Skin (18 page)

“
Ready
to rumble, little rabbit?” he said.

“
You’ve
just got a higher place to fall from,” I said. “And that means it’s
gonna hurt more when you land.”

He chuckled
and lightly slapped my shoulder like we were old pals.

The tube
lowered between us and with it, a series of poles rose out of the
floor, forming a perimeter around the cross.

“
Electric fence,” Darius said. “Something
flighty.”

The poles
buzzed with an unseen barrier and the cage opened. A flurry of
brown and black feathers shot out, flying straight up. Two huge
owl-like birds, each with four legs and huge yellow eyes without
pupils glowing like twin suns.

“
Strix,”
Darius said, though I had to struggle to hear him under the whoops
of the cross and the shrieks of the birds flying manically about
the arena.

A sharp
zap from the electric fence brought one down as it flew too high,
but was not enough to do anything more than give it a mild stun.
That
’s the one I would hit for first.

The
birds screamed and came to land on either side of us, standing back
to back. I moved gingerly toward the one that had been stunned.
It
’s head swivelled, its demonic eyes fixed on me but
seemed to take in the entire room at once. Its golden hook beak,
glinting in the light was the last thing I registered before it
shot at me like a bullet. I leaped with the natural reflex as if
I’d been able to jump ten feet in the air all my life. The bird
shot up too, going for my face in a flurry of talons, its beak
snapping. The pain seared and the whole side of my head felt warm
and wet. It had eaten half of my ear.

As if
driven on by the taste of my blood, the Strix shot at me again like
a torpedo. I stayed down, not willing to risk another leap when
I
’d lost so much focus. The things were slower on the
ground.

I saw the
other bird do the same thing to Darius. Darius, all brute force and
no finesse was not so quick to get out of the way, lumbering his
tree like arms as the bird came at him, claws outstretched on the
front pair of legs. The other bird, perhaps seeing a slower
opponent moved away from me to join its mate.

I wanted to
let them have at Darius, but this was not part of the game. I
grabbed at one from behind, pulling its wing back, struggling to
get it into a shoulder hold. The feathers glistened because they
were slicked with grease that made it impossible to grip.

The bird
shot back to Darius and I tried again. The second came up behind
the giant and he was batting at it with all the grace of a big dog
trying to snap away a swarm of mosquitoes. Seeing its enemy
distracted, the other bird flew right for Darius
’
face, its talons outstretched, screaming its blood curdling
cry.

Its claws
found flesh and it swept to the roof, I jumped for it but was far
too slow even with me new nimble powers. It was regrouping for a
second attack while the other bird had made the same move toward
his back, cut and then flew upward.

Darius had a
deep cut across his cheek. He reached his hand to touch it. He
looked down at his fingers. I saw it too.

Our eyes
met, the birds still circling and shrieking above, their next
attack was imminent. Neither of us moved. We just kept shifting
glances from the smear on Darius
’ hand and then back
to each other. There was a terror in his eyes I had not seen in any
man.

Darius
lifted his arms to form a cross above his head and bellowed
“Forfeit!”

I head a sharp
electric whine and the owls fell, crumpling unconscious, maybe
dead, to the stage. The Guardians rushed to remove them.

Darius
ran toward the trapdoor, his hand pressed to his injured cheek. The
crowd booed and I didn
’t know where to stand or what
to do.

It was
unlikely anyone else had been close enough to see. But I saw, I
knew and Darius knew I knew. He was bleeding Mech fluid.

I was furious.
Pacing the den like a trapped beast, I need to hit something. I
needed answers.

I stood alone
on the cross, Darius exited, the Guardians dragged the unconscious
Strix back into the tube. Jeers filed the arena, a few people threw
litter, shouting, demanding the fight.

I
didn
’t know what to do so I just shrugged and waved to
the audience, making my way slowly back to the trapdoor. This did
not mean I had won against Darius. I didn’t know what this
meant.

Sveta was not
home and was not answering her phone. This cagey absence only
annoyed me more. Was she somewhere with Erik? With Darius? Did she
know he was a Mech? All that time I had suspected he was simply
juicing steroids, and then reasoning he was pumping Prime
supplements. I knew there was no way he was Natural and I felt
stupid for not seeing sooner that all that bulk was just a product
of machinery.

The
following day, no one at Sanctuary has seen either Darius or Sveta
but all talk was on the big man
’s forfeit. There had
never been a forfeit on the cross, not even when opponents had been
so badly injured they couldn’t go on. Fights were to the end, it
was part of the game. No one mentioned the Mech fluid and I was
certain I was the only one, besides Darius, to know.

It was
another night again before Sveta came home. I was getting ready to
go downstairs for a quick workout before heading in to watch the
show. I knew where she had been before she even said a word. She
hadn
’t been with Darius. She hadn’t been with
Erik.

“
I don’t
need to explain myself to you, Rev” she said, moving past me. She
walked slowly, a slight curve in her back I had never seen
before.

“
What is
it this time?” I asked looking at the dressings that plastered her
arms from her wrists to her shoulders. For two days I’d been
wondering where she was, assuming the worst, that she was off
screwing the new guy or her ex, maybe both. And she was only a few
floors below getting who knew what implanted into her
body.

“
It’s a
medical necessity,” she said.

Sveta
had told me once that her snake eyes wouldn
’t allow
her to cry, but when she looked at me in that moment, all the
pleading, the deep sadness in her eyes spoke more than tears ever
could. I was defeated against it as I always was against
her.

“
Just
help me into bed,” she pleaded.

I helped her
peel off of her clothes and pulled the covers over her. She closed
her eyes and held my hand as I sat on the bed beside her.

“
Tell
me,” I said, not as gently as I had intended.

“
Shouldn’t you be getting ready to go?” she said.

“
I’m not
going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.”

The grip
on my hand tightened.
“I’m sick, Alistair.”

“
I can
see that.”

“
No. I’m
sick. As in terminally sick. This,” she held her bandaged arms
towards me. “This, the snake skin, the lot, it’s just one more
chance to skip this thing getting me, maybe it will buy me another
day, maybe it’s weeks or months.”

I
didn
’t understand.

She peeled
back the layers of bandage to reveal a thick, glossy black fur.

“
It’s
fur of the back of the Michel beast,” she said, closing her eyes
and sinking into the pillow.

Was that meant
to be some kind of explanation?

She continued
without opening her eyes. “For centuries people have used the skin
of the beast to make hunting cloaks, armour lining, protective
gear. The fur is restorative. The clinic found it for me but my
body, it’s taking some time to come to terms with the new
addition.”

“
You’re
rejecting the implant?” I asked.

“
No,
Omega implants are never rejected. It’s just my illness fighting
back against the magic.”

“
Magic?
You’re using magic?”

Her
breathing had slowed to that point before sleep. She
wasn
’t going to talk anymore. But I still needed to
know more. But not about the magic.

“
Is it,”
I paused, surprised to feel the word trapped in my throat.
“Cancer?”

Sveta was
asleep.

I sat in the
chair beside the bed for a long time watching Sveta sleep, staring
out the window and into myself. The city moved on through its
night, silently so many floors below. It was raining. Water
trickled down the windows, glowing orange with the city lights
behind it, it looked like dribbling fire.

Darius
meant nothing at that moment. I was back here again, the woman I
loved battling a silent, deadly disease. It could have been cancer,
it could have been anything, it didn
’t matter. She was
sick, I was, once again, helpless and angry.

The
Prime Life building stood like an icon, two blocks over from
Sveta
’s tower. Its rooftop sign glowed like a beacon.
I had come into Guessing to fight against that. So what was I doing
now, fighting against everything else?

I
surveyed the city. There were other towers just like it. Other
corporations, other signs, other evils, all towering over those
dark corners where the other things crept. Was Prime just one among
them all, or was it really the special evil that I saw it as just
because of my mother. How many people out there were crusading
against any of these others? I wasn
’t crusading
anymore. I hadn’t thought about Prime Life much at all since I’d
come to Sanctuary. I had even taken their poisons into my body and
refused to admit they made a difference. A difference I
liked.

Sveta
had distracted me. Given me a new life. Was this one better? I was
more now than the futile fight of a small man against a company.
And what had that fight been? A few angry Internet comments no one
ever read? Unheard protests on unseen websites and all of the
things I
’d planned to do to bring them down when I
first arrived in Guessing what seemed like too many lives ago. I’d
dated Victoria. I could have used her to fight, but all I did was
screw her and complain. It wasn’t a crusade. It was a whine that no
one was listening to. Looking down on all of it now from the
heights of a new, a better life, I saw that it had been nothing. I
had been nothing. As the Priest I was almost something, but even
that was no more.

It was
over. I wasn
’t going to be nothing ever
again.

Darius
lived where Downtown met Chinatown. I
’d seen his
address on his expired driver’s licence when I’d snooped through
his bag, and thought it might be a handy piece of information to
remember.

It was
another grey concrete squat building, strictly utilitarian; the
kind I had lived in before Sveta took me in. These old parts of
Guessing were peppered with them. I sat across the street, sipping
on a water bottle trying to look like I hadn
’t been
casing the place since dawn.

Darius emerged
just before eight. It was strange to see him out of context, out of
the usual black workout gear we all wore. He wore overalls the
colour of storm clouds and his size, shoved into the little
costume, made him look ridiculous. He had a white plaster stuck
over the cut on his cheek. He slung a small satchel over his
shoulder and moved, head down, through the pedestrian traffic like
a man accustomed to hiding away in public. It was the complete
opposite to the presence he commanded in Sanctuary. I followed.

I had heard he
worked his days as a janitor, but was surprised to find myself
following him to the Prime Life building.

Darius stopped
to talk to the security guard who stood like a steel pylon near the
front door. The guard was a Mech, his neck lined with shining
segmented chrome plates.

He palmed
Darius something. Darius slipped it into his satchel with all the
subtlety and grace of an over-sized orangutan. The pair of giants
were talking, their heads close together, sharing whatever Mechs
shared, and Darius did not look happy. He pointed to the cut on his
cheek where the Strix had got him. The Mech shrugged and folded his
arms.

Darius moved
away, his colossal shoulders drooping, his Mech head hanging low.
He disappeared into a service elevator and that was as far as I
could follow him.

I
don
’t know what I expected Darius to say when I
confronted him. I didn’t even know what I was planning to say. How
long have you been a Mech? Does anyone else know? Does Sveta know?
Did he know anything about Sveta being sick? It hadn’t been that
long since they had been together, and they had obviously stayed
close after their separation. How long had she been sick
for?

When I left
home that morning, she was still asleep. This was her now . When I
had first come to live with her, she was up before dawn, tending to
her aviaries and padding about her menagerie like the Queen of
Eden. Now she only slept and read. And it was clear now why. Was
that why she knew so much about so many different types of animals?
She was looking for the perfect donors, the beast with qualities
enough to save her, whatever it was she needed saving from. And
now, that failed, she was into magic? Magic was not like her
either. Or maybe I hadn’t known Sveta really long enough to really
know what was unlike her at all.