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

by David Bussell

  ‘Of course, of course,’ he said, trying his best to sound professional but sounding pretty rattled.

  We waited impatiently while Viz fetched some research materials from his bookshelf. I heard him leaf through some dry, old pages, then he said, ‘I’m afraid there isn’t much to go on. The Admiralty Citadel was constructed during the Second World War and was occupied by the MoD until they sold it to a third party around ten years ago. Seeing as how that lined up roughly with the emergence of the Clan, I made a note that they might have purchased the property. I don’t have any evidence to back that up though.’

  ‘Neil’s there,’ I said, feeling the brand throb on my palm. ‘That’s where they’ve taken him, I know it is.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Viz, ‘the only question is, how do we get you inside? The place is a fortress.’

  He was not wrong. I’d already taken a minute to Google the Citadel before making the call. I’d seen pictures of a stone building shrouded by creepers and surrounded by high, squared-off hedges. It looked pretty formidable. Impenetrable, even.

  ‘They built the Citadel to protect the military's top brass in the event of a bombing,’ Viz said. ‘It’s heavily fortified, and I have no idea what you’ll find inside, even if you do figure out a way to get in there.’

  Something about the way he said those last words gave me an inkling of an idea. Yes, the Citadel was bomb-proof, and no, we weren’t about to scale its walls and lay siege to the place, but there had to be some other way of gaining entry. A back door, or a secret entrance, or maybe an underground—

  ‘I’ll call you back,’ I blurted, stabbing the phone’s red button.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Gen.

  I held up a finger to shush her then swiped through my contacts and hit Call.

  The phone rang a few times then, ‘What do you want?’ demanded a croaky voice on the other end of the line. It was Gary, my clown shoe of an ex-boss.

  ‘Listen, Gary, this is important—’

  He sucked in a deep breath and I could practically see his pigeon chest puff full of hot air. ‘Abbey, if you’ve called to apologise about what you said last night—’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about that,’ I assured him, taking the wind out of his sails. ‘What I want is to know what you were telling the temp in the cafeteria.’

  ‘What?’ he spluttered.

  ‘The other day, when you were trying to chat her up...’ He started to protest, but I cut him short. ‘You were banging on about a hidden tunnel that ran off the Circle line and led to some army bunker.’

  ‘What’s this about, Abbey?’

  ‘I want you to tell me the name of that bunker.’

  ‘And what if I don’t want to?’

  ‘If you don’t, I’m going to come by the office, stop in at Human Resources, and tell them how you made unwelcome advances on me.’

  ‘That’s not true—’

  ‘Sure it is, at least until I told you I had a boyfriend and you started lumping me with double-shifts and telling me how to dress. And you know what, since I’m popping by, I bet I can get some of the other girls to talk to H.R. too, because this isn’t your first offence, is it, mate? There’s a reason the girls all call you Pepé Le Pew, and it’s not just because you fucking stink.’ I buffed my nails on my jacket and examined my cuticles. ‘So, what do you say, Gazza? Wanna help me out?’

  I heard a fit of coughing followed by a long pause, then he finally spoke. ‘Fine. Whatever. The bunker’s called the Admiralty Citadel. Happy now?’

  ‘Very.’

  I hung up the call and span around to Gen.

  ‘I know how we can get in there,’ I said. ‘There’s a tunnel that connects the bunker to the Underground network. ‘We’ll find our way in there, bust inside, and come up right under their noses.’

  Gendith didn’t seem so sure. ‘We don’t have any schematics of the building, and there’s no telling how many vampires could be holed up there. This is the sort of thing you plan for, Abbey. Tactically speaking, running this mission now makes no sense.’

  I shot her a cold look. ‘Ever since I got this brand, you’ve been telling me I don’t have what it takes to be the Nightstalker, now I find you a hive of vampires and you go gunshy? Are we in this fight or not?’

  My phone rang. It was Viz. ‘Where are we at?’ he asked.

  I answered the call on speakerphone. ‘I’ve found us a way in,’ I told him, ‘and I’m going to take it.’

  ‘I see,’ he replied. ‘And Gendith, does she approve of this course of action?’

  I looked to Gen, who wavered on an answer. Finally, she bobbed her head. ‘Yes. Okay. Let’s do this.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Viz. ‘But listen, if you’re going to do this, you’ll have to do it as a team. The only way the two of you will survive that Citadel is by working together. No more squabbles. No more pettiness or hurt feelings. You must put aside your differences and combine your efforts to succeed.’

  He was right, even if it did feel an awful lot like mansplaining.

  I turned to Gen. ‘Come on then, what do you say? Girl power?’

  I held up a hand for a high five, but once again it remained un-fived.

  Finally, she made a long, frustrated groan and gave me some skin.

  ‘Bloodsuckers beware,’ she said.

  30

  Using my LPO pass, which had yet to be cancelled, we blagged our way into Westminster Underground before the shutters opened for the day.

  Gendith followed as I made my way speedily through the ticket barriers and down the steps to the Circle Line. The station was bare except for a skeleton crew of staff sipping coffees from a shared thermos, readying themselves for the day ahead.

  We arrived on the eastbound platform, which was quiet and chilly, like a murder scene waiting on a homicide. We walked to the platform’s end and stopped at the mouth of the tunnel next to a lightning bolt sign that warned, NO PASSENGERS BEYOND THIS POINT.

  ‘This is the way,’ I said, flicking on a torch that Viz had given me.

  I aimed an ear into the tunnel and listened. All was silent. I held up a hand to check for a breeze, but the tunnel was still and didn’t give off the telltale push of air that warns of an oncoming train. I stared into the maw of the tunnel, a great grey snake, coiled beneath the city. The beam of my torch shone pale and feeble, lost in the beast’s insides. Swallowed whole.

  I sucked down a steadying breath then stepped off the ramp at the end of the platform and into the tunnel beyond. Gen followed, and our footfalls echoed off the shaft’s curved wall like ghostly cries. Soon we’d left the safety of the platform behind completely. The real world was lost to us now. Now it was just the two of us in the pressing, claustrophobic darkness, a couple of foolhardy adventurers with nothing more than a fragile lance of torchlight to guide us.

  Desperate to bring some warmth to our grim surroundings, I struck up a conversation. ‘So what exactly goes down if the baddies manage to pull this thing off?’ I whispered.

  ‘Pull what off?’ asked Gen.

  ‘Their whole resurrection scheme. If the vamps get the blood they need to restore their master to full power, what then?’

  ‘Oh, you know, the Seven Seals crack open, crows blacken the sky, the rivers turn to blood. Basically The End Times: Judas Iscariot and his children, kicking in the doors of heaven and laying waste to paradise.’

  I laughed, I’m not sure why exactly. ‘Okay, no pressure then.’

  We journeyed deeper into the city’s twisting, subterranean network until we rounded a bend and I saw a passageway branching off from the main tunnel. It was barricaded though, cut off by a muscular metal gate decorated with a stern NO ENTRY sign.

  ‘This must be the passage to the Citadel,’ I said.

  I grabbed the gate’s iron bars and tried to wrench it free. It wouldn’t budge, not even an inch. The entrance was welded shut. I rolled up my sleeves and had another go, but even after I saw cords standing up on my
forearms like knotted garden hose, nothing gave. Gen stepped in to assist me, but there was no shifting the thing, even with the two of us working together.

  So much for Vizael’s parting advice. Girl power, my arse.

  ‘Can’t you use your magic to bust it open?’ I asked.

  ‘Magic?’ Gen replied.

  ‘Like you did with those force fields back in the alley.’

  She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t work like that. I can only manipulate sunlight, and there’s not much of that down here.’

  I heard a noise. A buzzing sound echoed down the tunnel.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘A train?’ Gen suggested.

  The buzzing noise was getting louder. Shit, what now? I thought about pressing myself to the wall to evade the oncoming train, but it wouldn’t have done any good, the tunnel was too tight.

  ‘Wait a second,’ said Gen, ‘that’s not a train.’

  I swung the torch down the tunnel and picked up some movement ahead.

  Something flitted through the air. Some tiny creature. I took it for a stray bird at first, but it turned out to be something far more exotic. It was a miniature woman, around six inches tall, elfin-featured, and borne upon a pair of gossamer-thin butterfly wings.

  ‘Is that… a fairy?’ I asked.

  ‘Yep,’ Gen replied.

  As I watched in rapt silence, the fairy performed a lavish aerial display, spiralling through the tunnel like a shooting star, leaving a trail of glitter in her wake. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Sure, I’d seen vampires and angels and werewolves and gnomes already, but a real-life, no-fucking-around fairy?

  The creature performed a couple of graceful loop-the-loops then hovered just beyond my reach, regarding me with her dewy brown eyes. I was utterly hypnotised. It was as though she were staring into my very soul. I outstretched an arm, inviting her to take a seat on my palm, but just as she was about to set down, Gendith struck out a hand and seized the fairy around the waist.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  Just then, Gen’s diminutive captive hissed and bared a mouthful of razor-sharp fangs.

  ‘What the hell?’ I cried, as the demonic fairy seethed and spat, thrashing around in the angel’s grasp.

  In the blink of an eye, the creature had transformed from Tinkerbell to a rabid, snarling animal, screaming like an untapped firehose full of scalded babies.

  ‘Vermin,’ said Gen, tightening her grip. ‘Lurking beneath the City like rats.’

  ‘But she was so cute!’

  ‘There’s nothing cute about them. Have you any idea how these little monsters reproduce?’

  ‘Well, given that up until a couple of days ago I thought fairies belonged on Christmas trees, I’m going to say no.’

  Gen squeezed and the fairy rasped in pain. ‘They lay eggs,’ she explained, ‘on the surface. Not in nests, but in the safest, warmest places they can find.’

  ‘What, like heating ducts?’

  ‘Like people.’ She gave me a moment to let that sink in. ‘Homeless people usually, asleep, out in the open. The fairy lays its eggs inside of them—you don’t need to know how—and then they wait.’

  ‘Wait for what?’

  ‘The egg has an effect on the victim. Puts thoughts in his head. Soon enough, he gets an idea that he needs to go underground, so he heads into the sewers, and that’s where it happens.’

  ‘He lays the egg?’

  ‘No,’ she said, tightening her grip on the fairy to such a degree that her eyes bugged from her perfect little skull. ‘The victim doesn’t give birth, at least not like that. The egg hatches inside them and its contents chew their way out.’

  I felt a wave of nausea wash over me. ‘That’s… I mean, Jesus wept.’

  ‘A fresh batch of monsters, bursting from their host’s stomach and leaving his husk to rot, only so they can grow up, lay more eggs, and repeat the whole, sick cycle.’

  Gen brought the fairy to her face, opened her mouth, and bit down, tearing the creature in half.

  ‘What the fuck!’ I cried. ‘Couldn’t you have just stamped on it or something?’

  Gen finished chewing and swallowed. ‘I didn’t do that just to kill it. I did it in preparation for what comes next. Fairies are full of magic. Eating them gives us a boost of power, like a magical energy drink.’

  ‘Right. Okay. Wait, did you say “us”?’

  She held out the remains of the fairy and gave me a nod. ‘Tuck in.’

  ‘Oh no. No way. I’m not touching that.’

  I felt a breeze on my face as wind streamed through the tunnel, clutching scattered pieces of rubbish and twirling them in the air.

  A train.

  There was no mistaking it this time.

  I swung my head around, frantically looking for a way out, but there was no chance of outrunning the oncoming train. No chance of stepping aside. The only way we were going to survive it was by busting through that metal gate and getting into the safety of the passageway beyond.

  I grabbed a metal bar and pulled at the gate with all my might, but the result was the same as before. I just didn’t have the strength.

  ‘Are you going to help or not?’ I yelled at my partner.

  ‘I’m trying to,’ Gen replied, waggling the rest of the fairy at me.

  I saw lights sweep around the tunnel ahead and felt the ground beneath me vibrate. ‘Please!’ I begged.

  ‘If you eat this, you’ll have that thing down in no time,’ Gen assured me.

  I heard the train tracks rattle as the rolling stock rounded the bend. Shivers rippled across my body as the tunnel shook, loosening dust from above.

  ‘Jesus, fine!’

  I turned to Gen and snatched the remains of the fairy from her. ‘You know, you really don’t act much like an angel.’

  She gave me what I can only describe as a very non-saintly grin. ‘No, I do not.’

  I sank my teeth into fairy meat and swallowed it down like I was trying to win a Bushtucker Trial.

  An awful lot had happened in the last couple of days. I’d found out God was real, donated blood to a vampire, and now I’d chowed down on a fairy. Funny how these things go sometimes. To think, it was only a little while ago that I thought I was missing out on new experiences by not going to university.

  The effect of the fairy kicked in quick and hard. At first I felt hot—uncomfortably so—but then that shifted as time slowed down and the buzz really hit me. Bells rang in my ears. Sparks danced upon the hairs on the back of my arms. Raw power flushed through my system, invigorating, thrilling. My brand went supernova and turned retina-searingly bright. I bunched my hand into a fist to dim the glare, but rays of light razored between my fingers, burning like flaming swords. I felt like I could sprint a mile in lead boots. Burn holes through brick walls with my eyes. Punch my way to China.

  The train roared towards us, deafening, furious, sounding its horn and applying its squealing brakes, but it was too late to stop.

  I grabbed the welded-shut iron gate with one hand and tore it off its hinges like it was nothing.

  31

  We threw ourselves into the passageway and the train hurtled past, skimming our heels as it flew by.

  When Gen climbed to her feet, she was laughing. Hysterically. A full-throated belly laugh. It was a sound I’d scarcely imagined possible.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I demanded, dusting myself down.

  She wiped a tear from her eye. ‘Lighten up,’ she said. ‘This is the good part. We made it into their nest. Now we go vampire killing.’

  I could have done without that little pantomime back there, but I had to admit, I did feel pretty amped. The fairy magic burned hot inside me still, pumping me up like a gallon of steroids chased by a bucket of Red Bull. I don’t know that I found the situation quite as amusing as Gen did, but wiping out a hive of vampires did sound like a pretty good way to let off some steam.

  ‘Let’s finish this,’ I said, drawing my dag
ger and filling the passageway with its flickering blue glow.

  Gen produced her morning star, drew its chain taut, and performed a quick flurry of whips and spins. Having warmed herself up, she nodded and we set off down the corridor, into the lion’s den.

  The crumbling passageway was dark and sinister, and infused with a sickly-sweet butcher shop odour.

  ‘This is definitely the way,’ said Gen, nostrils twitching.

  I checked the time. We had fifteen minutes until sunrise. A quarter-hour to save my boyfriend's life. I prayed we were on time. Any moment now, night would turn to morning, and Neil would be done for.

  We carried on into the bunker proper, following the source of the smell down several winding corridors until we reached a set of double doors leading to the Citadel’s inner sanctum.

  It wasn’t what I’d expected at all.

  Instead of a dingy chamber decorated with candles and a pentagram painted in blood, I found an antiseptic room with green tiled walls. I had to keep reminding myself that we weren’t dealing with chanting cultists dressed in robes and brandishing wavy knives and upside down crosses. Vampires were surgical, white collar killers. It was only fitting that their sacrifice site looked more like an operating theatre than the setting of a black mass.

  The room was bright. Bright enough to perform brain surgery by. Blazing overhead lamps illuminated stainless steel trolleys lined with sterile surgical implements, and in the centre of it all, an aluminium table supported a semi-naked man attached to breathing apparatus.

  ‘Neil!’ I cried, dashing to his side and wrapping my arms around him. He didn’t respond, he just lay there with his eyes shut, stock still. ‘What did they do to him?’ Tears stung my eyes, but when I pressed my ear to his chest, I was grateful to hear the soft beat of his heart.

  ‘He’s alive but sedated,’ said Gen, pointing to the IV drip in his arm.

  Neil looked so fragile on that cold metal counter, dressed in his boxer shorts, his ribcage showing through his pale white chest. Surrounding him was an inch-deep gutter that ran the perimeter of the table. The gutter lead to a drain that connected to a downpipe, which presumably funnelled vital fluids into the blood viaduct that Judas had told me about. I was pleased to see that the table was spotlessly clean, unmarked by even a drop of blood.