Uncanny Ink: Books 1-3 (Uncanny Ink Collection) by David Bussell & M.V. Stott

Author:David Bussell & M.V. Stott [Bussell, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Uncanny Kingdom
Published: 2019-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

10

I woke up spewing brine and gasping for air. The thing that hit me next was the smell, which hummed like an upturned porta-potty. I was in a large, open cylinder made of clammy, moss-covered concrete. I couldn’t make sense of the place. My eyes were open and my body was moving, but my brain had yet to catch up.

As I lay there, waterlogged, head spinning, I realised I was on a gantry of some sort. Up above I could hear a rumble of traffic, tyres on tarmac, echoing through the tunnel in a low, buzzing burr and travelling through the metal I was lying on. Down below me ran a magma of shit and stagnant water, bubbling and belching its wretched hot breath.

‘Rise and shine,’ said a familiar voice.

Lurking in the gloom, I saw a person who looked like a Cabbage Patch Kid rescued from a landfill.

‘Cupid? Well, I’ve woken up to worse,’ I said, and really, really wished that wasn’t true. Booze is the Devil’s milk, children. Tasty, tasty Devil milk.

‘Saw you thrashing around and fished you out of the drink,’ he said as he flapped his wings by way of demonstration. ‘You should count yourself lucky I was out this way.’

‘You couldn’t hole me up someplace a little nicer than a sewer?’

‘Oh la-di-da, Your Majesty!’ he said, prancing about on the tips of his toes. ‘Too much of a princess for the sewer, are ya?’

I tore a rip in my jeans to inspect for damage and was pleased to discover that my tattoos had made short work of the bullet wound. Where there should have been a gaping hole, I found a patch of healed-up scar tissue, which was just as well, as—and I’m no doctor here—I’m pretty sure an open wound and a sewer made for a bad mix.

‘Well, go on then,’ said Cupid, ‘what were you doing messing around in The Shark Tank?’

I rolled on to my knees and spat the last of the seawater from my lungs. ‘Thought I had a lead on the Galoffi kid. Turned out to be a bust.’ Well, not totally. I’d laid eyes on Sharez Jek for the first time. I remembered his smile and shivered. He was close. It was only a matter of time before I turned over the right rock.

‘Don’t suppose you’ve turned up anything new?’ I asked.

‘Not a sausage,’ Cupid replied.

Honestly, if this day had a face, I'd have punched it in the balls.

My visit to The Shark Tank had led nowhere. Even if Neroni did know where Jek could be found, there was no way I was paying her another visit to get anything out of her. I was just going to have to come at him from some other angle.

Planting a hand on the gantry, I forced myself to my feet and stood up straight, making my spine crack back into shape. My head ached and my joints felt as though they were full of broken glass, but other than that I felt just amazing.

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