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

by David Bussell

  ‘Followed in daddy’s footsteps and went into law.’

  Of course he did.

  ‘Lives in London now. Notting Hill.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re keeping tabs on him.’

  Stronge met my gaze as if to say, “So what if I am?”

  I put my hand on hers, much like Anya had done to me in her office, though my intentions were a good deal purer. ‘I know this isn’t fair, Kat, asking you to go through all that again, but… well, maybe we can do some good with it now.’

  ‘What? How could we possibly do anything good with it?’ she asked, loud enough to give pause to one of the cleaners outside.

  ‘The Hooded Man. He goes looking for people who hold grudges. If you’re serious about wanting to do this college bloke a mischief, maybe we can use those feelings. If you can bring that hatred to the top of your thoughts, right to the surface, we’ll be halfway to luring him.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘And then I kill you.’

  19

  ‘What?’ Stronge wailed, foregoing any notion of discretion this time.

  ‘I only need you to die a little bit,’ I told her. ‘Just enough to get the bad guy's attention.’ I removed the slim metal case from my pocket and opened it to reveal a large, brass syringe. ‘I’ll do it with this,’ I explained.

  Stronge’s “death” had to look genuine. While I was capable of reaching inside people’s bodies with my ghost hand and rendering them unconscious with a squeeze to the heart, I wasn’t able to mimic death, at least not without actually causing it. No, for this murder magnet to work, I’d need to make use of Jazz Hands’ contribution.

  ‘How is killing me going to solve anything?’ asked Stronge. It was a fair question.

  ‘It’ll simulate a death state and draw the Hooded Man to your body,’ I said. ‘We already know he’s using corpses to play out vendettas, so let’s serve him up a nice, fresh one.’

  I settled on the church as the staging area for the final fight; St. Pancras Old Church, the place I’d last run into the angel Adonael. As expected, he was gone now, no longer cuffed to the ankle of the wooden Christ. In his place was a snapped-off Jesus leg, lying on the floor of the altar like he’d stepped down from the cross and onto a land mine. Poor guy. Jesus, I mean. As if he hadn’t suffered enough already.

  I guided Stronge to the altar and she sat down on its white marble surface, back propped against the baptismal font.

  ‘Where did you get that anyway?’ she asked, as I inserted the needle of the brass syringe into its accompanying vial of red liquid.

  ‘It was a gift from my friend, Jazz Hands.’

  Stronge pulled away. ‘Let me get this right, I'm supposed to trust my life to someone called “Jazz Hands”?’

  ‘Jazz Hands is just her nickname,’ I assured her. ‘Her real name is Madam Olena.’

  ‘Oh, in that case go ahead and pump my veins with your magical death juice.’

  I laughed and drew back a dose. ‘Don’t be so dramatic, I have the antidote right here.’ I shook a vial of bilious green liquid. ‘Soon as the big bad shows up I’ll shoot you full of the good stuff and we’ll take him out together.’ I set down the green vial that Jazz Hands had assured me would act as a remedy to Stronge dying.

  She rolled up her sleeve. ‘What do we do when he gets here? The Hooded Man I mean.’

  ‘Let me worry about that.’

  ‘Thanks, but if it’s all the same with you, I thought I’d bring along a little insurance policy.’

  She reached into her jacket and pulled out a gun.

  ‘Woah, you came tooled up?’ I asked, and then, ‘Wait a second, is that my shooter?’

  It was. My pearl-handled revolver, the one Jazz Hands had given me to use against the soul feaster a couple of months back. I hadn’t seen it since I was framed for murder and the boys in blue took it off me. You know, sometimes when I see a sentence like that, I realise I lead a pretty exciting life. ‘What are you doing with my pistol?’ I asked.

  ‘Smuggled it out of the station’s evidence locker,’ Stronge explained.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, going to take it back, but she snatched it away.

  ‘This is for me,’ she said.

  ‘But you’re going to be dead on the floor.’

  ‘And I’ll still be a better shot than you.’

  Fair enough then. Something told me my puny six-shooter wasn't going to do much damage to the Hooded Man anyway.

  With that settled, it was time to get to work. ‘You remember the plan?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. I picture that shit-bag from college as hard as I can—’

  ‘And all the unpleasant things you want to do to him—’

  ‘And then you jab me with that needle of red stuff.’

  ‘Right.’ I squeezed out a drop and gave the syringe a flick like I’d seen done on the telly. ‘So, are we ready?’

  Her face went hard as she concentrated on the man who’d wronged her, then finally she nodded. ‘Do it.’

  I stuck her with the needle as gently as I could. After a couple more stabs and what I would describe as an awful lot of profanity for a church, I eventually found Stronge’s vein. ‘It’s going to be okay,’ I told her.

  Only once I got a final nod from her—it was Stronge’s neck on the block after all—did I press down on the plunger and shoot her full of crimson death juice.

  She gasped as the poison entered her arm. Almost immediately the blood drained from her face. She made to draw a breath but it caught in her throat. Her eyes bulged wide as she began to cough and choke. It was hell to watch her suffer like that, her hands snatching at me, her fingers clawing the air like the branches of a storm-tossed tree. I made my palm solid and placed it on her rib cage to find her heart had stopped beating.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, as much for my state of mind as hers. ‘It’s okay.’

  Finally, she stopped thrashing and ceased trying to draw breath. Her eyes clouded over and turned skywards as her body went limp against the baptismal font.

  Stronge was dead.

  I immediately started to scan my surroundings, my eyes darting desperately around the nave for their first glimpse of the Hooded Man. I looked down the aisle. I looked behind the pews. I looked to the the vestry and pulpit. I even cast a glance to the rafters in case the bastard planned on abseiling in like some SAS soldier.

  The Hooded Man was nowhere to be seen though. I began to panic. I’d flatlined Stronge, and I couldn’t stick her with the antidote until our man had made a show. That left us with just under two minutes of play before she suffered permanent brain damage. I checked my watch. We were already at a minute-thirty.

  ‘Come on!’ I said, my voice echoing around the still empty church. ‘Show yourself.’

  A minute-forty. It was looking bad. I scrabbled for the green vial of antidote, and in my haste it slipped from my hand and struck the hard stone of the altar.

  Crack.

  The sound rang out like a distant gunshot as the vial shattered and spilled its precious contents across the marble floor.

  I watched as the green liquid dribbled down the altar steps, drip, drip, drip.

  It took me ten more seconds to find my voice.

  ‘No,’ I croaked, as the antidote ebbed away. I felt as though my heart had dropped through my pelvis—

  And then, from out of nowhere, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Here,’ said the Hooded Man, grinning from ear to ear. ‘Let me get that for you…’

  He placed his free hand on Stronge’s chest, and a moment after that her eyes snapped open, burning white as snow.

  20

  The shock propelled me backwards, causing me to bounce painfully from the altar’s large wooden cross. The Hooded Man was up to his old tricks again, turning our surroundings super-corporeal and making them brick-solid to even the most immaterial of us.

  He dropped to his haunches, cradling Stronge in his arms and drawing her into an embrace. ‘Ahhh,�
� he said, nuzzling the soft skin of her neck and taking a deep breath. ‘The perfect blend of death and vitriol. It’s a sweet smell, is it not?’

  ‘Let her go!’ I snapped.

  ‘Certainly,’ he replied.

  The Hooded Man withdrew his arms, stood, and backed away, but Stronge didn’t settle on the altar before him. Instead, she sat up robotically, found her feet and positioned herself beside him.

  He looked to me. ‘Thank you for your assistance,’ he said, ‘you’re a real lifesaver. Well, you know what I mean...’

  I looked to Stronge, but she just stood there, a silent witness. I swear I saw some life in there though. Some semblance of who she really was. I knew dead things after all, and I could see her soul hadn’t departed her body yet. If it had, her ghost would be in the vicinity. No, something in Jazz Hands’ potion had sealed Stronge’s spirit inside; locked it in good and tight. There was hope for her still, I was sure of it. A way to break the Hooded Man’s spell and return Stronge to the land of the living. So long as I put an end to him, I could get her back. I had to believe that. Had to.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Where do we go from here?’

  ‘That depends on which of us you’re referring to,’ replied the Hooded Man. ‘The two of us will be engaging in a very short and very decisive altercation. Once that matter is brought to a close, your friend here will be making a trip to Notting Hill with that gun in her pocket.’

  ‘That’s not gonna happen,’ I replied, with way more confidence than I felt. The Hooded Man’s victims dropped dead for good once they’d completed their little pantomime, and there’d be no getting Stronge back after that. She’d end up a phantom like me, lodged between this world and the next, dead/alive.

  As I was pondering this, a fist struck me in the jaw and left me splashed on the ground like a beached flounder. The Hooded Man had closed the distance between us in a cocaine heartbeat, and was already coming at me again. While I was struggling to reorient myself he grabbed my arm, jacked it up behind my back and smashed my head into the baptismal font.

  Pow.

  I reeled backwards, staggering down the aisle, feeling like my brain had been excavated. ‘What are you?’ I slurred, punch drunk.

  He let out a brittle laugh. ‘You really don’t recognise me?’

  I scanned him up and down, taking in his black cotton hoodie and tracksuit bottoms. ‘All I see is some bloke who drives a Vauxhall Nova and lives on a council estate.’

  He offered me a rictus grin and regarded his reflection in the stained glass window. ‘I thought it was about time I updated the old duds for the modern era,’ he said, ‘but if it’s the classic look you’re after, here you go…’

  He snapped his fingers and his skin began to bubble and liquify. As he stood there, the flesh poured from his face, melting him through to the bone like a Nazi with an ark. I looked away in horror, and when I dared looked back again I found him transformed completely. Gone was the young black man in the North Face sportswear, changed now into a skeletal figure in a hooded black robe. In his hand he gripped a tall scythe.

  ‘The... Grim Reaper?’ I stammered, my voice a squeak.

  Vic Lords had been right. I was dealing with something else here. Something legendary.

  The Hooded Man’s bone feet clacked on the marble as he strolled towards me. ‘I've been known by many names over the centuries,’ he told me. ‘The Reaper, Death, Charon, The Boatman, The Rider of the Pale Horse. Believe it or not, I used to be feared once. Admired. Valued. Of course, that was before the Man Upstairs phased me out and turned me into a… a bloody halloween costume!’ He swung his scythe and lopped the top off a four-feet tall candlestick. ‘When I think of all that I did for Him… swinging my sickle, reaping great clusters from the vine. And the work I did here in London during the Black Plague…?’ He kissed the tips of his bony fingers with his lipless mouth.

  As he continued to advance on me I did what I could to placate him, hoping to buy myself enough time to come up with a plan. ‘I hear you, pal,’ I said, ‘the bloke’s got no class.’

  ‘You’ve got that right!’ agreed the Hooded Man. ‘And it used to be so classy! Picture yourself sat upon a hand-carved wooden barge as I stand before you, punting your soul across the River Styx, transporting you to your final judgment.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ I replied. ‘You know what I got? The old golden elevator.’

  ‘Christ, I hate that thing!’ he spat. ‘Golden lifts, golden staircases, golden bloody chariots! What’s next, golden jet planes? Golden rocket ships? What is it with Him and gold? Ever since He modernised He’s become bling obsessed!’

  ‘Progress, eh?’ I said, offering him a conciliatory shrug as he continued to back me into a corner.

  ‘I tried to keep up, I really did,’ he went on. ‘Tried to move with the times. I even offered to trade the scythe in for a chainsaw, but He was having none of it.’

  It’s a terrible day when even Death's depressed. This Millennium, man.

  ‘I get that you’re upset,’ I told him, ‘but why are you making people kill? I thought your job was to collect souls, not claim them.’

  ‘That was the old way,’ he replied. ‘When death was comfy and quaint. I decided I needed to try something different. Something more fitting for these times. So, I take the initiative now. I don't wait for things to happen anymore, I grab the bull by the horns!’

  He sounded like a madman; worse, like a contestant auditioning for The Apprentice. ‘Can’t you just let things be?’ I asked. ‘Why get involved at all? Why not just move on with your life? Hit the links. Go on a cruise. Do a Sudoku.’

  ‘No!’ he roared. ‘I’m going to get His attention. I’m going to make Him see I’ve still got it. I’m going to get my job back!’

  I cast a quick glance to Stronge, who stood rooted to the spot still, like a pawn awaiting a game of chess.

  ‘You used a dead kid to murder a man,’ I told the Hooded Man. ‘What do you think God's going to make of that?’

  ‘Don’t be so squeamish, the boy was already dead. Besides, I needed to make a grand gesture. God doesn’t notice the details, there are too many souls on this Earth for Him to be a micromanager. He only cares about the big picture now, and that’s what I’m giving Him – something worthy of His attention. Something biblical!’

  This was beginning to turn into a real Ted Talk. ‘You’ve lost it,’ I told him. ‘You really have.’

  ‘I just wanted to get in His good graces,’ the Hooded Man pleaded. ‘Surely you of all people should understand that?’

  He had a point there. We were both chasing the same goal to some degree, the only difference was that he was off his rocker. Being stuck in limbo had really done a number on this feller. Was that going to be me one day I wondered? Gone loopy from being trapped in a dimension I didn’t belong?

  ‘We’re nothing like each other,’ I told him, as much for my sake as his. ‘I help people. You only help yourself.’

  His skull seemed to smile, though I’m not sure how. ‘I can see the contents of a man's soul, Mister Fletcher, and yours… yours is not so pure.’

  ‘It’s clean enough,’ I replied. ‘Now are you going to put my friend back to normal or are you and me going to have a falling out?’

  It was all bluster, really. I’d rather have been anywhere but in that church giving the large to the Grim Reaper himself, but I had to stand tall. Stronge stood there, pale and lifeless, her very existence on the line. I’d led her into this mess and I was damned if I wasn’t going to lead her out of it. I’d made up my mind; tonight I was the ferryman, and I was boating the other way.

  The Hooded Man rapped the wooden part of his scythe on the floor as if to say, “That settles that then,” then he raised the large, curved blade and presented it like a giant metal frown. ‘Take one last look at your surroundings, Mister Fletcher, because this is as near to heaven as you’re ever going to get.’

  He brought down the scythe and I dodged it with a hair
to spare. He swept it in a horizontal arc next, and I only managed to pull clear of that one by sucking in my gut. We went on like that for a little while, me bobbing and weaving while he carved up the place. Pews were scarred, a donations box obliterated, a bowl overturned, spilling communion wafers everywhere (or “Jesus crackers” as I like to call them). Each time he missed me I lunged at him for a jab, but no amount of welterweight boxing was going to upset the personification of death itself.

  Soon enough my luck ran out and my futile struggle came to an end. The Hooded Man surprised me by using the wooden part of the scythe (the “snath,” Google tells me) to hook my legs out from under me and deliver me to the ground.

  Wallop.

  I landed hard on my tailbone, but before I could voice my displeasure, I saw the Hooded Man’s fatal farm tool come driving down on my neck. Somehow I found the wherewithal to defend myself, reaching for the back of a pew and grabbing the first thing that came to hand: a holy bible.

  The Reaper’s scythe bit into the book and made it about as far as Second Corinthians. Because of the angle, he was only able to employ the back part of the blade (the “rib” – thanks again, Google), so thankfully he didn’t slice right through.

  ‘Help me!’ I shouted, as the Hooded Man pushed down on the blade some more and cleared his way to Ephesians.

  ‘Who are you calling?’ he asked. ‘Her?’ His hollow eye sockets flicked to Stronge, who stood there statue-still, jaw slack.

  ‘You're just going to let this happen?’ I screamed. ‘You're going to let this fruitcake do me in, is that it?’

  The Hooded Man put his full weight on the scythe, pushing the blade all the way through to Hebrews. ‘Or is it the other one you’re calling? Your Uncanny friend, the witch’s familiar?’

  The blade split open the book of John. The only thing standing between me and my maker now were John’s Epistles, a flimsy bit of correspondence stuffed into the back of the bible to bump up the page count. ‘Come on!’ I yelled. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  ‘No one's coming to help you, ghost.’