Blood Stones: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (The Dark Lakes Series Book 2)

  Blood Stones

  A Dark Lakes Story

  M.V. Stott

  Copyright © 2017 by Genre Reader

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

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  1

  Okay, well, here’s the thing, and, as far as things go, it is really, really, quite the thing.

  It turns out that I, Joseph Lake, am a murderer. A killer. A man with blood on his cotton-soft hands.

  Yes, the revelation came as something of a surprise to me too. Particularly as—and you’d agree with this if you knew me—I’m probably the least murdery sort of person you could ever meet.

  A well-meaning doofus? It has been said on more than one occasion. A man gifted folically by the gods? Certainly. That’s not a brag, it’s a stone cold fact. Someone who knows the lyrics to every song on Fleetwood Mac’s seminal soft rock masterpiece, Rumours? Guilty as charged, your honour.

  But a murderer?

  It’s weird how a revelation like that makes you look at yourself differently in the mirror. There it is, the same daft face, the well-meaning, slightly crooked smile, but you start studying the eyes a little closer. Is there something grim in them that you hadn’t noticed before, perhaps?

  It was not so very long ago that I had no idea about my past. Any of it. I mean, especially not the murder bit.

  Then I found out that I was a warlock.

  A male witch.

  Which no, was not something that I’d ever considered a possibility, strangely enough.

  Furthermore, I had been just one of three witches, tasked with protecting the local area from mean vampires, naughty wizards, and other assorted magical bastards.

  A trio of witches that had lived within a coven, with a familiar as our helper. Now it was just me and that familiar left, a rather fighty, drinky, scary woman by the name of Eva. It was she who had, just a couple of days earlier, informed me that I was a murderer. That the reason there were no longer three witches in the Lake District, was because I—a man who once danced in the aisles with a sixty-seven year-old former post office mistress during a Barry Manilow concert—had killed them.

  Two dead witches.

  Thanks to me.

  Oh, but my tally doesn’t stop there. No, no, no; three days ago I was responsible for the death of one Chloe Palmer, a nurse at Carlisle Hospital, where I was employed as a dogsbody-cum-cleaner (and I use that phrase in the Latin sense, not the… you know). Chloe was a woman I had been madly in love with for several years, and who, I had started to believe, felt the same way about me.

  Until it turned out that she was, you know, a bit mad.

  And in league with some tentacle-limbed, soul-sucking vampire thingies.

  And intent on being in control of who got to live and die on planet Earth.

  That was a real red flag for me. A definite roadblock to us moving forward together romantically.

  Plus there was the fact she was going to eat my soul, which I selfishly like to keep hold of, un-chewed.

  Long story short, Chloe’s dead now, and I felt like a turd wrapped in a poop. It didn’t matter that I’d done the right thing in stopping Chloe, she was still the woman I’d been friends with for years, and in love with since the first moment we spoke.

  The whole thing was really tarnishing the rush I should have been feeling since having had my real self revealed to me. And so there I was, sat on my couch, wrapped in a duvet, watching my Seinfeld DVDs on repeat, and hoping that a little Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer might prod me out of my blues.

  The fact that I was to be found quietly snivelling as I watched, eyes red, nostrils damp, was perhaps a sign that this gambit was failing somewhat.

  ‘What happened to the pub?’ asked Eva, who was slouched beside me on the couch, ciggie in her mouth, can of beer in her hand, dressed in her usual assortment of black rags.

  ‘What?’ I mumbled.

  ‘The pub. You know, the pub. The pub they work in. Pub.’

  ‘There is no pub.’

  ‘The pub with the fat drinky man and the man with the brain of a child.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers,’ replied Eva, raising her beer can and taking a gulp.

  ‘No, you’re thinking of a different... never mind.’

  I would love to have been left alone to grieve for Chloe, but Eva had decided that what I wanted didn’t matter. She was sensitive like that. So she’d been letting herself into my small, poorly insulated ground floor flat to slump next to me on the couch for upwards of eleven hours a day.

  Perhaps, in some small way, forcing her company on me was her way of helping me through the grieving process. It was as that thought passed through my mind that an empty beer can bounced off my temple.

  ‘Get me a cold one from the fridge, idiot.’

  I already knew better than to argue with her, so up I got and over I went, duvet dragging behind like a stain-riddled cloak.

  ‘You know, this whole feeling-sorry-for-yourself-pity-party is really starting to get on my tits,’ said Eva, as I passed her a fresh can of lager. ‘That woman is dead. It was bloody weeks ago! Move on!’

  ‘It’s been three days.’

  Eva looked at her watch, then after a few seconds, realised she wasn’t wearing one.

  ‘Are you sure? You’ve lied to me before, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I am very sure. What’s more, this is at least the fifth time I’ve had to bring that up.’

  ‘The fifth?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You sure, love?’

  I nodded again.

  ‘In my defence,’ she replied, ‘I have a massive alcohol dependency issue that is probably eating away at my brain cells.’

  She cracked open her new drink and slurped up a fresh eruption of
foam.

  ‘You drink?’ I asked. ‘Can’t say that I’ve noticed.’

  ‘It’s true! I don’t think I’ve been fully sober in ten years. But boy, what a decade it’s been.’

  ‘Why, what happened ten years ago?’

  I already knew the answer, but since Eva told me about my having murdered my fellow witches, she’d clammed up on the matter, as though she couldn’t bear to reveal the whole story at once.

  ‘Eva? I couldn’t feel any worse, so maybe now’s a good time to spill the beans.’

  Eva nodded, downed her empty can, burped with such ferocity that a picture fell off the wall, then stood up with purpose.

  ‘Okay, enough of all this blubbery, it’s time to get you in fighting shape.’

  I pulled my duvet tighter around my shoulders. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’

  ‘No, now,’ she insisted, and clapped her hands together, which somehow tore the duvet from me, ignited it mid-air, and turned it to ash before it hit the carpet.

  ‘How did you…? I mean, magic, I get that. Stupid question.’

  ‘That was nothing,’ replied Eva, lighting up a fresh ciggie, ‘but it’s still more than your sorry, good for nothing arse is capable of right now.’

  ‘Well excuse me, but my mind is still pretty much a blank about all this magicky, warlocky stuff.’

  ‘Exactly, and there are people out there who are going to need our help. It’s the whole reason I came back here. We’ve been out of business for too long and this whole area has gone to ruin. It’s time you learned a few basics.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said, curling up on the couch, hugging my knees to my chest.

  Another beer can, this time not quite so empty, bounced off my head.

  ‘Fine!’ I cried.

  I stood, turned off the TV, and followed Eva to the door.

  ‘You know that was my only duvet. I’m going to be freezing tonight.’

  2

  Eva stretched out across the back seat of my battered little car, the Uncanny Wagon, as we left Keswick behind and the scenic Lake District opened up around us.

  ‘Wake me when we get there,’ said Eva, then instantly fell into a deep sleep, a rather enviable skill that I hoped she would teach me one day. I’d always had a bit of trouble with insomnia. Well, “always” meaning the last ten years, since I woke up without a memory, naked, and laying next to lake Derwentwater.

  Recent events and revelations hadn’t made it any easier to drift comfortably off to sleep either. When I closed my eyes, my mind played tricks on me now. Projected phantom voices into the black. Screams. Monster sounds. Chloe calling my name.

  Oh, there was a lot of Chloe rattling around in there.

  Stupid bloody subconscious.

  I was so lost in my thoughts as I steered the Uncanny Wagon toward the Cumbrian Coven, that it took me several seconds to register that I now had two passengers in my car.

  ‘All hail the saviour!’ said the fox, stood on the front passenger seat, Roman helmet on his head, battle-axe gripped tightly in its front paws.

  The car swerved back and forth two or three times as surprise momentarily overtook me.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said in a low hiss, looking back over my shoulder to find Eva somehow still sound asleep. I really, really needed to know her secret.

  ‘You haven’t yet returned,’ replied the fox. ‘To the Dark Lakes, I mean. Been days, it has.’

  Ah, the Dark Lakes. The strange, blood-soaked counterpart to the land I was currently driving through. A place a woman with the fiercest of red hair claimed I had a throne to accept, an army to lead, a title to take up.

  Magic Eater.

  I was pretty sure that whole business had something to do with why the other witches were dead, and why I couldn’t remember a bloody thing.

  ‘What if she wakes up and sees you?’ I said, gesturing for the fox to sit down, to hide, to not be there at all.

  ‘Make no difference. Awake. Asleep. Eyes open. Eyes closed. She won’t see ears nor tail of me. Not me.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because I don’t wants her to, now do I? No one sees me but who I wants. It’s only manners.’

  Eva had made it very clear, in no uncertain (and violent) terms that if I saw this strange walking, talking fox again, that I was to let her know. But then… Eva seemed perfectly comfortable keeping secrets from me. What harm could it do? Until they both told me all the things I needed to know, anyway.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked the fox.

  ‘Just a quick hello,’ he replied, waving his axe.

  ‘Yes. Hello. Now if you wouldn’t mind sodding off, I’m not in the mood for you or your red-haired master’s crap right now, okay?’

  ‘I lost my better half too, you know.’

  I blinked, then looked to the fox, confused.

  ‘Oh yes. You lost you a lady, I lost mine. Two of us were the fiercest team you ever did set eyes upon. She must’ve slain a thousand with her axe, an’ me at her side, doing likewise.’

  ‘What happened?’

  The fox shrugged. ‘Death has everyone’s number. Hers was called and now here I am, alone and ready to go meet her.’

  ‘The Red Woman, she won’t let you die.’

  ‘As is her right. Can’t complain. Mustn’t grumble. I serve my time, and then my time comes, sure enough.’

  ‘What did you do, fox?’

  ‘What’s that?’ came Eva’s sleep-bleary voice from behind, causing me to once again take the car on a sudden, s-shaped path. ‘Who you jabbering at?’

  I looked back to the passenger seat, but the fox was gone.

  ‘No one. Nope. Just me, having a one-sided chat. Keeping myself company, ha!’

  ‘Idiot,’ she said, before settling back down to sleep.

  ‘Right. Yes. Sorry.’

  I drove on, to the coven.

  The Cumbrian Coven—the place I apparently used to call home—is an old, stone building situated down something called a blind alley. Blind alleys are secret streets, hidden from the sight of most people. The coven basically sits in the middle of nowhere, so there are no buildings either side of this “alley”. Instead, it was secreted at the end of a sort of wrinkle in reality. An impossible fissure down which a building lurked, like a bug behind a skirting board.

  Which is a bit weird, yes.

  But then almost everything about my life was weird now. I refer you to my recent conversation with a chatty fox.

  I parked up, shook Eva for close to ten minutes until she woke up and almost throttled me to death, then followed her as she weaved her way drowsily into the coven.

  ‘Okay, right, now the lessons can begin,’ said Eva, as we stood in the coven’s shambolic library, sat just off the main room. There were large, wooden book cases, and giant, ancient looking grimoires scattered all over the place. It looked as though someone had thrown a fit and trashed the place, but then it always looked like that.

  ‘One question,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why are you holding that large stick?’

  To answer my question, Eva struck me across the legs with it, and I screamed high and sharp as I hopped around the room.

  ‘Any more questions?’ she asked.

  ‘No, no, I’m good.’

  ‘Then let’s get started.’

  During the past week I had proven myself able to perform some aspects of magic, though always by chance. Which is to say I had no idea how I’d accessed that part of me, and no clue as to how I might recreate the effect once I had done it.

  ‘We’ll start with something so simple a brain-dead idiot could do it,’ said Eva. ‘So, just do your best, love.’

  ‘Great pep talk.’

  I yelped as the stick connected with my legs again. ‘Ever hear the phrase, “You catch more flies with honey”?’

  ‘Ever hear the phrase, “I’m going to twat you with this stick if you don’t shut your gob”?’

  I shut my gob
.

  ‘Right,’ continued Eva. ‘Hold out your hand, palm up.’

  I did so with some trepidation, expecting the sting of the stick across my mitt at any moment.

  ‘We’re going to try fire first. Piece of piss, fire, look...’

  Eva held out her hand and a flame blazed into life, hovering in a perfect sphere about an inch above her palm.

  ‘Okay, so, how do I do that then?’ I asked. ‘I mean, I’ve sort of done it before, but I’ve no idea how, and when I try to think “hot thoughts”, nothing happens.’

  ‘Hot thoughts,’ repeated Eva.

  I nodded.

  ‘Jesus Christ…’

  I thought it best to move on, for fear of another stick incident. ‘So, are there magic words, like in Harry Potter? Perhaps in Latin, or ancient Greek, or ancient, I don’t know, Welsh?’

  The ball of fire flew past my head, singeing the left side of my hair. My perfect hair.

  ‘I think I’d just prefer the stick from now on,’ I said.

  Eva obliged.

  I yelped.

  3

  I arrived at Carlisle Hospital some hours later, legs throbbing from multiple blunt force traumas, and still no closer to becoming a magic whizz.

  I’d strained and strained until it felt as though I was going to pop a vein in my temple, but try as I might, fire refused to appear from my hand. I’d tried to be cheery about the whole affair. It was only my first lesson, after all. Things were bound to improve, I said. Practice would make perfect. Eva had been less sanguine about it, grunting as she’d walked out, and launching her stick in my direction as she did so.