Sanctified

by Uncanny Kingdom

  ‘Blood magic,’ Gen hissed.

  I went to get up so I could stop whatever it was Pinstripe was doing, but no sooner had I found my feet than I was knocked sideways by a sudden gust of wind.

  Pinstripe grinned, blood gumming his shattered teeth. ‘Goodnight, Nightstalker,’ he said, then tipped forwards and died face down on the floor.

  The contents of the room swirled and eddied about at a rate of knots—scalpels, forceps, aluminium trays—skimming my flesh, dashing off the room’s walls. At the centre of all this din and strife—at the heart of the howling mass—a figure began to emerge, a human silhouette growing ever more distinct. Ever more alive.

  ‘What is that?’ I screamed over the roar of the tempest, battling for my voice to be heard.

  ‘A blood golem,’ Gendith called back, her voice crumpled, her face lined with defeat.

  I had no idea what a blood golem was, but it was obvious that something from another world was taking a toehold in ours. Something powerful. Something fearsome.

  The figure at the eye of the hurricane was almost solid now, and growing still. It was the figure of a giant man, built like a gorilla, arms outstretched as if pushing through some invisible curtain.

  ‘How do I fight it?’ I screamed.

  ‘You don’t,’ Gendith roared back, ‘you might as well try fighting the sea.’

  ‘Then what do we do?’

  ‘We die.’

  As I fought to stay upright against the tempest, a scalpel tore by my face, narrowly missing my eye and painting my cheek with a blusher of blood. I cried out in pain, but the sound was lost in the gale. Shielding my face, I cast my eyes to the ground and saw the rivers of blood draining into the golem had almost dried up. Soon the monster would belong to this world entirely.

  Unless…

  Something about the situation we’d found ourselves in made me think of Neil’s book, specifically the part where the Wizard and the Warlock combined their powers to defeat the big bad. And that made me think of something that someone had recently told me...

  I turned to Gendith. ‘You’re right, I can’t fight this thing,’ I shouted. ‘But we can.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  ‘Yes. Well, mostly. Why?’

  ‘Good enough. Give me your hand.’

  Gen glanced to the golem, which had almost grown to full height. Without further hesitation, she placed her hand in mine, uncertain what for.

  We stood there, hands linked, united as one.

  ‘Okay, so what now?’ said Gen shouting to be heard over the noise.

  ‘You know, you ask a lot of questions,’ I said, grinning. Then I turned her hand over and sliced her across the palm with my blade.

  To say she looked betrayed would be selling it short.

  ‘Motherfucker!’

  As Gen stumbled back, the cut opened up, spilling blood—royal blue angel blood—which slithered from the wound in throbbing gushes to join the rivers of red tracking across the chamber floor. The golem’s lifeblood; the raw materials of its existence.

  At first, the blue met the red like oil in water, then the angel blood began to infuse with the vampire blood, hissing and spitting. The golem shuddered, its entire body convulsing, and then it let out a tortured howl as the Yang met its Ying.

  ‘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.

  Yeah. 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.

&
nbsp; So we celebrated. Me and Neil, the moment we got home. How exactly did we celebrate? Why, we braided one another’s hair and 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 and felt my body go limp. 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 patted 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 on to his back.

  He looked like death. His eyes were closed and sunk deep into their sockets. His skin was 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 the paramedics made it up those nine stupid flights of stairs, Neil would be gone.

  What had I been thinking, bringing him home after everything he’d been through? He should have been in a hospital bed under the watchful eye of a doctor, not here. Why had I listened to him when he said he felt fine?

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

  My limbs flexed in shock. 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 murky midday light.

  ‘No... not you, Neil…’

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

  To Be Continued...

  Get the Next Book in the Branded Series

  Click Here to grab Turned today!

  …And we have a sneak peek at another Uncanny Kingdom series: Hexed Detective, coming up for you in just a couple of pages!

  Leave a Review

  Reviews are gold to indie authors, so if you’ve enjoyed this book, please consider rating and reviewing it.

  REVIEW ‘SANCTIFIED’ HERE

  Branded: Turned

  Here’s a SNEAK PEEK at the next Branded book, Turned…

  This time, the vampires are out for more than just blood.

  When Abbey meets a mysterious stranger who gives her some fresh insights into the Judas Clan’s motives, she’s forced to ask herself a question: is her boyfriend really cursed, or have the Clan actually given him a gift?

  1

  My boyfriend was a vampire.

  It sounds like the title of a dodgy B-Movie, but now it was my reality. Now it was my Sunday.

  Rewind...

  Neil and I were splashed out in bed, dog-tired and ready to sleep off an evening of intense carnal celebration. Too much information? Not very ladylike? Yeah, you can stop clutching your pearls and get off your fainting chair, princess. I’d earned my bit of fun and then some; I mean it’s not every day you rescue your boyfriend from a sacrificial altar and save the city from an unholy vampire uprising, is it?

  It really had been a hell of a night—both inside and outside of the bedroom—and I was all set to conk out. I wouldn’t be asleep for long though, oh no. One of the many, many crappy things about being the woman chosen to guard the frontier between civilisation and an undead apocalypse is that I don’t get much sleep. And I love sleep. Love it. Before I got the Nightstalker gig, my ambition in life was to basically be in a coma. Now I’m lucky if I manage to snatch a couple of hours. I’m telling you, it’s not easy being London’s heroic and incredibly modest saviour.

  But let me backtrack a little further. Not all the way back to me getting Sanctified (because shame on you if you’re not up to speed with that already), but to the moment right before my boyfriend sprouted fangs and went for my neck like I was made of prime Kobe beef.

  Yeah, that moment.

  The two of us were marinating in post-coital bliss when things took the unexpected swerve. Actually, it was less of a swerve swerve than a full-blown, skidding on the chicane, smashing through the guardrail, and plunging headlong over the edge of a cliff swerve.

  I first realised something was wrong when I woke up and noticed that Neil wasn’t wearing his oxygen mask. Straight away, gooseflesh went creeping up my arms. Neil suffers from a condition called cystic fibrosis, which means he needs extra O2 to raise his low blood oxygen. It’s a bitch of an illness, but he gets by, at least he does so long as he wears his respirator, which at that moment was lying beside him, breathing air into nothing.

  What followed was a blur. A giddy little waking nightmare that ran the gamut from Neil being dead, to Neil being alive, to Neil being something halfway between.

  When I saw the colour of his fishbelly white skin I obviously thought the worst, but when I rolled him over and saw his eyes staring straight at me, I felt a huge wash of relief. He’s just sick, I thought, that’s all. But h
e was more than that. Much more. He was one of them.

  ‘Hello,’ he growled, his tongue flicking across his razor blade smile. ‘I’m really hungry.’

  Then he was lunging for me, canines gleaming, eyes blood-red. I thrust out my hands and held him at arm’s length as he chomped at my throat, thirsty for the taste of my hot blood. Two pearl daggers scraped my flesh, eager to gnaw through skin and sinew to get at the juice beneath. Claws sprang from his fingers, shredding the bed sheets as he swiped at me, turning the quilt into confetti.

  ‘Neil!’ I cried. ‘It’s me, Abbey, your girlfriend! You know… the one who never remembers to unload the dishwasher!’

  Then I saw it: the mark of Judas on his forehead, a glowing letter J, visible only to me. He’d been turned by my sworn enemies, the Judas Clan, the same people I’d just rescued him from. That did not fill my heart with smiles and cupcakes, let me tell you.

  The Clan had made Neil into one of their own, and now he was doing their bidding, trying to sink his chompers into me and snack on my red stuff. Well, lucky for me, I have a letter of my own: a big letter N seared into the palm of my hand that makes me a vampire’s worst nightmare (well, daymare, I suppose).

  The brand turned hot and bright, throwing darts of blue light about the bedroom. I felt a tremendous surge of adrenaline as my powers kicked in, snarling inside of my belly, filling me up with impossible strength, making me powerful beyond the limits of my puny frame. Something had woken inside of me. My own kind of monster.

  In one smooth move I seized Neil by the wrists, flipped him on to his back, and pinned him to the mattress. He bucked beneath me, a trapped animal, growling and thrashing and throwing his weight from side to side. The headboard beat a frenzied tattoo against the bedroom wall, only now the noise didn’t signal pleasure, now it was the noise of a man trying to throw me across the room and tear out my jugular.