Half Discovered Wings (45 page)

Caeles
stood.

‘
What are you doing?’ Gabel asked, sitting up in his
sweat-drenched clothes. ‘It could activate again.’

‘
We’ve been close enough to see it for days, and there was
nothing. Looks like it vents only once a week, or less often than
that.’

‘
We should go around,’ the knight said. ‘It’s not safe to move
over the glass with that thing as it is.’

‘
I don’t want to go around,’ Caeles said, ‘I want to go
inside
.’

‘
What for?’ Gabel cried, astounded. ‘It’ll be the death of
you.’

‘
You’ll
be the death of me, Joseph,’ he replied. ‘This thing,
whatever it is, is pre-Conflict. And there’s no way I’m leaving it
behind this time until I’ve checked it out.’

‘
Madness,’ Sarai muttered.

‘
I don’t know,’ said the knight, his voice conveying a
concealed grin. ‘It’d be an adventure.’

‘
You’d think you would’ve had enough of adventure, Hînio,’ she
replied, but a bright smile broke across her dark
features.

‘
Anyone coming?’ Caeles asked, standing by the hinge of the
giant steel door. ‘Or just me?’

Gabel sighed
and looked at the magus.

‘
I don’t like it much either, Joseph,’ the old man said, ‘but
Caeles is needed here.’

He walked off
over the coarse glassy surface. Sarai and the knight were already
by the door, and she was untying his bonds.

Gabel turned
to Rowan. ‘I’ll stay out here with you, if you don’t want to
go.’

Rowan barely
looked at the hunter, already off following the rest. He pursued
them up over the lip of the giant door, and further as they moved
down heavily scorched ladders, built up the inside of the giant
vent.

As they disappeared into the pitch-black hole, the pistons
began their work again. The earth trembled as the massive steel
door rose and then closed above them.

*

Twenty-Five

BLOOD AND
DUST

The daytime desert was a harsh place, the ever-present sun
scalding all who crossed it, but by night it could be equally
cruel. Its visitors were subjected to intense cold and bitter
winds. William Teague pulled his cloak tighter around himself and
glanced uneasily at the waning moon, three nights past full. There
were no clouds, nothing to obscure his view of it, but there were
stars as well as the moon, and they made him feel at peace. All
around him, the rest of the Sect slumbered peacefully.

‘
Look up there,’ he said.

Beside him, Sister Verlaine, swathed in her robes and cloak,
gazed upward and found the star Teague pointed at.

‘
It looks red,’ she said.

‘
It’s Mars,’ he replied quietly. ‘It’s another
planet.’

‘
I know about planets,’ she rebuked. ‘Don’t think me a
fool.’

‘
Sorry. You’re young, and I have no idea what you’ve been
taught.’

‘
I’m no younger than you are!’

He rolled over
in the dust and looked at her. ‘You still don’t believe me, do you?
About what happened to me.’

‘
Oh William, don’t begin to try to convince me of that. Too
often already you’ve told me stories of demons and
sanguisuga.’

‘
Well, maybe you’ll see one day.’

She followed
his gaze and stared at the red star, bright in the sky above them.
‘Is it just when you taste blood?’

‘
Or when I smelt it, sometimes. And it can be anybody’s, even
an animal’s. I used to believe that it had something to do with the
cycles of the moon, but I was mistaken. It seems that with my
rebirth I have also been granted a touch of enlightenment. Perhaps
it was the nightmares that Charos showed me that taught me
such.’

After a
moment’s reflection on this, Verlaine asked, ‘Does it hurt when you
change?’

‘
Every time.’

‘
Don’t ever change,’ she said, and kissed him lightly on the
cheek.

‘
I have already,’ he replied. ‘Before I was sent there, I was
completely different. Now … Maybe the experience of it, or of being
switched…’

He sighed, and
let his eyelids slip closed. The moonlight still penetrated them.
He couldn’t risk telling her about his other sickness, the one that
blurred his sight and made his senses swim. Whatever ailment he had
– possibly heat-related – it might even be fatal. Sometimes he
thought he was seeing things, fleeting shapes almost immediately in
front of him, like spectres.

‘
Have you checked to see if you can still change?’ Verlaine
asked.

‘
I daren’t. What if I can?’

She gave a
little smile and asked, ‘What was your body like before this
fantastical journey to Hadentes?’

‘
One older and stronger than
this
,’ he hissed in disgust. ‘This
boy must have been so weak. It’s pathetic. I feel tired just
walking in this body.’

‘
Would you rather be a theriope?’

‘
No. But I wouldn’t mind my old human body back. I miss my
hair,’ he said absently, and opened his eyes to stare
upward.

‘
You’re fine as you are,’ whispered Verlaine, and kissed him
again.

~

The trek during the daytime was torture. Two people had
already suffered from heatstroke, and were callously left behind in
a small recess where they would be partially sheltered from the sun
until they perished from heatstroke or dehydration.

Relentlessly the vast
disc of the sun bore down upon the thirty-strong group of
travellers. Teague walked in the centre of the procession. He wore
his cotton robe, which hung in deep folds on all sides. He felt
like a corpse, laid to rest wrapped in a sheet.

Sister Verlaine always walked beside him now, and behind her,
ever watchful, was her twin, Brother Paul. Teague always held
Verlaine’s hand, which felt small in his own. She wore a robe like
his, thin and semi-transparent, and hung the hood low over her
face, concealing her short white hair and brown eyes.

Every once in a while Teague would peer under the hood and
give her a smile, which she would always return; but Verlaine was
ill, suffering badly from the heat, and the skin on her bare
forearms was blistered. She would always return the smile, but it
would be weak.

The Sinh-ha
Plains were barren and empty, the Four of the Ministrati said.
Brother Lius, who carried the water on his back and still drank as
little as everyone else, had told them nothing could live for long
out there.

However, a few days before there had been a shaking of the
ground, and a vast eruption of steam or smoke could be seen far to
the northwest, tiny against the shimmering horizon. None of the
Four had been able to explain it.

~

‘
William,’ Verlaine said, as she fell. Staggering in the dusty
sand he caught her, and lifted her up to him as the rest of the
travellers numbly passed them by. She whispered something hoarsely,
and then fell unconscious against his chest. He hefted her onto his
back and carried her until the sun fell, and the group rested for
the given hour.

He set her
down, pulled back the hood. Her neck was red with sun blisters, and
her cheeks were burned almost black.

‘
God,’ he muttered, and checked her pulse. ‘Go and get Brother
Lius,’ he said to Paul. ‘Tell him to bring water.’

Teague sat in an exhausted heap beside her and covered
himself as best he could against the fading light. It was already
getting cold. He pulled Verlaine’s robes back over her, wrapping
them tight, and waited for Paul to return. It didn’t take
long.

‘
Brother William,’ said the Ministrati member, and offered a
skin of water. ‘For Sister Verlaine.’

‘
Thank you,’ Teague replied. He poured it slowly over her
cracked lips. Her eyelids fluttered, and she sat up and took the
skin, swallowing the water. Asking permission first, she then
poured some over her burnt skin.

‘…
Sunstroke,’ she told Lius quietly.

‘
Not quite yet,’ he replied, and turned to Teague and Brother
Paul. ‘Look after her. Make sure she’s well covered in the day.
We’re not going to lose another of our Sect to this
sun.’

He left,
leaving Teague and Paul together. ‘Watch her,’ the latter said.
‘I’m going to check on Marête. She’s also ill.’

Teague was
left alone with Sister Verlaine. ‘What am I going to do with you?’
he muttered. ‘You’d better not die, love.’

‘
I’ll do my best,’ she croaked. Then: ‘You called me
love.’

‘
Quiet now. We’ve got an hour until we have to set off again.
Get some sleep.’

The sun’s face
finally disappeared behind the horizon, and all that was left was
its rouge glare on the underside of the clouds. The sky suddenly
darkened, as if some vast godly hand had flicked a celestial light
switch.

‘
Tell me another story about William Teague,’ Verlaine
said.

‘
I’ve told you pretty much everything.’

‘
You never said how he was sent to Hadentes to see
Erebis.’

A sigh. ‘I
wish you believed me.’

‘
If you want me to sleep you’re going to have to tell me a
bed-time story.’ She closed her eyes in mock petulance. ‘I’m
waiting.’

Teague lay down beside her on the cracked ground and gazed
upward.

‘
Once upon a time, William Teague was only a boy who lived in a
town called Niu Correntia. One night, William saw another boy
collapse at the edge of town, completely naked and bloody, as if he
had been attacked by animals in the woods. The Father of the town
took him in, and William became the young man’s friend.

‘
When they were young they worked on the same town service
projects, fixing fences, cutting down overgrown trees, that sort of
thing. They became fast friends, but when they grew to be adults,
they got their own occupations.

‘
One day, a young girl from the town went missing. For three
days the townspeople looked for her, until eventually they found
her body, bloody and abandoned just in the woods outside of town.
It looked like some animal had mauled her, so they buried her and
left it at that. Then a few weeks later there was another killing,
an old man. Then, a month later, another victim. It seemed as if
someone was methodically killing the townspeople and making the
murders look like animal attacks. Soon there were vigils being set
up at night and, a couple of weeks later, somebody spotted
something moving through the town square. They saw a person who
looked like a beast – or the other way around. They hunted it but
never caught it.

‘
While William was out fixing fences, his friend became
concerned – or obsessed – by this creature. He read literature and
gave it the name that best fit: a theriope. He said he knew how to
stop it, and began his work as a monster-hunter. He killed
sanguisuga and theriopes for miles around, but always the same
creature kept coming back.

‘
William found out, after about a year of these killings, that
the theriope was his own mother. I’ve told you this, how she was
dying of an illness the doctors couldn’t cure, and she then bit
William to pass on her “gift”. He became a theriope as she died –
his only love, his precious mother. ‘Blood for blood,’ she’d said.
He succeeded her, compelled by this spiteful malady. William’s deep
desire to be loved drew him to families, couples, lovers; he ripped
them from each other and then ate. At least one day a fortnight, he
would return home caked in human blood.

‘
He burned down his mother’s home – this, as well, I’ve told
you – and buried her body in secret. He continued to kill, hunt
down people and tear them open like a wild beast.

‘
His friend told him that he’d seen another theriope, a second
one, that appeared to have replaced the first provocateur. But the
young man didn’t realise that
William
was the second
theriope.

‘
This same man often ridiculed William for falling foolishly in
love with a whore – a beautiful whore – named Lucia. He pestered
and provoked him, and eventually William exacted his revenge. He
killed and ate someone close to his friend, a woman named Rebekah.
He did this in full view of the entire town. In order to further
torture his friend, revealed to him his identity. We were enemies
ever since.

‘
A full sixteen years later, on the same day, William returned
from his half-home in the woods to kill another woman who his
friend held dear, one who could have given him all the happiness he
needed. She was called Bethany. William couldn’t tell you now why
he did that, murdered that beautiful young woman. Perhaps it was
spite. More likely it was motivation to have someone end his
suffering.

‘
Eventually his friend, the factotum, caught up with William,
and they fought. William was defeated, and … the rest you know.
Except his friend’s name. Joseph Gabel. There was a time when
William wouldn’t have rested until Joseph was nothing but tatters
of flesh. But now…’

He looked down at Verlaine. She was asleep, breathing
shallowly in the darkness. He kissed her on her burnt forehead and
settled down himself. There was still most of the hour’s respite
left. He rested, but didn’t sleep.