Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Darren Stapleton

  I screeched out of the pound, feeling good to be on the move. I had not heard an alarm sounding, but decided to take the long way to Doc just as a precaution as I could not be sure who was scoping the Mudhead Station or my whereabouts. I needed to get somewhere warm, get a decent meal and some rest, but more than that, I had to be certain that Doc’s safety and our hideaway were not compromised. My security protocol was always rigorous and stringent, and never changed, no matter how much I wanted the day to end.

  I hung my arm out of the window and welcomed the breeze on my face as I moved off the side street and out onto the main road, traffic was sparse. In the wing mirror I noticed a cream, unmarked car emerge from the pound and do the same thing.

  I sighed, put both hands on the wheel, changed lanes and accelerated.

  The cream car kept pace.

  Looked like the day was not letting go of me just yet.

  Delegate everything you possibly can in life, apart from the receipt of praise for getting the job done.

  Climbing the Rungless Ladder

  D. Lench

  CHAPTER 66

  ‘Please, take a seat.’ Rose gestured to an empty chair on the opposite side of the table. Vedett walked around the table, placed his hands on the back of the chair and remained standing.

  ‘Still can’t bring yourself to sit next to me, Governor?’

  ‘Frankly, Mr Vedett, I find all of our dealings distasteful, but necessary.’

  ‘Like pulling out a bad tooth,’ said Leonora.

  ‘Or taking out the trash,’ added Vedett, still smiling.

  Silence.

  ‘Speaking of trash, how are your men progressing?’ Leonora asked.

  ‘Leo, you know as well as I do, that they are not men but Blackwings. They are all ego and ineptitude, but outside of their quasi-organised military world, they are mine. They do as I say.’

  ‘For the most part,’ added Rose, remembering the transgression with the Newton’s eye.

  ‘For their own sake,’ said Vedett.

  Rose looked unimpressed.

  ‘The whore is gone, Drake is still where we want him and Crow and Makeover are sitting pretty, waiting for instructions.’

  ‘Then everything is in order,’ said Rose, ‘why did you need to call this meeting? And so late?’

  ‘Three reasons, Governor; first, because we are at the point of no return. At the moment we are down a Slayer, a whore, a doorman, a few scumbags and hired hands at those holding cells and a taxi driver. The only thing that links them all is Drake, he is easy to tie to them. He has made a very public, aggressive display at the Angelbrawl Arena, and we can pin him with the murders of a very wonky-toothed doorman and Pan, the prostitute. He’s booby-trapped a bolt into a Mudhead’s leg, even the unwitting taxi driver was wearing some of his clothes when they found him all over that underpass and the recovered vehicle has Drake’s prints on it: it all links to Drake. And that’s before his very public meltdown yesterday with our good lady Leo here and his egotistical rant at his brother’s funeral. He is exactly where you want him, because of me.’ Vedett looked at Leonora and licked his lips suggestively.

  Leonora did not allow a squirm at his undertones.

  ‘And now he is in the Mudhead holding cells?’ Rose asked Leonora.

  ‘Possibly, though for how much longer I cannot be sure, I sent the release order down to them a couple of hours ago. Realistically, they should be processing him now.’

  ‘We need him at large again, Mr Vedett, this incident and arrest have been unfortunate but not cataclysmic.’

  ‘Governor, I would suggest it did not really help your cause that he aligned himself with you before throwing that brick, or whatever it was, through Horizon’s window, now did it?’

  ‘Didn’t hurt much either, though,’ said Leonora.

  ‘It probably would have been less inflammatory if you had not driven him there yourself or shoved your tongue down his throat on arrival.’

  Vedett saw a flicker of anger flash in Leonora’s eyes and felt gratified.

  ‘Mr Vedett, as I am sure you have gleaned from the media, their coverage depict him as a rogue psychopath, unhinged and discordant.’

  ‘A man after your own heart,’ said Leonora to Vedett.

  Vedett grinned.

  Leonora continued, ‘The inequities of his actions yesterday will only add to that image, not detract, so I see no reason to veer from our plan or stop short at this juncture.’

  Rose sat forward to add her own weight to Leonora’s argument, her stately bearing in evidence, the soft lighting unable to mellow the edges of determination and slight furrows of age and deterioration. She had aged much in office, the years and stresses eroding her features and vitality. The rosy curves and blushes of her youth so deeply entrenched in the valleys and creases of her wrinkles that they would never climb out again.

  ‘In my opinion, Mr Vedett, I think we passed the point of no return when we harpooned his brother,’ Rose said.

  ‘We?’ Vedett laughed then took a seat.

  ‘Vedett, it is late and so far we have established that you called this meeting to bore us rigid with exposition we already know.’

  ‘Second,’ he said, as if he was still reading, uninterrupted from some internalised list, ‘there has been a development at the Mudhead station I thought you should be aware of.’

  Rose and Leonora exchanged a glance then looked back at Vedett expectantly.

  ‘Care to elaborate?’ said Leonora.

  Leonora was clearly not a late night person.

  ‘Coyle,’ said Vedett.

  ‘What? Is that a name, item or request?’ asked Leonora.

  ‘It’s the name of the officer who took him in. I noticed it on the early release request form I authorised. What of him?’

  ‘Very good, you still read the small print, Governor, I’m impressed,’ said Vedett.

  ‘I only read the small print, Mr Vedett. Now please continue, there is only so much patronising I can stomach at this hour.’

  ‘He’s mine,’ said Vedett.

  ‘When is the happy day?’ asked Leonora.

  Vedett did not mind any reference to his sexuality or sexual practices. He saw himself as asexual, taking no interest in the functional act of copulation. Rather he saw himself as a collector. He liked things of rugged beauty, physical traits juxtaposed to the masculine nature of man. Women were predictable, with their open blabbing mouths and acquiescing cunts. They bored him.

  He loathed being belittled though, especially by a woman.

  He forced a grin around his gritted teeth and added her to his list.

  ‘I could make an exception for you, Leo.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘No mind,’ he said, licking his lips again. ‘Anyway, I’ve got inroads to him.’

  Leonora looked at Governor Rose, with a minuscule ‘I told you so’ glance, no doubt from a previous discussion about his sexual persuasion.

  Vedett did not mind.

  ‘Let me just say, Leo, that neither you nor I could, ah, satisfy this man’s particular needs.’

  ‘This is hardly pertinent to this discussion, Mr Vedett.’

  ‘Yes it is, Governor, he will do anything I need him to. I have asked him to tail Drake on his release and to keep me posted, thereby negating any further risk of the inept ego twins fucking anything else up. Said he would rough him up to slow him down too.’

  ‘I do not care what your methods are. Or his. When I delegate I delegate. I am not interested in your sordid machinations or petty favours. Just get the job done. I want Drake at that Lowlands Outpost in three weeks’ time. We are launching something big and he needs to be there, but he needs to make his own way. Leave a trail of lunacy and expendable bodies. That is it. That is all. No more deviations or collateral damage. No more infractions. Am I clear?’

  ‘Limpid,’ said Vedett.

  His chair scraped noisily on the high polished floor as he abruptly stood to leave. ‘I will be on my way Go
vernor. I’ve got a small zepellin waiting outside to ferry me back, and time costs credits.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Governor Rose, who nodded at Leonora.

  Leonora left the room to prepare the escort.

  ‘Mr Vedett, before you go, may I remind you that you have not yet shared your third reason for this meeting.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, the devil is in the detail.’ He walked around the table to where Rose was sitting.

  ‘May I?’

  Rose said nothing.

  He sat in the chair Leonora had vacated and leaned in close.

  ‘Hmmm, still warm.’ His eyes flashed with mischief.

  Rose fidgeted, uncomfortable in her chair.

  ‘The third is a threat, ma’am.’ He leaned in closer. ‘And threats and promises are always best whispered. Close and personal.’

  ‘Mr Vedett, I do not respond well to …’

  ‘I don’t give a swamp rat’s fuck how you respond, here are the facts: if I don’t get paid or something befalls me before or soon after this mess, I have friends, friends from the Deluvian Plains who make the inept twins look like two fairies dicking around at the end of your manor garden. They will certainly make your next term, shall we say, untenable.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You,’

  he leaned in closer, his mouth almost touching the soft folds of her ears,

  ‘heard.’

  Rose brought her shoulder up, cringing at the whisper.

  ‘They’ll ride in here like a Nimbus City bound sandstorm and destroy everything you have ever aspired to build or lied to achieve. And it will be cataclysmic. You have my word.’

  ‘I do not respond well to threats, Mr Vedett.’ But this time her voice slightly faltered, quieter as it seeped out of her mouth.

  ‘In my vast experience Governor,’ he spat her title out, like it was a coarse bone stuck in his throat, ‘nobody does, that’s kind of the fucking point.’

  Governor Rose’s brow collapsed into consternation as she glared at Vedett.

  Vedett saw the worry behind it and stood to leave, happy.

  ‘That, Governor, was in the fucking large print when you hired me. Have a pleasant evening.’

  It’s amazing how fast you will see your plans, friends and lunch disappear at the sound of the first gunshot.

  Sergeant Braggs: Vanguard Training

  CHAPTER 67

  A bedroom shed a rhombus of light across Doc’s back garden, but it was still dark enough for purpose. I had pulled far enough ahead to gain an advantage on my pursuer but let them have enough information, via early lane changes, to know where I was going. If the driver of the cream car showed up, then they must know Doc’s address. To know that they must have been pawing through my personal file and only one Mudhead would have done that already: Coyle.

  Assumptions can be useful things, collect all the variables, apply the knowledge gleaned from previous experiences, dissect all possibilities and interactions with extraneous factors, weigh them all up, then, disregard them all with a ‘fuck it!’ and take your best wild stab in the dark guess at what is about to go down. I had assumed a number of things about my pursuer: that he was operating alone, his ego and fervent disregard for procedure meant any kind of back up would be extremely unlikely. He would also be armed, strong, overconfident and angry, yet experienced in using that to his own ends, hyper-aware and purposeful. And he would come in the back way. In my varied experience in military and police matters, the back door was the first covered by law enforcement. It was usually the door kicked open for illegal access and it was also the preferred escape hatch for fleeing interlopers or occupants with something to hide. It offered more privacy and easier access to the anonymity that the obscured alleyways and boundary fences allowed. I needed quiet and I knew I could find it here, along with a couple of other things.

  Doc loved his plants and flowers. I dragged a heavy hanging basket off the external wall and pulled the chain free of its fastenings; about five foot in length, it would be more than adequate for purpose.

  I opened the gate to leave it ajar then retreated to the rear of the garden, hid in the darkness hugging the back wall of the property’s boundary. I pressed myself flat against the bricks under the boughs and shadows of two overhanging trees. Dust cascaded like red sherbet over my collar and shoulders. I slowed my breathing, wrapped the chain around my fists, pulled it taut and stared at the chink of light coming through the gate and waited.

  Tiredness never plays a part in lying in wait for something, for someone like this. Ask anyone who has ever played a game of hide and seek. The problem is keeping everything in check whilst you wait: your nerve, your breathing, the second-guessing and scenario-playing that fills your brain as you hear someone getting closer and closer to your position. Tiredness was not a factor now; no, something else was in play. Dread. And for all the feathers in Nimbus I could not work out why.

  My stomach complained and I thought it’s rumbling was almost loud enough to give away my position to anyone passing within a mile of where I stood. It had been a while since I had eaten. My knee, now locked as I stood rigid with the wall at my back, throbbed in time with my heart. I bent it to test the damage; it was bad but serviceable. I continued flexing it as I stood there, keeping my ear keened for the hinges of the gate to groan, and hoping I would know the difference between that and the noise of my hollow, growling stomach.

  I almost missed it at first, then, tucked away amidst the noises and ticks of the night I heard the faint sound of creeping footsteps. I peered through the darkness and watched an elongated shadow splay across the gap in the gate then pause. I tensed, and the tiredness, hunger and pain gnawed at the frayed edges of my aggression and patience. I willed him to come in, may have whispered it even; urged him on to where I waited, but his shadow did not move from the gate.

  He lowered his crossbow. The tension on the bow must have been considerable because I watched his silhouette ratchet it back, using his foot as a lever. He knocked a bolt home and brought the sight up to eye level, turned on a torch and swung the beam across the garden, first quickly arcing past but then coming back to settle on and illuminate me. As I blinked the burned retinal images of the powerful torch away, I heard him laugh as he levelled the bow.

  Then he fired.

  Patience, it’s said, speeds things along.

  And yet procrastination is downright wrong.

  The Contradictions of Words

  Prof. C. Crebbin

  CHAPTER 68

  Croel kicked out at a doorframe in frustration, a rotten piece of wood flew up in the air and dry splinters exploded like dull fireworks.

  ‘We said we’d be better staying put,’ Mckeever said, not acknowledging the outburst.

  ‘Something is not right about this, Mac, not right at all.’

  ‘Vedett says in three weeks we’ll get our chance at Drake, the Doc too if it all goes to plan. We have just got to do that thing we hate most of all.’

  ‘What, listen to your boring monologues?’

  ‘No, Croel, wait. We have to wait.’

  ‘Have-tos have never sat well with me.’

  ‘Me neither, but Vedett, Rose, the whole government’s involved in this, Croel, there is stuff at play here that I do not much care for.’

  ‘Who’s to say we are not going to get framed for this too?’ Croel continued as if Mckeever had not spoken. ‘Scapegoated or offed by Vedett? We know too much and we know what happens to people with privileged information; it’s rapid promotion through the ranks or termination, in every sense of the word.’

  ‘Think we need to leave this alone. Let nature takes it’s course. Time our flight for the endgame and get what we want. It would be wrong to get involved in something we do not fully understand.’ Mckeever walked over to a window, the breeze cooled his face and made him think about flying again. ‘It’s just … just …’ he struggled for the right word, ‘wrong.’

  ‘Mckeever, wrong is where we
live. It’s our home and town and country and god. It is what we do and how we fly. And I’ll be damned if I let anyone call the shots for how we spend our time anymore. We have spent too long waiting in the shadows to narrowly miss out. Too long chasing swamp rats on somebody else’s say-so. It’s time we put our own birds to the sky my friend, time to fly.’

  ‘We have had our fun on the way. Made good credits.’

  ‘True. True. But you have also lost an eye and I am losing my fucking PATIENCE!’ He kicked at the doorjamb again and this time the whole side came away from the rotting plaster, dragging the architrave from above the door with it. Dust plumed and lumps of alabaster fell.

  Silence sat between them both, like an insolent child happy to be miserable and quiet.

  More than anything Mckeever wanted to fly then, jump up onto the windowsill and get airborne, circle the night until he had answers or the gloom engulfed him. He turned to face Croel, his temper and frustration swarmed across his brow, knitting into a look that could smash plaster and splinter wood itself.

  ‘We wait,’ he hissed through gritted teeth, ‘then we strike.’

  There was no more discussion.

  Self-congratulation is the first step to ruination. Many men have broken their necks trying to pat themselves on the back.

  The Humility Curve

  Governor De Peys

  CHAPTER 69

  The bolt disappeared into the dark. It did not clatter off the back wall or illicit the unmistakeable ping of metal-tip on stone. Coyle definitely heard it punch into flesh and a low grunt come from his target. There was no arc, its velocity so fierce, that it could not be tracked by torchlight, but he knew it had hit home.