DEAD WARLOCK

CHAPTER ONE

I walked down the High Street with Ashley on one of the rare moments we had together. Things are pretty different these days. Since declaring myself king of Maidstone I’ve had a much fuller plate. Every supernatural disturbance is now my problem to deal with. People think they saw someone doing magic — I have to go and clean it up. Vampire attacks an innocent human — I have to clean it up. Big old werewolf seen roaming around town — You got it, I have to clean it up. Sometimes I manage to get some money out of these things, if I catch the perpetrator that’s broken the rules and made my life more difficult I may charge the small fine. I’m in charge I can do that. Generally, though, I don’t get any money for being king. It kind of sucks. 

All the money really comes from Ashley these days. When I became king she took over the running of Arcane Inc. She’s better at it than I ever was. She’d got more people skills. They like her more which brings in more business. There’s so much business that she’s usually busier than I am. This isn’t really a complaint, I like to be busy, we both do. Even if the stuff I have to deal with is as annoying as hell sometimes. 

I only wanted to keep Clara and Aldric from taking over my town, I never really wanted to run it myself. When I took over in that grand dramatic way that I did, I didn’t think there’d be much to running the place. You see the supernaturals in town always tended to keep to themselves anyway. Problem is, more and more have been coming here to escape Aldric and Clara and most of them don’t appreciate being told what to do by me. They all seem to think that coming here is like a free ride, you can do whatever you want in Maidstone. Not so. I have very few rules, they can pretty much do what they like as long as it doesn’t expose what we are and as long as it doesn’t piss me off in anyway. If I allowed them to do as they pleased Clara would simply march in take over. To be honest, I’m not sure why she hasn’t anyway. There isn’t a damn thing I could do to stop her. She has an entire army at her disposal. I have seven vampires and Ashley. 

The seven vampires I acquired not so long ago when I had to deal with a disturbance. A couple of vampires came to town to escape from Aldric. It turns out they’d stolen his blood and were using it to experiment on his kind of vampire. If you remember a while ago I used a shit load of magic to turn Aldric into an almost unkillable vampire so that he could deal with my enemies for me. Well some vampires find him a tad threatening and they’ve been trying to find a way to kill them. So they were kidnapping humans in my town and turning them into vampires using his blood so they could do experiments on them. I put a stop to that. I killed the ones doing the experiments and took the newly sired vampires under my wing. They work for me now. One of the experimenters, Veronica Monderson, escaped. My guys are still looking for her but it’s most likely that she’s left town now. 

So anyway, I now have seven almost invincible vampires working for me. That was the price of my protection. If they don’t want to work for me then they don’t get my protection and then Aldric will most likely kill them. He outlawed siring new vampires with his blood because he doesn’t want people to do experiments on them to figure out how to kill him. As it happens, they’re a little easier to kill than he is. The only thing that will kill them is an ash wood stake, any other stake would only kill them temporarily. To kill Aldric you have to infuse the same stake with my magic. 

The vampires are pretty useful to have around. Now that I have my own personal guard, people are less inclined to fuck with me. Two of them assist Ashley with her work, the rest work for me. Gabe is their leader and he follows me everywhere. He’s kind of like my PA/bodyguard. I also enjoy his company, but don’t tell him I said that, he’ll get cocky. 

Anyway, that’s enough catchup. Let’s get on with the here and now. Me and Ashley arrived outside the Muggleton Inn where a small crowd had gathered. Gabe walked a couple of feet behind us, his short blonde hair shining under the street lights. When it’s just me and him I let him walk next to me but when I’m with Ashley we like out privacy. Tonight was the night of the grand reopening of Muggs since it was destroyed by a massive vampire attack about seven months ago. The front of the building had been rebuilt exactly the same as it had been before, the only difference was the bricks were cleaner because they were new. A single red ribbon hung across the doors and a sign saying “Grand Reopening” was hanging above them. That’s about all the effort Bobby was likely to make. I doubted we’d see so much as a balloon inside. 

I looked around at the crowd. It was mainly supernaturals attending as the pub had always been a hangout for our sort. There were a few unwitting humans scattered about. Humans were always safe in Muggs because Bobby did not allow any funny business on his premises. He had a team of security guards who were trained to deal with the supernatural.

The doors to the pub opened and Bobby stepped out. He was a short guy with a gut that draped right over his belt. Short stubble grew across his jaw and the dome of his head. He hadn’t dressed up for the occasion, he was wearing a pair of old jeans and navy shirt. Same old Bobby. The crowd hushed and turned to face him ready to hear his opening speech.  He lifted his scissors, not the usual oversized ones that people use for stuff like this, but ordinary normal sized scissors. He grabbed the ribbon roughly and cut it in half. 

“Get inside then,” he growled and then headed back through the doors. There were a couple of giggles and then everyone began filing in. I looked at Ashley and we both grinned. 

“Same old Bobby,” she said. We both headed inside too. Like the outside the inside had been kept pretty much the same. That’s good because I don’t like too much change. The walls were a sort of off-white colour and the floor had a nasty red carpet. 

“Kept everything the same eh, Bobby?” I said as we approached him. 

“What’s that? Oh, hello, Eddie,” he said and very nearly smiled. Bobby never smiled. “I figured you’d be showing up. Glad you did. There is one thing I changed.” He led us towards the back of the pub and my heart starting to sink. The back of the pub is where the booths were, more specifically my booth which is right by the back door. I always sit there when I come to Muggs. It would be just like Bobby to do away with the booths purely to wind me up. 

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that the booths were still there. With their ugly but familiar beige leather seats. Bobby stopped at my booth and pointed up at the wall. I tell you honestly that what I saw nearly brought a tear to my eye. Not a real tear, obviously, I don’t cry. Fixed on the wall just above the table was a little gold plaque which read: “Eddie Lancaster Booth.” 

“If it wasn’t for you this pub would have been turned to rubble. I mean, it kind of was anyway, but I would’ve probably been dead underneath it all. So… thanks,” Bobby said, avoiding meeting my gaze. 

“Don’t mention, Bobby,” I replied. I’d never seen him be this nice to anyone. I’ve never seen him be at all nice to anyone actually. 

“Anyway, I’ll get the kitchen on your usual. Same for you, Ashley?” 

“Uh, yeah sure,” she said, clearly as shocked as I was. 

Bobby nodded and then headed off to the kitchen to get our dinners started. “Where’s my plaque?” Ashley asked as we slid into the booth opposite one another. I laughed. She had helped defend the pub during the attack but I’d been the one to organise everything. I was the commander so to speak. 

A short while later we were tucking into two delicious buttermilk chicken burgers. Gabe was sitting at a table nearby. His incredibly light blue eyes were scanning the crowd keeping a close watch on things. Once I finished eating I sat and looked at Ashley at her big green eyes. It was so rare that we got time together like this, I’d nearly forgotten how enticing they were. 

“What? What are you thinking?” she asked, still chewing her burger. 

“Oh, I’m just thinking about all the things I’m gonna do to you when I get you home,” I said, flicking my eyebrows up in what I hoped was a seductive expression. 

“Mister Lancaster, not at the dinner table,” she replied, smiling coyly. 

Gabe suddenly screamed at the top of his lungs, rudely interrupting out flirting. I looked over and saw him sinking to the floor, his skin greying and a dark wooden stake protruding from his chest. It was too dark for ash wood so it wouldn’t kill him for long. A tall man stood over him and two other men and a woman stood just behind. The tall man ran at me, hands preparing a spell. I flicked my wrist and he flew up through the air, wacked his head on the ceiling and crashed down to the floor out cold. I’d deal with him later. For now he’d better just hope that Gabe was in a forgiving mood when he woke up. 

“Attack at the back!” One of Bobby’s security guards screamed. Black-suited guards ran towards the attackers as did me and Ashley. They were smart enough not to try fighting and they fled for the front doors. One of the guards lunged at them but a quickly cast spell sent the guard hurtling in the other direction.

Me and Ashley ran after them, we tried throwing spells at them but they were savvy enough too deflect them. As we all burst out on the street they split up. Two went left, one right. 

“You go right, I’ll go left,” I said to Ashley. 

“I bet I catch mine first,” she sad playfully and shot down the street. 

“We’ll see,” I muttered to myself and ran in the opposite direction. It was hardly fair considering I had double the amount to catch. 

I hadn’t got far when I heard the screeching of tires followed by Ashley’s scream. I turned. A red Vauxhall Corsa slammed into Ashley hard. She bounced off the corner of the bonnet as if repelled and then she smashed right into the front of a bus coming from the other direction. Her body hit it hard enough to dent the steel and crack the glass. The bus squeezed and hissed noisily as the driver braked but another car was already coming. The blue Fiat swerved to avoid running into the back of the Corsa and instead ending up slamming into the front of the bus. Ashley cried out again as she was crushed between the two vehicles. 

“Ashley!” I screamed and hurtled towards the crash. The attackers no longer mattered, in my mind they didn’t even exist. Nobody did, only Ashley. As I arrived the Fiat reversed freeing her from the death grip. I got there just in time catch her as she collapsed. I sunk to my knees, cradling her in my arms, healing magic already pouring out of my palms. I ran my green-glowing hands over her bloody, battered body, but it was too late. Her big green eyes had faded. She was already dead.