The Last Line Series One

by David Elias Jenkins

  Talk about femme-fatale.

  “It’s not that I’m not pleased to see you Ursula, it’s just that whenever you turn up you usually end up being a big, ominous, winged portent of impending doom… you shouldn’t…hold on…that means you went into a shop and bought wine. Am I going to see you on CCTV?”

  Ursula smiled and closed her wings around her body. They transformed into the illusion of a high collared fur coat. She blinked twice and her orange eyes became blue. Suddenly she could almost pass for a very strange, strikingly beautiful and slightly frightening human.

  “Are you forgetting that we met in a nightclub in Cyprus? I can hold a glamour for a few hours if needs be. People see what they want to see.”

  Usher finally lowered his pistol. He breathed out as the adrenaline left his system and he walked over to the wine, shaking his head. Of all the strange things that had happened to him over the years, finding an unlikely ally that he trusted amongst the creatures of another world was the strangest. Yet during the aftermath of the canary wharf incident she had saved his life and as strange and dangerous as she was, he trusted her almost as much as he did his own team.

  “I could’ve shot you. Not that it would’ve done much good. Want some?”

  Ursula nodded and Usher poured two glasses. He noticed his hand was shaking a little, so he picked up his glass, downed the wine in one, then shuddered and refilled it.

  “Tastes fine. Lovely bouquet. Very winey. You shouldn’t have.”

  Usher handed Ursula a glass and she took it in one red taloned hand. Usher noticed that she held onto her glamour as they spoke, and remained a tall and athletic raven haired woman.

  Usher took the measure of her. It had been months since she had visited him and he thought that beneath her frightening and ethereal beauty she looked more strained and haggard than usual. Her ivory skin carried a few extra scars and there were dark circles around her usually nocturnal eyes. She looked like all soldiers did when they came back from the front.

  She still terrified, repulsed and allured him in equal measure. He had been fully aware from the moment they met that she could probably kill him in a heartbeat. He had fought monsters for years but had never seen anything like her. Until she had approached him he hadn’t even known that there were magical creatures that fought against the Unseelie.

  She had explained to him that the war humanity fought against the Unseelie Court was just the tip of the iceberg.

  The strange realm of dark fairy tales they crossed over from was split in two, a world of forest and light above and a world of cavernous dark below. Ursula was from the world above and had fought the Unseelie for centuries across two worlds. She was a soldier like Usher. The first time they met she had used her power to seduce him and Usher had struggled with the experience ever since because Ursula in her true form was a long way from human. Privately he had craved it again ever since.

  Usher still found it hard to get his head around the fact that all the troubles the Earth had suffered from the creatures of the Unseelie Court was only a tiny part of a far larger war. The team’s occult investigator Ariel had tried to explain the Other Side to Usher on numerous occasions but Usher liked to keep it simple.

  Good faeries versus bad faeries. Us in the middle.

  Ursula drained her glass and then looked at Usher gravely.

  “Usher, something has crossed over from our side. A creature that will cause you a lot of trouble. I needed to give you warning before I left.”

  Usher sighed.

  “We just took out our biggest threat. Before he died Argent told us he’d managed to pull something across. What could be worse than that ghoul Isaiah Argent?”

  Ursula’s eyes narrowed, the blue fading to become two slits of orange fire. She seemed to look inwards as if struggling with a painful memory.

  “This man that has crossed over was a prisoner of ours for a long time. He was too dangerous to be set free and too rich in information to kill. A few days ago he killed his guards and escaped. We don’t know how, perhaps a traitor on the inside. All we know is that he returned to his master and a few days later he broke through one of our protected portals and with Argent’s help arrived somewhere on Earth. We believe he is headed for the place you are about to be sent. The town of Carnival, Canada.”

  “Who is he?”

  “His name is Cornelius Fortune. He is a Necromancer. A hugely powerful magician that has influence over the powers of life and death itself. He has always been one of the most powerful weapons of the enemy and we have always done our utmost to keep him from you. Trust me Usher, you do not want a true Necromancer loose on Earth. Death magic corrupts everything it touches.”

  Usher sat down at the foot of his bed and refilled his glass.

  Just when you think you’ve heard it all. A giant bird-woman tells you something new.

  “Do you ever just want to get drunk for a month?”

  Ursula regarded her empty glass and nodded. “All the time.” Her eyes returned to icy blue.

  “Usher you say that Isaiah Argent was the most dangerous foe your team had faced? Well Argent was an undead, a ghoul, and Cornelius Fortune created him. That’s what he does; he creates all foul undead things. Vampires, ghouls, carrion, and other more eldritch things without name.”

  Usher looked up at the Valkyrie, hesitant to ask her his next question.

  “Ursula this Cornelius Fortune…this Necromancer…could he raise the long dead? Could he have brought back someone who…?”

  Ursula reached out with a powerful taloned hand and smoothed back Usher’s hair.

  “It is not your wife that you saw, Usher. I’m sorry but it wasn’t. It was a foul undead servant of the Necromancer called a Doppelganger. It is a low skinbeast that assumes the form of other beings it has had contact with. Yesterday it was your wife, tomorrow it could be someone else. I have been personally tracking it for weeks. It is no easy task to find someone that can be anyone. If it can assume your wife’s face then it means it has at some point met her, nothing more. Do not hold too much hope.”

  Usher felt relief that his wife had not become some deranged killer and yet also felt a stab of disappointment that the familiar face he saw did not belong to the woman he had loved.

  I knew it wasn’t her. Somehow I just knew. And I’m glad… yet…

  “So it must have seen her? Been close to her. Ursula could she still be alive? Could my son?”

  Ursula stood up and separated the venetian blinds with a claw. Moonlight spilled in over her pale angular face.

  “It’s possible yes. Just possible. Usher, I promise that when I go back I will do everything that I can to find your family, if they live. I have lost mine also, I know how it feels.”

  Usher gave her muscular white shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

  “Thank you. That means more than you know.”

  Ursula turned and regarded him coolly with her icy eyes.

  “For now you must keep your mind on the task at hand. I think I know what Cornelius Fortune has come here to do.”

  “Whatever it is I’m betting it isn’t good news.”

  Ursula shook her head.

  “Cornelius Fortune is one of the most trusted and powerful servants of the dark. But even he has a master. That master has many names but his servants call him simply the King of the Dark. He is the ruler of the entire Deep, the world of caverns and night that lies beneath our feet. He is general of all the Unseelie Court and purveyor of nightmares. Long ago the King lost something on Earth that was very precious to him. I think he has sent Cornelius Fortune over to try and get it back.”

  Usher felt a shiver run through him. “A weapon?”

  “A weapon more terrible than any they have unleashed. Something that has not walked the Earth for millennia. I think he wants to resurrect his Queen.”

  “His Queen?”

  “She has been called Lilith, and Echidna. She is a she-dragon that walked your world thousands of years ago. She was defeat
ed, and her remains kept and hidden by a secret society. Always moving, always changing, so that the King of the Dark would never be able to find his Queen and attempt to resurrect her. I think that her remains have been hidden in the little town where you are being sent.”

  Usher breathed deep as he took in all this new strangeness.

  “If he succeeds, if this Necromancer manages to somehow raise her from the dead? What then? What kind of weapon is she?”

  “She is the mother of monsters Usher. If she is born again, she can fill your world with all manner of dragons and foul beasts. The kind of monster that nearly destroyed you all before your written records began. You must stop Cornelius Fortune at all costs.”

  Usher suddenly felt the full weight of professional responsibility upon him once again. Yet also a glimmer of fire in his blood.

  This Cornelius Fortune and his servants have had contact with my family. He has answers to give me. And I will make him talk.

  “You’re going home? Ursula we could use you here. You’re from the other side, you know more about these things than we ever will. You’re a much needed fighter, you could help us.”

  Ursula shook her aquiline head. “I’m sorry Usher. Call to arms. I cannot stay. What you’ve been fighting for centuries, the things that get through here, that’s nothing compared to what goes on where I’m from. I’m a soldier like you Usher. I have a duty and orders. No matter what I want in my heart.”

  Usher extended a hand to her and her taloned fingers wrapped around it. Her skin felt warm and crackled with static electricity. Usher thought she felt like a gathering storm wrapped in skin.

  “Thank you Ursula. For the warning. Whatever you’re fighting over there. Stay safe.”

  The Valkyrie reached into her long coat and brought out a fist sized tablet of red clay. It was crudely baked and scored with runes. In its centre was a keyhole.

  “I am being sent down into the Dark. If your wife and offspring are still there, I will do my best to find them.”

  “I cannot repay you for that gesture Ursula.”

  Ursula cast him a wry grin. “No?”

  The Valkyrie leaned in close and Usher felt her hot breath on his face. Her sensual purple lips parted and an unnaturally long tongue snaked out and writhed into Usher’s mouth. Their lips locked and melted together and Usher saw flashing visions of another world, with trees as big as skyscrapers and magic crackling in the clouds. As her moist tongue undulated within his mouth Usher felt himself harden against her thigh. He tried to fight his arousal and the wave of revulsion that rose beneath it but it only excited him more. Ursula smiled in the kiss then slowly drew back and licked her lips.

  “Oh you can repay me, little soldier. You’ve got plenty of give.”

  Usher stared at her knowing smile, the sharp white canine teeth flashing at him.

  “I think I might have to get in training for that.”

  Ursula flicked her head in laughter.

  “I think you might.”

  Then the Valkyrie parted her coat to reveal a heavy iron key hanging on a thick chain around her neck. Usher shook his head, puzzled.

  Ursula hurled the clay tablet at Usher’s bedroom wall. To Usher’s amazement it sank in as if the plaster wall were the consistency of mud, and it sat there embedded. It sparked a memory in him of when his family were taken. The Unseelie had used a similar portal maker. After a few seconds a fine line of fire flickered from the floor and burned upwards until it reached almost to the ceiling, like the fuse of an invisible stick of dynamite. Then the line turned a sharp right angle and burned horizontally across the room before turning sharply downwards. The fire settled and Usher was left staring at the smouldering outline of a door with a red clay keyhole, burned right into his bedroom wall.

  Ursula took the iron key from the chain around her neck and placed it in the lock. Usher looked around his bedroom at the television, the street light streaming in shafts through venetian blinds to cast bars of light and shade onto the carpet. He looked at the half full coffee mug on his bedside table next to the novel he had been reading. Outside he heard a car driving past and from the flat next door he heard the sounds of a party. Then he looked to the magical doorway burned onto suburban reality and his heart began to beat faster.

  Ursula turned the key and with a crumble of plaster dust the door swung inwards.

  Usher’s brain took a moment to adjust. Moonlight flooded onto the carpet. He looked through the doorway in his bedroom wall onto the pale columns of huge tree trunks. Gnarled and twisted branches hung with cobwebs forming a low roof. The trees seemed alive with faces, mouths and long fingers.

  “Well that couldn’t look more haunted.”

  Ursula smiled. “These trees are as old as mountains and this forest does not end. It is home.”

  “The Unseelie Court is in there?”

  “Not in it. Under it. In the forest are other things. It is the forest where secrets go to remain kept.”

  Usher shuddered. “Things like you.”

  Ursula nodded.

  Usher had a sudden thought. It pained him to do this but he realized that there might be a way to help Ursula.

  He whistled once and after a few moments the Alsatian Max thudded up the stairs barking enthusiastically. Usher knelt down and ruffled the loyal dog’s furry neck.

  “Hey boy. I’ve got a very important job for you, ok?”

  Max barked and licked Usher’s face. Usher turned to Ursula.

  “You can communicate with him? That was for real?”

  Ursula unfolded one huge wing and swept it around herself like a cloak. She bowed low and spoke softly in language Usher had never heard her speak. The Alsatian perked up to attention and gave a couple of attentive barks then tottered over and licked her hand. Ursula smiled.

  “He is devoted to you Usher. He knows you are asking him to accompany me and he agrees. As long as you promise to feed him prime steak for the rest of his life. ”

  Usher ran over to the chest of drawers and took out a faded college t shirt. He ruffled it under Max’s nose and the dog barked wildly with recognition.

  Usher looked to Ursula. “He knows my family’s smell. I’ve kept so much of their stuff around here it’s second nature to him. He’ll help you find them, won’t you boy?”

  Max barked enthusiastically.

  Ursula nodded and gestured to the dog. “He won’t be the same on the other side Usher. The air changes us. If he comes back he may be more than you can handle.”

  Usher rubbed the dog’s head and fought back the tears. He could not bear sending his loyal companion into danger and the unknown, but Max was a military dog and thrived on challenge. He trusted Ursula to look after him. That didn’t stop it from breaking his heart.

  “Go with your Auntie Ursula now boy. She’ll look after you for now. She’ll be good company, she can talk to you better than I can anyway.”

  Ursula make a strange clicking sound and Max gave Usher one final lick on his hand then trotted off to stand by her side, barking intermittently at the shimmering portal to another world.

  Usher stood and nodded to the Valkyrie. She smiled back and in a moment they were just two soldiers, weary of battle and death in whatever world it took place. She nodded back at him and spoke.

  “When you find Cornelius Fortune, say hello from me just before you kill him.”

  “I will.”

  “Stay safe Thom Usher. I’ll be watching. I’ll find your family if I can.”

  Then she folded her wings around herself and stepped through, closing the door carefully behind with a sharp click.

  The room was silent. Next door the party suddenly erupted in laughter. Outside some drunken revellers were shouting at one another then a bottle smashed. The red lump of clay embedded in the wall began to soften and run down to the floor like melting candle wax. The red outline of a door remained on the bedroom wall of Usher’s flat for several moments before fading to nothing and leaving just an empty room devoid
of all magic or trace of the Valkyrie.

  Usher stood silent amongst the familiar earthly noises, the tick of a clock, the passing of a car, the lingering and familiar smell of a pet dog.

  For a moment, just a fleeting moment, the world seemed like a normal place.

  8.

  CARNIVAL, CANADA

  “Fill you up?”

  Bobby Mackay nodded at the waitress then glugged down the last of his coffee, accidentally dribbling some down the front of his hockey shirt and cursing.

  “Aw damn it, I got practise in an hour. That’s clean on today Gina.”

  Gina licked a serviette and leaned over the counter. The buttons on her uniform strained as her pale breasts squashed against the Formica like unleavened dough. When she came up there was a light sprinkling of sugar on her pink waitress outfit. She smiled across the counter at him.

  “Don’t worry Bobby, it hardly shows. Here, stay still.”

  Gina leafed out two serviettes from the dispenser. She spat her well beaten bubble gum into one of them. She licked the other one then leaned over and started rubbing the coffee stain on Bobby’s hockey top. Her false eyelashes snapped together as she winked at him.

  “Been bench pressing Bobby? You feel pretty pumped up there.”

  Bobby shrugged and looked down at the waitress’s acrylic fingernails rhythmically stroking the napkin across his chest.

  “Fuck sake Gina you’re just making it worse. I look like one of those Hillbillies from Dreamcatcher Falls. Chewing tobacco all spat down me like those retards. Gimme the napkin.”

  Bobby grabbed the serviette from Gina’s hand and proceeded to frantically buff his t-shirt.

  “Dunno what kinda weird greasy spit you been hawking up there Gina but it ain’t good for coffee stains.”

  Gina’s face could hardly disguise the hurt, it was as if Bobby had smacked a puppy. She glanced along the counter at the other diners then cocked her head at him. “You didn’t seem to have any issue with my spit last week did you?”

  Bobby shot a glance around the diner and raised his hands begging Gina to lower her voice. Gina cast him a defiant sneer then popped her bubblegum back into her mouth. She fixed his gaze and said in a slightly louder voice.