Half Discovered Wings (2 page)

For years they'd been something like friends, since he had
arrived at the town as a young man and spent all of his time fixing
fences for small change. When she was younger and more
headstrong, Bethany would often confront him, but Gabel hadn't
learned how to channel his emotions until the time he'd graduated
from fence-mending to creature-hunting. From that point onward, he
concentrated on protecting Bethany by protecting the town from the
dark things that stirred in the woodland at night.

Frustrated by the distance she often put between them, and at
his own incapacity for direct communication, Gabel's usual response
was anger. It was a trained response; although he
considered himself fearless, he suffered from powerful bouts of
anxiety that had much the same effect. Long ago he'd learnt to
transform the anxiety into rage, and use that powerful weapon
against the monsters that he tracked through the
woodlands.

He said,
‘I’m leaving,’
and turned around.

~

He was stopped in the rain by a stranger: an old man with
hair braided across his scalp and who wore a coat that stretched
down to his boots. Back-lit by the glow from inside the inn, the
figure didn’t move.

‘
What is it?’ Gabel asked wearily. The inn was very close, and
he was already getting that tickle in the back of his throat that
meant his body was demanding succour.

T
he
man had freckles like stars on his dark cheeks, deep pockmarks
whose scars reflected the pale light from the night’s sky. He
narrowed his small eyes and said, ‘I’ve heard that you are a man
for hire.’

‘
I’ve finished my work for today.’

‘
It’s not today I’ll need you, but soon.’ Now Gabel saw a brief
touch of anticipation, even fear, on the old man’s face. ‘An
important job that may take some time.’

‘
If I’m interested,’ said Gabel, ‘and you have the money, then
I’ll take your job. But tonight I need a drink.’

He pushed past, and as he did so a hand fell upon his
shoulder. Gabel turned and thought he saw green fire burning in the
stranger’s eyes, its arcane glow glinting in every one of those
pockmarks, drawing attention from everywhere else and into the old
man’s tapered eyes.

‘
Magus,’ Gabel murmured.

‘
Yes,’ the man conceded. ‘but one who needs your help
nonetheless.’

The old man with the tightly-braided hair looked about
himself in the rain, as if he expected some shadow-wreathed
nightmare to land on him any second. The factotum took the
opportunity to scrutinise the stranger further: heavy boots worn
white on all sides; a fawn-skin coat bald in places, frayed or
ripped or burned in others; and underneath it a brown tunic and
matching trousers, pantaloons that had been carefully ripped and
re-sewn in order to narrow the legs. The old man may have been a
magus, but he was world-wise and adaptable.

‘
Go on,’ said the hunter.

‘
We are in an age of monsters and demons, Mister Gabel. A time
is coming, a time before a year has passed, when the darkness will
wax—’

‘
Yes, I know,’ he sighed. He spent a lot of his time around
rambling religious zealots.

‘
We are in a difficult age,’ the magus said urgently. ‘The
flagging end of a brighter era. I believe that we’ve lost that time
altogether, and must now work toward maintaining what we
have.’

‘
Which is what?’

‘
Very little. But there are still people who work toward
spoiling even that, my friend, and I would wish to conscript you to
help me put an end to such interference. Six months of your time is
what I ask.’

‘
You’d need a lot of money to keep my services for half a year.
And I would be paid at regular intervals.’

‘
You’ll receive your payment at the end of those six months,’
the magus said. ‘At the end. And you needn’t worry about the
amount. I’ll make sure that you get plenty.’

‘
I haven’t agreed to anything yet,’ Gabel replied, shaking his
head. Moisture spun from his hat. ‘Time is not an issue, but I draw
my line at distance. I will not travel far. I have too much
here.’

‘
What do you have?’

A good question. Gabel did not turn to look at the young town
around him, but used his mind’s eye instead. He had lived in Niu
Correntia for a long time. He saw the steelsmith, who’d hammered
out his kris blade and gave him the moulds needed to make his
pistol; he saw the inn, brightly lit and full of people who
considered him a friend, almost, despite his job; he saw his grubby
little apartment at the edge of town, unfurnished and filthy; he
saw the church in which he’d slept many nights, comforted (though
he would never have said so) by the proximity of the good Father
and Bethany and her young adopted sister, Rowan; and, of course, he
saw Bethany herself. He did not need to employ his imagination: She
was right there, sitting on the stone bench beneath the tree,
dripping in the rain.

He returned
his gaze to the magus. ‘I have—’

‘
That will be gone before the night is finished,’ the old man
replied. His black scalp gleamed with moonlight and rainwater
between his braids. ‘It will all happen quickly, at once, and it’s
already started.’

Rising heat, like flaming bats, winged its way up inside the
hunter and roosted hotly in his mind. It was a rage he was
accustomed to, but not proud of; every now and again it seized him,
blotting out all other emotions and logical thought.

‘
You can forget your work,’ he snapped, restraining his
clenched fists by sheer will. ‘Do it yourself.’

He left abruptly and embarked on a night which consisted of
drinks in the inn, an interrogation by the barman about the
creatures he had successfully hunted, followed by being harassed by
the dancing girls. Cul the bartender would never openly stoop to
giving a factotum a discount, not in front of his other patrons,
but he would sometimes slip Gabel a free refill when nobody was
looking, smiling privately as he did so. Wayne was at the
honky-tonk piano, his “pee-anna”, and he was a fine and regular
performer who secretly, almost shamefully, revealed sometimes that
he had hidden talents in his secret blood, “mah nigger blood, just
a drop, makes me musical”. The music he was playing that night was
fine, and although the girls leaning over the banister were
shouting for Gabel to speak of his latest and more glamorous
exploits – the successful hunts, not the filthy jobs like scooping
muck and bird-shit out of the gutters – his thoughts were still on
Bethany: smoke in his eyes, fire in his stomach, and fog in his
mind.

Suddenly he was out in the rain again, looking toward the
place where Bethany had been sitting. Lightning struck, making his
hair stand up on the back of his neck, and his eyes went round as
coins.

‘
Bethany
,’ he screamed, but the thunder drowned out his voice. She
was standing, his jacket still on her shoulders, looking down at
her feet, eyes glazed, lost in that same mist that had numbed her
when they had last parted.

And behind her stood a figure, clawed hands raised, mouth
wide, iron teeth bright in the darkness. Hands the colour of
coagulate
d blood grabbed her.
She was shaken from her daze, and before either she or Gabel could
move the creature sank its teeth into her shoulder. Lighting
smashed down once more from behind, silhouetting them for a second.
In the lingering after-image Gabel was blind to all but that
silhouette, and he roared in anger and ran, semi-sightless, toward
it.

The theriope was large, perhaps eight feet tall, and its fur
bristled with ire and stank of blood. Plates the colour of
orange-peel crested its scalp and traced the curve of its spine.
Its bear-like claws flexed in anticipation by its sides, a bald
tail whipping circles about its calves. It pulled its head back
and, in another flash, blood could be seen on its teeth. It plunged
them into her shoulder again. Bethany’s knees buckled, thighs
pressed against the creature’s crooked knees.

Gabel bellowed
and, when the figure heard it, it threw Bethany’s limp body over
the bench. It crouched, and suddenly was in the air, leaping from
the centre of the square onto the roof of the inn.

The hunter felt for the pistol by his waist and touched his
dark-bladed kris instead. He tore the wavy-bladed dagger from its
sheath and screamed at the theriope, which couched on the edge of
the roof, torn trousers pulled taut over its thighs. It wiped blood
from around its mouth with the back of its hand.

‘
Get down here and fight!’ Gabel roared, but the roar was lost
in the thunder, or else the blood in his ears was making him deaf.
He felt claws in his back and, when he could see, he saw the
creature gone from the rooftop. He twisted in pain and lashed out
with his fists. The kris was knocked from his hand.

His left wrist was grabbed and held tightly, and then the
right, and he couldn’t break from the were-creature’s grip. He felt
his feet lifting from the ground. Lightning again, this time from
behind him, and it illuminated the creature’s face, which was flat
and pale. Bethany’s blood stained its thin lips. Its tail snapped
through the air behind its flank, whipping against the bony
protrusions on its back and lashing Gabel’s calves.

The lightning was like a strobe now, unnaturally frequent,
making the theriope’s movements seem broken and spasmodic. He could
see the creature leaning toward him for his throat, but then
suddenly his toes struck the ground, then his knees and hands, and
his hat fell from his head and the rain was suddenly cold on his
hair. He felt it soak his back, dampen the backs of his hands. He
looked up and the theriope was gone.

Then he saw the bench, with the body – Beth’s frail body –
slumped over it. By her feet was the leather jacket, crumpled and
bloodied along the collar.

As lightning flickered he thought he could see her moving as
she lay broken over the wooden bench, but it was just the light
making the shadows dance. He walked over in the dark and stood
looking down. He saw the swollen bloody mess that the creature had
made of her. Then he bent and picked her up – still feeling heat
through the dress, though the rain had cooled her somewhat – and
put her carefully over his shoulder.

~

When he pounded on the door of the church he found that he
was crying. The door took forever to open, and finally Father
Dayle’s face appeared. Gabel pushed him back and, before Father
could get a look, took Bethany to the room opposite the one that
Rowan occupied. He kicked the door shut behind him.

A sudden silence; the rain was muted by the window, the
thunder barely a rumble, and no other sound could be heard except
for Bethany’s body being laid on the hard thin
palliasse.

Gabel took off
his belt and removed the kris.

Early. Oh so early for him to be doing this; he could wait
until tomorrow night, if he had to. No rush, but … to get it over
with now would be best.

The kris was heavy in his hand, the sturdy waved steel
ashamedly bloodless. Carefully, he turned Bethany over so that she
was face down, and he began to untie the laces of her dress. He
pulled it open to expose her neck and back, the join of her
buttocks. Blood was still slowly running down her
shoulder.

He counted the
lumbers of her spine, and rested the point of the kris just to the
left, fifth one down. It barely depressed the skin: the tip was so
finely cut. He held his breath.

The sound was thick and hollow. Immediately blood seeped up
through the wound and, before it got too soft, Gabel slammed again.
He heard the scrape of the blade’s tip touching the inside of her
breastplate.

For a moment
he looked at the dagger, and then released it, leaving it sticking
half-in, half-out of her back. He gathered a cloth – regrettably
filthy – and put it around the blade. He then pulled it out, with
sticky fingers, stemming the sudden blood flow with the cloth,
pushing with both hands until the cloth felt damp.

He heard a
voice from outside the door. ‘Joseph?’

Gabel kept the
pressure consistent, looking at the mess of her neck. Her bare
shoulders were slack against the mattress. Now that he was here, he
didn’t know what to do with her

The voice came
again. ‘Joseph?’

‘
Yes, Father.’

‘
What was it that attacked her?’

‘
A theriope, Father.’

‘
Theriope?’ Response muffled through the thick door.

‘
One of the were-creatures that inhabit the world outside of
town.’

‘
She is dead?’

‘…
Yes.
She just died.’

There wasn’t
another sound that night. He sat with his back against the cold
wall, looking at the figure pale and still on the bed beside him.
The morning was long in coming, and he awoke with shifting fingers
of sunlight warmly stroking him through the window. He snatched
another glimpse at Bethany who was now much whiter, her blood
darkly staining the straw mattress.

‘
Joseph, I’d like to see her.’ It was the Father again, waiting
outside. Had he been there all night? Like Gabel, he most likely
hadn’t slept a wink.