Uncanny Kingdom: An Eleven Book Urban Fantasy Collection (Uncanny Kingdom Omnibus 1)

by David Bussell

‘How likely is the egg scenario?’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s an 80/20 chance of that happening.’

  ‘80/20? Is exploding egg the 80 or the 20?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Eva, non-committally. ‘Now brace yourself.’

  ‘Is it the 80 or the 20? Eva? Wait—’

  Her hands gripped my skull, and suddenly I felt like I’d been dropped from a height into a freezing pool of water. I could still see everything around me. Still see Eva, still see Maya. Could still see the monsters, and the Chloe Queen monstrosity. But it was all in slow motion. Distant. A dot on the horizon.

  There were threads of fire in my mind. Burning tendrils, flaming worms. They wiggled their way through my consciousness, forcing connections that no longer existed. Images flashed before my eyes. Terrible things. Confusing things. Faces and monsters and places and sounds that I knew must be things I’d experienced. Things the old me, the forgotten me, had lived through. Whatever Eva was doing was giving me access to my past. Would it last? Was it just a temporary glimpse that would be locked away again?

  I was a witch.

  A warlock.

  But who was I?

  Those things weren’t the answer. Not really. It didn’t tell me who I really was. What I was like. It didn’t give me my memories, my fears, my loves, my hates. Then two faces, two women, women who I knew, loved, belonged with. Me and them and Eva and we had purpose. Strength.

  And then all clear thoughts were lost as it felt like my whole body was being pulled apart. Fingernails dragged down every raw nerve ending and I heard a horrible sound that I think was me screaming in agony.

  I was found. I was lost. My heart was broken, betrayed, scattered to the winds.

  Chloe Palmer. I had loved her as much as I could remember loving anyone, and it didn’t matter. It was nothing. I was nothing. I was just a means to an end. A tool to be used and cast aside.

  Anger.

  It swamped me. It fed me.

  What had the fox said?

  The Red Woman?

  Become the Magic Eater.

  I’d wanted that, hadn’t I? I suddenly felt like I had once wanted that very much. Desired it. Coveted it. Obsessed over it. Was willing to burn everyone to the ground to get it.

  A beast. I was a beast.

  I could see the Red Woman looking at me, only it wasn’t me, it was the other me, the forgotten me, and I was holding her hand and smiling. She was smiling back and the sky was on fire and a million-strong army of the dead raised their weapons to the heavens and screamed and hooted and cheered and they were all mine.

  We will do such things together.

  The Red Woman was right. I wanted it. The power, the power, the power, the power and I think I’m falling apart. I think I’m dying. It’s not working. It’s too much. I don’t know how to handle it, and any second now it’s egg in a microwave time and that’s all she wrote. I needed to control this. Needed to use it. Needed to unleash it. Come on, please, just do it!

  ‘Hey, idiot.’

  A voice. Not out loud, in my head. Eva was in my head.

  ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, you’re useless.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I never should have come back to the lakes for you. I was having a good time, but here I am, and look what I find. You’re pathetic, love.’

  ‘I am not! I am… I am the Cumbrian Coven. I am Joseph Lake.’

  I am the Magic Eater.

  ‘You’re a twat, is what you are.’

  Why was she doing this? Why now, when we were moments from death and… oh….

  ‘Yeah. Distraction. You’re welcome.’

  And then the cave exploded.

  33

  I was lying back on something that felt familiar.

  ‘Finally,’ said Detective Maya Myers.

  I opened my eyes. I was in the back of the Uncanny Wagon, and it was on the move. I sat up to see Maya driving, Eva beside her. ‘I’m alive.’ I gave myself a quick pat down to make sure. ‘I’m alive. How am I alive? How are both of you alive?’

  ‘We won, that’s how,’ replied Eva, lighting a cigarette and handing it to me.

  I took it with a trembling hand and inhaled.

  ‘It worked?’

  ‘Yup. You shat out enough magic to turn every single one of the fuckers to dust. Almost killed us too. The whole place started coming down while you were sleeping it off. Me and sensible trousers here had to lug your dead weight out of there, sharpish.’

  ‘We did it. We did it!’ I laughed, exhilarated. We’d put an end to it. Avenged the murders of Mrs Coates, of Mary Tyler, of Detective Sam Samm and all the rest.

  It didn’t take long for the bucket of cold water to be thrown on my high as Chloe’s face swam into my mind’s eye.

  My best friend for years. The person I’d been head over heels for. Who I thought I might have an actual future with. Dead by my hands. Okay, it turned out she was a half-monster, that she had allowed the deaths of numerous innocent people, but still. She hadn’t been all bad. I didn’t think I’d be able to just wipe away all the good memories. I didn’t want to. They were real. She’d lied to me, but I don’t think she had about that.

  And now this was real. All of it. Monsters. Magic. What I was, and what I could be. I may not have most of the pieces, or any of my memories, but I knew more than I had done for the last ten years, even if the things I knew were a mix of crazy and wet-your-pants terrifying.

  I wasn’t just a half-forgotten local mystery. The man who woke up, naked, without a past, beside Derwentwater. I was more. And I was pretty sure this was only the tip of the iceberg.

  ‘Listen, I’m part of this from now on, right?’ said Maya.

  ‘You?’ replied Eva. ‘You were about as useful as a chocolate teapot down there.’

  ‘I’m a detective. I can be useful. Resources, information, access. Also, this isn’t a request, it’s a done deal. From now on, I’m part of this. I’m the police here, and that means I am involved in protecting people from whatever they need protecting from. Understood?’

  ‘Yes Ma’am,’ replied Eva. ‘Besides, if it was just me and ol’ dickless over there, I’d probably end up killing the fucker.’

  ‘Hey, I have a penis. And balls. Two of them.’

  ‘Seen ‘em. Not impressed.’

  ‘Eva, why do you hate me so much? I mean sometimes you seem okay with me, others you’d be happy to feed my tender, baby-making parts to a wolf. It’s very disorientating.’

  Eva snorted, but didn’t reply.

  We left Detective Maya Myers at the police station, then I drove Eva back to the coven.

  I’d seen the place during Eva’s invasion of my mind. Seen memories of my life there, I know I had. Just flashes, but real things from my past. Now they were like fragments on the edge of my vision. Just frustratingly out of reach, out of focus. But for a few brief moments, I knew something of my life here. Not just my life. I’d seen other people who belonged here too.

  Other witches.

  I thought back to what the Red Woman and the fox had told me last time I saw them. What they had said Eva was keeping from me.

  I looked at her, slumped on the tatty couch, drinking from her vodka pistol, watching a woman try to convince a couple to spend £300,000 on a large detached house by the sea.

  ‘There were other members of this coven, weren’t there? Others besides me and you.’

  ‘That house is completely overpriced,’ said Eva, before shooting vodka into her mouth.

  ‘Eva.’

  She watched the TV in silence.

  ‘Eva, tell me!’

  ‘There were others, yeah. Two of them.’

  ‘So, it wasn’t just me. What happened to them?’

  Eva sat up and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, then she looked at me and sighed.

  ‘Eva, tell me, what happened to the other witches?’

  ‘Well, to put it bluntly, you murdered them, love. Shall we g
o hit the pub then? You’re buying.’

  The End.

  Blood Stones

  1

  Okay, well, here’s the thing, and, as far as things go, it is really, really, quite the thing.

  It turns out that I, Joseph Lake, am a murderer. A killer. A man with blood on his cotton-soft hands.

  Yes, the revelation came as something of a surprise to me too. Particularly as—and you’d agree with this if you knew me—I’m probably the least murdery sort of person you could ever meet.

  A well-meaning doofus? It has been said on more than one occasion. A man gifted folically by the gods? Certainly. That’s not a brag, it’s a stone cold fact. Someone who knows the lyrics to every song on Fleetwood Mac’s seminal soft rock masterpiece, Rumours? Guilty as charged, your honour.

  But a murderer?

  It’s weird how a revelation like that makes you look at yourself differently in the mirror. There it is, the same daft face, the well-meaning, slightly crooked smile, but you start studying the eyes a little closer. Is there something grim in them that you hadn’t noticed before, perhaps?

  It was not so very long ago that I had no idea about my past. Any of it. I mean, especially not the murder bit.

  Then I found out that I was a warlock.

  A male witch.

  Which no, was not something that I’d ever considered a possibility, strangely enough.

  Furthermore, I had been just one of three witches, tasked with protecting the local area from mean vampires, naughty wizards, and other assorted magical bastards.

  A trio of witches that had lived within a coven, with a familiar as our helper. Now it was just me and that familiar left, a rather fighty, drinky, scary woman by the name of Eva. It was she who had, just a couple of days earlier, informed me that I was a murderer. That the reason there were no longer three witches in the Lake District, was because I—a man who once danced in the aisles with a sixty-seven year-old former post office mistress during a Barry Manilow concert—had killed them.

  Two dead witches.

  Thanks to me.

  Oh, but my tally doesn’t stop there. No, no, no; three days ago I was responsible for the death of one Chloe Palmer, a nurse at Carlisle Hospital, where I was employed as a dogsbody-cum-cleaner (and I use that phrase in the Latin sense, not the… you know). Chloe was a woman I had been madly in love with for several years, and who, I had started to believe, felt the same way about me.

  Until it turned out that she was, you know, a bit mad.

  And in league with some tentacle-limbed, soul-sucking vampire thingies.

  And intent on being in control of who got to live and die on planet Earth.

  That was a real red flag for me. A definite roadblock to us moving forward together romantically.

  Plus there was the fact she was going to eat my soul, which I selfishly like to keep hold of, un-chewed.

  Long story short, Chloe’s dead now, and I felt like a turd wrapped in a poop. It didn’t matter that I’d done the right thing in stopping Chloe, she was still the woman I’d been friends with for years, and in love with since the first moment we spoke.

  The whole thing was really tarnishing the rush I should have been feeling since having had my real self revealed to me. And so there I was, sat on my couch, wrapped in a duvet, watching my Seinfeld DVDs on repeat, and hoping that a little Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer might prod me out of my blues.

  The fact that I was to be found quietly snivelling as I watched, eyes red, nostrils damp, was perhaps a sign that this gambit was failing somewhat.

  ‘What happened to the pub?’ asked Eva, who was slouched beside me on the couch, ciggie in her mouth, can of beer in her hand, dressed in her usual assortment of black rags.

  ‘What?’ I mumbled.

  ‘The pub. You know, the pub. The pub they work in. Pub.’

  ‘There is no pub.’

  ‘The pub with the fat drinky man and the man with the brain of a child.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers,’ replied Eva, raising her beer can and taking a gulp.

  ‘No, you’re thinking of a different... never mind.’

  I would love to have been left alone to grieve for Chloe, but Eva had decided that what I wanted didn’t matter. She was sensitive like that. So she’d been letting herself into my small, poorly insulated ground floor flat to slump next to me on the couch for upwards of eleven hours a day.

  Perhaps, in some small way, forcing her company on me was her way of helping me through the grieving process. It was as that thought passed through my mind that an empty beer can bounced off my temple.

  ‘Get me a cold one from the fridge, idiot.’

  I already knew better than to argue with her, so up I got and over I went, duvet dragging behind like a stain-riddled cloak.

  ‘You know, this whole feeling-sorry-for-yourself-pity-party is really starting to get on my tits,’ said Eva, as I passed her a fresh can of lager. ‘That woman is dead. It was bloody weeks ago! Move on!’

  ‘It’s been three days.’

  Eva looked at her watch, then after a few seconds, realised she wasn’t wearing one.

  ‘Are you sure? You’ve lied to me before, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I am very sure. What’s more, this is at least the fifth time I’ve had to bring that up.’

  ‘The fifth?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You sure, love?’

  I nodded again.

  ‘In my defence,’ she replied, ‘I have a massive alcohol dependency issue that is probably eating away at my brain cells.’

  She cracked open her new drink and slurped up a fresh eruption of foam.

  ‘You drink?’ I asked. ‘Can’t say that I’ve noticed.’

  ‘It’s true! I don’t think I’ve been fully sober in ten years. But boy, what a decade it’s been.’

  ‘Why, what happened ten years ago?’

  I already knew the answer, but since Eva told me about my having murdered my fellow witches’, she’d clammed up on the matter, as though she couldn’t bear to reveal the whole story at once.

  ‘Eva? I couldn’t feel any worse, so maybe now’s a good time to spill the beans.’

  Eva nodded, downed her empty can, burped with such ferocity that a picture fell off the wall, then stood up with purpose.

  ‘Okay, enough of all this blubbery, it’s time to get you in fighting shape.’

  I pulled my duvet tighter around my shoulders. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’

  ‘No, now,’ she insisted, and clapped her hands together, which somehow tore the duvet from me, ignited it mid-air, and turned it to ash before it hit the carpet.

  ‘How did you…? I mean, magic, I get that. Stupid question.’

  ‘That was nothing,’ replied Eva, lighting up a fresh ciggie, ‘but it’s still more than your sorry, good for nothing arse is capable of right now.’

  ‘Well excuse me, but my mind is still pretty much a blank about all this magicky, warlocky stuff.’

  ‘Exactly, and there are people out there who are going to need our help. It’s the whole reason I came back here. We’ve been out of business for too long and this whole area has gone to ruin. It’s time you learned a few basics.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said, curling up on the couch, hugging my knees to my chest.

  Another beer can, this time not quite so empty, bounced off my head.

  ‘Fine!’ I cried.

  I stood, turned off the TV, and followed Eva to the door.

  ‘You know that was my only duvet. I’m going to be freezing tonight.’

  2

  Eva stretched out across the back seat of my battered little car, the Uncanny Wagon, as we left Keswick behind and the scenic Lake District opened up around us.

  ‘Wake me when we get there,’ said Eva, then instantly fell into a deep sleep, a rather enviable skill that I hoped she would teach me one day. I’d always had a bit of trouble with insomnia. Well, “always” meaning the last ten years, since I woke up withou
t a memory, naked, and laying next to lake Derwentwater.

  Recent events and revelations hadn’t made it any easier to drift comfortably off to sleep either. When I closed my eyes, my mind played tricks on me now. Projected phantom voices into the black. Screams. Monster sounds. Chloe calling my name.

  Oh, there was a lot of Chloe rattling around in there.

  Stupid bloody subconscious.

  I was so lost in my thoughts as I steered the Uncanny Wagon toward the Cumbrian Coven, that it took me several seconds to register that I now had two passengers in my car.

  ‘All hail the saviour!’ said the fox, stood on the front passenger seat, Roman helmet on his head, battle-axe gripped tightly in its front paws.

  The car swerved back and forth two or three times as surprise momentarily overtook me.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said in a low hiss, looking back over my shoulder to find Eva somehow still sound asleep. I really, really needed to know her secret.

  ‘You haven’t yet returned,’ replied the fox. ‘To the Dark Lakes, I mean. Been days, it has.’

  Ah, the Dark Lakes. The strange, blood-soaked counterpart to the land I was currently driving through. A place a woman with the fiercest of red hair claimed I had a throne to accept, an army to lead, a title to take up.

  Magic Eater.

  I was pretty sure that whole business had something to do with why the other witches were dead, and why I couldn’t remember a bloody thing.

  ‘What if she wakes up and sees you?’ I said, gesturing for the fox to sit down, to hide, to not be there at all.

  ‘Make no difference. Awake. Asleep. Eyes open. Eyes closed. She won’t see ears nor tail of me. Not me.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because I don’t wants her to, now do I? No one sees me but who I wants. It’s only manners.’

  Eva had made it very clear, in no uncertain (and violent) terms that if I saw this strange walking, talking fox again, that I was to let her know. But then… Eva seemed perfectly comfortable keeping secrets from me. What harm could it do? Until they both told me all the things I needed to know, anyway.