Uncanny Kingdom: An Eleven Book Urban Fantasy Collection (Uncanny Kingdom Omnibus 1)

by David Bussell

  The ground shook.

  I staggered back, the wall stopping me, the fire in my hands spluttering out as confusion took the spell’s place in my mind.

  ‘Oh, don’t fight,’ said the creature to David. ‘We’re friends, you and I. Best of friends. Best of enemies.’

  David’s head slowly righted itself to look directly at the creature.

  There was something wrong with his eyes.

  They were filled with fire.

  A white hot glow that seeped from the sockets. Was this the creature’s doing? What was happening to him?

  ‘David! David, are you okay?’

  He lifted his hands and took hold of the creature’s forearms, slowly pulling them from his chest. I’d passed right through the thing like I was a ghost, and yet here was David gripping the thing by the arms.

  ‘Don’t want to be friends? Oh dear. Oh my.’

  David pushed the creature out of him, the power in his eyes had now escaped from his eye sockets and was spreading out, his whole head blazing with white fire.

  ‘David, stop,’ I said, weakly. I found myself sliding away across the wall, my arm raised to shield myself from the heat he was generating. This couldn’t just be the creature’s effect. What the hell was going on?

  David spoke, his voice a deep, unnatural rumble: ‘Finished.’

  He threw out his arms and the raging fire erupted from him, burning down this vision of the creature’s realm as the power he unleashed tore my spell apart. Pure, unbridled power flew from him and raged around the alley. I found myself on the ground, covering my head and fully expecting the flames to burn me to ash.

  It didn’t happen.

  Breathing heavily, I peeked out from behind my arms to see the spell I’d cast was over. Whatever David had done had wiped it away. Broken the connection. The other realm was hidden again and we were back in the here and now.

  ‘Stella?’

  I turned to see David curled on the ground. Whatever the energy was that had burned around him and killed my spell was gone.

  I stood and moved warily towards him.

  ‘David, are you… okay?’

  He looked up at me as he unfurled from his foetal position, then slowly pushed himself up, using the wall for support. ‘This is definitely my least favourite dingy alley in London,’ he said. ‘And I include the one where a junkie stabbed me in the gut with a four inch blade. So, you know, stiff competition.’

  He rubbed at his eyes, the eyes that had burned with magical power moments earlier.

  ‘It was here, David. The creature was here,’ I said, dumbfounded by what had happened. By what David had been able to do.

  He put his hand to his chest, to where the faceless man’s hands had entered. ‘Amy was here,’ he said. ‘She was here. Almost here.’

  ‘I couldn’t save her. Not like she was. The spell wasn’t strong enough.’

  David sighed and shuffled forwards as we made our way out of the alley and back into the light of the street.

  ‘So now what?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll think of something, don’t worry. We’ll get Amy back, I promise.’

  What had I said about making promises?

  26

  We found a nearby pub and collapsed into a booth, David’s hand noticeably trembling as he lifted his pint glass to his lips. His shakes upset the beer, which rolled down the glass and dribbled over his fingers and onto the table.

  ‘Shit,’ he said as he placed his glass down, half annoyed at the spillage, half embarrassed that he was still so shook up.

  We should have gone straight back to the coven to check on Amy, but who were we kidding? We knew what we’d find. Amy laid out in bed, still as a corpse, no closer to being saved. So, instead we found a dingy corner to numb a bit of the doubt and frustration. I took two big gulps and rested the already half empty pint glass back on the table, holding it tight in my hand.

  ‘It could see me. The creature I mean,’ said David. ‘Why could it see me and not you?’

  More to the point, what the hell did you just do back there, David?

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘Well, not for certain. But I think it must be something to do with what happened to you as a kid. It seemed like you were experiencing that memory again. That childhood trauma. It must have put you on its radar. With me it acted like I wasn’t even there.’

  ‘Well, don’t take it personally, but maybe you’re not his type.’

  I smiled and sipped at my drink.

  ‘Funny, but I think that is exactly it. I was born an adult, so I don’t have any childhood pain for it to take notice of. I might as well not exist as far as it’s concerned. Maybe it literally can’t see me because of that.’

  David sighed and shook his head, lifting his drink to his mouth again.

  He looked normal.

  There was no trace of the power, the magic that had exploded out of him. No evidence of the white-hot flames that had burned out of his eyes, his mouth, his entire head.

  ‘You know, my nut is banging here; I must have hit it on the ground or something.’

  “Or something” was right.

  Was this connected to his new ability to see ghosts? What the hell had Mr. Trick done to him?

  ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’ asked David.

  ‘Like what? I’m not looking at you like anything.’

  ‘You’re looking at me like a big-eyed puppy that you’re about to put down. What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing, just… I didn’t like to see you like that. In the alley, I mean. That’s all.’

  Well, that was sort of true. Just not in the way he would take it.

  ‘Yeah, well, it wasn’t exactly a picnic for me either. You know, I’d happily locked that memory up in the dark recesses of my noggin, and now here it is again. Any time I want to I can picture those three turds stood over me, knife in hand. I can even remember how I smelled after I pissed my pants. Of piss, if you were wondering.’ He snorted and shook his head.

  I should have told him, I know that. It’s like finding out someone has an illness and deciding it’s better for them if they don’t know. It’s never better for them, but I didn’t know exactly what it was that had happened to David. It may have had nothing to do with the effect of Mr. Trick living inside of him. Maybe what had happened in the alley was just some, I don’t know, “natural” backlash to the creature messing with him. Maybe, because he was an adult, his body had just reacted like an antibody, fighting off an infection.

  It was possible.

  No, I didn’t believe me either.

  ‘Stella,’ said David, indicating past me with his head, ‘Oi, mate, turn that up will you?’

  I looked over to see the barman pick up the remote control and turn up the sound on the pub’s television. It was a news report. A woman with a serious face and serious hair was informing London about the strange spate of children slipping into comas that was happening across the city. Since we’d last checked in, the number had grown.

  Eighty-seven.

  Eighty-seven kids had closed their eyes and failed to open them again.

  ‘It’s spreading,’ I noted.

  ‘And the number’s increasing each day.’

  The woman put forward one viewer’s tweeted theory that the children had drunk a contaminated soft drink; a chemical attack by terrorists. The Daily Mail was running with that one for the next day’s front page. One crackpot pundit said it was down to the soup of Wi-Fi waves we live in, affecting the brainwaves of developing minds.

  The newsreader moved on to discussing the opening of London’s fourth cereal cafe, and the barman switched over to the football.

  ‘It’s only getting worse,’ David lamented. ‘What’s our next move, Stella? How do we batter this thing?’

  27

  My witches would have known what to do.

  Kala, Trin, and Feal; they would have taken this thing down as easy as you like. The creature wasn’t even real, not in the
dictionary sense of the word. It was just a magical creation, pulled into existence by the emotions of children. Kala and the rest had already taken it down once, before my time. They’d tackled the thing and beaten it. Protected the children of this city from saying the rhyme; from falling asleep and never waking up again.

  But my witches were dead, and whatever safeguards they had put in place to stop this thing, to stop things like it, were growing weak. Now there was only me left to try and stop it. Well, there was Giles L’Merrier, but nowadays he seemed disinterested in the plight of man. Kala used to speak about him a lot. Of the brave and mighty L’Merrier, of the people he would save and the evil he would brush aside and stomp under his foot. She spoke about him with a sort of reverence in her voice, like he was one step above even them. Like she almost worshipped him. But that wasn’t the man holed up in his dusty antiques shop. Now it seemed like the world bored him. Irritated him. I wondered what it would take for L’Merrier to step out of that shop and lend a hand.

  I sent David to the coven to check on Amy. I didn’t want to go back. Didn’t want to see her, not yet. Not since the promises I’d made were no closer to being kept. So I walked the streets of West London, pulling my leather jacket tight around me, lost in my thoughts.

  Or at least that’s what I was doing at first. After that I was just pretending to be distracted. Pretending like I didn’t know someone was following me.

  When you work in my line of business you develop a sort of sixth sense. A little twinge that lets you know when someone is stalking you. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. A prickle that worked itself up and down my spine.

  I knew the routine by now. Knew how to snatch a look at who it was surveilling me without letting on that I knew they were there. I’d stop in front of a shop window, pretending to scan the goods inside but actually catching a glimpse of the person lingering behind me. Then I’d make a sudden change of direction, turning back on myself. The surprise would cause whoever was following me to stop, to waver in surprise, caught off guard. In the split-second it took them to right themselves, I’d learn who was on my tail and what they looked like.

  It only took rolling those two strategies out a couple of times to figure out two things: first, it wasn’t one person following me, it was several. One was stalking me for a while, for five or ten minutes, then someone else would take their place, like they were part of a tag team. Second: I knew what it was. It was a breed of low-level Uncannys, all from the same clan. I knew that because they always kept to their own, and besides, I knew this one by name.

  ‘Razor,’ I said, nodding my head by way of a greeting as I sat on some stone steps, waiting for him to catch up.

  ‘Familiar,’ he said, spitting the words past his small, sharp teeth.

  ‘Is there something I can do for you? Your whole clan seems very interested in my movements.’

  ‘Yeah, because I asked them to find you. We eaves know things, hear things; if someone needs to be found, we can track them down.’

  ‘I’m still waiting for an explanation. And believe me, I’m not in the best of moods right now, so if you’re just here to piss me off, or try to feed me some more dog shit, I’ll be more than willing to take a little frustration out on that ugly mug of yours.’

  ‘So disrespectful. The High-born always are.’ He slapped his forehead. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, you weren’t “born,” were you? You were puked out by some witches to do their bitch work.’

  I stood, hands throbbing with power, and Razor snarled, baring his teeth.

  ‘A little frustration therapy it is then.’

  I raised a fist, magic swirling around it in molten threads, expecting Razor to either attack or run. Instead, he sagged his shoulders and bowed his head.

  ‘What is this? You talk big and then give in at the first sign of trouble? That is very disappointing, Razor. But don’t think it’ll stop me knocking those yellow teeth out of your skull. I don’t like being followed.’

  I raised my fist and stepped forward, ready to teach Razor his—by my count—seventy-fifth harsh lesson. But something stopped me. He looked up, and for the first time I saw something in Razor I’d never seen before.

  Vulnerability.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  ‘I… I need your help, Familiar.’

  ‘You need what now?’

  ‘Your help. We all do.’ He broke eye contact, like he was ashamed. ‘It’s our children. You need you to help our children.’

  28

  Razor and I had never exactly spent quality time together. The extent of our relationship to date had amounted to me tapping him for information at The Beehive, or leaving a cracked tooth in his jaw when he did something to piss me off. Needless to say, strolling down the street by his side felt more than a little strange.

  Obviously I didn’t trust him, never could and never would, so I was on high alert the whole time, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Was he leading me into a trap? That seemed the most likely end result, but then what for, and for whom?

  We didn’t make small talk as we walked, which was fine by me. He lead me through the streets of Hammersmith, up back alleys, down blind alleys hidden from the normals of London, through doors that lead places they shouldn’t have. He was taking me to his den. To his home. The eaves hide their nests where no one can find them, even if you’ve been taken there before and think you’ve memorised the location, you’ll soon find yourself lost and trying to figure out which wrong turn you took. It was one of the things they did with the magic they received in exchange for knowledge. Because when your stock in trade is tattling and telling tales, the last thing you want is to be traceable, otherwise who knows what will come knocking on your door.

  Razor and I walked across rooftops then through a door into the sewers, swatting away the curious fairies that lived there. Well, I swatted them away, Razor grabbed a few and snapped them open, drinking down the magical juice within. For some reason fairy magic doesn’t have the same effect on the eaves as the magic I gave them. For Razor and those like him the fairy juice was like chewing nicotine gum. It scratched an itch, but wasn’t the same.

  Finally, we found ourselves before a large, wooden door that had seen better days. It had been painted bright red once, but now the only paint left on it was huddled in small, peeling patches.

  ‘We’re here,’ he said. ‘Wipe your feet on the way in.’

  As he opened the door I looked up at the large, three-storey Victorian house and wondered which street we were on exactly. I looked around me, squinted, but any time I looked away from the house it was like I was wearing goggles that someone had smeared gloop all over.

  Giving up, I stepped into Razor’s house, wiping my feet on the mat inside and closing the door behind me.

  ‘D’you want a cup of tea?’ asked Razor.

  ‘Tea?’ I replied, surprised. ‘I never imagined you’d be much of a host, Razor.’

  ‘Yeah. Well. I do have some fucking manners.’

  He turned and trudged up the staircase. I could hear the noise of a TV seeping down from above. I looked back at the closed door and wondered what the hell I was doing. How was this helping the job at hand? How was this helping me keep my promise to David about saving Amy?

  ‘You coming or what?’ said Razor.

  I followed up the stairs. ‘You get five minutes,’ I told him. ‘Some of us have got work to do.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  Eyes peered at me from darkened rooms as I walked, and I heard a few unpleasant words muttered as I passed. I could hardly blame them for that. I’d never exactly been pleasant to them.

  The house itself looked like a crack den; an abandoned, dilapidated building that the eaves has found and moved into. Squatted in, made it their own. From the look of the place, not to mention the smell, eaves weren’t too house proud.

  ‘In there,’ said Razor, pointing to the room at the end of the corridor.

  ‘And what am I going to f
ind in there?’ I asked. ‘Because if this is some sort of trap, I’ll be leaving you with more than a few bruised ribs this time, understand?’

  Razor snarled then spat onto the threadbare carpet. ‘Just get in there you piece of… just, in you go.’

  He went inside and I followed.

  I wasn’t expecting what I found.

  The room was quite large; larger than you would expect for an upstairs room in a house like this. More evidence of magic. They obviously used it for more than getting off their heads and making their dens tricky to locate.

  The walls were lined with single beds. Next to each sat an eaves, who looked up to me with barely concealed contempt as I entered.

  ‘What is this?’ I asked, my voice a whisper.

  ‘You know exactly what it is, Familiar,’ replied Razor, and went over to one of the beds, joining a female eaves who was sat next to it. I moved around the room from bed to bed. Each contained a small figure. A child. The young of this eaves clan. All had their eyes closed and were sound asleep. The reality of the situation was obvious.

  ‘They spoke the rhyme?’ I said.

  ‘Of course they did,’ replied Razor.

  ‘How did they get hold of it?’

  ‘We’re eaves, Familiar. We listen. That’s what we do. Something like that rhyme wasn’t going to be passed around our streets without us getting wind of it eventually.’

  There were nine beds in all. Nine beds containing nine young eaves.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘First few went down two nights back, the rest since,’ replied Razor, one hand resting on the arm of the young eaves in the bed he sat next to. Was that Razor’s own child? In my wildest dreams I’d never imagined he was a father. To be honest, I’d barely given him much thought at all besides what I could get out of him, or what I would do to him if he sold me out.

  ‘Why am I here, Razor?’

  ‘Why are you here?’ He stood, a snarl baring his sharp, yellow teeth. ‘You’ve got the nerve to stand in this room, to look at these beds, and ask why you’re here?’