Fresh Hell: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (The Ghosted Series Book 1)

by David Bussell

  The demon wasn’t what I expected at all. The soul feaster looked nothing like the woodcut in Jazz Hands’ bestiary; all sinewy limbs and smouldering eyes and razor blade claws. It looked like a woman. A human woman with bad table manners and a real thing for offal.

  She lifted her head and her blood-matted blonde hair parted to reveal a face.

  It was a face I recognised. A face that made the room tilt and threaten to drop me to the floor.

  The demon was Ingrid.

  Ingrid Vallens.

  But that couldn’t be.

  Ingrid was dead.

  Wandering Camden’s waterways as a ghost.

  No way it could be...

  … and then it clicked.

  This wasn’t Ingrid. This was Ingrid’s skin—the same skin that had been peeled from her body—now worn by the soul feaster. It hung from the demon’s bones like a badly-fitted suit, baggy and uneven. She looked beautiful still, but her features were like a death mask, lifeless and limp. The demon definitely passed for human though, which would explain how it had been able to walk the streets without drawing attention. I’d assumed it was using some kind of concealment magic, but this was a far more elegant solution. Gross, but elegant.

  The demon sniffed the air and its hollow eyes darted my way and flared orange.

  The cat was out of the bag.

  I went inside my jacket and pulled my gun.

  Tank Girl shrieked, startled by the sight of a pearl-handled revolver materialising from thin air. It was invisible inside of my ghost clothes, but out of my pocket it was there to see, plain as day.

  The demon saw the gun too and froze, caught in the open, uncertain of what to do next.

  I didn’t know what kind of damage a six-shooter was going to do a soul feaster—I might as well have been waving a fertility crystal at it for all I knew—but from the way it stalled, the demon was just as clueless as I was.

  ‘Stay there,’ I told it, cocking the gun’s hammer.

  Tank Girl screamed at the sound of my disembodied voice. Poor love. She really was having one of those days.

  The soul feaster twitched.

  ‘I said stay there!’

  But the demon was having none of it. Quick as a flash, it darted behind a pillar then around the other side to grab the cybergoth. She screamed as the demon brought its arm around her throat, turning her into a human shield.

  ‘Please,’ she begged, ‘whoever you are—whatever you are—don’t shoot!’

  I adjusted my aim but couldn’t find a clear target. No way I could risk taking a shot without slotting Tank Girl. Besides, what do I know about firing a gun? I’m no marksman – the only firefights I’ve ever been involved in went down on Xbox Live.

  The three of us stood there like human statues.

  It was a standoff.

  At least it was a standoff, right up until the demon lifted Tank Girl off her feet and tossed her, sending her soaring across the dance floor like she’d been fired from a cannon. She passed through me but collided with my gun, taking it with her. The revolver span from my grip and went clattering across the floor, lost beneath the dry ice.

  I scrabbled around under the dry ice, desperate to find the one weapon I had to defend myself with, when suddenly I saw it.

  I snatched it up and levelled the thing—

  —But the demon was gone.

  I fouled the air with some choice profanities.

  No one left but me and Tank Girl, out cold on the ground.

  I scanned the room. The demon was fast, but it couldn’t have gotten too far. I went looking for a trail and found a path leading through the dry ice, coalescing now, but distinct enough to show me the way the demon had fled.

  I followed the path to the bar and found smashed pint glasses where the demon must have vaulted it. Sliding through to the other side, I saw an open trapdoor and a set of steps leading to the beer cellar. I leapt through the hatch, landed like a feather—easy enough when you’re a phantom—and flashed my gun to every corner of the room.

  I caught a blur of movement and popped off three rounds.

  BANG.

  BANG.

  BANG.

  The third one did the business.

  The soul feaster squealed like a stuck pig.

  I’d winged it.

  I lined the bastard up in my sights and squeezed the trigger again—

  —but the demon was quick.

  And desperate.

  With no way to get past me, it hurtled pell-mell into a cellar wall.

  CRUNCH.

  It landed hard. Hard enough to bust through to the other side and leave me lost in a cloud of brick dust. By the time it had cleared, the demon was gone. All that was left was a trickle of black blood leading through a crumbling hole in the cellar wall.

  I stuck my head through the opening and peered into the inky gloom. The demon had punched through to the city’s old, Victorian sewer system. No way I was chasing it through there. The sewers were home to all manner of Uncanny – the kind that only walk the streets by cover of night. Creepers, lurkers, lurchers, not to mention fey folk. And I don’t mean the Tinkerbell kind of fairies that frolic at the bottom of your garden; these are spiteful, evil little bastards. Vicious bottom-feeders that lay eggs in your stomach that hatch like a pound of Semtex.

  I pocketed my gun and headed back upstairs. Tank Girl was starting to come around, woozy still from being ragdolled across the room. It didn’t seem right to leave her head full of all the stuff she’d seen, so I stepped inside her and gave that blob of grey meat a good old scrub. I don’t like to possess strangers if I can help it, least of all women, but it was that or a lifetime of nightmares for the girl. After I was done scouring I gave her back her body, along with a big hole where some bad memories used to go. Far as she knew, she’d had one too many snakebites and nodded off. She might wonder why she’d been the only one left in the club when she came to, but I doubt it would occur to her until she woke up the next day.

  With that taken care of, I went to the mutilated corpse spread-eagled on the dance floor. The dead body used to belong to a man. He looked to be in his mid-forties, but that was just a guess. I’d like to have confirmed the deets with his ghost, only the demon had already snacked on his soul.

  The deceased was dressed in a latex catsuit, complete with a tasteful peephole for his unmentionables. Much like the last body, the rib cage was torn open and the heart missing, except by the looks of things, this one had been pried apart by the demon’s bare hands.

  It seemed the demon had decided to strike out on its own this time, without its summoner in tow. What was that all about anyway? A demon and a magician in cahoots? It made no sense. What was the summoner getting out of this? And where the hell was he now?

  I took a closer look at the victim, trying to get an ID. Brown hair, blue eyes, a cleft chin...

  Huh.

  One of the elders had a cleft chin. One of the Eternal Flame guys.

  And then the obvious fell into place.

  He was a member of the Order. Chin Dimple! The body at the cemetery, the one with the weak chin; that must have been Glass Jaw. Why was I only figuring this out now? I was losing my touch. Bad detecting, Jake. Bad.

  Chin Dimple and Glass Jaw were obviously the victims of a vendetta. I had no idea how he was doing it, but the rogue magician had the demon bumping off his former colleagues. Chin Dimple must have known that though, surely? That someone had cored one of his buddies and left them laid out in a graveyard? It was on the front page of the Metro for crying out loud. And what does this genius do? Squeezes into a latex catsuit and heads off to a fetish club to air out his privates. I mean, come on, man. Priorities.

  So, who was this guy? I firmed up my ghost hands and patted him down; no mean feat when just turning a door handle can leave me shaking like a washing machine on spin cycle. I eventually found a pocket sewn into the upper leg of the dead guy’s latex outfit. Horny but practical – a winning combination. Inside th
e pocket was a leather wallet, which I pulled out with a squeak and rifled for clues. His driver’s license had his name as Timothy Martin Jones, D.O.B February 4th, 1969. Other than that he had forty quid in cash, an expired rail ticket and a creased up library card. Nothing much of interest there. I was about to return the wallet to its pocket when I noticed a zip on the side. I opened it up to find a condom and a half-empty blister pack of pills. I held the medicine up to the light to check the brand.

  Ziagen.

  I knew that name. A flatmate of mine at university used to take the stuff. Called them “Nukes.” Used them to treat his HIV.

  Guess that explained why Chin Dimple was living each day like his last.

  Too bad for him that this was the one.

  14

  By the time I left the club the sun was coming up and colouring in a new day. The police would find the body I’d left behind soon enough, in the meantime I’d check in on Ingrid and let he know how things were progressing. I’d made a mental note to keep the stuff about a demon running around in her skin to myself. That just struck me as an overshare.

  When I got to the canal there was no sign of her though. I walked the towpath from Camden Lock to St. Pancras, checked under every bridge, inside every narrowboat, but Ingrid was gone. Where the hell was she? Had she drifted away and turned feral? Was she out there somewhere, haunting the streets, springing from alleyways and frightening the sensitive? Or had she gone full Bloody Mary, materialising from mirrors and scratching people’s eyes out?

  I thought about Ingrid’s glowing smile. How much I missed it already.

  Then another theory occurred. What if the magician had gotten to her? What if he’d been down here, tying up loose ends while I was busy having it out with his demon at the club? Did he rub her out? Did he obliterate her, like an exorcist cleansing a haunted house? Just like I used to do.

  I should have been here. Should have protected her. I was so busy trying to scrub that red ink from my account that I lost sight of what mattered. I was thinking about myself, not Ingrid. About getting square with the Big Man. Typical me. Selfish to the end. Till after the end even.

  It was all starting to feel like a lost cause, but then I had a thought. If Ingrid had really been obliterated, why wasn’t God’s stooge already beating at my door? I decided to keep my worst fears in check until I knew what had happened for sure. So long as there was a chance Ingrid was still out there, I was going to fight for her.

  ***

  I went to Frosty for the word on the street.

  He occupied his usual spot, a patch of pavement under a Sainsbury’s cash point, a stone’s throw from Mornington Crescent Station.

  ‘I need your help, Frost.’

  He looked up at me with bloodshot eyes. ‘My fee?’

  I didn’t have time for this. It was day five of my investigation and the hourglass was almost empty. ‘I don’t have any booze for you, Frosty. Not right now.’

  ‘Then you’re shit out of luck, son.’

  ‘Please,’ I begged him. ‘Sort me out this once and I’ll have three cans for you next time. Scratch that, I’ll have a whole bloody six pack if you want!’

  His lips smacked like waves lapping against a rock. ‘Promise?’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’ Again, not really a promise you could take to the bank, that one, but it seemed to convince Frosty.

  ‘Alright then,’ he said, ‘what do you need to know?’

  ‘Ingrid Vallens. Where is she?’

  ‘Ingrid Vallens the underwear model?’ he asked, arching a frostbitten eyebrow. ‘What are you up to, you mucky bastard?’

  ‘I don’t have time to piss about, Frosty. She’s dead and I need to find her. Can you tell me where she is or not?’

  He flared his nostrils. ‘You owe me one, Fletcher. Or six to be exact.’

  He closed his eyes and did whatever it was he did. When he opened them again his face was crossed with confusion. ‘That’s weird. I can’t get a fix on her. I know I should be able to. It’s like I can sort of smell where the info should be, but I can’t get to it. Like... something’s blocking me.’

  I filled a speech balloon with some swears.

  ‘What have you gotten yourself mixed up in this time?’ he asked.

  ‘The Order I told you about. One of them’s gone rogue and started bumping people off.’

  ‘And you think he’s covering his footprints?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  He made a “we’ll see about that,” face and scrunched his eyes closed to seek out the errant magician.

  Usually, Frosty came back with a hit in about the time it took a roulette wheel to stop spinning, but he was struggling with this one. I watched his eyeballs darting about under their lids. His face screwed up and an axe-wound crease furrowed his forehead. Finally, his eyes flicked open.

  ‘I don’t see him. It’s like someone went through a box of photos and cut the heads out of all of them. The bloke’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma—’

  ‘—dropped in a bucket of dog shit. Yeah, I know.’

  I firmed up my foot and booted an empty can of Fanta across the street, surprising a couple of passing tourists.

  Another dead end.

  ‘Oh…’ A smile cracked the crust of ice on Frosty’s face. ‘Your magician… I did manage to get one thing on ‘em.’

  ‘What?’ I asked, in a pitch that came out just a bit too high.

  Frosty showed me two rows of rotten teeth. ‘I can’t give you a name, I can’t give you a face... but I can give you a place.’

  15

  I didn’t have time to round up the authorities. Three people were dead already, and I wasn’t hanging around to let another one croak. Besides, if I could find the magician, I was convinced I could get the whereabouts of Ingrid from him, even if I had to beat it out of him with my bare fists. Or Mark’s bare fists anyway.

  I took my mule to the address Frosty gave me. I needed Mark’s body if I was going to deal with this magician; how else was I meant to get answers from him? With a couple of ghost arms and good intentions? I don’t like to put Mark in harm’s way, but without a physical form I’m about as useful as Aquaman in Iraq. Besides, if anyone deserved to get roughed up, it was Mark “kick me in the balls for shits and giggles” Ryan.

  The pad Frosty steered me to was a plush three-storey townhouse in Primrose Hill, an area of Camden inhabited by people who give their kids names like Saskia and Rupert. Was this really the place? Was this where my rogue magician kicked up his heels? I bounded up the front steps and stopped at the entrance. I’d planned to pick it with an unlocking cantrip, but when I arrived there I found the door hanging off its hinges, which, you know, is a little ominous. And by a little I mean a lot.

  This wasn’t my rogue magician’s house, this was just his last known location. Or his last location as far as Frosty could figure it.

  I drew my revolver and slipped inside, padding down the hallway as quietly as I could and following a trail of something on the ground that might have been soot.

  The interior of the house was a mix of industrial and bohemian—exposed brick and polished teakwood floors—but the decor wasn’t the property’s most notable feature. The thing that really stood out was the smell – a pungent, smoky tang, like someone had been cooking BBQ indoors. It didn’t smell like any meat I knew though. It stank like burnt tramp with a top note of rotten eggs.

  I reached the end of a hall and arrived in an open-plan living area; a lounge, minimally furnished with a loose scattering of tasteful Danish designs. No one was home. No one living anyway.

  Sprawled across the floor and leaking its juices into an authentic bearskin rug was a body, its chest torn wide open, just like the others.

  My man had been here alright, but I was a step behind him like always. This was starting to get old now. I was beginning to feel like an unwilling participant in the world’s grimmest scavenger hunt.

  I crouched down to get a proper look a
t the rogue magician’s latest victim. He looked to be in his late seventies, with just a few wisps of hair clinging to his scalp and a pair of rheumy, blue eyes. Sat on his upper lip was a distinctive waxed moustache.

  Mustachio.

  I checked his arm to confirm. Sure enough, the limb was prosthetic. No doubt about it, this was the Order’s chief elder. The leader of the pack—the one who lost a limb sending this demon back to hell the first time—had finally met his match.

  Three magicians down, one to go.

  Christ, I was making a real balls of this job.

  I cast a look at my surroundings. There, on a shabby chic sideboard, sat next to a Bang & Olufsen stereo, was a framed certificate: an award from the Royal College of Surgeons, a diploma in the speciality of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery. So, a dead theology professor, a departed HIV patient, and now a plastic surgeon. Three people sure to have a marked interest in the prospect of eternal life. No wonder they all belonged to their little immortality club. Ironic that it had turned out to be the death of them.

  Searching the room some more, my eyes landed on a shape on the wall; the scorched outline of a silhouette spoiling a nice coat of tastefully neutral Farrow & Ball paint. Seemed I’d found the source of that BBQ smell. From the looks of things, Mustachio had gotten a last second shot in before the soul feaster went to town on him. Fair play, old man.

  Returning to the body, I saw something lying on the rug beside Mustachio’s hand. A twig, one end wrapped in a length of blue leather twine. I stooped down to examine the thing closer. There were etchings running along its side. Magical runes. This wasn’t a twig… this was a wand. A wand of lightning to be exact – the same one he’d used to blast the demon with. Magical wands and seraphim swords, huh? What didn’t these guys have... I mean, except for their hearts.

  I reached down and picked up Mustachio’s wand. I wiped a smear of blood off it and ran my thumb along the runes, feeling for a magical spark. It seemed the enchantment had been good for one charge only. The item was spent. Those things don’t mess around though; the soul feaster must have taken one hell of a whack. Along with the bullet I’d put through the thing, it should be pretty wobbly on its feet right about now. I just hoped I could get to it in time to take advantage of that.