Heaven's Gate (10 page)

“If I am right, we have only to wait for night fall.”
The old priest answers patiently.

At that the fly, ceases its humming and buzzes across the room, flying drunkenly on dry wings until it alights closer to the girl in the large hat.

“Why you still got your hat on honey?” The man at the next table asks, swiping a meaty hand through greasy hair. Lillian stares fixedly at the food on her plate, holding her teeth together on the cutting retort, which would normally follow such insolence.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart, no lips under there either?”

“Mind your own business and I’ll mind mine,” she growls back. Damn that cold fish Leedon, if it wasn’t for the prospect of falling under the sway of that hard eyed fanatic she’d be able to deal with the oaf in front of her the way he deserved. She’d never have gone to
Island
City
in the first place if her father and Julia hadn’t begged her. Her throat closes in tension at the thought of Julia, officially the woman was her nurse but she had been a mother to her since her real mother died giving birth. Her hand steals under her poncho to grasp the amber crystal on the amulet that had been
Leedon’s
betrothal present. She would have thrown it away long ago but Julia had been insistent.

‘It is a royal gift, even if its giver is not noble.’ she had said.

As she grips it, the crystal grows warm to her touch as if responding to her anger, it did that sometimes, it even glowed faintly from time to time. It was indeed a rare and princely gift. The rarity and beauty of the gift made it all the more galling when she discovered that, instead of a charming prince, she had found herself matched with a cold, aesthetic man with more taste for strategy, empty tomes and hypocritical religion than for life. Because of that she had to endure the fool next to her and who knew how many hardships before she was home. If the man only knew that he was insulting Baron Carter’s only child the oaf would no doubt be falling over himself, pleading for mercy. Not that he’d get any! Lillian is vindictive by nature, she had found a way to pay Leedon back for his bookish failings as a man and now she makes a private promise to herself that if she ever encounters this piece of filth again, once she is reinstated in her father’s court, she will have some part of his anatomy removed.

“She speaks, and such a sweet voice! You see, lads, I told you it was a woman, perhaps she doesn’t look so bad under that poncho.”

“Or maybe she does Ned and that’s why she wears it.” Another man quips.

Before she can stop herself the revolver is in her hand, the ornate metal work of barrel gleaming in the light of the common room’s lanterns.

“No need for that, my dear,” the heavy-set man says, breaking a silence in which the only other sound is the click of her gun’s hammer drawing back, “I believe my friends and I were going after this drink.”

“
We’ll be lucky if she makes it to the Carter estate with a temper like that,”
a fly on the ceiling above her buzzes, “s
he’ll get herself killed if she pulls a gun at the slightest insult.”

“She’s not as helpless as you may think, her father saw that she was well trained. After all, he has no sons to school in war or defense; she’s quite a shot by all accounts.”

“Trained or not it’s only a matter of time before she comes across someone who takes a gun being pointed at them personally, a pipe in an alley is just as effective as a head-on confrontation.”

“At least she has the sense to know when she’s made a mistake.”
Mordiki observes as Lillian resheaths the gun.
  

“I’m…” the girl stops, unable to apologize to these brash peasants for anything, least of all their own boorishness! “I’m not looking for trouble,” she says, “I’ll be going to my room as soon as I’ve eaten.”

As if on cue, a platter of roasted pork and boiled vegetables appears under her nose; Lillian’s face curls into a grimace at the sight of the greasy meat and the pulpy, over-boiled potatoes. One look into the proprietor’s eyes forestalls an outburst, it would hardly do her any good to point out that she had sampled the offerings of some of the best chefs on the river. Here she was a track hand. A barge worker even a thief or a whore would go unnoticed but an aristocrat complaining of the food and the coarseness of the men would be remembered.

“I don’t need trouble, miss,” the man says firmly, “Ned’s sometimes loud but he’s a regular. There’s no need to be pulling steel, I have made allowances for a lady on her own, I let you keep the hat and I’ll overlook your behaviour once but if you threaten any more of my customers you’ll be sleeping in the gutter and I’ll be keeping the silver you gave me. Are we clear?”

“Very.” Lillian responds, taking a mouthful of scalding vegetable mush, which does nothing to help the black look that she casts over the common room, “I’ll go to my room directly after supper. As you say a lady,” she emphasizes the word despite herself, “does not like to be disturbed.”

“No offence meant, miss,” Ned chuckles from the table opposite, emboldened by the proprietor’s apparent support.

“And no nonsense from you, Ned. If I’m any judge this one would plug you quick as a ground squirrel pounces on a snake.”

Ned looks as if he’s about to respond to the warning with some quip, but a look at the eyes watching him from beneath the wide brimmed hat make him think better of it. “
S’pose
you’re right, Hugh, none of us wants any trouble. Sorry, miss.”

Lillian makes no acknowledgement of this attempt at contrition but instead begins the process of sawing through the gelatinous outer skin of the small joint with an almost blunt eating knife.

She leaves the common room with her dinner half eaten and climbs the wide shallow steps up to her room on the second floor. With a sigh of relief she unlocks the door, enters her room and then relocks the door behind her. Once inside the room she moves to the corner where she peels back the carpet and loosens the floorboard beneath. With trembling hands she slips a thin package, wrapped in yellowed paper into the newly revealed cavity before replacing the wood, smoothing over the carpet and seeking the sanctuary of a foreign bed and sleep to remove her from this nightmare reality. The thought that most of the people in the room below would have killed for the money she had stolen to fund her trip does not even cross her mind; she is the only child of the Carters and as such not bound by the limits of common expectation. The thick wooden beams of the floor and their overlay of what had once been some fairly plush carpeting, cannot completely deaden the noise from the common room below, it permeates the chamber as a dull murmur punctuated with laughter and the sound of glasses. After a while the voices grow louder and are joined by the enthusiastic, if uncoordinated, strumming of an old guitar. Grinding her teeth with frustration, Lillian blows out the lantern and resolutely closes her eyes. She falls into a light doze, interspersed with moments of music-filled lucidity. While she tries to sleep something slips under the door, as slow as the moonlight creeping across her windowsill. Something that looks close to human, coalesces at the foot of her bed.

Chapter 5:

“Sins of the Flesh”

Dale Siphon is a skin sculptor. Since his rebirth, he has learned to twist his undying flesh into almost any configuration his imagination can conceive. Sinew and bone only moments before reduced to near liquid density, re-shape as the predator reassembles himself. Cartilage crackles quietly, no louder than the girl’s light snores, he has to do this slowly lest his victim wakes. Not that the room full of sacks below could do much to stop him from taking the girl but he has been told to do this quietly. The last thing he needs is to disappoint his patron.
Pellan
was short tempered at the best of times, privately Dale thought he might be jealous of his ability to reshape his body.
Pellan
might be an Elder and might be capable of all manner of terrifying sorcery but the gift touched each in different ways and for all his centuries of existence,
Pellan
had not been able to find a way to share Dale’s ability. Indeed
Pellan
seemed to be afflicted with a form of cancerous corruption that affected a small number of those of the blood, each year brought a new growth or a new fold of flesh.
Pellan
had long ago abandoned the sleep chambers in the old fortress as being too confining for his expanding bulk and ironically, his corpulence had probably prevented his destruction. The thought of ugly
Pellan
made Dale smile, no doubt he would kill to slip so easily under a door or to be able to conjure beauty with his own blood and bones. Not that Dale had the same conceptions of beauty as he did when he was alive, to his shame he had been a pious man and would have called the creature forming on the soft carpet nothing short of demonic.

Now, though, he understood the beauty in the sleek lines, the deadly whip-quick body, thrumming with the strength of inexhaustible muscles. Bone and horn frame the features of the leering vampire, his mouth set with rows of shark like teeth, his knees bend backwards unnaturally as he gathers newly formed legs under him and his feet coalesce into broad, wicked talons. Long tendrils of callused sinew begin to extrude from his hardening body, the first of them swishing the air idly while new ones form. Normally he would consider such appendages unsightly, a break with the smooth lines of the sleek black form he had made for himself but at the moment, he needed some way to restrain the girl when they leave. She will struggle, he’d been promised that much and the thought brings an unfocused stirring to his
chitinous
loins. The urge is not sexual, he has passed through such things, it touches something deeper in his make up. If he could, he would taste her before he returned her to his master, just a sip. The girl is warm and young and the fact that he is forbidden to harm her makes the prospect of every stifled scream delicious.

Suddenly the girl stirs in her sleep, half consciously swatting at a fly that repeatedly bumps into her head, as it describes lazy and uncoordinated circles in the air. It doesn’t
 
take Dale long to recognize that this is no ordinary insect, like calls to like and he can sense even the tiny energies animating the small creature. Even though he is still in the process of aligning bones and organs, the skin-shifter risks extending one of his flat tentacles, in an attempt to swat the offending insect. Before he can reach it, however, Lillian's hand snakes out, shattering the dry insect against the headboard. Through blurry eyes she sees the shadow rising at the foot of her bed, jet black despite the illumination of the nearly full moon. Lillian blinks once hoping that the apparition is some trick of her unfocused eyes but the intruder only seems more substantial. With a small gasp of panic she lunges towards her revolver.

Surprising as the speed of the girl’s reaction is, she is only human and the tendril has caught her wrist before she can reach the gun hanging from the bedpost. Lillian opens her mouth to scream, as something that feels like an animal’s tongue wraps itself around her wrist and begins to pull with a grotesque strength but before she can utter a sound another dark tentacle, plunges into her open orifice. Her immediate urge is to gag at the taste of rotten flesh and decay but retching only makes her more aware that she cannot breathe for the rubbery flesh now filling her throat. Desperately she tries to pull back from the intrusive limb, thrashing and thrusting her head back into the wall behind her with bruising force but the tentacle seems to have no trouble simply extending itself following her movement. Through her growing panic she is vaguely aware of other leathery restraints slipping around her legs and lower body, wrapping her tighter and tighter in layers of leathery skin. All this is a secondary concern to her growing need to breathe. The creature behind the snaking chords of flesh fixes her with cobalt blue eyes and smiles, revealing a line of teeth, sharp and hollow.

Outrage and anger fade as the demand of her
spasming
muscles for oxygen begins to shut down her frenzy. Bile builds in her tortured throat and nausea replaces panic. She fixes angry eyes on the abomination smiling back at her, able to see it properly, now that she is resigned to her impotence. The monster is hideous, its skin a deep black that reflects the silver moonlight as if it were horn or the outer skin of a beetle. The eyes look human enough, except they are almost luminous in the darkened room, an effect of being in the dark face rather than because they are actually glowing she speculates. It doesn’t matter now, much longer and she will lose consciousness. A blessing? or an escape from a night mare? I’ll wake up any moment she promises herself as her eyes droop.
 
As if it some how reads the severity of her need the tentacle suddenly surges forward again and opens itself deep in her throat.

“I’m sorry but you’ll not be escaping that way,” the monster chuckles, as the girl takes her first breath through the now hollow tube. Unable to reply or struggle against the bonds pinning her left arm and leg, Lillian simply stares at the thing, wondering what it will do next, I
will
wake up any minute she promises herself fervently but instead she feels her body lifted gently from the bed. Somewhere, further up the tentacle filling her throat, a twisted lump of muscle begins to pump, forcing new air into her lungs, breathing for her. Furious at the monster’s presumption, Lillian tries to bite down as hard as she can but the tube merely compresses then opens when she relents, as flexible and impervious as leather.