Skin (20 page)

The door
opened and I stared into the face of an old man. He had patchy ash
stubble on a greasy face. He wore a beanie despite the cloying heat
down there.
He wore an old brown cardigan, running
with holes, patched in places with mismatched wool, and shuffled
about in filthy slippers. He looked like he should have long been
in a nursing home or dead.

Another man
stepped out from behind a plastic shower curtain decorated with
cartoon images of fish. It would have been cheerful and cute in any
other setting. In this room with its damp stained walls and tables
of spotted surgical instruments that looked like they should have
been outlawed decades ago, it became the most unsettling
feature.

“
Hello!”
the younger man beamed. He was around my age. His dark hair was
slicked back, looking like a plastic helmet. He wore a black suit,
cheap but clean, and a heavy black, shining moustache. “I am
Ricard. You’ve met my father and son, yes? Please sit.” He gestured
to a short stool with a cracked vinyl seat that had been repaired a
few times with silver duct tape. I chose to stand.

“
We are
Berislav. Ours is a family business top to bottom, though it is I
doing the business you’re here for. What is it you want? Big
muscles like a gorilla? Horns for a horny man? Donkey
cock?”

“
Barnacles,” the old man said. He was leaning against the
wall as if it was the only thing holding him up.

“
What?”
Ricard snapped.

“
Barnacles, not donkey. Barnacles have the biggest cocks of
all, relative to their size.”

Ricard
snatched up an instrument off the bench and hurled it at his
father.
“Shut up old fool,” he yelled. It clanged to
the bar concrete floor, the old man didn’t move.

“
I am
sorry for my father,” he said, turning his attention back to me.
“Barnacle cock. Whoever heard such stupidity?”

“
I want
armour,” I said. “I want a skin so thick nothing can get through. I
don’t want to cut, I don’t want to bruise, I don’t want to even
feel.”

Richard looked
me up and down, circling my body as if he were sizing me up for
spare parts.

“
You an
athlete,” he said. “I see it in your shape.”

“
I am a
warrior,” I said. “A champion.”

“
Then
why you need armour like this, if you such a hot shot?”

He moved his
face too close to mine. He smelled like cabbage.

“
Can you
do anything?” I asked, ignoring his questions. I wasn’t there to
justify myself.

He circled me
again, leaning in close, poking me with a long finger, a nail
chewed down to the quick.

“
I have
something very special,” he said finally.

After a short
time, Ricard and his father returned, carrying a white cooler
between them. They set it down and unlocked the rubber clasps
revealing exactly what I needed.

“
But
it’s a cost,” Ricard said.

“
How
much?” I said.

“
Nine
hundred and Eleven. Thousand.”

I almost
spat.
“Dollars?”

“
No,
pretty boy, we here trade in jelly beans because we foreigners
don’t know better. Of course fucking dollars.”

“
That’s
almost a million bucks. I don’t have that kind of money," I
said.

“
Then
you don’t have that kind of skin you want.”

Richard closed
the case and folded his arms. The old man hacked in the corner. I
had to have that skin. There was no question of that. It would be
mine. The rest was just going to have to figure out itself.

Sveta
obviously had that kind of money, but even if she was still talking
to me and I to her, it wasn
’t something I could just
ask her for.

“
Or we
trade,” he said, just as I was about to give up and leave. He laid
a finger onto the Sanctuary emblem on my sweater. “You know Snake
Eyed Queen. You bring me something from her collection. I know she
has unimaginable treasures in that sky jungle of hers. If it’s good
enough, I give you what you want. ”

Sveta
was out of bed and already gone by the time I returned. It was the
first time she
’d left the house in ages. whether she’d
gone back to work, to Omega or was off somewhere with Erik or
Darius, I didn’t care. I was just relieved I had the house to
myself to do what I needed to do.

Mariosa
was napping in the aquarium hall. The flicker of muscle as I
approached showed she was only asleep on the surface. She knew
exactly where I was and in seconds, could have me down and my
throat torn out like she
’d been wanting to do to me
since I first stepped into this place.

She was a
stunning creature. Even curled up in that cat like way, she was
enormous. Five hundred pounds of pure power. From her position, the
edges of her shimmering scales were only just visible. When I had
first seen her, those scales were hypnotising. Impenetrable, Sveta
had said. It was for that same thing for myself, I had to do
it.

It was little
wonder Ricard wanted her so badly, but surely he could not want to
make implants out of her. As pieces, she was nothing. It was the
whole beast that made Mariosa special.

I
gripped the syringe, my hand locked, cramping and sweating. I took
another step towards the sleeping beast and her tail flicked. Just
the tip. She wasn
’t happy I was getting closer. She
knew.

I slunk
back into the main atrium, defeated by the sleeping cougar. I would
have had a good chance of jumping out of the way of her deadly
strike, I could
’ve brought the injection down on top
of her. Ricard said the effect would be instant. I could have taken
Mariosa out, dragged her into the elevator, and then what? I didn’t
have a vehicle. I would have to sled pull an unconscious mountain
lion, magical mountain lion, across Downtown, down to Chinatown and
into Ricard’s shop.
The skin I was already thinking of
my own, nestled in that ice box, was worth it, but kidnapping
Mariosa was an impossible task even if I could get her knocked
out.

A chattering
came from the tree above. Quiello scurried down, leaping on my
shoulder before scampering into my lap. His little face was almost
a smile, demanding one of the head scratches he loved so much.

The
marmoset
’s golden fur flashed into a dark brown,
smouldering into black as soon as he landed on my legs. It was
exactly what I was feeling—black and stormy. He purred as I
scratched behind his ear in that special way he liked that Sveta
had said only I was able to do just right for her beloved little
monkey. His fur began to lighten into a slivery blue as I made my
choice. He was picking up on my thinking of the skin and when it
went dark again, he knew what I was about to do. An unimaginable
treasure, Ricard had asked for. He had not specified the
lion.

The
monkey
’s fur ran with strips of pale pink, darkening
into crimson and back to dark as I lifted the syringe by my side so
he wouldn’t see it. His happy purring stopped and he looked at me
with little black eyes, shining like glass. He was a tiny thing, it
would just need a drop. Quiello squeaked as the needle pierced the
skin on the back of his neck. He whimpered, his eyes closed and he
slept in my arms as if he had fallen there, peacefully and
trusting. As if he had not been betrayed. His fur was white, he
could not feel anything.

Ricard held
the unconscious monkey by the heel, dangling him upside down and
turning him around the examine every side of the critter I had once
thought of as a friend. Who had once thought of me as a friend.

“
Psychic
chameleon marmoset,” he said as if he were talking to himself. “I
read about such marvels but suspected they were tall
talk.”

“
Is it
worth the price?” I asked. Richard lay the little body down on the
bench spread with a stained sheet. He was not careful about the way
he held the frail little thing, his sleeping breath barely a
feather touch.

“
By
size, this little primate hardly compares to the full kit out
you’re seeking, Mr Rev. You understand this, yes?”

He scratched
his chin, stretching his fingers up to his moustache, preening and
thinking, looking between me and the monkey that looked almost
dead. His sleeping face was pursed into a frown like he knew this
was not a natural or welcome slumber.

“
I
cannot use this little one for the Animus.”

“
But
value comes in many forms,” I said, hating the words as they came
from my traitor throat. Who was I more upset about betraying? Sveta
or Quiello. “Surely there’s a price there.”

Ricard
let out a long hissing breath. He was not a good actor. I could see
the excitement in his beady eyes as soon as I had revealed
Quiello
’s sleeping body. He knew the value of a magic
monkey, probably more than I did.

“
A deal,
Mr Rev. You will have your dragon skin.”

In the seconds
before I woke, I thought I was in bed, next to Sveta, in our home.
Before any of this madness. The smell of methylated spirits cut
through my hazy slumber and brought with it the memory of where I
was and what I was doing.

I had
patted Quiello
’s little head, said goodbye, before Old
Man Berislav came to take him away, sealing him in a dusty shoe box
with holes punched in the lid. It was all too much like a coffin,
but I focused on what it meant, on the price he had fetched, the
sacrifice he had made for me. For Sveta. She would love me again.
Sveta would find him, I was sure. She had enough money to buy him
back whatever the price. We’d all be together again. We’d all be
happy.

Ricard
took me into the room where we had first met. He had a bed ready, a
tray of instruments that didn
’t look clean enough. The
cooler was there and my saving strength was inside. I lay on the
bed and watched the needle go into my arm. Sleep followed almost
immediately and I drifted under listening to the old man’s hacking
cough through the thin walls.

I was face
down on a hard bench with a limp dusty pillow beneath my head. I
tried to sit up and pain gripped my back and chest. It was done
then. I had my dragon skin.

“
You’re
awake,” Ricard pulled aside the fish curtain. He was grinning.
“Everything is a success. Your skin has adapted.”

I
struggled into a sitting position.
“Can I see
it?”

Ricard
shrugged.
“It’s your body,” he said. “You can do
whatever you like.”

Yes.
That
’s right.

I went
straight to Sanctuary. Everything was the normal. Cato was lifting.
Imogen was twisting herself into beautiful positions. The place
looked the same. It smelled the same. I was entirely different.

“
Where
you been, Priest?” Cato said with his usual cheer.

“
Personal business."

I wore a
sweater over my new skin, not yet ready to reveal the marvel. I
would get onto the cross that night and reveal my power before an
adoring crowd.

“
Is
Sveta here?” I asked Cato.

“
In the
office. Man, does she look great these days or what? When did she
get those arms done. I didn’t think it was possible for that woman
to be anymore sexy but…” he trailed off. “Sorry, Rev. It’s bad form
to talk about your lady that way.”

“
It’s
fine,” I said. From Cato, it was fine. He was harmless, brotherly.
If it were anyone else, if it were Darius or Erik, it would’ve been
different.

I
didn
’t bother knocking on her office door.

She sat behind
her desk, her head thrown back, laughing. Really laughing. The
sound was like some enchanted music had struck my heart with a love
spell. Darius was sitting opposite her, smiling, his body heaving
with the awkward chuckle he used as a laugh. They both stopped when
they saw I was there.

“
Rev, I
didn’t expect to see you,” Sveta said. There was genuine surprise
there. I had interrupted another kind of intimacy between them, one
that burned just as bad as knowing Darius was seeing her during the
day. “Where have you been? I was getting worried.”

“
Personal business,” I said.

Darius
pushed back his chair and stood.
“I should leave,” he
said.

“
Yes.
You should,” I said, not hiding the malice in my voice.

He still
wore the plaster that hid his secret, and a small crack in his lip
that marked where we fought. There was no sign of the punishing
blows he
’d landed on my body. An effect of the skin,
Ricard had said, beaming as if he had performed the healing magic
himself.

“
You
told her yet?” I asked.

Darius pushed
passed me, shouldering me enough to make it seem like an accidental
bump.

“
Told
her what?” Sveta said.

With Darius
out of the way, I saw her properly for the first time since the
night before I’d left for Ricard’s place. It was like looking at
her for the first time ever.