Blood on the Bar (Lucas the Atoner Book 1) Read online

  Lucas reclaimed the cue and considered snapping it to relieve more of his anger. “I’ve already lost everything,” he growled.

  “You could let it strengthen you—like Greg did.”

  Lucas wanted to punch Max right in his sweet, understanding face, yet somehow his anger slipped away, and he only felt exhausted. “You’re a good lad, Max, but please just give me some spa...” He trailed off, spotting movement in the corner of his eye. The cue ball that had leapt from the table earlier was now rolling across the floorboards towards the pub’s front door.

  Max noticed it too. “Huh, guess the floors in this place aren’t plum. I’ll go fetch it.”

  Lucas didn’t object, despite the odd feeling at the back of his mind that told him something wasn’t quite right. He watched the lad stroll over to retrieve the ball, then glanced at the others still huddled around the bar. They were staring at the old nail, so intently they hadn’t noticed Lucas and Max arguing. On the wall behind the bar, the spirits rattled. The spirits inside the bottles sloshed to one side, as if gravity had suddenly turned sideways.

  Something was wrong.

  Lucas turned his focus back to Max just as the lad knelt by the front door to pick up the elusive cue ball. But it rolled away from him, forcing him to creep after it until it clunked against the door inside the front porch. The sudden, sharp noise got everyone’s attention, and those at the bar turned their heads.

  Lucas put down the pool cue. “Max! Listen to me. Get away from that d-”

  The door burst open and a colossal gust of wind forced its way inside the pub. At the opposite end of the room, the rear door burst open as well, and the interior became a wind tunnel, chairs and tables sliding and shifting across the floorboards. Shaun stumbled off his stool and collided with Shirley. Max stumbled backwards, hit full-on by the gust. The crack of his head on the floorboards was ghastly—even over the sound of the howling wind.

  “What the fuck is going on?” shouted Simon, clutching the bar to keep from falling. “Get that door closed!”

  “We’ve been desperate to get it open,” said Shirley, scurrying about on her hands and knees.

  Annie screamed. “Max is hurt.”

  Lucas clutched the pool table and pulled himself along it, fighting to get to the door to close it. Max lay on his side, trying to sit up, but the wind kept pushing him back down. Annie crawled along the bar to get to him, her blonde hair blowing everywhere.

  The wind stopped. Just like that, it ceased.

  A gin bottle fell from the wall behind the bar and smashed on the ground. Everyone yelped, but then there was nothing but silence. What just happened?

  “You did it,” said Shirley, looking at Lucas. “You broke the spell on the pub. We can leave.”

  Both doors were open, but what had caused the seal to break?

  He shook his head. Something wasn’t right here. “Nobody move!”

  Annie scrambled over to her brother. “What are you talking about? We can finally get the hell out of here. Someone, get that door before it closes.”

  “No,” said Lucas. “Stop! Everybody stop.”

  But Annie had made up her mind. She grabbed her brother and yanked him to his feet while he was still dazed. “This was one hell of a weird afternoon,” he said, stumbling along with her hand on his back. “Just wait until I tell Dad.”

  Annie halted and turned her brother to face her. “What are you talking about, Max? Dad’s dead.” She grabbed him and stared into his eyes. “Damn it! You have a concussion.”

  “I’m fine,” said Max. “I just got a bit confused for a second. Dad is really…? Yeah, I remember. He was—” Something from outside the door snatched Max and yanked him into the porch. It cut off his words and left him too startled to scream, and he only just managed to get a hand out in time to grab the edge of the doorway. He clung on for dear life, something unseen tugging at both his legs.

  Annie screamed. “Oh God, Max!”

  Lucas hurried to help. Together, he and Annie grabbed Max’s arm to pull him back inside, but the force pulling him out was too strong. The tendons in his fingers bulged around the door frame. His face grew purple. He couldn’t hold on for long. What the hell had him?

  The others hurried to help, but there was little they could do to insert themselves. Lucas and Annie were still wrestling to get Max back inside, but it wasn’t doing any good, and there was only enough space in the porch for them.

  “Help me!” Max cried. “Please!”

  Lucas shoved Annie aside so he could get a better grip by himself. “Hold on, kid,” he urged, pulling with all he had. “Just. Hold. On!”

  Max looked at Lucas pleadingly, eyes bulging with terror. He had been yanked clean off his feet by whatever unseen force had him, and inch by inch he was slipping away. Lucas could not keep hold of him. One of Max’s fingernails tore away as his hand slipped further down the wood.

  Jake arrived and thrust a pool cue out through the doorway. A vicious crunch, and the cue was ripped out of his hand. Something outside growled malevolently. The lights in the pub flickered.

  Simon raced forwards next and grabbed Max by the back of his neck with both meaty hands. Max cried out, but his terror turned to a pitiful mewing. His eyes searched desperately for his sister until he spotted her sobbing over by the bar. They shared a moment, terrified eyes meeting across the room. Max opened his mouth. “Annie!”

  The creature outside roared.

  Lucas and Simon flew backwards into Jake, and the three men crumpled to the ground. Max fell on top of Lucas, free from the force trying to yank him outside.

  Lucas shook the boy urgently. “Max? Max, are you okay? Max?”

  Max stared at Lucas with wide, hemorrhaged eyes. Blood ran from his mouth.

  Annie raced over in a panic, but when she reached her brother, she screamed. And screamed and screamed.

  Lucas possessed Max’s top half, but the lad’s legs were slithering out of the doorway, dragging behind a creature now standing half inside the pub. The abomination skittered about on elongated arms and legs, akin to a spider but with a long, twisted neck supporting a contorted human face. Long, greasy black hair hung from its skull and weeping sores covered its flesh. The creature had once been human. Now it was a demon.

  Shaun stood frozen in the middle of the room, hands trembling by his sides. He was sobbing openly. “W-What the hell is that thing?”

  Lucas scooted backwards on his butt, getting away from Max’s blood-spewing corpse. His eyes were transfixed by the creature in the doorway. “We’re so screwed,” he muttered. “We’re so screwed.”

  The creature skittered out of the doorway, leaving everyone in the pub horrified. Lucas got up and hurried over to the doorway to make sure the thing was truly leaving. He struggled to believe his eyes as he watched its retreat. The creature clutched Max’s legs against its fat abdomen with a spindly arm while it pounded the ground with its other sinuous limbs. It was heading down the hill towards the deserted shops—a spider leaving with its prey.

  “This is so messed up,” said Jake, joining Lucas at the doorway. He was sweating, and his lower lip trembled. “What is happening?”

  “Are we dead?” asked Vetta. She was propped against the pool table, taking deep breathes like she might throw up. “This is Hell, yes?”

  “This isn’t Hell,” Lucas told her. “It’s something else. We’re still trapped.” Julian had snatched them from reality and placed them inside a cage of his making, but why?

  What did I do to this guy?

  “This is all your fault, you bastard!”

  Lucas turned in time to catch Annie charging at him. “You killed my brother!” He didn’t fight back as she collided with him, even though her fists against his chest hurt like buggery. He just waited until Vetta and Shirley pulled her away.

  Lucas tasted blood in his mouth as he spoke. “I don’t know who Julian is, or why he’s doing this.”

  Annie spat at him. “It’s your fault.”r />
  He nodded. “You’re right.”

  Simon was pulling at his beard, like it was the only way he could keep his hands from making fists. “You’ve dragged us all into your mess, and now you’re covered in Max’s blood. What the hell is that thing outside?”

  “Aswang,” said Lucas—the word thick in his mouth.

  Simon jutted out his hairy chin. “What you call me?”

  “I didn’t call you anything. That creature outside is an aswang.” Nothing from Lucas’s days in Hell stayed with him quite as much as the aswangs. They were truly abhorrent creatures—monsters, even in Hell. “They have other names, but that’s the one that comes to mind.”

  Vetta stepped in front of Lucas as if she feared Simon might attack him. “What is aswang?” she asked.

  Lucas’s mind conjured memories of Hell, the landscape teeming with abominations, some human, others barely even flesh. He remembered the aswangs more than any of them.

  “Aswangs are formed from the tortured souls of suicide victims,” he explained. “People who hoped to escape their pain by ending their lives. Instead, they found themselves damned, sentenced to relive their most painful regrets forever, ruminating on the most painful moments of their lives over and over again in exquisite detail. Eventually, the unbearable weight of their suffering forces them down onto all fours where they lose all trace of what made them human. I know their suffering because it was I who passed their sentence.”

  Annie shook her head in revulsion. “You sentenced them when you were king of Hell?”

  “A long time ago now, but yes. I am responsible for the creature that took Max.”

  Annie stomped over to the bar, obviously trying to hide her tears. Lucas wished he could say something that would make things better for her, but he knew there was nothing. He’d seen enough weeping widows and orphaned children to know words could not erase pain.

  “What do we do next?” asked Shaun, rubbing his sinewy arms as if he was cold. His tattoos looked alive as they bunched up and shifted beneath his skin. Truthfully, it was neither hot nor chilly. The room lacked temperature in either direction.

  Lucas pointed to the deserted shops outside the window. “We go outside. There’s no other way.”

  Shirley gasped. “What? Go out there with that thing skittering about? Are you insane?”

  “I wish I were, but we have to go outside and kill that thing. This fabricated reality is tethered to it.”

  “I thought Julian was behind everything,” said Shirley. She had retrieved her handbag and had it clutched against her chest.

  Lucas rubbed at his temples, feeling sweat in his sideburns. “Julian is behind everything, but he would have needed to implore a higher power to cast the kind of magic this would require. By summoning an aswang, he opened a conduit to hell to syphon its dark energies. He’s using that energy to drag us out of reality. Right now, we’re in a space between Hell and Earth. A bit like the meat between two pieces of bread. A kind of purgatory.”

  Shaun groaned. “Some place between Hell and Earth? That doesn’t sound good—or in any way believable.”

  Rather than continue to fret, Lucas tried to focus on the positives, on the things they could actually tackle. “If we kill the aswang, we’ll untether ourselves and fall back in line with reality. I doubt we were ever supposed to see the creature, but when we did the unbinding spell on the safe, we accidentally unsealed the pub as well. I forgot the final words of the incantation that would have focused the spell only on the safe, but because I didn’t say them, the spell spread out and unbound the doors too. It was a lucky error, I suppose.”

  “Lucky?” said Simon. “Luck is the last thing any of us have right now. Max is dead, you prick.”

  “I still can’t believe it, man,” said Jake, leaning over the bar and rubbing his forehead. “I’ve known Max since we were kids. He helped me when my… I just can’t believe he’s gone.” He looked at Lucas and frowned. “Why are you here, man? I mean, you were at the pub drinking last night like any ordinary geezer, but you’re not an ordinary geezer, are you? What is The Devil doing hanging out in a Birmingham pub?”

  “Ex-Devil,” Lucas corrected. “And where else would I be? You choose to spend your nights down the boozer, so why can’t I? Why does a person go to a pub, Jake?”

  Jake shrugged. “Company, I suppose.”

  “Exactly. A pub is a place where you can go for company, and yet still be alone. It’s lonely living forever, let me tell you, but it’s pointless forging friendships. Human beings come and go in a heartbeat, while time stretches on forever for an immortal. I spend my time in pubs so I’m not alone, but also because I never have to get to know anyone beyond a friendly conversation or the odd joke or two. It’s the best life an immortal can hope for. Not that I qualify anymore.”

  “You sound like a nutter, mate,” said Simon.

  Jake sighed. “Vetta said she saw an angel last night. Is that true?”

  “Yes,” said Vetta. “I see.”

  “Gladri,” said Lucas. “An angel in the service of Heaven. It was he who turned me human last night.”

  Shirley sniffed. “Why did he do that?”

  “Because I’ve been interfering.”

  “In what?”

  “A war. God has been under attack since before he made the very first man and woman. In fact, he created mankind in order to protect Heaven from assault. There are those who seek to take His power, so He instilled it into humanity—into every human soul—rather than keeping it all in one place. Next, He created a near-endless stream of worlds, ensuring the spread of His power far and wide. But for the last few thousand years those worlds have been systematically wiped out by sadistic forces, and with each dead Earth, more of God’s power returns to Him, where his enemies can try to take it.”

  Annie groaned at the bar. Shaun was sitting beside her and made the same noise. Simon was standing and folded his meaty forearms while he remained silent. Vetta appeared thoughtful. Jake pulled a face. “Wow!”

  “Yeah,” said Lucas. “Wow. God’s enemies want his power to create a new universe of their own, one they can rule however they want. So, God sealed himself away in a secret place where nothing could get at him. His barriers are maintained by the power he placed into mankind, so as it weakens with each dying world, God becomes more vulnerable. If humanity is extinguished, God will be vulnerable, defenceless against the avarice of his kin.”

  Annie cackled from the bar. “Bullshit. What a load of…” Her volume lowered, as if she couldn’t be bothered to finish her sentence. Or maybe she was coming around to the idea that she was in deep shit whether she believed it or not.

  Lucas ignored her. “I know it sounds mad, but it’s because you’re too close to things. I’ve been watching on the big screen, and the ending doesn’t look like it’s going to be a happy one. I’ve been trying to even the odds in mankind’s favour, but it seems like Heaven prefers me muzzled. Gladri is the guy they call for that kind of thing.”

  “He’s a Heavenly pest controller?” Simon grunted sarcastically.

  “Gladri’s a justicar. He passes God’s laws and judgements. He and I were close… once.”

  “He hurt you,” said Vetta, seeming to read his mind.

  Lucas sighed. Yes, Gladri had hurt him, but it was just one nick amongst a thousand deep, gangrenous wounds. A mere graze compared to the agonies Lucas had inflicted on others—like the fate of the aswangs.

  “Look,” he said, “you don’t need any more back story, so let’s just focus on that creature outside. Kill the aswang and you all get to go home. I will disappear from your lives forever, you have my word!”

  “Amen,” said Annie. Shaun lifted his head out of his arms and nodded in agreement.

  “It won’t be that easy for some of us,” said Shirley, who was now sitting on the sofa and rubbing at her armpit. “It won’t bring back Annie’s brother.”

  “Or will it?” Jake raised both eyebrows and looked at Lucas. The lad see
med excited. “You healed me when I was dying. If we break the spell, or whatever, you can bring Max back, right?”

  Lucas watched Annie’s ears prick up, and he considered lying to give her hope—but he couldn’t do that. “No,” he admitted. “Max is gone. I’m sorry.”

  “Where do Max go now?” asked Vetta. “He go to Hell and become monster like thing that kill him?”

  “No! Of one thing I can be certain, it’s that Max is going nowhere but up. I may be just a man now, but I’ve been alive long enough to recognise a good soul when I see one. Max is in Heaven as we speak, of that you can be sure.” He glanced at Annie and hoped it would at least be something for her to hold on to.

  A silence descended, but they would need to get moving soon. Lucas plucked a pool cue from the rack and weighted it up in his hands. “Grab anything you can,” he said. “Pool cues, spirit bottles, stabby things. Anything we can use to hurt the aswang. It’s scary, I know, but trust me, that thing bleeds.”

  “We all do,” said Shirley, somewhat ominously. She reached into her bag and pulled out a long green packet. “Anybody want a mint?”

  Next Round

  Vetta was fretting. She stood in front of the window, staring out at the grey landscape below. “I really don’t think we should go out there,” she said. “There must be better way, no?”

  Lucas wished there was, but Julian had wanted them trapped inside the pub, so heading outside would throw a spanner in the works, and that could surely only work in their favour. Lucas being human had ruined whatever Julian’s original plan had been, but it wouldn’t be long before he had another in place.