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

by David Bussell

  ‘Oh, good, thanks.’

  ‘I’m just going to take my body back. For good.’

  ‘Right, not so good.’

  ‘A decade of drifting, of barely existing. I’ve been so patient. I had to grow. Had to gather the power to reclaim you, without Eva pulling me back out. And now, thanks to that feast from the Dark Lakes, I am ready.’

  Janto reached out to me, and I scrabbled backwards until my shoulders met the wall.

  ‘Don’t be scared. This is good. Look what she did to us, that lowly bitch familiar. Look at what she did to us. Look how we’ve had to hide inside a lowly human body.’

  ‘But what’ll happen to me? To Joseph Lake?’

  ‘There is no Joseph Lake. You made him up. There will only be me.’

  ‘If it’s all the same to you then, I don’t think I really want you back in here. I’ve not heard the most pleasant of stories.’

  I stood slowly, pulling the magic that swam around the coven into me.

  Janto smiled, amused. ‘You really think you can take me on, Joe? You can barely create a little ball of fire. You’re pathetic. She made you pathetic.’

  ‘That’s good, because hurting you hurts my friend, and she’ll get really pissed off if I ruin that leather jacket of hers.’

  Janto smiled. ‘Then what are you doing?’

  ‘This, you dick.’

  I grunted and swept my hands across him, managing to pull enough power into me to shove Janto out of my path. I didn’t pause. I sprinted for the still-locked door, conjuring a fireball that I tossed in its direction. The fire smashed through the door, sending wooden splinters firing, and out I went.

  I ran from Myers, from Janto, from the Coven, leapt behind the wheel of the Uncanny Wagon, and got the mother-shitting fuck away from there.

  19

  I drove, my heart going like the clappers, my eyes on the rearview more than the windshield. I expected to see Myers, to see Janto, surging after me to reclaim his body.

  I drove aimlessly, not knowing where to turn. I tried phoning Eva, but wasn’t surprised when she didn’t answer. I kept replaying that look she’d had in her eyes when she realised who it was that had taken over Myers. The look in her eyes when she said my real name.

  The Red Woman had told me that something was coming. That she didn’t have to trick me into taking my throne, that I would be taking it soon enough without her assistance. And now the part of me that wanted that throne was back, and wanted his body back too. Wanted to be complete again.

  The Red Woman may not have known what it was she was sensing, what was causing ripples to spread across the lake, but she had felt Janto’s return.

  My return.

  I had no doubt that when I was complete again, when Janto got his body back, that I would walk into the Dark Lakes and fulfil my destiny.

  I’d take the throne that sat on top of the blood red hill.

  I’d become the Magic Eater.

  I’d lead an army of the dead into this world.

  It was all a bit grim really, and yet I couldn’t see any way around it. Especially not with Eva playing hide and seek.

  No Eva, no Myers for backup, just me against me. And there was only going to be one victor in that unpleasant tussle.

  I needed to hole up somewhere for a while and try to think, try to bolt together something that I could fool my daft old brain into thinking was a viable plan. But where could I go? Janto knew all of the places I might head to, and those he didn’t, Myers did.

  I couldn’t go home, couldn’t go to the hospital, couldn’t go to the coven. I needed somewhere that felt safe. Some place I wouldn’t have to look over my shoulder for a little bit.

  And then the answer popped into my head. It was obvious where I had to go.

  I made a not entirely safe three-point turn in the middle of the road, drawing a chorus of enraged car horns. And I headed to the pub.

  Mickey Finn’s.

  Of course.

  The Keswick pub, secreted down a blind alley, that served the area’s Uncanny types. The place stood within a magic-dampening bubble, so if Janto did steer Myers’ body there in the hope of carrying on our fight, I would at least be standing on a more level playing field.

  Sure, he could just beat the crap out of me physically instead of magically and then drag me outside, away from the effects of the bubble, but this was the best option on offer, so I parked up, legged it down the blind alley, and breathed a sigh of relief as I stepped inside and pressing my back against the door.

  I headed for the bar, glancing around the place to make sure Janto wasn’t already here, waiting to get the drop on me.

  ‘Your Fox friend is barred,’ said Grunt, the giant bar man.

  ‘Oh? Why?’

  ‘He hit one of my best customers with an axe.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Could I get a pint, please?’

  Grunt went about pulling the required. ‘She’s been waiting for you over there,’ he said, as he slid the glass over to me.

  ‘What? Who? Myers?’ I whirled to find a figure slumped across a table in a corner booth.

  It was Eva. Great minds and all that.

  I paid, picked up my glass, then walked across the pub to sit on the free side of the booth.

  ‘Look at this,’ I said. ‘Disaster strikes and we both head straight for the pub.’

  Eva sat up, almost knocking over the many empty pots littering the table. She’d clearly made herself busy since running out on me.

  ‘Is it still you?’ she asked. I didn’t like the fact that she didn’t put “idiot” at the end of her sentence. It made me feel uncomfortable.

  ‘I’m afraid so. Just Joseph Lake in here,’ I said, tapping my noggin.

  Eva reached over and took my drink, gulping it down in one.

  ‘Could’ve used your assistance back there, though.’

  Eva slammed the glass down and lunged across the table, grabbing me by the shirt and yanking me forward.

  ‘You have no idea!’ she roared. ‘You have no fucking idea!’ Her eyes practically burned through me.

  ‘You know my shirt collar is digging into me a little.’

  Eva hissed with derision and pushed me away. ‘Oi, Grunt, another round for me,’ she said waving her hand.

  ‘Maybe you’ve had enough to drink?’ I suggested.

  ‘Never. Never enough… not since then.’

  ‘Since when?’

  Her eyes momentarily met mine, then darted away. It seemed to me like she looked, well, ashamed.

  Grunt arrived with a pint and a bottle of whiskey with one glass. Eva pushed the glass away and drank from the bottle.

  ‘Okay, what’s going on?’ I said.

  Eva laughed.

  ‘No, I want to know. What’s up with you? Myers, our friend, is possessed by the bad side of me and you just run away?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘She’s our friend, Eva. It doesn’t matter who’s controlling her. She’s our friend.’

  ‘It matters when it’s him.’ She lifted the bottle to her lips again, but I reached across the table and pulled it out of her hands. ‘Give me that bottle back.’

  ‘We need to come up with a plan.’

  ‘Give me. That bottle. Back.’

  I poured the contents on the floor. ‘Since when were you the coward out of the two of us?’ I said.

  Before I knew what was happening, I was on the floor and I could taste blood in my mouth. I pressed a hand to my jaw and looked up in shock as Eva slid out of the booth and stood over me.

  ‘You just hit me…’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, and now I’m going to kick you.’

  Eva took a step and kicked me in the ribs. I rolled onto my back, gasping for air.

  ‘The things you made me do. Look what you did to me. Look what you made of me!’

  Another boot to the side. I cried out in pain and scrabbled backwards until my back met the bar. I think I heard Grunt say something abou
t taking it outside, but he wasn’t going to step in. No one in this place would risk getting in Eva’s way.

  ‘Eva, stop. Stop, please. It’s me, it’s Joseph!’

  ‘You made me do it. I didn’t have a choice. You made me!’

  I held my hands up, ready for another kick, another punch. ‘Eva; Eva, please, it wasn’t me. Whatever he made you do, whatever Janto did to you, it wasn’t me.’

  She lunged at me, pulling me to my feet by my coat collar, fist raised. I closed my eyes, helpless, ready to feel her knuckles make mush of my cheek, but the punch never came.

  I opened my eyes. Eva was crying. Great, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. I think that hurt more than the kick in the ribs.

  She let me go and slumped onto a bar stool. Tentatively, I pulled the stool next to me out and sat.

  ‘I never told you the truth,’ she said. ‘Not all of it, anyway. Why should I? Why did you deserve it?’

  I didn’t say anything, I just waited for her to tell me in her own time.

  ‘It was Lyna who noticed something was wrong with Janto first. She told me even before she told Melodia. He was always the darker one of the witches. Always the one who had to be tempered. Had to be stopped from going too far. From being too black and white. Too fucking brutal. But he was one of them. One of the trio. Fuck, he was one of the people that gave me life in the first place and I loved… I loved him with every part of me, just like I loved the others.’

  I’d never heard Eva talk like this. So clear and direct, but honest. Emotional. Was this what she’d been like before the coven fell?

  ‘Lyna suspected something was up, had me keep an eye on him. It was me who saw him talk to the Red Woman first, though it wasn’t the first time he’d spoken to her, as it turned out. Lyna and Melodia, they thought they could pull him back from the brink. He made them believe they could. But he was lying. He was just biding his time until he was ready to take them out.’

  ‘And they destroyed themselves trying to kill him. Trying to kill me.’

  And yet, in the end, they hadn’t killed him at all. They’d given their life, and it hadn’t mattered one bit.

  ‘No. They didn’t destroy themselves. Not exactly.’

  ‘What?’

  Eva looked at me directly in the eyes. ‘I killed them.’

  The pub seemed to tilt, like the whole world was drunk and queasy and was trying to throw me to the ground.

  ‘I don’t… I don’t understand. I attacked them, and they killed themselves in the fallout of trying to kill me. That’s what happened, that’s what you said happened. And then I woke up next to Derwentwater. That’s what happened.’

  Eva shook her head.

  ‘They tried. They thought they could. It was two against one, but they’d waited too long. They tried to help him, to believe his lies, long enough for him to gain enough power from the Dark Lakes that he was a match for them both. No, more than a match. But Melodia… she was always one for a back-up plan. She knew if they failed that the Magic Eater would walk the earth. So she handed me a spell. A sort of doomsday scenario spell that she and Lyna created. They fought inside the coven. Janto, he had them on their knees. They were done. So I did what I had to. What they told me to do. I detonated the spell. I saw his face the moment before the spell unleashed itself. The confusion. Betrayal. I killed the witches of the Cumbrian Coven. All three died, because I made it happen. And it turns out it was for nothing. I killed my creators for nothing.’

  And there it was.

  The whole thing at last.

  I hadn’t killed my fellow witches at all. Not exactly. A spell they’d created had done the damage, and it was Eva who’d cast it. I didn’t know how to feel about that. It didn’t make any difference to what I’d been back then. I was still the witch gone bad, ready to become a beast. I’d still caused it all.

  ‘Eva...’

  ‘Forget it.’

  She stood and straightened her coat, drying her eyes with her sleeve.

  ‘You should have told me,’ I said. ‘Why did you carry that on your own?’

  Eva didn’t answer, she just walked away. I knew without asking that she didn’t want me to follow.

  ‘But what about him?’ I called after her. ‘What about Janto?’

  ‘I’m leaving the lakes. For good this time. Fuck trying to be a hero all the time. It doesn’t suit me. It never did.’

  Eva grabbed a bottle from another patron’s hand.

  And then she was gone.

  20

  I slumped back into the booth I’d recently been punched out of and helped myself to the pint Eva had abandoned. Eva leaving perfectly good alcohol behind. Now I knew things were serious. I chuckled to myself, but I didn’t feel jolly at all.

  Oh, was I ever royally screwed.

  Eva was gone and what did that leave? Just me. The weak half of a witch with only a smidge more magical ability than a Las Vegas stage magician. Actually, that was overselling myself a bit; I had no idea how to do the sawing a woman in half bit, never mind card tricks.

  Despite my current, bad situation, all I could think about was Eva. About how she’d carried around that secret for so long. That she’d been forced to kill her own creators. They’d told her too, but I don’t suppose that made the act or the aftermath any easier to take. One look at Eva in all the time I’d known her told me it didn’t.

  Eva was a drunk, a drug addict, a don’t-give-a-fuck mess. That’s what my turning to the Dark Lakes had done to her. No wonder she’d warned me that if she ever saw me near that place, she’d kill me. It’s incredible she ever came back to Cumbria at all, really. Ever told me what I was, ever started to train me up again.

  For ten years she’d stayed away, but something in her, something she couldn’t numb with denial or drink, had pulled her back to this place, and back to me.

  I don’t think I could have done what she did. And I don’t think, if I had, that I could ever have come back, or ever trusted again.

  I winced and held my ribs, hoping that Eva’s boot hadn’t cracked one.

  So what now? That was the question. If I really was on my own, then I needed to try and formulate some plan of attack that made a virtue of my limited knowledge, skills, and magical abilities.

  I mulled this as I sipped at my pint. And I came up with nothing. Actually, nothing would have been a start.

  My phone rang and I pulled it out of my coat, hoping against hope to see Eva’s name. I’d answer and she’d tell me, ‘Fuck it, let’s get our friend back, even if it kills us.’ But it wasn’t Eva’s name I saw, it was Annie’s.

  I considered ignoring it, but hey, I seemed to be on a run that day with horrible events, so why not tell Annie that I was calling time on our barely-even-a-relationship, and what’s more, it was all for her own good. I couldn’t allow this to drag on any longer, not with all that was happening.

  I sighed and hit answer. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey, Joe? Are you okay?’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry. Just, this has turned into a real shit of a day.’

  ‘Well, maybe it’s just about to get better again,’ she said, playfully.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  I could hear Millie chattering in the background, and I knew I was doing the right thing. I was bad news. Look at what had happened to Myers, look at what I’d done to Eva. Being with me meant putting yourself at risk, and I couldn’t do that to Annie, let alone a child.

  ‘Joe, what’s wrong? What’s happened?’

  ‘Too much to even get into, and none of it pleasant.’

  ‘You can tell me. I’ve had my own share of the bizarre, remember. I’m here for you.’

  I savoured that for a moment. I was as isolated as I could remember. Myers possessed, Eva walking out, holed up in a pub waiting for the bad guy to turn up, and that bad guy was me.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I have to do this, Annie.’

  ‘Have to do what?’

  There was a muffled bang at her end of the call.


  ‘What was that?’ I asked.

  ‘I think something hit the door.’

  Another muffled bang.

  ‘Let me just check what’s going on,’ she said.

  And then a thought crept into me that turned my blood cold.

  ‘Annie? Annie, listen to me.’

  Another bang.

  ‘Hey, who is that?’ said Annie.

  ‘Annie, get away from that door!’

  All I could do was listen. Listen as the door to Annie’s house crashed open. Listen as Annie screamed in surprise, in fright.

  The call ended.

  It was, of course, far too late to do anything by the time I pulled up outside Annie’s home, stepped out of the Uncanny Wagon and sprinted to the front door of her house. I touched the splintered wood around the broken lock, then pushed the door open and went inside.

  Should I have called the police on my way over? Maybe. But then what would the use have been? It would already have been over by the time they got there, and if Myers had been there, if Janto had been there, no officer who entered would have walked out again.

  ‘Annie?’

  I hadn’t heard Janto during the call, but I knew. He wanted me, and he searched Myers’ mind and found a weak link. He could have come directly to me, but it seemed like the old me liked playing games. And now exactly what I’d feared might happen if I became involved romantically with someone had happened.

  There was blood on the wall in the entrance hall. I reached out and trailed my fingers through it, the red smearing against the cream of the wallpaper.

  The skeleton in the cathedral, it had said it saw death in my future.

  ‘My death?’

  ‘That would be telling. But it’s there. Clear as night. Tragedy. A fall is coming. A fall that stings and shocks.’

  Maybe this is what the skeleton had seen. Maybe this was the death to sting and shock. A woman I liked, and her innocent child. Dead because of me.

  Toys littered the floor, evidence of the innocent caught up in my horror.

  Each room I went into, I expected to find a body. I wondered which I would find first. Adult or child. But I only found one body in Annie’s house, and it was neither of the bodies I was expecting.