Half Discovered Wings (10 page)

The first of the four versions of Teague was led through the
torturous courtyard, amidst screaming bodies. Charos pulled at his
soul, dragging it through fire and coal. A semi-corporeal chain
linked them. Up the stairs to the ramparts they went, black slimy
steps lined with living marrow and tormented souls, twisted
creatures kept from a restful death by the demons that tortured
them. Every time the pain became bearable enough to stop screaming
a new hell seemed to beset them, something to provoke even louder
screams.

The whole place was spiked with gnarled nails that hung
craggy from floor to ceiling. Teague walked by them, not touching
the nasty black things until a body – one of the many that
surrounded them – was flung from across the stairwell by something
and forced him back … They were not spikes on the wall but severed
fingers, their nails sharp, twisted, and bloodied. Souls all around
him were being tormented by innumerable dark miscreants, obscure
and spiny, or blood-red and dripping, or made of fire or smoke or
slime.

Blood streaked his naked legs, and it wasn’t all his own; the
skin on his feet was raw from glass or rocks on the ground. The
pain seemed intolerable. Everlasting agony already a part of him,
Teague was forced along the west wall to the first tower and then
around it, up the southern wall, which was awash with wet blood
that his smoky form swam through, until they reached the Tall
Tower

The eternal residence of the Lustful.

The blood had no effect on him, though he could smell it. His
curse had been taken away for this place, and he was no longer a
true theriope, drawn into anthropomorphic transformation by the
scent of gore. He was merely an ethereal representation of himself;
a soul? A self-generated figment? Whatever he was, he was far from
his body, made of only his thoughts and his pain.

Charos forced
him onto the huge spiral staircase and pulled him down the twisted
steps, through the darkness and mass of twisting bodies.

‘How do they
all fit?’ Teague asked.

It is always
big enough for them. They all experience Hell, as they should.

‘Why should
they?’

A new and sudden pain crackled down his body, through what
his mind still called his bones, through his bloodstream, every
vessel. His arteries, his veins, his capillaries, all flooded with
pain; no, not just pain, but fear. It flooded Teague’s being until
he was made of it, like he was made of the pain.

Do not ask
questions. You cannot convince me of anything other than what I was
made for. I harvest. I do not consider such things. I am
Charos.

He wanted to
fall to his knees with agony, but the black creature before him
wouldn’t grant him that; his dark guide, his steersman through the
underworld, and never-relenting tormentor.

Remember
!
said Charos.
Remember your sins, and
be penitent.

~

A week before
the death of his mother, the young William Teague leant back
against the cold alley wall and looked up, past the bricks and
tile, at the moon. That near-round disc eyed him unremittingly, as
if in accusation.

‘I’m doing
nothing wrong,’ Teague said, crossing his arms in defiance.

Th
e
alleyway was narrow and dark. No light could slant down between the
rooftops to meet him. He was alone and in shadow, but – thankfully
– a second shadow soon joined him.

‘Lucia,’ he
said, as she approached.

She came quickly, brushing down her bodice and pursing her
lips as she met him. ‘William,’ she
whispered. ‘Here again?’

‘
I couldn’t stay away.’ Taking her waist, he pulled
her to him, and breathed in her scent: perfume
and
leaves.

With his fingers curved around her thighs, her painted lips
pressed against his in that alleyway under the moon. Her scent and
touch galvanised his senses, enflamed his blood and nerves. She
allowed herself to be pressed against the cold wall, breathless,
her legs around his waist.

‘
You
know, these aren’t my normal working hours,’ she said.

‘
I know.’

‘
Still, so long as you’re carrying your purse, you’re worth
staying up for.’

‘
I hope so.’

Lucia smiled. ‘What’s
the matter? You sound like you don’t want to talk about it.’

‘
I don’t,’ he said. ‘Kiss me.’

Her smile did not sit right on her face whenever he asked her
to kiss him. She usually made a rule about no kissing. Maybe it was
the moon this time, shining on a face already beginning to glimmer
with sweat. They hadn’t even started. He wondered if she had come
from another job, another man somewhere.

She held his
face in her hands, aware that his thoughts were drifting. She hated
it when he was in her, but not thinking about her. ‘Hey. We don’t
have to talk. Just do what you do best.’

Right. Right,
what he did best. She looked at him with such narrow-eyed passion
and hunger that whatever it was that beat inside his chest, whether
he thought it dead or alive, suddenly was caught up in that same
fire. Already, Teague knew, he was lost.

~

In the realm that
the Father had called Hadentes, Teague’s second
soulform had been led away from the courtyard to the black western
wall that adjoined the Tall tower. Here they stopped, and Teague
looked up. The ramparts were hidden in the swirling black clouds
above them.

Charos held up a clawed hand and a space in the wall
dissolved. Beyond it Teague saw a gaping wilderness, red with fire,
and right in front of him stood a gargantuan black tower some
distance away, taller even than the walls they had just passed
through. Molten metal dripped from the cracks, which quickly
solidified into terrifying shapes reminiscent of deathmasks and
broken skeletons.

He was led through the wilderness for what seemed like days,
and the tower didn’t seem to get closer. They arrived at a gaping
chasm, the true depths of which Teague couldn’t determine, for
thick fog lingered at its edges like water. Charos led him to its
nearest bank, where a small boat made of black bones waited for
them.

The river Achronne
, said
Charos.
I will lead you across.

The boat
seemed to be painted with concentrated pain; touching it made
Teague feel dizzy with it, and again he was sick, twice by his
feet.

Row
, ordered Charos.

‘
There’s nothing to row with,’ Teague managed,
choking on the burn from his own hot bile.
The anguish wouldn’t go away, despite the
grogginess.

Charos held out another claw and Teague’s
smoky body exploded into a torrent of blood and organs. His bones
spun and collected themselves to form two bloody oars, which
lowered into his hands. His chest gaped, but yet he survived; he
was still half-alive.

Row,
said Charos.

‘
I can’t…’

You have
already paid me the fee. You may as well make your way across. More
pain will greet you if you do not row.

‘
What fee
…?’

Charos held
out its cracked hand, and in it were Teague’s bloody
fingernails.

Row
!

For eternity Teague
rowed with no strength, and inside him he felt the additional pain
of hunger that had been steadily growing since his arrival. He
didn’t bother asking for food. They crossed over the river of mist,
the depth of which could not be gauged; if he stepped out he might
set foot on the same rocky ground that the cliff walls were made
out of, or he might tumble for all eternity down a chasm of spikes
and fire that would burn his soul until the armies of heaven saved
him after aeons of suffering.

The one hope they missed
, Teague
tried not to think:
the hope that the
Final Battle will be waged and we’ll all be set free, or
vaporised.

Charos burst
into flame and was suddenly all around him, a hundred red eyes
admonishing.

That false hope will be gone soon
!
Do not think it again. There is no
end. Settle yourself into your torment; it will be all you ever
know!

The bank was
finally reached, and the boat of bones vanished. The oars
disappeared from his grasp, and while he climbed onto the rocky
embankment he doggedly clung to his organs.

‘
What is
this
?’ he asked.

The second tower: the Square Tower of Sinners. Here reside
the Gluttonous: those that grow fat on their greed, as you did;
those that horde, the miserly; those that hunger for more, the
insatiable; and those whose hunger never stops, the
obese.

All around him were creatures that sat with lolling tongues,
who clutched swollen bellies and belched garbled laughter. Some fed
on the souls that inhabited the towers, growing ever more
grotesquely fat, and others broke the souls apart, hoarding the
pieces and scowling with gored lips.

‘
I have no place in this tower,’ Teague said.
‘Please
…’

You think that
you do not belong here? Maybe your memories betray you.

Perhaps Charos was right. He was in complete agony, and he
could see and feel the experiences of the other three Teagues. His
pain was fourfold, the others having found their eternal home in
other places, and suffering for their sins. But gluttonous? Had
Teague been insatiable in life? He had been a healthy man. His
parents had both been hard working, especially his father, and his
physical appearance had shown that. Teague himself had once
possessed a physique that was impressive to any man or woman, and
he’d known it. Now his body was gone, most likely still rotting in
the same place that Gabel had left it, a hole steaming in the head,
burned right through and cauterised. His flesh had probably been
half eaten away by now, by the bats and the rodents.

How long had
be been in Hadentes? How long had his mortal vessel been lying
there, in the mud and leaves, in the forest by the town? Had Gabel
felt anything for the loss of his friend, muttered any last words?
Had there been a funeral?

Of course not!
Why would there be?

You are learning
!
said Charos.
Like
everybody here, you learn fast. You are learning that your
iniquities carry consequences.

‘
I already knew that they would,’ he groaned. ‘I
knew it
…’

But you didn’t stop
?

‘No.’

Why not
?

‘
Because…’ And there Teague’s thoughts stumbled. ‘Because …
that’s not who I was.’

Then Charos surrounded him in smoke and laughed.
Remember your sins, and be
penitent
!

~

Teague felt drained. Not of energy, though it was sapped, but
of money; he felt that he was growing poor, whilst Lucia was
growing rich. She’d asked him to return to the alley on several
occasions, and he had. Had she only wanted him for his money? She
knew how he felt. Was she taking advantage of him, or genuinely
wanting to see more of him?

He clicked his tongue as he waited, watching the fading
sunlight. He was in his ancestral home, which the Teague bloodline
had occupied for over a dozen generations, going back even to
before the Conflict. Niu Correntia had been built around that
isolated home and two others, one of which was home to the current
mayor’s family. The other belonged to the church.

The previous
month had been a strange one. He had no idea what he had become,
the “gift” his mother had given him. Now long dead and buried, she
lay in a small plot of land in the corner of the church graveyard
closest to the Teague household, not thirty feet from where he was
sitting. Grass had begun to grow over the grave, and as Teague
looked out the window in that direction, two small flowers quivered
in the cold wind between the sparse blades of green.

When
she’d called him to her deathbed he’d expected a frail old woman
dying from tuberculosis. Instead he’d found a woman full of
strength and power, beckoning him to her side, whispering so that
he would have to lean closer … After she’d sunk her teeth into his
shoulder, she’d said:

‘
Blood for blood. Smell and transform. Taste and transform. The
gift your father left me I now leave to you.’

In the month or so that passed since her death, Teague had
been through the painful transformation three times. Each of those
nights he sat in his father’s old oaken chair and looked at his
furred hands, watched the light reflected in his smooth black
claws, clicking his toothy jaws together as he swiftly changed from
man to beast.

He’d felt certain urges, but had passed them off as grief. He
had been in such pain the whole week after his mother’s demise. It
felt like his heart was being plucked from his chest with each
breath.

The third transformation had been much later than the last,
after he cut his forearm whilst repairing the roof. The smell of
blood, even his own, was all it took.

That third night was when he recognised the pain for what it
was: a hunger for something he had never tasted. He thought that it
might be blood, or meat, for was that not what animals ate? But he
had sniffed the salted meat from the cellar, and it wasn’t even
close. Not meat, even the fresh kind.