by Ben Galley
Bloodrush
BY BEN GALLEY
Book 1 of The Scarlet Star Trilogy
“This book is a work of fiction, but some works of fiction contain perhaps more truth than first intended, and therein lies the magic.”
Copyright © Ben Galley 2014
The right of Ben Galley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be edited, transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), or reproduced in any manner without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews or articles. It may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s permission.
Permission can be obtained through www.bengalley.com.
Ben Galley owns the right to use all images and fonts used in this book’s cover design and within the book itself.
All characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
BREB1:
ISBN: 978-0-9927871-4-1
Kindle Edition
1st Edition – Published by BenGalley.com
Cover Design by Teague Fullick
Original Image by John Harrison
Professional Dreaming by Ben Galley
Edited by Kevin Booth
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About the Author
Ben Galley is a young indie author and purveyor of dark fantasy from rainy old England. Harbouring a near-fanatical love of writing and fantasy, Ben has been scribbling tall tales ever since he can remember. When he’s not busy day-dreaming on park benches or arguing the finer points of dragons, he works as a self-publishing consultant, aiding fellow authors achieve their dream of publishing. He also co-runs indie-only ebook store, Libiro.com
For more about Ben, and special Bloodrush content, visit his site:
www.bengalley.com
Simply say hello at:
[email protected]
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Also by Ben Galley
The Written
Pale Kings
Dead Stars – Part One
Dead Stars – Part Two
This book is for the readers, as always.
A special mention also goes out to comedy trio the Sleeping Trees, my friends and fellow mischief-makers, who were the inspiration behind Akway, and will be making an appearance in the second book of this trilogy.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
If you enjoy this book
About the Author
Also by Ben Galley
Dedication
A Prelude
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Epilogue
Ars Magica
A Prelude
There are many places in this world where we humans are not welcome. Antarticus, for example, has slain explorer after explorer with its wolves and winds so cold and fierce they can cut a man in half. Or the Sandara, plaguing travellers for millennia with its fanged dunes and sandstorms. Or what about the high seas, and the Cape of Black Souls, where the waves swallow ships whole, and never spit them back out? But there are darker places on this earth. Much, much darker places.
These are places that time has forgotten, that we have forgotten, now that we’ve turned our attention to industry, to business, and to science. Our steam and our clockwork may have conquered the globe, but we have built our cities on old and borrowed ground, a ground that knew many creatures and empires before it felt the kiss of our own feet. These were the ages that spawned fairy tale and folklore, dreams and nightmares, the world that we trampled in our march for progress, burying it beneath cobble and railroad.
But stubbornness is a trait of victors, so they say. The vestiges of this old world are still clinging on, hiding in the dark places, lost in the shadows, glaring at us from behind their magic. Oh, they are very much alive, friends, hiding in the cracks of reality, the spaces between your blinks. And woe betide anybody that dares to go hunting for them. You would have better luck in the Sandara.
Of course, you have known this all along. If you have ever felt the hot rush of fear in your stomach when a twig snaps in the twilight woods, then you have known it. If you have ever felt that chill run up your spine every time you cross the old bridge, you have known it.
We humans remember the darkness very well, and how its monsters prowled the edges of our campfires and snatched us into the night. We simply refuse to acknowledge it is anything other than irrational fear. Ghost stories. Boogeymen. Old wives’ tales. Nonsense, though we secretly know the truth. So much so that when we read in the newspapers that a man was ripped to shreds by a mysterious assailant in the old dockyards last Thursday, we do not think psychopath, we think werewolf. Maybe we would be right.
There are dark things in the shadows, and they are far from fond of us humans.
Chapter I
“TO THE LOST”
18th April, 1867
‘To the lost.’ The surgeon raised his tiny glass with a gloved and rather bony hand.
Tonmerion Hark did the same, though he could only summon the wherewithal to raise it halfway. He let it hover just beneath his chin, as if he were cradling it to his chest. The liquor smelled like cloves. Sickening. However he tried, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the pistol, that sharp-edged contraption of humourless steel and stained oak, lounging in an impossibly clean metal tray at the elbow of his father’s body.
‘The lost,’ he murmured in reply, and flicked the glass as if swatting at a bothersome bluebottle.
A pair of wet slapping sounds broke the sterile, white-tiled silence as the liquor painted a muddy orange streak on the milky vinyl floor. So that was that. What precious little ceremony they must observe was over. Lord Karrigan Bastion Hark, the Bulldog of London, Prime Lord of the Empire of Britannia, Master of the Emerald Benches and widower of the inimitable Lady Hark, had been pronounced dead. As a doornail.
Tonmerion could have told them that from the start, but such was tradition. His gaze inched from the gun to his father’s pallid skin, bruised as it was with the blood settling, or so the surgeon had told him as he worked. Tonmerion had decided he did not like surgeons. They were rude; being so bold as to poke around in the visceral depths of other people
. Of boys’ dead fathers.
His gaze moved to the neatly sewn-up hole in his father’s chest, directly above his heart. The oozing had finally stopped. The puckered and rippled edges of white skin around the black thread were clean. Not a single drop of corpse blood seeped through. Not surprising, thought Tonmerion, seeing as so much of it had been left on the steps of Harker Sheer’s western garden.
For a brief moment, the boy’s eyes flicked to his father’s closed eyelids. He thanked the Almighty that those sharp sapphire eyes were hidden away, not bathing him with disappointment, as was their custom. Even then, in the grip of cold death, Tonmerion could almost feel their gaze piercing those grey eyelids and jabbing him. His own eyes quickly slunk away. Instead, he looked at the surgeon, and was somewhat startled to find the man staring directly back at him, arms folded and waiting patiently.
‘And what now?’ Tonmerion piped up, his young voice cracking after the silence.
‘The constable will be here in a moment, I’m sure.’
‘Is he late?’ asked Tonmerion, biting the inside of his lip. The body was so grey …
The surgeon looked a smidgeon confused. He pushed the wire-framed rims of his round glasses up the slope of his nose. ‘I beg your pardon, Master Hark?’
Tonmerion huffed. ‘I said, is he late?’
‘No, young Master. Simply finishing the paperwork.’
Tonmerion scratched his neck as he tried to think up something clever and commanding to say. Gruff words echoed through his mind. Get your chin up. Stand straight. Look them straight in their beady little eyes.
Words from dead lips.
‘Then he must have been late earlier in the day. Why else would he not be here, on time, when I am ready to leave. Instead I am forced to stand here, stuck looking at this … this …’ His words failed him miserably. His tongue sat fat and useless behind his teeth. He waved his hand irritably. ‘This … carcass.’
For that was what it was. A carcass. So callous in its truth. Tonmerion could see it in the surgeon’s face, the condemning curl in that hairless, sweat-beaded top lip of his.
The surgeon took a sharp breath. ‘Of course, Lordling. I shall fetch him for you.’ And with that he turned on his heel, making to leave. The leather of his shoe made a little squeak on the white vinyl, but before he could take a step, the sound of heavy boots was heard on the stairs. ‘Ah,’ the surgeon said, turning back with another squeak. ‘Here he comes now. You shall have your escape, young Master Hark.’
‘Yes, well,’ was all Tonmerion’s tongue could muster. He folded his arms and watched the barrel of a constable emerge from the stairwell. The constable’s bright blue coat strained at the seams, pinning all its hopes on the polished buttons that glinted in the sterile light of the room. Now here’s a man who has seen too much of a desk and not enough of the cobbles, his father would have intoned. Tonmerion almost felt like turning and shushing his dead father.
‘Master Hark,’ boomed the constable, as he shuffled to a halt at the foot of the table. His eyes were fixed on Tonmerion’s, but it was easy to see they itched to pull right, yearned to gaze on the body of Tonmerion’s father. Tonmerion didn’t blame him one inch. It wasn’t every day you got to meet a Prime Lord, especially a freshly murdered one.
‘My apologies for …’ he began, but Tonmerion cut him off.
‘Apology accepted, Constable Pagget,’ he replied. ‘Have you captured my father’s murderer yet?’
Pagget shook his head solemnly. ‘Not yet, I’m afraid …’
‘Well, what is being done about it?’
‘Everything that can be done, Master Hark.’
‘Well that’s not …’ Tonmerion began, but it was his turn to be cut off.
‘Please, young sir, it’s about your father’s will.’
Tonmerion threw him a frown. ‘What about my father’s will? What and where must I sign?’
There was a moment of hesitation, during which the constable’s mouth fell slowly open, the ample fat beneath his chin gently cushioning the fall. Not a single sound came forth for quite a while.
‘Whatever is the matter?’ demanded Tonmerion impatiently.
Constable Pagget summoned the wherewithal to shut his mouth, and soon afterwards he found his voice too. ‘It’s your father’s last wishes, Master Hark, they concern you directly,’ he said, his eyes flashing to the surgeon for the briefest of moments.
Tonmerion huffed. ‘Well of course they do! I’m the only Hark left. The estate will be left to me,’ he replied, trying to ignore the truth in his own words. It frightened him a little too much.
‘Not … exactly,’ Pagget croaked. ‘That is to say … not yet.’
‘Yet? What do you mean, yet?’
The constable took a step backwards and waved a couple of fat fingers at the stairs. ‘You’d better step into my office, I think, young Master Hark. We apparently have much to discuss.’
‘This is highly irregular,’ Tonmerion began, his father’s favourite phrase, spilling out of his mouth. He bit his lip and said no more. Fixing a frown onto his face, the young Hark raised his chin and went to take a step forwards that said everything his traitorous mouth could not: a confident step that said he was inconvenienced, displeased, that he deserved respect, that he was in command here, and not crumbling with worry and fear and disgust and all those other things that lords and generals and heroes don’t feel. Sadly, Tonmerion’s step forwards was quite the opposite. It was a step so lacking in grace and dignity that Tonmerion would forever shiver at the very thought of it. As his foot hit the floor with a wet slap, not a squeak, Tonmerion realised his mistake. The liquor.
His foot slid away from him, betraying him so casually that his leg, and the rest of him for that matter, were powerless to resist. Tonmerion performed an ungraceful wobble and grabbed the nearest thing his flailing arms could reach … his father’s dead arm.
A small wheeze of relief escaped his tight lips as he found himself upright, safe. A similar sound came forth when he realised what exactly it was that had saved him from the most embarrassing fall, though this time it was strangled by horror, and disgust. Tonmerion’s gaze slowly tumbled down his arm, from the expensive cloth to his ice-white knuckles, to the dead, bruised, slate-coloured flesh that his fingers were squeezing so tightly. Tonmerion gurgled something and quickly righted himself, red in the face and wide in the eyes. He quickly began to smooth the front of his shirt, but stopped hurriedly when it dawned on him that he had just touched a dead body. He held his hands out in the air instead, neither up nor down, close nor far.
‘A cloth,’ he murmured. The surgeon obliged him, leaning over to pass him a startlingly white cloth from beneath the bench. Tonmerion dragged it over his knuckles and fingertips, and nodded to the constable. ‘Lead the way.’
Pagget had not yet decided whether to stifle a laugh or to share the boy’s revulsion. He simply looked on, one eye squinting awkwardly, his face stuck halfway between the two expressions.
‘Jimothy?’ the surgeon said, and Pagget came to.
‘Right! Yes. This way if you please.’ He only barely managed to keep from adding, ‘Mind your step.’
Tonmerion followed him without a word.
*
‘America.’ Tonmerion gave the man a flat stare that spoke a whole world of disbelief.
Witchazel was his name, like the slender shrub, and it was a name that suited him to the very core. He was more stick than man, loosely draped in an ill-fitting suit of the Prussian style, charcoal striped with purple. His hair was thin and jet-black, smeared across his scalp and forehead like an oleaginous paste. Tonmerion had never liked the look of the lawyer. One with power should dress accordingly. His father’s words, once more.
Witchazel shuffled the wad of papers in his leather-gloved hands and coughed. It meant nothing except a resounding yes. Tonmerion looked at Constable Pagget, but found him idly thumbing the dust from the shelves of his ornate bookcase. Tonmerion looked instead at his knees,
and at the woven carpet just beyond them. He tugged at his collar. The constable’s office was stifling, heavy with curtains, mahogany, and leather. The news did not help matters, not one bit.
‘And this aunt …’ he asked.
‘Lilain Rennevie,’ filled in Witchazel.
‘Lives where exactly?’
Witchazel’s face took on an enthusiastic curve, a look of excitement and wonder, one that had been well-practised in the bedroom mirror, or so it seemed to Tonmerion. ‘A charming place, right on the cusp of civilisation, Master Hark,’ he said. ‘A frontier town, don’t you know, going by the bucolic name of Fell Falls. A brand new settlement founded by the railroad teams and the Serped Railroad Company. They’re aiming for the west coast, you see, blazing a trail right across the country in search of gold and riches and the Last Ocean. An exciting place, if I may say so, sir. I’m almost envious!’ Wichazel grinned.
‘Almost,’ Tonmerion replied drily.
Witchazel forced his grin to stay and turned to look at the constable, hoping he would chime in. All Pagget did was smile and nod.
Witchazel produced a map from the papers in his hand and slid it across the desk towards the boy. ‘Here we are.’
Tonmerion leant forwards and eyed the shapes and lines. ‘It looks small.’
Witchazel templed his fingers and hid behind them. ‘Yes, but it has so much potential to grow,’ he offered.
‘Very small.’
‘You have to start somewhere!’
‘And forty miles from the nearest town.’
‘Think of the peace and quiet. Away from the hustle and …’
‘It’s literally the end of the line.’
‘Not for long, mark my words!’
‘And what does this say: desert?’
Witchazel’s temple collapsed and he spread his fingers out on the desk instead, wishing the green leather would magically transport him out of this office. What a fate this boy had inherited. Whisked away to Almighty knows where. No mansion. No servants. No money … Witchazel almost felt sorry for him.