Dark Lakes, Volume One: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (A Dark Lakes Collection Book 1)

by Matthew Stott

  ‘Oh. What was the screaming and jumping about then?’

  I made to speak, paused, then brushed it aside. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I hope so. My name is Annie. Are you Mr Lake? Mr Joseph Lake?’

  ‘Yeah, for the last few years. It’s a long story. Well, not that long a story. I woke up next to a lake with no memory and decided to use “Joseph Lake” as my name.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You’re probably not here for my stunted life story though.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Mr Lake, I emailed you about a job, but you didn’t reply.’

  ‘You what now?’ And then I remembered the email I’d recently deleted. ‘Sorry, I don’t recall any email. At all. I definitely didn’t delete it.’

  Smooth.

  ‘No worries; I didn’t get a response, and I’m in a bit of a rush, so here I am! Initiative, you see?’

  ‘Yes. Well done. Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not really looking for any additional work right now.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘There’s a very large, big case I’m on at the moment.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yep, several murders. I’m assisting the police, all very hush-hush. And then there are the hospital toilets on the third floor that need a good seeing to tomorrow, so, as you can no doubt appreciate, my hands are pretty full right now. Sorry.’

  I slid my key into the door and pushed it open as I gave Annie an apologetic shrug/sorry face combo, and placed one foot inside my flat.

  ‘Please, Mr Lake, I don’t know who else to turn to.’

  I stopped and turned back to her. It figured that a woman who took it upon herself to track me down at my door after one unanswered email wasn’t going to be brushed off so easily.

  ‘Okay, what about if you send your information to me in another email, and this time I don’t delete it.’

  ‘I thought you said you didn’t delete the first one?’

  ‘Yes. Good. And I also won’t delete this next one. Put all the stuff into it, and if I get a moment, I’ll give it a look. Deal?’

  Annie bit her lip and shook her head.

  ‘Really, Annie, I don’t want to sound rude, but I am rather tired and would like to go inside. Alone.’

  ‘I’m in danger, Mr Lake.’

  Damn.

  ‘Oh. Have you gone to the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then maybe go to the police? They should really be your first port of call, not a man who mops floors six hours a day.’

  ‘I can’t! I can’t go to the police!’

  She was starting to become more animated, emotional. She’d been all cool, calm and collected up to that point, now the strain of whatever was bothering her was starting to crack her perfect surface.

  ‘Why can’t you go to the police?’

  ‘Because they won’t believe me, just like you don’t!’ she bawled. ‘Coming to you was a mistake. You’re just some crank cheating people out of their money by pretending to investigate ghosts and what have you.’

  ‘Whoa there, take it easy.’

  Something was definitely tearing her up inside. I won’t deny to feeling a little bit guilty about brushing her aside. And the whole email deletion thing.

  ‘Why won’t they believe you, Annie? Tell me what’s wrong.’

  Annie’s eyes filled with tears, and her shoulders trembled as she tried to hold back the sobs.

  ‘Annie, you can tell me, why do you need my help?’

  ‘I need your help, Mr Lake,’ she replied, ‘because I sold my soul to the Devil.’

  Now, that was quite the revelation to chew on. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to sit with it, as it was only three or so seconds later that a large, vicious eagle swooped out of the sky and began to attack her.

  10

  Annie’s cries of pain were masked by the Uncanny Wagon’s screeching tyres—not to mention the tribal anxiety drums beating out a frantic rhythm in my head—as we hurtled at unsafe speeds toward Carlisle.

  ‘Annie, are you okay?’ I asked, like everyone’s favourite celebrity paedophile.

  I glanced at her in the rear view mirror. She was sprawled across the back seats, smearing blood onto them from the wounds she’d received at the claws of the eagle.

  Right. The eagle.

  Now, eagle attacks are not exactly a common event around these parts. Or, to be honest, any parts. Maybe if you’re a vole, but not a fully grown human lady.

  ‘Annie?’

  ‘I’m okay. My head hurts.’

  Yeah, she’d cracked her skull pretty viciously after falling as the eagle dive bombed her a second time. I’d tried to shoo the thing away, but it turned out that a man timidly saying, “Go away! Shoo! Go away, please!’ wasn’t all that off-putting to a huge bird of prey with dinner on its brain.

  The thing had had four good goes at Annie, leaving deep gashes and torn clothing behind each time, before I managed to grab her and bundle her into the back of my car. I’d had the choice to duck into the house or the car, and in the moment, I’d chosen the motor. Which had definitely been the wrong choice. Annie was losing blood, and I’d decided the best thing I could do was get her away and to help, which is why we were currently breaking the speed limit on our way to the hospital.

  ‘Told you,’ said Annie, her voice groggy, ‘I told you. Wants to… I’m gonna die.’

  ‘No negative nellies in here, Annie. Come on! It’s just a few wounds and a bash on the bonce. You’ll be right as rain in no time.’

  ‘Kill me. They want me dead. All of them. They want me dead.’

  ‘Who wants you dead? Annie?’

  I twisted in my seat and looked back to see that she’d passed out, blood pooling under her head.

  ‘Shit. Balls. Annie? Annie!’ I gave her a shove to try and rouse her. She managed to bat my hand away, but didn’t come round.

  I stomped on the accelerator and my poor little car lurched forward, the engine sounding not in the least bit happy about the thrashing I was giving it. ‘Sorry old thing, but this is an emergency! Woman in peril!’

  As if responding to my cry, the car sped up, the needle passing the hundred miles an hour mark. I won’t deny feeling slightly proud of the battered thing, I had no idea it could even go at such speeds. My admiration was cut short however as a shadow fell over me and I looked up to see the eagle, beak wide, giant wings spread, swooping directly at the windscreen.

  ‘Shitting shit!’

  I yanked the wheel to the left and the car went into a screaming spin, the eagle’s wing brushing the side as it rushed past, letting out a squawk of frustration as its target dodged out of the way.

  ‘You crazy, kamikaze death bird!’ I yelled. Which is not something you say every day.

  I twisted the wheel and reversed back onto the road from the grass verge, where our spin had deposited us. Annie was on the floor now, still unconscious.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’re not far from… oh fuckity fuck-fuck!’

  The eagle’s head crashed through the rear window, its vicious beak screeching and snapping at Annie. If she hadn’t tumbled from the seat as we spun, the thing would be up to its eyeballs in her already.

  I grabbed the metal steering wheel lock and leaned back, striking at the crazed bird’s head as it struggled and thrashed, trying to force its way through the window.

  ‘Get out, you rotten, feathery bastard!’

  Each hit I landed only seemed to make the thing madder, more determined to get inside. Now, I’m no expert on birds, but I’m pretty sure if one rushed head-first at a car window, its skull would come off second best. Despite that, this thing showed no sign of injury, just a devilish determination to get at its quarry.

  The steering wheel lock proving to be less than useful, I tossed it aside, shifted position, and began to strike out at the thing’s head with the bottom of my boot.

  ‘Go away! Please! Thank you!’

 
My boot mashed against the eagle’s skull six or seven times before I got a lucky strike and dislodged the thing. The bird fell from the back of the car, wings going like the clappers.

  ‘Don’t worry, Annie,’ I said to the unconscious body lying prone on the floor of my car. ‘I sorted the bastard out. Everything’s going to be okay.’

  That is, of course, exactly the sort of thing a stupid person would say right before things got many times worse.

  I contorted my body until I flopped back the right way in the driver’s seat. As I reached for the key though, it suddenly turned darker outside.

  ‘That can’t be good,’ I said, leaning to look out of the window, to see what had just cast its huge shadow over us. The sight that greeted me elicited a slight squeak of terror. Okay, a big one.

  ‘Hold on, Annie!’

  I turned the key and stamped on the accelerator. The Uncanny Wagon lurched forward, its tyres not the only thing screaming as they struggled for traction.

  There were more eagles after us.

  Not one, not two, a lot more.

  Blackening the sky.

  I’m talking Hitchcock turned up to eleven.

  I didn’t have time to make an exact count of the birds as I was in a state of blind terror, but let’s say it looked like about a hundred of the bastards. It’s possible I’m rounding up.

  ‘Everything’s going to be okay, Annie, just a few ticked off birdies, that’s all.’

  A dent appeared in the panel of the driver’s door as the first of the feral beasts dive-bombed us.

  ‘Leave my car alone! It’s an antique!’

  The eagles, strangely, paid no heed to my demand. Rude.

  I gripped the wheel so tightly my fingers ached as I tried to keep control of the thing, tried to will it forward as the birds attacked again and again, buffeting the outside of the Uncanny Wagon like one of those plagues from the bible, only worse. I don’t know about you, but I’d take a swarm of locusts over a swarm of razor-beaked, knife-taloned birds any day.

  A crash, and a bird’s beak was suddenly through the driver’s side window and in biting distance of my face.

  I grabbed the steering wheel lock again and swatted at the animal as I tried to keep the car moving. No time to stop to try and dislodge the maniac, we’d have been swamped by the rest of them in seconds.

  ‘Ours, ours, ours!’ said the eagle.

  That’s right, “said” the eagle.

  Despite everything happening in that moment, it still came as something of a shock to hear the animal talk.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Ours!’

  Not quite the extended vocabulary of my fox friend, but it was getting its point across clearly enough.

  ‘Sorry, but you can’t claim ownership of a lady these days, this isn’t the Fifties!’

  I struck out again and again, the talkative eagle doing its best to dodge my blows and wriggle its way further into the car.

  Another crash, an eagle head screeching, this time from the left passenger window.

  ‘Ours! Ours! Ours!’ it yelled with its sharp, grating rasp.

  Things were not going well, and we were still several miles from Carlisle, let alone the hospital.

  A thud from behind. One of the eagles had found the hole made by the first attacker, and was attempting to widen the gap.

  It’s times like these that knowing how to access a little bit of magic would have really come in handy. I grabbed my phone and called Eva, trying to ignore the eagle’s beak to my right, which was inching ever closer to my eyeball.

  ‘I’m not here,’ came Eva’s sleepy voice.

  ‘Eva!’

  The call ended.

  Even dockers don’t swear the way I did then.

  ‘Ours! Ours!’

  ‘Invest in a thesaurus!’

  I hit Eva’s number again and she picked up on the fifth ring.

  ‘I told you, I’m not here, idiot.’

  ‘Birds! Eagles! Lots of birds eagles beaks claws very very danger and scared and need help and magic!’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Eva!’

  ‘Rubbish, you sound nothing like me.’

  I screamed some more anguished, angry gibberish at her.

  ‘You finished?’

  A beak scratched my cheek, drawing blood. Further obscenities were launched.

  ‘Ours! Ours!’

  ‘Oi, is that a talking eagle?’ asked Eva.

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Thought so. Horrible voices, that lot. Like nails on a blackboard.’

  I was driving at quite an obtuse angle now, one hand on the wheel, the other holding my phone to my ear as I leaned as far away from the snapping beak of the eagle as possible, whilst still being able to see out of the windscreen. How I was still managing to keep us on the road and more or less in the right lane was a mystery.

  ‘Eva, loads and loads of eagles from I don’t know where are attacking me as I try to drive. Help me!’

  ‘How? I’m here, on my couch, enjoying a rather cheap lager, and you’re there, trying not to get pecked to buggery.’

  ‘Tell me how to do some sort of magic to stop them! I know I’ve done it before, so tell me how!’

  Another kamikaze eagle bombed into the side of the car. The tyres met the grass verge before I yanked the wheel to the right and the Uncanny Wagon swerved back onto the road, a large lorry honking its horn as I just about went nose-first into its front end.

  ‘Eva!’

  ‘Okay, well, the thing is, magic is all around you, see? It’s just a case of being able to will it into your horrible, skinny, good-for-nothing body.’

  ‘Okay, okay, it’s all around me.’

  ‘Ooh!’

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve seen this episode of Columbo before. That’s sort of magic in itself, isn’t it, love?’

  ‘Eva!’

  The eagle stuck in the driver side window had now wiggled close enough for its beak to nip at the sleeve of my beautiful, long coat. Now it was just pissing me off.

  ‘Nope. False alarm. Seen it.’

  ‘Magic! Magic!’

  ‘Hm? Oh, right, well, it’s all around you, all the time. Everything emits a natural background trace of it, you’ve just gotta allow yourself to see it.’

  ‘Right. Okay, what does it look like?’

  ‘Sort of, colourful waves, washing around the place.’

  ‘Okay, okay…’

  I had a bit of a look around.

  ‘No waves.’

  ‘Look harder.’

  ‘That’s your advice? “Look harder”? I can’t see any colourful magical wave thingies!’

  ‘Listen to me. You can. You can see them better than almost anybody.’

  Something about Eva’s voice had changed. It was almost… soothing.

  ‘The magic is yours, warlock. You are born of it. It is part of you.’

  I felt almost calm. Well, as calm as a man barely in control of a speeding vehicle that’s under attack from a swarm of murderous, talking eagles can feel.

  ‘It wants you to see it. It wants to make itself part of you. For you to soak it in and use it. To realise its potential. Can you see it now?’

  And then a strange thing happened.

  I could see it.

  It’s like someone had flicked a switch, or placed those magic shades from They Live in front of my eyes, and now a world that had been hiding from me was revealed.

  Magic was everywhere.

  Great, multi-coloured stripes of noisy, beautiful energy swishing this way and that. Sparkling with possibility. And it called to me. Almost sang.

  ‘I… I see it.’

  ‘Just let it in.’

  ‘Hello, lovely magic,’ I said, and the waves responded, changing course, flowing towards me. I felt it enter the fabric of me, bathing me in a warming, static shower.

  ‘Make demands of it,’ said Eva. ‘It
’s your tool. Yours to use. Make it your weapon.’

  The eagle’s beak had torn through the material of my coat, I could feel it scraping my skin. But that was okay, because it was about to be very, very dead.

  ‘The magic is mine,’ I said. ‘I control it. It is my instrument to play.’

  It felt right. Natural. For a moment I wasn’t Joseph Lake anymore. I was a warlock. A witch. And I was about done with all these bloody eagles.

  ‘Do it,’ whispered Eva. ‘Tell the magic what you want of it.’

  I sat up and grabbed the eagle by the neck, my hand glowing with white hot fire. It struggled and screamed in my grip.

  ‘Ours! Ours!’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Now please do go away, you little swine.’

  And with that, the fire in my hand consumed the bird, turning it to ash.

  Which, yeah, was pretty cool.

  ‘All of you,’ I said, my whole body glowing now, tendrils of pure, white energy weaving out of me, like flames from the sun, ‘you can all piss right off.’

  And piss off they did.

  11

  The ancient coffee machine in the corner of the hospital reception rattled as it spat black tar into my Styrofoam cup.

  The eagles were dead, burnt to a crisp at my own hands. How I’d pulled that little trick off I had no idea. I’d seen magic everywhere in that moment, washing around me in colourful, evanescent waves, but peering around the room now, I saw nothing.

  Nothing of the magic that I’d used.

  That I’d willed into myself and turned into white-hot fire.

  As terrifying as the whole eagle episode had been, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a touch thrilled at the way the situation had resolved itself. At the momentary access I’d been given to the world the old me had lived in. The old world I’d used; I’d wielded.

  For a few minutes there, I’d been an honest to goodness warlock! A witch! A powerful bastard capable of unleashing fire from my—

  ‘Shit!’ I swore and blew on my fingers as the hot coffee I’d spilled scorched my skin.

  ‘A bird?’ said Big Marge from behind her desk, an eyebrow cocked.

  ‘Yup. A big one. Insane. Just dive-bombed down at poor Annie.’

  ‘You’re telling me an eagle did that to her?’