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

by David Bussell

  ‘Ebony and Ivory...’ I sang.

  Then the monster exploded, knocking me and Gen to the floor as we were showered in a geyser of cold, lifeless gunk.

  I sat up, laughing and wiping blood from my eyes.

  I did it. We did it.

  The golem was gone.

  The fight was over.

  Gen sat up and looked around, bewildered, then winced as she clutched at her lacerated hand, cursing my name in some dead language.

  ‘Hold still,’ I told her, shuffling over on my knees and applying pressure to the wound with one hand as I tore off one of her sleeves with the other.

  ‘What did you do?’ she bleated.

  ‘I killed the big bad.’

  ‘I can see that, but why did you cut me?’

  ‘I remembered what Carlo said about angel blood being bleach to vampires, and I guess I just ran with it.’

  ‘It hurt like hell!’

  ‘You’ll live,’ I told her.

  A couple of minutes later I’d managed to stem the flow of blood by tying it off with a tourniquet.

  Gen inspected my handiwork and flexed her fingers. ‘Not bad,’ she admitted.

  ‘Yeah, well, I am my office’s resident first aider.’

  Gen looked at me coldly, then laughed. ‘Maybe you’re not so terrible,’ she said.

  I looked around at all the dead bodies, at the room drenched in blood, and had to agree. I crouched down by Pinstripe’s body, checked his pockets, and found the lock of hair he’d stolen from me.

  Not so terrible.

  33

  The first rays of sunshine kissed the gas tower as the grey light of morning bled through the streets of Bethnal Green.

  Vizael had called us back to base for a debrief, and while Gendith gave him her report, I spoke with Neil.

  ‘So… vampires are real?’ he asked, still trying to make sense of the situation he’d found himself in. We’d begun the conversation shortly after I’d destroyed the blood golem (once he’d stopped screaming at the sight of all the dead bodies anyway), and the discussion was still in effect.

  ‘Yeah, vampires are real,’ I replied. ‘Real arseholes.’

  I fessed up to the lot. The monsters, the angels, the whole stopping the apocalypse shebang.

  ‘And that N on your hand,’ he said, tracing a thumb along the zig-zags of the brand, ‘I’m guessing that doesn’t stand for Neil after all, right?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted, ‘it stands for Nightstalker.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, smiling, ‘cool name.’

  Viz hobbled over to us on his ivory-handled walking stick. ‘Pardon me,’ he said, ‘but may I speak with you alone?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, worried where this was headed.

  Gen cleared the room, taking a very tired and confused Neil with her.

  Viz gestured for me to take a chair, and we each took a seat across the same cracked coffee table we’d sat at the first time he tried to convince me to become the Nightstalker.

  ‘Well done, Abbey, ’ he said, reaching over to place a hand on my shoulder. ‘I always knew you were worthy of the brand.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, and meant it. I meant it so much I began to cry; great, heaving sobs that wracked my body from top to toe.

  ‘There there,’ said Viz getting up from his seat and taking a knee before me.

  He wiped a smear of blood from my face and pecked me on the forehead, warming my heart like a baked potato, fresh from the oven.

  I smiled back at him. ‘Can I please go home now?’

  ‘Yes,’ he chuckled, ‘of course.’

  ‘Thank Christ,’ I gasped, wiping some sob snot from my nose.

  Viz helped me to my feet—or I helped him, it didn’t seem to matter—and patted me on the back. ‘You just passed your biggest test so far, Abbey, so go home, rest, enjoy a normal life for a day or two, because our fight—the fight to end all fights—has only just begun.’

  By the time I’d finished filling Neil in on the missing details, the two of us had found our way back to Thamesmead, back to our flat. My stigmata had healed by then, and the pair of us were already feeling much better. Sure, we’d suffered a harrowing ordeal at the hands of a terrifying vampire menace, but we were home now, and home had never looked so good.

  I had reservations about returning to the scene of Neil’s kidnapping, but Viz had assured me we’d be safe there, at least for the time being. The Clan had suffered a humiliating defeat, and wouldn’t be mounting another attack tonight. We’d disrupted their bloodletting and purged the sacrifice site. They’d be too busy licking their wounds to pick on me any time soon.

  So we celebrated. Me and Neil, the moment we got home. How exactly did we celebrate? Why, we braided one another’s hair as we softly kissed each other’s foreheads of course. Just kidding. We banged like mad rabbits is how we celebrated. I mean, we really went to town on each other. I set into Neil like I’d just been released from prison after a ten year stretch. Like it was Christmas Day and he was the biggest present under the tree. I didn’t even bother to take off my makeup before we got down to it. I’m telling you, by the time we were done, he looked like he’d been beaten up by a clown.

  I felt sure we’d be getting a note slipped under our door by nosy old Mr Munford about the racket we made, shortly followed by a noise abatement letter from the council, but that was a problem for another day.

  ‘I love you,’ Neil told me, and I said it back to him, meaning every word, every syllable.

  I’d been guilty of taking Neil for granted—of treating him like a comfy, loose-knit jumper, all worn in and snug—but he was so much more than that. When those vampires took him away, they left behind a hole, an emptiness where Neil belonged. It made me realise that a future without him was no future at all. It had been a valuable lesson, even if I did have a criticism or two regarding the overall syllabus.

  The sun had been up for a couple of hours already, and it was absolutely, most definitely, time for bed. I was so shattered that I barely had it in me to draw the curtains. My eyelids refused to stay open, except on an individual, one-at-a-time basis.

  I climbed into bed beside Neil. He rolled over to put on his breathing mask, and I nuzzled into the nape of his neck. We said our good nights and I draped an arm across his torso and closed my eyes. The worries of the world vanished as sleep descended on me, heavy and warm.

  When I woke up, it was getting on for noon. A few threadbare streaks of daylight trickled in through the crack between the curtains. The room was nice and toasty, and smelled of last night’s sex; sickly and sweet.

  I wouldn’t get up for hours yet—God willing—but before I nodded off again, I gave Neil a hug and sniffed his back. He felt cold, so I pulled the duvet tight around his neck and padded it down. That’s when I noticed he wasn’t wearing his oxygen mask.

  ‘Neil?’ I said, feeling a surge of panic.

  He needed that mask to breathe, yet there it was, lying on the carpet beside the oxygen tank, pumping air into nothing. It must have slipped off of his face while he was sleeping. It had happened once before a couple of years ago, and that had almost been the death of him.

  ‘Neil?’ I screamed, rolling him onto his back.

  He looked like death. His eyes were closed and sunk deep into their sockets, his skin the colour of curdled milk. At first I thought he wasn’t breathing, but when I whipped the sheets off him, I could see his chest rise and fall ever so slightly. Breath quivered from his lips in short, shallow gasps.

  I dived astride him and scooped up his oxygen mask, pressing it to his face and forming a seal around his mouth. ‘Come on, Neil. Wake up. Wake up!’

  His eyes opened to puffy slits and he broke into a shiver. His expression was glassy, not altogether there. ‘I don’t feel well, Abbey,’ he said, his voice a reedy whisper.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, ‘We’re going to get some air in you, then I’m going to call the hospital.’

  He coughed with such force that
I had trouble keeping the mask on his face, then he went into a spasm. His heels kicked at the mattress so hard that I was almost thrown off him, then his jaw clenched tight as his body convulsed some more, writhing and bucking beneath me like a prize bronco.

  He went still.

  ‘Neil?’

  I checked his breathing but couldn’t feel a thing. His skin was ice-cold to the touch. I went to grab my phone and call for an ambulance, but I knew in my heart that it was already too late. By the time an ambulance got here, by the time a paramedics made it up those nine stupid flights of stairs, Neil would be gone.

  What had I been thinking, bringing him back here after everything he’d been through? He ought to have been in a hospital bed under the watchful eye of a doctor. Why had I listened to him when he said he felt fine and just wanted to go home?

  Then, without warning, Neil’s eyes snapped open and his lips peeled back like a corpse decomposing at speed.

  My limbs flexed in shock, but there was another surprise yet to come. There, on Neil’s forehead was a mark.

  A mark I recognised all too well.

  The mark of Judas.

  The Clan had turned Neil into one of their own.

  A pair of long white fangs ejected from Neil’s gums and glistened in the wan light.

  ‘No... not you, Neil…’

  ‘Hello, Abbey,’ he rasped, his tongue licking across his new teeth. ‘I’m really, really hungry.’

  To Be Continued…

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  London Coven: Familiar Magic

  Here’s a SNEAK PEEK at the first London Coven book, another series set in the Uncanny Kingdom universe…

  Three butchered witches. An unknown killer. One sole survivor.

  Stella Familiar was created by the London Coven to protect the city from the monsters that lurk in the shadows. She’s fought off dark forces for decades, but now something new has come to town. Something that’s torn her world apart.

  1

  It was the absence of magic that first got me, hitting me like a punch to the stomach.

  As I stepped forward my legs actually shook a little, like they might give way and drop me to the ground. So much for the seen-it-all, jaded, powerful Familiar.

  My name is Stella, I belonged to the London Coven as the Familiar to a trio of witches, and I’d just arrived back to find the door hanging off its hinges. After discovering this, I’d just stood looking at the thing for a few seconds, confused. It was impossible. It couldn’t be. And yet there it stubbornly was.

  The entrance to the coven itself sits in Hammersmith, west London; just a few streets away from the underground station. It’s situated down a blind alley, so called because only those who know it exists can actually see it. A simple but very effective bit of perception magic that makes the alley invisible to most, even when looking directly at it.

  Let’s get back to that impossible lack of magic.

  It assaulted my senses like a rancid smell. Like meat gone bad. The coven and the blind alley that led to its door should be noisy with magic. Alive with boiling, agitated power. It was home to my masters, Kala, Trin, & Feal, the most powerful witches in England, and every inch of the place was infused with magic, old and new, black and white. On top of that, there were the spells of protection. Thousands of them. Anyone that wasn’t meant to be there could find themselves stepping into a patch of superheated air that would melt the flesh from their bones. Or perhaps they’d blink and, just before their heart gave out, they’d find themselves confused as their eyes opened one last time to see their insides were now on the outside. There were any number of ways it could happen. Any number of creative deaths to discover. The coven was locked up tight, it had to be. It was impossible for anything to step inside that wasn’t invited. And yet…

  The door—

  The lack of magic—

  I swallowed hard and ducked through the gap created by the half-off door, straightening up slowly on the other side.

  The place was dead.

  There wasn’t a whisper of magic to be heard. To be felt. Tasted.

  It was impossible.

  I know I keep using that word, but it was true.

  Every building, every street, every hill and river and grain of sand contains some residue of magic. It’s all around us every day. Even if this place hadn’t been a coven, hadn’t housed three of the most powerful magical creatures in the country, the very fact of its existence meant it should emit traces of the Uncanny.

  But there was nothing.

  I reached out with all of my senses, desperate for anything. For a ghost of some ancient incantation.

  I came up empty and it terrified me.

  ‘Kala? Trin...?’

  Silence.

  I stepped into the first room; it was empty but there were signs of a struggle. ‘Kala?’ Chairs on their sides, broken glass on wooden floorboards. The coven smelt the same despite the lack of magic; that weird mix of cinnamon, freshly cut grass, and lavender that seemed to permanently drift around the place, no matter which potion was cooked up or meal was prepared. The smell of my master’s witchcraft. I turned back and stepped into the hallway again.

  ‘Intruder, my name is Stella Familiar and you will show yourself or I… or I will…’

  I pressed a palm against the wall to steady myself and swallowed, throat dry. The emptiness was getting to me, giving me the shakes. All magical beings are connected to the power that radiates from all things. They feed a little on the magic that naturally occurs, and I was no different. I soaked it in, night and day, without even thinking about it. It sustained me, made me stronger, gave me the energy to cast spells, and, for want of a better word, gave me a ‘buzz’. But now, in this place, in this empty coven, I was like a junkie who’d suddenly gone cold turkey after a lifetime of indulgence.

  And it hurt.

  It was actually disturbing to me how quickly I was affected. A minute had passed, tops, and I was a shaking, sweaty wreck.

  I grunted, straightened up, and tried to get my shit together.

  ‘Intruder, my name is Stella Familiar and you will damn well show yourself to me for punishment!’ The words roared out of my mouth with a strength I really didn’t feel.

  There was no reply.

  I placed a hand on the door to the main coven room and pushed.

  I tasted death before I saw it.

  That coppery tang on the tongue that twisted my stomach and told me exactly what I was going to see before my eyes had chance to catch up.

  There were three bodies on the floor inside. Three bodies, but more than three pieces. Kala, Trin, Feal, my masters, my coven’s high witches, had been torn to pieces and scattered around the room.

  Eyes wide, hand to my mouth, I stepped inside.

  ‘No…’

  The world had gone mad.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  Nothing was capable of doing this to the witches of the London Coven. Together, the three of them wielded enough power to crack open mountains, and yet my shoes were now soaking in a pool of their collective blood.

  I crouched and placed a hand on a hunk of meat that could have once belonged to any one of my masters. It, like the coven itself, was empty. Not just of life, but of magic. Of power. Something had broken into a place it was impossible to break into, survived the magical protecti
ons it was impossible to survive, and torn to…

  …and murdered my masters. Murdered creatures of immeasurable power. And then, to finish things off, they’d drained every last drop of magic from the place.

  It was impossible on top of impossible on top of impossible and it made me tremble.

  I stood, angry. Angry that I’d allowed fear to infect me. I cradled that anger and blew upon it, igniting it like the first spark of a new fire. It didn’t matter that this was impossible, it had happened. It didn’t matter that the kind of power needed to have even achieved one of the impossible things done to this coven would be enough to turn me into a puddle of bubbling goo.

  None of it mattered.

  All that mattered was that the coven was breached and my creators had been murdered as though they were nothing. As though they were less than nothing. They’d been ripped and shredded and tossed aside. My nails dug into my palms and drew blood, but I didn’t flinch. It felt good.

  I was going to find out who was behind this and do something impossible myself.

  I was going to get bloody, horrifying revenge.

  I was nothing but a lowly Familiar, but I swore on every spell I knew that I was going to avenge my slaughtered coven.

  ‘Listen to me. Listen closely. You’ve made a terrible mistake. You’ve made a terrible mistake and you don’t even realise it. My name is Stella Familiar, and what’s happened here today will be met with fury like you could never even imagine. Do you hear me? I know you can. Whoever did this, I will find you, and when I do, I will rip your heart from your chest!’

  A noise—