Half Discovered Wings (58 page)

‘
Where are my creatures?’ the man cried, and just as he said it
there was an unholy shriek, and then another, and from around the
back of the machine stepped two creatures, large and black, with
hunched oily shells and wide hoof-like feet. Their faces were
almost man-like, black lips stretched between giant mandibles,
glistening and serrated.

The two things
stalked around the man on the floor and snarled at Gabel, and he
saw that they were almost as tall as he.

‘
My children!’ the man screamed at his creatures. ‘The
intruder: can you taste the air around him? Can you taste
yourselves on him?’

Gabel let loose a raging cry and dove at the first of the
creatures, but they were both on him in a second. They snarled and
tore at him. He knew what it was that infuriated them: the pouch of
powder that Cleric had thrown at him
, which contained the grounded chitin of
the creatures’ siblings. It had fallen over him like powdered snow,
and now they could taste that he was a killer of their kind, and
they were frenzied by it.

‘
You’re not the same,’ Cleric was screaming at him, ‘you aren’t
the same as Charos! You’re different, aren’t you, you have
man
in you … You poor
thing, you must feel like only half a creature, with that much
human in you!’

Gabel slashed at the great animals, but they were powerful
and dominating and he felt their hot breaths and their screeches,
like crying insects, cut into him just as their claw-like mandibles
did. He struggled and summoned all his strength, calling on his
seemingly endless reserves.
How far can I
go?
he wondered, looking out from within
his raging, transformed physicality.
How
long will this last?

Cleric was
scrambling around the tables, taking pouches and satchels and
spilling their contents onto the floor. He shaped the powder and
crushed stones into patterns, forming words, all the time giving a
manic, didactic speech:

‘
Watch what I do; see what I am drawing here? See what I do.
Understand it.
Iberitum chamme ist, lacum
lacurae sibrium
. See, look, watch,
understand…’ He made stars and crosses in the dusty cave floor,
ignoring the battle going on so close by, and eventually got on his
knees and wrote with his finger into the peat. ‘
Cubrum sate ist
.’ Then he stood, as
if hit by a bolt of lightning, and raised a pointed finger,
screaming, ‘Yes, that’s it, that’s it…’ He ran to the console and
pulled levers, turned dials. The light from the great machine
intensified. ‘Burn, my love, my Hahnium, make my fire and leave no
ashes behind you.’

Let these
wretched souls free.

Gabel remembered something through the haze of his anger.
Reddish colours flickered in the back of his mind. Words, or rather
the memory of words, moved through the colours like a reflection of
light on a wall.

One of the creatures had its dripping claw-teeth around his
wrist, their fleshy palps beating against him. Extending a claw he
gouged out one of its eyes, and then the other; it screeched and
oozed dark, oily blood, but it didn’t release its bite.

The other was
on him suddenly, clouting him with an elephantine foot and knocking
him to the ground, twisting one of his wings. It clamped its
mandibles around his skull and he felt like his head was in a vice.
He couldn’t move. His arms were pinned to the floor, and his leg
felt broken. He couldn’t turn his head. He couldn’t see Rowan.

‘
My life,’ Cleric was saying, ‘has been a miracle. The journeys
I’ve taken. I’ve tasted both victory and defeat. I have been
sailing a vast ocean in a battered, decaying vessel and I am about
to hit the other shore, finally, just as I did so long ago … and I
have my manufactured children with me, I have called them here with
the Hahnium’s light, compelled them to be born,
almatori kinest fiori
, moths to the
flame! Have you seen them fly? Did you see them circling? They have
laid their eggs, they have spread their plagues, and they are being
born all around. Did you see? Have you seen one being born? From
the empty skulls of those soulless shells my offspring have
arrived. And I am making a new world for them now. A world without
man. The special, the individual, are all that will remain; I only
want to purge this dead globe of all the tiresome and plain, the
weak and evolutionarily unworthy. I want a world of errants, of
cyborgs, of my creatures, my aliens; what can be more individual,
more disparate, than an alien? I take them and change them. The
religion of science has given me faith. I am pious. And I do this
now, I call the Daemon, so that it may help me, and now that I have
fed it the poisoned souls of Shianti it will come. I make a new
existence for you now. I bring you piety. I bring you hope. I bring
you love in the form of all-caressing tongues of flame!’

The pillar of
fire was churning a deep red, a squall of powered scabs. There was
a storm brewing inside it, and like an arrow through water the
tendrils of light and smoke parted, and from it was spewed a
man-form that landed roughly on its knees and crouched there, hair
singed and black, portions of exposed spine burnt black.

It looked up,
and at first Gabel thought he was seeing some kind of distorted
reflection, but he saw that it was a creature he never again
expected to see, a man named Teague restored to his theriope form,
who stood and staggered, flesh burned, arms raised to shield itself
from the light.

He has regressed
, Gabel thought, and
as soon as he did the ruined figure lurched forward. With powerful
black talons pulled back one of the creatures, tore its throat and
opened its mouth to its blood, then, with a hissing snarl, cried,
‘I owe … you a life…’ He toppled backward, still clinging to the
creature, into the radioactive pillar. They writhed for just a
second, and then they were gone.

Rebekah
,
Gabel thought.

Bethany
,
Samuel
.

With a new
injection of strength, he roared and knocked away the creature that
was on top of him, toppling it onto its back. He then lifted one
muscley thigh and placed a clawed foot upon its chitinous belly.
With a gnarled hand tore the front of its skull from the rest.
Gabel took one of the creature’s legs and broke it loose, tossing
it into the light, where it charred and split. He bared his
fingernails, sharp as daggers, and split its stomach, then scooped
up its innards in a hollowed palm and filled his cheeks with
them.

I will not
stay here and feast on these any longer.

Let these
wretched souls free.

Father, let
them be loosed. Let them ascend. Let me leave.

I will
not.

Let me
leave.

I will not.
You are mine. You are my blood. You are my spirit. I will not.

Gabel raised
his head to the cave roof and screamed. Looking down he saw Cleric,
black against the light, sprinkling the last of his powders onto
the ground.

‘
With this,’ he said, no longer talking to Gabel but to another
absent soul, ‘I call thee …
Cubrum sate
ist
. With this I am suppliant.’

I am leaving.
I have no more to give. My stomach can hold no more. I will not
eat.

Eat.

I will not
eat! I will sail these rivers no more. I will walk these castle
walls no more.

Father, let me
leave.

You are my
spirit.

I am a
prisoner. I am fettered. Loose them, loose my bonds and loose these
wretched souls!

Let me leave!

I am not your
blood. I can make my own blood. I can make my own flesh. See my
blood, see my flesh. I can be human. You have Charos. He will serve
you in my stead.

Let me
leave.

Let me leave!

‘
Lacum lacurae
sibrium
,’ Cleric hissed, standing in the
centre of his mad pictures, taking his shirt from his back. He
poured over himself a vial of black liquid that filled in his eye
sockets, his mouth, and trickled down his chin, between his
clavicles and down his chest. ‘With this I am suppliant. I am your
vessel. I am your river.
Mirae begast
lacae tu. Licum clarat thurnist tawak. Lacum lacurae
sibrium.
’

Something began to happen. Gabel was moving forward, but he
was not fast enough; he was catching up with the wind from his own
wing-beats, yet be wasn’t
fast
enough. The light was hot. He couldn’t breathe;
the pillar of light was sucking up the air and burning it. He
couldn’t move; he was frozen mid-air. The air stopped moving. The
light hesitated in the back of his eyes, and everything took on a
greyish hue. But he saw the darkness.

It appeared like tendrils of black smoke out of the air, an
infectious miasma
that twisted and
spiralled around Cleric’s body, encasing him and moving into him;
through his eyes first, then his mouth and nose, and his ears, and
then through his pores, his skin. His eyes turned to liquid and in
their place darkness coalesced, and formed black eyes, with stars
in the very centre. His hair turned to ink, and twisted horns
protruded and curled. His skin darkened and sprouted black fur and
feathers. His shoulders exploded and wings came forth from fonts of
blood. The wings had eyes; they all blinked and opened and stayed
open, and in each shone eternity, the Universe. The blueprints of
life and death. The secrets of the framework of
existence.

Gabel fell backward with the force of the Daemon’s
gaze.

Son
, it said.

~

‘
No,’ he hissed, getting to his feet. He felt the weight of his
life on his shoulders. He sensed the presence of Rowan, and heard
the battle cries of the people outside. Moving like
shadow-lightning, Isaac was tearing Cleric’s army of mutated men
open. The magus was ablaze with green fire, turning the attackers
to ashes. He stood atop a pile of soot and remains and spewed a
swirling thunderstorm from his fingertips, clearing the air of the
frantic, ravenous creatures.

Gabel
shouldered all this, and yet stood straight.

‘
No,’ he said, ‘you’re not my father. I am not your
son.’

The Daemon moved its wings and surrounded him with darkness,
all the eyes watching him, scrutinizing, penetrating, and the voice
belched,
Yes you are.

As it forced back its pinions, Gabel spread his own, and in
them blinked an eye each, burning red and stark. ‘I am
not
!’

He rushed forward and lifted the Thing in his hands, pushing
his talons through the black flesh, saying, ‘And you, you are not
really here; you are a lodger, you are a cuckoo chick; you are
a
prisoner
here,
and if I break this body, you will leave.’

If you break
this body I will find another.

‘
I will make you leave here. You will go back.’

Perhaps you can make me. For certain you will come back with
me. Know your place. Recognise your blood.

‘
My blood is my own!’ Gabel lifted the black, fetid, hairy body
and with the strength of his wings pushed both of them toward the
machine and its great column of light. ‘This body is mine. This
strength is mine.’

You will
return to Hadentes and you will take your brother’s place. You
shall guide the fresh souls, and you shall punish those who need to
be punished. There is a home for your there.

My home
, he replied,
is here
!

Gabel forced his fists through its chest and lifted it up by
them. He slammed the body against the curved silver dome of the
machine. The Thing tried to break free, but Gabel had already drawn
Caeles’ wakizashi. He plunged it through the Daemon’s torso and
deep into the innards of the machine, pinning it.
That was mine
, said a
voice within the Daemon’s voice.

The Daemon’s wings caught in the rotating arms. The mirrors
juddered and one cracked. The light and glass began to spill
outward from their intended shapes, the contours of the pillar
distorting.

You deserve Hell
!

‘
Remember your
sins
,’ Gabel said, as the Daemon’s wings
were torn from its back and its hair began to burn,
‘
and be penitent!
’

Gabel hauled
the thing into the air, and with a mighty release of bunched
muscles sent them both cascading into the light.

Inside was hot, and he felt his skin peel and his insides
boil. As they both blistered and melted Erebis rammed its fist
through Gabel’s chest and said:

I gave you your strength, son…

…
and I shall reclaim it
.

Gabel felt his blood reverse its flow and his armoured shell
return to flesh. The fiery bird inside was caged in the Daemon’s
dark fist and its wings were crushed; it was pulled from him, and
in every vein and artery Gabel felt a ghastly wrenching. His claws
turned to hands. His black skin turned red and peeled; he felt
something like a planet colliding with his chest and he was knocked
backward, out of the fiery light and against the cave wall. He felt
bones break with the impact, and again when he hit the floor. The
strength had been taken from him, and he was only a man
again.