Skin (13 page)

“
What do
you think?” she said softly. She turned around, her breasts bare
and doing nothing to stop the heat of hard excitement that was
spreading through me as hot as the demon that had passed through me
just hours before.

“
It’s
just for show, right?” I said. “I mean, you said with your eyes, it
was the only way to make you see again. But this new skin. This is
just for the aesthetic, right?”

The
smile fell from her face and she reached out for her blouse that
was on the seat next to me.
“I should’ve known you’d
be so judgemental,” she snapped.

I grabbed onto
her wrist and she dropped her shirt. I picked it up with the other
hand.

“
Let me
go,” she said.

“
Tell me
why you got it,” I said.

“
I’m not
talking to you about it,” she said. “What’s the point. You’ll never
understand.”

“
Tell
me,” I repeated, still holding her tightly by the arm.

“
Because
I like it. Because I like the way it makes me look and I like the
way it makes me feel.”

I let go of
her arm but held onto her blouse and stayed sitting before her.

“
I like
the way it makes me feel too,” I said. “And I like the way it
looks.”

She
looked surprised and I could tell by the slight arch in her brow
that she wasn
’t quite sure whether to believe me or
not. I reached out and took her wrist again, more gently than
before, and pulled her too my lap. I kissed her lips, tasting the
sweetness of the fruit still on her mouth.

I stood,
lifting her in the same motion, still kissing, and carrying her to
her bedroom, our bedroom. She lay on the bed, still half-dressed
while I took off my clothes. Naked and unable to hide how
completely turned on I was, I slid her skirt down over her hips and
threw it on the floor to join the messy tumble of my own clothes.
She made some comment about expensive fabric, but I
didn
’t hear properly. I turned her over so she was
laying with her new back up, and I drank in the sight of
her.

The small
scales shone with a nacreous shimmer of green and yellow, shifting
colour with the movement of the gentle rise and fall of her breath.
They started, just a few in the middle of her back and reached out
to cover her shoulders where their colour was much more intense,
before tapering off again as they rose up her neck.

I reached out
my fingers and touched her. The new skin was warm and smooth like
soft leather. I trailed my finger upward and relished the tiny
twitches in her muscles as I trailed the stroke towards her neck. I
leaned over and kissed her scales and she let out a soft gasp of
pleasure.

I
couldn
’t sleep. Sveta slept beside me, still laying on
her front with her new scales exposed. The city lights glowed
through the window creating a soft light that made her skin shimmer
with an eerie magic.

How could I
loathe something and still be so attracted to it? In every other
Animus I’d seen, even those I had starting thinking of as friends,
the implants were attachments, grotesque extras and additions that
didn’t belong on the body. In Sveta, these elements just became
her. Is that why I loved these hideous scales? Is that why they
were so stunning, even in the red raw of their newness.

I
’d tossed and turned a million times and didn’t
want to wake her up. I knew sleep was not coming, with the
adrenaline of the ring, the debate about her new implants and what
we’d done afterwards. The fight with Imogen had bothered me. It
wasn’t only that she would have beat me if it wasn’t for that one
lucky move I pulled out of nowhere. The bugs on the first night
were easy. The mist was a mystery and another fluke. There were
things coming out of that stage I had no way of knowing
about.

Know your
enemy, was another Gretchen Knight slogan. She was always trying to
make friends with the other women in her game, the women she had
fought or would one day fight. She needed to know how they moved,
how they fought. Knowledge is what made her a champion. That was
basic enough when it came to my Animus opponents, but what about
the second round? That part of life was a complete mystery to me.
Anything unknowable was possible.

I slipped out
of bed, got dressed and took the elevator down to the street for a
midnight run.

It had
been forever since I
’d gone running. Even though I was
still keeping form at Sanctuary and wasn’t in the least bit unfit,
I admit, I struggled on the first few blocks. I jogged through the
lights of Downtown and into Chinatown where the onslaught of food
smells threatened to make me sick as I ran, taking huge gulping
breaths.

I was running
through the Remnants, the kind of place in Guessing you only want
to hear about and never want to find yourself in if you can help
it. I think I was heading there in the first place. I wanted to
find something, those lives that you hear about but never want to
let yourself believe in. With what I’d seen night after night in
the arena and what I was going to keep on seeing, I wanted to know
everything, see all of the scary monsters so at least I’d know what
they were, have half a chance at trying to beat them.

In the dim of
those tight corners in those streets where darkness wasn’t only to
do with night, I knew that the demon I’d faced with Imogen scared
me. And I wasn’t a man to be scared.

So what
was I looking for? More demons? Werewolves? Incubi? Kobolds?
Vampires? Goblins? I didn
’t even know if half of these
things were real, or if they were just things parents told their
kids to keep me off the streets at night. I suspected there were
enough badass beasts in the city at night without having to invent
monsters and supernatural creatures, but now I wasn’t so sure if
half of these stories were true or not, let alone if they were
something I could encounter just by taking myself into the streets
of Guessing’s darkest corners.

I kept
running, breathing evenly and relishing the numb that was starting
to form in my brain and the ever comforting heat that was my blood
pumping through muscle.

I found myself
at the harbour’s edge where the wharves started. This was the first
place I had ever seen a werewolf all those years before and the
first time I had ever seen what I assumed was an Animus, that woman
with the cat’s tail.

I’d just
fought a demon with my mind, two nights prior, giant roaches and
who knew what else I’d see descend onto the cross, ready to end my
life. What else did the darkness have to serve up for me?

I
’d been running for almost half an hour and was
starting to tire. I ran down to the edge of the harbour and leaned
against the low stone wall, breathing hard and relishing the strain
in my legs.

“
Got a
light buddy?” came the deep, phlegm crackled voice from behind me.
I turned and saw an old man, grey and stinking. He wore a pile of
worn out clothes and mismatched boots. He grinned at me with a
mouthful of twisted and broken yellowed teeth.

“
Nah, I
don’t smoke,” I told him and turned by back on him again to face
the water, the putrid stink of piss and sweat ingrained in his
clothes and skin was so much worse than the stink of Chinatown and
it stuck in my neck like rising bile.

“
That’s
not the kind of light I'm asking for,” he said. I felt his hand
fall onto my shoulder in an iron grip I would never have imagined
possible from such a frail body.

I spun against
him, twisting away from his hand, only to find his other hand flash
and snatch at my throat. He lifted me by the neck, my feet dangling
inches from the ground. In those initial seconds I was too shocked
to do anything but hang there, suspended by my suffocation.

His
sunken black eyes sparked with a flame like a tiny ruby in the
depths of each pupil. Here then was my monster, whatever he was,
the very thing I had been out looking for and the very thing that
was about to kill me in such a weak way
.

No. I
was The Priest. I wasn
’t going to die like
this.

I spat; a
great grey glob of slag, landing in his fiery eye. It was just a
second, a sliver of time enough to distract him while I brought my
fist up and punch him hard in his red blob of a nose. He yelled and
loosened his grip. As soon as my feet were back on the ground, I
lifted one leg and jammed my knee hard into his crotch. Yes me, the
champion fighter going for the low blow of a ball kick.

Inhuman as
this thing was, it still responded to being kicked in the groin
like any guy would, doubled over and gagging. I ran.

I
didn
’t look, I didn’t think, I just put one foot down
after another and moved as fast as I could, all the while a little
part of my head chanting failure to me.

I ran up
through the wharves, through the miniature city of shipping
containers, the thing not far behind and soon catching up with its
lumbering run.

I’d gone out
looking to do battle with some kind of nasty that I might find in
the ring and here I was, running from… what was it? Some kind of
zombie? Running from my destiny. Whatever comes, we face it, we
deal with it, we get up the next day and do it again. That’s what
my mother said until the day came when she didn’t get up again.
This was not that day for me.

I stopped and
whirled on my heels ready to face the bastard once and for all. It
grinned at me with that dead man’s mouth, the red glint in its eye
still smouldering.

“
Let’s
dance,” I said, moving toward it with my fists up, ready to
fight.

“
You’re
such a pretty one,” the zombie thing said. “It’s going to be such a
shame to muss up that face of yours.”

Two things
happened.

The zombie
took a flying step toward me and as I readied for the impact of its
decaying weight, I heard a guttural growl threaten from too close
behind me. As the old guy landed, the beast from the shadows behind
stepped forward and I was sent backward, the zombie pinning me
against the great hairy hulking chest of a werewolf.

Sveta
had told me after that first night in the arena that the whole
thing about the transforming powers of the werewolf
’s
bite was nothing more than legend. Cato told me later that she
didn’t know what she was talking about. Whatever the truth was, it
wasn’t one I really wanted to test out with myself as guinea pig
here in the dark corners of the Guessing wharves while I had a
zombie and a werewolf both trying to make a meal out of me, and
possibly each other.

I used
the hairy brute
’s solid body as a backboard and swung
my feet up to kick the zombie right in the chest, half expecting my
shoe to crack right through that sunken ribcage. It screamed, a
sound that drove the wolf mad and I had less than a hair’s breadth
to get out of the way as its hook clawed paw came right for my
belly. The zombie flew again, hard and fast despite its awkward
gait, and whether it was aiming for me or the dog, I ducked down on
my haunches as it fell over the top of me, right into the dog’s
grip.

I came up,
pushing the corpse thing from behind, further into the werewolf
embrace. Blood flew, black and sticky and stinking as the dog’s
claw sliced the thing’s paper thin neck and it howled a blood
gurgling cry that sounded like a siren of death.

The wolf
shoved at the zombie, its yellow and bloodshot eyes fixed on me and
sent its body slamming into the container wall. It snarled,
revealing a clutch of yellowed fangs, dripping with saliva and
stepped toward me, clearly not interested in chowing down on zombie
monster meat.

I took in my
surroundings, looking for the advantage. Two shipping containers
and only one way out that meant running away. The only weapon I had
was my body and I, Priest, had the have faith it was enough.

I
jumped, pressing my hands and feet hard against the containers,
climbing higher with a spider crawl until I was high enough out of
the wolf
’s reach. Temporarily relieved of one of his
opponents, the wolf turned back to where the zombie still lay
bleeding out on the concrete and with two flashing swipes of its
claws, it finished the job, tearing the old man’s delicate flesh
like it was made of meringue. Zombie insides sluiced onto the
pavement and even from an upward distance of a few meters, my eyes
watered from the stench.

I
jumped, leading down with my heels, aiming right for the back of
the dog
’s neck. If I could pin it from above, I might
have a chance of snapping its neck or stabbing out its eyes or
something. That was my reasoning at least.

Instead, I
fell and landed on the dog sending us both tumbling down and over
in a tangle of legs and beast fur, sliding around in zombie guts. I
felt both my knees pop and something shift in my shin with a
thundering and immediate pain.

In seconds I
was flat on my back, looking up into the snarl of what would become
my end, my leg burning in agony and useless to let me do anything
but die in a shipping yard covered in dead undead. The wolf punched
me, hard between the eyes, a distinctively human move. My nose
snapped and my face felt like it was about to explode.

I heard a
shrill whistle and the dog stopped its advance.