Sanctified

by Uncanny Kingdom

  I felt a hot spike of pain as the blow landed and my nose flattened flush with my skull. Stars exploded in front of my vision and blood shot from my nostrils and splashed to the ground.

  Like a hungry shark drawn to fresh chum, the vampire went into a frenzy, pummelling me, raining fists upon my body, each of them heavy as a van full of anvils. I threw out a couple of sloppy swings to defend myself, but it was no good. He was all over me.

  My knees gave out and I crumpled to the pavement, curling up into a foetal ball as he continued to kick at my face. The tip of one of his Oxfords connected with my jaw, and I felt blood pooling in my mouth. As I lay there, taking blow upon blow, my mind went to another place. I began to wonder, once all this was over, what they would write on my tombstone.

  “Died of a vicious beating”?

  Nah, they’d never write that. The dead always died gentle deaths. They departed this life, died in their sleep, fluttered away to reunite with their loved ones. They never got kicked to bits in a grubby alleyway by some scumbag murderer.

  Things began to go dark as the purpled flesh of my face puffed up and squeezed my eyelids shut. Any powers the brand gave me were depleted now. I wore my nerve endings on the outside of my body. My cells were empty. The champagne had gone flat. I cried for help, but the only thing that escaped my shattered jaw was a hollow gurgle. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  I was dead.

  17

  Actually, let me walk that back a bit. “Dead” is a bit strong. Sure, I might have felt like death, but I survived my encounter with the two vampires, just about anyway. Sorry if I left you feeling a bit cheated there. My bad.

  I woke up in a ratty cot back at home base. Back in the gas tower. Sweat cooled on my face, a face that I expected to be puffed and painful, but instead felt almost normal. I yanked out my phone and reversed the camera so I could get a look at myself. On the screen I saw—much to my surprise—not a mashed-up, broken mess, but an almost-normal looking me staring back, wide-eyed. There was a little light bruising, and my bottom lip was a little fuller than normal, but otherwise, you’d hardly know I’d taken about two dozen boots to the face.

  I looked at the brand on my hand. It had to be down to that. To my “powers”. They hadn’t won me the fight, but they’d helped me recuperate fast.

  It turned out, since I’d managed to fall flat on my face, that Gendith had been forced to intervene. It was an act that I had mixed feelings about. On the one hand, my catastrophic performance had demonstrated perfectly that I didn’t have what it took to be the Nightstalker, which was regretful, to say the least. On the other hand, without Gen stepping in and battering my attacker to death with her morning star, my remains would be pasted all over that Square Mile back alley.

  So, swings and roundabouts, really.

  Jesus, I’d really made a fool of myself. I wasn’t cut out for this gig and Gendith knew it. My first mission was meant to be a doddle, but I’d botched it big style. Survived it by the skin of my teeth. Of course, Gen was only too happy to relay this information to Vizael in her debrief, which she delivered with enough conviction to wake me from my stupor.

  Having forced my eyes open and crawled out of bed, I staggered from the room and on to the mezzanine balcony. The angels stood below in the main living area, having a heated conversation. I looked on secretly, spying on them from the shadows.

  ‘...You made a mistake,’ Gendith said. ‘The girl was never meant for this life.’

  ‘She wears the brand,’ Vizael replied, not meeting her eye.

  ‘And look where it got her,’ Gen cried, her voice like a blade on a leather strop. For a moment I thought she was about to attack Viz’s library again, but instead she took a calming breath and continued in measured tones. ‘Just because she wears the brand, doesn’t mean she’s fit to use it. Do the right thing, Vizael. Please.’

  The old man let out a long sigh. ‘Abbey was Sanctified. That means something.’

  ‘It means nothing. Let me do this. I don’t need the brand. I don’t need anything. Just give me the dagger and cut me loose.’

  Viz was about to answer her when he saw me in the corner of his eye. ‘You’re awake,’ he said. ‘Good, there’s work to be done.’

  I traipsed downstairs to join them. ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked. ‘I just got the crap beaten out of me.’

  ‘And yet you endure.’

  ‘Only because I interceded,’ Gendith noted.

  ‘She’s right,’ I said. ‘I was done for back there. If Gen hadn’t jumped in…’

  ‘You need more practice,’ said Viz. ‘That’s all. These are dangerous creatures, it’s arrogant to assume, just because you have taken up the Nightstalker mantle, just because you wield a great power, that you could brush them aside as though they were nothing. Respect your enemy, Abbey, otherwise they will break you in two, power or no power.’

  Gen snorted. ‘“Power”? I certainly didn’t see any “power” back in that alley. What is it with you and this girl?’

  Viz shot Gen a hard stare and she threw up her hands before plopping down in a moth-eaten armchair, silenced.

  ‘This is my fault,’ said Viz, turning back to me. ‘I shouldn’t have thrown you in at the deep end like that. You must learn to walk before you can run.’

  Mixed metaphors aside, I knew he was right. I had what it took to fight these things, I could feel it in my bones. When the brand was doing its job I was a powerhouse. A vampire-killing machine. And I needed to be. Because if somebody didn’t step up, the whole of London and beyond was going to start looking like a slaughterhouse kill floor. I just needed more practice, that was all.

  ‘So, what’s next on the docket?’ I asked. ‘And just so you know, I’d be very up for anything that doesn’t involve a large foot connecting with my nose.’

  Viz smiled back at me, eyes glittering. ‘Tell me, Abbey, what do you know about ghosts?’

  18

  What did I know about ghosts?

  Well, I knew Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore were in a movie about one in the Nineties, I knew Scooby and the gang were always getting into scrapes with the things too, and yet I had a sneaky suspicion that neither of those factoids was going to help with what came next.

  Before we went any further, Vizael decided to edify me on a few more things about the Uncanny.

  ‘There,’ he said, handing over a telescope. ‘Do you see?’

  We were up on the roof of the gas tower, sat on a couple of pieces of old lawn furniture. I aimed the scope across the industrial park, following the line of Viz’s finger to spy on a woman stood on a street corner over the other side of the canal.

  ‘All I see is a woman in a short skirt. A hooker maybe? Not that I’m slutshaming anyone.’

  ‘Not a woman,’ said Viz. ‘A succubus.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you?’

  I nodded. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘A succubus is a female demon that drains men of their life force through sexual intercourse.’

  ‘Sounds like a real Angelina Jolie,’ I quipped. ‘Again, not slutshaming.’

  Viz frowned and found me a new target. ‘What about him?’ he asked.

  I found the person he was pointing at, a big brute of a man standing around seven feet tall. He was ugly as sin and had the sort of waxy, warty complexion that made me think you’d catch septicaemia from shaking his hand.

  ‘Yuck,’ I grunted.

  ‘Well?’ said Viz. ‘What do you think he is?’

  I shrugged. ‘No idea.’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘I don’t know. A really unsanitary basketball player?’

  Viz shook his head. ‘An ogre.’

  ‘Huh, how about that? I have a quick question.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘What’s the point of all this?’

  Viz took the telescope from me, compacted it, and replaced it in the pocket of his linen jacket. ‘The point is that there are more than just v
ampires and eaves running around this city. There are phantoms and demons and werewolves and trolls, and they each have their own agenda.’

  That certainly was a whole mess of monsters. It’s a wonder we weren’t tripping over the bastards, really.

  ‘So, London has monsters out of the arsehole?’ I said. ‘Is that the lesson?’

  ‘That’s certainly one way of putting it.’

  ‘What do we do about it then?’ I asked.

  ‘We remain vigilant,’ he replied, ‘because the situation out there is only getting worse.’

  ‘Why? What happened? Was it Brexit? It was Brexit, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It wasn’t Brexit,’ he replied. ‘Though it was a departure of sorts.’ He straightened up in his deckchair and assumed a posture I’d learned to recognise as his storytelling pose. ‘In days gone by, a coven of witches looked after this city. The group, who called themselves the London Coven, used their combined magic to protect us against the creatures of the Nether.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  The old man let out a long exhale and looked to the floor. ‘The Coven aren’t around anymore,’ he replied. ‘They’re gone forever. Now it’s up to us to look after things.’

  So, the city was crawling with all kind of beasties and baddies, not just vampires, and it was up to me to keep them all in check? No pressure. Nope.

  ‘Well then,’ said Viz, staring at me intently, ‘are you ready for the next item on the docket?’

  I told him yes, hoping his eyesight wasn’t strong enough to see the sweat forming on my forehead on a cold winter’s night.

  19

  For my second mission I’d been tasked with a single, bite-sized undertaking: to go eyeball-to-eyeball with a ghost and send it back to wherever it is that ghosts come from.

  Viz was light on the details, and Gen certainly wasn’t about to dazzle me with any science, which was probably for the best, all things considered. So long as I was only confronting the ghost to send it packing, the thumbnail version would do just fine.

  I focused on the task at hand as we made our way to the site of the haunting. I had to get it right this time. Had to prove that I was cut out for this job, to myself as much as anyone else.

  ‘Let’s see if you fare any better in the spectral world,’ huffed Gendith, accompanying me for a second time.

  The mission didn’t take us far. As a matter of fact, it didn’t even take us outside of the industrial park where the gas tower stood. After a short walk, we came to a halt at the padlocked entrance of an old circuit boards factory. A chill wind whistled through its crumbling facade, and moonlight chromed the building’s battered edges. It looked like exactly the kind of place a Scooby-Doo monster would lurk.

  ‘It happened a couple of decades back,’ Gen explained. ‘A factory worker fell into one of the acid vats they use for copper plating. They say the fumes overwhelmed him and he lost his footing.’

  Yikes, I thought. It’d take more than an appointed first-aider to square that circle.

  ‘The company called it an accident,’ Gen went on, ‘and the courts agreed. Evidently the victim felt differently, as he keeps manifesting here on the anniversary of his death.’

  ‘And what does he do when he shows up?’ I asked.

  ‘So far, nothing. For twenty-one years, the revenant has materialised on this site, but every time he has, we’ve put him out of commission.’

  ‘Revenant?’

  ‘A malevolent phantom. Otherwise known as returners, ferals or wraiths.’

  I thought back to my performance with the vampires in the alley. ‘And what happens if the revenant isn’t, like, put out of commission?’

  Gen shrugged. ‘Best guess: it will make a bid for freedom, mindlessly terrorise the area, and maybe kill a local or two.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, letting out a scared little laugh. ‘So what can I do? Kill it?’

  ‘Oh, it can’t be killed.’

  ‘Right. Good. So what is it we’re doing exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re banishing it.’

  ‘Uh huh. And I suppose there’s a difference between the two?’

  Gen sighed and explained it to me like I was an American politician. ‘We can’t kill that which is already dead. All we can do is keep driving it away when it manifests.’

  ‘So… kind of like a game of whack-a-mole?’

  Gen sighed again. It was really getting on my nerves. ‘Look, when you see the ghost just stick it with the pointy end of that dagger, okay?’

  And with that, she reached out, grabbed the padlocked chain securing the warehouse door, and ripped it free with her bare hands.

  The space beyond was pitch black. I stepped inside and scrabbled around for a light switch until my hand found a frayed cord dangling from the ceiling. I tugged on it and a bulb fizzed to life, briefly throwing up a few spooky shadows before popping and plunging the warehouse into darkness again.

  Remembering the blue glow the dagger gave off, I drew it from its sheath and used it to light up the warehouse’s interior. The cobalt bloom illuminated the shop floor, which was laced with cobwebs that billowed gently in the cool draught from the open door. Among the webbing, huge broken-down machines lay dotted about like the aftermath of some giant robot battle.

  I made my way inside, brandishing the blade above my head like a treasure hunter holding aloft a flaming torch. I looked about for any sign of paranormal activity, but the only movement I saw came from motes of dust, kicked up by the breeze from outside and sent spiralling before me.

  ‘Hello? Mr Ghost…?’

  ‘Shhh,’ hissed Gen.

  As I progressed further into the building I saw deposits of bird shit piled up on the floor like ancient stalagmites. I covered my mouth with my sleeve, but the pungent air sat damp and heavy in my lungs. Breathing it in was like swallowing something solid. Like swallowing wet chalk.

  I heard a sudden drumming sound and my muscles went tense.

  ‘What is that?’

  It was nothing, just rain striking the roof above. A storm had appeared overhead, sending pellets of water bouncing off of the corrugated iron canopy and making a noise like two skeletons going at it with a tin can condom.

  Trickles of fresh rain water poured through the roof’s many cracks, mingling with stagnant puddles on the warehouse’s concrete floor. I stepped over a pool of water and rounded a corner to see an errant shaft of moonlight puncturing the roof some twenty feet above, its silver glow pooling on a large metal vat.

  Rust and time had gotten the better of the vat’s support frame, and now it lay on its side, toppled flat. The mouth of the tank opened up before me like the cavernous maw of some fearsome beast, enormous, and impossibly black.

  ‘This is it,’ said Gen, her voice echoing about the vacant space. ‘This is where he died.’

  ‘Okay. So what now?’

  Gen pulled up a sleeve of her hoodie and checked her watch. ‘Now we find out if you’re really the Nightstalker, or whether you’re about to faint like some anaemic woman in a penny dreadful.’

  I heard a sizzling sound coming from within the bowels of the vat and my head snapped to one side to find the source of the noise. Inside the pit I saw a flicker of light, then a white hole flared open like a lit cigarette burning through the night.

  A shimmering mist drifted out from the white void, accompanied by a soft whispering sound. As the white hole closed behind it, the entity became clearer, focused, and the whisper turned into an eerie, rasping voice as the diffuse entity congealed into a humanoid form.

  The revenant.

  At first, it was no more than a distortion of the light, a rough human cut-out made from a substance that didn’t belong in this world. Then the apparition became more substantial. More complete. It was a man, arms held out like a sleepwalker, feet hovering a few inches from the ground as he floated out of the toppled vat.

  I saw his face as he came for me; the hollow sockets of his eyes as empty as his gaping mouth,
which was wide open and blacker than squid ink. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. That was my first mistake. You can’t fight something you don’t believe in.

  Suddenly, a terror gripped me. This was a ghost. An actual bloody, leap out of your bathroom mirror and grab you around the throat, ghost! I tried to scream, except my throat was too dry, so instead, my vocal cords made a peculiar clicking sound, like a stick being dragged over a washboard.

  The revenant floated towards me with an anguished howl. I didn’t have it in me to step aside. Instead, I stood rooted to the spot as he drifted through my body, putting ice in my veins and leaving me cloaked in a chill sweat.

  ‘So… cold…’ I chattered.

  ‘Here we go again,’ said Gen, watching me choke for the second time. ‘Come on, we can’t let it get away.’

  She spun on her heel and took off after the revenant, only for it to pass through the wall of the warehouse and escape outside. My instinct was to stay exactly where I was, but I knew that wasn’t an option. If I couldn’t take down one lousy spook, what good was I against a vampire army?

  I needed to get my shit together. I felt the ice in my blood thaw and my body came to life. I was going to get that ghost and I was going to prove to Gendith that I had what it took to be the Nightstalker.

  Third time’s a charm, right?

  I blasted through the warehouse’s exit, hot on Gen’s heels. The storm lashed down, stinging my face and plastering my forehead with loose tangles of hair. I gripped the dagger tight as I took off after the revenant, rain sizzling as it struck the blue fire of its blade.

  Up ahead, I saw Gen powering after the revenant, trying to close the distance, only her quarry was too fast. It made it to the edge of the industrial park and phased through the chain link fence, off into the city beyond. Undeterred, Gen continued her pursuit, snatching up a length of old scaffold and using it to pole vault the fence and continue the chase.

  Not being the gymnastic sort, I charged the fence instead, juggernaut style. Whether it was because the rusted barricade had already had its day, I don’t know, but it came down under my shoulder and smashed flat to the ground. The soles of my Doc Martens pounded over it as I kept up the pace, tailing the fleeing revenant by a good fifty metres, but drawing closer with each footfall.