Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller (20 page)

‘This is the last time,’ Pan said to her reflection as she went through the usual ritual of applying her mask. Her war paint. A range of colours and hues designed from the most expensive Lowlands ingredients and sold at the highest Edgelands prices.
The tricks of the tricks trade,
as one of her past Madames used to call them, had done a good job at eradicating the dark swathes under her eyes and the vacant expression that accompanied the nagging thoughts dancing on the periphery of her consciousness, her conscience, since Drake had left.

She looked at herself in the mirror and saw her top lip was curled up. Evidently the paint had made quick work of obscuring her bumps and bruises, but it could not conceal her disgust. She felt hollow as though the events, coupled with the lack of food and sleep had somehow whittled away something more essential, at her core. She felt less of a woman than she had a few days before. She felt as if the real her was trapped beneath the surface and that her silent screams would get lost in the luminescent goop of her potions, powders and paints.

She stuck her defiant, bruised jaw out and watched as a treacherous tear escaped and blitzed a path through the skin coloured powder on her face to collect in a mushy drop at the corner of her mouth. She dabbed the glistening track with a cotton ball to repair the pale line then absently tongued the warm tear away. She leaned closer to the mirror and stared, looked beyond the reflection and into herself, and saw a stranger.

Not physically.

But deeper.

She did not recognise the woman looking back at her, the overwrought frown or distant anguish in that indeterminable space behind her eyes.

She leaned back in her chair and sighed, ‘Who cares if you feel like shit, Pan? Hmm?’ she said to herself in a flat tone. ‘When you look this fine? Now, no more tears.’

And she did look fine.

And that would have to do.

She practised a smile and instantly regretted trying. It looked like a landslide, the kind read about at the Edgelands perimeter that wiped out whole mangroves and elite, expansive homes on the edge of the drop.

Drake had made her betrayal almost justified in the way he had treated her, and used her. He had shown her that he was exactly like all the others.

All of them.

But she knew she did not believe that, despite wanting to.

He had begun to let her in, to see aspects of his life, the Doctor, his nubs, his... his history, that undoubtedly he had seldom, if ever, shared; and she had abused that trust. Regardless of any concern for herself, she felt sad, because she categorically knew the world would be a worse place for that. He had allowed her to see a glimmer of good inside of him, and she had casually snuffed it out.

Then she realised she was lying to herself, trying to make her doubts and sadness seem altruistic; like she cared about the world or Drake’s impact on it.

Her misery grew because it had been a long time since anyone had let her in, unequivocally let her in to something real. Raw. Personal. That was where the real sadness lay.

Her business was in selling blissful detachment, in sailing ceilings on the oceans of desires and compassions and needs; even if they were make-believe.

And she was good at it.

With Drake she had felt trusted, needed, included. And it had not been bought or faked.

That was the real tragedy, the real truth, and now, her mask was slipping.

She sighed again and walked through to her lounge avoiding looking at the red drapes that now hid the boarded up remnants of her stained glass window. She placed two empty glasses on her table.

She did not use coasters.

She was not certain when her decision to retire from the trade had changed from a whim to a cemented idea, but it had. She would not take the standard route of buying out Jacques-Yassar with her hard earned credits either. She would book another job for three days’ time, and not be here when the paunch bellied fuck showed up.

She started a little when someone in the street below, announced a menswear sale at Crazy-some place or other over a loud haler.

She composed herself.

‘Stupid. Come on, Pan, this is just another job. Your last job. You can do this. He’ll be here soon.’

She usually found that her clients were impeccably on time. She hoped that Jacques-Yassar had vetted this one properly, that they would be polite, clean and not too rough. If they could just make it past the carnage of the front lobby and look beyond the internal damage of her flat, then maybe they’d get on with things straight away so this could be over as quickly as possible. She hoped...

There was a knock at the door.

She hurried to answer it, straightening her dress and flicking her hair as she went.

She turned to survey the room; it looked clinically clean, tidy and ready. She reflected that she looked the same. She opened the door to two new clients. Both from the Edgelands too, by the looks of them. They filled her doorway.

And though one only had one eye, and wore an old fashioned eye-patch, it was the other man’s stare that was more unsettling.

He flashed a tongue across his rodent like teeth.

‘Yassar sent us,’ he said.

‘Us? Two? Oh... ah... I’ll need another glass.’

Without shuddering, she turned, inviting them in and offered to take their coats, which they politely declined.

This is the last time.

As she went to get another glass from the kitchen, she fought to compose herself. She would be having words with Jacques-Yassar, needed to, if she did not treat him with the usual stubborn disgust she always had, he might get wind she was about to flit.

This is the last time, Pan thought. The. Last. Time.

Never again.

She was right.

Keep your friends close and your enemies under.

Battlestations – A City at War

General Hohm

‘Well?’ said Loopes.

‘Well what?’ asked Bronagh.

‘You gonna tell me who those ladies are or have I got to ask them myself?’

‘They ain’t no ladies, they’re politicians, Loopes, and no concern of yours.’

‘What about him? He’s huge!’

‘Security Chief Cowlin? Harmless, well, more harmless than them anyway,’ Bronagh answered. Cowlin stifled a smirk.

‘What they doing on our ship?’

‘I believe they are enjoying tea and looking out of the observation deck window.’

‘No, I mean how did Cap let them on? He’s got a ‘no women’ policy hasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well?’

‘Like I said, they are not women, they are politicians. Besides, we didn’t have a choice on this one.’

‘You said there’s always a choice.’

Bronagh said nothing.

The whir of the Zeppelin’s motors kicked on a notch as they banked into a turn to take them further away from the heights of Nimbus City and ever closer to the ground.

‘Can I meet them?’

‘I am sure you will. They’ve asked us to take a ‘circuitous’ route to the Lowlands North Territory, which is where we are dropping them.’

‘We staying?’

‘No. Beaugent will want to get back in the air quick snap.’

Loopes sighed. He took a drink of water, careful to place the cup back in the circular hollow that stopped vessels sliding around in more turbulent conditions.

‘Why didn’t they use one of the state’s ships, if they are politicians?’

‘They said because they wanted this one off the radar.’

‘My Dad...’ Loopes paused.

Bronagh said nothing.

‘He said a joke about how you could tell a politician was lying if their lips were moving or something.’

‘I’d work on your delivery if I were you.’

‘It was funnier when he told it.’

Bronagh drained his own glass of beer. He had struggled back from Kitchna’s Market with their supplies and the bags he had had to carry for their guests. The straps had left red diagonal marks across his chest and shoulders. Women needed a lot of clothes.

He reached down into one of the ship’s leather bags and took out another beer.

Loopes looked at him expectantly.

‘No,’ said Bronagh.

‘But I’m nearly fourteen.’

‘Nearly’s halfway, and halfway’s...’

‘Nowhere,’ finished Loopes. His shoulders dropped.

Bronagh removed the cap and took three long gulps before dropping it onto the circular drink store hollow at his side of the table.

‘Do you miss them? Your parents.’ He regretted asking the question as soon as he had said it, more for the stupidity of it than the timing. Loopes surprised him by answering, ‘Yes. Every day.’

Bronagh took another drink and said nothing, not sure how to cope with the answer.

‘It’s weird. Sometimes I hear people say that they wake up and for a brief moment forget that their loved ones have gone. You know, died.’

Bronagh nodded.

‘But I never get that. I know before my eyes are open that they are still dead. Because I dream about them but I miss them in my dreams, whilst my dream is happening. It’s like I know the dream is pretend and nothing is going to change that they are gone.’

Bronagh said nothing.

Loopes’ voice dropped two octaves and he spoke more quietly, ‘I remember the Windshark too, and what it did to them.’

Loopes went distant then, his voice petered off to nothing more than a motor whir somewhere deep in the bowels of a vast ship. He stared at his empty cup.

Bronagh said nothing and bit back the temptation to offer him a beer.

Loopes took his cup and Bronagh’s empty and went into the galley.

‘We’ll catch that windshark one day, Loopes,’ Bronagh whispered to the empty table.

He thunked his bottle back down into the hollow with a loud smack.

‘Promise.’

Loopes looked through the galley window and up at the observation deck. The large viewing window showed rainclouds speeding by in fat blobs of misty bloatedness and the Edgelands receding to a distant smudge beyond the weather and drizzly haze. At one end of the deck he could see Beaugent engaged in maintenance of the flight controls. His sleeves were rolled up and he was spitting unintelligible words out as he worked. His temper was probably nothing to do with the ship, Loopes thought.

He then looked through the glass at the two women on the other end of the deck. They looked deep in conversation and paid no attention to Beaugent or their surroundings.

He looked a little closer at them and saw their lips were moving.

Trust your guts for bile, food and intuition.

 
Standard Roll-call

Sergeant Shaw

Something did not feel right.

Returning to my apartment, I stopped without making any conscious decision to do so. I had coursed these detritus-filled runs and alleyways innumerable times. The puddles seemed greasier, the darkness more dank, the rotting food more putrid. Flaking stone hung like tessellated armour over a threadbare disassembling skin of cheap mortar, thin brick and render. Blustering rats were notable in their absence, as was sunlight, which, though it never reached down here, had never felt so far away. Barely intact mesh was bedecked with handwritten or paint stuttered notices:

‘Keep Out!’

‘Come In.’

‘No cold calling!’

Crooked buildings stretched up into the sky and pollution clung to them like nicotine to an old man’s arthritic fingers.

Nothing appeared to be out of place.

But it was.

I strained into the drizzle to hear something tell-tale, the creak of a bowstring, the pop of a long locked knee, the descending death of an assassin falling from above.

I had learnt that every man comes to depend on his instincts and training in battle. When to duck, swing the axe, fire the bolt.

When to run.

Only a wet novice, blind slave or total fool disregarded what his guts were telling him in times of crises. So I stood motionless, thinking about trying not to think too much.

Disappearing was not an option, I had to go back to my place and see if someone had sprung my trap. I did not have many leads and even fewer ideas about how to go on the offence; I could not turn and run away from any potential clue or suspect. I had so very little to go on.

And I had to go on the offence.

In times of uncertainty, one defensive move leads to another, then another; soon, rather than making a decision, you kid yourself that the act of defence is a decision in itself. It is not, it is merely a reaction to an aggressor.

Be the aggressor.

I had to go on the attack, be unpredictable, break my standard patterns of engagement and thinking. Go straight for them.

Whoever
they
were.

Was that it? I was trying to convince myself that arrowing straight into them was the smart thing to do, but I knew it was nothing to do with tactics or the machinations of a well-trained, honed, ex-Slayer. It was everything to do with ego, retribution and pride. It was because they were pissing me off.

So, certain in the knowledge that I was not a wet novice or blind slave, I ignored my guts and followed the internal war drum like a total fool. I sped on into the well-known darkness, my feet pounded across the worn cobbles and flags, the raised grates, the sunken runnels, well-travelled yet best avoided. I arrived at the back of my apartment building, checked around.

And up.

Removed a knife and collapsible bow then stowed my bag with the rest of my things in a small recess beneath the eight stone stairs that led up to the back door of my apartment block. They would stay dry there.

I didn’t use the back door.

I had other plans.