Bad Soul: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (The Uncanny Ink Series Book 1) by David Bussell & M.V. Stott
Bad Soul
Uncanny Ink Series Book 1
by David Bussell & M.V. Stott
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Promises, rules, bones; Erin Banks will break them all.
Unscrupulous and lethal, Erin has everything she needs to be an assassin in a world full of mobsters, monsters, and magic.
She wasn’t born with powers, but thanks to her Uncanny Ink—arcane tattoos that transform her body into a magic-fuelled killing machine—she’s more than a match for anyone dumb enough to stand between her and getting paid.
Fresh out of prison, Erin wastes no time getting back to what she does best: running down wanted men and claiming their bounties.
But when a powerful demon lurking in a black cathedral hires her to round up an errant soul, the creature offers a reward far more valuable than money…
He offers Erin the key to unlocking her tragic past. The key to the mystery surrounding her long-lost brother.
Magic, scares, and acid-tongued snark collide in this thrilling urban fantasy series set in the Uncanny Kingdom. Buried secrets and whiplash twists will keep you riding the edge of your seat. Read Bad Soul now for a pulse-pounding tale you won’t be able to put down.
Praise for Bad Soul:
"Bussell and Stott deliver a dark and gripping read in Bad Soul, marking Uncanny Ink as a must-read series for urban fantasy fans." ~ Readers' Favorite
"The writing is very colorful with lots of British slang and strange and seedy characters. The plot is fast and furious with unexpected developments and exciting scenes. A nice piece of gritty urban fantasy." ~ Kasey's Book Nook
"Hits the ground running and doesn't stop." ~ Sean Cunningham, Author of the Hawthorn House series
"Bussell and Stott deliver a dark and gripping read in Bad Soul, marking Uncanny Ink as a must read series for Urban Fantasy fans." ~ Inspired Chaos
"Smart, funny, irreverent with tons of action... [Bad Soul] has it all in spades." ~ K. Bird Lincoln
**On sale for only .99 cents April 1st – 13th!!**
Bad Blood: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy
(The Uncanny Ink Series Book 2)
Bad Justice: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy
(The Uncanny Ink Series Book 3)
Bad Intention: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy
(Uncanny Ink Book 4)
Bad Thoughts: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy
(The Uncanny Ink Series Book 5)
Bad Memories: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy
(The Uncanny Ink Series Book 6)
Series Trailer
Excerpt 1:
This story starts with me in jail, locked up for a crime I didn’t
commit. Framed. A huge miscarriage of justice. My freedom cruelly and unjustly
torn from my blameless hands.
Okay, technically I may
have broken a guy’s legs in fifteen different places, but in my defence, I did
it for money. For lots of money. The kind of money that justifies a shattered
kneecap or two, and really, who holds on to stuff like that anyway? His bones
would heal just as quickly as the red drained from my bank balance. Everyone
was happy. Well, at least until the whole prison thing.
My name is Erin
Banks. I’m twenty-eight, a Taurus, not a fan of dogs (or cats) (or people), and
I have arcane tattoos across my shoulders and arms that leach magic from the
air around me. Actually, my full name is Erin Gertrude Banks, but if you
ever bring up my middle name I’ll snap your thumbs, deal?
Okay, moving on...
‘Hold on a moment
there, Gertrude—’
What did I just
say?
‘—Can we please go
back to that whole “arcane tattoos” business? What’s all that about?’
Okay, long story
short, magic is real: a supernatural radiation that permeates all natural
things, the fundamental energy of creation itself. And yeah, there are
monsters, of course there are. I’m talking ghosts, demons, undead armies,
basically a whole steaming pile of secret stuff that you don’t have a bloody
clue about. I know, terrifying, right? For you, I mean, not for me. It’s a
world I forced myself into a long time ago, a world where I work as a private
investigator, as an assassin, as hired muscle, as basically anything a bit
dangerous and dubious that you want to throw money at me for.
Oh, you spotted the
word “assassin” there, didn’t you? Thing is, I don’t just break people’s legs,
I also kill if the money is right, or even if it’s not right – say if I’m at a
loose end on a lonely Tuesday afternoon.
So how did an
average, non-magical, run-of-the-mill girl from a working-class, Brighton
family end up punching werewolves in the nuts and smacking the tits off
vampires?
Well, there’s a whole
backstory leading up to that part, but I’ll come back to that later. Like I
said up top, this story starts with me in jail, six months into a three-year
stretch, so let’s begin there.
It wasn’t the first
time I’d been in jail. I’d served a few months here and there—bit of an
occupational hazard—but three years? That was serious time. And so, so boring.
It got so bad that I’d started shit-talking people in the showers in the hope
that they jumped me with a shiv. Anything to break up the ovary-curdling tedium
of it all.
Another two and a
half years of that and my brain was going to turn into gruel.
‘Oi, Banks,’ barked
Lolita, one of the prison guards.
His real name was
Jake Thomas, but the inmates had given him the nickname due to the fact that he
looked about fourteen and wore tight trousers that hugged his arse just right,
driving a significant percentage of the inmates nutty with sexual frustration.
The bloody great tease.
‘What’s up, Lolita?’
I asked, looking up from the razor-thin mattress of my bunk, upon which I was
passing the time by lying very still and doing bugger all.
‘It’s Mr Thomas. Not
Lolita: Mr Thomas.’
‘Are those trousers
even tighter today?’ I asked, leaning over and eyeing the pleasing curve of his
regulation slacks.
Red crept into his
cheeks. ‘Got a visitor for you.’
I sat up, surprised.
‘Really?’
Lolita waved for me
to follow. I frowned and hopped off the bunk, following him out of my cell. A
visitor? Sad as it may sound, I didn’t exactly have a wide circle of friends.
Maybe it’s the “assassin” thing, people can get really uppity about that.
Anyway, the point is, I tended not to get much in the way of drop-ins. Matter
of fact, the only visitor I did get was my cousin Lana, but she visited on
Wednesdays, and this wasn’t a Wednesday, it was a Friday. Very different days.
Friday doesn’t even have a “W” in it. Ridiculous.
‘Who is it?’ I asked
as Lolita’s tight buns swayed back and forth before me like a hypnotist’s
pocket watch.
‘How should I know? I
was just sent to get you.’
Well, this was all
very mysterious. Still, it broke up my afternoon nicely seeing as all I’d had
in my diary was six hours more of doing absolutely nothing, followed by sleep.
I tucked my long, dark hair behind my ears and followed on, my feet clattering
along the metal gantry, then down a set of equally metal steps.
Lolita opened the
door to the visits hall, or the “visits hell” as it had come to be known, owing
to its sickly yellow decor, stale sweat bouquet, and general air of desperate
misery. Still, it made a nice change from my cell.
The person I found
waiting for me came—it’s fair to say—as something of a surprise.
‘Hello, Erin,’ said
my dad, standing up from a Formica table and wringing his hands nervously around
a rolled-up newspaper, the print coming off on his damp fingers.
‘Well,’ I said, my
mouth flapping soundlessly for longer than I liked, ‘well.’ I grimaced, annoyed
that I’d reacted so stupidly. So weakly. The last thing I wanted was for my dad
to see me on the back foot. I’d spent years cultivating a Don’t give a shit,
always ready for what comes my way attitude, and a lot of that was because
of him. No, flummoxed was not my brand.
Dad gestured at the
chair on the opposite side of the table, and I took a seat.
‘Five minutes,’ said
Lolita, tapping his wristwatch, ‘visiting time is almost up.’ He turned and
headed off, the soles of his boots slapping the ground like wet fish.
‘Hate to see you go,
but I love to watch you leave,’ I told him with a wink.
Lolita smiled, then
frowned, then hurried away.
‘Great guy,’ I said,
turning back to my dad and crossing my arms. ‘Did you check out that arse? You
could open a bottle of Corona with that thing.’
What followed were
several long seconds of awkward silence. Probably at least fifteen seconds, but
it felt more like a good day and a half of pure, constricting agony.
Dad looked older.
Greyer. Fatter. Tired. Looked like he’d shrunk by a good inch. I stared at him,
unwilling to look away even as his big, basset hound eyes caught mine and
darted aside.
‘It’s… well, it’s
good to see you,’ he said, finally.
The feeling was not
mutual. This was the first time my dad had visited me since I got banged up. In
fact, it was the first time he’d spoken to me in almost four years, and we were
hardly on close terms before that. Yeah, my parents and I had some issues. But
we’ll get to that.
‘So, Erin,’ he
mumbled, ‘how’s prison?’
I laughed. It erupted
from me in a single, loud bark that caught the attention of the other visitors
dotted around the hall.
‘Awesome, Dad, just
brilliant. Two thumbs up. It’s karaoke night tonight, always a highlight of the
week.’
‘They let you have
karaoke nights?’
‘No, Dad, I’m in
fucking prison. Actually, there is a woman called Mandy three cells down who
likes to scream Neil Diamond songs at three in the morning, but that’s mostly
because she’s completely mental. Fair play to her though, that nutbag can carry
a tune.’
Dad didn’t react,
just quietly waited until I shut up. A proper Dad move, that one. Just ignore
the hysterical girl while she stamps her feet and shouts.
I glanced at the
clock hanging on the wall beside me. Three minutes left until visiting hours
were over. Might as well say something to pass the time. ‘So, how’s Mum?’
‘She’s okay.’
‘Still wants nothing
to do with me even after finding out I’m in jail?’
He looked to the
floor.
‘Amazing.’
My heart was beating
like crazy, smashing against my chest like it was trying to escape. I felt sure
my dad could hear it. Could hear how his visit was affecting me. I hated that
it was. I wrapped my arms tightly around myself, hoping to muffle the sound. I
knew he couldn’t hear it really, that it was a percussive showcase with an
audience of one, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
‘She doesn’t know I’m
here,’ he said. ‘Your mum.’
‘Ooh, bit naughty,
Dad. If she finds out you came and visited your own flesh and blood she’ll have
your nuts for earrings.’
He grimaced. ‘Erin,
stop it.’
I leaned forward,
jabbing a finger at him. ‘No. You don’t get to tell me what to do or how to
act. Not ever. You lost that right when you turned your back on me.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Yeah, well life’s a
dick, get over it. I have.’
Dad’s cheeks flushed.
He checked his watch.
‘Sorry, am I keeping
you from something?’
‘No. No, sorry, I…’
‘Why are you here,
Dad?’
‘Lana told me.’
‘Of course, she did,
I told her not to.’
‘She cares about
you.’
‘Well, it’s nice
somebody in the family does, isn’t it?’
Another few seconds
of awkward, brooding silence.
‘This was a mistake,’
he said, and stood.
I wanted him to stay,
to sit down, to talk. I wanted him to turn away, walk out, and never come back.
‘Okay, off you fuck,
then,’ I said, fists bunched.
He took a step away,
then paused. ‘Take care of yourself, Erin. Please. I don’t…’ He faltered. ‘Just
stay safe.’
He turned and
scurried away, not looking back.
I stood, defiant,
sad, angry. ‘Don’t worry about me, Dad, one of life’s winners, I am. Doing just
awesome. Best life ever.’
The door closed
behind him and he was gone.
Excerpt 2:
As it turned out, the giant of a man—whose name was Gerald—didn’t want
to stab me. Which was a bit of a relief. I’d yet to have my tattoos reapplied,
and I didn’t fancy my chances against a bloke his size without them. By the
looks of him, he could’ve gripped me in a bear hug and squeezed my insides
outside like the contents of a tube of toothpaste.
‘The Long Man is
waiting for you,’ said Gerald.
The Long Man? That
rang a bell. We hadn’t crossed paths before, but I’d heard all sorts of
whispers about things like him in the darkened corners of pubs at three in the
morning. About demons.
‘Okay. Where’s he at?
Maybe we could do lunch.’
‘He is inside of me,’
he replied.
‘Ah. Oh. Christ.’
Demons tend to occupy
little realms of their own, separate from the everyday world but connected to
it via hidden portals. Well, hidden unless you know where to look. It might be
a crack in reality at the bottom of an ancient well, or a hollow in a tree that
leads to another place. Or the door might be a living thing, in this case a really
tall, wide man named Gerald.
‘You’re sure he
wouldn’t just like to do this over the phone?’ I asked as I followed him across
the pebble beach and into a small hut.
‘Face-to-face,’ said
Gerald as he began to undress, carefully folding each item of clothing and
placing it aside as he did so.
Then came the
horrible bit.
Well, the sight of
Gerald stark bollock naked wasn’t exactly a delight, but what he did next was
grimmer still.
He took the knife he
was holding, turned it upon himself, and jabbed it into his throat. He didn’t
flinch, didn’t scream, he barely even blinked. He dragged the knife down his
neck, down his chest and stomach, until he reached his groin. The whole time he
cut away at himself, not a drop of blood was spilt. Finally, when he was done,
he kneeled down and used his fingers to dig into the long gash he’d fashioned,
then he began to peel himself open until there was a gap large enough for me to
crawl through.
‘You know, you’d go
down a storm on Britain’s Got Talent,’ I said.
He didn’t laugh,
which was fair enough. Crap joke.
‘The Long Man is
waiting,’ he said.
‘Right. Just gonna
crawl inside you now, Gerald. Nothing weird about that.’
I got down on my
hands and knees and began to creep into the opening. I wasn’t sure what I was
expecting, exactly. Would I be fighting my way through organs? Apparently not.
Instead, it was like I was making my way through a gap in a fence, and I found
myself crawling across a carpet of brown, fallen leaves and twigs. I turned to
see a gap in reality. A hole through which I could still see the beach hut I
was in just moments ago.
‘Okay. Right. Cool.’
I stood, brushed the
clinging sticks and leaves from my jeans, and took in my surroundings. They
were, in a word, bleak. The colour scheme was shades of grey and black, the
surrounding landscape mostly barren rock. A light breeze toyed with loose
stones and twigs, stirring up the parched earth. It wasn’t the kind of place
tourists go mad for, put it that way.
There was a single
building a little way in the distance, an ancient, crumbling cathedral, made
from large blocks of stone blacker than Hitler’s heart. Its spire was broken in
two, most of it laid out on the ground like a fallen tree. A twin pair of
stained glass windows looked down at me depicting jagged flames licking at the
bodies of anguished sinners. A wide-open set of wooden double doors formed the
mouth of the building.
‘Time to stick my
head into the lion’s gob,’ I said to myself, and walked towards the entrance.
About David
David Bussell is a winner of the P.G. Wodehouse New Comic Writer Award. David is an avid fencer, and a committed comic book fan. Rumours that David was conceived on an Indian burial ground remain unfounded
About Matthew
Matthew Stott writes strange stories. Influenced by the likes of seminal TV show ‘Doctor Who’, and writers Neil Gaiman and Stephen King, he crafts stories full of creep, wonder, and adventure. Matthew is not a murderer.
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Series Trailer * Excerpts
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