Caeles turned and caught the shine in the magus’ eye. ‘That isn’t funny. And he’s not just an errant freak. It’s an errant freak with a cybernetically augmented body.’
‘Like you.’
‘Like me. Only without the pleasant temperament. And if – if – Cleric’s got some grand scheme with the consequences you’ve been implying, how the hell am I meant to keep Gabel out of it? That’s why I’m here, right? To protect that fool.’
‘I’d like to tell you something about the factotum you distrust so completely. He knows that fretting over the future – however near – solves nothing. He’s happy with what he has.’
‘Rowan? He might not have her for long. Look at her. She’s skeletal: you can see the bones in her arms. Look how pale she is. I’m surprised she lasted this long.’
‘She’s fighting because she has to.’
‘You know as well as I do what’s wrong with her. I’m sure the ninja senses it too. There’s nothing anyone can do to help her.’
‘There might be. The man we all seek has the knowledge.’
‘Perhaps,’ Caeles said, and rolled over.
~
Across the fire, Sarai leaned into Colan and they held each other. The Caballeros had surprised himself by accepting her company, despite his natural revulsion at her errant condition. The Horsemen of Death were not good teachers or fine thinkers; their every notion was trained toward battle and strategy, from their leader Captain Alvares on down to the lowest stable hand. Colan wondered at how quickly disparate he had become from the group that had raised him, and how easily he had allowed himself to open up to the group and Sarai in particular. The Caballeros were notorious for their intolerance, their brutality. He wondered why he should be so different.
‘I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘Of what will happen now that we’re in the rainforest.’
‘There aren’t many dangers here. Nothing that I can’t protect you from.’
‘You’re going to leave me.’
The knight’s grip around her waist tightened slightly, and he released her, fearful of making her uncomfortable with the sharp edges of his armour.
‘I don’t want you to leave,’ she murmured, and he held her again.
‘I’ve things to do once I get to the camp.’
‘Are you going to try and get back with the Caballeros?’
‘They’re my family,’ he said.
‘They were your jailers.’
‘My protectors. My benefactors.’
‘They might kill you.’
‘They might not.’
Sarai surprised him by throwing her knuckles against the black wall of his chestplate. She’d taken to wearing her facebelt loose around her neck, revealing more of her Caribbean skin and her unsettling green eyes. Looking closely with the fire close enough to aid his vision, Colan could just make out the darker, thinner layer of pigment that must cover her pupils. He realised then that the Scathac must see the world in an indomitable shade of green.
‘Don’t play around with me,’ she said sharply. ‘You said yourself that you weren’t good enough for them. They kicked you out and now you’re an outcast. Stay with me; help me find my son.’
‘What about his father…?’
‘The man doesn’t want Isaac, he wants me. He can’t have me.’
Colan sighed and tightened his hold around Sarai.
‘I wish I could see your face,’ she murmured quietly, but before he could reply she had fallen asleep.
~
Gabel watched them through the flames and couldn’t help but growl to himself. Rowan looked up at him. In the light of the fire, her eyes had the same odd peculiarity as the night Bethany died; the same curious hint of colour, the unnerving iridescent gleam.
‘What is it?’ she asked softly, her face orange in the firelight.
‘Nothing,’ he replied. After blinking, the gleam to her eyes had gone. ‘I’m just exhausted. And angry.’
He didn’t tell her that he was also feeling progressively ill in his stomach. What he had always taken for general anxiety seemed to have fast developed into hot nausea since their departure from the Transitway. He speculated on the cause – perhaps a pollen or spore originating in the rainforest – but knew that his unease and his mild hair loss had started long before even Iilyani.
‘What do you have to be angry about?’ Rowan asked him, teasing his thoughts back to the present.
‘The old man, for one,’ he replied. ‘He never told us that we would be facing pre-Conflict super weapons and the madmen that control them.’
The hunter hissed and his hand, which had been palm-down in the dirt, balled into a fist. He had scooped up a mound of sandy earth, which he looked at briefly before tossing into the fire.
‘I only came here to help you, and he’s made this into some ridiculous crusade.’
‘Hush,’ she replied, and put a hand on his. ‘When you speak like that…’
‘What?’
‘You have the same look as when you talk about William Teague…’
‘Teague’s dead! I killed him.’
‘And don’t think that I am not glad of it. That beast killed Bethany and her parents.’
‘And others!’ Gabel cried, and saw out of the corner of his eye when Caeles turned and stared. Gabel quickly drew from his pack a large flask of water and emptied the contents over his hands, dropping the flask to rub them together.
‘Joseph!’ said Rowan, pulling away the half-empty flask. ‘Stop it!’
‘And others! Not just Bethany … He killed her, not me!’ he stammered as he stood, and for a second looked through the fire and caught Caeles’ eye just as the cyborg said:
‘He’s fucking insane.’
‘You!’ Gabel yelled. ‘You know nothing.’
He spun and walked to the edge of the clearing and threw himself down into the ferny grass to sleep.
Rowan sat alone by the fire, her eyes on Caeles. The others were quietly observing.
‘Who was he talking about if not his girl Bethany?’ the cyborg asked, quieter now. ‘A friend of his?’
‘No,’ Rowan said. ‘I think that he was talking about Rebekah.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘He and Bethany talked about her sometimes, in the church in Niu Correntia. He never spoke of her to me, though,’ she added, curling up beside the fire and closing her eyes. ‘All I know is that she died.’
~
They journeyed for three days before coming across the first signs of the nomadic camp that Colan hoped to find. With each passing hour Gabel felt within himself a flaming winged creature that soaked itself into his organs, filling his stomach, his lungs, grasping his heart. Nausea welled up in him, often making him stop to vomit into the cavernous hollows between the roots of the giant trees. His skin felt like it was slipping from his body, and what was left of his hair constantly itched. He was more than half bald now, and to hide it he kept his hat firmly on his head at all times.
At night, he dreamed of white fire and endless pits, of great courtyards inside towering ramparts made of ashen stone, and decorated with bodies. He saw monstrous creatures all around him, and a dark winged presence that he could never see, but watched over him always. By day, he felt nothing but the burning in his stomach. He was stoic and quiet, and fancied the others saw no change, but on the inside he knew he was already past salvation.
He wondered if he had contracted some hideous tropical illness, but knew that he was trying to find an explanation other than the obvious one: he was changing somehow. It had been very gradual, but was now peaking. This metamorphosis, he knew, would change everything. The creature from his dreams had caught up with him at last, and he would never be himself again.
The climate made him feel worse. The overpowering heat of the rainforest was worse than the desert. It was a terrible humidity that made his shirt cling to his back and the hair under his hat plaster itself to his forehead. It seemed to rain constantly – a shock from t
he barren lack of moisture out on the Plains – but the canopy of leaves above kept the water from cooling him, and it felt like torture.
Rays of sunlight came through the canopy and tilted until finally disappearing altogether. Every night when this happened they made no fire and slept without blankets. Gabel forced himself to sleep away from Rowan, frightful of what he might do to her; the horrific memories of what the rusalki had made him do on the Tractatus returned to fill him with dread.
On the second night he began to feel himself lose his mind. It felt like he was going mad, but he knew – he was certain – that it was something else, some force pulling him in directions it was unnatural to go, tugging at his mind and playing tricks. He couldn’t control his limbs that night, suffering a waking paralysis that terrified him into a stuporous sleep; when he awoke he found that his faculties had returned and he could move.
The third night he didn’t sleep at all, chained to consciousness by the unseen presence that lingered over his dreams. He felt uninhibited rage wash through him, a constant uncontrollable urge for destruction and a tireless need for the taste of blood.
He wondered then if perhaps a sanguilac he may have battled long ago had passed on its base virus. Instantly his mind rejected the implausible thought. Gabel knew with utter certainty that it was something else.
The fourth day after they entered the rainforest was when they finally encountered the gypsy travellers that the Caballero hoped would accommodate him. Gabel barely understood what they were saying, though they spoke his language and had no accents, yet although his ears misunderstood, his mind worked out their words for him. His sight had been blurred for longer than a day now, and it was getting harder to distinguish between the other members of the party.
He heard snippets of conversation, and was aware that he was being led about the tiny camp and shown where they would sleep for this night and the next. He heard voices belonging to people he knew were a long, long way away, yet could understand every word as long as he trained his mind to it.
He heard Rowan say how she was worried about him.
He heard, through a haze of conversation, the voices of Sarai and Colan, alone somewhere far away, each tentatively expressing what they thought might be love for one another, and embracing.
He heard Caeles mutter under his breath, voicing his desire to continue the journey and “get it over with”. Gabel felt nothing but disdain for him; the burning new hatred that had integrated itself within every part of his body felt drawn to the man, and was directed in a blazing torrent of emotion whenever the hunter heard his voice, or smelled his clothes that were damp from the air. Every one of his senses was enflamed.
~
That night he had one of the rare moments of lucidity. He felt the emotions still there, smouldering away, but could think much more clearly.
His head was a mess of sensations he didn’t understand, all seeming to be random, but after a while of concentrating he realised that something, like the beating of drums, seemed to hold everything together.
Working his way through each sensation, he tried to find his way to the drumbeat.
Sights: the curved, dark ceiling of the caravan, his own soaked hair over his eyes. Tastes: his own blood (he must have bitten his tongue), and tiny particles from the plants outside. Smells: wet foliage, damp clothes and wood, the sweaty bodies sleeping nearby. Touch: the hard mattress under his back, the hair against his forehead, the shirt unfastened over his chest. Sounds: the chirping of insects outside, the steady breathing of people elsewhere, the rustle of wind and the patter of rain.
All these he filed away after focusing on each one until he was sure what was what. All that remained now was the sound of drumbeats, the racket of a hundred fists pounding some hollow thing from every direction. He tried to concentrate on just one of them, the loudest, and as soon as he did he realised that it was his own heart, throbbing against his ribs.
Gabel laughed, now finally understanding what had been bothering him all night. How long had it been, since he first heard the cacophony? Hours? Or only minutes?
He singled out each of the heartbeats, and placed directions on each of them. All were slower than his, thumping quietly inside their owners’ chests. He counted thirty-two altogether, including his own. All beat with a steady regular rhythm, but there was one – something he had heard before but didn’t understand – that was different, and it disgusted him.
He sat up on the mattress trying to fix a location for this abominable thing, and when he pinpointed it, he instantly knew. Just as he had placed the smells and sounds all around him, he immediately recognised the abomination as Caeles, the creature with the counterfeit body and harvested organs. That monster was lying there, pumping blood around what was left of him with an ancient heart that was worn out, tired of living, but it kept him alive because its job was reduced with each piece of his body that had been removed so long ago.
‘Monster,’ Gabel said aloud, feeling the heat turn over inside him.
He associated Caeles with the walking cadavers that he hunted daily before this oddyssey, with the sanguisuga and the theriopes that it was his job, and pleasure, to eradicate. A great fiery bird flapped its wings inside him, imbuing all his being with an incinerating heat that loaded his body with hatred and disgust.
He was aware that he was standing and getting out of the caravan, and felt his legs pump themselves with blood and propel the rest of him across the clearing, felt fire in his mind, but after that there was only pain and confusion, and he slipped into a dark and frightening unconsciousness.
~
The first thing he heard was screaming, but before everything else he was aware of only the darkness. He tried to open his eyes, but couldn’t.
The screaming didn’t stop, but it did get louder. He was vaguely conscious of figures rushing in all directions around him, and heard feet crash through undergrowth and hands beat back vines and branches.
He was standing. Feeling bubbling, bitter nausea.
The screams were still there, coming from two or three people now. He heard a noise like an animal by his feet, a groan, but it didn’t interest him when there were so many other confusions to work out.
Like who he was. Slowly, very slowly, with the screams dragging out the process, he remembered his name, and then the names of the others around him. He placed the loudest screamer.
Rowan…?
He attempted to lift his eyelids, and must have been at least partially successful because a frightful light lashed his eyes. He saw shapes moving around, and something large and tall immediately in front of him. He realised he was standing before a massive tree, and looked down at his feet to see a collapsed figure, curled up against its trunk.
He smelled and tasted blood.
Stepping slowly away, moving backward, he blinked his painful, watery eyes. A lot of people were standing and watching, others rushing to the man by his feet. He saw Rowan, backed up against a caravan, crying into the arms of someone … the magus. He recognised Colan and Sarai looking horrified amidst a cluster of young saplings.
He smelled blood again, and looked over the ground to see a trail of it leading from a great splatter just outside of one of the caravans. The spatter turned into a stream that wound its way toward him. He looked at his feet, which were caked in it. His hands were also bloody, awfully so, dripping with the thick liquid that his nerves insisted was still hot. He stood in a pool of it, and the source of the pool was the man by the tree, shivering and clutching his gaping stomach, a massive gash stretched from groin to gullet.
Gabel felt dizzy, and knew he was falling. He barely felt himself land on some thick bed of flowers, but smelt the blood all over himself and felt sick. He sat up though, the nausea abating, and gazed over at the man who was dying just a few feet away, his glassy eyes fixed firmly on Gabel.
*
Twenty-Seven
ETCHED IN TILE
The errant Rosanna waited for her chest to sto
p heaving. She slowly counted her breaths. As the length of each intake of air increased, she felt sleep take her and she became lost in dreams, dwelling on lingering images from the very-recent past: pleasant memories that excited her in sleep almost as much as when she had been awake.
Johnmal watched her eyelids flutter. When he saw that she was finally asleep, he got out of bed and padded slowly across the room. Still naked and glistening, he began his nightly exercises: sit-ups, push-ups, stretches, then the usual jog around the facility, for which he wore a robe to conceal himself.
No-one else was around. The boss was asleep, Rose was asleep; he was entirely alone, and tired as he was he felt nothing but an exulting pride in being the only conscious being for miles around. He owned the world.
He and Rosanna had slept together in an unused apartment that they’d stumbled across just an hour or three earlier, some empty room deep inside the facility, which had been designed to accommodate someone but had never been slept in. Obviously Cleric had had a larger staff in mind when he built the place however many decades ago, as there were many rooms Johnmal assumed had never been used. The apartment area had been one of these newly discovered playgrounds, and were now thoroughly broken in; Rosanna had torn a heavy notch into the wall above the bed-head, her territorial mark.
He jogged through the residential block and down into the subbasement. Johnmal ran quickly past the room with the booth, and then by the holding pens, which frightened him a little but continued to fascinate him (though why, he couldn’t fathom). Behind the thick doors, Cleric’s outlandish creatures stirred.
On the way back up the ramps and staircases he gulped down water, which he carried in a plastic bottle. Always he needed water, but more so during exercise, and especially after sex. He stopped at another apartment and filled up the container in the sink, then continued at a more leisurely pace back to where Rosanna slept soundly.
He lay back down beside her, still in the robe, and slept with the touch of her hot body against his, saturated by the smell of her skin.
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