by M. V. Stott
‘Don’t—’
‘Stella, I’m serious. I won’t hurt all those people. If you have to, if it’s the only way, you do your job and you stop me. Do you hear me? You stop me.’
18
I looked down at the pile of dried-up, withered bodies stacked on top of each other in the centre of the living room. A family of five, a mother, a father, three kids, in a three-bedroom house in Hammersmith.
Lorna had indulged in a sick feast to celebrate our return.
‘Why do you keep inviting her,’ said Layland, eyeing me evilly, cup of coffee in hand.
It hadn’t been easy covering David’s absence, Layland especially had needed three or four doses of the spell before she forgot he’d been missing. Even after all that I got the impression she was aware she was pissed off for some reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
‘You force this woman on our crime scenes because you think she can help in some way. Well, this is crime scene number three of this case, and I’ve yet to hear one useful word drop out of her mouth.’
This really was the problem with our set up. If I was involved, it was because something Uncanny was going on. Something Uncanny that we were never going to just capture, put on trial, and lock up like your normal criminal. As far as Layland was concerned, I was about as useful in an investigation as a house brick. Worse than a house brick. At least with a brick she could pick it up and throw it away. I kept coming back.
‘Layland,’ replied David. ‘Trust me, she helps.’
Layland grimaced at him. ‘I can’t help but think there’s something I’m forgetting to shout at you about.’
As she turned and left us, I dropped onto my haunches to look closer at the bodies. I wanted to really see, close up, the result of my ineptitude. Five more people dead, including children, because I’d failed to uphold my duty to keep the people of London safe. I reached out and touched the arm of the smallest body, a girl named Sally. She’d only recently celebrated her fifth birthday, and now that would be her last, because of me.
Had I murdered her myself? No, of course not, but it was my job to stop things like Lorna, and now she had seven bodies on her slate, and more to come if I didn’t get it together and take her down. It didn’t matter what Anya had said; that she thought it her mess to clear up and that I should stay out of it. Three days had passed since that confrontation, and still Lorna was on the streets, murdering innocents.
This had to be the last of them. No more. This bitch was going down.
I leaned in to the girl’s body. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough, but I’ll get her. I’ll get your killer.’
The girl’s corpse opened her eyes. ’He must be destroyed.’
I jerked back in shock.
‘David, tell me you can see that.’
‘I see it. And hear it. And I really don’t like it.’
The girl’s eyes had no colour to them. Two dried out, white prunes sat in their puckered sockets. How was this possible?
‘Kill him. Stop him. He is death,’ said the girl, her voice dry and whispery, empty of life, of emotion.
Someone was using the bodies to get a point across. Some sick bastard playing with the dead.
And then, one by one, the other bodies began to open their eyes and join in with the girl’s demands for me to put an end to the dangerous man. I didn’t need to ask who they meant.
I looked around the room to see if anyone else was seeing what we were, but they carried on, oblivious. This wasn’t real, this was an illusion meant just for us.
‘Listen, you sick fuck,’ I said, leaning in as I spoke so no one else would hear me and wonder why I was threatening a pile of dead bodies, ‘if you think this is going to scare me, you’re wrong.’
David raised a hand: ‘Job done over here though.’
‘I promise, if you or anyone else tries to force my hand, or tries to take him out by yourself, I will fuck you up.’
I stood and turned away from the bodies, David following as I left the house and the bodies fell silent.
19
We needed to get back to the coven and find a way to track down Lorna before any more corpses piled up. Hopefully Eva would still be there and I could actually convince her to lend a hand.
‘Just so we’re clear, they meant me, right? That you should kill me?’
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘Blimey. Even the dead want me dead. I mean, I’ve not always been the most popular of people, but this is a new low, even for me.’
‘That wasn’t the dead speaking, that was some fool speaking through them.’
As we walked I felt eyes on us. I didn’t turn to look, or to confront, I just kept us moving as quickly as possible. Once we were in the coven, we’d be safe.
‘Um, Stella?’
‘What?’
‘I think we’re being followed. No, I know we are, they aren’t being at all subtle.’
A crowd was forming, ten or twelve Uncannys, more joining as we moved forward.
‘Don’t worry, we’re almost at the coven, then they can try all they like, they won’t be able to touch you.’
I sounded confident but I didn’t feel it. Things were coming to a head; word of David had clearly spread far and wide since the altercation at The Beehive. The apocalypse man wasn’t a rumour anymore. He wasn’t someone you could wait for someone else to deal with. David was a threat and needed to be taken out before he turned everyone in London into ashes.
I wondered why they were hanging back, why they weren’t attacking before we reached the safety of the coven.
I got my answer when we reached the blind alley.
Because there wasn’t one.
Someone had blocked the entrance.
‘Did you do that?’ asked David, looking nervously from the solid brick wall in front of us, then over to the crowd of Uncanny stood calmly, waiting.
‘No.’
I pressed my palms against the bricks and tried to find the way in, my fingers dancing over the stone, senses extending, desperately searching for a fault in the spell. I pulled magic into me, placed the words together in my head, and fed a spell into the wall, demanding the blind alley appear again and allow us entrance.
But nothing.
Whoever had done this was powerful, their magic stronger than I could counteract. They knew the coven was the one place David would be safe. The one place I could hide him away until my time to cure him ran out and he went boom. So they took the coven off the table and left us with no safe space.
No safe space and a crowd of scared, angry Uncannys ready to do what had to be done.
‘We don’t want to hurt you, Stella,’ said one person in the group I recognised. A half-wizard on his mother’s side who, fifteen years back, I’d rescued from a hex a pissed-off ex had placed on him that was turning his genitals to stone.
‘Karl, you don’t want to do this. None of you do.’
‘What choice do we have? You know what he’s going to do. You know of the portent. Why would you endanger us all like this?’
We had our backs to the wall – to the now missing blind alley entrance. My instinct was to run, but a quick glance to my left informed me that two groups had formed to block off both directions.
David stepped forwards. ‘I’m not going to hurt anyone, I swear.’
I grabbed him back, placing myself in front of him as a shield.
‘David, I need you to stay calm, okay?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They’re going to attack. We can escape, but they’re going to attack, and if you switch like you did at The Beehive, I don’t know what will happen. You don’t know what will happen. So stay back, stay behind me, and stay calm. Please.’
David nodded, and I did my best to smile. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.’
I pulled the magic into me, placing my feet into a boxer’s stance and raising my fists.
‘Who’s brave enough to take the fir
st hit?’
The two groups looked at each other, then to me, then swarmed us as one.
This fight wasn’t like the one at The Beehive. Out there, in the street, there was nothing to dampen my attacks or theirs. But that was okay, I was strong, and I was used to fighting. That was my whole purpose for existing. Violence had been bred into me.
I didn’t move far from my starting position. I held my ground, shielding David, as wave after wave of people surged forward, unleashing all sorts of magical attacks, not to mention fists and knives. One of them even swung an enchanted axe.
Despite it all, I stayed on my feet.
My body trembled as I opened it up to more and more of the magic in the air, starving my attackers of a strong connection by gorging myself on it. Willing it to be mine and mine alone as I blocked attack after attack and unleashed a fury of my own.
Bodies fell, blood splattered, bones cracked. The enchanted axe became enchanted kindling.
They had the numbers but I had the expertise. Thank Christ I was only dealing with your run-of-the-mill Uncannys. Nothing here was above my pay grade.
Soon enough there was a gap, a way out. I grabbed David’s hand and pulled him after me as I swept my free hand back and forth in front of me, scattering anyone that got too close like skittles.
I placed the correct words together in my mind and shared a spell between myself and David: ‘Run.’
And run we did, the spell letting us go a little faster, a little longer, than our bodies would normally allow. We took turns sharply, tearing through the street until the spell wore off and our bodies finally forced us to stop.
We staggered into an alley and collapsed on our backs, gasping for air, our lungs furious with pain, limbs shaking like we’d run a marathon.
‘Holy… holy… shit….’ wheezed David.
When I finally had strength enough, I pushed myself into a sitting position and flopped back against the wall.
David dragged himself over to sit beside me. ‘Remind me… remind me never to piss you off,’ he said.
We’d lost the pack, but more would come. More people, stronger people. Soon enough, either through sheer numbers or magical expertise, it would be more than I could handle.
‘Someone has cut off the coven, so we need to try and stash you somewhere else. Somewhere safe enough until I can find a way to stop what’s happening to you.’
‘Do you think you can? What if there isn’t a, you know, “cure,” or whatever? Maybe this is just the way it’s going to be. Maybe nothing but death is going to stop this.’
I pushed myself up onto my feet, my jellied knees threatening to keep me down. ‘There’s always a way. Always.’
David hung his head for a moment, then nodded. ‘Okay. But what I said before still stands. I won’t become a mass murderer. If it comes to it, you put me down.’
I went to argue, but the look in David’s eyes stopped me. Part of me knew he was right. I would do everything I could to stop it, to stop him. To prevent him not only dying, but becoming a mass murderer in the process. But the very idea of… of killing him, it made me feel weaker than I’d ever felt in my sixty years of life. I had to find a way. No matter what my dead witches had said, no matter what L’Merrier demanded, I had to find a way to save him, and save everyone else, too.
‘It won’t come to that. I promise.’
He smiled.
‘So what now? Where can we go that people won’t be able to find?’
I had an idea about that. A favour that it was time to call in.
20
We found him at one of his usual haunts.
Razor, the head of his eaves clan.
‘What the fuck do you two want?’ he asked, hissing through his needle teeth.
Normally we’d have sat in The Beehive until Razor showed up, but The Beehive was currently in need of a drastic remodelling, so we had to do a tour of his other known drinking holes. It took us ducking into six different pubs until we found him, all the time trying to keep David out of view.
We took our place uninvited opposite Razor.
‘We need your help,’ I said.
Razor looked at me, then over to David, then back, his eyes blinking slowly, then he burst out laughing.
‘I’m thinking that might be a no,’ said David.
Razor spluttered to a stop, wiping the tears from his eyes. ‘Too right it’s a no. Are you mental? Why the fuck would I want to help either of you?’
I leaned forward and locked my eyes onto his. ‘Because you owe me.’
Razor’s smiled dropped. ‘How do you figure that one, Familiar?’
‘Are you forgetting how I saved your clan’s children? Not one, not two, but all of them. They’d have never woken up if I hadn’t rescued them from the nightmare realm. I could have rescued the innocent and left your offspring to rot, but I didn’t. Because I wouldn’t. I saved your clan’s future, and now you’re going to grant me my favour, do you understand me?’
Razor glared at me fiercely, then broke eye contact, grabbing his drink, taking a swig and wiping the back of his filthy sleeve across his mouth. ‘All the Uncanny of London want your friend here dead. How am I meant to help you with that, exactly?’
I smiled. ‘You can build him a house.’
Eaves are low level Uncanny, but they do have one particular skill that I needed right now—that David needed—they could hide their homes. An eaves trades in secrets. In hearing things that shouldn’t have been heard and passing the information on to anyone willing to pay the price; and that price was a taste of pure magic.
A person with that sort of a predilection will find themselves on a lot of shit lists, so they need a place they can lay their heads at night without keeping one eye open. The eaves have developed a way of using some of the magic they earn to create a strange network of spells, of misdirection, of shielding—layer after layer of it—that makes their homes almost impossible to find, no matter how many times you visit.
And that’s what Razor and two members of his clan were now creating for me and David. A place for David to lay low. A place that only I knew how to get to and from whilst I figured out a way to save him.
I drip-fed Razor and his two grimy clan members magic while they worked, siphoning it from the air around us. It was a strange thing to watch. It looked like they nibbled at the air with their needle teeth, scraped and swatted at it with their filthy hands, their ragged, long nails clawing at the space in front of them as they walked steadily forward, almost like they were moles digging a tunnel into the earth.
They moved steadily through streets, down alleys, through doorways that should have led one place but now led somewhere else entirely. Across rooftops, through sewer tunnels, into tube train carriages, public toilets, libraries, until at last they stopped in front of a green door.
Razor turned to us, his two partners leaning against the wall either side of the door.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Done.’
I turned in a little circle to see the surrounding area was a blur, impossible to make out. Like someone had smeared oil all over the view.
‘I’ll be able to find my way back,’ I said, ‘but no one else will be able to, right?’
Razor nodded. ‘You were with us for the creation, you’ll always be able to find this place.’
‘Hey,’ said David. ‘Thanks, Razor. Really.’
Razor grunted. ‘I may be scum, but I’m honourable scum.’
I raised an eyebrow at that.
‘Well, maybe not honourable, but you did save our young. You deserve one good turn. But don’t think you’ll get another, this is us clean now. If you ever come back looking for another favour you’ll be shit out of luck.’
‘Got it,’ I replied.
Razor snorted dismissively, then he and his two clan members turned and walked away, seeming to fade away into the indistinct blur as they did so.
David placed his hand against the green door. ‘Will this work?’
&nb
sp; It was our best shot at keeping him out of harm’s way, but the only place I’d have been entirely happy with would have been my coven. Whoever had blocked our entrance to that was going to find themselves spitting teeth before this was all over.
‘It’ll work.’
I opened the door and we went inside.
21
I left the safe house as night fell and shivered, a sharp chill had invaded the air.
I wanted to stay with David, of course I did. Stay right by his side in the safe house to make sure nothing could get at him. But he was as safe as I knew how to keep him, no one should be able to unravel the maze Razor had set up, and I had another promise to keep.
To my coven.
To the bodies of a young family, tossed on top of each other like they were nothing but waste ready to send to landfill.
Lorna, the succubus, was still out there, and it was only a matter of time before she killed again.
I had to trust in Razor’s work and carry on trying to put Lorna down, because that was my job. What I was created for. If I paused in my duty to take care of a personal matter, to solely concentrate on David’s safety, then I was betraying my purpose.
So I left the safe house and I worried about David, worried that I wouldn’t even be able to find my way back, no matter what Razor had assured me. After I found myself back somewhere I recognised, I stopped and attempted to find the path back to the green door, back to David, in my mind’s eye; and there it was. As clear as fresh water.
‘I won’t be gone long,’ is what I’d told David. I hoped it was true. I needed to take care of Lorna as quickly as possible so I could get back to him.
‘I understand,’ said David. ‘I’m good here; I’ve got a TV, I’ve got food. You need to do your job, I don’t want anyone dying because you’re babysitting me, okay?’
I felt my stomach swirling with butterflies as I thought of him, but there was no time to indulge in any kind of stupid romantic feelings, if that’s even what they were. I had a monster to hunt.
‘Why are you calling me?’ came Layland’s voice into my ear.
‘Has it struck again?’
