Spectre's Rest Read online

  SPECTRE’S REST

  Book Three of The Brackenford Cycle

  Nick Moseley

  Also by Nick Moseley

  Location, Location, Damnation

  Deceased Estate (novella)

  Hangman’s Pond

  The Ghost’s Story (novella)

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Copyright Information

  About The Author

  One

  ‘Don’t worry, this’ll be easy,’ the big Custodian said, cheerfully guaranteeing that things would go horribly wrong. Trev Irwin gave him a thumbs-up and did his best not to wince. He stood by the unmarked van, watched his three companions checking and loading their guns, and wondered just what the hell he was doing there.

  I’m an estate agent, not a SWAT team member, he thought. Unless “SWAT” is an acronym for “Slacker With Antisocial Tendencies”.

  He wasn’t even sure where they were. Somewhere on the outskirts of Birmingham, apparently. He peered through a gap in the wooden barriers to his left and saw the half-finished office block reaching up into the black sky as if trying to struggle free from the piles of construction materials and silent earth-moving equipment gathered at its base. Somewhere in there, he’d been told, was a vampire.

  The men finished with their guns and holstered them. Trev noted that they hadn’t offered him one. Not that he blamed them. The one and only time he’d been let loose with a firearm he’d proven himself incapable of hitting the proverbial barn door at three paces. After all, marksmanship was hardly a required skill for people in the property trade. Unless you were working in Manchester, of course.

  Despite his lack of a gun, Trev was armed. At his waist were two holsters, each of which held a bladeless sword-hilt. One was Celtic in design, the other Norse. Under most circumstances a sword with no blade was only dangerous if you threw it hard enough, but these were not typical swords. They were vapour weapons, capable of producing phantom blades composed of psychic energy. The two that Trev was carrying were known as The Twins, and worked as a pair.

  ‘Ready?’ said the talkative Custodian, a tall muscular man with a shaved head. His name was Jeff Ingersoll, although he answered to “Big Jeff”. Trev had worked with him once before but didn’t know him that well. The other two Custodians were total strangers. One was a slim, twitchy man with blond hair who appeared to have chosen his clothes with the intention of growing into them; Ingersoll had identified him as Robbie Carter. The other was a sturdy, middle-aged Asian man with an impressive black moustache. He’d been introduced as Sajid Rahman.

  ‘No, if I’m honest,’ Trev said. ‘I’m happy to stay and guard the van, if you like.’

  He shivered. It was mid-December and the temperature was just above freezing. Trev cast a glance across the muddy building site and lamented his decision to wear his good pair of jeans that evening. Ingersoll had given him a body-armour vest which he’d put on under his coat. It was uncomfortable, but at least it was an extra layer of clothing.

  Ingersoll laughed, assuming – quite incorrectly – that Trev was joking. ‘Want me to go over things one more time?’

  ‘Sure, why not,’ Trev muttered.

  ‘Right, well we know this vampire has been selling drugs and feeding off the addicts. We tried to nab him last week but he got away and has been lying low since. We’re almost certain this is where he’s hiding. The construction company’s gone into administration so there’s no work happening here at the moment.’

  ‘Yeah, I got that bit,’ Trev said. ‘But remind me how we’re going to catch him?’

  ‘There’s only one working entrance,’ Ingersoll explained. ‘The back one. The front doors are chained shut. I want you and Robbie covering the back entrance and the stairs at ground level in case the target tries to run for it. Sajid and I will move up the floors until we find him. Once we’ve got him, you two can come up and help us get him to the van.’

  ‘Do we know if he’s armed?’

  ‘No, but vampires usually rely on their hypnosis ability to get them out of trouble. He might have a knife or something, which is why we’re being careful.’ He tapped his armoured chest. ‘Hopefully he’s not stupid enough to try and fight his way out, though.’

  Trev looked at the little group. ‘Shouldn’t there be more of us for this?’

  Ingersoll shrugged. ‘In an ideal world, yeah. You know how things are at the moment. We’re stretched pretty thin.’

  ‘If you’re dragging the likes of me along, then “desperate” is probably the word,’ Trev said.

  ‘You’re joking, right?’ said Carter. He pointed at The Twins. ‘You can use those bad boys. You could bring this vamp in on your own, no trouble.’

  Trev adopted a noncommittal expression and tried not to cringe. He’d developed something of a reputation among the Custodians. Not only was he one of the few people with enough power to use The Twins, he was also the man who’d single-handedly banished a demon and had followed that by going toe-to-toe with Ezekiel Barker, a Victorian hit-man who was rated as one of the most dangerous people in the supernatural world. These things made people assume that he was some kind of badass, when in fact – in Trev’s opinion – he was just very, very lucky.

  ‘Well, maybe,’ he said, not wanting to dampen Carter’s enthusiasm too much. ‘But I’m still a newbie to all of this, don’t forget.’

  Carter gave him one of those “I think you’re joking but I’m not quite sure” half-smiles. Trev raised his eyebrows and switched his attention back to Ingersoll, leaving Carter to draw his own conclusions.

  ‘We’ll go in through that gap in the barriers,’ Ingersoll said. ‘Immediately to your left when you go through you’ll see a load of pallets of bricks and stuff. Use them as cover. We should be able to get almost to the side wall of the building without being seen. Then we can work our way around to the back doors.’

  ‘We ought to get started then,’ said Rahman, checking his watch. ‘The traffic will be building up soon.’

  Trev took the opportunity to further depress himself by looking at his own watch. It was five forty-six in the morning, a time that he hadn’t even known existed prior to that moment. The idea was to catch the vampire after he’d settled down to sleep through the daylight hours and would, in theory, be less alert.

  ‘All right, let’s go,’ said Ingersoll. They walked along the tall wooden barriers until they came to a pair that were only loosely joined together. Ingersoll levered them apart with his beefy hands and leaned aside so that Rahman could get through. Carter went next, followed by a reluctant Trev.

  Rahman led them along the pallets
of bricks and roofing materials, keeping low. The mud clung to Trev’s boots and he could feel the cold nibbling at his toes. Now I understand why SWAT teams don’t wear flip-flops, he thought.

  They reached the end of the available cover and dashed across the few yards to the side of the office block. Ingersoll held up a hand for silence and they all listened for any sign that they’d been detected. There was nothing to hear except the faint fwap-fwap-fwap of a loose tarpaulin catching the wind, somewhere higher up the building. Ingersoll nodded and led them on.

  The rear doors weren’t chained shut like those at the front, but they were locked from inside. Rahman reached into his pocket and produced a small black plastic device with a pistol grip at one end and a metal probe at the other. He inserted the probe into the keyhole along with a thin torsion wrench and pumped the trigger; a moment later he was clicking the lock open.

  ‘What’s that thing?’ Trev asked.

  ‘Snap gun,’ Rahman replied. ‘It makes lock-picking a lot easier, but it doesn’t do the lock much good.’

  Rahman stowed his lock-picking tools and eased the door open. Beyond was a dark hallway. A little light spilled in from the streetlamps outside the barriers, but not much. Rahman switched on a torch and adjusted the beam until it was very dim. The other Custodians followed suit and the team moved inside.

  They were in a hallway which stretched the length of the building. At the far end they could see the front doors, which let in some light through their glass panels. More building materials were scattered about. It looked as if the construction crew had literally downed tools and left.

  ‘All right,’ said Ingersoll softly. ‘Earpieces in.’

  Trev dug out the radio headset Ingersoll had given him earlier and put it on. The radio itself was clipped to his belt. Ingersoll checked that everyone could both hear and be heard over the airwaves and nodded to Rahman.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Radio silence unless it’s absolutely necessary.’

  The main staircase was located halfway along the hallway. Trev and Carter took up positions on either side while Rahman and Ingersoll headed up. For such a big man, Ingersoll was surprisingly quiet.

  ‘I’d have thought that you’d be one of the guys doing the actual hunting,’ Carter whispered. ‘Seems a waste to have you kicking your heels down here.’

  Oh good, he wants to talk, Trev thought. He wasn’t feeling very sociable. Had he known that the Custodians were going to drag him out at stupid o’clock in the morning, he wouldn’t have volunteered his services. It didn’t seem to be bothering Carter, whose expression was almost eager. Trev suspected that the bloke had dosed himself with caffeine tablets or energy drinks, which would certainly explain his twitchiness.

  Trev had taken a week off work to do some training with these new friends. The Custodians were the United Kingdom’s secret supernatural police force. Their job was to keep all the spooky stuff from getting into the newspapers, as well as protecting the general public from the various weird creatures that might do them harm (and, in some cases, vice-versa). They’d been trying to recruit Trev for a while and he had finally agreed, though not for any altruistic reasons. He’d discovered that the Custodians had a traitor in their ranks, and he or she had tried twice to have Trev killed. This was both annoying and rude, so Trev had joined up to try to track down his would-be assassin.

  Carter was waiting for a response. ‘I’m only a raw recruit,’ Trev said. ‘To do the heavy lifting I need to wait for promotion to the rank of Tea Boy, at least.’

  ‘There’s nobody else who’s done what you have,’ said Carter. ‘You fought Ezekiel Barker! Twice!’

  ‘Keep your voice down, eh?’ said Trev, leaning into the stairwell to listen for any sounds from above.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Carter, ‘but… bloody hell! Twice!’

  ‘Yeah, and on both occasions someone else had to step in to stop Barker from handing me my arse,’ Trev replied. ‘Don’t think that those fights were even. Barker’s way more dangerous than I am.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Carter said, ‘but the only other people who’ve survived a fight with Barker were the ones that he let survive.’

  Trev shrugged. He really couldn’t be bothered to continue the argument. It was six a.m., he was cold, and he wanted to be in bed. He adjusted his headset. They hadn’t heard a peep out of Ingersoll or Rahman. Trev didn’t know whether he ought to be concerned or not.

  ‘How long are we supposed to wait for them?’ he asked.

  It was Carter’s turn to shrug. ‘As long as it takes.’

  ‘What if they get into trouble?’

  ‘They’ll radio us for help.’ Carter actually looked like he hoped that would happen. He was fidgeting so much Trev was worried he might spontaneously combust.

  ‘Right,’ Trev said. He shuffled his feet. His toes were going numb.

  ‘What about the demon?’ Carter said.

  ‘What about it?’

  Carter bounced on the balls of his feet. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I banished it. But I had help.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re playing this stuff down so much,’ Carter said. He appeared to be frustrated by Trev’s truthfulness. ‘If that was me, I’d be dining out on these stories.’

  ‘I don’t want a reputation,’ Trev said, ‘or any special treatment. I just want to get on with my training like everybody else does.’

  ‘You won’t get anywhere like that,’ Carter said. ‘You’ve got the chance to push on really quickly, you should take it while you can.’

  ‘Noted,’ said Trev, hoping that Carter would take the hint and shut up. Even an uncomfortable silence was preferable to unsolicited careers advice. If Carter began using phrases like “think outside the box” and “eyes on the prize” Trev was afraid he might have to kill him.

  In the event he was spared from having to commit twatricide by a succession of faint sounds from above. He moved to the foot of the stairs and listened, unsure of what he’d heard. There was silence, but it was a silence of the foreboding kind.

  ‘What was that?’ Carter whispered. He had drawn his gun with his right hand and was doing his best to get both his torch and his vapour weapon, which was a cross-hilt dagger, into his left.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Trev, staring upwards into the blackness. Carter aimed his torch into the void, illuminating the plain concrete steps and little else.

  ‘Maybe they’ve caught him,’ Carter said.

  ‘Shouldn’t they have radioed us then?’ Trev wondered.

  Carter frowned. ‘Maybe. Do you think we should go up?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Trev said again, but it wasn’t true. They were going to have to go up. Something had gone wrong, as he’d known it would. Bloody Ingersoll, he thought. Why did he have to say “this’ll be easy”?

  Their headsets crackled. Carter started, and had to juggle his gun to avoid dropping it. Trev could hear, faintly, the sound of breathing in his ear.

  ‘Hello, Custodians,’ said a voice. ‘I’ve got your two colleagues up here on the fifth floor. I haven’t hurt them yet, but I will if you don’t do what I say.’

  ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ Carter blurted into his headset.

  ‘I was just getting to that, you impatient clown,’ said the voice. ‘Come up to the fifth. You’ll see your two friends. Go and stand facing the wall with your hands against it. I’ll make my exit and nobody has to die messily.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Carter said to Trev, who had remained silent throughout the exchange.

  ‘I think we’re in deep shit,’ Trev said. His face was very pale in the dim light from Carter’s torch.

  ‘I recognise that voice.’

  Two

  ‘His name’s Corbyn,’ Trev said softly as they started up the staircase. ‘You may have heard of him.’

  His tone was casual, masking his concern. Corbyn was a very unpleasant piece of work. He’d built a reputation as somebody who could lay his han
ds on almost anything a buyer could want, if the money was right. Usually the things his buyers wanted were dangerous, illegal or both. Trev had encountered the vampire while tracking two nutcases who’d summoned a demon, and had asked him for information. There’d been a fight, during which Corbyn had lost two of his fingers and all of his composure.

  ‘The name rings a bell,’ Carter murmured back. ‘Wasn’t there a big search for him a couple of months ago?’

  Carter had phoned the Custodians’ HQ in the hope of being sent some backup, but the operator had told him it was unlikely anyone could get to them for at least an hour and recommended that they try to stall for time. Based on his past experience, Trev didn’t think that Corbyn would be that patient.

  Trev nodded. ‘Yeah, he was kidnapping people for that demon to possess.’

  ‘I remember now. Sounds like he’s in need of a kicking.’ Carter held his gun in a raised position as he climbed the stairs, the dimmed torch in his other hand. It was just bright enough to allow them to pick their way. They were moving as quietly as they could, though it wasn’t as if Corbyn was unaware they were coming. Trev had drawn The Twins but hadn’t activated them. The swords’ phantom blades would have illuminated the stairway in dramatic style and removed any pretence of stealth.

  ‘There’s no doubt about that,’ Trev said, ‘but we can’t just go charging in there. If he’s got Ingersoll and Rahman then he’ll have their guns. And Corbyn and I have… history. If he sees me, he’ll try to kill me.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Carter said.

  Bloody hell, Trev thought, struck by a realisation. He’s not fidgety because he wants to get in on the action. He’s fidgety because he’s scared shitless. And the poor sod’s looking to me for leadership? We’re in more trouble than I thought.

  ‘I don’t want to get into a gunfight,’ Trev said. ‘I’m at a disadvantage. Because I haven’t got a gun.’

  ‘You can take him down with The Twins,’ Carter said.

  ‘Using these doesn’t make me bulletproof,’ Trev replied, ‘and this body armour’s not going to help if he shoots me in the head.’