ElyriasEcstasy (30 page)

Bongo appeared to muse on this for a moment then nodded
decisively. “Okay.”

Overhead the Black Ship squirmed and glowed. It was such a
vast, impossible, horrible thing, and yet Bongo wasn’t wasting time gawking up
at it. Arvra remembered her own inaugural raid. The first time she’d been under
the Black Ship, with Frank leading the crew, she was terrified. It had taken
everything she had not to beg her brother to turn the truck around and take her
back.

Bongo, then, had some real grit. Again she couldn’t
completely hide a grin.

“On the left,” came Hervo’s stolid voice from behind.

Arvra’s eyes flashed that way just in time to see a crossbow
bolt pierce the malformed skull of the Passenger that had apparently sprung up
from the ground itself and started racing toward the vehicle. As it collapsed
she could hear Hervo reloading his weapon. He was quite a shot.

She saw no other Passengers in the immediate vicinity.
Beside her, Bongo let out a breath he’d evidently been holding for several
seconds. His lips thinned into a line. His green eyes turned forward.

“Straight ahead for a while,” he said once more.

* * * * *

Rune was racing the wings harder than he had ever done
before. Wringing the overtaxed motor. Squeezing every bit of thrust the burning
fuel could provide. He had traveled from the Citadel in what was surely record
time—if anyone had ever bothered to keep such records. No one had, he felt
sure. Using wings in this manner was not advisable.

He was numbed from the wind. At some point he’d passed
through a mist, not troubling himself to go over it, and it dampened his
clothing. The black strips snapped wetly against his sleek body. He didn’t care
about the discomfort.

Ahead, still quite some distance off, he thought he detected
a flush of light on the horizon that could only be the Black Ship. Miles to go
still. But his altitude gave him an extended view. Wisps of cloud intervened.
He maintained the straight line he had been following since lifting off from
that administration building’s rooftop.

Perhaps his absence had been discovered by now. Soon it
would be time for his evening dose. It might even be past that time by now. He
felt no effects yet of narcotic withdrawal. It could be that he would feel none
at all, so caught up was he in this venture.

Urna. Urna.

But he didn’t speak the name aloud. He wasn’t within range
yet. His words wouldn’t carry to his treacherous lover’s ears. Rune wouldn’t be
able to feel him, not even if he donned the blindfold so to let his other
senses take over.

He might, however, be in radio range by now.

Taking a firm grip, he slipped the handheld radio from his
belt. With his other hand he pulled down the fabric to bare his face. He
pressed the radio tightly to his chilled ear. He felt his dark hair streaming
out behind him as he turned his head a few degrees to cut the howl of the wind.
He turned up the radio’s volume as loud as it would go and listened.

He heard Guard chatter. At first he thought it was just routine
traffic. Then he heard the urgency in the voices, overlapping each other. Some
crisis was underway. This was the correct channel for the Guard border units.
This disruption must be happening in one of the border towns.

The very town, in fact, Rune determined after a moment’s
intent eavesdropping, from which the report of Urna’s sighting had come.

A grin gleamed on the Shadowflash’s narrow face. Not only
were the Guard dealing with a “civic disturbance”, but from their rapid talk
Rune deduced where the wayward Weapon had gone.

Into the Unsafe. Riding with a pair of illegal salvage
vehicles. Rune even had a description of those transports now.

The grin stayed stamped on his features. He worked the
wings’ throttle, somehow coaxing even more speed from them. The fuel gauge was
dropping at an alarming rate. The harness cut across his wind-benumbed body. He
didn’t care. Didn’t care. Forward. Forward. Find the Weapon, find Urna. Into
the Unsafe.

He and his second self would have their reunion on familiar
ground.

* * * * *

Urna let the man with the crossbow in the lead vehicle take
the first shot, so to measure his accuracy. He let Pelkra, who sat next to him
atop their transport’s roof, take down the second Passenger that appeared, for
the same reason. Now he had an idea of their skills.

This was different for Urna. Always in the past he’d known
the value and talents of his partner. Rune had been an absolutely defined
quantity to him. But he wasn’t on a mission with his Shadowflash this time.

When the third Passenger came racing out of the fungal
gloom, claws scraping the ground, Urna let his instincts take over. In less
time than it took to blink he’d aimed, fired and put a bullet through the
creature’s head, while it was still little more than a distant shadow.

Pelkra, after an appraising pause, said, “Nice work.”

“Thanks.” His prideful grin was a brief flash of teeth. “You
too.”

Arvra had turned onto a new course a little ways back and
Gator had followed. Presumably Bongo was providing the directions, probably using
that cluster of structures ahead as a reference point. Passengers seemed to
congregate in the old, ruined cities. It was why the Weapon/Shadowflash kill
missions almost always went there. Still, there were plenty of the monsters
running loose in the erstwhile countryside to keep things lively.

After a time a new collection of rotting buildings appeared
in the distance. The land here was hillier than before. They’d come upon a
crumbling roadway.

Arvra slowed her vehicle, Urna saw, so as to more easily navigate
the rubble-strewn road. He could hear the rusting transport’s motor growling in
protest but it kept chugging. Gator followed close. They went on for close to
half an hour like that, the general hush only periodically broken by the report
from Urna’s pistol (the clip was full but he was meting out his shots
judiciously, needing only one bullet per target) or the lethal whistle of a
crossbow bolt or one of Pelkra’s arrows. They were accumulating a decent kill
stat among them, Urna noted, not without a twinge of irony.

Speaking of twinges…

Again he pressed his temple. The disorientation wasn’t the
same as before. It was both less distracting and more intense, as if something
were clarifying in his head. As before, he fought to keep the sensation suppressed.

He and Rune as children, playing on an expanse of green
grass, the sun shining down on them. Urna let Rune tackle him to the ground
even though he could outdistance and outwrestle his dark-haired friend. His
best
friend. Urna was laughing. So was Rune, though not with the same vigor. It was
all frolicsome fun. Then a voice was calling, an adult voice, a kindly
admonishment, “Don’t play too rough, boys!”

Urna couldn’t see this adult, just Rune and the grass and
the warm, bathing sunlight.

Then he couldn’t see any of it. The vision had gone.

Vision?
No, he realized. No! Another memory. He was
sure of it. Like that one where Rune—slightly older than he’d been this
time—had been trying to tell him something important and dire. And Urna hadn’t
wanted to listen.

At first, the knowledge that this was Rune had been nagging,
suspect. Urna couldn’t fully trust it, not if there were the slightest chance
that he was under some influence of Kath’s or even Bongo’s magic. Now his head
was free of outside interference and he was confident in his memory, in these
images. It was a relief. A weight lifted from his shoulders that he had barely
understood he was carrying all his life.

He shook his head sharply. There was a flash of clammy
black, leaping over an ancient moldering vehicle that sat at an angle just off
the roadside. The Passenger was near enough that Urna could see its distorted
features. Too close! With no Shadowflash to tell him of the impending threat,
the thing had come too near.

When he shot the beast in mid-jump, it sprayed ichor just
half a dozen feet from the side of the transport Gator was driving. Breath
shook Urna’s chest. No time for memories. Not now. As much as he wanted to know
about himself, he couldn’t spare the attention, not under these circumstances.
His revelations, if there were any more to come, would have to wait.

The two vehicles were closing on the cluster of buildings.
Urna and Pelkra both had good vantages up here, able to see past the lead
transport. Up ahead were the outskirts of a city. Big buildings. Or what used
to be. Only now they were mostly piles of rubbish, and they were completely
blocking the road.

Arvra slammed on her brakes. Gator, so close behind, almost
collided with her when he followed suit, reacting as quickly as he could
manage.

“Shit!” Urna heard from below. Sparing the briefest glance
downward, he saw Virge Temple tumble into the back of Gator’s seat.

Urna, keeping vigilant of their surroundings, nonetheless
looked down into the forward vehicle and saw Arvra slamming her steering wheel
with her right palm. Beside her, Bongo was working quickly with the map. Hervo,
in his sharpshooter’s nest, turned and gave a
hold tight
hand sign to
the vehicle behind. Both transports idled.

It was unpleasant to be halted in the Unsafe. Even when he’d
been on foot here he had almost always been in motion. Slaying Passengers right
and left, never pausing.

On the ground it seemed there was no such thing as a “clear
route”, no matter how good your maps were. Urna thought to mutter this observation
to Pelkra but refrained. Grousing wasn’t his style.

Among the three armed members of the salvage gang, they
picked off seven Passengers before the vehicles got moving again. Arvra’s
lurched to the left, cutting away at a sharp angle. Gator kept pace. It looked
like they were going to make a drastic lateral move, hit the city from a new
tack, by way of what would hopefully be a passable street.

The briefer the time they actually spent inside the ruined
city’s limits the better. Urna trusted these people. He believed in this
mission. But he knew what the Passengers could do. Whatever they were, whatever
their motivations or supposed intellectual capacity, those creatures considered
the Unsafe
theirs
. Intrusions weren’t welcome. Intruders were to be halted—and
torn to pieces.

Urna gunned down two more, both charging toward them from
the direction of the city. In all his time as a Weapon he had never decided for
himself whether the monsters could even communicate among themselves. If so, it
seemed to be only as animals did. But that was enough.

Arvra found some unobstructed ground and picked up speed.
Gator came jouncing after. The quicker velocity was exhilarating.

Urna allowed himself another grin. There was no reason why
he couldn’t enjoy this a little. After all, his entire adult life had been
dedicated to this work.

One thing was sure, though. He preferred siding with these
people to operating at the behest of the Lux.

The grin stayed, even as he fired off another round and
Pelkra and Hervo both sent shafts into the Shiplit dusk. It wasn’t until Urna
heard the faint, familiar buzzing from the sky that his grin slipped.

Chapter Seventeen

“Hang on.” Bongo drew the map sharply across his lap. His
green eyes moved, following a tracing finger. “I’ll find us another way.”

Arvra had confidence that he would do so. He’d guided her
through two detours already. Things weren’t static in the Unsafe, as much of a
dead place as it seemed to be. Old buildings gave way and spilled across
streets. Roads buckled. The terrain changed.

“I’ll be right back,” Arvra said, reaching for the door
handle. She didn’t take with her the long blade with the leather-wrapped hilt.
That was only a last-ditch weapon and she wanted both hands free. “Hervo, cover
me.” The order was unnecessary, she knew. The crossbowman was doing his usual
exemplary work, picking off Passengers with deadly precision.

Bongo didn’t even look up as she jumped out of the vehicle,
boots crunching on the littered ground. It was one thing to ride around in the
Unsafe, something else to be on foot, to feel the turf under your soles. She
didn’t linger over this philosophical point, however. She dashed over to what
had caught her eye. Donning a pair of gloves, she caught the object’s edges in
a firm grip, heaved it up, turned and hurried back to the idling vehicle.

She kicked the lever that dropped open the back hatch into
the cargo hold and flung her prize inside. It rang hollowly on the enclosing
metal. It was a piece of ancient electronics, something from the old world, a
casing housing wires and—what was that word she’d come across in her reading of
old texts?—
circuits
. Good salvage. There were people back at her town
who were getting good at tinkering with such things.

Pre-Black Ship Elryia had been a place of wonder, with many
advanced devices. Maybe the world could be so again. Someday.

Arvra raced back to the cab, felt a surge of relief when she
had the door securely shut behind her. Hervo hadn’t had to fire off a shot.
They were still on the city’s outskirts but by going around its boundaries,
Bongo had said, they were getting closer to the armory.

“Go that way.” Bongo pointed.

There was a gap in the blockade of rubble that had stopped
them in the first place. Beyond, it only looked like more obstructions. Arvra,
however, didn’t hesitate. She threw the transport forward. Gator, as always,
followed closely in the second hauler.

Past the barrier a clear zone opened up. It was almost
ridiculously pristine. Nothing but flatness for several square blocks,
interrupted here and there by the sad, skeletal shapes of dead trees.

“Clear running,” Arvra said, grinning.

Bongo took it as the compliment it was meant to be. “All
this used to be a…park. An urban recreation area. At least I think that’s what
a park was.”

The two vehicles were picking up speed, making a straight
line for the far border of the onetime park.

“We’re almost to the arsenal,” Bongo said as Hervo’s
crossbow twanged and, off to their right, a Passenger fell and rolled and lay
still. “This is going to work!” Excitement flushed his handsome face.

Arvra ran the transport even faster. Its six wheels handled
this flat landscape easily. Headlights blazed. Some of those Passengers
attracted by the sound of the engines flinched at the sight of the harsh lights
and shied away. Others kept on charging and were cut down by bolt, arrow or
bullet.

Urna was making a real difference. Arvra’s eyes flashed
toward the rearview, saw the former Weapon perched atop the trailing vehicle. A
tiny sliver of memory winked across her mind. Lying beneath his leanly muscled
body, taking his cock and seed into herself. It wasn’t, she knew, the most
unpleasant of remembrances.

They were halfway across the dead park, Arvra still in
mid-glance at the rearview mirror, when the shape in black swooped out of the
air, seized Urna in an implacable embrace and lifted and carried him back up
toward the Ship-dominated sky.

* * * * *

The sharp jounce was worse than anything Virge had felt yet
on this trip. Couldn’t Gator avoid some of these yawning ditches he seemed so
bent on driving over? It was unfair and she knew it immediately, and winced.
Gator was doing a hell of a job steering this behemoth, keeping pace with
Arvra, who had sped up considerably in the last minute as they’d reached a
clear area within the ruins.

Something struck the seat on Virge’s left. An eye blink
later she noticed that Urna’s legs were no longer dangling down through his
hatchway. Right on top of that same instant, from the roof itself, came a sharp
cry. “
Urna
!” Pelkra’s voice.

Virge turned, rose, looked up. Gator braked but this time
she caught herself before lurching into the back of his seat. Urna was not
sitting on the lip of the hatch where he’d been a moment ago. What had dropped
to the seat below was a pistol. His pistol. Much used on this excursion. A
thread of smoke still curled from the barrel.

Instinctively—though where such an instinct could’ve come
from, she didn’t know—Virge grabbed up the handgun. It was heavy but balanced
in her grip.

“Urna!” Pelkra shouted again, but there was a finality in
her voice this time. The tight, ringing pluck of her bowstring followed.

“What the hell’s going on?” Gator wanted to know. Ahead,
Arvra’s vehicle had halted as well.

Firearm in hand, Virge went up through the opening to the
roof. Pelkra was there. Only Pelkra. Her face was pale around the thick white
scar that marked it. She was nocking another arrow from one of the several
quivers spread around her.

Her eyes were wide and still, but tearless. She said, “A man
with…wings strapped to him dove from above. I only heard him a second or two
before he grabbed Urna. The man…he…he just
lifted
Urna. Took him. Like a
predator bird.”

Virge couldn’t help but look around her, knowing that the
Weapon was gone, knowing that he’d occupied this very space just seconds
before.

Dove on him? Grabbed him? A man with wings? She could barely
wring any sense from the words.

Then Pelkra said the name that brought it into focus, which
lent her story an awful believability. She said, “Rune.” She fired off the
arrow, reached immediately for another. “I recognized him. He was blindfolded
but the rest of his face was bare.”

Virge looked upward—and instantly regretted it. Above,
seemingly far too close, the Black Ship spread in every direction. There was no
sign of sky, just that terrible wriggling, glowing monstrosity. Nausea swam in
her. But somehow she concentrated. She scanned the heavens. She didn’t see
Urna. Or Rune. But this clear tract of land was surrounded by many crumbling
buildings. The two men could be lost among those towers by now.

Rune. The Shadowflash. He’d come for his Weapon. There was
no other explanation.

“What the hell’s going on?” came from below. Gator again.
The first indication of strain in the big man’s voice. Pelkra fired another
arrow. Hervo, in the lead vehicle, twanged off two crossbow bolts.

Virge saw the black shapes racing toward the two stopped
transports. Some were skittish of the headlights, while others kept coming. She
raised the pistol, using two hands. She sighted along the barrel, slit her
eyes. And, doing a thing she had never done before, she pulled on the trigger.

A dozen yards out a Passenger flipped over backward, scraped
at the ground with wicked claws for a second or two, then lay still. It was the
dumbest of dumb luck, the sort of thing that can never happen until it does.

Pelkra, meanwhile, had called down the news to Gator. Gator
said something in reply that Virge, aiming and firing again, didn’t hear. Next
to her on the roof, the bowwoman made some sort of hand sign at Hervo in his
sniper’s nest in the forward vehicle. A moment later Arvra was moving, Gator
pursuing. And Virge Temple was picking off Passengers as best she could. There
wasn’t even time to hope that Urna was okay.

* * * * *

The strain was fantastic. Rune’s arms were wrenched at the
shoulder sockets, hard enough that he literally thought, in those first
seconds, that they would be torn wholly from his trunk. That Urna would go
plummeting away, still wrapped in the Shadowflash’s frantic, bodiless embrace.
That Rune himself would soar higher and higher, armless, twin gouts of blood
erupting from the new ghastly gaping holes at his shoulders.

But no such grisly and gory eventuality came to pass.
Instead, Rune’s plan—devised quickly, in the field, his combat training
asserting itself—succeeded. He had come within the proper range. He’d heard the
Weapon’s breathing, detected the tight grunt each time he discharged his
pistol. He distinguished from all the other noise the minute tugging of facial
muscles as Urna broke into a grin.

First, though, Rune had seen the two vehicles, the very ones
described by the Guard over the radio. He had hovered above, at last laying the
blindfold over his eyes, allowing his other senses their full dominion.
Finally, after following awhile, he’d seen his chance. The vehicles were in the
clear. He had plunged upon his target.

He had caught Urna beneath the arms, hooking him, colliding
with him and using that swooping momentum to lift the Weapon from the roof of
the hulking transport. He dove in an arc, so to pluck up and carry his prey
away. Upward. Up. Away from the Passengers, away from the band of salvagers
Urna had evidently fallen in with. Leave the ground behind.

To the roofs. But still the strain was terrible, and Rune
could barely hold on. His hands were locked across Urna’s narrow chest. The
angle of their ascent was steep and rapid. As the Weapon’s silver hair streamed
over his face, the wings were taxed all the more, now with a double load. The
motor protested. If it gave out before they got to a rooftop, all would be
finished. The only compensation would be that the two would die together,
locked in this belly-to-back embrace, a lunatic, precarious parody of countless
lovemakings.

They rose and rose. The ground shrank away. Urna, still in
shock probably, barely squirmed in his grasp. Rune aimed them for the apex of a
looming, decaying tower. Its crown was flat and hopefully wide enough for any
kind of landing.

Fire screamed through Rune’s arms. Blood hammered in his
skull. His breath had left him and not returned yet he managed, even so, to
growl into Urna’s hair, “You are
mine
.” Which was the truth. The
absolute truth that governed the Shadowflash’s existence. Urna was
his
.

Elyria wanted to suck them back down to its surface. The
wings howled alarmingly. The chill air clawed them.

But Rune, peering past locks of whipping silver, saw the top
of the tower approaching, its edge coming into view. They were nearing the
roof, so close, so close—

* * * * *

When he was let go, it was not a soft landing he met.
Instead, stone. Tumbling and flailing. His body the proverbial marionette with
the cut strings. And someone had flung this toy without care, letting it roll
and bruise and bleed.

And yet Urna scarcely felt a thing.

His eyes were closed as he at last flopped to a halt.
Nevertheless, he
saw
. The child with the beautiful eyes. Eyes just like
his own.

Whatever floodgate Kath had opened, be it by legitimate
magic or simple power of suggestion, there was more behind that unlocked barrier.
Information. Memories. They were meant to come slow but strong, so she’d said.
But now it was as if too much were trying to get through at once, permitting
only a trickle, promising an imminent deluge. It frustrated him. But he didn’t
let the frustration eat at him. Instead, lying still on the hard stone, he let
the memories come.

They were standing in the light, he and Rune. Sunlight.
These children had known no oppression, no darkness, however distant. They had
lived free. Then something had happened to change all that. Did that mean they
had been raised inside the Lux city? It was the only explanation that made
sense. Only, the feel of the memory indicated some different place.

Again Rune was trying to tell him something. Warning him of
some danger that he, Urna, could not comprehend, or did not want to.

“They’re going to take us away, Laine. We have to run. Run
away and hide.”

Laine?

A name. Freighted heavy with meaning, with memory. It
brought a delicious ache to Urna’s chest. Laine. A lovely name. A treasured
name. A name he must never lose…

He was on the cusp. The totality of his remembrances loomed
near. They hadn’t been destroyed, just damaged. Not obliterated beyond
retrieving, merely confused and veiled. But the drugs were out of his system.
The mental dampening had eased. Kath had applied her magic—and, yes, why not
admit that such a thing as
magic
could exist? Must exist.

But there came an intrusion. An intruder. A hand seized him,
a hand grabbing the collar of his coat, lifting his head from where it had come
to rest. Inside his skull, Urna—Laine?—felt the vast slosh of memories, warm
bright waters slapping the bony confines of his head. Don’t disturb them! Let
the memories come!

He heard harsh breaths. The hand pulled tighter, winding
itself into the coat’s fabric, drawing the collar cruelly about Urna’s throat.

“You…are…mine.” The breath was on his face now. The other
hunkered near, still cinching the coat’s collar. It could become a strangling.

Urna opened his eyes. Doing so brought the pain, all the
hurts of the rough landing. Tears stung his eyes. He tasted blood on his
tongue. Wild dark hair framed the familiar face that hovered over him. The
beautiful eyes were cloaked by a strip of black. Cruelty stamped those
features. Madness, maybe. And agony as well.

Love gave that face such pain.

Urna, sprawled helplessly on the rooftop, beneath the
immense and ghastly canopy of the Black Ship, gazed up at Rune. Not a child
now. Rune continued to grip his collar. In his other hand was a pistol. Its maw
hovered before Urna’s face.