Half Discovered Wings (11 page)

He had put his claws to his head at the thought. It was an
evil notion, the eating of another’s flesh … But he had let it go,
consumed by joy that the hunger was for something else. But for
what did he hunger…?

The moon grew smudged and waxy as it reached the horizon, and
the sun rose in its place. Teague had reverted back, knowing now
his deadline as he felt his face, feet and hands become human
again, and the fur and crab-like plating darken and drop from his
skin.

But now, as
Teague thought over all this, the sun began to set once more. He
thought of his mother, and his eyes flicked over to the bloody
handkerchief that he’d nailed to the wall beside the mirror.

The light
turned red, then disappeared. The sky turned a deep navy blue, and
the clouds sat quietly amidst the darkness, still reflecting the
last hint of dying sunlight.

Then blackness. The leaves outside rustled in the wind as
Teague waited in the chair. He had moved it a few hours before, so
that he could watch his own transformation in the mirror, something
that hadn’t occurred to him that whole month in which he’d been
human. Maybe his mind grew superior as it approached that of a
theriope.

He snatched up
the blood-soaked handkerchief and pushed it against is face,
breathing in the smell of iron and rot. Teague felt a twinge in his
stomach, a tiny knot that began to unwind, like the uncoiling of a
serpent. Itchiness of the skin, burning behind the eyes. His hands
began to shake violently until – suddenly – the fourth
transformation started.

Pain: like electricity down his spine and in his arms, then
legs; like static that burned between his muscles. Convulsions …
The gland under his tongue went into overdrive and saliva sprayed
across the room as he tried to keep seated through the anguish. His
eyes rolled back in his head. His gums bled as the teeth grew,
pushing through gaps too small for them.

An endless minute later, Teague felt his heart, now shaped
differently, begin to slow its beat. His eyes still stared at his
reflection and, though what he had seen had shocked him, most of
the metamorphosis appeared to have been internal. His bones had
turned to dust inside him and moved in clouds to different
positions, and the skin had changed shape and stretched in new
places. Now the theriope looked him in the eye from inside the
glass, and all Teague saw was his mother in the last moment of her
death: vulpine and savage, armour-plated and rat-tailed.

She’d been buried like that, and the Father had been
disturbed by Teague’s insistence that no-one see her before she was
placed in the coffin and the lid nailed down. Teague had done that
himself, of course. No-one could ever know.

On the night of this latest transformation and the
uncountable nights since, he found families that were bound by
love, and then tore them apart one by one, gorging himself on
anguish.

~

As Charos led the third Teague through the Courtyard and past
the wall, he felt the experiences of his other soulforms. One stood
by a huge black wall, like the one Charos was opening for him now;
another was led up some black stairs that were strewn with living
corpses, other tortured souls like himself, and led to the tower of
the Lustful; and a final Teague was surrounded by inky water, a
Teague whose fear was beyond that which his other selves
experienced. He was somewhere else entirely.

Now the third Teague was rowing, his innards hanging on the
outside, his oars made up of his own bones. He took himself across
the dark river Styx, toward another tower, a third.

He was dragged inside the Round Tower, the tower of the
Wrathful, and thrown against a stone wall made of compressed human
flesh. It pulsated, still alive somewhere in its bruised
cells.

Beside him,
Charos spoke:

Remember
…
Remember your sins and be penitent
!

~

A year had passed since the death of his
mother. The month before, he had dug up her grave, torn open the
coffin in a rage and bundled her bones into the handkerchief, still
encrusted with her dry blood. It was the same rag she had been
dabbing her bleeding gums with the day she had died. The bones
barely fitted inside it, but he tied it securely and hung it from
his shoulder with a length of string, before heading out from the
town.

Behind him his house was burning. Great red flames reached
for the stars while the gasoline Teague had scavenged from some
unused vehicle maintenance shack fuelled the inferno. The roof
caved in with a fountain of ethereal sparks that rose in the hot
air, and a supporting timber crashed through the front wall into
the cobbled street. People stood, gaping.

But that was a month ago, and Teague now lived in the forest
between Niu Correntia and Pirene, to the west. Three nights a month
he feasted on the flesh of the townspeople, taking them drunk from
the alleys beside the inn, or from their beds if they lived alone,
or off the streets at night. He dragged each one to a secluded
place just outside of town by lifting them onto his shoulder, or
simply carrying them in his claw if that particular meal was a
child.

They
paid for
his
pain. He tore them open, still
alive. He ate them as they died, some screaming, some already too
weak to voice their agony, and swallowed each organ only after
chewing it to paste. The skin he saved until last, a sack filled
only with blood. He finished his meal and left the bones, along
with whatever other useless bits that remained, in a bloody heap
somewhere in the forest.

Each week he took normal food from Pirene to sustain himself
between the real meals. A few months later, after numerous deaths,
Joseph Gabel would travel there during his monster-hunts and warn
the people, give them the monster’s description. Then Teague would
have to move farther and farther out from the town, but would
always return for the kills during those nights when he was his
complete self.

Teague had killed forty-six men, women and children, and
eaten most of them. One of the first was
Lucia
, the daughter of one of the poorest council members, who had
tasted particularly sour.

~

As Teague felt himself pulled apart by Charos in the
courtyard, all he thought about was pain. While each soulform was
taken away, worse than a condemned prisoner, the final Teague stood
in the courtyard, feet burning, smoky skin bright with pain. Charos
stood before him, grey and malevolent.

‘
What about me?’ he asked. ‘What place in this dimension is
fitting of my sin?’

Charos looked
at him and then surrounded him, turning to black smoke that clogged
his lungs.

Your sin is the worst. Its very essence goes against your
God. Do you believe
?

‘
It’s hard not to whilst being tortured in
H
adentes.’

His bones grew spikes and his whole body shook with pain as
muscles were torn to ribbons. His skin cracked in several places
and he began to fall to his knees, bleeding, before Charos wrenched
him up.

You would think all mockery would be gone from your head
after what you are experiencing
!

Teague
certainly had cleared his mind of all jokes. He had never known
such excruciating anguish.

Your sin takes
you to a place different from here.

‘What
place?’

Charos
swallowed him up in smoke, and Teague felt the smouldering ground
beneath his feet vanish, and he knew he was somewhere else. But he
couldn’t see through the smoke; Charos bound itself tightly around
him, and became like a thick chain of fog that pressed his limbs to
his body. His knees were bent so that his ankles were strapped to
his thighs. He couldn’t move.

‘Where are we
going?’

Charos didn’t
answer. Teague felt himself being pulled somewhere, felt a sudden
change in pressure around his body, an intolerable heat blasting
upon his essence. Still he could see nothing through Charos’
smoke.

‘
Tell me, Charos
… Where are we going?’

Now Charos
answered, and its voice was so baneful that it made Teague shudder,
despite his restraints.

We are going to the place of the Heretics,
the Cavern beneath the
Courtyard
, it explained.
Where the greatest heretic of all
awaits.

*

Eight

FLAME-PALMED MAN

Caeles sleeps. He knows he sleeps because
there are things all around him that don’t exist anymore, that
haven’t existed for decades. They are made of silvery chrome and
gleam all around him, a thousand shining objects in an otherwise
dark place. Steel ribs form a domed ceiling above him. Sleek metal
arms ending in silver digits all gesture for him to move, to walk
on. Skulls without jaws stare at him with black, hollow sockets as
he passes, rivets in their steely scalps.

He can tell
from the wall panels and the frayed, exposed wiring that he is in a
defunct starship. He senses that the air in here is fake – like his
bones – and stale. The air had been recycled by a thousand pairs of
lungs over a hundred years.

And the chrome
ushers show him the way. A door swishes smartly open for him, and,
confidently, he steps through.

The dream-room is cold, and this time, here,
now
, he can
feel
this chill. Not
sense, but feel; experience;
know
. In this dream, Caeles is back
in a time when he was
real
.

A man sits on
top of a toppled computer work station, swinging his legs and
whistling cheerfully. He sees Caeles enter and grins, shakes his
head furiously as if to clear his mind.

‘
My eyes!’ he cheers. ‘My eyes are seeing things! Has it
happened? Tell me it has, oh tell me!’

‘
Has what happened?’ Ceales replies. ‘You. I know
you.’

‘
Me,’ the man mocks. ‘You know me.’

He jumps down
from the computer terminal and brushes down his white lab-coat. He
shakes his head again, and his wild white hair ripples like a
lion’s mane. A dozen kinds of madness are ripening behind his
expressions.

‘
Uh oh,’ he says. ‘Yeah, it’s happening all right. I must be
crazy. Here is John Parland, military call-sign
Caeles
. More machine than man – in
the real world, at least. Was it worth it? Having your flesh and
organs stripped away so that you could fight someone else’s war in
a radioactive battlefield?’

He takes a step closer, and suddenly his face is alive with
rage. His body visibly shakes as he hisses: ‘It’s about
time,
John
!’

Caeles, uncharacteristically, takes a step backward.
‘It
is
you. You
can’t be real.’

‘
Took the words right out of my mouth,’ the white-haired man
says, walking circles around him. ‘Man, you’re
old
.’

‘
So are you. Tan Cleric.’

‘
He remembers!’ he cries, throwing up his arms. He claps his
hands, performs a strange little jig on the tips of his toes. ‘Oh
John, I thought you’d forgotten me, I really had.’

‘
Get out of my dream.’

The walls sneak up on them, but the ceiling slides upward,
ascending into darkness. And, somewhere inside that thick
obscurity, something is coming.

Tan Cleric
looks afraid. ‘Do you hear that?’

‘
It sounds like…’

‘
Are they wings? Are they beating wings I can hear? It’s
an
angel
,’ he
says, suddenly desperate, grasping at Caeles’ clothes. ‘The Angel
of Death! This proves that
you’re
in
my
dream. I’ve dreamt of those beating wings for
years … in my sleep and in my waking hours…’

‘
Maybe we’re both dreaming,’ Caeles replies flatly, pushing
Cleric away and staring up into the abyss. ‘Maybe you
are
still
alive.’

‘
You sound confident. Are you sure
you’re
not dead?’

‘
If you’re alive,’ Caeles warns, ‘I’m going to kill
you.’

‘
You’re welcome to try.’ Cleric makes a cavalier gesture. ‘I’ll
either complete my work or die trying.’

‘
You killed Claire,’ Caeles is saying. ‘When we found out you
sabotaged our lab. It’s
your
fault I had to accept the constription. It’s your
fault she’s dead!’

‘
Oh yes, so it is! Killing her with the same shard of metal
that punctured you. Two fleshy mortals, skewered together like lamb
chunks on a kebab. God, I miss lamb. What, did you think I
forgot
? That was the
first time I ever killed anybody. Of course I remembered it. But
you know it wasn’t the last time I killed.’

‘
They had you in jail. You should be dead. Before I shut down,
I swear I’m going to destroy you.’

In Cleric’s
hand, a silver short-sword has appeared. It has the wings of an
angel carved along its blade, and they gleam like the metal bones
that adorn the starship’s corridor.