Hell Hound Read online

  'Let's just say there might be a…ah, conflict of interests.'

  'You have got to be fucking kidding me. The Merlins, protectors of the Kingdom. Compromised?’

  'No, this isn’t a joking matter. This comes from The Merlin himself. They can't prove it, and they can't make their suspicions known. Apparently, the Summoning spell, if used, will determine who it is. Something about who uses what spell showing who has what access. It's beyond me.'

  There was some bitterness in his tone. John was a Mundane. A liaison for MI21, a branch of the Secret Intelligence Service. It always happened. To see what was possible with Magic but to be unable to use it often caused such feelings. John had resisted it longer than my other liaison officers. Lived longer, as well.

  My food arrived. Harry's was nothing but efficient.

  It looked and smelled amazing, but I couldn't summon the strength to eat it. The Hound was being Summoned. The Merlins were compromised.

  'Triple my normal rate.' I kept my voice low but firm.

  He looked at me, then gave a stiff nod. ‘That’s reasonable.' Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out a heavy gold medallion. One side was smooth, the other worked with the crest of the Merlins. He pressed that side hard into his palm, then passed it to me.

  I pressed it into my palm, then held out my hand. We shook, once.

  John leaned forwards, placing his hand over mine, a small frown on his face. 'I know that you've only had Dawn as your apprentice for a few weeks, but you're the best Agent in Devon with the most local knowledge. I wouldn't have asked otherwise.'

  Dawn had joined me nearly six weeks ago, and although we got on like a house on fire, to say she had a lot of training to do was a classic British understatement in the same league as ‘the sea is somewhat damp.’

  'It's fine, John. I bet that this is just a rumour that has got out of hand, or a crappy power play by a minor Merlin, which I'll be able to close with little to no effort. It'll be a good bit of training.'

  Oh, the hubris. Little did I know how those words would come back to haunt me

  He patted my hand and leant back. ‘Well if you're sure, then I'm sure. You truly are the best.' From the look on his face, the words sounded as hollow to him as they did to me.

  'Well, that's that. Eat up. I rather think you'll need the strength.'

  Business over, we tried to act normal. The food tasted like ashes.

  ‘Statham's fucking gorgeous. What I wouldn't give to have five minutes with him.'

  Dawn, my supposed apprentice and assistant, leaned over, tapping the page of her Wowser! Magazine. Statham was posed topless, in the process of putting on a shirt in such a way that every muscle on his torso bulged. It was artfully posed, and he was extremely well-toned, with muscles crafted for power, not for show.

  Looking at him, I could tell he would be a very difficult person to fight. A lot of power in his shoulders, as well as a very strong core would mean he'd be able to put a lot power into both punches and kicks.

  His triceps were also huge, and they were a key part in throwing punches. Biceps were great for lifting, but if you wanted a strong punch, you needed to work on your triceps.

  'He's okay. If you're into that sort of thing.' Which I wasn't, but his body was still a work of art. I was more of a Sandra Bullock type of girl.

  She laughed, pulling the magazine back, turning it back and forth as her eyes devoured every inch of the photo.

  'One day, you'll meet the man of your dreams’, she jibed. It was an old joke. Like a pair of slippers. Part of our daily rituals.

  'One day, you'll meet the woman of your dreams.' So was that.

  We both laughed, Dawn taking the opportunity to snuggle in. She was well padded in all the right places, perfect for snuggling and cuddling. Crying shame really.

  I gave praise to the gods that I didn't have a penis. An erection would have literally come between us. I snaked an arm around her, stroking her dark skin lightly as we just lay there.

  She'd tied her hair in braids, which was both practical in that it couldn't really get caught on anything, and it also made her look utterly bad ass. She was, in my humble opinion, fucking beautiful.

  'Fancy curry or Chinese?'

  Neither of us was a great cook, and my Marks meant there was no incentive to learn. I had the feeling that if either of us ever did, the takeaways would be most upset.

  'Indian. That delivery driver, woss'is name?' She clicked her fingers as if doing so would make me remember quicker. 'Dave! He's bloody gorgeous.'

  'Ah, lust over a biryani. Curry it is.'

  Despite the day's event weighing heavily on my mind, I felt I could face food and enjoy it. Dawn had that effect on me. If Magicians could be said to have a muse, she was mine.

  She was a force of nature who just seemed to sweep my cares away, bring light to the darkness. She was also very handy with a cosh, as well, having been brought up by what passed as a criminal family in Debbun (Devon how it should be pronounced).

  Dawn was a rarity. She was a member of the Magical community who had been brought in from the Mundane community.

  Somehow, due to a catastrophic mix-up somewhere along the line, a family of Mundanes ended up adopting a Magical child. Naturally, neither they nor the child knew she was Magical, even though odd things happened occasionally.

  Like all Mundanes, they closed their eyes to this and used Dawn's miraculous ability to blend into shadows and move almost silently down to natural ability. Which it was. Just not the natural they were used to.

  It was only when she hit puberty that things started to go wrong. Puberty for Magical folk can be a tumultuous time, even when being raised in the Magical community. For a Wyldling such as a her, it could have been fatal for any number of people around her.

  Fortunately, she kept it under control until a couple of years ago. She was finally brought back into the fold when she got into a fight at a pub and set light to it with the heat of her fury.

  As usual, it was put down to faulty wiring combined with a gas leak that made people hallucinate that the flames were coming directly from Dawn. Compulsions, as well as white hat hackers carefully removing any trace of recordings from social media and the mobile phone networks, could work bloody wonders.

  At twenty-two or so, Dawn was only five years younger than me. I say twenty-two or so, as she wasn't too sure as to when she was born, her adoptive parents being more than a little vague on that subject.

  She wasn't even sure if the date they celebrated her birthday on was correct either. She could remember at least five different birthdays where the not only the date, but the month of her birthday had changed.

  They were typical townies from Torquay. Debbun (Devon) born and bred. And white. She was a lovely, milk-chocolate colour. How they'd passed her off as their own child I never knew.

  Probably said they'd adopted her from out of the country, like seems to be the fashion nowadays. Still, aside from the odd inconsistency and teaching her to thieve from an early age, her parents had been loving and caring to her.

  They weren't Fagin-like people just misguided, as the Merlin Caseworker in charge of Dawn's assimilation into our community had said.

  They'd also decided Dawn needed to learn to defend herself. From a young age, she'd been training in the Filipino art of Eskrima.

  It was an art which most thought focused entirely on the use of sticks, but which had a rich and deep syllabus, and which also gave her astonishing hand-eye coordination, as well as the ability to punch the living shit out of someone in a matter of seconds.

  The only other art I'd seen deliver so many strikes with such speed was Kenpo. Watching her on the bag hanging in our home pugnasium—I hated calling it a dojo as neither of us did Japanese arts—was utterly riveting.

  Two years in a special institute saw Dawn set on the straight and narrow, but she had proven to be particularly difficult to educate.

  The unfortunate result of her stubbornness was that not only was I hav
ing to show her the ropes as my apprentice, it also fell to me to get her well and truly up to speed with all things Magical.

  It was a royal pain in the arse and the source of a lot of arguments and stress. The Merlins had also been very specific that, with her set of roguish skills, and cavalier attitude, she was going to be an Agent whether she - or I - liked it or not.

  Myself, I concentrated on the style my maternal grandmother had taught me: Gatka—and Reality Based Self-Defence. As well as the training provided to all Agents.

  Together, we made a mean team in a fight and with her being black and myself being an out-and-out lesbian, we'd had the odd occasion to work out how best to fight alongside each other against low-threat Mundanes.

  We laughingly referred to those as our ‘live training scenarios with non-compliant partners.’ The police referred to them as ‘justified self-defence.’

  You might have surmised, from the fact that I study Gatka, that I'm Indian, as in the Indian sub-continent not American Indian, and you'd be partly correct.

  My mother, who was Sikh, met and married a very nice Englishman who was in India on a passage of self-discovery, what most normal people would have called a gap year.

  As such, I've got a skin-colour most white people would pay a fortune for, luscious black hair, and the ability to Shapeshift into the form of a tiger. I must explain that I'm not a Were-creature, however.

  I'm a member of the Magical community who can Shift their shape into that of an animal whilst retaining their humanity.

  I'll leave further explanations of the differences for later in this chronicle. My grandmother was an absolute legend, and it was her who taught me Gatka as soon as I could stand on my own two feet.

  She even made the move from India to be with us for the first ten years of my life. Granddad came over, as well, but he was a gentle soul and concentrated on teaching me defensive Magic, as well as how to cook the perfect curry, scrambled eggs, and chips.

  I never did manage to master how he cooked chips, and every time I go to visit them, chips are the one thing I look forward to the most. I'd almost claim that his chips were Magical. When he opened a restaurant over here, he won awards six years running for his chips and curries. But mostly his chips.

  'It'll be forty minutes. Fancy a pint at Buller’s?'

  That was our local 'spoons, literally yards away from where our food would be delivered.

  A pint was most certainly what I needed. Shoving business right to the back of my head, I grabbed her hand and left for the pub.

  The town we lived in was called Crediton. Or Kirton, as the locals referred to it. Quarter of an hour's drive away from Exeter, the ever-glorious capital of Devon, it was a bustling town full of independent coffee shops, barbers, and a regular-as-clockwork farmers' market.

  Crediton that was. I lived in Kirton, the Crediton that was and will hopefully never be fully again.

  Kirton was a town that suffered a tragedy roughly three hundred years ago, a firestorm that swept through the then affluent town, and made nearly 2,000 people homeless.

  Local legend puts it down to the fact that spirits stored in many houses and pubs (made from imported molasses) ignited, and then kept the fire going.

  The truth is a lot sadder. And darker. It always seems to be that way. It started with a stolen kiss between the daughter of the Mundane baker and the son of a prominent merchant, who was also a Magician.

  Unrequited love, a ban on them seeing each other, and the daughter speaking to a Hag about revenge led to a minor (and by minor, don’t mean little, it just wasn't as big as it might have been) Fire Djinn being Summoned.

  After that, it was all the local community could do to survive. There wasn't a chance anyone would believe the stories of man-like flames consuming the heart of the town, and the hearts of the townsfolk. Nor of a prominent merchant doing battle with it.

  All that tragedy, the love, the hate, the loss, caused a small (relative, remember) gate to open to Elsewhere. And so, when we opened the door of our house, we had to remember to turn the horseshoe next to it anti-clockwise to enter the present-day high street from Silbury Place.

  If we didn't, we'd end up in post-fire 18th century Kirton. Awkwardness we would most certainly not want to repeat after the last time. Modern attire is somewhat frowned upon

  Even modern-day Crediton wasn't what could be called safe. The gate to Elsewhere was currently sealed, but that didn't stop rogue elements of our community, Elsewhere Touched (those with Fae, Demon et cetera blood), Fae and utter loons, from trying to access it.

  As it was, Friday was looking to be a busy one at the 'spoons, and there was a pale ale I needed to try.

  'Dike.' It was Phil, the town alcoholic and Tourette's sufferer. Well, I charitably attributed his constant insults as such. 'Show us your tits, Dawn.'

  It was as bad as being on Facebook and Magic-Net. Only I could do something about this. He'd ruined my night’s good feeling. Reminded me once again that I was something different. Not that he knew I was a Magician, but that I liked women. Everyone did. It wasn't as if I tried hiding it.

  'Piss off, Phil.'

  Somehow, Dawn's swinging arm caught him square in the balls on the upswing. 'Oh, mate, I'm so sorry! You need to stay off the sherry, getting hurt like this all the time.'

  We left him leaning against the wall, trying to shout insults between groans of pain.

  And that, was why I loved Dawn more than I could ever tell her.

  'Lessons, Padawan, lessons. Did you complete your thesis on the Great Grimoire of Fantastical Beings and their Social Strata?' Dawn groaned as I held my hand out for the thesis, reaching out over our traditional Full English. We were ensconced in our kitchen for a slap-up breakfast. Pretty much the only meal we could actually cook.

  'Can I have an extension?' she asked, fluttering her eyelids at me, chocolate-brown bosom heaving.

  'No, you bloody can't! And stop doing that, especially the tits things. The Courier will be here soon.' We didn't post or email documents, there was too much risk of them falling into the wrong hands.

  Instead, we gave them to the Couriers. Men and women whole-heartedly dedicated to delivering documents. It wasn’t the safest of jobs, but it paid well, and they lived longer than Agents. Usually.

  I spent an idle few seconds wondering what it would have been like to be a Courier.

  'Jane, Dawn to Jane.' I realised she was clicking her fingers at me. ‘Jesus, you might as well just get out a phone and start texting someone. As I was saying, can I please have extra time?'

  'No.' I felt my face flush at being called out for being rude. 'You had one. You know you get one. One only.'

  'Fine! Have the damned thing!' A neatly spiral-bound document plopped onto the table.

  'You're going to want to wipe the ketchup off the cover, love.'

  'Oh, for f...' I tuned her out again as I thought about the day's work.

  'For God's sake, Jane, I swear we're married the way you ignore me. What's the plan?'

  'Courier. Recce to Widecombe, lunch at the pub. We'll check on the Rock Trolls at Haytor whilst we're there.'

  'Right, better get my Darkmoor kit.'

  Our weapons preferences differed greatly. I tended to rely upon Icons, and the use of Spells such as Fireball and Lightning.

  Dawn preferred to use a semi-automatic pistol, knives, and a pair of heavy eskrima sticks that I'd had especially made for her. They were capped with iron and silver both ends, with silver and iron inlaid for their full length.

  The most common enemies, if I can call them that, were Fae and Were. Fae were extremely susceptible to the properties of iron, whilst Were were creatures naturally allergic to silver.

  Her sticks’ special caps not only added weight to her strikes, they also exploited those weaknesses. Not only that, should the people she was striking attempt a disarm or simply try to grab the sticks, the inlaid metal would burn them.

  In her hands, they were utterly devastating, cap
able of crushing skulls and burning skin with equal ease. Well worth every single penny.

  Her pistol was loaded with a special mix of rounds. Some of the rounds used a mix of lead iron bullets, others had a mix of lead and silver bullets, and yet more were standard expanding rounds.

  Most people call them dum-dums. Whilst the first two were deadly to the Fae and Were, the dum-dums would put them into a world of hurt regardless, blowing plate-sized holes in them, and slowing down their healing process considerably.

  They were also very useful when fighting Vampyres, but since the Treaty of Jerusalem, we rarely had need to fight one of those. It was most certainly a hot war gone cold. For now, anyway.

  She tended to carry as many magazines as she could, using a Berretta 92FS because, and I quote, ‘The 9mm round might be light, but I can pack fifteen rounds into the magazine, and get a round into the chamber as well. I'll take sixteen rounds over eight any time.’

  She was also a subscriber to an unhealthy number of gun magazines. I'd even found her trying to work out how to make Icons from bullets. My apprentice was well on her way to becoming what I was tentatively calling a Gun Mage.

  Naturally, we would have drawn no end of stares and attention had we walked down Crediton High Street touting our weapons, so I used a Glamour that hid them entirely from the eye of Mundanes.

  It didn't matter whether members of the Magical community could see them, as pretty much everyone was armed in some way or other, but Mundanes tended to make a lot of fuss and bother whenever they saw something out of the ordinary.

  That fuss and bother usually involved calling the police, something which was just better avoided. More importantly, we didn't want to be viewed to as utter psychos by the good people of Crediton.

  The drive to Darkmoor, what Mundanes called Dartmoor, was pleasant enough once we got off the A38 to Plymouth.

  The scenery is stunning. I read somewhere once that the Tors were the remains of mountains taller than Everest. I thanked the gods they weren't, as we'd probably have had to deal with Yetis on top of everything else.