URBAN NOSGOTHIC 2 – CALL TO ARMS

Chapter 2

I think it's safe to say I was utterly delighted (and overwhelmed) by the positive reaction I received to the first chapter. Thankyou, all of you, so much. ^_^ This next chapter begins to throw in Defiance spoilers, just to reiterate.

Disclaimer: Legacy of Kain created by Eidos & Crystal Dynamics.

Why didn't I go back to Wales, you ask? Instead of selling my wretched self in the worst parts of London?

I was ashamed, is the simple answer. I'd done it once before I'd even really had time to think it through, and then I couldn't, wouldn't tell anyone. It's the same everywhere – it was the same with Gary. No-one ever wants to admit that it's happened to them.  Everyone always wants to think: "Things will get better. I can do this. It's not so bad. The money's pretty good….I can do this on my own…no-one ever has to know…" And the shame closes down around your heart like shackles, until you are more afraid of what will happen if anyone finds out than you are afraid of what you are actually doing. The price is too high, and so you shrink away from doing the right thing.

Right now, I would have given anything, would have run buck naked down Regent Street in broad daylight, if I could have run fast enough to escape from my life.

Right now, I should be screaming, but to be honest, I just don't have it in me anymore.

Janos, his big cat-eyes fixed on me, reaches down towards me with one arm, very fast, too fast not to be a blow. I roll, hurling myself from my bed and flattening myself against the musty carpet. I can just about see the black tips of his clawed feet catching in the rumpled sheets as he perches on the side of the bed.  

"I will not harm you."

His voice sounds completely calm, as if he routinely faces hysterical madwomen wearing only their underwear. I turn my head away, concentrating on a big peel in the wallpaper. I can no longer see him, which is probably just as well because just thinking about having him here is giving me the wrenching horrors.

Something comes flying over the edge of the mattress and hits me in the back of the neck. I claw at it wildly for a minute until the feel of fleece under my fingers makes me realise what it is. My bathrobe, my dressing gown.

He was reaching for my dressing gown.

It had been bunched up on the bedclothes underneath me, forgotten as always. Like I said, I am wearing only my working underwear, and my body is covered in fear sweat, cold and relentless.

Janos is trying to be nice to me. Unlike Raziel before him, he seems centred, unfazed by his surroundings, and quite accepting of what to him must surely be an intolerably strange situation.

I drag the warm robe over me, very slowly. His claws swing slightly, as if he is kicking his feet, bored, while he waits for me to stop being so….so human and come out to talk to him.

My bite scars are on fire. I can't face that, not again. My capricious brain throws a line from an old Flanders and Swann musical number at me: "Eating people is wrong…"

Eating people may be wrong if you're human. It's just like making toast if you're a vampire. And feeling like a piece of nice fresh toast is doing nothing for my desire to move from this corner.

The bed-slats groan with strain. The clawed feet vanish upwards, and as I look up too, heart hammering, in panic, Janos' head appears over the edge of my tatty mattress. 

He must be lying stomach-down on my bed. The wings –

Janos cocks his head to one side, expression set in that familiar cast of slightly world-weary concern. Rabbit-caught-in-headlights, I stare back.

"I – will – not – harm – you," he repeats, as if talking to a half-wit. His fangs flash behind his lips as he speaks, and he stretches down a pale blue arm to help me up.

Suddenly the desire to move from this corner is overwhelming. I bolt. And I almost make it to the door, too, but something that feels as tough and soft as steel cable wrapped in cotton-wool knocks into my shoulder and pins me to the doorframe. I can't help myself. I stare.

All he's done is spread one wing.

That single wing must be over ten foot long, and the secondary flight feathers spill down like black knives, points gracefully spread towards the floor. The arch of the wing is brushing the lampshade. He has pinned me with only the wing-tip, the smooth length of the primaries cutting across my collarbone. Who knew feathers were so tough?

So much for not wanting to harm me.

As if he senses my continued terror, the wing abruptly draws back, and I watch it fold like some marvellous magic trick. It tucks behind one blue shoulder, all grace and elegance, and Janos' neck and shoulder muscles bunch under his skin like snakes winding under silk.

I become aware that I am still snivelling uncontrollably, salt tears and nose running unchecked, while he stands there, quite calmly, looking like a Pre-Raphaelite fantasy, or a statue from a graveyard.

A guardian angel.

My voice rattles in my throat.

"Have you –"

I remember Raziel, how terrifying he was to me in all his decayed glory. Somehow Janos is more terrifying still. Raziel's ravaged form gave at least a hint of some past vulnerability, sandstone worn down by harsh environments: Janos is marble, smooth, perfect, and resisting all age.

Then I remember seeing Janos in Defiance only the day before, his comatose shape resting amongst the candles while Raziel and Vorador looked on. My eyes flick to his chest. No sign of blood. No torn ribcage or shadowed hole where a heart used to be. And I remember his appearance in Soul Reaver 2 – infamously the only person to show any true compassion towards Raziel's plight.

When have you come from, Janos?…Have I really sunk so low that my poor diseased brain has dragged you out of Nosgoth too?

And suddenly I can speak properly again.

"H-have you come here to help m-me?" I ask him, but he is not looking at me anymore: instead that sharp, intelligent gaze has fixed upon the little plastic figures of Raziel and Kain on my shelves.

He steps towards them in two quick paces, and lifts one to examine it. It is Raziel he picks up, and turns the action figure to and fro against the dusty light from the overhead bulb. One dark talon touches and lifts the thin plastic wings, almost stroking them as if he wants to remember the texture of them.

"It is possible," he says, turning those bright eyes back on me for a brief moment, then returning his full attention to dolly-Raz, "that it is you who are going to help me…"