Dead Spark

by Al K. Line

  I was filling back up minute by minute. My call to the Empty, my craving for magic to course through my veins and swell the ink finally answered. It's amazing how habits become ingrained, and for a hundred years I'd become accustomed to being on death's door after intense magic use, needing weeks, sometimes months to recover from enforcer jobs, close to death and good for nothing. So, that's what I expected this time, but it wasn't the case at all.

  Even after all I'd been through, I was recovering quickly. Drained, but not empty inside like a husk of a dark magic enforcer. I was different now and it took some getting used to. There was a background thrum of magic that could not be depleted. Not a reserve so much as an innate ability, a hallmark of true Hidden creatures.

  Regardless of the fact I'd ignored magic over the last five years, this thing inside of me had grown. It had strengthened, it had solidified, it had become a true part of me after I'd awoken it in my time of need in Tokyo.

  Faz Pound was true Hidden.

  What had Dragon said of this gift from the giant? That I was immortal as long as I didn't get myself killed. Yes, I could be killed, but I was also no longer a human being who could wield elemental forces. I was something else. A magical being who had an undying spark—haha—of eternal life and power at the core of my being.

  It was stirring. Drawing energy in from the Empty without me even having to think about it. This was how I always sensed true Hidden to be. No matter how much I drained them, stole their magic away, there was an untouchable core. Like a dense backup battery that was impenetrable and immutable. I thought back to my time in the skinner's room and the lump I'd discovered nestling beside my heart. Wound up tight and waiting to be unleashed.

  This was me now, and as I spat out flies and tried to see while the wind sucked at my eyelids, my spirits soared as magic engulfed me, supercharging my battered body, shunting fantastical chemical combinations around my body as fast as my heart could pump them. Battling and raging against the virus that was the enemy. The deep ache and burn in my thigh eased off until I could almost imagine I'd beaten it for good, banished the infection to a sealed-off place inside where it could do no harm. There was sadness, too, as I knew all I'd done was slow the inevitable.

  Still, better than nothing, right? When you've been bitten by the undead you take what you can and don't complain. Or not much, anyway.

  We roared past junctions, overtook when we could, but slowed down when we hit traffic as we closed on Birmingham. We were safe for now. No way would an SUV be able to get through the traffic and reach us, and besides, the last thing we wanted was to be stopped by the police.

  It was a relief. My face felt battered. I'd consumed more bugs than was healthy even for a bird, and my eyes were half-glued together in a weird way from squinting for so long. We needed gear if we were to stay on the bikes. A helmet, or sunglasses at the very least. True, there was an amazing sense of freedom, but it was marred by the almost overpowering feeling of vulnerability as you hurtled past massive lumps of metal at seventy miles-per-hour with nothing but a retro suit between you and the asphalt.

  The bike throbbed between my painful thighs and I wondered why I'd gone so long without owning a bike. Ethelbald had done a serious job on them, too. The chrome gleamed, the seat leather was dark and thick, and there were more bespoke parts than off-the-shelf. He was gonna be pissed, I knew that much. Why? Because there wasn't a hope in hell that the bikes wouldn't be trashed at some point—I was surprised we'd managed to ride for so long already. He thinks of them as his babies, and woe-betide any customer that treats his creations with anything but love and attention.

  We slowed in a traffic bottleneck and pulled up alongside each other. Dancer wasn't looking good, even by his standards, and I refused to look in my mirrors, however shiny and chrome-lined they were, for fear of what I'd see.

  "We need to get off the main roads," I shouted. "It's just a matter of time before we get stopped for not wearing helmets."

  "Spark, we're the invisible men, nobody will call it in. Look." Dancer nodded at a guy in a Subaru one lane across from us. He glanced at us, frowned at our appearance, then promptly looked away. We were already forgotten.

  "I know we're nigh on invisible, but it only takes someone to act quickly before thinking too much, or for a cop car to go past, and it could get nasty." It wasn't likely, we truly are ghosts to Regulars, but why take the chance? "And besides, we need to make sure the wyrmlings don't find us. We need rest, and food. More food. And sleep. You do know the kind of day I've had, right?"

  "Hey, mine hasn't exactly been a picnic," he protested.

  At the mention of food my stomach somersaulted. "Let's just get off at the next junction and take it easy."

  "Fine," he agreed.

  We crawled through the traffic. How could people do this every damn day? The same in the morning and the evening? It would drive me nuts. Guess that's the sacrifices we make to feed ourselves, put a roof over our heads and our families'. Respect where it's due; I couldn't imagine anything worse.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were sailing down quiet lanes, as rural as it gets. Hard to imagine that a short distance away the billboards screamed at distracted drivers and the skyline was nothing but skyscrapers and a maze of roads that led nowhere I wanted to go.

  The sight of fields and hedgerows calmed my mind and body, and for the first time since we got rather violently booted from Council HQ I felt a glimmer of hope.

  Then everything went dark and I felt the zombie virus steal my sight.

  Oops

  "Haha." I laughed at my own idiocy. It wasn't the zombie virus taking me over, we'd just entered a tunnel of dense oak trees overhanging the road and were plunged into darkness. I flipped on the full beam and chased Dancer's tail lights, emerging into dying rays of golden sunlight as day got ready to give up its warmth to the cold of the English night. We had hours yet, but dusk was fast-approaching and we would have to slow if we were to remain safe.

  A noxious smell of rotten eggs assaulted my freezing nostrils and I glanced down at the handlebars.

  "Wotcha, Spark, got any... Ack, ugh. Gross," moaned Intus as she stuck out a tongue that kept on unfolding and scraped dead insects from the bright red thing with tiny but deadly claws.

  "Hey, Intus. Um, I'm kind of riding a motorbike at the moment. Can this wait?"

  "Wait? No, it can't wait," she replied testily, ears flapping wildly and tail the same as the wind battered her three inch body. She gripped tight, her incredible strength making the bike veer.

  "Whoa! Careful. If we crash I'll be dead."

  "You big baby. A bit of dying never hurt anyone."

  "Actually, it totally has, loads of times," I said, knowing it was an argument I could never win no matter how often I tried to explain the difference between a human's life and an immortal, demonic imp's.

  "Whatever. Look, can we talk?"

  "Talk? About what?"

  "Got an, er, serious problem. Someone's been nicking the kids. I'm down about twenty of the little buggers. Um, I mean, darling implings. Illus won't let me hear the end of it. Says I gotta find 'em, and quick. That it makes us look bad. I'm sure they'll turn up, but you know how Illus likes to make sure we always have the right number. Stupid, but there you go." She shrugged her tiny shoulders and smiled her wide and cheeky grin, although how she pulls it off and looks cute whilst also looking so terrifying, if in miniature, is beyond me. Maybe I'm biased, or maybe it's a size thing. Not that I'd ever mention that to her, of course.

  "Damn, I'm so sorry, Intus. Anything I can do to help, just say the word."

  "Cool, I was hoping you'd say that." She smiled at me and my heart sank.

  "Oh, no, I didn't mean that."

  It was too late. Me and my big mouth.

  Intus clicked her fingers even as I spoke. The world split into a million parts, the veil between our world and the infernal underworld—hell, Impland, or whatever or wherever imps live for eternity—soaked through into my
reality. Up ahead were green hills and a darkening sky, but a layer of red death descended from above like a dodgy fade-in. As though red paint dripped down the canvas of my world, raucous and manic laughter echoing through from a realm I was never meant to know or see, let alone be a part of. It came down faster and faster, wiping away the world.

  Then time froze.

  My bike stopped, and I turned to Dancer only to discover he was frozen. A snapshot of an exhausted man who looked like a funeral director, his oiled hair wild from the buffeting of the wind. Bits of insect stuck to his face, eyes almost closed as he squinted. Suit trashed, bite on his forearm exposed and looking all kinds of nasty, like a snake bite times a thousand. The exhaust fumes trailed behind him in a weird static montage, tiny droplets of fuel sparkling.

  Then everything I knew and understood vanished and I was no longer in my world.

  I was in Intus'.

  Eek!

  She was on my shoulder, and I was standing in a ravine maybe five feet deep so I had a view of Impland as seen almost from their height, give or take a foot.

  My eyes took in the scene. My mind reacted by shutting down. I screamed, and millions of tiny imp heads turned at the sound as it echoed through valleys of mismatched socks, bounced off the mountains of lost keys, and made thousands of pairs of underwear vibrate on the imps' work benches where they were busy picking apart the stitching so they'd rip at the most inopportune moment when returned to unsuspecting owners.

  Then I lost my sanity and the gibbering of countless alien tongues, in a demonic language I could never hope to understand, all chattered manically in my mind simultaneously.

  The last thing I remember before I lost even the vestige of sanity was Intus up close, peeling back an eyelid and prodding my eyeball as she said, "Oops."

  Damn right, oops.

  Lost Implings

  I spat out the noxious liquid, so bitter and foul it made anything the Chemist had ever given me taste like a fancy cocktail.

  "Just drink it," ordered Intus, tipping the test tube of liquid—red, of course—up high so the poison hit my throat again.

  "Gah," I choked. "Is this lava?"

  Intus tilted her oversized—it's all relative—head to one side and peered at me suspiciously. The fact she was at eye level meant I must have been lying on the ground, my head sideways, or ripped off, or something equally demonic and stupid. "Of course it's not lava. You don't drink lava, you bathe in it."

  "Ack. Uck. Aggle. Ah, stupid me."

  "Right?" she said knowingly, then upended the rest of the vial.

  With no choice, the liquid dried out my mouth like it had been set fire to, burned its way down my scalded throat, hit my stomach and erupted into what I can only describe as feeling like hell itself had been miniaturized and thrust through my skin into my belly. Then the party really got started.

  Speaking of hells in miniature...

  My vision cleared and my mind stopped screaming about the terrors of all things imp related. The chittering and chattering of nasty beasties that made Poe's imaginings pale in comparison fluttered away back to the dark recesses of my mind, and the door slammed shut on them, leaving me clear-headed and light of limb. I felt fab.

  For less time than it took to scream. Then Round Two kicked in.

  Intus, and about a thousand other imps who appeared in a cloud of vomit-inducing stink, took a few steps back as I thrashed about wildly. I expected to pulverize them to smithereens as I flapped and kicked and generally acted like I'd been poisoned by a so-called friend in the netherworlds, but I didn't. I watched in horror, mind numb against such an impossible reality, as my arm shrank and kept on shrinking.

  The rest of me followed suit. Head, legs, torso, the lot. All of it shrank and it felt like my insides weren't catching up fast enough to deal with the new, diminutive Faz Pound.

  I may have screamed. I may have ranted. I may have shouted abuse. Then it was over. I was still me, but tiny. An itsy-bitsy Faz Pound. Intus walked up to me as the other imps wandered off, bored. Heading back to work, or what they called work, when it looked more like fun throwing socks about and sliding down mountains of keys that soared up high until lost to cloud—again, red.

  "Intus, put me back to my right size this instant. And get me out of here. I've got things to do. Important things." Then it hit me. My bike, the speed, the lack of me on it. Was the bike already in a ditch? Had it crashed into Dancer? How would Intus return me without killing me? More to the point, how had she got me here in the first place?

  Was I really here? Or had she just done something gnarly and impish to my mind?

  "You said you'd help. Anything. Remember?" Intus came close and stood beside me, shoulder to shoulder. We were the same size, give or take the extra hair on my head.

  "Yeah, but I didn't mean this. How is this even possible? Isn't this off-limits? And what about my size? Ugh, there's something I need to tell you." I glanced down at my torn suit—still the same, but the perfect size for a small action figure. I prodded my leg, pulled at the material, but it was just bare flesh. Clean, unmarked, definitely no bite mark. I was whole again. Searching inside, I felt good. On top of the world although I was far beneath it. No infection, just magic. Lots of magic.

  "The weird zombie thing, right? Don't worry about it," she said, eyes reflecting madness, twinkling with delight. "We don't have zombies here, can't. Imps only."

  "But I'm not an imp," I moaned, utterly at a loss.

  "I know that," she said, way too close for comfort.

  It's one thing having an imp as a friend when they can sit in you palm, another thing entirely when they're full-size—or you're small, same thing—and you can see every detail of them up close and way too personal. Her smile was like a shark's. Rows of teeth gleaming huge and monstrous. Her claws made her stretched arms appear almost regular length, and don't even get me started on the madness that seemed to scream for release from beneath taut skin, or the tail, or the strange bulge and... Ugh, enough.

  "So, what gives?"

  "I made a few changes. We have our ways. And don't sweat about getting home, it's all taken care of."

  I was going to ask what that meant, but thought better of it. Best I didn't know, not yet. "Intus, this is nuts. Humans can't be here, it's not possible."

  "Aha," Intus jumped around excitedly, "but you aren't human now, and you offered," she reminded me. Again.

  "The giant thing?" I said with a sigh.

  "Yup." She smiled a smug smile. She's good at it, got her smugness down to an art.

  "Fine," I said, knowing this was a battle I wouldn't win. "Let's find the kids. Um, is it always this hot?"

  "Sorry, Spark, I must have given you the wrong potion. I didn't realize it would make you utterly idiotic."

  "Look, I was just asking."

  "Hey, you wanna see my house?"

  "Er, sure. Why not?"

  There was a very good reason why not, as I soon found out.

  Ugh

  "Jesus, fucking, holy, mothering shit, fuck, ugh," I continued—the bad language had been going for some time. Sorry about that, just keeping it real. Anyway, you weren't there.

  "You like it, then?"

  My head spun wildly and I sank into what passed for a chair in these here parts, ignoring the scalding of the semi-molten, semi-sentient furniture, surprised to find my suit wasn't burning.

  "Ugh," I managed again, which was better than continuing with the swearing. I'd exhausted all the words I knew, anyway, and had progressed to making new ones up. I got some good ones, too.

  "Wanna see the pool?" Intus wandered over to one of the endless screens that ran on and on in every direction, receding into the distance until too small to see. There must have been millions of them, maybe infinite.

  "Maybe later. I'm guessing it's lava based?"

  "How did you know? You been peeking? Been here before?"

  "Just a wild guess," I moaned. I was doing a lot of that lately. Muttering, too. I was master
ing the mutter real quick.

  The house was less a conventional space than an infinite sea of chaos, somehow still managing to be rammed with more unusual, mostly unfathomable items than I'd ever imagined, and I'd imagined a lot of weird stuff when it came to Intus.

  There were rocks of all sizes, strange elongated things like clubs made from jagged shards of cooled lava three times our size, and so many weapons of bizarre shape I didn't know what to look at next or whether to look at anything at all. Apparently, lots of it was either for the kids to play with or for gardening. Only a few choice weapons were for Intus' work as she, too, was an enforcer. Just like one in every five other imps. They get into a lot of mischief and lose control, so the more sensible ones—yes, Intus was one of them—had to be constantly on guard to clean up when things went haywire.

  Good job their wayward nature is mostly benign. Comprising getting carried away with hiding things, re-arranging cupboards, moving chairs a little bit, or messing with the height so you sit down only to find it's slightly shorter than usual, but you don't quite realize, and wonder why you cracked your arse as you sat down the same as you have thousands of times before. Unaware that imps have been working hard to saw off maybe a quarter inch from the legs.

  There were weird slabs protruding from walls that acted as dividers, hiding more madness—apparently cots for the kids or somewhere to get stretched out if they were feeling short, or their arms weren't growing fast enough—and on and on the nuttiness went.

  I couldn't take it. The whole realm was so different it was impossible to focus on, let alone make any proper sense of.

  And that was without the damn screens. I glanced from one to another, and another, mind in a state of shock and utter confusion.

  "Um, that's me, right? From the beginning?" I got excited and searched the screens, hoping for a glimpse of when I was young. When I was with my parents. Then I caught sight of Kate and Mithnite at our home, sitting at the kitchen table, talking and looking worried. Kate continually picking up her phone and checking it.