Silver Nails (Vampire Genevieve Book 4) by Kim Newman

Author:Kim Newman [Newman, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Games Workshop
Published: 2019-07-05T16:00:00+00:00

VI

In the attic, his birds were mostly asleep. He had trained them to be night flyers.

He prowled between the coops and perches, checking on his favourites. Belle was resting, head tucked under one wing. The barbs attached to her feet weren’t chafing her. A good attack bird should have weapons as grown-in as a never-removed wedding ring.

His back, where the wings would grow, was itching constantly, two invisible rashes on his shoulderblades. Candlewax dripped on his hand, stinging.

He remembered his father, a statue on the hillside, mind soaring up in the body of his Minya. The Warhawk, the first Warhawk, had left his son in early childhood. Each of the boy’s memories of the man was a polished perfect cameo that would stay with him forever.

Some of the birds shifted. It was comfortably hot up here in the windowless dark, only occasional shafts of light beamed in through the slats around the hatchways. The natural smells were strong, comforting, constant.

In his memory, his father was always still, a shell, his true self absent. He remembered looking from his father’s impassive mask of a face to the dancing shape in the sky, and feeling the beginnings of understanding.

He lined the birds’ coops with broadsheets that contained stories about the latest sacrifice.

The next movement of the Device must be bold.

In a corner of the attic, he contemplated the detritus of his earlier paths. Here were the remains of his first machines, bent metal and torn canvas, broken-toothed clockwheels and tangles of snapped wire. He had wasted years. He had always known that the answer was in science, not magic. But it was only recently that he had remembered his father’s talk of the Device.

A clever man might fly. A man with no magic, but with the love of the sky in his heart.

Once, he had consulted a wizard about the Device, and the man had laughed at him, concealing his terror and envy with scorn. Wizards were all afraid of being caught out, of being shown up as frauds. They all pretended that Devices were nonsense, jealously guarding their own exclusive powers.

When he could fly, he would take a delight in tormenting wizards.

He must sacrifice again, soon. This time the sacrifice must be deliberately chosen. As it neared its completion, the Device had to be tended carefully, each move provoking its successor.

He thought of Kleindeinst and his witch woman, wondering if they were ready for what they must do next.

It would be a gamble, but it was his only possible move. Would his father have approved? He didn’t know. It didn’t matter. When the Device was complete, there would only be one Warhawk.

He went downstairs, and put on his hood.

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