by Helen Adams
BOSS FIGHT
by
Helen Adams
Copyright © 2017 Helen Adams
‘Pest control. With a sword.”
Most people don’t know that they’re on the menu; to the monsters who shroud themselves in their own aura to make a human disguise, they’re mobile snacks. Only modern-day berserkers – skilled fighters with nothing but a sword and a bad attitude – can stand between them. And when they do, life gets… interesting.
Daphne McArthur has a simple life: - eat, sleep, kill trolls, repeat. She might be a hard-faced librarian between the hours of nine to five, but out of work she’s a berserker who’s determined to have it all – protect her town and date the hot boyfriend who knows nothing about her secret life.
When she’s cornered by a pair of angry golems, she puts them down. So far, so normal; but investigating the attack soon turns her world on its head, particularly when she meets the devastating one-night stand that she’s spent years trying to forget. And when first her boyfriend, and then her best friend, are sucked into her problems, Daphne has to do what a berserker does best – fight.
DEDICATIONS
This book is dedicated to the small team of people who gave me the support I needed to finally get this damned thing finished. Writing a book – at least the first draft – is comparatively easy; editing it to a standard worthy of publication is a more difficult beast.
So my thanks go to the following people, for their feedback, their suggestions, and their patience:-
Becky Munday
Matt Mundy, Mark Holman-Lisney, Tamsin Eagle, Luke Hadley
A big shout-out to Samantha Thomas for the cover artwork. Special thanks go to Sue and Steve Rollins.
Finally, thanks to the kind people who offered me technical assistance and advice on formatting!
A GUIDE TO PRONUNCIATION
There are a few words that might trip your tongue:-
VAENGRJARL – ven-gur-ya-rel
TAUFRKYN – tau-fer-kin
LORL – lor-al
But it’s important to remember – you’re the reader, so read it any damn way you like, you sexy beasts.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATIONS
A GUIDE TO PRONUNCIATION
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
EPILOGUE k12
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ONE
I snatched a look at my watch and put on an extra burst of speed, calf muscles burning as I rushed for the bus. I couldn’t afford to be late for work again. I was an assistant at the local town library, but the way things were run, you’d think it was a military operation.
As I hurried past a playground – barely noticing the familiar broken swings, rusting roundabout and litter – my duffel slipped, threatening to take my sports bag down. I hoisted them both back onto my shoulder with a muttered curse.
“Oy, princess! Got a fag?”
I glanced behind me, uneasy. Three lads slouched along about a hundred feet back, puffed up jackets, baseball caps and jeans sagging around their arses. Great. The youth of Britain at its finest.
“Sorry, don’t smoke,” I called back.
On one side the park was deserted; on the other, rank, overgrown bushes crowded the path. I was alone apart from these clowns.
“Just one?” the teenager wheedled. I ignored him.
When I looked again they’d closed the gap. They wouldn’t mug me in broad daylight… right? Right? Just keep walking.
I clung to that belief until a rough hand landed on my shoulder. I spun – bags falling, heart kicking against my ribs – to find a knife in my face.
In the space of a blink, adrenaline turned to cold clarity. As I looked between each would-be mugger their outlines crackled and fizzed, like a TV channel that hadn’t been properly tuned, and I saw through their magical disguise. The human faces fell away.
They were all over six feet tall and built like tanks. Their features were squat and pig-like with vicious tusks, squinting eyes and coarse hair. Juvenile trolls: - not my first rodeo.
I looked at the boys. They looked at me. Close up, we recognised each other for who we really were.
“Oh shit –” one kid, an ugly bastard with a thick ring through his nose, squealed as he realised his mistake. He held the knife. It wavered.
“Hello, boys!” I interrupted, pasting a bright smile on my face. I’d learned long ago that the peppier you were, the more frightened they became. “You’re not from this part of town, are you?”
“Just shut up and give us your money,” Nose Ring ordered.
Tsk. They had no manners these days or, well, any day.
“Seems like you need a refresher course on the pecking order around here,” I advised, letting a note of reproach creep into my voice. They were psyching themselves up to attack but I had some time.
“Gimme your handbag and we won’t kill you,” the second troll demanded. He had hairy ears, thick sheaves sticking from each misshapen shell.
“You thought I was just another helpless dewdrop, didn’t you?” I asked, still bright and breezy. ‘Dewdrop’ was a faerie word that meant ‘innocent’; basically, dinner. “You thought I couldn’t see through the aura you use to pass as human?”
“I think you can shut the fuck up and hand over your valuables,” Hairy Ears growled.
The only thing I was going to hand them was their dignity. On a plate.
“You do know what I am, right?” I asked. I’d thought they’d caught on already, but maybe they’d never heard of us. Stranger things had happened. “Your folks sat you down when you were just little piglets and told you scary stories about the big, bad berserkers?”
Centuries ago Viking berserkers had gone into battle wearing only bearskins and a temper, but times had changed. Now we came in all sorts of flavours. The outer package had changed but the ethos remained – a sword, a bad attitude, and nothing else.
“Shut the fuck –”
I laughed. “Let me give you a refresher course.” I stepped forward. They stepped back.
I heard a frantic whirring. We all looked as dozens of creatures – small, about the size and shape of a squirrel, with translucent dragonfly wings and long tail feathers – landed on the fence beside us. Their fur rippled a beautiful mix of rainbow colours. The local wildlife, come to watch me play.
The trolls shifted from foot to foot. They were anxious but too damned stupid to know when they should run away.
“You’re a berserker,” the second troll snarled, thick lips curling back over his tusks. “I fucking hate you!”
Give the lad a prize. We were finally on the same page.
“And I hate trolls,” I replied, all sweet smiles, “but hey, we have to get along, right?”
“Leave it,” the third troll whined. He was a warty runt, ugly even for trolls. “She ain’t worth the hassle!”
I drew my fist back and punched Runt Boy in the face. There was a satisfying crunch as his nose shattered. He reeled away, clutching his face. Well, I had warned him.
The others rushed me, driving in from the left and right. I shimmied past with ease – honestly, what kind o
f fighting skills were troll parents teaching their kids? – and batted the knife away.
A couple of hard kicks from a well-placed trainer (I saved the heels for work) had the trolls staggering. I followed up with a classic one-two punch, then watched with vicious satisfaction as they writhed on the ground. Thanks to these idiots, the chances of getting to work on time were now slim to non-existent.
“This could go one of two ways,” I growled. “You take your buddies and run, or I carry on beating the shit out of you. Just hurry up and choose, OK? I’ve got a bus to catch.”
“You don’t scare us –”
“Right, I don’t scare you so much that your mate’s just pissed himself.”
I watched as the troll teenagers – beaten and bruised – grabbed their friend and shambled back the way they’d come. If I saw them around here again I wouldn’t go so easy.
The flying squirrel-things clapped tiny paws together in applause, crooning their appreciation. I grinned. They were taufrkyn, creatures with an aura so dense that dewdrops couldn’t see them at all.
The way I understood it, every living thing kicked off natural energy in the form of an aura. If that energy was strong enough it could be used to power spells. Berserkers turned it inward, making us strong, fast and hardy.
Those trolls weren’t the only hunters among what we called the Mythic Races. Humans were everywhere and so were our predators. Life and death beyond the aura didn’t just happen in big cities, it was in towns like mine, in villages and hamlets and the arse-end of nowhere. It was a berserker’s job to stand and say – not on my watch.
One taufrkyn opened her wings and flitted down to me, spreading her tail feathers wide for balance. I caught a glimpse of familiar peacock eye-spots before she landed on my shoulder.
“Hi, sweetie.” I tickled her chin. She purred.
No one knew much about taufrkyn, but they were particularly fond of humans with strong auras. They had intelligence and personalities of their own, their fur changing colour to reflect their emotions. Flying mood squirrels.
Taufrkyn also had some kind of psychic ability that we didn’t understand. The female on my shoulder was Lorl; the day she’d found me I’d been asleep, then bam – I woke with her name coming out of my mouth.
I picked up the sports bag and duffel, slung both over my shoulder and set off at a fast trot. The bus was already at the stop. I swore and ran.
“That’s twelve books,” I said later, looking at the computer screen. I’d just scraped into work on time. A typical day for a berserker – hurrah. “Ten days overdue, at ten pence a day. Twelve pounds, please.”
“Twelve quid!” The woman on the other side of the desk was stricken. “But it’s only been a couple of days!”
“The library rules are clear. Your books are overdue. By ten days.”
More than that – we’d sent her due date reminders, first by e-mail, then text. What more did she want? Carrier pigeon? Smoke signals? A message from the Beyond? I knew a couple of grey witches who were dab hands at that sort of thing.
She gave in with bad grace, letting her handbag drop to the crook of her arm as she rummaged inside, paid, and left.
“Was that Mrs Longdale, Daphne?”
I turned to my best friend. Alice was a redheaded waif; slender, fiery, hotter than a Texas barbecue. She drew guys like bees to a flower. There was just one snag to her admirers’ plans – she was gay.
“You can’t miss her,” I replied. “She’s what we call a ‘hardy perennial’. She produces overdue books the year round.”
Alice didn’t know my biggest secrets. She didn’t know that I was a berserker. She also didn’t know that I carried a sword to work, concealed in my duffel bag. And she never could.
Trolls were just the tip of the iceberg. When a casual fist to the face didn’t work, a sword sliced and diced the monsters in a way that no other weapon could – something to do with the magical composition of metal worked in a certain way. Guns, bombs, they didn’t work. But bladed weapons? Get in there. I’d be sent back to prison if I was caught carrying, but if I didn’t, I was going to get eaten. I chose the lesser of two evils. The one that meant I stayed alive.
Prison… yeah. OK. When I was a kid, no older than the trolls I’d sent packing, I’d killed a man. Hard to believe that they’d let me out for good behaviour, but now here I was, spending the rest of my life paying for my mistake. Employers weren’t exactly falling over themselves to hire ex-cons.
Part of me regretted what I’d done. Part of me didn’t. Only a handful of people knew that I’d been to prison and I wanted to keep it that way.
“Lunchtime. Finally,” I sighed, locking the computer. My sports bag and duffel were in a locker. Lorl was probably napping on top of the murder mystery section, safe in the knowledge that no one could see her.
“Daphne, you show an unseemly amount of joy in taking a break. Are you so tired of this job that you wish to quit?”
I gritted my teeth, tried not to grimace, and turned to face my boss.
Wilhelmina Grey was in her late forties. She was petite like Alice, but whereas Alice’s size spoke of fragility, Mina reminded me of a black widow – short, dark bob, brown eyes, thin lips. She’d only been here a few months.
“I’m perfectly happy with my job. I’m also perfectly happy with my lunch break.” If the miserable bitch wanted me to make up time again, I was going to scream.
“Good,” she sniffed. “See that you’re not late back today, or you’ll have to make up time tonight.”
I wanted to grab her by the neck and twist, and with my strength I knew that I could. One day last week my lunch break had overrun by five minutes. Five minutes. I mean, come on; I worked overtime some days – unpaid – and she ordered me to make up five measly minutes?
But instead of cracking her skull I nodded and offered her a polite smile, all the while repeating the mantra – I don’t want to go back to prison, I don’t want to go back to prison…
Mina gave me a severe look and drifted off. Alice let out a sigh of relief.
“Whew, glad she’s out of the way. She’s really got it in for you.”
“She hates what I am.”
“Tall and gorgeous?” Alice shot me a sly sideways glance.
“No, you plant.” I nudged her in the ribs. I didn’t mind a bit of harmless flirting; we were both clear that it would never go anywhere. “She hates that I’m a criminal.”
“Used to be a criminal,” she admonished. “And from what you told me, that guy totally deserved it.”
“Come on,” I said, changing the subject. “I want to nick some of your salad.”
I didn’t talk about prison, not anymore. She thought I’d gone in for GBH. I’d never told her the truth.
“You’re the only woman I know who enjoys salad,” she said, disgusted, locking her own terminal.
“That’s because you smother it in mayonnaise.”
“Would you eat sprouts if I put mayo on them?”
I licked my lips and patted my stomach. Alice made a face.
We left the desk and crossed one of the library’s many open spaces, heading for the staff room. We passed several clumps of comfy chairs. I caught sight of my reflection in a plastic display stand and grimaced. What I saw, in between posters for knitting clubs, children’s reading groups and theatre performances, was a thug: - strong face, tiny scars across the bridge of my nose, suspicious blue eyes. I kept my ice-blonde hair shoulder length. I chose to call it ‘tousled’, but ‘shaggy’ might have been closer to the mark. A knee-length skirt and neat blouse softened the image… in the same way that camouflage netting softened a tank.
Alice had the kind of face that launched ships. You could probably crack rocks on mine. That wasn’t to say that I considered myself unattractive; I had a boyfriend. But it was a million miles between attractive and beautiful.
Recently the staff room had been refitted. Now it finally resembled something out of the twenty-first century, not
the twelfth. The county budget hadn’t stretched far, but we had the basics. The dingy kettle had been replaced by a chrome beast shiny enough to see my reflection. The dungeon-like grey walls and floor had not only been washed, they’d been repainted, and now sparkled with lemon-fresh zest. I’d seen the paint can – it really was Lemon-Fresh Zest.
Now we had a brand new microwave, one we didn’t have to smack three times and mutter arcane phrases over to get working. We even had a fridge, big enough for milk and a few lunchboxes.
I made a beeline for the kettle. Alice retrieved our food.
“Leftover steak again?”
“Cooked a lot of cow.” I filled the kettle and clicked it on.
Actually Raz, my mentor – a man in his fifties who’d been a berserker forever and who ran a used-car dealership up on the Autoplaza – cooked my cow. My culinary skills ran to ready meals and not much else, so I ate at his place when he wasn’t working late. We needed a lot of protein; we trained in his ‘dojo’, a back room at his garage that he’d turned into a gym. Mostly he kicked my arse. He called it ‘martial arts and swordplay’.
“OK, I get that you like steak. But you had it two days ago. And three days before that.” Her tone implied that I was mentally deficient.
“I like steak… a lot?” I offered her a big, cheesy grin.
Alice threw her hands up in an ‘I surrender’ gesture. She thrust two plastic boxes into my hand, her lunch and my own.
“Chicken salad. If you eat all of it I’ll beat you.”
Ha, I’d like to see you try.
“When have I ever eaten all of your food?”
My wounded air was hard to maintain when I considered the chocolate muffin, strawberry cheesecake and bacon sandwich that I’d liberated last week. I’d shared some of it with Lorl – the fluffy little ditz ate just about anything – but I was still guilty of ‘borrowing without intent to replace’.