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

by David Bussell

  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 a bit, 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.

  I had a sneaky suspicion that this wasn’t my rogue magician’s house. This was just his last known location, or at least 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 as 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 at 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.

  Only Cleft Lip remained now. 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. It was 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 double-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. No, this wasn’t a twig… this was a wand. A wand of lightning to be exact, which 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.

  I leaned across the body to set the wand down where I found it—

  When something lashed out and seized me by the wrist.

  A hand, gripping me like a vice.

  I almost jumped out of my skin… literally.

  Mustachio was still alive!

  The guy was opened up from navel to neck and I was ankle-deep in his blood. Bright red arterial blood. How could he possibly still be kicking?

  ‘I tried…’ he choked, blood bubbling from his mouth as he pointed to the scorched silhouette on the wall. ‘Tried... to kill it.’

  ‘Easy,’ I said, shushing him and making a face like everything was going to be alright, despite the wealth of facts indicating the opposite.

  I could see his heart now, in his chest still and beating like a jackrabbit’s. He must have blasted the soul feaster before it had a chance to chow down on him. Chased the thing off before it could chew out his vital organs.

  ‘You did well, mate,’ I told him. ‘Played a blinder.’

  He managed to croak out some more words. ‘...Has to be stopped…. promise… promise me you’ll stop it.’

  His bony grip relaxed and I took him by the hand. ‘I’ll stop it,’ I told him. ‘I promise I will.’

  He smiled. His eyelids fluttered. And his heart stopped beating.

  I set his hand down on the floor and bowed my head.

  All was silent.

  Until a sharp yell came from behind me.

  ‘Put down the gun!’ barked a voice I knew all too well.

  Detective Inspector Maddox. Inspector Fuckwit.

  I looked at the revolver in my hand. At that point I’d forgotten I was even holding it.

  ‘This isn’t what it looks like, Maddox,’ I said, pathetically, like a teenage boy trying to explain away some questionable items in his browser history.

  ‘I said put down the gun!’ Maddox repeated.

  I did as I was asked and placed the pistol gently on the rug. The blood-sodden rug that had soaked right through my trousers already. Into my hands, under my fingernails, pretty much all over me. I was marinated in murder. Doused in DNA.

  I turned around slowly with my hands held high.

  ‘Stay where you are! Down on the ground!’ It was DCI Stronge issuing the orders this time. She looked as angry as she did disappointed.

  A pair of laser sights dotted my torso. Both officers were armed with Taser guns.

  Maddox grinned like the cat that got the cream. ‘Look at all this. You’ve been a busy boy, Fletcher.’

  Stronge remained the more professional of the two. ‘Put your hands behind your head and lace your fingers,’ she ordered.

  ‘I didn’t kill this guy, Kat. You must know that.’

  ‘Is that right?’ chuckled Maddox. ‘What are you doing here then, reading the old man’s entrails? ‘Cause if it’s the future you’re after, I can tell you yours, Fletcher: life at her Majesty’s Pleasure, no parole.’

  ‘We don’t have time for this!’ I cried. ‘You're letting him get away!’

  ‘Who?’ said Stronge. ‘Who are we letting get away?’

  At that point I heard a new voice. ‘What’s happening?’ pleaded the ghost of the dead magician, who was sat up from his corpse and looking down at the giant pool of blood surrounding him.

  ‘Tell them,’ I said, forgetting myself. ‘Tell them this wasn’t me!’

  ‘Who are you talking to?’ asked Stronge, following my eye-line but oblivious to the old man’s apparition.

  ‘Going for an insanity plea, are you?’ said Maddox. ‘Good
luck with that.’

  He started walking towards me with a pair of handcuffs.

  ‘I can’t go with you,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh, yeah? What are you gonna do, Fletcher? Fight your way out of here?’

  I froze.

  ‘Yeah, I thought so,’ he said, and started to robotically read off my rights.

  He was inches from me, about to slap on the bracelets. I couldn’t let him take me. Couldn’t let him lock me up. And that only left me with one option.

  I sprang to my feet and kicked Maddox square in the nuts.

  He went down like a bag of hammers, but I was quick to follow as a dart hit me in the chest, chased by about 50,000 volts.

  My muscles convulsed and my teeth clamped shut as Stronge’s Taser lit me up and dropped me hard.

  As I lay on the ground, drooling onto the teakwood floor, a thought occurred.

  Two electrocutions in this place in one day.

  And they say lightning doesn't strike twice.

  16

  I was taken to the station and shoved into a cell. The cops were holding me on breaking and entering, assaulting an officer, perverting the course of justice, and possession of an unlicensed firearm. Oh, and there was that pesky multiple murder charge too.

  They weren’t just writing me up for the last batch of murders either. On top of Ingrid and the three dead magicians, they were trying to pin me with five years of homicides. Every case I’d assisted them on, every bad guy I’d steered towards the slammer, was being treated like a fit-up. As though I’d done the killing, planted false evidence, and served the police a patsy.

  No doubt about it, things weren’t looking great for old Jakey.

  Apparently, Stronge and her trained monkey had arrived at Mustachio’s house following an anonymous tip. I was beginning to get the distinct impression that I’d been set up. Taken out of the picture by the real culprit, the rogue magician. Was he working with Frosty? Had he paid that old lush off to feed me false intel? To speed up my trip to the noose?

  ‘You really had me going,’ said Stronge, as she locked the door to my cell. ‘You really did.’

  It broke my heart to see her so betrayed. So utterly beaten. ‘I had nothing to do with this,’ I told her. ‘You really think I’m a murderer? Come on, Kat, you know me better than that.’

  ‘I only know one thing about you, Fletcher: you’re not a psychic, you’re a fucking psychopath.’

  I was ready to plead my case but she cut me short.

  ‘A lawyer will be along shortly. If you’ve got anything more to say, you can tell it to them.’

  And she left.

  My ex-wife, Ingrid, Jazz Hands, and now Stronge. I was getting to make a real habit of disappointing women.

  A short while later, Maddox arrived on the other side of my bars wearing the kind of smile that belonged on the face of a Disney villain.

  ‘You must have been laughing your arse off, Fletcher. Killing all those people and getting a pay cheque from us to play Nostradamus.’ He slammed his hand against the bars of my cell. ‘Well, you’re not laughing now, are you?’

  He was shaving with Occam’s razor and making a proper meal of it.

  I stayed schtum while he went on. No sense incriminating myself any more than I already had.

  ‘We found the one you left at the nightclub,’ he leered. ‘That your scene is it, Fletcher? Getting tugged off by leather daddies with nipple rings and pierced cocks?’

  ‘You haven’t got a clue,’ I spat.

  Shite. Here I was, banged up inside someone else’s body and about to be done for multiple counts of murder. I'd really dropped Mark in it this time. You could almost feel sorry for the guy… well, you could.

  I had to get out of there. If I could just get to the rogue magician in time, if I could get some answers from him before he set his dog on the last man standing and dropped off the map, maybe then I could find out what had happened to Ingrid. There was still a chance for her, and I wasn’t quitting until I had the facts.

  ‘Maddox,’ I whispered.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, leaning in close enough that I could see the network of veins on his eyeballs, but not so close I could grab him through the bars. ‘What can I do for you, Fletcher?’

  ‘Just one thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You can bite down hard... ‘cause I’m coming in dry...’

  ‘Wha—’ was about as far as he got before I made my move.

  Jettisoning from my meat puppet, I shot through the prison bars and right into Maddox.

  He flailed about like he’d been set on fire, jerking around, bouncing off the walls, clawing at his skin. He put up a fight, I’ll give him that, but he was no prize bronco, and this wasn’t my first rodeo. I took hold of his body, breaking him in, seeping into his bones and clamping down on his mind.

  ‘Possession… for men,’ I whispered, using Maddox’s lips.

  He was mine.

  I ran a quick diagnostic to see what I had. I saw some things rattling around in that peanut Maddox called a brain. Things he wouldn’t let me near with a barge pole: memories, passions, secrets. The whole kit and caboodle. No wonder he put up such a fight. I mean, for a card-carrying homophobe, he sure thought a lot about butt stuff.

  There was one particular memory in there that flashed like a beacon. It came from his twenties, back when he was at university. To join the rugby team, he’d taken part in an initiation that involved him taking to the field and running from one try line to the other, buck naked and with a hotdog up his arse. And get this, every time the thing fell out he’d have to pick it up, take a bite and put it back where he found it. By the time he made it to the other end of the field, that hotdog was a stub.

  So yeah, Maddox had some things to work through, but then so did I.

  The first thing I had to deal with was Mark, who had come out of his stupor and started freaking out over his situation. It’s not every day you wake up stone cold sober in a prison cell, and Mark had a lot to say on the subject. Before he could make too much of a fuss about it though, I thought it prudent to shut him up. I did that by using Maddox’s key to get into his cell, then used my spirit arm to reach into his chest and give his heart the required squeeze to put him out for a few hours. He’d wake up feeling like he’d taken the ice bucket challenge in Antarctica, but he’d live.

  Now to continue my investigation. Since I had access to Maddox’s memories, I sifted past the butt stuff and had a root around for any info pertaining to the Vallens case. Anything the cops might not have shared with me. I found something noteworthy pretty quickly, from right back at the start of the investigation. It turned out that the warehouse Ingrid was skinned in belonged to a local businessman. Maddox had questioned him to find out if he was connected to the crime in any way, but the businessman had claimed the property had been broken into, despite not showing any signs of forced entry. Since the police couldn’t prove any connection to the crime, the suspect was discharged and the matter considered an investigative dead end.

  Here’s the thing though, I know that businessman. He goes by the name of Vic Lords—an employer of mine from back in the day—and I can tell you this for nothing: Vic Lords is innocent of bugger all. The man’s a gangster and an all-round bad guy, and on top of that, he’s a closet Satanist. No surprise he’d be wrapped up in an occult ritual. Vic Lords and shady shit? The Venn diagram of the two is practically an eclipse.

  17

  It was early evening by the time I reached Lords’ office, and a gentle breeze yanked low, grey clouds across the dimming skyline. It was getting on for day six of my investigation. After that I’d have 24 hours to make good on my promise, or I was toast.

  I hadn’t had the displeasure of Lords’ company in a while, not since I’d died in fact. Before then I used to do house clearings for him. He’d buy haunted properties on the cheap then bring me in to exorcise the place so he could sell the purged estates on for a tidy profit. There weren’t all
that many gigs available to a freelance exorcist, so I tended to take whatever I could get my hands on. Of course, I’d always known Vic was dodgy, but I hadn’t known the half of it back then. Or maybe I’d just chosen to ignore it. The prospect of ready money can play tricks on a man.

  Since I became a ghost, I’ve become intimately acquainted with Vic’s shadowy business practices: the illegal gambling dens, the drug smuggling operations, the sex trafficking rings, all of them nourished by his experiments in the black arts. Ever since he committed himself to mastering the occult, his power and notoriety have grown like a fungus, spawning in London’s darkest, sweatiest corners.

  I stood across the road from Vic’s office and cracked my knuckles. Well, Maddox’s knuckles. I’d been wanting to put that sack of shit Lords away for years, but the bloke’s like Teflon. Pin whatever you like on him, he’d always have an alibi. Failing that, he’d grease some palms, or have his goons apply pressure to the arresting officer until he changed his statement. The cops could bring Lords in with a sawn-off head in one hand and a confession note in the other, and he’d still be back on the streets in the time it took to boil a brew.

  I wasn’t there to bring Vic to justice though, I was there for answers, and I was getting them with or without his cooperation. I marched across the road and arrived at the entrance to his premises, a nondescript door stood next to a set of battered steel shutters that hadn’t been rolled up in years. I rapped on the door with Maddox’s knuckle, and a moment later a hatch slid open. The eyeballs peering out from the other side caught the flash of my badge, and I heard a series of bolts slide open. The door swung inwards to reveal Vic’s doorman, a giant slab of gristle in a too-small tank top.

  ‘Here to see the boss man,’ I told him.

  The pituitary job flared his nostrils and reluctantly stepped aside. I brushed past him, maintaining eye-contact, then headed up the sticky staircase leading to Lords’ den.

  I didn’t knock, but then I didn’t need to announce myself. Vic had already seen me coming on the black and white security monitor he kept on his desk.