Turned: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (Branded Book 2)

by David Bussell

  Still, just because Neil had been bitten by one of them, that didn’t mean he had to behave like them. Did it? I just couldn’t see it. Neil never cared about money, and he didn’t have an evil bone in his body. He was a good guy. When the waiter delivered the wrong dish at a restaurant, he ate it. I knew him. I knew everything about him. I knew he liked to cook, I knew his favourite writer was Neil Gaiman, and I knew his eyes went crossed at the point of… well, you know.

  I cast a glance over my shoulder. The angels were next door behind one of the tower’s partition walls. Neil and I were alone. The coast was clear. So long as I was quick, I could get away with this. I had to at least give him the benefit of the doubt, right?

  ‘Okay,’ I whispered, ‘I’m going to help you, but you have to keep the noise down.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’ve heard you eat soup, Neil.’

  He chuckled. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘Just a taste, okay? Enough to stop the pangs, no more.’

  Like a jolted bobblehead he went.

  I pushed up the sleeve of my jacket and saw his blood-shot eyes land hungrily on the white flesh of my wrist. For a moment I considered pulling my sleeve back down again, but then he looked up at me with his puppy dog face and that was that.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ said Neil, even as he licked his lips in anticipation. ‘This is just… mental.’

  I put my arm to his mouth, ready to jerk it back again if he went at it too hungrily, but Neil kept his animal in check and dined with the utmost etiquette. Craning his neck slowly, he opened his mouth and bit down on my wrist. The tips of his fangs slid into my flesh—two quick pin pricks—and his mouth formed a tight seal around the wound. He sucked at the emerging blood like a babe at the teat, hungry, forceful, but not enough that it caused me any discomfort. As a matter of fact, I found the process surprisingly painless, so much so that I began to wonder if vampires had some kind of special numbing agent in their saliva.

  It wasn’t my first time feeding a vampire, which is a weird thing to say, I know. I’d already donated blood to an undead snitch in exchange for the information that got Neil off that altar, so I had some idea what to expect from the experience. With that vamp though, I felt nothing. Giving him blood was just a one-way exchange of bodily fluids, a business transaction. With Neil, I felt something. Some kind of charge, an intoxication, a heady trance that made me feel warm and snug and close and—

  I felt woozy. Lightheaded. My balance left me and I had to throw out my free hand to grab Neil’s chair for support. Neil fed hungrily, slurping loudly, his lips thawing out and growing hot. I looked down to see muscles springing up beneath his skin; muscles I didn’t even know he had. The blood was making him strong again… too strong. I couldn’t allow that.

  ‘That’s enough, Neil,’ I whispered, trying to pull away from him.

  He gripped me tight though, the O of lips clinging to my wrist like a suction cup. Ropey veins stood to attention on his forearms, making him look like a bodybuilder after a serious pump sesh. I felt weak, powerless to stop him, but I knew if I let him carry on feeding from me he’d grow strong enough to break his bonds, and then what?

  ‘That’s enough!’ I said, and this time I succeeded in pulling my wrist from his mouth.

  As Neil withdrew, I saw blood on his teeth and got a flash of the monster inside, then he swilled out his mouth and returned to his former self.

  I heard Viz’s cane tapping on the concrete floor. ‘Is everything okay in here?’ he asked, appearing from next door.

  I tugged down my sleeve to cover the bite marks Neil had given me. ‘Fine,’ I said, ‘we were just talking.’

  He eyed me warily for a moment, then said, ‘Can you join us next door, Abbey? We need to talk.’

  ‘Sure,’ I replied, fearing the worst. ‘I’ll be through in a minute.’

  Viz hobbled off, casting a quick glance over his shoulder before he went.

  ‘Do you think he saw anything?’ Neil asked.

  ‘I hope not,’ I replied. ‘For both our sakes.’

  4

  I left Neil chained to the chair and went next door to find Viz and Gen waiting for me in the dojo.

  ‘How is he?’ Viz asked.

  ‘He’s okay,’ I said, cautiously. ‘He’s stopped ranting and he knows who he is.’

  ‘It’s not who he is, it’s what he is,’ said Gen. ‘That creature back there is a vampire, and the sooner you get that into your head, the sooner we can move past this.’

  ‘Will you stop telling me how I’m supposed to feel?’

  ‘Someone has to take charge around here.’

  ‘Not you though. I don’t work for you, Gen. We’re a team. Viz does the nerdy academic stuff, you take care of the cloak-and-dagger business, and I… um…’

  ‘And you are our shining sword against the vampire army,’ said Viz, helpfully.

  ‘Right. Except I’m not just some weapon to be used at your disposal. I have a say in what goes on around here too.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ said Viz. ‘So tell us, what do you propose we do next?’

  ‘We find a cure.’

  ‘A cure for what?’ asked Gen.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked, throwing my arms in the air. ‘A cure for Neil.’

  Gen scoffed. ‘The blood in his veins is wicked and black. There is only one way to cure that boy, and that’s to put him out of his misery.’

  ‘That’s your prescription, is it, Doctor? “Take two shotgun shells and call me in the morning”?’

  ‘It needn’t be that drastic,’ said Viz, stroking his chin, ‘there is another way to cure Neil.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We would need to slay the one who turned him,’ he replied, ‘and within a short enough space of time.’

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘Let’s do that then.’

  ‘It’s not as simple as he makes out,’ said Gen, sticking a pin in the balloon. ‘There’s no telling who sired the boy. The vampires who took him are all dead, which means it could be any surviving member of the Clan. Judas Iscariot himself could have turned him for all we know.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Then we find another way.’

  Gen sunk her hands into her afro as though the skull beneath it might explode. ‘There is no other way, girl. If we had the means to cure vampirism, do you really think we’d have allowed Judas to raise an undead army?’

  We’d only recently discovered that the J-man was still alive and kicking when I stumbled across a secret tomb and found him hooked up to a blood pipeline; an underground viaduct that the Clan had built to restore him to full strength.

  ‘Judas is the real threat right now,’ said Gen. ‘Wasting all this time on one doomed mortal could cost us everything.’

  She was talking about the vampires’ grand plan. Once Judas was back on his feet, him and his lot were preparing to bring about an Earthly apocalypse before they kicked in the gates of heaven and laid waste to the Holy Land. A real dick move from a gold-plated arsehole, but I guess you don’t become an evil overlord just because someone forgot to baptise you.

  ‘Listen to me,’ said Gen, bringing me back to the present, ‘there is no curing your boy. He’s one of them already, he just doesn’t know it yet.’

  ‘Will you keep your voice down?’ I hissed. ‘He’s right next door.’

  I turned to Viz for some support, but instead of weighing in on the discussion, he hobbled across the room to one of his bookcases. He plucked an old tome from a shelf and blew off a swirl of grey dust.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said, adjusting his bifocals to read a page of spidery scrawl. ‘Apparently, Neil’s situation may not be as black and white as we first thought.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ I asked.

  ‘I thought I remembered something about a cure in here, and it turns out I was right. According to my notes, there may be a way to reverse his condition yet.’

 
; ‘Are you kidding me? A minute ago the only choice I had was to put a bullet in his brain, now you’re telling me there’s a way to make him better?’

  ‘Yes. I apologise. My advanced years have left me rather forgetful. I’m afraid it happens when you’ve been around long enough to remember the Great Fire of London.’

  Gen made a face at him. ‘What are you blathering about, old man? For the last time, there is no cure. Now, let’s finish this and get the vampire out of our house.’ She looked to me. ‘If you’re too squeamish to do the deed, I'm happy to take care of it for you.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks for the offer, but given the choice of murdering my boyfriend in cold blood or hearing Viz out, I think I’m going to go with the second option.’

  Viz nodded sagely. ‘According to my notes, there is a single recorded instance of someone curing themselves of vampirism. Apparently, in the early Fifteenth Century, a Jesuit priest was turned by a vampire and went on a holy quest to restore his humanity. Yes, yes, I remember this now. Quite the talk in Heaven, it was.’

  ‘So?’ I said.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So how did he cure himself?’ I cried.

  ‘Oh,’ Viz replied, slapping his forehead. ‘Of that I have no idea.’

  ‘Great. Super helpful. So where does that leave us then?’

  Gen answered. ‘It leaves us with a very limited amount of time before that creature next door turns completely.’

  ‘How long?’ I asked, sweeping my head back and forth between the angels. ‘What are we talking? A week? A month?’

  Viz grimaced. ‘Until sundown.’

  I checked my phone. It had just gone 2 p.m.

  At this time of year, that gave us less than two hours to save Neil.

  Less than two hours to find a cure that probably didn’t exist.

  Awesome.

  5

  Carlo,’ I said. ‘We’ll talk to Carlo.’

  Since the angels weren’t being any help, I figured we should consult a vampire expert, and who better to give advice on vampires than an actual vampire?

  Carlo was the vampire I mentioned earlier, the one I’d given blood to. He was a deserter from the Judas Clan who traded gossip for a taste of the red stuff. Like I say, he was the one who passed along the information that helped me get Neil off the Clan’s sacrificial altar, so I knew he could be trusted.

  Gen glowered at me. ‘Don’t you think if Carlo knew a cure he’d have used it? Having vampire blood in his veins is a curse to him. He hates the Clan more than anyone.’

  Somehow I doubted he hated them as much as I did.

  I knew I was clutching at straws but I didn’t care. ‘I need to talk with him, Gen. I have to.’

  ‘Fine,’ she replied, in a tone that suggested it very much wasn’t, ‘I’ll arrange a parley.’

  ‘A parley? What are you talking about? By the time you’ve set up a meeting, Neil will be too far gone. I need you to take me to Carlo right now.’

  And to her credit, she did, at least once she was done tutting.

  We fired off in a cab; a cab that I footed the bill for. I wouldn’t be seeing that money again, not in my lifetime. No expenses, no overtime, no hazard pay; I’m telling you, being a vampire-killing super-gal ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

  The cab pulled up at a shit apartment block in a shit part of Mile End. Litter was strewn all around the place, blowing freely, caught in the weeds, stuffed into every conceivable crevice. I saw an urban fox digging around the sprawling rot for food, gnawing through a bin bag and escaping with a half-eaten chicken carcass in its muzzle.

  Carlo was holed up in an abandoned fifteenth-floor apartment in a run-down tower block, not unlike the one I inhabited in Thamesmead. Just like my block, Carlo’s lift was out of order, but unlike my building, his at least had the excuse of being scheduled for demolition. Jesus, we lived some grim lives, and when you factored in the angels’ living situation—squatting in a decommissioned gas tower on a derelict industrial estate—it seemed none of us was exactly living it up in this town. They say crime doesn’t pay, but I’m telling you, being the good guy will send you straight to the poor house.

  Gen and I made our way up fifteen flights of piss-reeking stairs until we found Carlo’s floor and were finally able to unpinch our noses. The first thing I saw was graffiti. Sprayed in red paint across an apartment door that looked as though it had seen the business end of a police battering ram more than once, were the words JUNKIE SCUM.

  ‘This is it,’ said Gen, stating the obvious. Because a junkie is exactly what Carlo was. A junkie for blood.

  I pulled out my dagger and used its pommel to rap on the door. ‘Open up,’ I demanded.

  ‘Easy,’ said Gen. ‘He’s on our side, remember?’

  I supposed knocking on someone’s door with the butt end of a bloody great knife could be viewed as a tad unfriendly, so I sheathed it and hammered on the door with my fist instead.

  ‘Who is it?’ croaked a voice from the other side. ‘If it’s the police, I know the law and I have every right to be here.’

  ‘It’s Gendith,’ said my companion, ‘and the other one.’

  I heard a number of bolts slide open, then finally the door opened a crack, latched still by a heavy-duty chain. Through the crack I saw a pair of pinprick eyes drowned in the pool of a pale, stubbly face.

  ‘What do you want?’ Carlo sighed, obviously in no mood.

  He looked bad. Actually, he looked like he was coming down from a four day meth binge. His greasy black hair was stuck to his head like he’d just gotten up, his dyed skunk stripe plastered to his scalp in a flattened S shape. On his feet he wore a pair of threadbare slippers that looked as though they’d been rescued from a charity bin. His upper half was only semi-concealed in a dressing gown that might just have lost a fight with a wheat thresher.

  ‘We need to talk,’ I told him.

  He brightened, shoulders straightening, head popping up like a meerkat. ‘You paying?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘so long as I get what I need, and quick.’

  Wasting no time, he swiftly unlatched the door chain, turned around, and jogged inside. I took this as a cue to follow him, despite the lack of any formal invitation.

  ‘Sorry the place is a mess,’ he said. ‘I meant to tidy up last night, but that last batch you gave me really knocked me on my arse.’

  He wasn’t lying about the mess. The flat was an absolute pigsty – or at least what I could see of it was. The only light in Carlo’s living room came from a dim glow that oozed through a narrow gap in the room’s ratty curtains. Unlike other vampires, bloodsuckers from the Judas Clan were able to stand sunlight. Still, they took the dark where they could get it.

  My eyes adjusted to the gloom and I saw junk strewn around everywhere; dirty laundry, empty cigarette packets, a stained mattress with no box-spring. The detritus of a broken life. It reminded me of the street outside, only instead of a fox picking through the litter, a cat slithered through stacks of heavy metal records. I found myself wondering if vampires could feed from animals, and if they could, whether Carlo had partaken.

  ‘Take a seat, ladies,’ he said, but we politely declined. Well, I did. Gen turned her nose up so high it’s a wonder she didn’t tip over backwards. ‘Suit yourselves then,’ he said, obviously hurt.

  I actually found myself feeling sorry for the little runt. No one deserved to live in a place that smelled like R. Kelly’s bed sheets. Carlo didn’t want to be what he was any more than Neil did. For him, this really was a curse. Damn it, that was two vampires I had a soft spot for now. I was doing my Nightstalker credentials no favours.

  Carlo sniffed the air and turned to me. ‘That’s weird… you smell of blood. Blood on the outside.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Yeah. Got that coppery tang in my nostrils.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘You’ve been fed on already, haven’t you? You dirty girl.’

  I felt colour mount my cheeks. ‘Of course I have,’ I stammered
, ‘I gave you some last night, remember?’

  ‘Nah, this is a fresh feed. This is today.’

  Gen grabbed me by the sleeve of my jacket. ‘You gave blood to that boy of yours, didn’t you?’

  I didn’t see any sense in lying. Gen’s got this way of reading auras that makes her pretty good at rooting out fibs. It’s an angel thing. ‘So what if I did?’

  ‘You foolish girl,’ she cried. ‘Why would you do such a thing?’

  ‘I dunno, because I'm a nice person?’

  ‘Nice people don't feed monsters.’

  ‘Oh, what do you know?’ I retaliated.

  ‘With all due respect—by which I mean none whatsoever—a great deal more than you do.’

  Carlo gave us a little wave to remind us he was still present. ‘Can we get back on track, ladies? I've got a real hankering here.’

  He was itching to get to it, literally in fact, scratching at his skin like he had bugs on him. Bugs in him even.

  ‘First of all, we need something from you,’ I explained.

  ‘What’s mine is yours,’ he replied, throwing his arms wide. ‘So tell me, what can I do for you lovely people?’

  ‘It’s my boyfriend, Neil. The Clan turned him into one of them.’

  ‘Shit. Sorry to hear it, I know how that goes.’ He shook his head sympathetically. ‘So what do you need from me exactly? You want me to do away with him? No problem, I’m sure I’ve got a bit of wood I can sharpen around here somewhere.’ He began rooting through his junk, sweeping aside some unpaid bills and a pile of outdated Kerrang magazines.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Gen, ‘I already tried.’

  ‘I don’t want you to kill Neil. I don’t want either of you to kill him.’

  ‘Oh,’ Carlo said, straightening up. ‘Then what do you want?’

  ‘I want your advice. You’re one of them—one of the Clan—except you’re not really.’