Half Discovered Wings (54 page)

‘
You don’t deserve a father
like me
!
’

There was a flash of light from near the treeline, and a
screaming bullet tore across the clearing. Blood spouted from
mid-air and spattered Isaac’s face, another cry hurting his ears.
The sword fell. The cry was cut short by a second gunshot, and
there was a thud. The weight lifted from Isaac’s chest.

He looked up,
confused. Blood slowly stained the grass in front of him, gradually
pooling as if coming out of the ground itself. His eyes looked to
where the gunfire had come from, and there stood one of the
strangers from the camp, tall and frowning, a fedora pulled low
over his eyes. He lifted up a silver pistol.

‘
Lucky for you,’ Gabel said.

It began to
rain.

*

Thirty

UNCLEAN

The summer had arrived, and the rain that fell was hot and
came in floods from the sky. It washed over the forest floor,
taking with it organic rafts of red ants, forcing giant shrews up
into the trees, and soaking the legs of the travellers.

Just two days earlier Isaac had buried his mother in a
mud-swilled leafy clearing: the same spot her life had been taken,
by the father of her own child.

‘
I don’t regret killing him,’ he told the magus. ‘He deserved
death.’

And that was
all he said, until they were just two days from Hermeticia.

The magus seemed to be growing uneasy. Gabel spotted this as
they camped, roasting preserved vegetables over the fire. The old
man had always seemed meditative, contemplative. Usually he would
sit with his eyes closed and his hands resting on his crossed
knees, deeply breathing in the night air.

But now he seemed uncomfortable and anxious, as if some great
anticipation had settled upon him and he couldn’t shake it. He
stared blankly toward the direction they travelled, always looking
upward as if he expected to see something in the stars or the
formation of the clouds.

Rowan had fallen asleep. Isaac was sitting elsewhere. He had
requested that he join the party on their mission to find and
destroy his father’s employer, the same man who, ultimately, was
also his mother’s killer. They agreed to let him come, but he
refused to sit and eat with them. He said this was because he had
yet to prove himself to them, though they denied that this was
necessary. The true reason was that he had felt the unease that
permeated the dwindling group, and didn’t wish to be a part of
it.

Gabel had been
watching the magus intently when the old man met his gaze suddenly,
stood quickly and said, ‘Joseph, come with me.’

The hunter
took to his feet, surprised, and turned to Isaac. ‘Watch her with
your life,’ he said, regarding Rowan. The young man nodded.

~

Gabel put on
his hat and followed the magus out of the fern clearing and into
the dense, hot rainforest. The insects were for some reason silent
that night, and the chatter of birds and monkeys could not be
heard.

‘
Old man,’ he said, ‘tell me what’s going to happen. Something
is coming.’

‘
It’s the universe,’ said the magus. ‘Joseph, when I came to
you almost eight months ago and asked you to come with me, I tried
to prepare you for what you would eventually face. Do you
remember?’

‘
You called me stubborn.’

‘
You see, then, that you haven’t changed.’

‘
You also said it was an age of monsters and
demons.’

‘
Exactly,’ said the magus. ‘That’s exactly what I said. We hunt
a monster.
You
are the demon. I think you have realised this. You are a
demon, but
not
a
monster.’

‘
How could I be such a thing? I understand that I have …
transformed, but—’

‘
The
form you are in now is your transformed self, a shell,’ the magus
said impatiently. ‘You must examine yourself and realise that you
are a stranger here. Your anxiety—’

‘
That’s not so much a problem now.’

‘…
Your anxiety was your unconscious way of acknowledging the
fundamental differences between yourself and others, although you
never allowed yourself to remember your true origin. You were not
born here. You
fought
your way here, from Hadentes, forging yourself a new body in
place of your unwanted memories.’

‘
Ridiculous,’ Gabel murmured. How could this be true? His mind
shoved against the idea, but it felt forced, as if by
habit.

‘
You were born by the hand of Erebis to be its ferryman of
souls. There is a being called Charos that still does this now, in
your place. Imagine how furious Erebis must be now, to have its
offspring abandon it so.’

‘
You couldn’t possibly know all of this for fact,’ Gabel
grunted. He felt himself becoming defensive, but he knew that there
must have been at least some truth to what the magus was saying.
How else could he have transformed in such a way?

‘
I have been around for a long time, and I’ve been to a lot of
places,’ the magus replied. ‘And I know others who have travelled
even further. You are what I say you are. But you must remember
that while you were born of its loins, you carry only a fraction of
its black essence. What I mean to say, Joseph, is that you have its
shape, but not its heart. That is black and withered, and old and
decaying. Yours has yet to find itself.’

‘
Are you saying my heart could still blacken?’

‘
It is already
doing
so, Joseph, don’t you understand? You’re letting
yourself be taken by the evil inherent to your blood. The evil it
put in you. But you are more than that.’

‘
What can I do?’

‘
First of all, you can tear down that tree.’

The magus
pointed with his finger to a large, vine-choked tree that reached
far, far up into the canopy. Its branches reached out for metres.
The trunk was twenty paces around.

‘
This tree?’ Gabel asked. The magus nodded. ‘I can tear down
such a thing?’

‘
You can tear down things of all sizes and shapes, Joseph. Just
try harder.’

The hunter stood by the great trunk. It was ancient and huge.
He stretched his arms to their fullest span and wrapped them around
it – and he could still see both sets of fingertips.

‘
Not like that,’ the magus sighed.

Gabel looked at him angrily, then took his left hand and
forcefully jammed his fingers through the bark like spears. He put
his right hand a good half a metre directly above it and did the
same. Then, without groan or even clenched teeth, he lifted the
great tree out of the ground, pulling back to take out all the
roots, then dropped it on its side with a resounding crash. The
ground shook. Leaves and other torn vegetation fluttered up into
the air. Its echoes rang out again and again through the
forest.

‘
Well done,’ said the magus. His green eyes smiled at him. ‘Do
you now understand what you can do? You’re not a
monster.’

‘
I feel like one.’

‘
Don’t be infantile, Joseph. Just know you’re better than the
one you now hunt, this man Tan Cleric.’

‘
Why is he so dangerous?’ he asked, rubbing his fingertips.
They were bleeding from behind the nails.

‘
He would destroy everyone on the planet by activating his
machine.’

‘
The war relic. You called it the Hahnium.’

‘
It would kill everyone. And Cleric means to use
it.’

‘
How could it destroy
everyone
? Surely there would be
survivors – it’s only one machine…’

‘
You can’t conceive,’ said the magus, shaking his head.
‘Initially it blows out radiated particles that would poison those
in the vicinity. After a few minutes it would begin super-heating
the atmosphere, boiling the air until the heat begins to
self-perpetuate, like a star. After that, it’s only a matter of
hours before all things begin to perish. In a day, there will be
few living creatures left on this continent. Beyond that, there’s
little anybody could do to—’

‘
Wait,’ said Gabel. ‘I can hear something.’

Almost instantaneously a dark form descended upon them,
leaping from the thick fern to land on the fallen trunk. It was a
boy. He crouched there, shaking like a leaf and surrounded by a
shower of disturbed rainwater. Short, wet hair moved from the boy’s
pale face as he looked up, his eyes shining in the sparse
light.

‘
Joseph,’ he murmured. The stranger was a young man, perhaps of
twenty years.

‘
Yes. What is it to you?’

‘
I know that you’re travelling toward Shianti. You wish to stop
the madman that digs up the war relic,’ said the young
man.

‘
He is there? Now?’

‘
Yes. He has found the entrance to this ruin and seeks to
activate it.’

‘
Are we too late?’ frowned the hunter.

‘
Not yet,’ the young man said hoarsely. ‘It will take some time
before he can do it. He has only one helper, a girl. She knows
little on the matter.’

‘
Why are you here? To tell us this?’

‘
Yes, and to offer my assistance.’ The young man slid down off
the trunk, pulled back his shoulders and stood straight. He almost
looked impressive in the half-light. ‘If you will have it,
Joseph.’

Gabel looked
at the magus and sighed heavily. ‘Has everyone the same goal as
us?’

‘
There are many,’ said the young man, moving closer and
examining Gabel. ‘I’ve seen Hermeticia just twenty hours ago. It
swarms with the
Caballeros de la
Muerte
, who have seized the city from its
government.’

‘
What? Why?’

‘
The city is caught in plague. The
Caballeros
believe the council
members are doing nothing to help end it, that they wish the city
to become depopulated. The horsemen also know that the Head
Councillor allowed a man to enter the city, and begin excavation at
the very centre of the crater. That man was Cleric.’

‘
Good. Maybe the
Caballeros
will do our work for us.’

‘
They are afraid to go near him and this excavation site. They
say there is a strange energy there. And the sickness frightens
them; most have left the city. The leader of the
Caballeros
though,
Captain Alvaros, he stays and leads the rest against this
man.’

‘
Then we’re not alone in our quest,’ said the magus.

‘
And there are yet others,’ the young man added, reaching up
and touching Gabel’s face. He felt the lines of his forehead, the
rings under his eyes, the tendons in his neck, and his chest and
arms. The hunter allowed this, uncomfortably, at a signal from the
magus. ‘I was briefly a member of a great Sect who come from a
monastery near the city of Goya-on-Lual, who travelled west across
the desert toward here. We were attacked by sanguisuga.’

‘
How did you find us?’

The young man had lost interest in Gabel’s face and was
slowly walking around him. ‘Some kind of spirit drew me here. I’ve
had plenty of time to make up my mind regarding you, but I’ve
decided that I will join you if you will allow me to. The Sect I
travelled with also intends to halt Erebis’ plans.’

‘
Erebis?
How is that related to Tan Cleric?’ asked
Gabel.

‘
Cleric has some sort of connection with it. It’s real, Joseph,
I swear. I’ve seen it.’

‘
Nobody sees Erebis and lives to speak of it,’ scoffed the
hunter.

‘
No. They don’t. The Ministrati are on a holy crusade to
destroy Cleric before he brings a catastrophe down upon us. Now,
the survivors and the others Sects are converging on
Shianti.’

Gabel and the magus exchanged looks. ‘You mean to say that
there’s an army of knights and a large religious cult descending
upon one man? Surely, then, we’re not needed? Who
are
you?’

The young man smiled. ‘Don’t you remember? Can’t you see it
in my movements, my manner of speaking? Joseph, we’ve known each
other since we were boys. We were once very close, you and I. So
close that when I became a theriope, you took it upon yourself to
exterminate me. Only, in this world, you can only kill bodies.’ He
laughed.

‘
William…?’

‘
Yes. Pleased to see me?’

‘
How are you here?’ Gabel growled.

‘
It’s a long, long story,’ William Teague replied
placidly.

‘
You have a different body.’

‘
That I have. Joseph, I’m something else now. I’ve been
subjected to Hell. I am now penitent.’

Gabel looked at the
magus, and then at Teague’s new flesh. He felt a resurgence of that
old fiery rage he had become so accustomed to. The magus’ words
rang true now: his strength felt like something that had been
forged in Hell.