Turned: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (Branded Book 2)

by David Bussell

  The method we were following was simple enough, at least on paper. The idea was to dampen Neil’s burgeoning vampirism by injecting him with a gradually increased infusion of substances known to be the bane of bloodsuckers. Inside the intravenous bag were garlic juice, colloidal silver, and holy water, among other things. According to the scientist’s notes, the compound would delay the vampiric mutation and suppress the associated endowments, such as super strength and heightened agility. More importantly, it would also curb the blood hunger and general bad attitude that came with being an undead freak-beast.

  ‘Do you trust me?’ I asked Neil.

  ‘I trust you.’

  I looked into his eyes and ran a hand through his unruly mop. ‘I love you,’ I said, and kissed him on the mouth.

  Enough of the sweet, now for the sour. I drew the cap off a cannula and plugged the needle into a juicy vein on the crook of Neil’s elbow.

  ‘Ow!’ he said, but I was too busy hooking the needle up to the IV to give him any sympathy.

  Time to let her rip. I turned on the tap and let the drip do its work. The formula snaked down the rubber tube and Neil shivered as it entered his system. I watched his face carefully, we all did, looking to see how he handled the infusion.

  At first, it seemed to do nothing much. Once the initial shock had passed, Neil just sat there serenely as the solution continued to course through his veins. The sun was down now though, so I took serene for good. Serene trumped big fangs tearing my throat out any day of the week.

  ‘How do you feel?’ I asked.

  ‘About the same I think. Not sure whether that’s a good or ba—’

  The sentence pinched off as Neil’s throat went tight. His back arched as his body stiffened suddenly, turning his spine into a question mark.

  ‘Neil?’

  He didn’t answer. The best response he could manage was a high-pitched gurgle, as though his voice were trapped behind a wet plug of mucus. I’d seen this before. When Neil’s condition was at its worst—his cystic fibrosis—he was susceptible to respiratory attacks. They were scary and they were awful, but they could be dealt with, at least so long as he had the right medicine to clear his airways. His inhaler was at home though, and without that, there was little I could do but watch him suffer.

  His eyes looked back at me pleadingly, bulging from their sockets. For a second, his voice broke through the plug, thin and distant. ‘Help me,’ he wheezed.

  Neil told me once what it felt like to suffer these attacks. He’d said it was like having someone pour concrete into his lungs, then clamp an invisible hand over his mouth. He tried telling me more, but I had to ask him to stop. It made me sick just to hear it.

  ‘He’s not breathing,’ I said, stating the obvious. ‘What do we do?’ My eyes flashed to the angels, desperate for an answer, for any answer.

  They had none.

  Then a thought occurred. ‘Wait, he’s a vampire, right? Does he even need to breathe?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gen replied, matter-of-factly. ‘Vampires of the Judas Clan breathe air just like us.’

  A last, fragile gasp rattled in Neil’s throat, then he began to convulse, his limbs straining violently against their bonds. The force of the seizure tore the needle free of the cannula in his arm, and the contents of the drip spattered on the floor. The chair shook beneath his body, its wooden legs tap dancing on the ground, clackety clack clack. Neil was dying, spiralling downwards, faster and faster, tighter and tighter, into a helix, into a pinhole.

  I had to do something. Working fast, I went to undo his chains so I could lay him on the floor and clear his air passage, but before I could get there, Gen intervened.

  ‘It could be a trick,’ she said, placing a hand on my wrist. ‘So he can break free.’

  I shook her off. ‘I don’t care!’

  I barged past her and tore Neil’s chains away like they were made of wet toilet paper. Head bowed, he slid from his chair, and I helped him gently to the ground.

  ‘Neil?’

  He’d stopped fitting and gone limp now. His jaw was slack, his limbs soft and rubbery. I looked into his eyes but they were vacant; lifeless as the glass marbles in the head of a Victorian doll. I placed a hand on Neil’s face, which was already turning cold. His complexion had lost its natural hue and taken on a pale bluish colour. His palms, which had been slick with sweat a moment ago, were bone dry now.

  I put the back of my hand to his mouth and felt nothing, not even a tickle. ‘Neil?’ I begged.

  I checked for a pulse but his arteries were quiet, wrist and neck. He was catatonic. I felt tears spill from my eyes, but this was no time to give in to dread. Every second I wasted was another second Neil’s brain was starved of oxygen. I remembered my First Aid training; the course I did with St John Ambulance. I needed to clear Neil’s airway quickly, and doing that required an emergency procedure. Something drastic. Something I really didn’t want to do.

  I drew the hallowed dagger from its sheath.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Gen. ‘Put him out of his misery.’

  ‘I’m not killing him, I’m making a hole in his throat. It’s the only way to get him breathing again.’

  I’d never performed a tracheotomy, nor had I ever wished too, but if I didn’t act soon, Neil was a goner.

  ‘You can’t use the dagger on him,’ Viz cautioned. ‘It’s made to kill vampires. One nick and he’ll never stop bleeding.’

  ‘What choice do I have?’

  Either Neil died of suffocation or I gave him something to breathe through. Bleeding I could deal with—at least I hoped I could—but sitting by and doing nothing, that I couldn’t do.

  I moved the dagger to Neil’s neck. For a moment I considered the idea of sterilising the dagger, but there was no time for that. My hand was trembling. I had to get a hold of myself. I knew from experience that the metal would break his skin with only the slightest contact, so I couldn’t afford any slip-ups. Get this wrong and I might as well be sticking the knife in Neil’s heart.

  I swallowed and readied myself to apply pressure to the blade.

  ‘He’s already gone,’ said Gen. ‘Don’t do this to yourself.’

  ‘Just shut up and get me some bandages, okay? And a tube. Something I can put down his throat to help him breathe.’

  I gripped the hilt of the dagger tightly and steeled myself. This was it. The moment of truth. I put the tip of the blade to the spot just below Neil’s Adam’s apple and prepared to make the incision—

  When he sat bolt upright like a jug of ice water had been flung into his face.

  I managed to pull the dagger back just in time to stop him from beheading himself. The rest of us lurched backwards in surprise as Neil let out a great hacking wheeze and coughed a blob of mucus halfway across the room. His fingers gripped me, digging into my shoulders like talons, then he went limp again and slipped back into unconsciousness.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked, clutching at him like a drowning woman to a passing log.

  Viz smiled. ‘Whatever you did, it looks as though it worked.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘The mutation’s been stalled,’ said Gen. ‘I can tell from his aura. He hasn’t turned. Not fully.’

  I cast my eyes to Neil and saw that his fangs and claws had retracted. The colour was returning to his waxy skin, and the Judas mark on his forehead—while still there—had become dim and indistinct. I put a couple of fingers to his neck and found a pulse this time. His chest rose and fell, shallow but steady. He was out for the count, but on the mend.

  ‘He’s stabilised,’ said Gen. ‘Just like the man in the lab coat told us he would.’

  Yeah, the man she’d murdered.

  ‘So what’s the upshot?’ I asked. ‘Is he okay now?’

  Gen shook her head. ‘No, he’s still affected. The complete transformation has only been postponed.’

  ‘For how long?’ I asked, searching her face.

  ‘According to the notes we were
given, instead of twenty-four hours, he now has a week left in this state. Give or take.’

  Was that all? Seven measly days? I raked a scraggle of hair from Neil’s brow and placed a hand on his chest, feeling the soft heartbeat beneath his ribs.

  ‘Okay then,’ I said, trying to remain positive. ‘In that case we’d better come up with a full, lasting cure, and fast. Viz, anything new?’

  Viz slumped his shoulders. ‘While you were away I took the time to double-check my library. I searched high and low for anything even remotely connected to a cure for vampirism, but found nothing. I’m sorry to say this, Abbey, but its seems you’ve only succeeded in delaying the inevitable.’ He placed a hand on top of mine. ‘If I were you, my love, I’d use the time you’ve bought to accept what’s coming and say goodbye.’

  I snatched my hand from his. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No way. Neil isn’t becoming one of them, not while I have anything to say about it.’

  ‘Abbey…’

  ‘I said no! If there’s nothing about a cure in those books of yours, then you'd better do something about it.’ I pointed to the sky. ‘You’d better call upon the author to explain.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It's from a Nick Cave song. It means you need to get your God on the phone.’

  Viz’s eyes slid off me. ‘You know I can’t do that, Abbey. Neither of us can. We haven’t spoken to Him since He cast us out of Heaven.’

  ‘Vizael is right,’ said Gen. ‘The Big Man’s been screening our calls ever since He stranded us on this rock.’

  I felt my lower lip begin to quiver, first with sadness, then with rage. I stuck out a finger, thrusting it at the angels like the point of a weapon. ‘Maybe you’ve forgotten what you are, but I haven’t. I can see the halos hovering over your heads. Whatever it is He marooned you for, you’re still angels, and that means you’re still part of God's flock.’

  ‘So what?’ asked Gen.

  ‘So you’d better figure out a way to get the shepherd's attention, or my Nightstalking days are done.’

  10

  I reattached Neil to his drip and put him to bed. The angels had insisted he be kept restrained, which meant lashing him to the bed frame like the star of a BDSM video, just on the off-chance that he woke up and turned feral. It didn’t look to me like he was attacking anyone though. That boy was out for the count.

  I pulled a fold-out cot beside him and prepared to snatch some rest of my own. There was no going home now, not since our flat had been invaded by the Clan. The gas tower was the safest place we could be given the circumstances. Besides, I wasn’t about to head out anywhere, I’d been on my feet for the better part of three days, and was bleary-eyed to the point of collapse.

  My head had still been on its way to the pillow when I fell asleep, that’s how tired I was. I didn’t stay down for long though. When I came around, the sun had yet to crest the horizon, forcing me to scrabble around in the dark to check for the time. I squinted at the glowing digits on my phone to discover that it had only just gone three in the morning. Despite the time, I felt fully rested. I was never going to get used to that. Being forced to stay awake all night was an item from the Nightstalker superpowers list that I could really have done without. I mean, it’s not like I could do anything worthwhile with the extra time it gave me, or at least not in that moment. Viz and Gen were asleep, and even though I’d have done anything to lay my hands on Neil’s cure, without the angels’ help, I had nowhere to go.

  I splashed some cold water on my face. The base had no plumbing, so I had to make do with a wash bowl full of old rainwater collected from buckets on the tower roof. I checked my reflection in a shard of broken mirror balanced on a sideboard and grimaced at the sight of my eye luggage. I had to get out of that place. Had to kill some time until the sun came up and I could get back to work.

  With the state Neil was in I didn’t want to stray too far though, so I decided to take a short walk along the canal that ran around the back of the industrial park. Something told me I probably shouldn't have been out there on my own, but if I was ever going to learn to do my job without Gen chaperoning me, I figured I might as well act accordingly. I squeezed through the peeled-back panel that acted as the tower’s front door and headed out into the night.

  My breath formed in visible puffs as I walked alongside the canal, trailing behind me in wisps of dragon smoke. It was cold out – absolutely Baltic. Tangled thickets of lifeless thorn lined the outer edge of the towpath, interrupted by the occasional willow tree, which loomed overhead, leaning towards the moon-dappled water like respectful mourners. The canal was eerily quiet, save for the occasional sound of something fluttering overhead. A bird? A bat maybe? Did we even get bats in London?

  My mind soon returned to more pressing matters, specifically, to Neil. What was I going to do about him? No, what were we going to do? It was high time the angels started pulling their weight. We had a serious knowledge gap that needed filling, and I couldn’t plug that thing on my own. The way I saw it, me being the Nightstalker was a two-way deal: I did the brawling, and the angels worked my corner. I’d fight my hardest for them, but I needed to know they were there to look after me between bouts. Right now I was bleeding—bleeding like hell—and the only way they were going to patch me up was by figuring out how to make Neil better.

  Frustrated, I kicked at a stone in my path, punting it into the murky canal. I watched the stone arc through the air then plop into the water, creating ever-widening ripples upon its surface.

  Then I saw something else.

  Something was moving beneath the water, causing bubbles to sprout to the surface. A fish? No, too big for that. I tried to make out what it was, but all I could see was the reflection of the night sky. The bubbles began to move, forming a path, heading in my direction. I took a step back and drew my dagger, lighting the water cobalt blue. The bubbles stopped, disappearing under the blanket of duckweed that clung to the bank of the canal.

  Feet planted, I readied myself for whatever it was lurking in the depths of that fetid estuary. Nothing came though. Nothing showed. Of course it didn’t. What had I been expecting exactly? Some inner-city Nessie? The Bethnal Green mermaid? I chuckled. I was meant to be the Nightstalker, but I’d managed to spook myself out at the sight of a few water bubbles. What an absolute twat. What would I do for my next trick? Run from my own shadow? Jump on to a stool as a mouse ran by? Shit a brick at the sound of a creaky door? My chuckle turned into a laugh; a great shrieking guffaw that left me clutching my sides.

  Which was unfortunate, because it left me completely unprepared for what came next.

  Two hands sprang from the duckweed, quick as snakes, grabbing me around the ankles. My arse hit the ground with a thump as my legs were pulled out from beneath me and my body dragged towards the canal. Freezing water stung my feet and filled my Doc Martens. I kicked out and my heel made contact with something. Something altogether hideous.

  A head had appeared above the surface of the water, stalks twitching in the bony hollows of its eye sockets. The lurker in the canal was a thing of nightmares. A woman with bilious green skin, long lank hair, and razor-sharp teeth. A horror, empty of heart and brimming with spite. A creature as foul on the outside as it was within. I tried to recoil from her, but the lurker left me with nowhere to go. Claws like black iron dug into me as she clung on, dragging me into the foul-smelling water.

  I tried to think of my next move, but the pain absorbed my full attention. Before I knew it, I was in the canal fully, submerged up to my neck in icy black water. I thrashed around and tried to free myself of the lurker’s grip, but she held on to me like a vice. With a fierce tug, I was hauled beneath the surface, my cries of protest silenced as frigid water flooded into my lungs and turned my screams into mute bubbles.

  I was drowning—suffocating—just like Neil had been, only hours before. While I was busy panicking, the creature shifted her grip, climbing on top of me, hands around my throat and driving me to
the depths with powerful kicks of her webbed feet. I arrived at the bed of the canal and the lurker pinned me there, plunging me into the sediment. I was utterly blind, buried in blackness, enveloped by the void.

  My heartbeat rang like thunder in my ears as I fought the creature, quickly at first, then slowing as panic turned into acceptance. This was not my domain. The canal belonged to the lurker, and I would die in it as surely as the sun was about to rise on a new day. Call me a pessimist, but if there’s one good thing about pessimism, it’s that you’re never disappointed.

  And often surprised.

  The hands around my throat went slack as the creature pinning me to the canal bed unexpectedly released her grip. For a moment, I just lay there in disbelief, then my survival instincts kicked in and I boosted myself out of the mire and went rocketing up for dry land. The moment my head broke the surface I ejected about a gallon of putrid water. It was only when I stopped coughing that I realised why the lurker had let go of me.

  Bobbing before me was the creature’s green head, torn from the rest of her body and set adrift. Pitch black blood seeped from the ragged wound of her neck, settling on the surface of the water like an Exxon special. I tried to swim away from the spill, but I’d used up the last of my energy escaping the bottom of the canal, and my limbs had turned into silly string.

  I felt myself begin to sink, but before I could return to the depths, something snagged hold of me. Not the lurker this time—she wouldn’t be grabbing anybody any time soon—it was a new pair of hands that seized me now, not grasping, not swiping at me like some frenzied animal, but lifting me from the water and out of harm’s way.

  I felt ground beneath me and realised I’d been deposited back on to the soft earth of the riverbank. Rolling over to my side to cough up the last of the water I’d swallowed, I got a first look of my saviour. Sitting beside me, sopping wet from his dip in the drink, was a man of around thirty. Moonlight flecked his hair and gilded his perfect features. He was handsome. The kind of handsome you feel in your ovaries.