Chapter 8
Finch
Ifind myself strapped to a gurney, cold metal beneath my naked body as a scream rings out from the next room. Hooks glint in the harsh light above me, swaying to and fro as they descend toward my body, ready to pierce and drag at the skin.
I’m good at recognising my neighbours just by the sound of their pain. Always have been.
And once again, it’s him. Kit. My little brother.
There’s a low buzz underneath the screams and I know that sound too. A flash of white passes by and my gut clenches as sweat begins to pool at my back. That noise doesn’t signal anything good, and the hooks let out a hum as they descend toward me.
I brace myself for the next bit. Readying for the pain that feels like my skin is being peeled inside out, even though it never helps. Another scream rings out and—
I jerk awake, covered in cold sweat. My ears are peeled, listening for the screams, and instead there’s the sound of a snorted snore.
Torin, or possible Jack. Both of them sound like a frog with a sore throat in the dead of night and I let the sound wash over me as my tentacles rub at my shoulders, as though they’re trying to soothe my lurching, stuttering heart.
This is why I don’t sleep. Naps only and even they’re a menace.
I glide through the silent house. Seems like I’m the only member of the insomniacs club tonight, which means one thing.
Time for some fresh air. I need to feel something else on my flesh that isn’t the memory of those hooks.
My skin puckers at the memory as I grab my coat and pull the hood to cover my head.
That damn place still haunts me, even in a dream.
In my dreams, it’s always the same voice. It’s always Kit. Not so much a nightmare so much as it’s a memory, although one that’s grown thorns over the years.
I slip out toward the water, unnoticed. Might as well use these moonlit hours for something useful. I could build another table, or knit yet another jumper, or I could continue with my task from the past week.
Heading along the shoreline for about a mile, I let my body shift into its other form, unraveling into the water and onto the land and then sliding until we’re fully submerged.
Often, this is the point where my plans derail.
The beast doesn’t care about my wants most of the time and, more often than not, we wind up slinking into the deep and settling there until it decides to resurface again.
Tonight I’m not pushed to the back of the beast’s mind like I often am. Instead, I’m at the forefront, guiding it along as we eat up the miles until the water changes, growing murkier and more polluted, indicating we’re close to a larger town.
The beast flicks up one tentacle, water pouring off it in a deluge as I push out of its body, shifting back to my usual form as I fly through the air.
It’s always the trickiest part of the whole procedure, with every chance I might land too early or splat right into the cliffside rather than landing on top and out of sight.
Hitting the ground at the top of the cliff on my hands and knees, I do a quick check to see I’ve not snapped any bones and then brush off the worst of the mud from my knees before making the trip down from the clifftop, following the sight of the violet streetlamps toward the town.
I readjust the important package in my pocket. There’s a midnight mail coach out of here and I slip the package onto the back as I pass by. Nothing fancy, travelling by road to the next city, where it’ll be taken by air or by water until it reaches the capital.
Once I’m done, I’m then in the middle of a town where no one knows me. And I find I can’t bring myself to head back to the island. Not just yet.
And so I go exploring.
It’s the middle of the night and there’s no one out on the streets.
Not even drunks or dodgy dealers. Keeping my hood pulled over my face, I stride through the drizzle, following my nose as I search for the specific mix of smells that are exactly what I’m looking for.
There’s the faint smell of damp cigarettes and beer in the air, which grows thicker as I reach a piss-soaked alleyway.
Here.
If the grotty nature of the alleyway wasn’t a clear enough signal, the fact that this area is scent-marked makes it clear enough. It’s a beast-borne neighbourhood. Exactly what I’m looking for.
Every town like this has one. They’re hidden little rat’s nests for the most part, places no one wants to go near so they all just ignore their existence.
Which suits everyone just fine. Beyond the smells of rubbish left to linger too long and spilled beer, all mingling with the piss that marks this area as beast-borne territory, there’s something else. Fried fish and vinegar.
My stomach rumbles. Fish and chips might not fill the boundless hole inside me, but it’ll be enough for now.
There’s a busted metal door a little further along the alleyway, with the bottom half dented as though it’s received a couple of firm kicks, and it no longer closes correctly.
I nudge it open and am hit with another wall of smells.
The fish and chip scents linger in the air, along with a heavy grease that tells me I’ll be feeling this meal for hours to come.
There’s also the scent of sweat and unwashed bodies from all the people who headed straight here after a long day of work.
Inside, there are no lights and I feel my way along, tentacles quivering as they point me in the right direction and stop me from smashing my face into any walls.
There are three things people born with an animal inside of them like above all else: food, a fight, or a f... ine time. And failing that last one, they also like a flutter, or anything else that’ll give them a little thrill.
Which means places like this thrive. Illegal dens and fighting rings that cater to filling exactly those vices. Sometimes I like to pop along for a little extra dose of chaos or just for a good meal.
They’re also the perfect place to go unnoticed, even when you’re as freakish-looking as I am.
I pass by a wooden door to the left, one that’s letting through the distinct stink of feet and rubber.
I can hear the grunts from here as well as the odd shout of encouragement that tells me exactly what’s going on behind that closed door.
Since there isn’t any blood in the air, it must not be a fight night tonight, or maybe I missed it.
Not really my scene; I’ve never been one for brawling.
Beyond that, there’s another door, and this one’s guarded by a grey-haired woman sitting at a table with a crossword in front of her. I don’t stop there either, knowing what it costs to get into the den she’s guarding.
Nothing I’m willing to risk tonight.
Jack’s usually good with the gambling dens and the underground clubs. The man’s got a nose that can sniff one out at a hundred paces and he usually has a liver of steel to battle against the hard drinks they serve to your disadvantage.
That’s not where I’m headed either. Instead, I keep going until I reach a pair of battered wooden doors which swing open to reveal a large room filled with communal tables and benches.
The place is heaving, despite the late hour.
Which means this is one of those towns where these people work unbearably early or late hours, slinking home in the darkness so that the rest of the populace doesn’t need to see them.
Their furnaces get fixed, their chimneys cleaned, their grain worked to a pulp ready for them, but they never see the people behind all that work.
Or the hovels these people are forced to live in.
That’s the real reason places like this exist. The single rooms most of these people occupy don’t have running water or any way of cooking that won’t gas them out, so they have to stick to communal eating like this.
I grab a tray and a plate that’s laden with salty, fatty food and plop myself down on one of the few benches with space free.
Taking a bite of food with my hood firmly in place, I keep my head down as I let my extra appendages feel around under my hood, checking out my neighbours already seated at the table.
There are two of them. Both grizzled and scarred, and letting out low warning growls from their chests. Their reactions are nothing new. The beast-borne people never know what to make of me, or any of the rest of the crew. We don’t smell right. Don’t act quite right either.
They can somehow tell we don’t belong here with people born with two souls.
“You new here?” one asks me.
I give a slow nod under my hood. “Just testing the waters. Seeing if there’s any work hereabouts.”
He snorts while the other one leans forward, trying to see my face. I keep my head down so he can’t make out any of my features.
Not that people in these parts know what I look like. The name, though? Yeah, that’s something plenty of people still know.
Sometimes being infamous has its uses.
A lot of the time, it’s a nightmare.
“You’ve picked a shitty town to find work in,” the curious one replies while the other lets out another warning growl.
I don’t take offense. I know I’m unfamiliar and it’s his animal taking umbrage at that.
Plus, they can always sense there’s something off about me. That I’m a much bigger threat than I make out to be.
Which means they’re a lot wiser than any of the fools bandying magic around and thinking it’s the same as having actual power. Or the humans that don’t even have that much, but still swagger around like they have a death wish.
I know all about humans, considering I used to be one of them. Got tortured and mangled beyond recognition by ‘em too.
The curious one seems to be waiting for a response from me, so I give a little chuckle. “Why? You know of anywhere better nearby?”
I know there isn’t. I’ve been up and down this stretch of coast for hundreds of miles, and all the towns are the same. All under the bastard king’s thumb.
Mostly I’m not here to talk, though. Just to listen and to eat my fish and chips.
I might not be my brother, with his patter and ability to talk to anyone about anything, but I have my own uses.
It turns out I don’t need to say anything more.
A commotion from the other end of the room draws all our attention.
Another beast-borne giant is limping through the door, escorted on either side by a pair of equally massive males.
His lip has been split, and the cloying tang of blood that accompanies them as they drag him along until he collapses onto a nearby bench.
“Bad spill at fight night?” I mutter.
“Not tonight,” my chatty seatmate tells me. “Training only. And he wouldn’t have wound up like that. They know not to fuck each other up during practice.”
“Random attack, then?” I say, although I’m fairly sure I know the answer already. No one would be stupid enough to attack someone his size unless they were willing to get their arm ripped off.
Or unless they had the upper hand.
“Sam works for the Morgans, over at the mill.”
With deliberate slowness, I cock my head to one side. “They have a habit of beating their workers?”
“Nah. They’ve got shitty working conditions at the best of times.
They don’t care who gets chewed up by the machinery.
” The guy beside me holds up his hand, revealing two missing fingers on his right hand and a chunk of his flesh is oddly sunken and shiny.
“Half of these guys have grey lung from the factory too.”
“He needs to get out of town before they kill him.”
“Gus,” the quiet, growly one at my table snaps. “What did we say about having loose lips?”
“Something profound, no doubt.”
I fight the laugh building in my chest as the grouchy one lets out a warning growl.
I tune out their bickering, more interested in the other conversations going on around me.
It seems like I don’t have to do too much around here to sow any seeds of discord.
There are enough disgruntled mutterings to tell me that these people aren’t just sitting back and letting things happen to them.
When you dig a hole in the sand, you can’t just fill it with water and expect it to stick. You have to dampen the sand first and work slowly from there.
Still, it seems like there isn’t much I need to do here.
“Think our friends have transport willing to take him in the state he’s in?”
“They’re picking him up in an hour.”
My ears prick up with interest. I’ve wondered in the past if we should be helping dissatisfied and disillusioned people up north. But it sounds like we wouldn’t be the only ones.
Everyone wants freedom. Choices. A way of living that they’re not forced into. And we could be the ones to help them get closer to that.
Maybe we should have been doing something more altruistic with our time over the past few years. But there’s something about our current chaotic setup that feeds my fucked up version of a soul.
I finish my food, and when I’m done, I slip out unnoticed. My hood’s still firmly in place as I head back into the dark and the drizzle.