Wings of Justice (City of Light Book 1)

by Michael-Scott Earle

  We came to the door marked '3C,' and my wingmate gestured for me to stand on the side of the door away from where it would swing, so that she might rush in first. Once I nodded at her, she used the pommel of her dagger to knock on the door. The thin sheet of glued bamboo bent with her blows and the sound filled the narrow adobe hallway we were in like a trumpet blast. There was no way that the man couldn't have heard it.

  "Pruet Carna, this is the Potentia. Open the door," Fallon commanded.

  There was the sound of movement inside, and my already rapidly beating heart skipped for a second. Fallon motioned for me to step back and kick in the door, and she prepared herself to dive in after.

  I took a deep breath, pushed my back against the wall, and visualized myself performing the front kick on the door. I nodded at Fallon, took a step toward the old scrap of glued bamboo, and then stopped myself when a voice cried faintly from the other side.

  "Did you bring it?" It sounded like the cry of a wounded animal.

  "Pruet, is that you?" Fallon called out.

  "Did you bring it? I need it."

  "Open the door," my wingmate called, and I heard more movement in the apartment. Then a lock turned, and the door opened outward a few inches.

  "Did you--"

  "By the love of the Priestesses, open the door, man." Fallon yanked the bamboo the rest of the way open, and I stepped around it to face Pruet.

  I couldn't stifle my gasp, and neither could Fallon.

  The man's face looked almost skeletal. There was no fat on his cheeks, his skin was as white as goat milk, his teeth were yellowed to the point of almost being brown, and his eyes were sunken too deeply into his skull. He trembled as he stood, and a boney hand held onto the doorframe for support. He blinked at us slowly, and it appeared that he might have just awoken.

  "Are you sick?" the blonde woman asked.

  "No?" he seemed confused by her question.

  "Are you Pruet Carna?" I asked and choked back my breath. The man smelled like death.

  "Uhhh," he seemed surprised by my question, and his bloodshot eyes bounced between Fallon and me with a drunken lull. "I am. Yes. Did you bring it?" his words were a raspy whisper.

  "Bring what?" I asked.

  "What I need. I need it. They said they would bring me more." His teeth started chattering as he spoke.

  "Have you seen Fontyane Veer?" Fallon asked with obvious annoyance.

  "He went to get me some more. I need it."

  Fallon sighed, sheathed her knife, and then reached into one of the pouches on her belt. She pulled out a pair of official-issue thick leather gloves and put them on her hands while she stared at the man. I moved to put my knife away and follow her example, but my wingmate shook her head, and I guessed that she wanted me to keep my blade ready.

  "We are going to take you to a local nest and ask you some questions, but first I'm going to pour twenty buckets of water on you." Fallon reached for the man, but as soon as her fingers touched his arm, Pruet screamed.

  "No!" I thought the man was about to tear his arm away from the blonde woman, but instead he jumped out of his doorway and tackled her.

  Fallon's face betrayed her surprise, and I stepped toward the man while my wingmate tried to push him back with her hands. Pruet seemed to have gone insane, and his skeletal body slid between her arms as if he was a wiggling snake.

  "I need it!" he screamed, and he slammed Fallon against the wall of the hallway.

  I didn't want to stab the man with my knife, so I punched him in the side of his malnourished face with the hand enclosing the hilt of my blade. It was a perfectly aimed strike, and I shot my fist out as I stepped toward the man, but his head didn't even snap to the side when I hit. He grabbed my arm with one of his free hands, and his jaw seemed to unhinge like a snake's.

  He moved to bite my forearm with his browned teeth, and my stomach jumped into my throat as I tried to pull away from him. Pruet's grip was ridiculously strong, and it felt as if a wooden vice was clamped onto my arm.

  The three of us were tangled together, but Fallon managed to free her arm and then slammed the gloved finger of her right hand into one of his bloodshot eyes. She poked him hard, and he let go of my arm with a screech, so that he might clutch his face. He took half a step away from us, and Fallon stomped him in the chest with her right foot while her back was pressed into the wall.

  Pruet stumbled back through the doorway of his apartment, and I charged inside the dark space after him. Dozens of beer bottles, empty glass vials, strangely shaped pots, and dirty plates littered the place. I had to dance around the trash for a few steps, and the crazed man had the chance to steady himself on the far wall of his room. He jumped at me, but I kicked out with my left foot, hitting him in his right knee, and the skeleton crashed into a pile of bottles beside me.

  I was on top of him instantly with my knee pressed into his back. My left hand yanked back his disgusting arm into a wing lock, and his screech somehow increased in volume.

  "Shut up!" Fallon kicked the man in the face and grabbed his other arm. "If you don't lie still, then you are going to get hurt."

  I thought the order was ironic since she's just kicked him, but Pruet stopped struggling, and my wingmate put her cuffs on the wrist she had grabbed. She got the metal clasp around his other wrist, and we both stepped away from his prone body. The man gurgled out a few confused words, and then he stopped twitching.

  "More vials, more beer bottles." I commented as we both examined the room.

  "Hey Pruet, what is in these vials?" Fallon asked the man. When he didn't answer, she nudged him with the toe of her boot and yelled the question.

  "I need it," he whispered.

  "What about the beer?" she asked, but the man moaned and started to shiver.

  "Look at his face," I said as my stomach dropped to my feet. The shutters on the windows were closed, but I could still see the spot where Fallon had kicked him.

  "What do you-- By the Priestesses." My wingmate stepped to a window and threw open the shutters. Light filled the room, and the squalor became even more apparent.

  I didn't care about the condition of the apartment anymore. I was more concerned by what oozed out of the cut on the man's face.

  It was a thick, yellow slime.

  "Shouldn't he bleed red?" my wingmate asked

  "I need it. Please."

  "Yeah, we know you need it," Fallon said as she shook her head.

  "You need what is in the vials?" I asked.

  "Yes, he said he would bring some," he gasped.

  "What is the stuff? Why did you do this to yourself?" Fallon asked.

  "Drink of the darkness. Moon Night's blood. Mine. Mine. I need it. Did you bring it? Do you have any?"

  "What is wrong with your blood?" I asked.

  "Everything is red, and black. The sun is too bright."

  "I think we should throw him in the drunk tank. He might make more sense tomorrow," I told Fallon.

  "The sun is too bright," Pruet moaned.

  "Alright. Let's get him out of here. Put your gloves on," the blonde woman said.

  I put away my knife, pulled on my thick gloves, and helped Fallon lift the assistant brewmaster from his apartment floor. He was oddly heavy, and we both had a hard time hoisting him.

  "The nearest nest is half a mile to our west. I don't want to drag him down those bamboo stairs, let's glide him down," Fallon said as we pulled the man out of his apartment and around the hallway of his building.

  When we reached the edge of the hallway balcony, the man started to wiggle in our arms again, but I half expected his movement, and I just tightened my grip on his arm. We turned away from the janky staircase so that we could have some room to change our Alulas, open our wings, and carry the man down to the ground.

  Then we stepped out of the cover of the building.

  The skeletal man let out a shriek that reminded me of the maggot-lizard creatures. It was loud enough to make my eyes blink against the pain, a
nd I saw Fallon clench her jaw in agony. Pruet twisted against our grasp, and he suddenly slammed his head back into Fallon's face. I heard her nose break, and the force of his blow made her release his arm and tumble to the floor of the walkway.

  I slid my arm though his elbow and twisted the joint as the man tried to twist around and bite me with his brown teeth. He thrashed again, and I couldn't help but break his arm. I thought he would have yelped, or screamed again, or done anything as a reaction to the snapping of his limb, but the crazed man didn't seem to feel pain. He twisted more toward me, and I had to punch him in the throat to keep him from biting me.

  That also meant I let go of his arm.

  The strike to his esophagus should have taken him to the ground, or at least stunned him. Pruet didn't seem to acknowledge pain, and he dashed away from me like a fleeing rat. He slid on his chest for a few feet when he stumbled before the bamboo staircase. Then he rolled down the steps like a ball of gnashing teeth. The poles of the staircase creaked with his descent and I saw one of the anchors rip free of the wall.

  A hundred thoughts spun through my mind at once. I knew that the man was sick, maybe with some sort of disease. If he ran through the streets of the city, he could bite someone or spread whatever sickness he had to others. Fallon and I would have to chase him, and I didn't like the idea of losing the man after all we had been through to get this lead. It was obvious that Pruet knew what was going on with these murders, but we needed to get him into a drunk tank so that he could recover.

  I kicked the last support anchor of the bamboo stairs, and it sprung away from the adobe with a thankful ping of release. The coiled staircase groaned and then rolled over on itself. Bamboo rods, rope ties, and steps flew in all directions, and the structure seemed to swallow the running skeleton.

  "Quick thinking," Fallon got to her feet and grabbed her bloody nose with her gloved fingers. She made a quick motion with her hands to snap the cartilage back into place, and then she blew a cupful of blood onto the balcony where we stood.

  "He's stuck in the bamboo," I said to her as I looked over the edge. Pruet was thrashing under the pile of rods, but he didn't appear to be injured.

  "Guards are approaching. The sound of the crash probably echoed through most of the city." I looked to where Fallon pointed and saw ten armored men running toward us.

  The blonde woman floated down to meet them on spread wings, and I followed her lead.

  "We've cuffed the man, but he is strong and tried to escape several times. He needs to be thrown into the drunk tank."

  "Yes Potentia, I'll-- By the Priestess!" the lead guard's eyes opened wide, and he pointed behind us.

  We both turned to see Pruet shrug off the mass of bamboo poles and stand. His right arm was torn off at the shoulder, and the limb hung from the handcuff attached to his left wrist as if he carried a child's doll. The man's eyes were almost completely red, and he glanced around the street with bewilderment. Then he focused his eyes on us and gnashed his teeth.

  "I need it!" he shouted again as he charged at us.

  He ran as fast as a stampeding bull, but he had been a good thirty feet from us and was greeted with twelve drawn rapiers. I stabbed him first in the heart, but the momentum of his run carried me back a step. Pruet's red eyes glared at me with malevolence, and he made a clawed grasp for my throat, but Fallon's blade took his head off at the shoulders, and his body slumped to the ground.

  I expected blood to pour from the neck of the man's corpse when it fell, or to come out of his chest when I pulled my blade out of him, but it was only the yellowish slime, and it crawled from his wounds like a thick porridge.

  "What was wrong with that man? Why isn't there any blood?" the guard's voice was a whisper of fear, and I saw that the other men glance to the top of the city. They were no doubt praying to the Priestesses.

  "We will need to examine the body to find out for sure. Can you fetch your coroner's team and have them deliver the body to Captain Ocellina's nest on the thirty-fourth level?" Fallon asked the guard.

  "Yes Potentia." He nodded to one of his men, who turned to run down the street. "We'll secure the area and keep the body covered."

  I kneeled next to what had once been Pruet Carna and forced myself to study the strange slime. It smelled horrible, like a combination of coppery blood, feces, tar, and stagnant water. I choked down stomach bile and stepped away from the corpse. The scent reminded me of Veer's house, but it also reminded me of the hidden room that had been discovered in Restina's brewery. That place had smelled of tar and strange algae.

  "Let's go back to the brewery," I told Fallon.

  "Think we missed something?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

  "Pruet said that Fontyane went to get him more of whatever he needed. There is a drug in the vials, and they are putting into their beer. His blood smells like the beer that investigator Mitar found in the hidden room," I said.

  "So you think Fontyane went to the brewery to take that beer? There is no way he can get it. We've got thirty guards there, and they all know what he looks like."

  "Unless he is looking like this." I pointed to the corpse that leaked ooze onto the cobblestones with my rapier. The blade was covered with the slime. I grabbed a handkerchief from my pocket, wiped off the blade, and then sheathed it.

  "I think we might be better off going back to the nest and pulling up records of Veer's family so we can speak with them, but I'll let you take the lead on this, pigeon." Fallon's wide mouth formed a smile, and I returned the expression.

  Our Alulas changed to feathers, and we lifted into the air over Petrasada. As we flew back toward Restina again, I turned the pieces of this investigation over in my head. Fallon might be correct, and Fontyane may have gone to hide out with one of his family members, but I didn't believe it. Ash had hinted to me about something in the vials. If it was an addictive drug, then they might be mixing it with the beer, and they were drinking it for some reason. What if the bodies in Fontyane Veer's house might not have been of people he had murdered, but were instead of others who had sampled the drug? What if the stuff drove them as crazy as Pruet?

  A theory formed in my brain, and I felt my breath catch as the pieces fell into place. They fit almost perfectly, and I knew that I'd figured out what was going on and Fontyane's involvement in everything.

  "Fallon!" I called out to my wingmate as we dove toward Restina's property again.

  She looked at me as we neared the ground, and she turned toward me when we landed in the shipping yard of the warehouse.

  "It is gone," I said as I looked around us.

  "What is gone?"

  "The cart that Dust tried to steal." There were a few guards standing fifty feet away at the covered entrance to the warehouse, and I beckoned to them.

  "Perhaps someone took it inside?" my wingmate asked. Her eyes narrowed at me, and then a smile spread across her lips. "Did you figure something out?"

  "Yes." I smiled back at her and turned to the approaching guards.

  "Where was the cart that was sitting right here?" I asked them.

  "I'm sorry, Potentia, which cart?" one of the guards asked.

  "It was here ten, maybe fifteen minutes ago. The man we arrested was attempting to steal it." After I finished speaking the group of men turned to each other and frowned.

  "Shit," Fallon said. "Let's go find it."

  We took to the air again and corkscrewed on a rising updraft. When we reached a few hundred feet above the city, I flew as close as I could to my wingmate and yelled into the wind.

  "I'm guessing that he'll head back to Pruet's house." She nodded at my words, and we darted down the sides of the city.

  I hadn't really looked for the cart on the way back to the brewery, but I was familiar with the rickshaw, and I knew that I could pick it out of a crowded street from my elevation. After a few minutes of travel over the city, I saw the small cart and a shrouded man pulling it down the ramp. I pointed to Fallon and made a hand signal to ask
her if we should arrest him now, and she nodded. We dove through the air like hawks and landed in front of the man.

  "Fontyane Veer, you are under arrest for the murder of Rafa Manus, Aetius Colo, Naris Manin, Tronique Ballator, Valteera Royar, and Quentin Eamat. Apply the brake to your cart and then kneel on the street with your palms touching the back of your head," I ordered the man. His body was covered with gray bandages, as was his face, and he wore a wide-brimmed hat such as a farmer would wear.

  He coughed into his bandages and then moved to pull up the lever that controlled the brake on his rickshaw. Fallon and I took a step toward the cart, but Veer suddenly skipped forward and let go of the poles. The man spun out of the way, and his rickshaw rolled down the ramp toward us.

  Fallon made a grab for one of the poles, and I tried to grasp the other one. My gloved hands closed around the wood, but the thing was too heavy, and the ten feet of rolling momentum made the full cart unstoppable. My boots slid across the cobblestone street, and I felt the weight of the thing push me over.

  "No!" Fallon shouted as the cart pivoted around her and started to tip precariously. I jumped backward and willed my cloak to convert into wings. A blast of air from the tumbling wood pushed me away, and my wingmate managed to roll to her side. The cart turned into a rolling avalanche of crates, wood shrapnel, bamboo missiles, and flying beer bottles. It was a bit before lunch time, but the wide ramp leading up to the next level still had plenty of citizens walking it. The masses screamed with surprise and ran out of the way as best as they could.

  The destroyed cart eventually came to rest at the bottom of the ramp, but the entire street was a disaster, covered in wood, glass, bamboo, shattered carts, and straw.

  And beer.

  The liquid was everywhere on the street. It dripped down the cobblestones, coated the road, and poured down the gutter. It didn't appear as if any citizens were injured or covered in the liquid, but I did see plenty of unbroken bottles lying on the street.

  "Is anyone hurt?" I shouted out to the crowd. Fontyane had finished his sprint down the ramp and was cutting through the confused crowd away from us.