Blood & Magic Read online

  Blood & Magic

  INK CHRONICLES BOOK 1

  George Barlow

  For those who need to escape to another world from time to time and for Liz, for joining me in mine.

  With infinite gratitude to Liz, Carolyn & Neil.

  Edited by Elizabeth Phillips.

  - Chapter 1 -

  Decisions

  “Choices are the hinges of destiny.”

  - Edwin Markham

  His wounded and bleeding body failing him, Mark propped himself up against the gate. There was no escape, nowhere left to run to. How had he let this happen, to him of all people? He had been ignorant for so long. Finally, he understood.

  Dipping his finger in his own blood, Mark wrote on the stone pavement a message for those who would find him, a single word that had been both his obsession and his undoing. Finished, he withdrew his knife and forced the world into focus once again. For his next move to work, he would need to act quickly and without fear.

  From the depths of the shadows, a pair of bright blue eyes stared out at him, unblinking. Mark smiled to the creature and, in a single fluid motion, spun the knife and plunged it deep into his own chest. There was the sound of his ribs splintering, footsteps rushing toward him and then… nothing.

  One hour earlier…

  - Chapter 2 -

  Nightshift

  “You're such a boring bastard,” Dixie said, taking another mouthful of canteen spaghetti with a noisy slurp and whip of tomato sauce. Henry replied with a familiar eyebrow raise, which was about the limit of emotion most people thought he could muster. Dixie smiled back, red sauce dripping down his chin.

  “So what if I am?” Henry said. “Someone has to act as the responsible adult between the pair of us.”

  Dixie wiped his face clean and opened his phone to check his reflection. Dixie was built for basketball, with the kind of high pitched whining voice that made him sound constantly outraged. He had joined the hospital the same week as Henry, both starting as junior biomedical scientists in the haematology department. Over time, and nobody could quite figure out how or why, Dixie had been gifted with the unfortunate title of being Henry’s best friend.

  “Henry, you need to relax a little. Try new things,” Dixie said.

  “I relax just fine, thank you.”

  He didn't, but there was no point in admitting it. Henry remained adamant that he was fine how he was, at least, that is what he told himself. For the past two weeks, Dixie had been attempting, with ever decreasing hope, to get Henry to participate in the annual Byron-Day charity run. However, with the fear of looking like a giraffe on ice, Henry had repeatedly declined.

  Taking another spoonful of what claimed to be moussaka, Henry found himself focusing on the mindless chatter of the doctors and nurses on the surrounding tables, trying to decode what each person thought of the others in their group and more importantly, if the others had any idea what their friends thought about them. It was a strange game Henry liked to play, an obsession almost, to watch the root of so much stress in his life.

  “You've got that look on your face,” Dixie said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Distracted, caught up in your own little world. You've been zoned out for the last five minutes. Do you have any idea what I was talking about? It's not healthy, you know, to analyse everything. Now me, I just-”

  “-Take the world, one mouthful of spaghetti at a time?” Henry said, as Dixie crammed more pasta into his mouth, reinforcing his resemblance of a hamster.

  “I hate being on call,” Dixie said, “but you can't complain about the pay. You should go on the list.”

  “I should.”

  “And you should come down the gym with me, plenty of girls down there.”

  “I should.”

  “You shouldn't be wasting all your energy on her.”

  “You're right.”

  “I mean, you think about the time you spend flirting away, she's just playing with you. You know that, right?”

  “You are one hundred percent correct, as always.”

  Henry had pushed it too far. There was a pause as Dixie realised what was happening.

  “Very mature,” Dixie said. “I only say it for your own good, you know that.”

  “I do.”

  “And speak of the devil…”

  “Room for one more?” said a soft voice from behind Henry. He turned to see Elle, a beaming smile etched across her face, as she lowered herself into the seat next to him. She wore a tight green top that clung eagerly to her skinny frame, not that Henry looked at her figure. Well, not often. As she brushed a lock of auburn hair off her face, Elle met Henry's eye and he saw the glimmer of something unsaid in her expression, a look Henry had never been able to decipher. A split-second passed before Henry averted his gaze towards his plate, it was a much safer place to look.

  “What you guys talking about?” Elle said.

  “I was trying to get old Mr Excitement here to live a little,” Dixie said.

  “Really, how?”

  He paused for a second, his face betraying a sly grin as he turned to Henry, “What about the charity run? You up for that?”

  “You should so do it,” Elle said enthusiastically. “I am and I'm hopeless at running.”

  They should make it a rule that Dixie couldn't use Elle against him, especially not to prove a point.

  “Come on Henry,” Dixie said.

  “Please, say you'll do it Henry. For me?” Elle said. A playful tilt of her head and he was putty in her hands.

  “Sure,” Henry said. He hated himself sometimes.

  “That's my man,” Dixie said, ruffling Henry's hair.

  “So, how are you?” Henry asked Elle, trying to forget about how weak-willed he was.

  “I'm fine thanks. Tom and I are going up to Scotland for the weekend, it's gonna be fantastic.”

  “Wonderful,” was all Henry could manage to say. He struggled with conversation at the best of times, but feigning delight at her romantic weekend away required far too much energy.

  “Tom is up there now on business, he works way too hard. It's going to be fantastic, just the two of us.”

  Dixie let out a little laugh, followed by a broad, smug smile. Elle stared at him with a puzzled expression, pushing for an explanation she would regret seeking.

  “So, what is this I hear about you not leaving the Bio-Tech dinner alone last night?” Dixie said.

  “I'm not sure I follow,” she said, stumbling over her words. The reddening of Elle's cheeks confirmed the rumours.

  Dixie's smile widened, “Someone saw you and Matt leave together last night. And I saw you arriving in his car this afternoon. Now you don't need to be Miss Marple to-”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Sure, you just went for a real long drive together. Enjoy yourself?”

  “Oh shut the hell up,” she snapped.

  Conversation came to an abrupt standstill.

  It was one of his most unattractive qualities, but Dixie lived for gossip. With the ability to become instant best friends with everyone he met, he was the hub of scandal and hearsay at the hospital. Although Henry knew it was none of his business, he still felt the emotion he denied the existence of curdling in the pit of his stomach at the thought of Elle and Matt together.

  “Anyway, we aren’t judging, are we Henry?”

  “No, not at all,” Henry said, but he couldn't bring himself to make eye contact with her.

  “Why are you here so late?” Dixie asked Elle in a transparent attempt to change the topic of conversation.

  Elle had gone the colour of strawberries as she stared intently at the table, no doubt contemplating whether to leave or not.

  “I'm using one of
the analysers in biochemistry,”she said finally. “They only use one of them overnight, so I'm using the other for my dissertation project.”

  When he met Elle, Henry hadn't imagined she would stick around long, the urge to climb the ladder of her profession far too hard for her to resist. He could have understood that more than the reason she stayed. Henry himself had slipped into a vacant role in the specialist department, a job that meant long days and meagre pay, but at least he was able to focus on his interests and enjoy the solitude a four-man department afforded him. The plan, as there was always a plan, was to find somewhere to divert his life's energy: finish his professional portfolio and make a name for himself in the field. People were stressful. Work was constant and absorbing, but more importantly, work was safe. Maybe that wasn't enough. Elle had fallen in love, that was why she stayed. Just a cocktail of hormones Henry told himself, but envy never sat well with him.

  Henry's wandering thoughts meant the conversation had continued without him and, when his attention returned, he found that he couldn't work out the topic. He had two options, either wait until he recognised where the conversation had reached or interject with a new point in the lull that had just arisen. ‘Be brave,’ he thought, even though in the grand scheme of things starting a conversation wasn't really up there with bungee jumping or running into burning buildings.

  “Who's on the late-shift?” Henry said.

  He felt the adrenaline surge through his chest, little victories like this both annoyed and excited him. Henry’s anxieties were ever present and a bigger battle than anyone could possibly understand, not that he wanted anyone to ever try to figure them out.

  “Just Laurence until eight and then Mary until-”

  “Don't upset Mary for Christ's sake, I'm on call with her all night,” Dixie said.

  “Tempting as that may be, nobody messes with Mary,” Elle laughed.

  Mary Wells was a beetroot of a woman, in both shape and colour. Her fuse was short and, although some claimed to have found a sweet woman within, she had verbally destroyed enough people around the lab to have been given the nickname 'Bloody Mary'. Talk revolved around some historic 'Bloody Mary' stories for a few minutes, before the pressure to keep up conversation became too much for Henry, his mind begging to escape.

  “I'd better go, I need to get these results and ask someone on the late shift verify them before I can leave.”

  It might not be a good idea to leave the two of them on their own, but every time Elle spoke, the thought of her and Matt made Henry's skin crawl. Tray in hand, Henry stood from the table, his gaze momentarily catching Elle’s as her eyes shimmered a kaleidoscope of colours against the harsh fluorescent lighting. Henry could have gazed into those eyes for an eternity, but Dixie was right, that was a hopeless dream.

  - Chapter 3 -

  The Times They Are A-Changin'

  Henry made his way through the pathology department and into the Blood Transfusion lab, worries about the charity run trying desperately to smother his thoughts of Elle. For a moment, he wondered if he owned any clothes for taking part in physical activity before deciding that the answer was most certainly no. While never being sporty, Henry was gifted, or cursed as he sometimes thought, with a metabolism that defied science. His weight was one of life's constants, no matter how much or little he ate. He was reminded of that fact as he put on his lab coat, for which Henry played the role of a coat hanger as it ballooned out around him.

  Inevitably, Henry’s thoughts returned to Elle. Further distraction was in order and, in Henry’s experience, there was no better one than work. Why would anyone deal with emotions when they could just bury them?

  The transfusion lab was bustling, even at this time of night. Automated arms moved samples across bleached white analysers as they buzzed and whirred, brightly coloured reagents being fed through pipes in noisy clicks as they switched from sample to sample. Organisation masked as chaos, perhaps that was the real motto of the National Health Service. Henry sat down at the manual testing bench after taking his tray of samples from the fridge. He fixed the slides in ethanol, incubated them for a few minutes, before dipping the set into the staining solution. Henry was running the tests as a favour to get in his boss’s good books, but providing them late would do the opposite. He was already days behind, so staying late was the only option.

  Henry looked up from the desk to see his boss, Matt, across the lab in his office, the green command-line interface of his computer glowing against his unshaven face. Matt was, in Henry's humble opinion, an arse. No more than a walking management textbook, a talking cliché, an opinionated teen stuck in a forty year-old's body. How could Elle have fallen for him? The thought of her sleeping with Matt made Henry's skin writhe, however the real mystery was how she could cheat on the man she had so much heralded as the love of her life? Henry might not like Tom, although he wouldn't acknowledge why, but Elle cheating on him made no sense.

  “Henry! For Lords sake, what are you doing?” said a loud voice to his side. “I think they've probably had enough!”

  Bloody Mary was staring at Henry's workbench with puffed red cheeks and an eyebrow raised so high, it was lost in her wonky fringe. Henry glanced down to the slides and cursed. He had left them in too long and now they were ruined, every slide stained purple. Pulling them from the dye bath, Henry dropped the set straight into the biological waste bin.

  “Sorry, I was a million miles away,” Henry said.

  “Try to pay attention, equipment doesn't grow on trees and you're clogging up my lab,” Mary said.

  She walked back over to the cross-match bench, although waddled may have been a more accurate description, as her lab coat poppers strained to constrain her figure. Henry lambasted himself for ruining the slides and, taking the pipette in hand, began to prepare a new batch. He had reached the staining stage again when the door to the lab opened and Elle entered with a rack of samples, her pristine lab coat somehow fitting perfectly to her body. How did it do that? Nobody looked good in their lab coats, they weren't supposed to be flattering. She didn’t acknowledge him, but instead, headed to an analyser in the corner of the room and loaded her samples. Henry counted to sixty in his head, his eyes absently focused on Elle the entire time, and pulled the slides out of the dye bath. Wafting the first slide in the air, a slight indeterminable chemical smell filling his nostrils, Henry clamped it in place under the microscope. Adjusting the focus, several bright pink spots came into focus: the test had worked, which meant he could head home.

  “Elle, have you got a minute,” Matt called across the room.

  She followed him into his office, the door closing behind her. Dixie was right; he needed to stop caring for her, that would be the sensible thing to do.

  Henry got up from the desk, arranged the slides neatly on a tray, and made his way back to his own lab. As he reached the door, his heart began to pump impossibly fast, straining to beat as the world crashed down around him, blurring into nothingness. Every muscle in his body spasmed, causing him to drop the slides, which shattered into a million tiny diamonds across the floor as Henry fell after them.

  A thousand lifetimes passed through Henry's thoughts, hints of memories cascading through his brain, each one moving too quickly for him to understand. They felt like his memories, yet something about them defied reason, as if he was dreaming through another's eyes. Vivid images flew toward him, drowning him in an overwhelming array of sights, sounds, smells and emotions. He was still falling, a moment in time that lasted an eternity, heading to the floor with agonising slowness.

  In a flash, the images exploded from his mind as time caught up. With a bump and a slight bounce from his momentum, Henry hit the floor gasping for air.

  He was back in reality.

  When the blackness lifted, he was met by a pair of topaz eyes, sparkling with a thousand hues, familiar and safe. Elle crouched over him, her face full of fear and concern, a few inches from his own.

  “Henry, can you hear me?�
� she said.

  Words did not come. Henry raised his hands to his face and miraculously, found only the gloves had been cut by the glass on the floor. Idiot, he thought angrily. Henry became aware that it was not just Elle who had rushed to his aid. He was at the centre of a swarm of people all looking to help or, more accurately, trying to get a first-hand glimpse at some new gossip. How embarrassing was this? And what the hell had happened, had he fainted? He must have, but why? He didn't feel ill before, although now he felt he could throw up any second.

  “I'm fine, I just-” he stopped to catch his breath. “-I slipped. Give me a minute.”

  With arms pulling him up, Henry found his feet and steadied himself against the door.

  “Are you all right?” Elle said. “You need to see a doctor.”

  “I'm fine,” Henry said, the words coming out in an incoherent mutter. Henry pushed open the lab door and headed down the corridor, Elle following closely behind.

  “A&E is the other way Henry, you need to-”

  “I need to be left alone, you understand?”

  Elle stared at him for a moment before she turned and walked back into the lab, leaving Henry alone in the corridor. The floor swaying, Henry walked past the security doors at the end of the hall, wildly swiping his entry key at the console, before continuing towards the staff bathroom. He switched on the light, for which only two out of five bulbs worked and turned on the tap, water spluttering through the antiquated pipework. He filled the bowl and sighed, staring at himself in the mirror above the sink. Physically he appeared fine, if a little pale, but then again, he always looked pale. His body felt weird, as if every cell was shifting and readjusting itself.

  Something was changing.

  Memories whizzed through his head, seemingly from the minds of a plethora of people. They seemed connected, but moved too fast for him to figure out how. It was like looking into a train carriage hurtling through a station, except somehow he recognised everyone inside, even if he didn't quite know who they were.