www.thevalentinechronicles.com presents:
Night Time
by Paul L. Mathews
Part Three
Creatures of the Night
Folkore labelled him a ‘Draugr’—an
ethereal and intangible spirit born of concrete, tar and street violence.
Whatever he truly was, Mortlock now flowed through
the streets of Promise leaving a swelter of heat in his wake that momentarily
banished the unseasonal cold that had befallen the
night. In the shadow of the Torch he cascaded about the Theocracy gentry that sat
in their restaurants and carriages. They sweated and pulled on tight collars as
he swept by. He passed startled alien merchants in their finery, washed over
Theocracy nobles in their brass armour, and flowed past boutiques brimming with
priceless object d’art, exquisite foods and exotic robots.
Ignorant of the sweet
smells of off-world perfumes, indifferent to the alarm of perspiring Constables,
he surged from the cobbled streets and into the labyrinthine congestion of
neo-gothic towers, arches, and churches that radiated from the Torch. He poured
over the gravs, pack animals and old cars that fought through the narrow,
twisting streets, their torturous progress documented by the blare of horns,
insults, and bestial cries. The dizzying spectrum of life—from beggars to merchants, from soldiers to priests, and all colours
between—paused as he swirled by, and the stench of tarmac and burnt rubber
seized them, gave them pause and made them nauseous.
With those gravs,
pony-traps, and flat-beds behind he rushed on, and the streets dipped downhill
as he crashed toward the estuary. Here terraces and tenements were tied
together with myriad lines of washing which contorted and quivered, tortured in
the heat of his passing. The sound of baying animals, wailing children, and
quarrelling adults leaked from the thick, ugly walls and filled the night sky,
but he cared not.
Another sharp turn, and he bore down toward the riverbank that fed into
the estuary before he flooded Promise’s dense docks with his redolence and
heat. Night workers gasped for breath and covered their mouths. Gone as quickly
as he’d arrived, oblivious to the cranes that rose into the night, the blaring
of horns from inbound freighters and the taste of brine on the breeze, he sped
on.
Into the industrial sector
now, he rushed by workshops that rang with the pounding of machines and the
rhythm of industry, past cold and darkened warehouses, and over forges that
danced with the light of furnaces and welding-lances, their heat made weak and
timid by the swelter of his passing. The tired workers trudging home and their
reluctant counterparts plodding to work staggered as he washed over them, their
brows seized by sweat and their lungs stung by hot air.
Then Mortlock
crashed against the walls of his master’s home and vaporised like a wave against
a sea-break, only to materialise inside and shudder to a halt in the workshop
therein. He hovered and watched in silence whilst the mutant rat continued to
work on Vast.
The Vermiddion
lay on an operating table, a Doctorpus unit poised
over her inert form. Stood between his patient and Mortlock,
Tap-tap blocked most of the view of the table, and all the spirit could see of
the Amazon was the sheet draped over her legs, and the top of her head which
now sported cropped, sheer white hair. With delicate fingers and absolute
precision, Tap-tap completed his work before, with a pause and satisfied nods,
turning his heads to look at Mortlock. The rat was
one of the few living creatures that could see Mortlock,
and the Draugr looked away in deference, his gaze
fixed on the workshop floor.
“What news?” Tap-tap asked.
The servant stole a glance at his master, and saw the halos of whiskers about
his twin muzzles quiver when he spoke. The small black eyes bored into him, and
the noses twitched incessantly.
“Things move faster than I
thought possible.” The Draugr’s voice, a thin whisper
of heat that shivered in the air, tore his throat and the words burnt his
mouth. Duty bound, he forged another sentence, determined to serve his master.
“The night darkens about Ivan Valentine. I doubt he will see another dawn.”
“He’d better. He owes us
for this.” Tap-tap’s twin heads nodded towards the dormant Vast. “We don’t work
for free.”
“He has been captured by
Black Gladys and given to The Now’s son in the Torch.” Molten tears of pain
steamed as they dripped from his blazing eyes, but Mortlock
pushed on. “The Siberian Winter has
just landed in the city’s spaceport. It bears a witch,
a robot dog and a killing machine all intent on Valentine’s destruction. As we
speak a Coven prowls the streets in league with Mister Grinzz.
They seek him also.” Mortlock risked another look at
Tap-tap, but the disapproval in the rat’s eyes made him look away once more
before he summoned his strength for one last sentence.
“I fear,” he whispered, “you
will never see Ivan Valentine again.”
#
It had, Jed Coven reflected
as he watched Mister Grinzz at work, been years since
he’d seen the tracker go about his business.
On the garish street
outside the Reptile House, the ebb and flow of barely dressed detritus and its
consumers undulated about him, and Jed watched Grinzz
as the Krak’n unlocked a hinged panel on the
breastplate of his armour. This small aperture opened to reveal a tarnished
brass knocker screwed onto a secondary layer of Grinzz’s
armour. Metal scraped metal as the knocker opened its eyes, and its nose—now
devoid of whatever brass ring had once blocked its flared and prodigious
nostrils—wrinkled. It blinked and yawned, its gargoyle face making a metallic
noise as it stretched.
“I say! What time is it?” It
sounded sullen and sleepy. “I’ve barely slept.”
“You have slept long e-nough,” Grinzz said. “Now it is
time to earn your keep.”
Jed popped a cigarette into
his mouth as the knocker grumbled. A smile touched his lips as he extracted his
zippo from the pocket of his worn pants.
“What on earth is a Coven
doing here!” the knocker asked, voice shrill and
querulous. It watched Jed shield his cigarette with one hand, and fire up the zippo with the other. “You hate the bloody Covens!”
“Can’t say I like your
friend that much neither,” Jed said. He took the briefest moment to admire the zippo. An old silver affair with “Fuck Communism” engraved
in its hide, it had been a gift from Pa when he and Jed had been reunited after
all those years. He put it back in his pocket and said, “But we’ve reached
ourselves an agreement, have we not?”
Grinzz nodded and glared at Jed. “And the soo-ner
we find our prey, the soo-ner the ag-ree-ment
ends.” He gave the knocker a sharp tap on its bulbous nose with his thumb. “So
get to work.”
“I should cocoa!” the
knocker said. “You can’t keep me under this armour for hours on end and then
just expect me to— Oh! Hullo!” The knockers eyes
widened as Grinzz produced a small metal box from one
of the many pouches on his belt. With thick, green fingers showing a dexterity
that surprised Jed, the Krak’n opened the box to
reveal a pinkish powder. “Oh! I say! Oh, yes!” The knocker’s nostrils twitched,
and its lips parted as a tongue of flexible metal tracked back and forth across
them. “Yes indeed, that’s it…oooo! My
word!”
Grinzz took a pinch of the powder between his forefinger and
thumb, and held it under the knocker’s nose. The metal nostrils flared, and the
powder vanished.
A smile crept across Jed’s
lips, his cigarette momentarily forgotten. This were’n’
somethin’ you saw ev’ryday.
“And whom,” the knocker
asked, face now dominated by a stupefied smile, “am I sniffing out, exactly?”
#
Once more Tatiana, Katarina
and Maxim assumed their red holographic robes as they walked through the precinct
known as
Tatiana’s nose wrinkled a
little as a heady combination of smells seeped from the throng. She looked
about her, and her eyes narrowed as she tried to count just how many
evangelists and clerics addressed the crowds. They dwarfed the amount of
storytellers and activists , as did their audiences.
She’d never seen so many holy men in one place before. Most rulers in the Pagentorns—her parents included—didn’t trust religion, or its hold over people. She leant to murmur in
Maxim’s ear, “Why are they so many preachers here?”
Inside his holographic
hood, Maxim smiled sardonically. “It’s all part of the caring and sharing
Theocracy. They’ll conscript your healthy relatives for their wars, but they’ll
give you all the religious freedom you want to pray for their safety.”
“That’s magnanimous of
them,” Tatiana said with a sideways glance at a nearby Constable. It watched
the crowd with hawkish attention.
“Magnanimous?” Maxim
allowed himself something between a grunt and a chuckle.
#
“They’re in that lot,” said
the knocker. “Somewhere.”
Jed and Grinzz
looked out over the masses in the park, and the Coven sneered, the cigarette
dangling from his bottom lip.
“Can you be a lil’ more precise,” Jed said.
“You’ll have to give me a
moment, old boy.” The knocker’s nose twitched. “There’s quite a lot of
different smells about.” It closed its eyes and smacked its lips, as if it
could taste the aromas. “Let me see… Sweat. Incense. Jaffy.” A small pause. “There’s a Jennite
couple making love. Karscalian coffee. Cooked meats—human, Verminion
and Jaroth Pha, I believe. What could be either
rotting fish or a
Jed frowned. It wasn’t that
he doubted the knocker. Hell, the damn thing had already followed whatever
scent it had picked up all the way from the Reptile House, but that was a real
big crowd. “An’ you’re sure it’s them?”
“Oh, it’s them, young man.”
The knocker’s eyes opened with a screech. “I’d recognise the smell of Oridians
anywhere.”
With that Grinzz chuckled a laugh of
staccato grunts.
#
“So, if you hate the
Theocracy,” Tatiana asked Maxim, “why have you stayed in Promise?”
Their pace had slowed now
they were in this morass, and Tatiana was only too grateful as the lung the
Cook had damaged back on Stanztrigger’s ship was still
healing. Maxim shrugged as they continued to sidestep hawkers, beggars,
preachers and outcasts. “When we lost the war against the Theocracy, and Ivan
and Skullion escaped in the Troika, the rest of us mounted a ‘tactical retreat’ in the Torch’s
basements: which really meant fighting for our lives until most of us managed
to escape through Kithaen’s portal.”
He stopped to have a quick
look around and assure himself they were in no danger. Tatiana followed suit,
then felt a little foolish when she realised she didn’t actually know what she
was looking for. Everybody and everything in this damned city looked
dangerous to her. She blushed a little, and her
discomfort grew when she glimpsed Katarina smirk at her.
“This ‘Kithaen’,”
Katarina asked of Maxim with an interest that Tatiana hadn’t seen in her for
some time. “Rish said she was a witch. Is that true?”
“As much
a witch as Bleakwinter, and maybe even more
powerful.”
“So why didn’t you all go
through the portal?” Tatiana asked as she glared at her sister. She didn’t like
all this talk of Bleakwinter, or Katarina’s
fascination with witchcraft. Katarina smiled back and winked.
“Kithaen
was weak, wounded. She got most of through before the portal closed, but those
of who were left behind had to escape through a secret tunnel only Rish knew about.”
“That still doesn’t answer
my question,” Tatiana said. “Why did you stay here? Why not leave the planet
and start again somewhere else? Maybe find Ivan or my father?”
“Because I met a woman and
got…married…”
The sentence tailed off,
but not before it had slapped Tatiana across the face. Married? She blushed,
and her throat tightened. He’d never mentioned a wife! Where was she? What—?
Stop this! she told herself. Why would he tell you? Why should he? It’s
not like he’s Boyd—
“Maxim? What’s wrong?”
If Maxim heard Katarina, he
didn’t answer. Instead he looked back behind them, his eyes narrow and
attentive. His hand moved to one of the several pistols holstered on his belt.
“Maxim?” Tatiana looked in
the same direction, and even stood on her toes to get a better view. “What’s
wrong?”
It wasn’t that she couldn’t
see anything. She could see too much. A crowd of aliens that
would kill her just as soon as look at her. Now she reached for her
pistol as it lurked against the small of her back. Its wooden handle felt good
in her hand.
“Fuck me,” Katarina
murmured. “He’s big.”
Tatiana frowned, and she
followed her sister’s gaze until she too saw the massive Krak’n.
With its darkened eyes fixed on them, it moved through the park in their
direction. The glacial crowd parted before it as though under an ice-breaker’s
prow. Its fangs gleamed even in this light.
“Shit. That’s Mister Grinzz.” Maxim grabbed the both by the arm so roughly
Katarina gasped in pain.
“Get off!” she said with a
hiss. “You’re hurting—”
“We need to be leaving,
girls.” He grabbed Tatiana with his free arm, and now she yelped. Christ on a
bike, she thought as she instinctively tried to pull free. And I thought Boyd
was strong!
Without so much as a glance
over his shoulder, he shouldered his way through a pliant crowd focused on its
opiates and orators. The twins were pulled in his wake, grimacing.
#
“Wait.”
Grinzz hissed and turned to glare at Jed. “What
for? They have seen us. They are es-cape-ing.”
Jed glared back and his lip
twitched into a snarl. “An’ what are you gonna do if
you catch ‘em here, uh? Kill ‘em,
I suppose. In public.” He gestured at a nearby
Constable. “With all these Poh-lease watchin’. Is that what you’re gonna
do?”
A hiss slid from Grinzz’s teeth like a knife would slide through skin. It
told Jed the Krak’n was struggling to regulate his
breathing and with it, his anger.
“Might I suggest the…ahem…gentleman has a point, old boy?”
said the knocker.
Grinzz growled. He did not answer, but merely pounded his fist
into his palm.
Jed raised an eyebrow at
the Krak’n. “So we wait, let ‘em
get away from the park, an’ catch up with someplace a lil’
less conspicuous, right?”
#
“What’s a taxi?”
Maxim spared Tatiana a
laugh and a smile. “It is what the rest of us who are not travelling in
armoured cars and royal cavalcades are using, little Princess.”
They stood between the edge
of the park and a wide arterial road. A steady parade of cars, pack animals,
bicycles and trucks and streamed by. The rainbow of colours, shapes and sizes
dwarfed even the diversity of the crowd behind them. Red and
green. Yellow and Purple. Blue
and Orange. They were all there, some peppered with rust, some gleaming
under the artificial lights suspended over the road. Angry shouts and tooting
horns pierced the babble of engines, and the isolated braying of a horse or Karscalian pony brought animal stabs to the mechanical
orchestra.
One further wave from
Maxim, and a battered yellow car emerged from the melee of vehicles to park
before them. With a smirk, a theatrical bow and an “After you, Your
Highnesses!” Maxim opened the backdoor of the vehicle and ushered the twins
inside.
#
They couldn’t see the
driver through the grubby glass, but they’d smelt him as soon as they clambered
aboard his dilapidated taxi. A thick, organic alliance of damp soil and mouldy
bark, the fusty odour clung to the vehicle’s muddied upholstery.
“Where going are you, hmm?”
The driver’s voice was thin and frail, and Tatiana couldn’t place the species.
All she could see of him—if, indeed, it was a ‘him’—was a tiny pair of wizened
green hands that reached up to clutch the steering wheel. Christ alone knew how
he could see the road, she reflected with a shudder.
“Corner of Kershner and Kasdan,” Maxim
shouted over the uneven chunter of the engine as the taxi idled on the
roadside.
“Be there soon we will.”
The engine noise rose and
the car pulled away and into the stream of traffic. A blare of horns told
Tatiana the driver wasn’t exactly careful. She glanced at Maxim, whose concern
seemed directed entirely at whoever followed them. Sat between the twins and
with his arm on the back of the seat, he turned to look out of the grubby rear
window. Tatiana looked too, but she couldn’t see any potential threats as the
crowd in the park receded. Satisfied, she looked at her sister who, for the
first time in weeks, actually looked apprehensive. Eyes wide and knuckles white,
she clutched at a handle over her door and stared at the road ahead as the
driver jinked the car into a gap in the next lane.
“Did you say people pay for this?” she asked over the sound
of more car horns and the angry snort of a Rahwan
mule glaring through the back window at Tatiana, its breath steaming on the
glass.
#
Jed and Grinzz
stood before the scrolling vista of animals and cars and watched the
Valentines’ taxi consumed by the traffic.
Jed looked at the knocker
and pointed at the decrepit vehicle. “You can follow ‘em,
right?”
“I already have the
vehicle’s scent. The engine runs on a fuel high in toluene and benzene…” The
knocker gave the air a further series of quick sniffs. “…Mixed
with a low ratio of potassium additive. The driver also smells a
little…swampy. I could follow that across the whole city if I had to.”
“You have to…thanks to Co-ven.”
“Then hail us a taxi, old
boy.”
Jed laughed and looked at
the hulk of a Krak’n. Grinzz in a taxi? This he
had to see…
#
Their skins a pale cyan,
the twins stood on a curb as the taxi pulled away. Tatiana’s heart raced, and
she savoured each breath whether it be tainted with
exhaust fumes or not. The cab ride out of
“And I thought your flying
was bad,” Tatiana said to Katarina in a low hush.
Her sister looked back with
a blank expression, and her hand trembled as she placed a cigarette on lips that
muttered what Tatiana imaged to be indistinct thanks to whatever God of taxi-passengers
had seen them here safely.
The driver had dropped them
at the intersection between two streets packed tight with locked-up workshops sitting
beneath residential flats. All bar one were festooned with hoardings and
posters offering services ranging from automobile refurbishments to android
repairs. Some were still open, the light from their windows splashed across the
street like spilt paint. Save for a handful of industrious souls still working
in those lit workshops, the two streets lay deserted and cosseted within the
irregular sound of hammers, grinders and saws.
“We are not having much
time,” Maxim said. The return of his exaggerated accent told Tatiana he was
enjoying himself again. He closed his wallet and stuffed it back into his back
pocket. “Grinzz will be soon be catching us up.”
Tatiana unfastened her
jacket before she replied.. The chill that had
previously fallen over Promise had vanished, and now perspiration tickled her
brow and her armpits were sticky. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and
exhaled. “Why the hell is it so hot?”
“It is being the heat
created by Tap-tap’s bodyguard, Mortlock.”
“Tap-tap?” Katarina paused, hand and its
incumbent lighter hovering close to her cigarette. “So we’re close?”
“Very.” Maxim gestured at
the plain workshop. Bare and somewhat anonymous, and with its windows covered
with armoured shutters, it looked more like a prison to Tatiana. Or a fortress. “Tap-tap lives there.”
“Awesome.” Katarina lit her
cigarette and inhaled on it. “So let’s get Vast.”
To be continued...
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© 2010 Mathew David
Spaull. All rights reserved.