Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller Read online

  ‘How are you going to explain me kidnapping you tied to a steering column?’

  ‘Aviation fuel burns very hot, Mr Theron, it will disintegrate your ties and pretty much everything else in this cabin. Even your blood-stained borrowed wings.’

  She stood to follow Leonora, then stopped, leaned down and kissed me high on my cheek.

  ‘Nimbus thanks you, Slayer, for your sacrifice.’

  ‘Ex,’ I said.

  The joys of all travel can be found in one solitary action of forward movement.

  Ruminations: Canto 5

  Vanda Smith

  CHAPTER 98

  Cowlin climbed into the seat next to me, buckled a new but crudely made safety harness across his chest and waist, then thought about it and removed it. He opened a book in his lap. One side of his face was swollen, I had caught him a heavy blow, but he did not seem to be paying it any attention. Less than I was anyway. He mistook my attention as interest and started talking, tapping the book.

  ‘Got it from the Blackwings at the library near the old four point church. Lead a snatch and grab whilst they were out looking for you. Don’t even know we took it. Would have paid them more for this than for any of the half-arsed errands and goose chases we have been sending them on.’

  I ignored his attempt at small talk and stared out of the hangar doorway. The clouds were rolling on, but the rain seemed lighter now, the wind had dropped, the afternoon sun trying to penetrate the clouds and succeeding in small pinholes that spread and shifted spotlights of day across the neglected, sodden airstrip.

  Cowlin looked embarrassed to be in this position with me, seemed to be chattering nervously; he was not comfortable. It might be something I could use.

  ‘Soldier, what rank are you?’

  ‘Do not engage in conversation with this man.’ Leonora's voice came from behind us. ‘He is poison.’

  Cowlin looked down, consulted his book then flicked a couple of ball switches. ‘A few more minutes and we will be ready for take-off. I have cross-checked the ’chutes, they are stowed and the fuel is topped.’

  ‘What about the crew?’ asked Leonora. At first I thought she meant cabin crew, like the plastic beautiful people that serve you wine on the larger, more luxurious Zeppelins, then I realised she meant camera crew. The four-seater aeroplane would be too small for anyone else.

  ‘In position, centre strip. Under strict instructions to roll when we level out, up there.’ Cowlin pointed at the sky as if a particular spot there denoted an exact position.

  ‘Can’t we put our parachutes on now?’ Rose whispered to an engineer who was doing a final check of something near the door.

  ‘Sorry, Governor. You must be strapped in correctly. The ride will be bumpy. Turbulence, especially in these atmospherics, it will be especially …’

  ‘Thank you, Evers,’ said Rose.

  There was an eerie silence then as the wind dropped and the sun began to win its battle against the pandemic storm. The skies were not clear, but the raindrops fell fatter and less often. Sing-song drops smacked about the hangar floor in various places revealing where the holes in the roof were.

  ‘We’re ready,’ Cowlin said, then went back to close the aeroplane’s door.

  I used the opportunity to test my ties, planted my feet firmly either side of the steering column then felt a pain prick in one of the cuts of my right cheek.

  Leonora had a crossbow bolt resting delicately in my cut, she then brought it up and pointed it directly at my right eye. It was so close I was surprised it did not break the surface tension and striate my iris. The bolt head lost focus as I stared past it and at her. She ignored my insolence.

  She put a finger to her lips in a shushing gesture then disappeared behind me again. I sat still. Cowlin found his seat and tucked the CESSNA manual into a gauze pocket by his side as Evers removed the steps.

  ‘Taxiing now, Governor.’

  The plane lurched forward.

  Cynicism is desperately essential to the human condition; it is the keening doubt that makes all certainty great.

  Conquests and Kings

  Z. Guilan

  CHAPTER 99

  Cowlin pushed forward on the throttle and we slowly moved out of the hangar. He took great care to check both wingtips would clear the doors, constantly looking left and right as he deliberately navigated the Cessna outside, despite the size of the hangar doors. The propeller was loud and rumbling, like a chainsaw slowed down and heard on a lower register. A couple of small backfires from the engine made Cowlin frown and he adjusted a setting on the cockpit’s console.

  I gave a gentle pull on the steel column I was anchored to, but nothing affected the steering. Despite a small amount of wriggle room, the newly placed steering shaft was not moving. I did not have enough leverage to pull it free from its mooring. There was nothing within reach of my feet that I could use either. I was stuck. Stuck inside a noisy, refurbished drone from another time with three people who wanted me dead.

  I looked out of the window as the plane steadily angled to join the beginning of the runway.

  Was I supposed to be thinking about my demise? The things I had not done? The fleeting joys I had experienced? A time to take stock, review and reflect and say goodbye? I thought none of those things.

  I gave little thought to Bethscape, to the Blackwings who had eagerly nudged and prodded me along this path through some long-harboured pointless grudge, borne of psychosis or boredom.

  I pictured Doc, hanging from a rusty girder and felt a bitter regret and dread spread across the floor of my stomach. It was his bare feet and what that implied: a calculated and very painful torture, a sadism no one deserved, let alone an intelligent man who had spent his life helping those around him. And he had already paid so much for doing that. So much.

  And hadn’t I too?

  I watched the world of weeds and cracked, aged tarmac go by and thought of the lives I had helped ruin. Who cared about my brother’s good name or mine anyway? I had put myself in this chair. Helped the world believe I was an unhinged psycho ready to bring down the Government and be a traitor to my friends and kin. Would anyone really care when I hit the wall?

  Would I??

  It is not the ground that kills you, it is the fall. Death is not our end, it is the distance we travel and the velocity we speed along at that takes away our lives. Lost in speeds. Worries. Finances. Planning. Plotting. Rutting. And we miss the journey, the view as we descend, the shouts from our friends as the wind fills our ears. Instead of embracing the exhilaration of sensations, we scream we are falling or wonder what it will be like to hit the ground.

  The human condition is a fragile one I suppose. Disbelief suspended, like a good magic trick we do to ourselves over and over and over again. But we know the truth, know how the trick is done. We just choose to ignore it. Stick our heads into clouds and act like we are immortal, act like time is not a finite thing, so we can abuse it.

  I have had my time and I have wasted it.

  We should embrace our mortality, not deny it, and then, and only then, get lost in the true exhilaration of flying, of living. Enjoy the fall. In my experience, the ground does not move or change, however you drop...

  It’s waiting.

  Smiles are as transparent as tears opaque.

  Walking Into Doors

  Heather DeLilly

  CHAPTER 100

  Leonora watched Drake’s head tip to one side and nudged Rose. She spoke low and, with the noise of the sputtering engine, knew her whispers would reach no one but Rose’s ear.

  ‘He’s giving up. Look, his body language, even from here, you can tell.’

  ‘There comes a time when we must all accept our fates, I suppose,’ Rose said.

  Leonora thought Rose looked worried, pale even, blanched at the thought of having to parachute out of the plane. Though they had both trained and prepared well, they had only jumped at night, from balloons over Primary House, protected from windsharks by turre
ts. They could not risk being seen practising, and the plane had to be kept under wraps. In the daylight things looked a lot different. More real. Altitude was no longer an abstract concept stretching away beneath her in the dark. It was a real one with a definite zero.

  Leonora thought about what Rose had said and wondered if she would ever accept her own fate or if she thought she would go on forever. On past evidence Leonora believed that Rose would give forever a steadfast try.

  ‘To be honest Leo, I do not really care about his state of mind. I just want this jump out of the way.’

  ‘Do you really think this will work? Halt the swell of public opinion, the whole debate about mechanised flight, the Horizon movement?’

  ‘Leo, we’ve been through this. It will not stop any of that, but it will give me power to push a bill through to set it back another ten years. They will have no choice but to back off, after this. Think of the spin and the public opinion I will have with me.’ She adjusted the belt across her lap. ‘To be quite honest, Leonora, I am just relieved that we can put an end to our ghastly jump practice.’

  ‘I cannot say I will be unhappy to see that go either.’

  Rose smiled. ‘Leonora, you speak like a politician.’

  ‘I am not sure whether I should be flattered.’

  Rose took a sip of water.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Rose asked.

  ‘I will be in about five minutes, when we hit the ground,’ Leonora said, then winced at her choice of words.

  ‘Now, let’s get airborne and leave this blasted mess behind.’

  Loneliness can be said to be the ultimate need or the ultimate sacrifice. A need for solitude, distance or time for reflection are needs seemingly aided by the self-perpetuation of loneliness. But in time spent alone, are there not voices? When we are furthest away do we not think of the things closest of all to us? Does not all reflection need a mirror, someone to tell us what they see? The sacrifice comes from making the choice to be lonely; the choice is a selfish one and the needs are never, never met.

  Society I

  J. Niamh

  CHAPTER 101

  We gained altitude.

  They say the war was caused by a culmination of mankind’s transgressions. Not because man had gone too far by altering nature, one step too far. No. It wasn’t even because the resultant modification gave people wings. The conflict arose because science’s creation now walked, or indeed flew, in an Angel’s image. The sight of winged babies or the first Black Angel had been too much for the most devout to bear.

  And, as usual, religious rhetoric far outstripped any other field, when it came to overreaction and conflict. It all escalated. The politicians shouted, pointed and sharpened their teeth. The news judged and pigeon-holed to whip up public opinion. The patriotic clung to their country and the ignorant used it as an excuse for bigotry and hatred, to launch their bombs and steal the oil and rant about glory, as they always, always had. For religion. For oil. For war. For who-cares-what. Just blast and maim and justify.

  In the dark days after, as the clouds eventually broke, when the tectonic plates had dropped and shifted, when the oceans had settled and the new plinths had arose from out of the deserts and swamps, parting sand and mud like a hand thrust from a grave, searching for the sky; in those days, they spoke of balance. How mankind’s flirtation with annihilation had been good for nature, allowed her to recover, been just the tonic the planet needed.

  Each used the facts to their own ends.

  I was outdated, a relic, a reminder to all of the past, of the frailties and stupidity of mankind. I was not helping suspend disbelief. So I had built walls, to keep people at arm’s length, thinking that made me tougher, more resilient, stronger.

  What did I know?

  As the plane’s wheels left the bumps and holes of the runway and the aeroplane noisily started to climb, as I was tipped back into my chair and looked up and out into the grey but breaking clouds, I thought of how beautiful flying was, how free and natural it felt. My brother had loved it.

  Yet I had denied myself of my chance to fly.

  And it came to this.

  Maybe I was self-pitying after all. All signs of hope lost in the clouds, in the miasma of gloom. I had no ideas or options left.

  The plane lurched and dropped a few feet, my stomach rose and turned. Cowlin was deep in concentration, biting his bottom lip, his knuckles were white on the throttle. Then he noticed something.

  ‘Who in Nimbus’ name is …’

  ‘Cowlin?’ Leonora, from behind me.

  ‘There.’ Cowlin pointed off into the sky, as he fought to keep the angle of ascent steady with his other hand. ‘Up there, almost dead ahead, one o’clock, there’s something in the clouds.’

  I heard the sound of a belt unbuckling. Leonora shuffled forward to get a better view, placed her hands on mine and Cowlin’s headrests and leaned in between.

  The plane skittered again, Cowlin gave more throttle. Rose shouted out behind me and Leonora disappeared, momentarily rocked backwards, then reappeared between our seats, her eyes fixed on the unrevealing sky.

  Then I saw it, like a small planet: something big and slow and looming and dark, cast in the shadows of the pressing clouds, emerged from the miasma.

  Is there anything more overtly hostile than being asked to leave a moving vehicle?

  Travels on the Nomad’s Plains

  Gris Urman

  CHAPTER 102

  ‘There,’ shouted Croel as he hung onto the Orca’s handrail, pointing through the damp mist, his eyes narrowed to slits. ‘That must be them, must be, I can hear it.’

  ‘We’re too high. There’s no way we would hear a Zeppelin’s generator from way up here. Not in this wind. Something’s wrong. I want to know what is making that noise. It does not sound like a balloon or any other Zeppelin I’ve ever heard. Let’s get a little closer first.’

  Croel released the handrail and reached down to grab his crossbow and club that was precariously rolling around the planche de vol. The bolts were oversized with ornate barbs at their point that reflected dull light in cruel cool angles; he clasped them to his belt.

  Mckeever was agitated. ‘Croel, wait. A few more hundred feet and we will be able to see clearer. I …’

  ‘Get off my balloon,’ a voice said from the door at the end of the platform. Beaugent stood in the doorway behind them, his crossbow pointed at Croel. Wind ruffled his clothes and his hair flapped wildly, but he looked calm, looked like he meant it.

  Croel glanced down at his own crossbow then back up at Beaugent.

  Beaugent scrutinised them both but kept his bow directed at Croel.

  ‘It is time you were both leaving the Orca.’

  Croel turned his back on him and flapped his wings in a couple of small circles, warming up.

  Mckeever shook his head and started to do the same.

  Croel looked out into the gauze of shifting cloud cover and concentrated, staring into the white and grey as if looking for the horizon or some lost but precious soul.

  Beaugent grew impatient. ‘Are you even listening to me? I said step off or …’

  ‘There,’ Croel said, and with his weapon held close to his chest, dove off the platform.

  Mckeever was still shaking his head when he followed, as the swirling white nothing of clouds swallowed Croel and he disappeared.

  Compared to outside, the Zeppelin’s interior seemed like a calm, quiet haven. Loopes sat atop a cabinet, swinging his legs and looking sullen. Bronagh pretended he was disinterested as Beaugent came back in, and carried on cleaning his equipment.

  ‘They’re gone,’ Beaugent said.

  ‘Too little too late, if you ask me,’ said Bronagh

  ‘I didn’t ask you.’

  ‘Ballast we never needed in the first place.’ Bronagh shook his head and started the third round of cleaning his harpoons.

  ‘We will dock soon and you can both be on your way if that is how you want it. There’s plenty of cre
w down there, less of the bitching and whining kind too, I reckon.’

  ‘You made your choice, now we make ours,’ said Bronagh.

  Loopes looked at Bronagh. Tears welled up in his eyes, then he looked away, jumped down from the cleaning cupboard he was sat on and dragged his feet all the way back to his quarters.

  ‘Bah.’ Beaugent walked off to set a course for their return to Nimbus City.

  Applying pressure, Bronagh ran a waxed cloth slowly down the wooden shaft of the harpoon, then turned it over to inspect his work then muttered, ‘Stubborn fool,’ to the empty chamber.

  Unsure of whom he was talking about.

  We enter our lives upside down and should leave it the same way; so that our pockets may be emptied, our heads full and so that our inverted frown may be our last smiling goodbye to the world.

  Blaizing Trails (Autobiography)

  Governor Binsley-Blaize

  CHAPTER 103

  ‘It’s a Zeppelin,’ said Leonora, still braced between Cowlin’s seat and mine.

  ‘What, the Zeppelin?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Can’t tell.’

  ‘What is it doing down here? There are no scheduled flights. In fact I made damn sure the airspace down here would be clear. Cowlin, did you cancel all manoeuvres and patrols?’

  ‘Yes of course, Governor.’ Cowlin banked slightly left so the zepellin was off further to my right, high above us but somewhere between two and three o’clock. I had a better view.

  ‘Maintaining course for Nimbus City Governor.’ Cowlin said