Mortal Souls Read online

  CALEDONIA

  MORTAL SOULS

  by Amy Hoff

  Erebus Society

  All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First published in Great Britain in 2018

  by Erebus Society

  First Edition

  Copyright of Text © Amy Hoff 2018

  Cover & illustration copyright © Constantin Vaughn 2018

  www.erebussociety.com

  About the Author

  Amy Hoff spent years travelling across the United States, living out of cars and cheap motels. She was a weightlifter and street-fighter, collecting monster legends across the country. Eventually she left the USA and continued travelling around the world. She was educated in Scotland and specialised in Scottish history, literature, and folklore. She is now a folklorist and historian whose primary research interest is monsters. She has never owned more than what can fit into a backpack and a suitcase.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Yoo Min stared out at the rain and mist shrouding Glasgow. She sipped her tea, and considered how the grey tendrils wrapped around the dim streetlights as the dawn approached. The city glowed a soft orange in the darkness, a Victorian memory reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and the hansom-cab grey streets of London in popular imagination.

  Yoo Min was very, very old.

  She thought of the night she had left Seoul, that city of colour and sound, before coming here, to this drab and grey colourless place.

  Yoo Min was a gumiho, the nine-tailed fox woman that ate the livers of handsome men. Lately she had been hungrier, walking down the streets of the city, in the night markets as she passed by the young men in silence. She could scent them, on the soft winds that breathed through the urban capital. She walked on, just another woman on the busy night streets of Seoul.

  The beautiful gumiho sighed. Ninety-nine years, seven months, and two days – and counting. No one even knew if it would work. The oldest legends said that a gumiho denying herself the taste of a man’s liver would one day become human. She would soon find out. It was trying at times, particularly when she was bored. A cruel diet, as like starvation as not.

  Distracting herself from her hunger, her mind was lost in memory, as the neon lights surrounded her and the steam rose from the food at the countless little restaurants and night markets.

  The men still noticed her, and looked her way. They smiled, unaware their flirtations were calling to a shark, dead-eyed and moving slow, purposeful, quiet, through the streets of the city.

  Yoo Min smiled, and the men hurriedly looked away. She had strange sharp teeth and she smiled far too wide. She was a pretty girl, and a nightmare thing.

  They left her alone, for the most part. Some kind of ancestral memory, because most of them did not remember the folklore enough to know better, anymore. Still, they let her be.

  There were few things that surprised her, not the wash of time nor the cruelty of men.

  Tae Pyeong had been a surprise.

  GYEONGJU

  SILLA KINGDOM

  640 AD

  The wind blew the fragrant scent of spice viburnum through the streets, and through the small houses near the palace. A beautiful girl ran through the darkness, past bunches of flowering mugunghwa. Her hand was placed over her mouth, hiding a smile, and her eyes lit up even in the deep twilight of late evening. She made sure she hadn't been followed, and turned up a path to the hill littered with flowers.

  Yoo Min climbed to the top of the hill, and looked out across the valley of the city. Gyeongju, the great capital of the Silla Dynasty, would soon know untold riches under the reign of Queen Seondeok.

  She waited, almost holding her breath, smiling. She would know the sound of his footstep anywhere.

  Lithe, slim, lovely – the boy was like no one she had seen in her long, long years. A romantic, skilled in the arts, including those of love. His talents were meant for the queen alone, but he had chosen her instead. If he were discovered, his life would be forfeit.

  He would give up everything for her.

  Tae Pyeong was an idealist and a romantic. He believed his love would carry them through any obstacle. They had heard of faraway exotic places. Speaking in whispers late at night, he had told her they could travel together to see the famous cities of the world.

  Her breath caught as she heard steps on the path. She turned.

  Smiling at her, love shining from his dark eyes, Tae Pyeong was so intensely beautiful that wars might be started over the right to gain his favour. Yoo Min had never seen his like in the thousands of years she had been alive. Beautiful was not a word that sufficed, in any language.

  The Hwa Rang – flower boys – of Queen Seondeok were famous. Chosen for their beauty, they were trained in every aspect of the gentle arts. Also called Hyangdo, fragrant ones or incense men, they were taught some of the military arts, but their main purpose was to serve as the cultured and educated harem of the queen.

  Tae Pyeong was a special favourite.

  He bowed low before Yoo Min, his forehead touching the ground. She gently lifted his chin so he could look into her eyes, and they embraced. He kissed her.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Are you afraid?” he asked, “To leave here?”

  She nodded again.

  “Yes,” she replied, “I have known no other life.”

  “You deserve more,” he said.

  Yoo Min smiled at his naïveté. She deserved nothing, and she knew it. She knew she had no right to him, and she knew how dangerous it was, but she had been selfish; her love had inspired a greed in her heart she had not known before.

  “And what of you? Will you not miss the arms of Seondeok?” Yoo Min asked, already knowing the answer.

  “When I am in your arms, all else is forgotten,” he said, and smiled.

  Her heart felt as though it might break from happiness.

  SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA

  MODERN DAY

  Yoo Min walked through the subway, waving her mobile phone at the barrier. It let her through immediately. She walked up to the touch screen on the wall, to model in the mirror as clothes were fitted to her image and she ordered a few dresses. She remembered running down that Gyeongju street, hiding her smile, in another time. Seoul had risen from the ashes of the Korean War to become a technological megacity with an everyday science fiction reality, even in comparison to the rest of the world. Seoul was Byzantium, Bohemian Paris, Rome at its height.

  Still, she could feel the old hunger in her heartbeat, whenever one of the well-dressed descendants of the Hwa Rang passed her on the street. In the modern age, the men had embraced the flower boy aesthetic once again, and Yoo Min was finding it more and more difficult to deny herself. She had not been hungry like this in centuries. Tae Pyeong had been on her mind a great deal lately, enough that his memory had been distracting her from her duties at Hanguk Interpol. They had recommended a transfer to a place where the men could not possibly tempt her, particularly in comparison to the visions that filled the city streets of the Korean capital.

  She stood on the hill above Seoul, watching the city lights, as she had once waited on a hill in Gyeongju, for a boy whose love she did not deserve.

  She touched the piece of Tae Pyeong's rib bone on a silver chain around her neck, inlaid with the heron symbol of immortality.

  Blood.

  Yoo Min, I love you. I forgive you.

  Tae Pyeong.

  Like Adam, I am made from him.

  CALEDONIA INTERPOL

  GLASGOW, SCOTLAND

  Lea
h Bishop regarded the slim young man in the impeccable suit through the steam rising from her teacup. His large brown eyes, fringed with dark lashes, gave him a mournful look; the hangdog expression of a seal staring out from the water. His extreme etiquette and formality was evident in his spotless tailcoat, gloves, and the gleaming chain of his pocketwatch. Despite his resemblance to a seal, he was quite handsome, his great dark eyes expressive and bright. When he turned to look at Leah, one eyebrow archly rose.

  “Yes?” asked Dorian Grey.

  “Staring contest,” said Leah, grinning. Dorian looked down his aristocratic nose at his partner.

  “Is that so?” he asked.

  “You’ve lost already, about ten times,” she said.

  An older man walked into the room, grizzled and dignified in his old leather coat. He had piercing blue eyes and a threatening manner, but it belied a strong and loyal heart beneath.

  “So, how are you two wasting time?” Chief Benandonner asked.

  Leah made a disgusted noise and rolled in her chair.

  “Aww, Chief, there’s nothing happening in our world,” said Leah, “Plenty in the human world, but the faeries have been nice to each other.”

  Dorian stirred.

  “I must agree with Miss Bishop,” he said, “Things have been very quiet of late. There’s nothing for us to do.”

  “What about Sebastian?” asked the chief.

  “We’ve looked,” said Leah, “the trail ends – completely. He knows what he’s doing. I do miss Geoffrey, though.”

  “Always more fish in the sea, Miss Bishop,” said Dorian, “and I would know.”

  “I’ve got horrible taste in men,” said Leah.

  “Indeed.”

  “You’re not supposed to agree with me!”

  “Did Sebastian say anything to you?” Chief Ben interrupted.

  “Only that stupid thing about Dylan,” said Leah. Ben turned to look at her.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “He said something like… he’s not the real problem. That the Guardian was killed – or that Dylan would only be ‘called’ if a Guardian was killed. Then he told me to protect his city, the arrogant –”

  Chief Ben’s presence filled the room. He seemed to become the giant he was.

  “Detective Inspector Bishop, if you even deserve that title, do you not realise what he was telling you? You were the one with the brilliant idea to listen to the ravings of a madman – because they weren’t ravings, after all. And yet you miss this?”

  Leah stared at him, bewildered.

  “Sebastian didn’t kill the Guardian. The other faeries, sure – but if he thinks of Glasgow as ‘his city’ he certainly isn’t going to take down one of the Guardians that protect it from outside forces. There’s something we’re missing, because when Tearlach appeared on Saturday night in front of Dylan, he’d only just seen one of the Attendants killed.”

  “A moment,” said Dorian. “Now that you mention it, I realise that the night Aonghas claimed he was kidnapped was also a Saturday night. Saturday nights are like the twilight times to the Glasgow fae. We mirror the city, and the people within it.”

  “Wasn’t Aonghas taken on Sauchiehall?” asked Leah, “And Tearlach found Dylan there as well?”

  “That’s what I like to see,” said Ben, clapping Leah on the shoulder, “my detectives. Detecting. It’s what I pay you for. You’ll let me know if you figure anything out.”

  Ben went into his office and shut the door behind him. Leah and Dorian didn’t notice him leave.

  “There may be something to this,” said Leah, “but we’d need to find out if anything else particularly magical happened on that Saturday night, on Sauchiehall Street.”

  “I don’t know, Leah, it’s very thin,” said Dorian.

  “You’d know,” she said, looking at his lithe figure, “but I think there might be something in it.”

  “I agree there is something strange going on,” said Dorian, “and we were so caught up in Sebastian – and Magnus– we missed the most obvious clue. Listen to the madman, he isn’t always a fool.”

  “I think Paul McCartney wrote a song about that,” said Leah.

  “I’m sure I’ve no idea who that is,” said Dorian.

  “Oh, come on! Greatest pop band the world has ever known, he wrote Mull of Kintyre, lived in Scotland himself? I once almost got into a fistfight at a pub over him,” she said.

  “Indeed? Was he one of your lovers?” asked Dorian.

  “I’m about to get in a fistfight with you in a minute,” said Leah, “I know you know who I mean.”

  “Newfangled music,” said Dorian, shaking his head.

  “All right, then, Little Lord Fauntleroy,” said Leah, “how about we go ask some questions?”

  “Do not compare me to the bourgeoise, madam,” said Dorian, “passionate scoundrels, the lot of them.”

  “You know, I really have no idea how you survive in this city,” said Leah.

  Dorian allowed a slight smile to crease his features.

  Glasgow was dark, and the streetlamps glowing gold reminded Leah of Victorian London in the mist and rain – or even, strangely, Paris. The city could be beautiful at times. She and Dorian walked together, incongruous in the crowd – a modern girl with a Victorian gentleman.

  They located the door they had been looking for. Leah placed a white hand on the red door, pushing it open easily. The security system had broken long ago.

  The long yellow hallway was lit with a single pale lamp. Graffiti on the walls and their cold, hollow footsteps on the concrete floor completed the feeling of despair in the place, and the need to escape. Escape in any way possible.

  They turned the corner, where on the concrete stairs lay a woman drained. Her face was aged, her teeth falling out and her hair stringy. It was a very familiar sight to any Glaswegian – the heroin addicts in the city had found the secret places in the outer regions where unlocked doors provided shelter for the next hit.

  They knew the angel was there before they saw him.

  The beating of his wings. The feathers that graced the floor, falling like a cloak behind him.

  A young man with an honest face, dressed in a familiar track suit, was crouched in front of the woman. Seraph wings of a brilliant white sheltered her, as though he were holding her in his arms. The wings wrapped around her, offering comfort and solace, a strange stained-glass window image in a council house close reeking of urine and despair in one of the darkest parts of Glasgow.

  He turned to look at them as they approached, and he stood up out of respect, his wings retracting and vanishing until he looked like any other person on the street. He nodded at them. His eyes were sad.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” said Leah.

  “’S fine,” said Dylan, “yer awrite, she’s been gone fer some time. I thought a last beau’iful dream of angels might help her rest easier.”

  “Dylan,” said Dorian, more gently than Leah was accustomed to hearing, “you cannot save everyone.”

  Dylan looked at him in defiance.

  “The Guardians have neglected this place too long,” he said decisively, “and this is the only way change comes – one person at a time. Do you know what it’s like to clean up thousands of years of mess?”

  “We have come to ask you some questions,” said Dorian.

  “Oh? Am I a suspect then?” said Dylan.

  “No,” said Leah, “but we’re trying to find out what Sebastian meant in his last phone call – that you wouldn’t have been called if a previous Guardian hadn’t been taken. Do you know who it was? The Guardian you replaced?”

  Dylan thought for a moment.

  “Well, there are six of us,” he said, “I dinna hae Attendants yet, because I’m young. The others do. There’s myself, Aonghas, the Angel, the Lomond Monster, the Nuckelavee, and...”

  He looked puzzled, and shook his head.

  “I dinnae much about the sixth,” he said, shrugging.

  �
��Anyway,” said Dorian, “we’re going to have to question the others.”

  “Well, Aonghas doesn’t know anything,” said Dylan loyally, “besides, he’d have told me if he did.”

  “Maybe we should start putting the Guardians on the payroll?” asked Leah as they departed, leaving Dylan at his post, overlooking Glasgow Green.

  Dorian sniffed.

  “What I want to know,” said Leah, “is why bad things happen, even when there’s a Guardian sitting right there. Glasgow Green is famous for being a nasty part of the city, although I’m sure King James wasn’t thinking it would end up like this when he first created it.”

  “I wish I knew,” said Dorian. “Sometimes things just happen.”

  Leah gave him a sharp look, but he did not appear to notice.

  They had questioned everyone they could think of. Dorian pointed out that if they were to put everyone on the payroll they would have to pay every faerie in Glasgow.

  “It looks like there is only one thing left,” said Dorian.

  “What’s that?”

  “Leaving the city.”

  “Shame about her, though,” said Dylan, returning his attention to the body on the staircase.

  “She was dying. Of an overdose,” Leah pointed out, “there wasn’t anything you could do.”

  “No,” said Dylan, fixing Leah with a challenging stare, “Wasnae heroin.”

  “Pardon?” asked Dorian.

  “Dunno,” said Dylan. “Wasnae drugs. Not a kind I’ve ever seen, anyway. I think she was ill.”

  Dorian moved closer, intrigued.

  “Ill? What do you mean?” he asked.

  Dylan shrugged, and then lifted the woman’s arm. Her hand was black from fingertips to elbow.

  “Dinnae ken,” he said. “Never seen anything like it before.”

  Dorian recoiled.

  “I have,” he said sharply.

  Turning swiftly to Leah, he began to bundle her out the door.