Sanctified: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (Branded Book 1)

by David Bussell

  ‘My boyfriend was taken,’ I told him. ‘By your lot.’

  ‘Not my lot, please and thank you,’ Carlo corrected. ‘I parted ways with those scumbags a long time ago. I’m a lone agent now.’

  ‘I don’t care. You’re going to tell me where they’ve taken my man or no amount of immunity is going to save you from this knife, or fork, or any other utensil I choose to stick you with.’

  Again, a couple of heads turned.

  ‘Alright, alright, dial it down a bit, will you?’ Carlo whispered. ‘I’m here to help. Jesus. Just tell me what they looked like. Give me something to go on and I’ll be only too happy to point you in the right direction.’

  ‘The man we’re looking for had a birthmark on his face,’ I told him.

  Carlo’s eyebrows shot up. ‘One of those gross lumpy purple ones?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Big fat lad?’ he asked, puffing out his cheeks and bracketing his sides with his arms.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Ah, now him I do know.’ He pulled out a pen and scribbled an address on the back of a paper napkin.

  I went to take it, but he snatched it back.

  ‘When do I get paid?’ he asked, returning the pen to his pocket.

  ‘Paid?’

  Carlo turned to Gen. ‘You mean you didn’t tell her?’

  Gen stared into her plate of bubble and squeak.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘What didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Blood,’ said Carlo. ‘When I rat on the Clan, I get blood. Gossip for you, a lovely bit of claret for me.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Just a little nibble,’ replied Carlo, grinning.

  I stared slack-jawed at him, then to Gen who nodded towards Carlo in a, Go on then way.

  ‘Yeah, no, not happening, sorry. Gen, give him some blood and let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Angel blood?’ said Carlo, making a face. ‘I might as well drink bleach.’

  ‘It’s true,’ said Gen, ‘my blood would kill him outright.’

  The two of them stared at me across the table. ‘No chance. I’m not giving him my blood, not even a little bit.’

  ‘It’s in the covenant,’ said Gen.

  ‘I don’t care what weird promises you’ve made to this freak, I’m not letting a vampire chew on my neck. And you really should have let me in on that part of the arrangement before we got here.’

  ‘You would have said no,’ she replied.

  ‘No fucking shit I would have, because I’m not mental.’

  Carlo sighed and screwed up the napkin. ‘Then if you don’t mind, ladies, I have to feed before sunrise or I’ll… well, starve to death.’

  He stood up and smoothed down his denim waistcoat.

  ‘Abbey,’ said Gen, ‘we need that information. That’s our lead. Without it, Neil is dead. Do you understand that? He’s dead. It’s up to you.’

  I stood and walked away, grunted and walked back, teeth clenched. ‘Okay, wait,’ I said. ‘How much blood are we talking?’

  Carlo tried to stay poker-faced, but I could make out a smile quirking his lips. He sat back down. ‘Less than you’d give the doctor for a routine check-up,’ he replied. ‘I wouldn’t ask, but without your kind donation I’d have to resort to less… savoury means.’

  I sighed, closed my eyes, and saw Neil smiling back at me. Shit.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, reluctantly. ‘Fine. You’ve got a deal.’

  Gen relaxed as Carlo unbunched the napkin and slid it across the table to me.

  I took it. The address he’d written was some place in Kensington I’d never heard of. ‘You’re telling me that if we go to this place, we’ll find Neil?’

  ‘I can’t say for sure,’ Carlo replied. ‘He could be there, or he could have been passed up the chain. That’s if he isn’t already dea—’

  ‘In any case,’ Gen cut in, ‘it's the best and only lead we have right now.’

  I grunted, placed some cash on the table, and tugged on my jacket. ‘Alright then,’ I said. ‘How do we do this?’

  Carlo grinned. ‘This way, madame.’

  Then he led me outside to an alleyway untroubled by lamp light or casual passers-by.

  28

  Giving Carlo his donation was like losing my virginity: one little prick and it was gone. Just like losing my virginity, the experience also meant a lot more to him than it did to me. It turned out that the blood of the Nightstalker was like crack to Carlo, a powerful, irresistible narcotic. By the time his needle-like fangs withdrew from my wrist, his breathing was shallow, his pupils the size of saucers. The man was high as a kite.

  ‘Pleasure doing business with you,’ he purred, his spine sliding down the alley wall until he was left squatting among the sour relics of week-old takeaways.

  I watched as Carlo’s eyes rolled back into his skull. His jaw went slack and drool ran down his chin, pooling on the dirty ground. It was a sorry sight to behold, watching the junkie get his fix. I had to look away. I never thought I’d feel sorry for one of those bloodsucking freaks, but I actually left that alleyway feeling bad for the guy. Sympathy for the devil, and all that.

  ‘I’m not going to catch anything, am I?’ I asked Gen, spitting on the pin pricks in my wrist and giving them a rub.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘The Sanctified one is immune to all vampiric diseases.’

  ‘What about turning into one of them?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s not how it works, but you needn’t worry, the brand gives you immunity to that too.’

  Good to know. I checked my phone. It had gone five and was edging its way to half past. ‘Come on,’ I told Gendith. ‘We’d better get going.’

  We hailed another cab, this time to Kensington.

  The night had grown long, very long, and I was sick and tired of having to ping pong all over the map. Honestly, I’d seen more of London in a single evening than I had the whole time I’d lived there.

  We’d already been subjected to a half hour of Heart FM before the cab finally rolled into Kensington. I wiped some condensation from the window beside me and peered out at our surroundings. The streets of Kensington may not be paved in gold, but in terms of real estate, they might as well be. Everywhere I looked I saw money: brightly lit shops full of fancy hats and pricey doo-dads. The kind of places that only the cream of society have a need for. A playground for visiting sheikhs to run up bills on their black credit cards. A haven for the chinless, toffee-nosed, tax-dodging aristocracy.

  We took a couple of corners and parked up next to a grand, red brick mansion block with a view over a well-tended communal garden.

  ‘You think Neil’s in there?’ I asked, after the cab had left us.

  ‘Let’s find out, shall we?’

  I went to push past her, but she barred my way.

  ‘This time we do it my way,’ she insisted. ‘No more charging into places like an angry bull.’

  I nodded, remembering what had happened when I stepped in front of Pinstripe’s Mercedes.

  ‘Very well,’ Gen replied, then checked the coast was clear, put a finger to her lips and gestured for me to follow her lead.

  She effortlessly hopped a wrought iron fence and took a circuitous route through the mansion block’s front garden, avoiding the motion detectors that triggered the building’s floodlights. Watching her go was like watching a puma—a greased puma—slicing through the veld.

  I shadowed her with as much grace as I could muster, and together we snuck into the mansion block’s front porch.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Gen whispered.

  ‘Of course I am,’ I shot back, though my stomach was doing cartwheels.

  ‘The man we’re going after won’t give us what we want willingly, you understand that, right? This isn’t going to be like putting the squeeze on the tailor. Vampires are tough. They can take a lot of pain.’

  ‘I get it.’

  ‘So you’re willing to do whatever it takes to get the information we need?’
/>   Her meaning was clear, and sounded all the more sinister coming from an angel.

  ‘They took my boyfriend, Gen. If I need to staple his testicles to his forehead, that’s what’s going to happen.’

  Gen dipped inside the front pocket of the gilet she was wearing and produced a leather wallet full of small, complicated-looking tools. She selected a couple of slim metal picks from her collection and inserted them into the door’s keyhole, jiggling them to and fro. Moments later, I heard a click, and the door was undone.

  I followed Gen across a mosaic floor, then onto the hall’s runner carpet and up a flight of stairs. We crept on to the next floor until we reached a door with a number matching the address on our napkin, then I watched Gen jimmy it open with as much ease as the first.

  The lights were off, but I could hear the soft burble of a television coming from an adjoining room. I decided to take the lead, slowly drawing my dagger from its sheath and tiptoeing past Gen in the direction of the next room. On my way, I passed a beautiful cast iron fireplace in its original cornice, and a generously-sized sash window overlooking a private garden below. All of this—all of this luxury, all of this privilege—stolen from under our noses. My fingers tightened on the handle of the dagger, a white-knuckle death grip.

  I angled my head around the door frame of the TV room and took a peek inside. Sat in the centre of the darkened space was a plush leather armchair facing a giant flatscreen TV, and in that chair I saw a man, sat watching a film. Not a horror film, as you might expect, but a documentary on Minimalism. Something you might find on Netflix, add to your list with the best of intentions, then never actually get around to watching. I couldn’t believe it. This gross fucker, surrounded by all of his wealth, all of his expensive material possessions, was sat there schooling himself on the joy of having less.

  Holding my breath, I moved inside the room, padding across the polished hardwood floor, creeping towards the chair. I heard a sniffing sound and saw the nostrils of the chair’s occupant twitch. He turned to look over his shoulder, but before he could rotate his head fully, I slipped the blade under his chin and brought its edge to the wattle of his fat throat.

  ‘Make a noise and you go from being undead to dead-dead.’

  Gen switched off the TV and dragged a lamp stand across the room, aiming it at his face before turning on its hot bright light.

  I could see the man clearly now. See the fangs in his mouth. See the livid purple mark on his cheek. This was our guy.

  Birthmark was fat as a well-fed tick. The swollen stain that covered half his face stood proud of his skin like a bubble of blood fit to burst.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ I breathed in his ear.

  He nodded ever so slightly, setting his jowls a-jiggle.

  ‘Then you know what you took from me,’ I said, ‘and you can probably guess what I’m going to do to you if I don’t get him back.’

  He nodded again.

  ‘Good. So let’s talk.’

  ‘He’s not here,’ he whispered.

  ‘Then where is he?’

  He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed up beneath his three chins, scraping the edge of the blade and making a nasty rasping sound. ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said.

  Gen pushed the lamp closer to his face, dazzling him, making him sweat. Up close and personal now, I saw tiny beads of blood ooze through the pores of his fat forehead.

  ‘Tell us where you took him,’ demanded Gen.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Wrong answer.’ Gen lifted up a foot and ground the heel of her boot into the fat man’s groin.

  Birthmark squirmed and cried out in pain, but I clapped a hand over his puffy fish lips, stifling the noise.

  ‘Why don’t we try that again?’ suggested Gen, placing her foot back on the floor. ‘The boy you took, where is he now?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said. ‘If I say anything I’m a dead man.’

  Gen picked up the TV remote and turned up the volume to mask the sound of what was to come. ‘You did this to yourself,’ she said, shrugging.

  What followed was the most savage beating I’d ever witnessed.

  Layers of blubber rippled and danced as Gen batted the fat vamp about the place, bringing to mind a waterbed being subjected to a vigorous bone-sesh. By the time Gen was finished punishing the guy, his downstairs neighbours must have thought he’d turned his front room into a mosh pit.

  ‘Please,’ he begged, splashed across the parquet floor, broken and bloody. ‘Please... stop.’

  I looked down at the sorry bastard, lying there like a beached beluga whale. He was ugly enough before Gen had laid into him, but now he was grotesque. His eyes were swollen over with two purple blooms that matched his birthmark, and a stream of bloody spit drooled from his broken jaw.

  From between his split lips came a pitiful moan. ‘Please…’ he begged.

  Gen wiped some blood from her knuckles. ‘Just tell me where he is and this stops.’

  ‘Can’t…’ he wheezed, ‘they’ll… kill me.’

  Despite the ferocious beating he’d taken, he still wouldn’t squeal.

  ‘And what do you think I’ll do?’ Gen raised a fist, ready to go at him some more, but now it was my turn to bar her way.

  ‘Let me try,’ I whispered.

  I straddled Birthmark’s great, fat body, and set my rear down on his stomach.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ I sighed, resting my elbows on his copious man bosoms. ‘I sympathise, I really do. It’s like you’re opening an umbrella in a phone booth, right?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he groaned.

  ‘I mean, whichever way you turn, you get it in the eye.’ I placed my free hand on his shoulder. ‘Thing is, with your lot, you have a chance. You’ve got money, you can go underground, drop off the map. With me, there’s no running.’ I showed him the brand on my palm. ‘Do you know what I did before I got this?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I worked in a lost property office,’ I told him. ‘The big one on Baker Street. You know it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he wheezed. ‘Saw it on... BuzzFeed.’

  ‘That’s the one. And it’s all true you know? You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff that made its way to us—prams, stuffed animals, telescopes—all kinds of junk. Most of it found a home eventually, either the owner would show up, or we’d sell it on, or auction it to the highest bidder.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘I’m getting to that,’ I replied. ‘Now where was I? Oh yeah, the rest of the junk. The stuff we couldn’t find a home for. That would just sit there in the basement, collecting dust, at least for a few months.’ I tapped him on the shoulder. ‘I bet you’re wondering what happened to it after that, aren’t you? What we did with the things no one wanted.’

  He grimaced, which I took for a yes.

  ‘We destroyed them,’ I explained. ‘Stuck them in a great big crusher and flattened the lot. Because that’s what we do with useless things. We get rid of them.’

  I leaned in close enough that he could feel my breath on his face. Close enough that I could smell his aftershave failing to mask the stench of his leaking bladder.

  ‘Are you catching my drift here?’ I asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘So what’s it going to be, big man? Are you going to tell me where Neil is, or do I crush you like an unclaimed dildo?’

  ‘Fuck you,’ he croaked.

  ‘What’s that now?’ I replied, using my dagger to draw a thin red line across his jugular.

  ‘I said, fuck y—’ The vampire’s flabby jaw clenched as I pressed the tip of the dagger against his neck, the point slowly sliding into his skin.

  ‘The Admiralty Citadel!’ he cried.

  ‘Come again?’

  Gen leaned in. ‘Did you say the Admiralty Citadel?’ He nodded and Gen turned to me. ‘It’s an old Ministry of Defence building near St. James’ Park.’ She turned back to our prisoner. ‘You’re
telling us that the Citadel is where they’re keeping Neil?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Or what’s left of him anyway.’

  ‘What did you just say?’ I asked, returning the point of the dagger to his neck.

  ‘Your boyfriend is as good as dead,’ he hissed, his face lit with fury. ‘You don’t stand a chance of getting inside the Citadel. You never did and you never will. Because you’re weak. Weak little humans. Nothing but blood bags for the master. Cattle to be cull—’

  He didn’t get to finish his sentence on account of me plunging my dagger into his heart and turning him into a hill of ash.

  ‘Jesus!’ cried Gen, taken by surprise.

  ‘What, I should’ve left him alive? This is what we do, right? This is why I was given this brand. To kill vampires.’

  She brushed some ash from the sleeve of her hoodie, placed her hands on her hips, and smiled.

  ‘Damn, girl, maybe you’ve got some Nightstalker in you after all.’

  29

  It was a touch shy of seven in the morning and the sun was due to come up in just over an hour. Thank God it was winter and the nights were long, because there was still so much left to do.

  Having snuck out of Birthmark’s flat, Gendith insisted we contact Vizael and bring him up to speed with where we were at. Since the angels’ gas tower base was way across the other side of town and Neil was about to be very dead, she had to deliver the news by phone.

  ‘Give me your mobile,’ she insisted.

  I handed it over. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask, Gen, why don’t you have a phone of your own?’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ she replied, ‘it’s just cheaper to use yours.’

  Within a couple of rings, Viz picked up and we huddled around the phone, the glow of its screen illuminating our faces like a campfire. After a frustrating few minutes of trying to explain to the old man how to put the call on speakerphone, we were able to fill him in on the bullet points of what he’d missed.

  ‘Judas is alive?’ he said, flabbergasted.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, not for the first time, ‘but we can’t get stuck on that right now. We need to find a way into the Citadel so we can rescue Neil.’