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

by David Bussell

  Snore.

  ‘Eva!’ said Maya, very not tentatively.

  Eva’s eyes snapped open. ‘What happened? Did we win? Was I very brave and sexy and brave?’

  ‘How are you going to talk to them?’ asked Maya, just ploughing on through. Good tactic.

  ‘Well, they’re under there, somewhere,’ said Eva, wandering closer to a stone and patting it like a favoured pet. ‘Headstones is what Malden said, so it stands to reason each marks where either Elga or one of her Kin are buried.’

  ‘So, they’re dead?’ I said. ‘As in, dead. And not alive.’

  ‘Dead. Undead. Between alive and dead. It’s all a spectrum, love. Doesn’t mean life stops.’

  Eva didn’t know how much I hoped that was true.

  ‘Okay, so they’re dead or half-dead,’ said Maya. ‘How’re you gonna chat to them?’

  ‘Magic request,’ replied Eva, who dropped her trousers, crouched, and took a thunderous piss onto the grass.

  It went on for some time.

  Accompanied by a series of sighs and groans of satisfaction that made me feel more than a little grossed out.

  Finally, she grabbed a fistful of grass, wiped her… lady bits, then stood, pulling her pants back up.

  ‘That should do it,’ she said.

  ‘Assuming the answer isn’t just, “Because you’re insane and disgusting”, why should that do it?’ asked Maya.

  Eva looked at her, incredulous, then to me, pulling a, “Do you believe this idiot?” kind of a face. ‘Piss magic,’ she said.

  ‘Piss magic?’ I repeated.

  ‘They’re under the soil, so I put the magical request into my piss, took a slash, and right now it’s soaking its way down towards whoever’s down there. They’ll get the message any second.’

  ‘You know, it’s at times like these that I’m not sure how much of this I should take seriously,’ said Maya.

  Eva pulled out a smoke and lit it, her back to the stones, which meant she didn’t see what both I and Maya saw next.

  A hand.

  A hand pushing its way out of the earth.

  What was left of a hand, anyway. There was no flesh, just ragged skin and sinew clinging to bones.

  ‘Um, Eva…?’ I started.

  ‘Up already, eh,’ said Eva. ‘Nice of a host not to keep their guests waiting. Just ‘cos you’re a murdering zombie bastard, doesn’t mean you can’t have decent manners.’ Eva flicked the remains of her ciggie off into the distance, and turned on her heels to face the emerging… thing.

  ‘Hello there, love. I’m Eva, that’s Maya, and that twat over here is Joseph. We’re here to ask what in the name of fuck it is you think you’re doing.’

  The corpse wore a dark, crimson robe, soil crumbling from it as it stepped fully out of the ground. Its head was covered by a large mask, fashioned to look like a goat.

  Basically, your classic satanic cult look.

  ‘Oi, wanker, you listening or do I have to make you?’ said Eva, taking a few steps forward.

  ‘Careful,’ I said, but Eva waved me back, smiling, not at all concerned.

  The corpse raised a hand and pointed to me. ‘Warlock.’

  Not sure what else to do, and attempting to ignore my body’s treacherous trembling, I smiled and gave a little bow. ‘Hello. Yes. That’s me. I believe we have met before, though my memory recently is a little, well, let’s say hazy.’

  Maya stepped forward, baton in hand, ‘How about you fill us in on why you’re sending your stones out and about to kill people?’

  ‘Uncanny people at that,’ added Eva.

  ‘Because we can,’ said the corpse, its voice a dry scrape. ‘Because we must. Because life shall return, and death shall follow us as we step out into this new world.’

  More movement in the ground as in front of each of the twenty-nine remaining stones, hands began to push up out of the earth.

  ‘Looks like the whole family’s up,’ said Maya.

  ‘I am Elga, and I shall lead my Kin back into life. Back into a life that you,’ she stated, punctuating the word with a bony finger jabbing in my direction, ‘you and your unworthy witches took from us! The stones bring us power, bring us life, and we shall drink until we break the bonds placed upon us and step back into the world of the living, to take our rightful place as gods!’

  ‘You’re a real talker for a dead bastard, aren’t you?’ said Eva.

  Elga’s masked head twisted sharply, hissing at Eva.

  ‘We will eat our way through all of you. Drink down your power to put flesh on our bones!’

  ‘What if you just, I don’t know, didn’t do that?’ I suggested. ‘It sounds like a lot of hard work. What if you just didn’t kill anyone and carried on being dead? Or sort of dead. Whatever it is you and your friends here are.’

  Each member of the circle raised their hands to point at me, and began to speak as one. ‘You, the last remaining witch of Cumbria, last remaining member of the three that took our life, our freedom, our future from us. Could not kill us entirely, instead reduced us to this. Trapped, until ten years ago, when your coven fell and the barriers became weak enough for us to try and push through.’

  I glanced to Eva, but she was too busy yawning to react. Ten years ago, when the coven fell, when I lost my memory.

  ‘Over the last decade, we clawed our way back into being. At first we were just thought. Just an idea. An ache of nothingness. We had to be patient, but piece by piece, we forced our way back into reality.’

  ‘Ah, so that’s why the attacks are increasing, hey?’ said Eva.

  ‘As every night fell, we became more. And then, finally, the stones began to respond to our demands. Now we cannot be stopped.’

  ‘If you’re so powerful, why only send out one stone at a time?’ I said.

  ‘Good point,’ replied Maya.

  ‘I’ll tell you why,’ said Eva, ‘it’s because they’re all mouth and no trousers. They’re still too weak, which means they can be beaten.’

  ‘Oh, well that’s good news,’ I said. ‘Big fan of good news, me.’

  Elga hissed at me. ‘We shall drain you dry, and then curse your soul forevermore, warlock.’

  Little did they know that there was currently a bit of a queue for my soul.

  ‘I’ve got bad news for you,’ said Eva, ‘for you and the rest of the Addams Family here. D’you wanna know what that bad news is?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Me, motherfucker.’

  Eva’s hands burst into flames and she began tossing globe after globe of burning power in the direction of the cult, until the view was entirely obscured by flames and smoke.

  Eva stopped and blew the smoke off one index finger.

  ‘You can pick your jaws up off the ground now,’ she said to us, smugly. Unfortunately, she had spoken a wee bit too soon and, with a yelp of surprise, was lifted from the ground by an unseen force and tossed in the direction of my car.

  The smoke cleared to reveal Elga and her Kin, all perfectly unharmed. All that magic, that power, hadn’t even touched them.

  ‘I think, maybe, we should retreat,’ said Maya, baton twitching in her hand.

  ‘Well, you did say you were in charge, and I always respect authority.’

  ‘Death will come for you,’ boomed Elga. ‘Death shall come for all.’

  ‘Yes, I think we’ve more or less got the picture,’ I replied, and with that, Maya and I beat a hasty retreat back to the road. Eva was laid out across the roof of the Uncanny Wagon. I’d like to say I was upset about the dent she’d created, but in all honesty, after the beating it had taken recently, I didn’t think I’d be able to notice the difference.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asked Maya, helping a groaning Eva clamber down.

  ‘Fit as a fiddle.’

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘they’re still pretty strong, eh?’

  Eva nodded. ‘That “Me, motherfucker” bit would have gone over a whole lot better if they hadn’t handed my arse to me, right?’<
br />
  That was definitely true.

  25

  Maya left to drop Eva off at the coven. Eva was being her usual self, but I felt like I’d been around her enough now to see that she wasn’t as blasé about the situation as her actions were trying to suggest.

  She was worried.

  Very worried.

  It wasn’t difficult to see why. The sort-of-dead cult, Elga and her Kin, were already too strong for her to simply blast aside. To barrage with fire and magic. Eva had thrown her best at them, and hadn’t even scorched their scarlet robes. Which was a bit of a pisser. I mean, that’s going to knock anyone’s confidence.

  They were too strong for her to tackle head-on. If the fragments of memory I’d seen had taught me anything, it was that Elga and her Kin were almost more powerful than the three of us witches when we were at full strength. Now they were on the rise again, and there was only one witch left. Just me. And I could barely work up a flame when I wanted to.

  Yeah.

  We were on a bit of a shitty wicket.

  Eva had said she would search the coven’s library, that there were bound to be spells, records, that would sort the situation out, lickety-split.

  Can’t say I felt too confident about that.

  But there was more than just that on my mind as I steered the Uncanny Wagon back to Keswick, back to my flat. There was the question I’d tasked the fox with delivering to the Red Woman.

  What exactly did I think she’d want in return for her help? I thought I knew, but I’d deal with that when it came to it. My mind was too clouded by the burning desire to try and help Chloe—to pull her back from whatever limbo I’d banished her to—to dwell on what the consequences of asking the Dark Lakes for help might be.

  Just like Annie, I was not always much of a forward-thinking person.

  Or even a thinking person.

  I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw Chloe looking back at me.

  ‘Chloe!’

  I instinctively looked over my shoulder, expecting her to be sat in the back, but of course the seat was empty. I returned to the mirror to find Chloe, still there, slowly fading from view.

  ‘Please, Joe. I’m almost all gone… almost all…’

  ‘Chloe, hang on! Just a little longer, please!’

  As my heart beat a furious tattoo in my chest, Chloe disappeared from view. I gripped the steering wheel, teeth clamped. I was running out of time. Chloe was running out of time. I could feel it.

  ‘Fox, where are you!’ I said, bashing the steering wheel with the heel of one hand.

  So preoccupied was I with my thoughts, that I didn’t notice the van hurtling toward me.

  Its front end clipped the back of my car and sent me in a spin. My head bounced off the driver’s side window and bright lights exploded in my vision as the car shuddered to a stop.

  ‘Ouch,’ I said.

  There was a frantic knocking on the passenger door, a man, wide-eyed, bending over to look at me.

  ‘Sorry mate, sorry!’

  I smiled weakly and held up a hand, opening the door and stepping out.

  ‘Sorry, van went fucking mad, I swear. Weren’t my fault.’

  The skin on the back of my neck began to prickle, the thing I’d taken from Annie, the debt, I could feel it growing heavier inside of me.

  ‘Oh shit,’ I said, looking around.

  ‘Honest, van suddenly lurched forward, like, and the brakes wouldn’t work. You alright?’

  ‘Get back in your van.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m fine, I forgive you, it wasn’t your fault. I think a demon took control of your vehicle to knock me off the road.’

  The man, not unreasonably, looked at me like I was a shitting lunatic.

  ‘I think you might have bashed your head, mate,’ he said.

  ‘Probably. Actually, definitely. But don’t worry, you can go.’

  The man resorted to looking merely confused. ‘What about insurance? Don’t you wanna swap details?’

  I had been trying to get rid of him before whatever was about to happen happened, but he was being rather stubborn about the Get Out of Jail Free card I was waggling fiercely in front of him.

  And that’s when the wolf showed up.

  ‘Is that… is that a wolf?’ asked the man, looking into the field beyond me.

  I turned to see what appeared to be the same animal that had attacked Annie while I was down the well. Only the man was wrong.

  ‘No,’ I replied, ‘that appears to be six wolves.’

  Five more melted out of the gloom to join the first, teeth bared in saliva-dripping snarls.

  ‘I might actually go now, if that’s okay,’ said the man.

  ‘Quite okay.’

  He jumped back into his van, the wheels kicking up dirt as he hurriedly reversed away.

  I would have done the same—clambered back inside the Uncanny Wagon and left this out of place wolf pack far behind—but as I pulled at the handle, the door refused to open.

  The wolves howled as I swore, then one bolted towards me. I scampered to the next door, tried the handle, no dice.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

  Round to the other side, both doors, the same story. Whichever demon was making a play for my soul this time, wasn’t taking any chances. I considered legging it, but quickly realised what a stupid and short-lived gambit that would be. Instead, I ran up the back end of the car and scrambled up onto the car’s roof, taking off my boot to use as a weapon.

  Yes, I’m sure I’d have no problem seeing off six hellhounds on a mission to tear me to pieces using a worn-out old boot.

  The wolves circled my poor car, growling at me, in no rush. They knew it was all done, but for the actual eating me part.

  ‘Piss off, you toothy bastards,’ I said, waggling my boot.

  I thought back to the alley, the rats, and balled my right hand, trying to find some of the old magic. The car rocked, almost sending me tumbling from the roof and to the ground below, a tasty-treat for the jaws beneath.

  One of the wolves leaped up onto the car bonnet, its paws on the windscreen. ‘Ours!’ it said. ‘Ours! Ours! Ours!’

  I swung my boot, catching the animal flush on the nose. It fell yelping off the car.

  ‘Who’s next!’ I yelled, waggling my boot at the other wolves. ‘Fire hand, fire hand, fire hand.’

  Sparks and sputters of flame danced into life for a half-second at a time above my palm, but nothing held.

  ‘Firey-firey-fire-hand!’ I yelled, and laughed in surprise as a globe of magic, of white-hot flame, appeared, spitting with fury an inch above my palm.

  ‘I did it! I bloody well did it!’

  And then one of the wolves barged forcefully into the side of the Uncanny Wagon, sending me off balance and falling to the ground, where I landed heavily on my right shoulder. The magic puttered out, my boot spun away, and my lungs refused to do their job properly.

  I rolled onto my back, throat desperately trying to force air in the right direction, to see three sets of giant, hungry teeth hove into view above me.

  I would’ve said, ‘Oh shit’, but I was still struggling to take in breath, never mind speak.

  I suppose I thought my number was up at that point. I’d done a brave, daft, reckless thing in taking on Annie’s debt, and keeping that information foolishly from Eva, and now here I was. The debt was being called in. My throat, and other bits, were about to be made a chew toy for a pack of wolves, and a demon would step in to pluck my soul out of the mess they left behind.

  Well, at least I’d die doing something nice. Something kind.

  Or I would have done, if a small, axe-wielding fox hadn’t jumped, twirled, and laughed as he worked his way from wolf to wolf, his heavy axe dancing from hand to hand, the fox and his weapon in perfect harmony.

  I sat up, pushing myself back until I rested against the car, finally managing to take in some shallow breaths, as the fox deftly defended itself as the wolves attempte
d to swamp the small, fierce thing. Beast after beast fell, their blood and guts flying across my vision, as the fox sunk the blade of his axe into stomachs, ribs, skulls, until the last wolf collapsed. Its back legs gave one final spasmodic kick, before life finally left it, aided by the fox raising its axe high above its head, then swinging it down into the creature’s brain with a mighty battle cry.

  The fox wiped the worst of the dark red gore from his axe onto the fur of one of the fallen wolves, then wandered over to me.

  ‘All hail my saviour,’ I said. Or rather wheezed.

  26

  The blazing sky of the Dark Lakes opened up above me.

  ‘Cheers for the assist,’ I said, thanking the fox again for his timely intervention.

  ‘Doing demon work, those wolves,’ said the fox. ‘Sneaky demons.’

  We were stood atop the red hill. The same hill that the throne fashioned from skulls sat on. The throne made of skulls that I was, apparently, supposed to take as my own.

  ‘So… where is she?’ I asked.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘The Red Woman. I take it that’s why you came to find me.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s it.’

  ‘Well?’

  I felt an ice-cold hand snake around my waist.

  ‘Here I am, dearest,’ said the Red Woman, her voice a purr in my ear.

  I stepped away from her grasp with a shiver and turned to face her. She smiled, and for once that smile seemed to reach her eyes.

  ‘It seems you cannot stay away from here,’ she said, and ran a finger across the arm of the throne. ‘Perhaps you’re ready to take your rightful place after all?’

  I dithered, stepping from foot to foot, uncertain of exactly what it was I was going to ask.

  The Red Women narrowed her eyes at me. ‘You have demons on your tail.’

  ‘I’ll do anything to impress a woman,’ I replied.

  She shook her head and tutted. ‘So cavalier. That’s the Janto the warlock I remember. So eager to dive into the new. The unknown. The dangerous.’

  ‘Tell me something,’ I said.

  ‘Anything, dearest.’

  ‘Why did I make the choice to join you, back then? Back when I was Janto.’