Sanctified: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (Branded Book 1)

by David Bussell

  It made me… angry. I hadn’t done anything. I’d barely tasted life. I’d spent too much of it cooped up in this stupid, boring place, and now it was all going to be taken away from me. Taken away before I could do anything to change things for the better. It wasn’t fair.

  It wasn’t fair!

  I winced as my hand throbbed, and looked down to see the brand on my palm glowing blue again, burning bright as the sun.

  And as the brand came alive, so did I.

  Power flowed through me like a raging, frothing waterfall. Muscles I didn’t know I had tensed and sprung up, strong as steel cables. With a furious yell, I worked my knees under my chest, bucked my spine, and levered the shelves up and off me.

  The fanged man stopped in his tracks. I couldn’t say I blamed him. Whatever it was he’d just witnessed was more than just a spike of adrenaline, and we both knew it. He switched his grip on the dagger so the tip of the blade was pointing down, then came at me like I was a block of ice he was setting a pick to.

  I scurried backwards, panicking, feet propelling me across the floor, but ended up backing into a dead end at the farthest reach of the aisle. The fanged man stepped forward and lifted the dagger, and as he did, my hand instinctively went up to protect my face. The dagger came down and I acted without thinking, catching the man by his weapon arm.

  As my fingers closed about his flesh, I felt his skin go from polished marble to fine china. Bones ground and popped as I tightened my grip, and the fanged man yowled and pulled free of my grasp. He scurried away, face pinched with pain.

  ‘You little bitch!’

  The dagger slipped from his crumpled paw and I snatched it up, forgetting what had happened the last time I took it in my hand. On this occasion, I found the weapon cool to the touch, so I kept a hold of it and turned it in my attacker’s direction. The blade glowed cobalt blue as if lit by some inner fire.

  I liked the way the dagger felt in my hand. The weight. The possibilities. It felt… right.

  The fanged man hissed at me and my heart kicked into a higher gear. I bounded up on spring-loaded legs, landing on my toes with perfect poise. My muscles were singing and my blood sizzled and popped like a can of Red Bull in a paint-shaker. Knock-kneed Abbey Beckett with the toothpick arms was no more. In her place was an amazon. A nuclear-powered valkyrie ready to kick monster arse!

  ‘Come on then,’ I said. ‘Let’s be having you.’

  The fanged man looked dismayed. ‘No,’ was all he had to say for himself.

  Pulse jacked and acting on instinct, I lashed out with the flaming blue dagger and left the fanged man clutching a six-inch gash in his shoulder. It wasn’t deep—just a scratch, really—but it gushed like a busted water pipe.

  ‘You stupid cow,’ he snarled, his voice a cable about to snap.

  Spotting the broadsword, still on its shelf, he snatched it up and launched himself at me, swinging the weapon with both hands. Jaw firmed, I brought my own blade up to intercept his, and our steel met in a shower of blue sparks.

  I fought back reflexively. Confidently. No thought, no strategy, just letting my body move how it wanted. The dagger felt natural to me, like an extension of my own arm.

  My attacker came at me again and I swung the dagger in a powerful half-moon. It sang as it cut the air, and a long, horizontal gouge appeared across the fanged man’s midriff. He rocked back on his heels in shock, bleeding like a haemophiliac, blood blossoming beneath his torn dress shirt like a big red flower.

  The fanged man’s surprise turned to rage. He dumped the sword with an ear-splitting clang and came at me with his bare hands. He moved fast—too fast—like a scratched DVD, skipping from one frame to another and losing the moments in between. I thrust the dagger at his throat, but before I could get there, he deflected my forearm and knocked me aside.

  His fist connected with my jaw and the pain threw green and purple splotches into my eyes. After that came his other fist, knocking a fresh helping of pain into my guts.

  When I regained my senses, I found myself dangling in the air, feet tracing tiny circles above the floor. The dagger lay on the ground beneath me, and the fanged man was holding me up by a fistful of hair, a rictus grin on his face. I raked at him with my fingernails, but he held me at arm’s-length, just out of reach.

  ‘They’ll call me a hero for this,’ he said, smiling so wide that it made it look like he was unhinging his jaw to swallow a baby.

  As I gasped for air, his hand went for my face and I felt his fingers slither between my lips. I gagged as he forced himself into my mouth, his graveyard flesh invading my throat, ripe with corruption. I tried biting down on his knuckles, but he just smiled as blood trickled from his hand and into my gullet. I hacked and spluttered, desperate for one ragged intake of breath, but there was nothing I could do.

  As I fought, terror turned into hopelessness, then into resignation. My body, clenched and rigid, sagged and went limp. The fringes of my vision darkened, and my body grew numb. I was drifting away. Slipping gently into a deep, hot bath. All I wanted was to close my eyes, to tip back my head and slide beneath the black water. But no. I had to stay awake. A voice in my head told me so; a nagging, insistent demand that I open my eyes, plant my feet, and get back into the fight.

  With my last ounce of strength, I kicked up a foot and swung a Doc Marten at the space between the fanged man’s legs.

  Oof.

  He folded like a lawn chair as the steel-tapped toe connected with the jelly of his balls, and I felt my feet touch back on the ground. Without taking a pause, I threw my shoulder into my attacker’s chest and sent him stumbling backwards. He lost his balance and keeled over, and as he did, I saw a long, silver knife sprout through the centre of his chest. It was so coated in blood that it took me a couple of seconds to realise what it actually was…

  The business end of the five-foot long stuffed swordfish.

  A pink mist of blood shotgunned from the fanged man’s mouth and his body went stiff as a board. All at once, he changed. It was like watching a time-lapse video of a man decomposing, only played in fast forward. His eyes became hollowed-out sockets and his lips turned blue. His skin went tight like he’d been vacuum-sealed, then turned brittle and papery. Steam spat from his mouth like tea from a kettle, then BADOOF! he exploded in a cloud of soot.

  I watched incredulously as the black confetti spiralled down, cinders mixing with the red pool on the ground, like pepper shaken into a bloody mary.

  I was alive. Alive! A monster had tried to end me, and instead I’d ended him. I should have collapsed with relief. Instead, I realised I was grinning wildly.

  I looked at my palm and saw the symbol had gone dim now, the glowing blue letter Z returned to a dull, pink cattle brand.

  ‘Hello there,’ said a voice over my shoulder. I whirled around to see an elderly man stood before me, smiling beatifically. His eyes went to the dagger. ‘I believe you have something that belongs to me.’

  4

  The old man was short and dressed in a crumpled white linen suit, trousers hoisted up to chest height. He had on his person an ivory-handed wooden walking stick, atop which wobbled a frail white hand. If you were to call Hollywood Central Casting and say, ‘Send me a sweet old man type,’ you'd have ended up with this guy.

  I grabbed the dagger from the sticky red floor and brandished it in both hands. ‘Who the hell are you?’ I inquired. ‘And how did you get in here?’

  He smiled wider and held up a hand in surrender. ‘I mean you no harm,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, sorry, but that was pretty much the same story the pile of ash tried to sell me.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the old man replied, ‘I’m on your side.’

  ‘Oh yeah? And whose side is that?’

  He cocked a fluffy white eyebrow. ‘Why, the side of the angels of course.’

  I was in no mood for riddles. To tell you the truth, I never am. I’d sooner inject myself with bleach than do a cryptic crossword.

 
‘Tell me what you’re doing here,’ I demanded, punctuating the sentence with an air-stab.

  ‘I told you, you have something of mine,’ the old man replied. That dagger you’re threatening me with, in fact. It belongs to me. My name is Vizael, but you can call me Viz. What do I call you?’

  I studied his eyes. I saw no malice there, maybe he was on the level. Then again, I’d given Mr Fangs a pass too, and look where that gotten me.

  ‘I’m Abbey,’ I said, even though I wasn’t really obliged to give any answers. ‘Now it’s your turn. Tell me this, if the knife belongs to you, who was that guy?’

  ‘An imposter,’ the old man explained. ‘An imposter who wanted my dagger very badly.’

  What was so special about that hunk of metal that a man was prepared to kill for it?

  ‘Let’s say I believe you and this knife is all that and a bag of chips. How did the dead guy know he’d find it here?’

  The old man shrugged. ‘My best bet is that you alerted him to the dagger’s presence when you logged it onto your computer system.’

  I suppose Sherlock was technically hackable, but getting into it would require some serious, Matrix-level I.T. skills, wouldn’t it? Then again, the amount of time I’d spent using my machine to fart around online, its system could be loaded with untold amounts of spyware.

  ‘And the guy pretending to be you?’ I said, pointing to the ashy puddle on the ground that looked so nasty a dog wouldn't lick it up. ‘Who was he? Scratch that, what was he?’

  ‘He was a vampire,’ the old man replied, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Surely the fangs gave it away?’

  ‘A vampire? As in, well, a vampire?’

  ‘Quite so.’

  It hardly seemed worth arguing with him. In the last half hour I’d been burned by a magic dagger, demonstrated superpowers, and killed a man with a stuffed swordfish. Whether or not the guy who attacked me was a vampire seemed immaterial at that point.

  ‘Is that why he asked permission to be let in?’ I asked. ‘Because vampires need to be invited into places?’

  ‘No,’ replied the old man. ‘He did that because there was a locked door in his way.’

  As is so often is the case, the solution to the question was the most obvious one.

  ‘And what about this?’ I asked, showing him my palm. ‘What’s the big Z stand for?’

  ‘It’s not a Z,’ he replied, rotating his hand ninety degrees clockwise and encouraging me to follow suit. ‘It’s an N.’

  ‘Okay, then so what’s the big N stand for?’ I stared quizzically at my palm but kept one eye fixed on the old man.

  ‘It stands for Nightstalker,’ he explained.

  ‘Nightstalker? Isn’t that what they called that serial killer in the Eighties? Something Ramirez?’

  ‘Richard, yes. An unfortunate coincidence. We were using the title first though, so take some comfort in that.’

  I’d wandered off topic. The only thing that really mattered at this point was, who was this guy, and what was his game?

  As if sensing my uncertainty, the old man shuffled over on his cane and held out a hand. ‘Please,’ he said.

  Trustingly—too trustingly—I took his papery hand in mine, dagger at the ready in case he tried anything funny.

  Just like when I’d touched the imposter, something appeared upon the old man. It wasn’t a letter J this time though, it was halo. A corona of silvery light hovered above the his head, accompanied by the faint sound of choral music.

  I withdrew my hand and took a couple of steps back. He hadn’t been joking before when he said he was on the side of the angels.

  ‘No…’ I said, wide-eyed.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘You’re actually shitting me.’

  ‘I’m actually not.’

  ‘You’re a… well, a…’

  ‘An angel?’

  I laughed, my free hand slapping over my mouth to keep the crazy in. ‘Bullshit. No. No, no, no. This is all a bit much.’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘Vampires and magic and now a bloody angel! Have I gone mental? It’s this place, isn’t it? The long hours and the tedium have finally broken me.’

  ‘You’re not mad, I’m afraid, you’re just seeing me as I see you.’

  ‘And what are you seeing?’

  ‘I see a good person, destined for greatness.’

  I snorted. ‘Okay, now I know you’re talking shit. I’m a straight C student who lives in a high rise in a shitty part of town. I can show you about a billion people doing greater than me.’

  ‘Doing what exactly?’

  ‘I dunno. Climbing the career ladder. Getting their degrees. Wearing clean underwear every day.’

  ‘A degree won’t save them for the vampire apocalypse,’ said the old man, and it was hard to argue with him there. A degree is a pretty flimsy defence in any kind of apocalypse.

  The old man elaborated. ‘They’re waking up from hibernation, Abbey. The vampires. In their hundreds.’

  ‘Are they now? Right, sounds a bit bad. Can I go home now? I reckon if I get a solid eight hours, all this will be forgotten.’

  ‘I’m serious, Abbey.’

  I pushed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, grunting with frustration. ‘Fine,’ I said, ‘where are these vampires waking up from?’

  ‘They’ve been rising in small numbers for hundreds of years of course—’

  ‘—Oh, of course—’

  ‘—But now we’re facing an epidemic.’

  ‘I see. And why now?’

  By way of an answer, the old man crossed to the far wall and pointed to a framed map of the London Underground network. ‘Plague sites,’ he went on. ‘All over the city.’

  ‘You mean from the Black Death?’

  ‘Yes, exactly.’

  ‘And the plague sites, they’re the pits they threw all the diseased bodies in, right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ the old man replied, impressed. ‘Very good.’

  The bubonic plague was my favourite thing from History at school. Again: morbid.

  The old man carried on with his story. ‘At the start of the outbreak, parishes did what they could to provide proper burials for their parishioners, but they soon ran out of space. Bodies were buried on top of each other in mass graves, layers upon layers, like some kind of horror lasagna.’ He went quiet for a moment, then, ‘Do you have anything to eat?’ he asked. ‘All this lasagna talk is making me very peckish.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Or a sandwich, if you’ve one spare. Cheese and pickle would be lovely.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, but can we stick to the vampire apocalypse, please?’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied, slapping his forehead. ‘Sorry, my mind’s not what it used to be. One of the drawbacks of being over six-thousand years old.’

  Did I hear him right? Did he just say he was six-thousand plus? Before I could ask him to repeat himself, he went on with his story.

  ‘The burial sites are being disturbed by modern developments, shaken up and unearthed. Because of that, the bodies are rising,’ he dotted a finger all over the map. ‘Legions of vampires, stirring from their slumber, every single year. And these aren’t ordinary vampires. These are a new breed.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Do you understand what I’m telling you, Abbey?’

  ‘Yep. Got it. Vampires, disturbed, new breed, it’s a hell of a story,’ I said, even though it actually sounded like piss-poor Buffy fanfic.

  ‘I’ve fought them for about as long as I can remember,’ he went on, ‘but I’m too old for that now. That’s okay though, because I finally have a successor in you, Abbey.’

  There was a bit of a silent pause at that point. ‘Come again?’

  The man smiled, his watery blue eyes twinkling.

  ‘No. No, no and no again. You’ve got the wrong person, mate. You want Jason Statham, or Bruce Willis before he went crap, not a girl
who works in an office and whose diet is seventy-percent cheap cheese.’

  ‘It’s you, Abbey. It has to be. You have been chosen. The hallowed dagger does not make mistakes. I’ve seen you fight, and I believe you are the answer to the vampire menace.’

  I laughed. ‘So, that's it, is it? No interview? “You got the job; when can you start slaying bloodsuckers?” Simple as that?’

  The old man pointed to the puddled remains of the fanged man. ‘That was your interview.’

  I shook my head. ‘And what if I say no?’

  ‘I understand your concerns, Abbey. This is a lot to ask.’

  ‘Avert an apocalypse? Uh, yeah, kind of a biggie.’

  ‘I’m afraid the choice has already been made. The dagger has made its choice. You have been Sanctified. You are the one who will destroy the vampires before they bring about the End of Times.’

  The bloke was off his nut. Abbey Beckett was going to save the world? Abbey Beckett, the girl the kids at school used to call “2D” on account of her being so stick-thin she was in danger of slipping between the floorboards? That Abbey Beckett?

  The old man smiled. ‘I understand this is a lot to take in,’ he said, and reached inside the front pocket of his jacket to produce a calling card. ‘Look me up when you’re ready to get to work. The card will evaporate by next nightfall though, so don’t leave it too long.’ He turned to leave.

  ‘That’s it? You’re just going to go?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve taken up enough of your time already. Besides, you have some cleaning up to do before the morning shift arrives.’

  He was not wrong; the storage area looked like a bomb had hit a slaughterhouse. As I examined the state of the place, I felt this morning’s bowl of Frosties preparing to hit the ejector button.

  ‘Ugh, that is nasty,’ I groaned.

  ‘Goodbye, Abbey,’ said the old man, smiling, tipping an imaginary hat, and shuffling out the way he came. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

  ‘Actually, you won’t. Bye-bye for good.’

  I looked down at the dagger. ‘Wait!’ I said, snatching it up and calling after him. ‘You forgot your knife!’