Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Darren Stapleton

  I had to keep moving and decided to head back East, to the hangar where all of this had started. There would be a film crew I could do with talking to.

  I held the level of the clouds so I was not easily visible, but yet hopefully could spot, or hear, an incoming aircraft and avoid getting decapitated by two duplicitous women. They were doing well to be steering the vehicle at all.

  I did not see the second Blackwing until it was too late. He barrelled straight into me. He must have been circling up here waiting for me to emerge. He was a large man and when he hit me, and clung to me, the air escaped my lungs. My head snapped sideways and the force of the blow threatened to push us both off, down into the clouds. There was a sickening internal crack as at least one of my ribs gave out. I tried to twist myself free, but he held on. He was wearing an eye patch and he was not grinning. Spittle flew from his lips with the effort and he squeezed onto me tighter. A monosyllabic ‘NNNNGGGHHHH’ the only thing he said. I beat my wings frantically, to stay upright, to offer up some kind of resistance, keep some kind of control. We were face to face, locked and tumbling through the air. He had tight hold of my torso, but my bound hands were unrestricted.

  Then I remembered they were not empty and brought the bent steering column smashing up into the underside of his jaw. His teeth splintered and he relaxed his hold. Our wings tangled and repeatedly hit each other as I shoved to get out of his hold. I would lose my advantage if I fell, so I held on, beat my wings and brought my hands up to his face.

  ‘You thucking bathtard.’ He spat teeth and blood, so much blood he could have stained a cloud. I raked at his eye-patch until I snagged the elastic and dragged it down about his nose. I pushed my thumb into the empty socket.

  He cried out and let go, reeling away sharply, fell ten or twenty feet and I followed. I could hear his shrieking above the wind and something else.

  It was the sound of the Cessna approaching again.

  *

  Croel emerged from the lower storm clouds and scanned the skies. He located the plane first, an incoming hornet with smoke bellowing out of the missing door. Lurching into and out of turns as its engine complained, it was not easy to miss. He then noticed Mckeever and Drake entangled, grappling, saw Drake get the upper hand and heard his partner squeal. On Drake’s blindside, he flew towards them, his head was low and his smile had now gone, leaving absolute fury in it’s wake.

  *

  I dropped fast, kicked an angry boot out at the Blackwing and caught him a glancing blow on his shoulder. He tipped and yawed, unsteady but still flying. One of his hands to his eye. I positioned my hands, bent bar forward and prepared to go at him again. If I could manoeuvre him into the flight path somehow, I …

  ‘Last time I heard a squeal like that was from a perfumed bitch in our basement,’ another Blackwing said from behind me.

  I span around as a club swung at my head. I brought my hands up to protect my face, and dropped a couple of feet quickly, so I was not there when the swing finished. I twisted and flew under him, trying to come up behind him. He was too fast, had anticipated my move and was already turning to face me as I rose. He kicked me in the chest and I tumbled backwards, my rib was agony. I brought my knees up to my stomach and managed to slow my turns on the third rotation, put my head down and flew straight back at him. More rock than bird. It surprised him but as he evaded me, I swept passed him and kept flying. Beat my wings. Ignored the tiredness and agony at my back. Started to climb again. If I traded blows with two, I would fail and fall. And it was a long way down.

  I looked over my shoulder, the two Blackwings were in pursuit, the plane was circling and angling in close to us. Its flight path was so unpredictable it was more a danger than a use to me. Though I could always hope it would sweep in on some acute angle and take care of one of the Blackwings for me, they would both have to be deaf as well as partially sighted for anything so unlikely to occur. I kept flying up, wanting to gain height, get into the second strata of clouds to obscure my next dive and direction as much as possible.

  I heard something small fly past my ear and disappear on a wide arc into the distant clouds. Before I had processed what it was the second one hit and a barbed bolt stuck into my right side, found a space between my ribs and lodged there. I winced, curled over to my right and tried to pull it out with my bound hands, but they were not working, especially encumbered as they were by the bar. My wings faltered as the sickening pain at my core tore through my tired body. I lost altitude. The clouds were close. So close. The smudged grey and white underbellies looked like a soft quilt made of cotton balls. Waiting for me. I wanted to get up there. To rest. To never come down.

  The big Blackwing caught up to me, grabbed my feet, hooked me like a fish and dragged me backwards. I had no strength left. Kept beating my wings but it was no use. He clung on to me tightly in a bear hold, one massive forearm hooked up, squeezed my throat airless, the other around my middle and rested on the bolt embedded in my side. I felt numb to the pain, it did not hurt as much as the one Coyle had put into me in Doc’s garden. Maybe it was the cold and adrenalin, or maybe it was resignation. The smaller one rummaged at his belt to bring another bolt out as the other flew a small circle and squeezed harder at my throat. The clouds seemed to grow darker, their grey hearts surfacing once again as daylight seeped away and gave us the unnatural in-between light of late dusk, when the sun starts to bleed from the day. I felt as if my consciousness would leave me before he made his shot.

  One waved his bow and the big guy loosened his hold a little.

  ‘Any last words, Slayer?’ He hissed the ‘S’ like it was a spat slight.

  I looked him in the eye as I had at Bethscape before he had brought the club down onto the Doc’s skull.

  No one spoke.

  ‘Croel ...’ the Blackwing shouted. His wings, beating hard to keep us both aloft, missed a beat. Croel followed his partner’s open-mouthed gaze and looked up to see a bright yellow Zeppelin looming out of the clouds, blotting out the light. He could just make out the shape of someone on the landing platform.

  ‘What the …’

  The windshark harpoon obliterated part of Croel’s wing and exploded through his collarbone and chest, almost took a chunk of him clean away. Pink mist fanned out, painted a wet crescent of blood across my thin sleeve.

  The puzzled look on Croel’s face stuck, even as his wings folded inwards and he started to fall, then swing backwards on an arc. The high tensile wire that now attached him to the harpoon’s winch on the Zeppelin, made him look like the weight at the end of a plumb-line. There was a pressurised THWAPP, the line was cut and Croel tumbled away down towards the waiting blanket of clouds. His hands flailed as if reaching out for an invisible ledge, his eyes, locked on mine, wide with fear and incomprehension as he fell.

  The other Blackwing let go of me quickly, cast me to one side and dove after Croel, he was strong and fast, probably the most adroit flier I had ever seen. He cut through the wind and distance and went after the loose end of the wire. I just saw him catch it before the lower strata of clouds engulfed him. It snatched him violently down, like a small man being snatched into the ocean by a whale on the other end of a flimsy fishing pole; and they both disappeared.

  I beat my wings as much as I could, saw the Zeppelin clearly, like a bright beacon, my own sun at the centre of this cloudy universe. Someone was waving at me from the landing platform, two, maybe three people. I had to make it.

  I was flying into the wind; it did its best to stand me up, buffeting me, making me circle and dip to make any kind of headway. I looked up and saw I was hardly any nearer to the landing platform than when I had started. They were manoeuvring toward me but they would never make it. The skies were cold here, the colour of the blue heavy and tinged with rain, there was a bleakness to the wind as it stirred the ceiling and floor of rolling clouds into ambivalent motion and night moved in. I felt cold, the barb in my side stung water free from the tightly closed corners of my eyes
. My brother’s wings beat on, the names at my back propelled me forward, kept me aloft, I needed to get safe, to get back, to get home.

  I was closer now, close enough to hear they were shouting, beckoning with flapping hands, three of them, the youngest hanging off the bar, reaching out for me, even though I was still a hundred yards away. Willing me on. Why? And why so urgently? I did not know these people. They knew nothing of my plight or recent events.

  Then I heard it.

  The drone of the Cessna.

  I looked over my shoulder as it banked sharply out of a turn, dropped beneath the cloud-line then exploded up noisily, angling straight towards me.

  *

  ‘It’s heading straight for him, he’s not going to make it,’ said Loopes.

  Bronagh tried to finish loading more cable so he could to attach it to another harpoon, ‘Even I won’t get this thing loaded again, in time.’

  Beaugent did not comment, just kept shouting for the Slayer to hurry up.

  Bronagh clicked the heavy reel into place with a kick, attached another harpoon to the winch and lined the gun up. He swung it out over the edge of the platform and pointed it towards Drake as he desperately tried to winch the firing cord string back far enough onto its ratchet. He shouted to be heard above the wind.

  ‘I could fire this past him, hope he catches the line.’

  ‘No,’Beaugent said, ‘You might hit him, or tangle his wings. Especially in this wind.’

  ‘He’s not going to make it,’ Loopes said again. ‘We have to help him.’

  Come on, thought Beaugent. Come on. He watched as the Slayer altered his course, the plane followed, dipping and turning to keep in line, struggling against the steering and elements, to head directly at him.

  Then he saw it.

  ‘Oh no,’ he whispered, so softly that no one heard

  ‘Oh no.’ Again. Quieter still.

  ‘Hurry up and get that thing loaded!’

  Something broke the cloud surface a few hundred feet below.

  *

  I tried to fly up, but the plane adjusted and came at me on the new angle. When I dropped; it dropped. It was heading straight for me and there was nothing I could do about it. I could not fly faster. My wings could not take another dive; I would never be able to stop or pull out. I would never be this close to safety again. This was my only shot, yet I was still too far away. I would never make it. The muscles in my back felt like they were imploding, curling in on themselves, dead from the fires of effort and loss. My side burned and my mind emptied; of thought, of action of any reason or forward motion. It hurt to breathe and the pain in my chest and lungs seemed to bloom brighter on every inhalation.

  Enough, I thought.

  Enough.

  I closed my eyes as the sound of the plane got louder. I braced for impact, let the pain go. I slumped forward into the blue.

  My wings beat no more.

  *

  Loopes looked on as the Slayer gave up. Watched his head drop and his wings stop beating. He started to fall. Loopes’ eyes cast down, started to fill with tears.

  He turned to say something to Beaugent but saw his skipper looking off to the lower clouds, his eyes wide and filled with fear. Watched as his mouth fell slack and followed the line of his gaze.

  The windshark exploded upwards like a missile. Its sleek body whipped in muscular flashes, propelling itself up at great speed. The cloud fanned out from his exit point, into a firework splash of vapour. It did not look like it was flying, it looked like it had been launched.

  ‘It’s the blood on the wind,’ said Loopes.

  They watched as it whipped into a jack-knife turn and headed for Drake.

  Its brutal jaws slacked open revealing an array of razor-sharp teeth that seemed to be too numerous for its mouth. Its dead black eyes rolled white and then black again as it kicked its tail violently and shot forward even faster, its sleek dark silver wings reflected a dusky blood red, soundless as it brought the storm.

  ‘It’s heading straight for him,’ said Loopes.

  Then, at the last moment it jack-knifed again, its huge, torpedo body cut back left and it headed straight up. Its mouth gaped further wide, ready to devour and obliterate.

  It caught the plane by its tail, snapped it clean off as it chomped down on the polymer fibre resin that coated the rusted internal frame. Splinters of everything flew. For a split second it seemed as if the windshark had the entire weight of the aircraft in its mouth, as if it was going to shake it to death like a Lowlands terrier would a Deadlands rat. Then it finished its bite and the remaining two-thirds of the plane dropped away. Loopes recognised the two women through the broken glass of the windscreen, eyes wide with terror. The windshark’s body horseshoed and it angled down after the falling wreckage, trailing the black smoke, tumbling wood and screams.

  ‘It went for the greater threat, the bigger bird.’

  Loopes was speechless, looked at the Captain then hugged him.

  Beaugent shook his head in exasperation.

  Loopes blinked back at him. ‘Do you think those women…?’

  ‘Loopes, I’d be surprised if even one of their little pinkies hits the floor.’ They both looked out into the sky and saw the Slayer look up, confused, panicked then renewed his attempt to stay airborne. He swatted listlessly at the damp air, like a sodden moth trying to escape from a waterlogged sill.

  There was a noise of the bow being fully drawn, then ratcheting back as the harpoon was notched home.

  ‘I’m taking the shot,’ said Bronagh.

  Loopes looked at him pleadingly. ‘Whatever you do don’t hit …’

  He took the shot.

  Help is like unrequited love; easier to give than receive.

  A Woman's Word Is Never Done

  Catalina Shaw

  CHAPTER 106

  I was inside and on my back, looking up at the vast curved internal structure of the Zeppelin. My hands burned from catching onto the harpoon’s tensile wire, but they were still tied and at my side, though the steering column had gone.

  The young one pulled the door shut and the wind immediately went from wail to minor complaint.

  ‘Cap, that is the most amazing thing I have ever …’

  ‘Loopes,’ Cap said, and made a zipping gesture across his mouth. ‘Fetch the medikit and a blanket, the sky jeebies will be settling into his bones soon. Got to keep him warm.’

  ‘Aye Cap,’ said Loopes, who ran off excitedly, like a child delighted to be fetching his newest and most favourite toy.

  ‘Bronagh, get this man a drink,’ Cap said, ‘and bring the good stuff.’

  ‘It’s all good stuff,’ Bronagh said, then left.

  The captain knelt down next to me.

  ‘You look pretty beat up, but I have got a feeling you’re faring better than the rest of the five hoop circus that was out there.’

  I tried to smile but winced as the barbed hook in my sides seemed to embed itself deeper.

  ‘Reckon we can get that out of you on the ground. We’ll head to the nearest hospital, get you patched …’

  ‘No. I have to get to the airstrip.’

  ‘What airstrip?’

  ‘There’s one on the edges of the mangroves. It’s where the plane came from. Head for the sulphur swamps, you’ll see it.’

  ‘What about getting you patched up?’

  ‘That can wait,’ I said, ‘There is a story needs telling, and it needs telling now. Get me down there. Now. Please.’

  The Captain still looked doubtful.

  ‘Please,’ I said.

  Bronagh helped me prop my head up and I took a big swig of rum. It seemed to open the swollen passages of my nose and clear my head for a short while, then settled its deepening warmth down the dry scratchy channel of my throat.

  ‘Bronagh, set course for the Lowlands, bring us down in a wide circle by the sulphur pits, let’s see if we can find that airstrip. Oh yeah, and Bronagh?’ He left the question hanging until he
had his full attention. ‘Good shot.’

  I grimaced as the coppery taste of blood mixed in with my second belt of rum, and was careful not to shudder or elicit a devastating cough.

  ‘Thanks for the drink,’ I said.

  ‘You know, I heard you Slayers were as hard as brass. Now I know why,’ said the captain.

  I rested my head back on the floor and closed my eyes.

  ‘Ex,’ I said, and smiled.

  Salvation cannot be found in the heavens. It can only be found in knowing you did the right thing, or accepting that what you did was wrong. It is about honest internal dialogue.

  And faith or God has fuck all to do with that.

  Sergeant Whark - Vanguard Training

  CHAPTER 107

  The journey down was blissfully uneventful. I slept a short while, glad that the Zeppelin’s descent was slower and more even than the plane’s take off had been, despite the jostling of the wind.

  When I awoke, the burning in my right side, where the bolt was still lodged, was unbearable. The edge that had been slightly dulled by the rum now burned fiercely with a vengeance; each inhalation made me flinch. I questioned myself, that I may be delirious as I even found myself longing for Doc’s green painkilling concoction.

  Doc.

  I tried to stay as still as possible, only moving when the Zeppelin landed and encouraged by the Captain to get myself ready to be stretchered off. I thought about making a run for escape as soon as we alighted, but my muscles refused to even entertain that notion. My mind screamed at me to get moving. There was something I had to finish.