s small landing platform. Its three residents liked to call it the Planche de Vol, and as verbose as Croel studied to be, the meaning evaded him. He assumed it meant stumpy landing plank, as this was the physical incarnation of this bygone, foreign term.

Mckeever missed it at first attempt, pulled out of his swoop at the last second, banked right and came around again to hit it at full tilt, barking one of his shins in the process and collapsing into the secure external door. Maybe his lack of depth perception was already taking its toll. Croel heard him banging on the thick wood of the door with the flats of his fists, evidently more concerned about the threat of a windshark than he had first considered. As Croel angled down for landing he heard the dead bolt disengage and the door swing noisily open. Mckeever hurried inside and Croel hit the board at a jog and curled his wings in, so it would take him inside in one fluid movement.
   

‘Nice landing,’ said Loopes, smiling.

Croel glowered at his cheerfulness.

Loopes, oblivious, beckoned for them to follow him along a railed gantry and into the underbelly of the ship. ‘Bolt the door behind you,’ he said without looking back. ‘'sharks are flying.’

Mckeever looked at Croel with two raised eyebrows that said a multitude of things. They said:
this teenager is weird.
They said:
I’m not used to getting orders from a pre-pubescent pup
and they said:
I’m not looking forward to the journey back.
Croel agreed on all points and bolted the door behind them.

‘I’m sure your landing platform is shorter than the last time we were here,’ Mckeever said.

‘Bitten off,’ said Bronagh entering the room ‘last night the windsharks didn’t even need the scent of blood on the air to agitate them. You did well to make it inside. Beaugent almost didn’t yesterday, they just came out of the blue like…like...’

‘I had an aeronautical mile to spare.’ They all looked up to see Beaugent framed by the doorway to the lower deck. Loopes held his hands out about two feet apart to indicate a more realistic appraisal of the distance. Beaugent smiled and compromised with an ‘or thereabouts’ in a deep, gravelled tone.

To Croel, Beaugent seemed to be like a well-weathered pirate he had read about in one of the historic classics in the library. He spoke in a harsh, rough voice, the timbre alluding to the singsong sway of the sea. He sometimes even interspersed his words with nautical terms and pirate ribaldry. Croel wondered where Beaugent’s eye-patch was and if he ever offered his shoulder up as a perch for some colourful tropical bird or epaulette denoting time served and conquests out at sea. He ran the Orca Crew like it was a ship’s crew and spoke of the Zeppelin always in terms of ‘shes’ and ‘hers’, like it was his partner or wife. Mckeever found the slight eccentricity endearing and enjoyed playing along with the oceanic references. Croel found it tiresome though and delighted in reminding Captain Beaugent, the adolescent Loopes and Gunnery Mate Bronagh that they were not sailors and they were not, and never had been, on the high seas.

Beaugent turned to address Mckeever directly, ‘You returning her, harpoons as well?’

‘No, we thought we would come and talk to you about albatrosses and trawling,’ said Croel.

‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit there, Blackwing, and you will do well to remember you are a guest on my vessel.’

‘As you will do well to remember that I do not enjoy being called Blackwing. My name is Croel and I will remind you but once to use it.’

‘Sarcasm is not the lowest form of wit. It is always current, it assumes intelligence.’ Loopes was trying to make the atmosphere more relaxed and not succeeding.

 
‘Well, you should know better than to come aboard my ship and assume anything,’ said Beaugent.

‘Especially intelligence,’ said Croel.

‘Where is she?’ shouted Bronagh from the next floor up.

‘On its way,’ replied Loopes through cupped hands, beckoning again for Mckeever and Croel to follow him. Beaugent stood to one side as Mckeever and Croel passed through the door to go up and return the weapon to Bronagh. He did not take his eyes off Croel, even as he climbed the stairs to the next deck, where Bronagh waited.

‘She bent or bowed?’

‘No, but she, ah, it… is heavy enough to warrant redesigning. It is way to heavy to be practical.’

‘She’s made to be housed on a ship’s bow or stern, not for hauling around on land by two…’

‘Choose your next words carefully,’ said Croel, eyes narrowing.

‘I was going to say mercenaries,’ said Bronagh.

‘That’s care enough,’ said Mckeever.

‘How many harpoons were deployed?’

‘Just the one. I do not miss.'

Bronagh looked uneasily at Loopes.
  

'It’s been cleaned and stowed as specified,’ Mckeever finished.

‘Cleaned?’ said Bronagh.

‘And stowed,’ added Mckeever.

Bronagh removed the harpoon gun from its casing to check its integrity. He held each limb up and looked down its length, with one eye closed.

‘This one’s kinked. Must have been dropped or shunted.’

‘You’ve received ample remuneration which should cover wear and tear,’ said Mckeever.

‘It isn’t the credits,’ said Loopes. ‘We only did this job because it came straight from someone on high. No one usually touches our equipment, but they threatened to take our licence.’

 
‘And our ship,’ said Beaugent, who had entered the deck via some other portal, patting one of the internal support struts as if the ship could feel it.

‘Here are your credits,’ said Croel, tossing the money into the empty harpoon gun bag. ‘Why not go and buy yourselves a new plank to land on, or walk?’
 

Beaugent walked over to the money, picked up one credit, a small note and folded it in his hand. ‘Now I do not know what kind of business you are into, nor do I want to, but I’ve heard of you and I do not like what I hear. Do not come here again, because threats or not, from viewing deck to Planche de Vol, you are not welcome.’

Croel walked over to Beaugent and stood facing him, inches away. He sneered and rasped a heavy low breath through his teeth. It was a look that emanated loathing, as dark as the wings that rose at his shoulders to frame it. Mckeever had seen the look before and readied himself for combat. Loopes took a step backward and Bronagh looked up from the harpoon gun with concern and trepidation, fumbling at the crossbow clasp at his belt.

But Beaugent did not move.

Did not blink.

He turned to toss Mckeever the screwed up credit.

‘Here,’ he said, ‘after you have left, and if you make it back, go and get yourself a decent eye-patch, it would really suit you.’ He chuckled to himself as he walked off towards the bridge and the upper deck.

‘Now that’s sarcasm,’ said Loopes.