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

by David Bussell

  ‘Choo choo choo!’ they roared, shaking their hips, ‘come on and do the conga!’

  It’s an imprecise science, the old out-of-body mind control trick, only good for a few seconds after I’ve vacated a host, but good enough to allow for this caper.

  The conga line snaked around the angel, forming a ring around him. Around and around the circle went, faster and faster, kicking their legs and belting out more Black Lace lyrics.

  By this point the angel was completely lost; stupefied by the shell game I was playing. He span about, trying to get an eye on me, muttering some distinctly non-kosher words under his holier-than-thou breath.

  ‘Show yourself!’ he screamed. ‘I demand you show yourself!’

  I would love to have seen the look on his face when he realised I'd hoofed it and taken Mark along for the ride too, but I suppose you can't have everything in this afterlife.

  8

  With that palaver out of the way, I returned to the job at hand.

  It was around ten in the evening when I arrived at the Royal Free Hospital. The A&E’s reception area smelled of bleach and a heady undertone of vomit. The walls were lit by harsh strip lighting and coated in scuffed magnolia paint scarred by the thousands of trolleys that had scraped by them over the years.

  I checked behind the reception desk to see who’d been lumbered with night duty. I was in luck. A young woman sat plonked on a cheap bit of revolving furniture; not too pretty, not too smart looking. The perfect mark for my charm offensive.

  ‘Hello love,’ I chirped, as I swaggered over and placed my hands flat upon her desk. She looked up at me and I saw her eyes widen, just a smidge, but enough to let me know she was liking what she saw. ‘I’m after a couple of your paramedics,’ I told her. ‘Two of your night shift boys.’

  ‘Karl and Dimitrie?’ she asked, taking her gum from her mouth and depositing it into a nearby bin.

  ‘That’s the ones,’ I replied, making a mental note of their names. This was too easy.

  ‘They’re on call tonight,’ she told me, fluttering her eyelashes. ‘Is there anything I can help you with?’

  ‘There is as a matter of fact. See, they were round my mum’s gaff a few hours back. Came by after she took a spill—’

  ‘Oh no, is she okay?’

  ‘She is now, thank God,’ I replied, allowing Mark’s eyes to mist up, then looking away. ‘The old bird’s getting on in years and... well, I don’t know what I’d do without me mum...’

  I stole a glance at the receptionist as I choked back a hot sob. She made an “Awww” face and placed a warm hand on top of mine. I smiled. I was worried the old loving son act might come over a bit Norman Bates, but from the looks of things, it was working a treat.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Anyway, Mum tried my phone first but I wasn’t able to pick up.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m embarrassed to say it, but I was driving a bus load of special needs kids at the time, and I didn’t have my hands-free.’

  The receptionist melted some more. ‘You help special needs kids for a living?’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘just in my spare time.’

  By this point she was putty in my hands.

  ‘After I didn’t pick up, Mum rang 999,’ I went on, ‘and from what she tells me, your ambulance blokes were with her in five minutes flat.’

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘Too right it is… sorry, what was your name...?’

  ‘Tracey,’ she replied, unflinchingly.

  ‘Tracey,’ I said, smiling. ‘That’s a nice name. So, like I was saying, Karl and Dimitrie got to her like a bullet out of a gun, and according to Mum, they were amazing. Really went above and beyond. Got her back on her feet, fixed her a cuppa, even stuck around to play a game of Hearts with her during their tea break.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Too right. And mum’s not usually great with strangers either, especially ones that ain’t from around here if you know what I mean.’

  She chuckled. ‘Yeah, my mum’s a bit like that as well.’

  We shared a laugh, then I moved onto phase two of my plan. ‘Thing is, while they were at Mum’s, one of them managed to leave this behind...’ I held up a wallet. It was Mark’s wallet, but she didn’t need to know that.

  ‘That’s good of you to bring that in,’ she said. ‘Not many good samaritans left in this world.’

  She reached for the wallet but I snatched it back.

  ‘Thing is, I’d like to return it myself. Personally, like.’

  She seemed surprised. ‘It’s no trouble.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, Tracey, it’s not that I’m not grateful, it’s just…’ I whispered, leaning across her desk conspiratorially; a move she was only too happy to mirror... ‘I thought maybe if you gave me an address I could drop it off myself, along with a little something to say thank you.’

  ‘Hm, whose wallet is it, Karl or Dimitrie’s?’ she asked, then decided it wasn’t important. ‘Actually, it doesn’t matter, they both live in the same place.’

  ‘Well, that makes life easier, doesn’t it?’ I joked. Seemed Jazz had been right; the vamps were cohabiting.

  I pulled a piece of paper from my pocket and slid it across the reception desk. ‘Do us a favour, Tracey, scribble that address down for me, would you?’ I gave her a wink. ‘And maybe bung your phone number on there while you’re at it...’

  She giggled and reached for a pen, but then— ‘What am I thinking?’ she said. ‘I can’t give that out, It’s data protected.’

  Ugh, so close.

  ‘Come on, Tracey,’ I said, giving her the old puppy dog eyes, ‘let’s not get all wrapped up in the rules...’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she replied, ‘it’s more than my job’s worth. Why don’t you just give it to me to pass on? I promise I’ll take good care of it.’

  Damn it. So much for my charm offensive.

  Plan B it was then.

  I don’t like to play the possession card, I really don’t, but she was leaving me no choice. Forcing your will on someone is a creepy thing to do, but forcing your will on a woman… that’s something I like to stay clear of altogether unless it becomes absolutely necessary. Thing is, stopping a couple of Draculas from draining another poor sod dry fits that criteria like a glove.

  I left Mark with a message to stay put then pulled the ripcord, passing from his body, through the reception desk, and into Tracey. She wasn’t a tough nut to crack. Within a few seconds I’d taken control of her brain and rifled through her mental Rolodex to find the information I needed. She didn’t have the address I was after committed to memory, but she did have the location of the staff records and the password to get at them.

  I rolled her chair over to her workstation, accessed the database and tapped in the necessary digits. A quick search of Dimitrie brought up his record, only instead of finding contact info, all I found were a few lines of asterisks. No address, no phone number, not even an email. Same for Karl. They’d covered their tracks well. Shit. This trip had been a total waste of time.

  Annoyed, I implanted a bit of conversational filler in Tracey’s head to cover the last couple of minutes I’d spent digging around in her brain, then jumped back into my ride.

  ‘Thanks anyway,’ I told her, replacing Mark’s wallet in his pocket before making off.

  ‘Wait,’ she called after me, ‘your bit of paper…’

  ‘Keep it,’ I said.

  ‘But I didn’t give you my number…’

  As I exited the building, the hospital doors sighed shut behind me, making a sound like I felt. What the hell was I going to do now? Any minute now Mark’s body was going to reject me, and I wouldn’t be able to go back to him after that for fear of being rumbled by the angel again. I was proper fucked now. Being intangible made being a detective nigh on impossible… or should I say “playing” a detective. I mean, it’s not like I have a P.I. licence or anything. I make this job up as I go along really. I take my cu
es from TV shows and film noirs, old pulp novels and Humphrey Bogart movies. I’m just a dead man with a thing for gumshoes, that’s all. The fact is, I knew as much about being a P.I. as I did about being an exorcist.

  Yeah, I was having myself a real pity party. I strode through the hospital car park, looking for something to kick or a car aerial to snap, except of course cars don't come with those anymore.

  Then I saw it.

  There, sat in a staff parking bay… a long, black hearse. A 1960 Superior Cadillac Hearse, to be precise, with polished chrome stylings and a giant speaker system where a coffin would sit. Hanging from the rear view mirror was a plush toy of Count Dracula. I shook my head in disbelief.

  ‘You're having a laugh…’ I actually said out loud.

  I may have been a bit generous when I attributed two brain cells to this pair of clowns.

  I pressed my face up against the driver’s window and took a peek inside the car. Stuck to the windscreen, just above the dash, was a sat nav unit. Perfect. Having checked to make sure the coast was clear, I pressed my hand against the driver’s door and used a simple bit of magic to jimmy it open.

  Did I mention that I was a magician? I meant to say something about it up top, but I worried the info dump was stacking up high enough already without me adding more to the pile. You know, what with all the ghost stuff and everything. I didn’t want to come on too strong, so I decided to portion the story out. One thing at a time, I told myself.

  So yeah, I know a bit of magic. I used to dabble back when I was an exorcist, but I decided to dedicate myself to it properly after I carked it. It’s still very much a work in progress. Right now the best I can manage are a few simple cantrips: a glowing light here, a magic flame there, that sort of stuff. None of your Gandalf the Grey shit. If it's real magic you're after, talk to Jazz Hands, or better yet, my witch’s familiar friend, Stella. That girl can sling a spell eight ways to Sunday.

  If I do have a knack for one thing though, it’s unlocking stuff. Show me a bolt, a latch or a padlock and I’ll have it open in a jiffy. I’ve had safes open before. Big ones. Compared to that, popping a car door was a piece of piss.

  I reached inside the vehicle and laid my hands on the sat nav. I turned it on and I checked the device’s GPS settings. There it was, a few notches below the last inputted location; an address.

  An address marked Home.

  9

  Seeing as I couldn’t drop Mark off at his pad in case the angel was sat there waiting for me, I left him in a nearby boozer with a few empty pint pots and a half-done crossword (just the easy answers filled in, obviously).

  With that business out of the way, I went to the address I’d lifted from the hearse’s TomTom and staked the place out.

  Castle Dracula it was not.

  The vampire den turned out to be a semi-detached house on a nice, leafy street; well looked-after once, but gone to the dogs now. Its empty driveway was strewn with uncollected rubbish; crisp packets, cigarette butts and old, sun-bleached Coke cans. The front garden had been left to grow wild, and the manicured ivy that climbed the front of the house now crept over the window panes and into the gutters.

  I pulled out my mobile, scrolled through my contacts and gave Stella a bell. I promised Jazz Hands I wouldn’t tackle these guys solo, and I intended to keep my word.

  The phone rang, and rang, then went to voicemail. ‘Stella, it’s Jake Fletcher, the Ghost with the Most. I’ve got a situation going on with some vampires. Call me when you get this, it’s urgent.’

  I stayed where I was, stood across the road from the house, casing the joint. Hours passed. It was getting on for five in the morning when I heard a car engine and looked up to see a hearse pull up around the corner and park in the driveway.

  As I watched from the shadows, two men stepped out of the vehicle and headed inside the property. I checked my watch. The sun would be up soon and they’d be sound asleep in their coffins. There’d be no better time to strike.

  I tried Stella’s number again. Still no answer. Shit. If I didn’t do something soon I was going to miss my window. I couldn’t let that happen. I said I wouldn’t go in there alone, but what else was I supposed to do? Lives were at stake, and I sure as hell wasn’t putting DCI Stronge at risk by dragging her into a vampire den.

  I patted the grenades in my pockets. ‘Sorry, Jazzer. A job’s a job.’

  I cracked my knuckles and crossed the road to the house.

  As I passed through the rusty front gate and crept up the house’s cracked concrete path I checked the windows to make sure I wasn’t being spied on through the gaps in the ivy. Unlike regular folks, vampires can see ghosts, so I had to be extra careful. This wouldn’t be a welcome house call.

  I walked up the steps of the front porch and entered the house without breaking my stride. No need for magic this time. Instead, I phased through the front door and arrived directly in the house’s hallway, no tarting about.

  The place was as much an eyesore on the inside as it was the out. The polished teak wood floor had turned dull from neglect, and a thick layer of dust lay on every surface. The place was a mess. As I passed along the hallway I took a peek in a room off to one side. It was a baby’s bedroom, with a colourful mural of a monkey on the far wall and a crib in its centre. Just like the rest of the house, this too was blanketed in dust.

  I felt a knot in my stomach.

  Returning to the hallway I saw a framed picture, face down on a sideboard. I made my hand corporeal and carefully stood it up. It was a family photo; a studio portrait of a single mother, and sat on her shoulders, a little girl of maybe six months old. My jaw tightened. The vampires had done something terrible here. A mother and her child, drained dry, their bodies done away with, their happy home turned into a tomb. Judging by the state of the front garden the intruders had been squatting here for months too, which meant no one had come calling. The vamps had done their homework. All this mother and daughter had was each other, and those bloodsucking bastards had snacked on them like two fingers of a Kit Kat. I lay down the picture and took out one of my grenades. Those fuckers were going to pay for that.

  At the end of the hallway I found a wooden door under the house’s main staircase. Beyond the door was a flight of steps that dipped into the thick darkness of the cellar like a quill into an inkwell. I crept down the steps slowly, not because I was worried about upsetting a creaky floorboard—I don’t weigh anything—but to savour the moment. I smiled, relishing the prospect of turning these parasites into a pair of smoking ash piles.

  The cellar was low-ceilinged, dank, and covered in mould. Its tiny, street-level windows had been painted black and covered with pieces of cardboard. The only light came from the faint glow of the hallway upstairs, which outlined various piles of junk; overstuffed bin liners, battered boxes, and cobwebbed exercise equipment.

  I expected to find some coffins down there in the gloom, maybe a sarcophagus or two, but instead I found a couple of piles of rags with a waxy body lying on each, arms folded across their chests. It was a healthy reminder that real vampires aren't the romantic creatures from a Bram Stoker novel, or sultry teenagers glittering like ravers in a gay club. Real vampires are pink-eyed scumbags that leech off the living. Oversized vermin.

  I felt the weight of the grenade in my hand and tossed it into the air a couple of times like a tennis player readying for a serve. Time to put these bastards out of commission for good. I took a step forward and readied for my shot—

  —when my phone rang.

  Shit.

  The vampires came up from their rag piles like coiled springs, hissing and spitting.

  I raised the grenade over my head. ‘Hold it there, Count Fuckulas,’ I said. ‘This thing’s harmless to me, but it’ll turn the two of you into little bitty ashes.’

  They froze. They could see in my eyes that I wasn’t mucking about.

  Since they were awake now, I figured I might as well get some answers from them before I dropped the
literal bomb. ‘So, go on then,’ I said, ‘why did you do it?’

  The vampires looked to one another with their albino eyes. ‘Do what?’ replied the larger of the two.

  ‘The street kid with the track marks and tattoo,’ I said. ‘You picked him up on your rounds a couple of nights back and dumped his body on the Heath. Why?’

  They looked at each other again, then back to me.

  ‘Dumped him on the Heath?’

  ‘Cut the shit, I know full well it was you.’

  The smaller one curled his lip. 'We only drank the blood. The husk was taken from us.'

  I laughed. ‘You expect me to believe that? What kind of a mug do you take me for?’

  ‘It’s the truth. We were about to dig a hole for the body out back when a visitor came.’

  ‘Go on then,’ I said, enjoying the yarn. ‘Who was it? Father Christmas?’

  The vampires both sneered this time. ‘A man knocked at the door,’ said the taller one. ‘We did not know him, but he said he wanted to come inside.’

  ‘And you just let him in?’

  ‘He was… very persuasive.’

  I found the idea of a suave, midnight caller a bit hard to swallow, but I played along anyway. 'So this mystery visitor of yours, what did he look like?'

  ‘It is hard to say. He wore a hood.’

  ‘What kind of a hood? A Klan hood?’

  ‘No, the opposite kind,’ he spat. ‘The man was a negro.’

  Charming. That’s the way it is with vamps though, they might look young, but most of them have been around since before slavery was abolished. Plus, being descended from a guy who planted babies on spikes doesn’t exactly add to your chill.

  ‘So, let me get this right,’ I said, kneading the bridge of my nose with my non-grenade hand, ‘a black man in a hoodie shows up at your door asking to take a corpse away and you said okey dokey?’