Just Try Not To Die Page 5

  “Don’t be silly. Some of them had one.”

  “That’s still doesn’t make any sense. But then none of this does.” He looked about, growing more irate by the second. “I’m going home,” he told the group at large. “Ring be damned. C’mon Neil.”

  At the exasperated stares of the two Masters, he made to move back towards the door, but a fresh figure now blocked his path; a petite woman, young, pretty, slim, with black hair streaked with brightly coloured dye, all the colours of the rainbow, and tied back into pig-tails. She stood there, barring his way, a smile on her face, her eyes wide and glistening like some Japanese cartoon character.

  “And who are you?” he asked with a sigh.

  “I’m Master Gertrude,” she told him, giggling.

  “Gertrude?” He rolled his eyes. “They get better and better. What are you Master of? Cosplay?”

  “No, silly,” she laughed. “Combat.”

  He raised an eyebrow, a sudden flood of nerves tingling him, despite his bluster of before.

  “Well,” he started. “I still wouldn’t get in my way. I’ve been told I’m pretty strong now, by a vampire no less. And they know a thing or two about being strong, believe you me. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off.”

  As he began to move once more, the girl glanced towards Master Heimlich, who nodded, a wry grin on his face. Even as Brian strode past her, her hands darted out with eye-searing speed. Out of unnatural instinct, Brian’s own arms flashed up, catching her arms by the wrists and holding her in place. Even he looked shocked at his own speed.

  “See?” he told her, before crying out in pain as she kicked his knee, sending him crumpling to the floor in pain. His head, even on his knees, was all-but level with hers. “Don’t make me hurt you,” he managed to gasp out, even as she headbutted him, causing him to release her wrists and fall flat on his back, stars in his vision. He shook his head, blinking, eyes watering. “I’ve warned you,” he croaked, trying to right himself. “I won’t…”

  Before he could even gasp out the last words, Gertrude was upon him, her hands a-blur as they pummelled him in key places, fingers strangely contorted as they struck his flesh with pinpoint precision. With each strike, Brian felt his arms, his legs, his neck losing all feeling. Finally, she rose, dusting off her hands and standing back with a satisfied smile, leaving Brian lying there on the stone floor, completely paralysed.

  “…warn you again,” Brian finished his sentence with a sigh of resignation. He glanced up at the gathered Masters who now surrounded him, Steve, Neil too, each trying to stifle their laughter as they regarded his prone and pathetic form. “I can’t feel anything,” he groaned. “I’m not… I’m not gonna shit myself am I?”

  “It could be arranged,” Gertrude told him with an infuriating smile. “One more tap in the right place.”

  “God no,” he replied. “I’ve had enough. I give in. I’m not going anywhere, don’t worry.”

  “Clearly,” Heimlich told him. “Either way, like it or not, this is your life now, lad. The ring has chosen you and only death can remove it. The supernatural will find you wherever you might be, just as it did in Wetherspoon’s last night. The only difference is, with our help, you’ll be better prepared. Luckily for you, that vampire you encountered last night, Beth, was but small fry on the scale of such creatures.”

  “You heard about that?”

  “We see all,” Heimlich told him with a nod. “Our team scry the land, with magical artefacts, police scanners. We scour the news, the airwaves, the ley-lines, Reddit, seeking out the darkness wherever it may be. And your job now is to learn how to fight it. You might be a buffoon, but you’re humanity’s greatest weapon in the fight against the creatures of the night. Are you ready to accept the responsibility and become Helsing?”

  Brian pondered the man’s words. If he could, he would have scratched his head, maybe rubbed his chin in some philosophical way. As it was, all he could do was lie there flat, like a discarded strand of spaghetti.

  “No,” he finally replied. “But it doesn’t look like I have a choice in the matter, does it?”

  Gertrude glanced at Heimlich, expectant, and the man shrugged.

  “Good enough, I suppose,” he told her.

  With that, the girl crouched down, hitting Brian once more in some strange pattern. The numbness began to subside, pins and needles now flooding his every limb as feeling began to restore. Slowly, carefully, lest he fall over, he climbed to his feet, shaking out his arms and legs.

  “Not going to try to run again, are you?” Friedrick chuckled.

  “Don’t think so,” Brian replied, eyeing Gertrude suspiciously.

  Please do, the girl mouthed at him, silently, her eyes twinkling with amusement.

  Brian sighed heavily, feeling the weight of destiny bearing down inexorably upon his bony shoulders, and turned back to Heimlich.

  “So, where do we begin?” he reluctantly asked.

  “First,” the man told him. “You need to learn what it is you’re up against. Only then can you learn how to fight them. And so we will take you to Otto; the Master of the Bestiary.”

  Great, thought Brian, still rolling his shoulders and freeing himself from the last vestiges of the nerve strikes of before. Another Master. How big was this strange Order? And would every single one of these Masters look at him as though he was in idiot? As he followed, glumly, behind the pack, down one of the corridors that led off from the main chamber, he wondered what fresh humiliation awaited him behind this next door.

  Chapter Seven:

  Loins. And The Girding Thereof

  This Otto was something of a strange chap, Brian thought to himself. What gave it away? Was it the mad professor hair that fell in a great, white mane down his back, matching the straggly white goatee on his chin? Or was it the way he was hacking away at the corpse on the marble table before him with an axe, bright blue blood and ichor spraying to coat his overalls?

  As Brian watched on in horrified fascination, the smell suddenly hit him and he all but retched; the reek of fermenting fish and stagnant water wafted over from the ruined cadaver. It smelled like Newlyn Harbour on a scorching summer day. The others all seemed reasonably inured to the smell. Even Neil only pulled an amused face.

  “Ripe,” he commented.

  At the sound of his voice, Otto stopped his feverish work, dropping the axe to the tiled floor with a clang and striding over.

  “You must be the new Helsing,” he told Neil, reaching out to greet him. Before, at the pointed stares of the other Masters, he paused, turning his gaze to Brian instead. “Oh.”

  “What is it with oh?” Brian blurted out, immediately regretting opening his mouth as a greasy tendril of fish-stench wormed its way into his throat, causing him to retch once more at the taste.

  “Nothing,” Otto laughed, craning his neck to look up at Brian. “Ignore me. It’s an honour to meet you, Number Thirteen.” He stuck out his hand to shake. Brian stared at it; slimy ichor dropped from his fingers. Was that a kidney lodged between two of his fingers? No, thought Brian; it looked more like a spleen. Otto glanced at his own hand. “Ah, yes.” He wiped it on his overalls, proffered it Brian’s way once more. It was no better the second time round.

  “Anyway, Otto,” came Heimlich’s drawling voice. “Why don’t you show our new champion what you’ve been working on?”

  “Yes, yes, a good plan,” the Master nodded, turning back towards the slab and the festering cadaver thereon. “Have you any idea what this creature before you might be, Number Thirteen?”

  “The name’s Brian. Or Helsing, if you absolutely must. And nope. Nor do I want to know.”

  “It’s a mermaid,” the man told him, completely ignoring the second part of his statement. “Or more precisely, a merman. You can see his penis here.” He pointed to a strange appendage that Brian could happily lived his entire life without ever seeing. “Between his legs,” he continued unnecessarily, gesturing to what remained of the creature’s l
ower half.

  “Don’t mermaid have tails?” Neil asked.

  Otto chortled.

  “No, only in fairy tales,” he chuckled. “What use a tail when mermaids hunt on land, on beaches and riverbanks?”

  “Hunt?” Brian gulped. “What do they… what do they eat?” he asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer to the question.

  “Whatever they can catch,” Otto shrugged. “Fish, deer, people. They’re not picky.”

  As Brian shuddered, Neil ventured closer to the corpse, eyeing the remains closely.

  “The meat,” he said. “It’s white. Like a fish.”

  “Correct,” Otto nodded. “You’ve a good eye. Their musculature is composed primarily of fast-twitch muscles, giving them great strength.”

  “All the better for catching people,” Brian murmured.

  “Quite.”

  “Otto.” It was Gertrude’s voice now, all light and whimsical, despite the grim offerings on display. “Shall we show our new Helsing the Bestiary?”

  “Absolutely,” he beamed. “Please, follow this way.”

  The group followed Otto across his lab, past other such slabs with their own corpses on, most of them thankfully covered by white, gore-stained sheets, towards a pair of huge brass double doors. He opened one, the door swinging open on oiled hinges with nary a squeak, before disappearing, the others following, all bar Heimlich who stopped and placed a strong hand on Brian’s shoulder.

  “Prepare yourself, Helsing.”

  Brian blinked.

  “How?”

  “How… what?” Heimlich asked, frowning.

  “How should I prepare myself?”

  “Erm, I… dunno. Gird your loins?”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “No-one knows. Just… just go in, lad.”

  With one last gulp, Brian turned back to the doorway. What could possibly await him that would be worse than everything he’d already been through, he thought? Surely his adrenal glands were all but empty by now, for his heart couldn’t take any more surprises. Slowly, hesitatingly, he began to shuffle through the brass doors. A firm shove from behind, a big hand in the centre of his back, pushing him quicker.

  “Get on with it. Jesus.”

  Now fully in the room, Brian gazed about. He was wrong; his adrenaline wasn’t quite depleted yet, his heart pounding, his pulse rising to a staccato beat in his ears as his disbelieving eyes took in the monstrosities on display. Neil strode here and there, eyes wide with wonder, taking in the strangeness, the foreignness of all the creatures on display, but all Brian could think about was how quickly he wanted to run away from this place and how far. John O’Groats might do, he thought. But then a knowing wink from Gertrude pinned his feet firmly to the earth.

  “The Bestiary!” Otto called out in something approaching a weird kind of pride. “This is the hall where we keep a body from each foe we encounter, along with information on their strengths and weaknesses.” He pointed to a glass display cabinet containing a small, stunted skeleton, about the bare bone chin of which still clung a wiry ginger beard. “A kobold. Usually peaceful, but they can turn quite nasty if provoked.” Then he pointed to a preserved corpse in another, larger display case, this one swollen and hairy all over, with baleful eyes, rending claws and teeth like knives. “A lycanthrope, or werewolf, to the layman. Normal, law-abiding citizens in day-to-day life, but come the full moon they become bity buggers.” Another questing finger, another case. This time, a skeleton jet black, nine-feet tall, with a twisted, monstrous face and horns atop its skull that stretched wider than even Brian could stretch his arms. Even just a glance at it caused shivers of cold dread to worm their way down Brian’s spine. “A demon-baron, from the fifth circle of Hell. A nuclear fireball of power all wrapped up in a convenient devil-shaped package. Pray you never bump into one of those bastards,” Otto chuckled.

  Brian prayed. Oh god, he prayed, his heart thumping so hard he could feel himself vibrating along the floor, his head starting to swim. Neil, on the other hand, seemed in his element, still wandering about, mouth open in amazement.

  “No vampires in here?” he asked.

  “No,” Otto replied, shaking his head. “They’ve a nasty habit of just, well, dissolving after they’ve been killed. Probably something to do with the fact that they should have died a long time ago. It’s as though, when killed, the ravages of time they’d so far cheated all catch up to them at once. Maybe if we’d got a fresh one, newly sired, we might be able to keep it on ice, study their physiology. Thankfully, trial and error over the centuries has taught us much about them and how to fight them.”

  “Stakes?” Neil ventured. “Garlic? Sunlight?”

  “Stakes, yes.” It was Gertrude, the Master of Combat, who answered his question. “A stake through the heart works wonder, same as it does on anyone. Garlic, not so much. They don’t like it sure, but in the same way I don’t like prawn cocktail crisps. And sunlight’s not their favourite either; they can’t venture out in anything but weak daylight and, even then, they have to wear factor fifty. It takes a concentrated burst of UV to do them any real harm.”

  “Like the flashbang Helsing used to save Bri?” Neil asked.

  “Correct,” Friedrick answered, his leathery, wrinkled face cracking into a grin. “One of my favourites of all my inventions, the UV grenade.”

  “There ya go,” Neil laughed. “You know who to thank for saving your life now, Brian. Brian…?”

  His friend was prostrate on the floor, eyes closed, face pale, his consciousness having finally, mercifully, fled him in the face of this hall of horrors in which he’d now found himself. Gertrude grunted in amusement. Heimlich sighed, before turning to Neil.

  “Is he always this much of a pussy?” he asked him.

  “Pretty much,” he answered, with a shrug.

  Chapter Eight:

  The Sound Of Being A Colossal Twat

  “Oi.” A psychic slap across his metaphysical face, echoing across the void of his unconscious mind. “Wake up, Helsing. Can’t have you sleeping on your first day on the job. Swim towards the light.”

  Brian didn’t want to swim. He wanted to stay here, where it was warm, comfy, no vampires or gribbly, towering demons. It was safe here, in oblivion. But some strange compulsion overtook him, a glamour in those words that made him start to swim, with arms that weren’t arms, legs that weren’t legs, up and out of the grey, towards the pinprick of light racing towards him in the distance. He only hoped that the light wasn’t a train coming the other way. It would be just his luck.

  He woke with a start, blinking his suddenly opened eyes against the light to see Heimlich bent down in front of him, his face but inches from his own.

  “Good, you’re back in the land of the living,” the Master of Magic announced, straightening himself and walking over to a mahogany drinks cabinet. “Took some potent sorcery to drag you out of there,” he continued, as he poured a brandy into a crystal glass. “You were proper dug in there. Like a stubborn tick.”

  “Where… where am I?” Brian murmured, sleepily. “Please don’t tell me I’m still in that Bestiary…”

  “You’re sat on a sofa in the Snug,” Heimlich told him, striding over, glass of brandy to hand. Brian reached out with an unsteady hand, grateful for the drink, but Heimlich frowned and snatched it away from his grasp. “Oi. That’s mine.”

  “Oh.” He paused, embarrassed, before glancing about the room.

  It was small, softly-lit, with tapestries on the walls, bookcases and cabinets along the edge of the room, a large, open fireplace at one end and a coffee table in the centre. On other chairs, the other three Masters sat. Well, two of them; Friedrick sat as ever on, or rather in, his wheelchair. Steve, the guide from before, was gone. And one other glaring omission Brian noticed.

  “Where’s Neil?”

  “We sent him away,” Gertrude told him. “He was a distraction.”

  “I… I didn’t find him distracting,” he tol
d her, confused.

  “Not for you, for us,” Heimlich replied. “It was like a case of ‘look at what you could have won,’ and it was starting to get on our nerves a bit. So now we’ve got you on your own. And if you’re not planning on fainting again anytime soon, it’s time to start getting down to the nitty-gritty.”

  Friedrick steamed forwards a couple of feet, sliding a black binder across the coffee table towards Brian. He stared at it for an instant, before slowly taking it and laying it in his lap, flicking it open. The pages within were laminated, the writing and clip-art pictures banded with faint lines as though printed out on an inkjet that was running low on ink.

  YOUR FIRST DAY AS A HELSING AND WHAT TO EXPECT the title on the first page read.

  He looked up from the folder, eyes full of disbelief. The Masters watched him, expectantly. Finally, realising they were serious, he began to leaf through the folder. Managing finances, handling weapons, how to disguise your secret identity. Chapter after chapter, each with bullet-points, diagrams, inspirational quotes from past Helsings. Finally, he closed the binder and slowly placed it back on the coffee table.

  “Really?” he said. “A welcome pack?”

  “Well, yes,” Heimlich told him. “It’s a job, just like any other.”

  “A job doesn’t ask you to risk life and death on a daily basis,” he gasped. “Well, apart from the army. And maybe the police. And the fire brigade.” He paused, before shaking his head. “You know what I mean.”

  “You exaggerate,” Gertrude laughed. “You wouldn’t be risking your life on a daily basis. I think it averages out as weekly. Weekly?” She glanced to Friedrick, who nodded. “Yeah, weekly.”

  “Still!” he exclaimed. “That’s not the point. I work to live, not to risk that life. I should be at home now, trawling through Indeed, or maybe signing on down the Job Centre. Demon-hunting isn’t going to pay the bills. And my pantry looks like old Mother Hubbard’s right now.”

  “If you actually took the time to read through the welcome pack properly,” Heimlich told him, “you would see that finances have been arranged. A hungry Helsing is a distracted Helsing. Bills are a non-issue, the Order has wealthy benefactors; the powers that be have always appreciated the work we do.”