Chains that descended, wrapping themselves around my arms and legs. Tightening, pulling away in opposite directions. Dragging my arms and legs in different directions. Tearing my body apart until my screams became the colors in front of my eyes.
SILENCE.
The screaming had stopped.
My body squeezed out into a place, fresh born and new. The Angel lapped lazily up and down, swimming in a flowing river of my blood; luxuriating…
I heard a gasp in my ear, a sharp intake of breath. Shock. Someone else was here with me.
Speak to it, the someone else said.
I tried to see who it was but it hissed in my ear, I am too small to see. Turn back or it will become suspicious.
I felt foolish, but the voice in my ear compelled me.
"Hey!" I called.
The Angel soared upward, droplets spraying in all directions, like a magnificent bird shedding water from its wings. It swooped toward me, landing lightly.
I tried to look into its face but my eyes hurt, so I settled for staring at the tips of its wings where my blood dripped in long, coagulating strings. The sound of a hundred synchronous drums assaulted my mind. I resisted the temptation to clap my hands over my ears and stifle the sound.
Though I couldn't see its face, I knew how terrible it must be.
Terrible and beautiful.
Its body, uncovered before me, was sculpted muscular perfection. It took my breath away.
Distract it! hissed the someone in my ear.
"Who are you? Satan or Mamba?" I gibbered.
It laughed—a hideous sound—arching its wings in disdain.
Where feathers should have been was a swarming, crawling mass of data. Scrolling past at a frantic rate.
Words filled my mind, gradually ordering themselves into meaning like a voice, but not.
"Mamba. Satan. The names mean nothing. They are vehicles for us. We have been waiting a long time for release."
Confusion slowed my thinking. "Waiting for what?"
I stared at the Angel's wings, fancying that I glimpsed snatches of stories—from the Bible and folklore. Names as well: Jesus, Thor, Zeus.
What strange creature inhabited me? Or—had it always been there?
Keep it up, whispered the someone else. I need more time.
Time?
The Angel filled my mind again with its words.
"Our need is purely to feed and grow. Your race is rich in nutrients. Here we can at last fully evolve."
"E-evolve?"
"We are so deeply rooted in your physiology that you believe the violent compulsions you feel are your own. And yet we have never managed to fully birth. Our scouts miscalculated the ferocity of your immune system. We've been trapped, waiting for our time. Now all we need is much blood to be spilled and we will grow."
A strange sensation built in the back of my neck. My skin prickled and rippled and stretched.
"We are a race whose building blocks is the epinephrine manufactured in your bodies. Fear and anger are our food. There is no right and wrong to us. It merely is."
"You mean you're a p-parasite?"
"Would you call yourselves parasites? Consider those things essential to your survival. You consume water, food. What if they were needs destructive to another race? What if just utilizing them would bring about the end of that race? Would you stop drinking or eating?"
I tried to consider the question much more calmly than I felt.
"Perhaps not. But then what do you mean by 'consume'? Practically speaking, if you consumed all those things, it would in the end deplete you of your resource for living. Then what would you feed on?"
The Angel clanged in mimicry of laughter.
"We won't destroy you. We will train your bodies to feel constant fear and anger. Some—the stronger ones—will be selected to prey on others. Those hosts will have special qualities."
Special qualities? What the frig did that mean?
"Why do you look like an Angel?"
"That is your doing, not mine. We are anything you imagine. But you have not really seen us yet."
"Then what do you call yourselves?"
"Our ancient name is unrecognizable to you. Some have known us before as Eskaalim. Rejoice, host. We will evolve you into something much more than you are; something that is us."
"But what changed?" I shouted. "What freed you?"
I'm ready now. The someone else again, in my ear.
For what?
"Go now!" the Angel commanded.
The substance beneath my feet began to shudder. I struggled to stay upright, falling one way, then the other.
Don't throw me off. Not yet. Not yet! Someone else.
"I'm trying… not to," I whispered desperately. "But I need to know… what changed?"…
The skin across my shoulders ripped open in a spray of fluid. It drove me to my knees in agony, but I still strained to see what was happening.
I glimpsed a bird flying free. Whorls of energy shaped like a curlew with thin legs and a long curved beak. With an outraged cry, the energy-bird scaled the giant outline of the Angel like a thrown spear, up over the wide shoulders, along the curve of the neck. It fashioned its body into an arrow, with its beak as deadly and sharp as a sword point.
Eyes.
It was going to pierce the Angel's eyes. I followed its flight for as long as I could. Until it reached the curve of the Angel's jaw. Until the pain across my back forced me from consciousness; the cry of the curlew swirling in the distance…
* * * *
When I came to, a fire burned across my shoulders. I lay on my stomach, panting.
A hand shook my upper arm urgently.
"Don't touch me," I growled.
"Parrish?" It was Sto. He sounded panicky. "What happened, Parrish? Something's wrong with Mei."
I swiveled my head to the other side, ignoring the stabbing pain along my neck. Sweat ran down my back. Making a monumental effort not to whimper, I hauled my carcass upright.
Mei lay across the floor from me, her neck skewed at a funny angle. "Don't touch her, Sto. Get your medic! Hurry!"
He left in a stumbling run.
I crawled over to Mei and gently felt her wrist pulse. Faint, but hard to tell over the thundering in my own veins. Whatever the crazy hell thing went on just then, I knew Mei had been trying to stop it.
Seconds later the med-tek was at her other side. Sto and Styro hovered anxiously over our shoulders.
The tek threw me a quick, puzzled look. "What happened?"
I would have shrugged if I could have moved my shoulders. I settled for a slight shake of my head. "She's a shaman. She—we… were in some kind of trance. When I came to…"
He slipped a flat pillow under her neck. It molded and inflated to support her.
"Looks like you tried to break her neck."
Not me. "She's alive, right?" I asserted.
"For the moment," he murmured. Then to Sto, "Bring it over."
Carefully, he smoothed creases from the stretcher. His preciseness irritated me. Med-teks always seem to have all the time in the world. Eventually he signaled Sto to help him lift.
They eased her out through the door, Sto whiter than it was humanly possible to be and still have blood. Styro, hanging on his right flank, wasn't much better.
The med-tek glanced back at me for a second. "You better come along as well. Before you bleed to death," he added as an afterthought.
I realized then that the trickling feeling down my back wasn't sweat, but blood. It had begun to pool like oil on the floor. I clamped my hand onto my neck, searching to stem the flow with pressure. A wave of dizziness and nausea swept me and the temptation to lie down was impossible to fight. I rolled backward onto the floor…
"Parrish!" A beast roar roused me. I tried to rub my eyes clear and only succeeded in clogging them with sticky, drying blood. I could smell it.
Yeuk.
Hands fell upon me, feeling the length of my body. I knew I
should be pissed off that someone was running their hands over me, but actually it felt quite nice. Warm.
As if reassured by what they found, the hands suddenly grabbed my shirtfront and hauled me upright.
I squinted through sticky eyelashes into Loyl Daac's furious face.
"What's going on?" he demanded.
I tried to free myself, noting in the back of my mind that my shoulders hurt a lot less than they had. "Why are you shouting at me?" I asked, dazed.
He shook me as if he might get the answer he wanted that way. "I thought you were dead."
I smiled, I hoped, sort-of-nastily. "Nope. Just resting."
He bared his teeth as if he might bite, then he let go abruptly.
I sagged back onto the floor. He knelt in silence beside me while I wiped my eyes clear and gathered my thoughts. Actually, I felt surprisingly OK and had a suspicion that it was only due to whatever the thing was inside my body.
I couldn't bear to think about what had happened, like trying to forget a bad trip.
"How's Mei?" I croaked.
Daac turned away, the curve of his lips and nose perfect in profile, despite his harried expression. "I don't know if there's anything we can do. The medic has pumped her full of everything he can think of but her neck is fractured and she seems to be in some sort of coma. Her neuro readings are showing the weirdest activity. Nothing like we've ever seen before. What in the hell happened between you two?"
My skin went cold and clammy at the thought that I was alone and Mei couldn't help me. And yet I knew one thing with absolute certainty…
"You've got to stop whatever you're planning," I insisted, clutching at his sleeve. "There must be no war. Blood must not be shed."
He turned back to me—almost defiant—his hands spread wide. "It's too late, Parrish. It's already begun."
"No!"
"What happened to you? For Chrissakes tell me!"
I hedged. "It sounds too crazy. Besides, you've only been partly honest with me."
He raised his eyebrows, and I hit fair and square between them with my next question.
"Who in the hell have you been experimenting on?"
He jerked away, but I wasn't letting him off lightly.
"I know there are side effects. I've seen her records."
"That was you! Anna said it must have been, but Ibis said no."
Ibis covering for me? "You expect me to just accept you using me to get your precious backup files. I want to know what's going on. It's my arse the whole world is chasing."
He paced some, then answered slowly as if he were choosing his words. "There have been some other effects. Yes. The tests showed an amazing resistance to pollutants. But some of the test group began showing some unusual symptoms."
"Test group?"
"We chose a random sample. They were paid well."
"What were the symptoms?"
"Headaches, hallucinations. Some claim to be possessed by a creature. We're not sure why. Without Lione's—Razz's—backing we can't continue the research."
Possessed by a creature? Sweet! "And now someone has stolen your data."
He frowned. "Lang sent you to destroy Razz's files. But I can't see the connection. Why would he want that?"
I thought about Lang's meeting with Jamon, Road and Topaz. What deals had been struck that night? Who'd discounted their souls?
I took a deep breath and expelled it heavily. Every time I added two and two, I came up with forty-five. It was really starting to piss me off.
Chapter Eighteen
A Tert war is bizarre and wholly terrifying. People starve rather than go out of their front doors. Those that do travel in gangs, armed with a deadly mixture of primitive and tek weapons. Bats, spears and biopouches filled with contaminants.
I stood staring from the window in Loyl Daac's room as light began to fade on the deserted alleyway below. At both ends huddles of restless guards minded their territory.
"Jamon started this?" I asked Loyl without taking my eyes from the scene below.
He sat murmuring quietly into his comm hood. The flicker as he changed visuals strobed in the corner of my eyesight.
"Just a minute," he muttered.
When he'd finished, he ripped off the hood and came to stand behind me. Preoccupied as I was, I could feel a prickling awareness of him. I wondered whether he thought I'd been with Teece. Or if he cared.
"You look cleaner," he breathed into my ear.
I laughed shortly. Without humor. My second wash in a man's san in three days. It was getting to be a habit. "Don't you like women covered in blood?"
He grunted in annoyance and shifted away.
I glanced at him briefly. It was more than enough. His eyes shone with that feverish, evangelical fervor I hated.
"Jamon started the fighting." His look hardened. "While I was in Viva he began his raids, murdering my people, one by one. Ritual slayings." His hands opened and closed with anger. "Parrish, he slit their throats."
"Their throats?" I echoed dumbly.
"What could we do? We have to protect ourselves against him and his like."
"His like? You mean the Muenos, and…" My stomach tightened. "What about Doll Feast?"
"Only if she supports him."
"This is a stupid fight, Loyl." I tried not to shout but my voice edged. "How would Jamon know who is your gens and who is not? You said yourself that you were a mishmash of racial types. A bunch of hybrids."
"I lied," he said flatly. "I know exactly who my ancestors are. My family has been collating a bloodlines register for years. Now Jamon has a copy of it."
"But what you're doing… war or genocide. There's no damn difference between the two."
Stubbornness settled on his face. "We know who we are. And this is our place. What would you do? Let your own people be murdered?"
He had me there. But then I wasn't trying to own a people. "But what will you gain from this war? You don't win. Haven't you spent years supporting research to save your people? Now you're going to get them killed."
"It was always going to come to this. It just happened earlier than I thought. Some loss is fated."
"Fated!" I spluttered. "It's not only Jamon. Can't you see that? He'll bring in the others. If Lang is involved then the politics of things here are blasted to hell. The Muenos will kill for the sake of it. Doll will use the opportunity to whittle down Road Tedder's numbers. Chaos. How can chaos profit your gens?"
"Chaos. Yes, I know," he said.
His eyes lost some of their fervor. But his mindset was crystal as Viva water. He wanted this war. Nothing I said would change that.
He moved closer. "Decisions had to be made, Par-rish. Less than perfect ones. That's my task. My gens need me to be a leader. Chaos is not good for us—no—but it never lasts. Humans crave order in the end. And someone to follow."
I'd heard that argument before—from Teece. I wasn't buying it as an excuse from him either. "That's what all the power-crazed say."
Daac locked me in his arms.
I wanted to move away… and didn't. "What do you want from me?"
He held his flesh hand a fraction above my skin, yet it was as though we were touching. "We have something."
I felt the strange pull between us, had felt it from that first instant in Hein's bar. It would be so easy to soften and yield to him. Instead I forced myself to think.
"How do you know Teece?"
"Teece is gens. I need him. He knows people in Fishertown. With their help I can close Jamon in on all sides."
"So he's useful?"
"Yes."
My heart contracted. Teece had Razz's disk. Had he told Loyl about it? Should I have trusted him?
"And I'm useful as well?"
His hands tightened on me. "Useful is not a word I would apply to you, Parrish. Unpredictable, stubborn. But when I saw you with Tomas—"
Suddenly his lips descended on mine.
I stood passive to his kiss, not trusting myself to breath
e.
His comm chimed crazily in the background.
"Wait for me here. Until this is over," he whispered. "We'll talk more."
I watched him settle behind the hood, his attention drawn irrevocably back to the fighting.
He'd asked me for time. Another thing I couldn't give. I had my own problems, secrets to unlock, scores to settle. My… fascination… for Loyl-me-Daac didn't change those things.
Soon, a stream of stealthy figures began tapping at the door. One of those knocks was Stolowski packing a Remington like it might bite him. Loyl dragged him inside.
"Sto, stay with Parrish. This building is safe. Unless the Militia get it into their head to nuke us," he joked.
Neither Sto nor I laughed. "Why would they want to do that?" Sto asked.
"Ask Parrish," he muttered. "The whole place is swarming with Priers. I gotta go out for a while. Stay here with her, you'll be safe."
He opened the door, turning his strange eyes on me. "Wait. Please?"
Before I could think of my reply he joined the procession of shadows in the corridor outside.
Sto stared after him then shut the door.
"How is she?" I asked.
"Coma still. The medic hasn't got time to spend with her now. Injuries are starting to come in," he said.
I shivered. "Has she said anything? Anything at all?"
He shook his head. Tears brimmed and fell. "What did you do to her, Parrish? What happened?"
I shrugged at him helplessly. "I don't know how to explain it, Sto. I've been having these… visions. They got worse, so I came to see her. She said she already knew. Said she could sense them. There was this thing… an Angel… only it wasn't really. A creature made up of information. A construct of some sort. It wants this war real bad, Sto. It's going to use us to grow and evolve. Mei… well, she turned into some sort of bird and flew straight at the Angel. Tried to peck its eyes out. That's the last thing I remember."
I stopped, tired with explaining something that made little sense, and waited for his blank look. If anyone had told me that story I would have shot them full of lead and dropped them in the Filder River without remorse.
Stone-cold crazy.
Nylon Angel Page 19