Bad Soul

by David Bussell

  I rolled down the window: ‘Pull over, dick head!’

  Brian did not pull over.

  ‘Fuck it.’

  I pulled the steering wheel and the Porsche swerved into the side of Brian’s car. Tyres screamed as he fought to regain control. Not wanting him to get anywhere close to control, I swerved again, striking the corner of his boot and sending the car into a screeching fishtail before it juddered to a stop.

  I pulled the Porsche up by the minivan, blocking its escape, and got out, twirling the car keys on my finger.

  ‘Open up, Bri,’ I said, tapping at the window. Brian shook his head. ‘Suit yourself.’

  Magic flowed into me and my tattoos glowed bright. I grabbed the door and yanked. Nothing.

  ‘Uh, one second.’ I tried again, straining. The tattoos were starting to lose their effectiveness. I’d called on them too much in too short a time. The fights with Kirklander, with Elton. Having to reset my broken bones during my escape from the wraiths in Highstaff.

  I spat on my hands, rubbed them together, and tried again. Forehead sweating, veins bulging like garden hoses, I tore the door from its hinges. With a screech of metal I tossed it aside and the door spun across the tarmac with a shower of sparks.

  ‘Out. Now.’ I said, gasping, my body aching. I was lucky the case was more or less done, because my powers were officially depleted. That stupid show of strength was all I’d had left.

  Brian stepped out, cowed, Cali coming round the minivan to meet him and taking hold of his hand.

  ‘I told you to stay upstairs, not to run away. What part of my instructions did you not understand?’

  ‘I heard what you said to that man,’ he replied.

  Ah.

  ‘Hey, Cali, the door to that flash car I nicked is open. Get in and wait for us, yeah?’

  Cali looked up to her dad, frowning. Brian nodded and forced a smile. The little girl gave me a glare then went to the Porsche and climbed in the passenger seat.

  ‘Okay, so I lied, you got me.’

  ‘You didn’t come to help us. You came to take my soul, just like that man did.’

  ‘You made a contract, Brian. You can’t run out on it. It’s binding.’

  Brian slumped against the side of the minivan, trembling.

  ‘She’s alive, Brian,’ I said, softly. ‘Cali, your daughter, she’s alive. You did your job. You gave up everything so that she could live, but now you have to pay the piper.’

  ‘What happens if I don’t? What happens if I get away, if I keep running?’

  ‘People will die. What you did, breaking the terms of the contract, it’s opened a sort of a wound in reality. I’ve seen the effects. There are creatures out there eating people alive. And it’ll only get worse. That wound will spread the longer your soul stays inside you’

  I pointed to the Porsche, to Cali, who was looking at us through the passenger seat window.

  ‘Would she want that? A daddy responsible for hundreds, maybe thousands of agonising deaths?’

  ‘I’m not killing anyone.’

  ‘Yes, you are. It might not be your hands around their throats, but you’re the sole person responsible for every murder. Just you.’

  Brian sighed and looked up at the moon. ‘It’s a beautiful night.’

  ‘It is.’ I rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘You did it, Brian. You made sure your daughter was safe. That’s all anyone can ask of a father. Now it’s time to do the right thing.’

  Brian rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands, then nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘Good on you. Is there anywhere you want to take Cali, first?’

  ‘I have a sister, we can take her there. She’ll look after her.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan. Come on.’

  Brian looked at the moon again and smiled sadly, then walked to the Porsche.

  ‘Ready for a trip to Auntie Linda’s?’ he asked.

  Cali cheered as Brian got in the car and sat her on his knee.

  I patted the Soul Dagger in my jacket pocket.

  Job done.

  17

  Okay, job not quite done. I have a tendency to get ahead of myself. What can I tell you, I have a short attention… thingie.

  Dawn was breaking as Sylvia and her not-so-merry band of passengers entered Bevensea, the southern town where Linda Stinson, Brian’s older sister, lived.

  I could feel my senses growing woozy. My body an all-over ache. It was always the same when my tattoos reached the end of their usefulness. My body rejected its connection to the Uncanny, which resulted in pain, in exhaustion, in an almost overwhelming desire to curl up on the floor and pass out for a good twelve to sixteen hours.

  But not yet. I couldn’t. I had to hold on a little longer.

  Once this was all over, once Brian Teller’s soul was in the Long Man’s green fingers, I could stagger home and recover, before meeting with Parker and getting the painful patterns applied all over again.

  Brian had called ahead, so when we pulled to a stop, Linda was waiting for us on the doorstep with a smile and a wave.

  ‘What’s all this about then?’ asked Linda as she hugged Cali and eyed me warily. ‘It’s the crack of dawn, Brian.’

  Linda was as mumsy as it got. I could tell in an instant that Cali was going to be in good hands. She might be losing her dad, but she was going to be with someone who would raise her right. Raise her with love. I wondered what that would feel like.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Brian, ‘last minute job opportunity came up. I have to go today or they’ll pass the role on to someone else.’

  ‘Right,’ she replied, obviously not convinced. ‘I thought you were stepping away from work for a bit?’

  ‘I was. I am. I will, I mean, just later.’

  ‘Hi, I’m Erin,’ I said with a little wave.

  ‘You said you were called Debbie,’ said Cali.

  ‘Yeah, that was a clever lie.’

  ‘How was it clever?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ve got me,’ I replied with a shrug.

  ‘Well, come in then,’ said Linda, ‘you can tell me a bit about this job.’

  ‘We’ve gotta run, really,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve got time for a cuppa, surely?’

  I looked to Brian, his eyes pleading.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Three sugars for me. And replace the tea with coffee. And replace the coffee with whiskey.’

  I followed them inside. Linda’s home was cosy. Warm. Like a womb made of brick. Which actually sounds awful. Forget that.

  While I chugged my coffee, Cali curled up on the couch next to Brian and fell fast asleep as he gently stroked her hair.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ asked Linda, not swallowing our shit for a second.

  ‘I told you,’ replied Brian, ‘a job came up.’

  ‘What kind of a job?’

  ‘A good one,’ I replied on his behalf.

  ‘I wasn’t asking you.’

  ‘No, but you got your answer anyway.’

  Linda looked at me, unblinking. Oh, she was a fierce one all right. Good. She was going to need that strength when Cali realised her daddy wasn’t coming back.

  ‘Trust me, Linda,’ said Brian. ‘What I’m doing, it’s for the best. It’s right.’

  ‘You’re scaring me, Brian.’

  Brian smiled and shook his head. ‘Just… look after her for me.’

  Linda frowned, then nodded. ‘Of course, you don’t even need to ask.’

  She stood and made her way to the kitchen to refresh her cup.

  I pointed to the clock. ‘Time to boogie, Bri.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘The longer you wait, the more deaths you’re going to have on your hands, okay? Time to stop messing around.’

  Brian leaned over and kissed Cali gently on the side of the head. She mumbled something and squirmed in her sleep before settling back down.

  ‘It’s probably for the best that she’s asleep when I leave,’ he said, standing.
<
br />   I stayed quiet. I wasn’t sure exactly what you say in a situation like that.

  ‘Are you going already?’ asked Linda as she stepped back into the living room, cup in hand.

  Brian went to her, hugged her. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not coming back, are you?’ she asked her brother, her eyes looking at me.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied.

  ‘Are you in trouble?’

  Brian looked to me then kissed Linda on the cheek. ‘Just look after Cali. Tell her I love her. Tell her I did the best I could.’

  He broke away, I polished off my coffee, and we left the house. Linda stood in the doorway watching as we climbed into Kirklander’s Porsche.

  As I started the engine and pulled away I saw Cali looking out of the window. The last sight she’d have of her daddy, being driven away by me. The person she’d hate until the day she died.

  An hour passed in silence, the English countryside rolling past outside. Brian was slumped in the passenger seat, staring out the window.

  I was separating a child from her dad forever. For good. That guilt mixed in with the exhaustion and pain... well, it was quite a cocktail, let me tell you.

  ‘She’ll be okay,’ I said, finally breaking the heavy silence.

  ‘Her heart will break,’ said Brian.

  ‘No one makes it through life without their heart breaking once.’

  I swore as the car swerved slightly, and rubbed at my eyes, trying to keep focus.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Brian.

  ‘Nothing. I’m fine.’

  I wasn’t fine. Not at all. I gripped the steering wheel as firmly as I could to try and mask how much my hands were trembling. My body was screaming at me to stop. To rest. To give in. It had been a while since I’d got to this point, full rejection, not since I’d fallen unconscious and been arrested over six months back. My body, grown unused to it by time, was reacting even worse than usual.

  ‘This isn’t right,’ said Brian.

  ‘What?’ I asked, his voice sounding very far away.

  ‘I won’t leave her. I won’t. I can’t.’

  I was dimly aware that Brian was now holding a knife, and wondered where he got it from. Then I remembered that long, goodbye hug from Linda after she returned from the kitchen.

  Smart, Linda. Nicely played.

  I tried to reach out and block him, but my body was too stiff, too slow, and the blade sunk into my thigh.

  I grunted, or screamed.

  ‘Don’t,’ I managed, before Brian pulled the knife from my leg and plunged it into my side. The car spun, turning the world into a blur, until everything jarred to a stop, my head connecting with the driver’s window and turning it into splinters.

  Oh boy, a crumpled front end and now a busted window. Kirklander was going to be so mad at me. I giggled at the thought as I tried to cling to consciousness.

  Did I black out?

  Maybe.

  For how long?

  I turned to my side to find the passenger door open and Brian stumbling away, off down the road, falling over a fence and running across a field.

  I fumbled with my door and tried to step out, but was yanked back into the car by my seatbelt. I groped at it with all the grip-strength of an arthritic T-Rex before I finally managed to release the latch and flop to the road. I screamed as the kitchen knife Brian had stabbed into my side shifted, widening the wound. I grabbed the knife by the handle, yanked it free, and tossed it aside.

  ‘Okay, okay, don’t—’ I threw up. Grabbing Sylvia’s door, I pulled myself to my feet. ‘Brian!’ I bellowed. He paused, turning, fell over, got back up again.

  Limping, one hand gripping my side, I rounded the Porsche and made my way to the fence, half climbing, half falling over.

  Teeth gritted, I tensed everything, calling on my tattoos, begging them to give me a little something. A little speed. A little healing. A little love.

  They ignored me.

  The world was a haze of static.

  ‘I’m coming for you, Brian!’

  I could see him still. He wasn’t that far ahead. I was falling apart but I was still too fast for him. He wasn’t a man used to running, and this was my world. My life. I was a hunter with the scent of prey in my nostrils. He wasn’t going to get away from me.

  Brian stopped as the ground before him dipped, revealing a small river. He looked back to me. ‘I can’t do it. She needs me. My daughter needs me!’

  I ignored him, charging forward, blood dripping from my mouth. He waded into the water and it slowed him even more, his unfit body struggling against the flow. I leapt from the bank, hit him, we both went down. I broke the surface to find him hovering over me, a rock in his hand.

  He brought it down with a scream and my arms reached up to cover my head, taking its brunt. He lifted the rock again but I was too fast. I jerked up and out of the water, one hand to his throat, the other going for the arm holding the rock. We fell back, me on top of him, and his head was swallowed by the river.

  He thrashed about beneath me, fighting to survive, his body fired up on adrenalin.

  ‘You shouldn’t have run, Brian,’ I said as his hands beat at my arms, at my head. A fist found the wound in my side and I gasped. It was just enough for him to struggle free, pushing towards the river’s edge, crawling up the grassy bank.

  Blood flowing behind me like red ribbons, I fell forward, my hand catching his ankle.

  ‘Stop,’ I managed.

  He kicked out, his foot driving into my shoulder, my head, my nose.

  ‘Stop.’

  I wasn’t letting go again. He could fight all he wanted, I wasn’t letting go. I crawled my way up him even as his fists connected with my chest, my neck, my face.

  I reached into my jacket, my fingers finding the Soul Dagger, and pulled it out.

  ‘Please,’ said Brian, the fight draining out of him as he realised it was no good. It was done.

  I brought the Soul Dagger down with what little force I had left in me.

  It entered his chest, slipped between his ribs, and found his heart.

  Brian’s back arched, turning him into a question mark, sending me tumbling to one side. A finger of bright red light shot down from above, meeting the pommel of the Soul Dagger for a moment, and then was gone.

  Brian sagged, lifeless.

  It was done.

  It was over.

  I collapsed into the mud beside Brian’s corpse and stared up at the sky.

  The black took me.

  18

  I wasn’t unconscious for long before my eyes snapped open and all the pain and exhaustion rushed back into me. But there was no time for that. Not yet. I needed to move. Needed to get back to Brighton. My body begged me just to lay still, to close my eyes, to accept that I was done. It would all be okay if I just rested. But that was a lie, wasn’t it? If I stopped now, I’d be dead. I’d bleed out on the riverbank, my insides painting the green grass red.

  Would that really be so bad though? Just to drift away? To roll into the river and be carried off by the water, a Viking funeral without the hassle of the flaming raft.

  I thought about the information the Long Man had for me. About my brother. About who had taken him.

  I pushed myself to my knees and turned to Brian, laid out lifeless beside me. I grabbed the handle of the Soul Dagger and, with some effort, pulled it from his chest. As it left him, Brian’s body turned to dust and was carried away on the wind.

  I stumbled my way back to the Porsche, wondering how much blood I’d lost, how much time I had left. Could I even make it back that far?

  A little under an hour later, driving on autopilot, I found my way to Black Cat Ink.

  The bell tinkled as I stepped inside and stumbled downstairs to the parlour.

  ‘Erin?’ said Parker.

  ‘Morning,’ I said before I fell to my knees and let the waking world slip away.

  Three hours passed before my eyes flickered
open.

  ‘You good?’

  Parker’s voice. I sat up from the battered couch he’d laid me out on. The wound on my leg had healed. I placed a hand on my side and found that hole was gone, too. Parker had reapplied my tattoos, fixed the damage.

  I sat up with a sigh. Alive, fixed, but my body still aching from the work Parker had done to save me. ‘Thanks, bud,’ I said, and reached into my jacket, pulled out my hip flask, and drained its contents in one, long gulp.

  ‘Tough job, then?’

  ‘Oh, a breeze,’ I replied with a smile, as Parker began to cackle.

  I pulled out the Soul Dagger, its shining, black blade rippling with life. With the soul it now caged. Brian Teller’s soul.

  ‘Hey, is that Kirklander’s Porsche outside?’

  ‘No, that’s Erin Banks’ Porsche outside.’

  Parker grinned and whistled. ‘Ooh, girl. He won’t be happy ‘bout that.’

  ‘He owes me. Owes me, and owes me, and owes me again. If he wants to complain, he knows where I am.’

  I pushed myself up to my feet, sliding my arms into my jacket. ‘Thanks, Parker, you pulled me out of the fire again.’

  ‘Hey, it’s what I do, girl.’

  The parlour’s doorbell tinkled and a giant, bald man in an expensive pinstripe suit arrived.

  ‘You have the soul?’ asked Gerald.

  ‘Ah, good news travels fast, eh?’

  Gerald began to undress.

  ‘I might just close up until you’re all done,’ said Parker, making his way towards the door. ‘Big, naked man with a giant hole in him is gonna turn off a lot of customers.’

  He had a point.

  As I crawled through Gerald, through the portal that he cut into himself that led to the Long Man’s realm, I thought about Cali. I wondered what her auntie Linda would say to her about where her dad was. About why he wasn’t calling. About why he would never come back, never be seen again. No body found. Not a word. I wondered what she’d say about the woman he’d disappeared with.

  ‘You have my prize,’ said the Long Man, stood in his Forest of Souls.