Twice Damned: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (Ghosted Book 3)

by David Bussell

  No, I didn’t think so. It was just toying with me; that’s the only reason it hadn’t already pounced. It wanted to make me scared to death, before death actually came calling.

  ‘Whatever you are, this is already getting boring. Just show yourself, but beware: I have enough juice in me to make your head go pop. Understand?’

  A bluff, but I sold it as best I could. From what I could sense, it was a simple attack beast, left to take care of anyone who stumbled into the dead coven. To take care of me. It was the monkey, not the organ grinder.

  ‘Do you hear me, you dumb creature? Show yourself or get the hell out of my house!’

  A growl and the floor shook—

  A wall in front of me exploded—

  A creature erupted into the room, busting through plaster and brick as though it were matchsticks and spit. The thing looked a hell of a lot like the dog-monster Rick Moranis turns into in Ghostbusters; horned, eyes burning with red fire, a mess of sharp teeth.

  It raised its great head, drool dripping from its mouth and splashing onto the floor, mixing with my masters’ spilled blood. I had to choose my next words carefully.

  ‘There, there,’ I said. ‘Good dog…?’

  Yes. Not ideal.

  A thought struck: This monster was created by magic, which meant it must have magic available for me to feed on. I ignored the fact that I should have already been able to sense any magic in my vicinity and tried to reach out to it, to draw in some of its power, but whoever had created this thing was no idiot. Some sort of extra spell had been cast upon the beast that made my mental feelers slide off it every time I reached out, like I was trying to push two magnets of the same pole together. So that was why I hadn’t been able to sense its presence, or its magic. The thing was shielded from me. Whoever had ripped apart my witches and left this booby trap didn’t plan on making things easy.

  The thing took a step forward, a floorboard cracking beneath its heavy, cloven foot.

  ‘Stop! Stay there! Don’t take another step or you’re for it!’

  I raised a hand by way of a threat, a weak cloud of sparks swimming around it, as though at any moment I was about to cast a furious spell upon the damn thing.

  ‘You will tell me your name, and the name of your master, or I will—’

  —I didn’t get to finish the sentence. The creature snorted and began to charge, drool trailing from its mouth.

  I flung the weak defence spell I’d conjured in the creature’s direction as I turned and bolted from the room. I didn’t bother to check for damage, I knew the energy I’d unleashed would have affected the beast about as much as running through a cobweb.

  A second more and the thing was going to be on me; I stopped sharply and threw myself through the open door to my left and into another room, the monster tumbling past and away, unable to suddenly halt its momentum.

  I landed on the floor, shoulder jarring, but I didn’t have time to notice the pain. I rolled onto my knee and turned to the open doorway; I could hear the thing scrabbling to stop and turn. I didn’t have time to run back out the door and head in the other direction, which left me only one option: the window.

  I had to get out of the coven and out of the blind alley; that was my only hope. Either the thing wouldn’t follow me, had been conjured only to stay within the confines of the coven, and I would be safe, or it would follow. If it followed, then my one shot was to make it out of the blind alley and into the street with enough time before it caught up to pull what magic I could from the surroundings to do… whatever I could. I’d have at best seconds to power up. I already knew that wouldn’t be long enough for me to gain enough energy to destroy the thing, but I was out of options.

  The corridor’s floorboards began to crunch as the beast headed back to the doorway. Its giant, snarling head came into view and its burning, hellish eyes looked at me. Looked at me with hunger, desperate to taste my flesh.

  Okay.

  It was now or never.

  This was going to hurt.

  ‘Here, doggy,’ I said, then used the last of my power to throw a chair directly at the thing’s face, hoping to slow it down for even half a second, as I turned, raised my arms up over my head, and threw myself through the window.

  3

  Shards of glass swarmed me like angry bees as I burst from the coven and fell hard onto the cobbles outside. I heard the beast, its roar barely muffled behind me.

  ‘Get up!’ I yelled, and pushed myself to my feet, hands criss-crossed with livid red cuts from the shattered window.

  I’d made it outside, now I just had to make it another twenty metres to the end of the blind alley, to the streets beyond with their wash of background magic that I could pull on. I could do it.

  Maybe I could.

  Had to do it.

  I took a step and my knee almost buckled beneath me. The adrenalin was pumping so hard that I hadn’t realised how hard I came down during my escape. I staggered, but managed to keep just about upright, even if I did step more sideways than forward.

  ‘Come on, you can do it—’ I gritted my teeth and kept moving. I had to make it to the street before the animal took me down. Had to. Had to!

  ‘Well, look at you.’

  The new voice seemed to come at me from all angles and I span around looking for a source, even as I tried to keep moving toward the street.

  ‘Such willpower. Such determination. I find myself admiring you.’

  ‘Show yourself!’ I yelled, though I really hoped they would ignore the request. I was as weak and empty as I’d ever been. A kitten could have taken me down at this point.

  ‘Keep going, Stella. Don’t make it easy for me. I want you to struggle and hope and strive, it makes the inevitable all the sweeter.’

  The voice speaking seemed to change from word to word, making it impossible to pin down. Impossible to try and work out who it might be. I knew every sorcerer, every member of the Uncanny that passed through London; if I heard their true voice, I’d know who it was in an instant. Another trick; more powerful magic used to evade and disorientate.

  ‘Why’ve you done this to my coven? Answer me!’

  ‘No,’ said the voice. ‘But you should know… they screamed for mercy, Stella.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Oh, they begged me for it. Even as I tore strips of flesh from their bones with my teeth. They tasted… weak.’

  I stopped in my pursuit of the street, rage clouding my senses. ‘I’ll find you! Whoever you are, I will find you and I will kill you! I promise you!’

  Mocking laughter swirled around me, only to be replaced by the crashing of the coven wall as the beast leapt through and into the blind alley.

  Bashed-up knee forgotten, I turned and ran, the creature howling and giving chase.

  I wasn’t going to make it.

  I could feel the ground shake beneath me as the animal grew closer with each bound, felt its hot breath begin to beat against the back of my neck. Five metres to go until the end of the blind alley, until the street and its magic welcomed me.

  It would be about four metres too far.

  Out of options once more, I screamed and threw myself to the side, hurtling into the wall, lucky not to bash my brains in against it. The beast roared in surprise and tried to stop, stumbling over itself and rolling out of the alley, screaming in fury at having been so close only to be foiled once again. The creature was vicious and strong, but it wasn’t smart.

  I pushed myself back up and ran for the street. I almost smiled as I stepped out of the blind alley and the dead veil, the absence of magic, was pulled away from me. I inhaled a great gulp of the natural background power of the place as shoppers screamed and sprinted from the insanity that had just intruded onto their day, browsing the Hammersmith high street shops. My every nerve ending tingled as the magic, weak as it was, washed over me and soothed my jangled nerves.

  So sudden was the rush that I closed my eyes, a beatific smile upon my face, and I almost f
orgot about the giant devil dog that was about to feast on my guts. My eyes opened again and I took up an attack pose, legs spread, arms up and outstretched, ready to unleash whatever spell came to me in the moment.

  I didn’t have time to consider my attack.

  The animal was already up and just metres away from me, teeth bared, the fire in its eye sockets roaring with fury. As it leapt toward me I felt myself shake in terror. I always thought, when death came for me, that I’d be able to face it boldly, but here I was, shaking like a child. Shaking and unable to form a clear thought as six or seven half-formed invocations crashed through my mind and the certainty of death seized my heart.

  I closed my eyes and braced myself for the end.

  End of Extract.

  Intrigued? Then click the link below to grab your copy of Familiar Magic today…

  FAMILIAR MAGIC

  DARK LAKES: MAGIC EATER

  Here’s a SNEAK PEEK at the first Dark Lakes book, another series set in the Uncanny Kingdom universe…

  “My name's Joseph Lake, or at least that's what I've decided to call myself. By day I scrub toilets and fix broken light fittings, by night I look into weird stuff. Local hauntings, unexplained disappearances, satanic cabals dancing naked around ancient stone circles; the usual. The Uncanny calls to me like a beacon, and I follow its signal wherever it leads, hoping that one day it will shine a light on who I really am…”

  1

  I suppose this all started when I woke up without a single clue as to who I was, where I was, or why I was bleeding from so many different and interesting places.

  My name’s Joseph Lake, or at the very least that’s what I’ve decided to call myself. Not the most inspiring of choices, I know, but I couldn’t find anything that felt comfortable, so Joseph Lake it was. The fact it stuck had made me wonder if the name meant something; like maybe it was a family member’s name, or a good friend’s, or even a good enemy’s, but I Googled that thing down to a nub and ended up with nothing. Just one of many deader-than-dead ends I’ve chased aimlessly since I woke up next to that lake.

  That was ten years ago. Right now I now found myself stalking the streets of Carlisle in the middle of the night, dressed entirely in black. This may have been my first time following a stranger from a discreet distance, but I’d seen enough movies to know the best colour for a stalking outfit. At first I’d even worn a pair of black shades, though it quickly became apparent that this was not my brightest idea. What with it being the whole night time thing. Yeah, I didn’t feel too smart as I pulled those off and pocketed them, I can tell you.

  The stranger I was following was a homeless woman who looked like a charity shop puked up over a passing Helena Bonham Carter. Or, in other words, like Helena Bonham Carter. She’d been throwing up red flags in my head for the last two months, so a good follow seemed in order, and not the friendly Twitter kind.

  Anyway, back to my origin story: I was found by a fisherman called Joseph (hence the forename), face down and very, completely naked, beside Derwent Water, which is one of several bodies of water that make up an area known as the Lake District in the far north of England. Yup, you got it, from thence derives my surname.

  Actually, that’s a lie, I wasn’t completely naked, I had one sock on. I still have that sock. It’s the only physical evidence I have of my past life and who I really am, though it is difficult to extrapolate much from a sock, other than “I wore socks.” Even Sherlock Holmes would want more to go on than that, unless I skipped Sherlock Holmes and the One-Socked Man.

  It was chilly out and I pulled my long coat tight around myself as I did my best to keep a discreet distance from the tramp, who seemed to be aimlessly wandering here, there, and nowhere in particular. The tramp had been showing up a lot recently; not just hanging out by the cash machine I always passed, or pushing a trolley around town full of tin cans. I hadn’t just happened across her on my way to work. No, she’d been turning up all over, almost as though there was some design to it. I’d look out of my window, she’d be sat across the street. I’d get to work, she’d be in the car park, going through the bins. It felt a lot like she was following me. So I thought, well, two can play at that game.

  So, here I was, following a homeless woman around the streets of Carlisle, Cumbria’s only city, in the middle of the night. No, you have too much time on your hands.

  I’m sure most would brush it her appearance off as coincidence, but when you have my kind of strange (and stunted) history, you tend to see the weird shining out from the ordinary. No, this wasn’t one of those situations where you buy a pair of red trousers and suddenly start noticing people wearing those self-same red trousers everywhere. This woman was following me. I was sure of it. Keeping tabs. For… for reasons yet to be ascertained.

  A little part of me even hoped it was because she recognised me. Maybe I’d been a tramp too, before… well… before whatever happened happened and I wound up unconscious by a lake wearing nothing but a sock and a fully-body bruise. Maybe that’s why it was so difficult to find anything out about my past; perhaps I’d been on the streets for years.

  The tramp stopped and turned, and I ducked into the doorway of a betting shop that stank sharply of piss. For a moment or two it looked like she was going to walk back the way she’d come—that she was going to walk right past me in my not too discreet hidey-hole—but then her head twitched to the left and she darted off down an alley. I counted to five then sprinted after her, coat tails flapping, heart pounding, grinning a lot more than I should have been.

  I didn’t want to bust out of the alleyway and find myself smacking into the back of my quarry, so I slowed down to a walking pace, one hand trailing along the old, crumbling brickwork that lined either side of the narrow crack between two shops.

  And that’s when the first strange thing happened.

  As my fingers trailed across the old bricks, a weird mood dropped over me like a heavy blanket. It was… fear. No, not just fear, fear mixed with hunger, mixed with pain, mixed with desire. Oh God! It felt like it was washing over me again and again, like I was pegged to a beach and the sea waves were battering against me over and over and if I didn’t get away I might just drown in all the intoxicating, terrible feelings of dread and—

  —A scream.

  My hand snapped away from the old bricks of the alleyway and my head dropped back into the here and now.

  There had been a scream; not in my head, not in whatever weird thing that was I’d just experienced, but out here, in the night. Not a fun scream, not a people playing around and being young and boisterous drunk scream. No, this was a blood-curdler. A for-God’s-sake-won’t-someone-please-help-me scream.

  I ran towards the sound.

  As I burst out of the dark of the alley into the comparatively bright square, my foot kicked something heavy and I found myself sprawling and tumbling at speed into the cobbles, my head bouncing painfully as it connected briefly with the ground.

  I lay for a few seconds, getting my breathing under control and trying to decide whether to throw up or not. I went with not. I pushed myself into a sitting position, the world tilting, and gingerly fingered my throbbing temple. I could already feel a lump rising like I was a cartoon cat who’d just been bashed over the head with a frying pan.

  Feeling stupid for not looking where I was going, I peered over to see what I’d tripped over. I was expecting to see a bag of rubbish, or perhaps a tree root pushing up from a crack in the cobbles. What I wasn’t expecting to see was the body of a woman with her throat torn out.

  No, I wasn’t expecting that at all.

  2

  Pain in my head forgotten, I shuffled on my knees to the prone body laid out flat on her back before me. I swallowed, throat dry, a metallic tang invading my mouth that made me want to gag.

  ‘Hey…’ my voice emerged an arid whisper. ‘Are you… are you… okay…?’

  Yes, it was a stupid question, but if I might be forgiven in the circumstances, it’s no
t every day one trips over a violently murdered woman.

  She looked to be in her late thirties, her eyes still wide and staring blankly up into nothing. What was the last thing those eyes saw? At what point had she realised her life was about to be given a violent, painful full stop? I felt a fist of anger clench in my stomach.

  Now I was closer I could see that not all of the blood on the ground was random splashes and sprays, some of it had been placed in deliberate patterns. Shapes that looked almost occult in nature and made me feel strange to look at.

  Had the tramp done this to her? She’d come this way, but surely she hadn’t had enough time; but then where was she? Would she really just run away after stumbling across a dead body?

  Hand shaking, I reached out and tried for a pulse just in case I was wrong. I wasn’t wrong. I shivered, not because of the cold of the night, but because her flesh was already cold, which was, well, wrong. This had happened recently. The blood was still wet, recently spilled. She should still be warm to the touch, or warmer than she was at least. I looked at the ragged tear in her throat, blood still pooling out onto the ground, soaking her long, red hair that was splayed out around her. What could do that? A knife? Or—

  —Another scream.

  Okay, okay, this was too much. This was all much too much. Someone had just been murdered and the killer was somewhere close. This was dark and scary and dangerous and it was stupid to even think about going forward rather than back. I’m no hero, I should have been getting as far away as possible and calling the police so they could get their arses over there to sort things out. So why were my stupid feet carrying me towards the danger?

  Stupid, stupid feet.

  I crossed the little square in record-breaking time and raced down another alleyway. This time it didn’t open up, but turned left, then right, before I finally emerged onto a back street behind a row of shops. As I stepped out I had the forethought to look at the ground, to make sure I didn’t go tumbling over another dead body.