Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller by Darren Stapleton Read Free Book Online Page B

have. I knew it was a mistake to get anyone involved, even…’ I let the sentence taper off, not liking where it was going.
    ‘Go on, say it,’ she said.
    I didn’t.
    ‘A prostitute. Whore. Say it. The terms mean nothing to me.’
    I still didn’t say anything.
    We both sat quietly and I used the opportunity to listen to see if our voices had brought any discernible attention from our captors. It had not.
    Her tone changed, ‘Look I am not one of those ‘tarts with a heart’, attached to you in any way other than by your wallet so you don’t have to feel responsible for me. I knew the risks, what I was getting into, and you paid me fairly. You’re just another fuck, so to speak, so get off your hero horse and get us out of this cold dark mess. I thought you were supposed to be good at this stuff.’
    ‘Is that your attempt at motivational speaking?’
    ‘Fuck you Drake.’
    She was right. I was not obligated to her. I had ended countless lives in my military and now mercenary careers, lives meaning much more to the world than this expensive hooker ever would, but that was not the point. She was on my team, one of my crew, and if being in the Vanguard had pounded one thing into my meat-headed skull it was that Corps always came before self, if not for survival then for the dignity of death with honour.
    Death with honour.
    The walls of the perfect blackness of the cell fell in on me, and I felt my heartbeat and breathing start to gallop, my pulse boomed through my body, metronomic thunder. Narcotics swayed me again, took me somewhere else. Images and sounds from long ago played across the screen of my mind’s eye…
    *
    ...I saw the child chopping wood and he smiled at me. A Nimbus breeze teased his unkempt fringe into motion and he rested his small hatchet down to wipe the hair from his eyes. As he chopped two small chunks of log tumbled from the stump, yellowy bark splinters flew off onto the forest floor to rest among the pine needles. He picked them up, dropped them onto a pile and placed another log onto the stump. He raised the hatchet again….
    *
    ‘You alright? Your breathing is all over the place,’ she said.
    ‘Fine, only trying to figure a way out of here.’
    ‘Wherever here is.’
    Her dress rustled as she shuffled again, a fruitless attempt at trying to get comfortable and I had an idea. It was a long shot but considering our odds on getting out of here alive, it was a chance.
    I went through all the permutations in my head.
    It was our only chance.
    And she was not going to like it.

Men are to government
    As wasps are to picnics.
    Old Lowlands Bygones Gone
    A. Gerritas

CHAPTER 10
     
    Nimbus City looked like a tree stump, a flat topped, sheer sided mountain. It’s circular settlement perched on a flat wheel atop vertical faces, rising up from the lakes and plains of the Nimbus state like a podium from the stage of the Lowlands and Deadland swamps.
    Croel and Mckeever flew beyond the neglected buildings of Nimbus’ City centre and into it’s outlying rich swathe of land called the Edgelands. It was difficult to believe they were still over Nimbus City at all. Occupying the fertile land at the cliff’s edge the buildings here were opulent and sprawling. As clear a demarcation of social status as was visible anywhere in the surviving world, and as juxtaposed to their library as possible.
    There were no peaks or valleys, no slate grey mountain ranges punching up towards the atmosphere to allow any kind of distance perspective up here, just model homes of the rich, winged and fortunate.
    As they circled, Croel scanned the skies for danger, natural or otherwise.
    If wars and conflict had changed the face of the earth over time, then nature had surely obliterated it. The enormous elliptical plinth that formed Nimbus’ capital looked like a volcano, but with solid, sheer, vertical sides at it’s full circumference. It looked like an enormous stepping stone waiting for a mythical giant’s