Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Darren Stapleton

  ‘It is time to stop,’ Doc said in a way that left no more room for discussion or denial.

  I could not have continued anyway. The pain was intense, though subdued by a creative yet not debilitating cocktail the Doc was giving me, his green milk shakes. I succumbed to my body; listened to it and rested. I wiped my face with a towel and took my sweaty corpse to bed. I would be up in five hours to start again.

  I needed to train, to get ready, to take the fight to them. I was certain that dropping off the radar as we had, caused someone concern, though I did not know who. Having my brother’s wings at my back helped me feel more prepared; more ready for the Blackwings and whatever else was coming. I struggled to think beyond what would happen afterwards, the pain and my situation sought to keep me in the present. Maybe life with wings could be different. Maybe I would feel more whole. Maybe it was my job to keep that part of my brother alive, not just to avenge his death, but to live. Or maybe I would never get used to them, dwell in the past and disappear up my own thermal draft. The fact that I was even considering a future seemed frivolous to me, right then, frivolous and alien.

  The drugs kicked in and as I drifted off to sleep I thought of what the Doc had said, how my military career had given me those things he read out loud: order, purpose and discipline. But relationships? The one with my brother had been the only real significant relationship I had ever had. And I had always had that, through competition and the shared adversities of training and combat. And even after, in the times we made no contact or effort to keep in touch, I knew he was there. A familiar background hum through the soundtrack of my life, someone whom I knew would be there for me if I needed him and more than that, someone who I wanted to be there for too.

  I had regrets about Bethscape, I had caused deaths, the child, Doc’s injury, my ruined life thereafter. Had we not all died in some way that day?

  There was something else now though, something more: perspective. My brother’s wings now obscured the names, tattoos on my back. Though each one would be indelible, forever smeared across my skin with loss and regret, would always cut deep furrows into my person, plough valleys of ink and a thousand unwritten words into the physiology of me; now they felt lighter somehow. Meant more but weighed less.

  It was not love. It was better. It was the freedom to love oneself.

  And how rare a love is that?

  These drugs are good, I thought.

  Not one thing more taken for granted;

  Not one thing more missed when it deserts.

  We are a multitude of false securities self-implanted;

  In denial of the coming hurts.

  Health, The Medical Poetical - A Doctor’s Anthology

  Dr Innesbrook

  CHAPTER 77

  ‘I am surprised these wings have not fallen off yet, it’s been so long since you attempted anything like this.’ I extended my left wing independently, felt a sinewy crunch rattle along my back.

  ‘It may be a while but I remember it like yesterday,’ said Doc, who then laughed at his own turn of phrase. ‘Which, incidentally, I cannot remember at all.’

  We both laughed.

  ‘The operation went well,’ Doc said, without being boastful, ‘better than we could have hoped for. Your recovery has been astonishing.’

  ‘It has to be. I have a deadline, Doc. Leonora mentioned something to me on our drive down here. It’s what I need these wings for.’ Feathers shuffled at my back, ‘I need to take the fight to them, and these are the best way of doing that.’ I extended both wings as far as I could to emphasise my point.

  Doc looked confused, I filled in what blanks I could so he did not have to consult his notebooks again. ‘She said there was some big launch and media circus happening in a couple of weeks and I do not believe in coincidences, this has to be something to do with Newt, and us. I have to be ready soon.’

  ‘Soon is too soon,’ said Doc, ‘you need to rest more, give your body time to... to...acclimatise.’

  ‘Yes. But we have a saying in the Vanguard, “Use it or lose it.”’

  I extended my right wing. ‘You are worrying for nothing Doc, look, all is good.’

  ‘Posture Drake, posture. Do not keep overcompensating with your lower back, your upper body needs to share the load.’ He scribbled something in his book. ‘And the years that have passed for me, between these types of operations, is immaterial, your physiology has not changed, neither has the method.’

  Doc had jumped back to the beginning of the conversation. He does that sometimes.

  I held my wing out fully extended, teeth clenched and tried to correct my posture. It was harder this way.

  ‘Still, the donated wings had not been removed with any finesse. Where did you get them?’ Doc tapered off, unsure.

  ‘You were talking about the operation.’

  Doc shook his head, ‘It was quite intricate. The nerve endings, where you were nubbed were severed extremely cleanly, the splicing was not difficult.’

  ‘That's because you did it.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes, I waited for you to recover after Bethscape before I asked you to do the operation. You saw it as bravado on my part to help the world see you were still brilliant. I saw it as a way to escape.’

  ‘I thought I recognised my own work. Did I try to talk you out of it?’

  ‘No,’ I lied.

  Doc looked confused.

  ‘Doc, before the operation you talked with crystal clarity about what had happened leading up to Bethscape. Your memories were bold and entrenched. You could remember each of your meals, who you had spoken to, even the specific times and exact words of conversations. But anything that happened in the week before your assault or afterwards was an entire black hole.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You kept apologising then too, as if it were your fault or a choice you were making. I have never understood that.’

  ‘Because whilst I may have suffered the trauma, the hurt was always in other people’s eyes.’

  I returned my wing, fought for the correct posture again and tried to imagine what that was like for him; the years of hurt and absence.

  ‘Now this time keep your trapezium muscles still, do not arch your back, take it as slow as you can and go for full extension. Ten repetitions, then we rest.’

  ‘We?’ I looked at him, with his feet up, reading a book on physiology and held back a laugh.

  I concentrated for each movement, I had to. Not just from effort, I was awakening something ancient, something so overgrown or dormant it had no right to cough back into existence again, but it had. It was. The autonomous twitching synapses and feelings were kicking in. Each movement seemed to renew old connections or create new ones. I was having to think and concentrate less and less.

  ‘Frequently in these cases, the nerves are the problems. Muscles can be developed, retrained, they have a memory all their own, but nerves, the ignited fireworks of electrical responses that make up our movements and thoughts and memories, prove the brain is still a mystery. Our last unexplored frontier. All we can do is splice the severed, nurture and pray for them and hope they take or re-root. Like … like plants I suppose.’

  I extended my other wing and focused on letting go, releasing my mind to let my body take over.

  ‘There are of course the psychological problems too. The confidence to fly, to trust, to leap.’

  I thought of how easily we lose trust in our bodies as soon as something breaks down or betrays us, with a fracture or amputation, with a rotting tooth or struggling heartbeat, with a disingenuous clot or a malignant atomic bomb of a tumour. And then how quick we are again to forget its shortcomings as soon as everything is functioning as it should again.

  ‘I will not have a problem with that.’

  ‘You convincing yourself or me?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘In most cases of reattachment it proved to be the biggest test of all, and the biggest stumbling block after tissue re
jection. Many people have been restored physiologically, anatomically, only to find that they could never again prepare for or do that which was natural to them before it had been taken away.’

  ‘Is this meant to be a big speech to instil me with hope and confidence?’

  ‘No, they are the facts, Drake. Make of them what you will. Eight to go.’

  The Doc must have seen something then, maybe in my stare, my body language, the slight tension across my shoulders.

  ‘Do not push yourself too much, Drake. You are making great progress every day. Hourly even, but there needs to be more to your life than restorative sleep and exertion.’

  ‘There is,’ I said and shrugged at the weight at my back. ‘There always has been.’

  Doc looked up from his book.

  ‘There’s fight and there’s flight,’ I said.

  There’s no impressing in acquiescing.

  Woman on Men

  Hilde Lawson

  CHAPTER 78

  Lacroix answered his phone on the second ring and did not have a chance to say hello.

  ‘I need you to do something for me,’ Vedett said into the phone.

  ‘Oh. It’s you...I... What did you say?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘Look. Not possible. I’ve already done too much. Way too much. Drake suspects I am involved. I’m surprised...’

  ‘I need you to do this. You owe me.’

  Lacroix was silent.

  ‘Get Jackdaw to the Arena.’

  ‘He’s fighting at the weekend, there’s no way he will...’

  ‘Just get him there. When you are both together I will need you to involve the press. It will be good publicity for you anyway. Win win.’

  ‘The press. Now come on.’

  ‘It’s time you call some favours in Lacroix, or I will call some in of my own. I know a lot of people who would be interested in what I know about you. The press included.’

  Lacroix said nothing.

  ‘Good. I want you both to meet me at the back entrance so I can park my van off the streets. Tell Jackdaw he will be paid for his trouble.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon. I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘How will I...’

  The line went dead.

  As we walk around with the heft of Nimbus on our shoulders, so each bird carries the weight of skies on its back.

  Life as a Slayer

  E.L. Crane

  CHAPTER 79

  I shucked into a new black sleeve. I struggled at first to get the wings to slide easily through the apertures at the back of it and remembered it had never felt like a natural movement, let alone something that would be easy after a transplant. The sleeve was fit for purpose, suitable for insulation, flexibility and camouflage. The tension of my bandages provided support but limited a full range of movement. Doc saw me wince as I wriggled into the sleeve then scribbled something in his notebook, squinting and stooped closer to the page to write it in the moonlight. The wind whipping up from the edge of the drop flapped his pages noisily.

  ‘Are you sure you are ready?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think we should wait longer.’

  ‘I do not have the time.’

  ‘You will not have the time if you dash your brains out on those rocks below.’

  ‘But at least I have your optimism as wind beneath my wings.’

  Doc shook his head, ‘I am just saying … ’

  ‘I know what you are saying, that is your job. Now let me do mine.’ I grabbed him by his shoulder. ‘Now Doc I need you to watch, to observe any flaws or physical manifestations, to help me correct, to fly straighter and faster.’

  I watched, he seemed to be having some kind of internal dialogue.

  ‘I’ll struggle to see you in the dark.’

  ‘The moon will light me up fine. You will see.’

  Doc said nothing.

  ‘Either way, I am going to jump.’

  Doc walked to the edge of the outcropping and tentatively looked over the edge to the black ground more than a hundred yards below.

  ‘When you suggested here, Drake, I did not feel it to be as dangerous as a jump off the Edgelands, as the height seemed less intimidating, but now I am not so sure.’

  ‘Doc, I’ve seen grown men break their necks from falling five feet and seen a shot Slayer drop like a stone, unconscious, over two hundred feet, to land in a Swamplands thorn tree and walk away with nothing but a few scratches and a broken arm.’

  ‘Your brother was lucky that day,’ Doc tried to force a smile.

  ‘That day,’ I said.

  I pulled my sleeve tight, zipped up the front and fastened the collar and hem.

  ‘It’s time.’

  I walked over to join Doc near the edge and looked down. The uprush of wind in my face felt familiar yet unwelcome, like a kiss from an ex-lover after an acrimonious break up. The ground waited ominously, a black hole, hoping to swallow me down into its bowels at the planet’s core. I stretched my wings to make sure the sleeve was not hindering me in any way and heard them crack and ruffle their approval.

  ‘I do not think you have given it long enough.’

  ‘Doc, some things never have their right time. Their only time is right now.’

  He shook his head and took a few steps back.

  ‘Well if you think … ’

  I jumped.

  The distance between the clouds and the ground is roughly the same as the distance between explanation and the wonder.

  Aviation Theories

  Douglas Ragg

  CHAPTER 80

  I banked into a hard turn and felt a screaming pain seep down my side and back, I pulled out to follow a less demanding arc and hoped the Doc had not seen me grimace. The wind stung at my eyes making it difficult to see. Tears streamed. The pit of my stomach shifted and rose as if to try and defy gravity itself. It simultaneously unsettled and delighted me, like a ride at a Lowlands fair.

  I turned and fought to hold a horizontal path, to use the wind and air currents, to self-correct. The pain at my back and all down one side was excruciating, a furnace of agony smouldering right into and from my centre, out and down my wings and around my ribs and upper vertebrae. Like being bear hugged by a three ton military vehicle.

  Through the effort and pain, the tired body and exhausted mind, there was something else, though, something so fleeting I almost missed it. I snagged it like a fish on a gossamer line then clung to it for all I was worth. It was flying. Not the sensations. Not the mechanics. Not the altitude, gravity or yaw. The invisible thread that holds us all up is self-belief, that we are more important than the rest of the world, that we are at the centre of our own universe. That is similar to flying. You cannot just exist in the space between ground and the ever eternal; you have to be it, be at one with the ecology and weather. Own the skies. I remembered a thousand manoeuvres in an instant, ducks and turns, rolls and twists, but owning the sky again would take time. The invisible thread holding me was tense, maybe overloaded, but I was up and staying up, and that was a start.

  I climbed on a thermal, the dark air rushed by my ears and filled my head with a sound like rushing water. I felt my mood lift and rounded my shoulders to gather speed. I wiped a hand across my face and saw Doc looking up, from the darkness far below.

  I looked up at the stars of Nimbus. The moon serving to illuminate my way and act as a guiding light, something fast and obvious to navigate by. Though I was not really any closer to it now than when I was standing on the ledge a few moments ago, it felt like there was a much stronger link now. A dependency on the celestial bodies and stars on which I relied for navigation, long ago forgotten, was now renewed. I felt pain rippling through my back with every bank and turn, but the painkillers Doc Carlow had given me this evening in the form of his joyless green cocktail were still in my system, so I shook myself more awake and tried to embrace the blue green ti
nge of serenity that bathed my surroundings. I flew towards the sheer sides of Nimbus City, looming in the middle distance.

  The City always looked better from the Lowlands at night; the Edgelands framed and backlit, haloed by the searchlight of the moon. The rocky vertiginous plinth was cast in cool cavernous shadows and seemed to support the vast entity of life above effortlessly.

  The home of the privileged and powerful; an elevated city offering up low and squat structures, that were all new and angled, corners and harshness that refused to be temporal or warm. The old world buildings at it’s core rotting and forgotten.

  I used to live up there, ran the Edgelands as a child and wondered how the huge disc of tenuously suspended land did not fall, slide away. As a child I thought we all looked like gnats on a mushroom. It looked better from down here, at least it used to. Now I was astonished at the number of enclaves and overhanging abodes I could see sticking out on the Edgelands. So many discs and structures and outcroppings blotting more and more light out down here, like spreading cancerous black shadows on an Xray.

  I think I heard Doc shout something, but could not make out the specifics in the noise. I was sure it would have something to do with exercising common sense and not pushing things too much, and whilst the stubborn space between my ears wanted to defy him and his advice, my body all too readily favoured Doc’s argument and creaked towards an agreement to descend rather than dissent.

  I used my feet to bank slowly, the pull at my back and bandages was tight and now, unbearable. The pain had been steadily graduating from a radiant heat to nuclear since leaving the ground but now an icy chill moved between my shoulder blades. A cold, honed harpoon of nagging doubt settled into my spine. What was I doing? Was I ready? Was I strong enough? My brother’s wings were holding me aloft above the sightless eyes of the dead windows and tarred, clodded rooftops as they had him, for so many years before. Did they have a memory? A sense of life and journey’s past? A sense of him? Of death?