Down The Shore

By Andrew Dudek

“Dave...I think I’m in trouble.”
When his friend Krissy Thomas calls Dave Carver with these words, he knows it’s serious. Krissy is a fellow knight of the Round Table, which means she’s one of the world’s most dangerous monster hunters and she’s no pushover. She’s gotten herself involved in some treacherous matters, though, and she doesn’t want the rest of the Round Table to know about them. Krissy’s boyfriend has gotten himself embroiled in some dark magic, and Dave knows that if it’s discovered, Christian Kean could find himself losing his freedom...or his life.
Dave, of course, agrees to lend any assistance he can, even when that means he needs to travel down the shore on the Fourth of July, even when that means he’ll be cut off from most of his friends and his usual allies. It seems like a simple job, a breeze for an experienced warrior like Dave.
But the town of Violet Bay, New Jersey, is more complicated than it seems. It’s got beaches and boardwalks, but it’s also got sirens and mermaids. It has bars and a Ferris wheel, but it also has a werewolf biker gang and a boogeyman.
Worse than that, though, Dave discovers that there’s something dark underneath Violet Bay, something old, something hungry. And Christian may just have woken it up...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Dudek
• Release date: Oct 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370795185

Andrew Dudek

Andrew Dudek is the author of the Dave Carver series of urban fantasy novels. Currently he lives with his family in that most terrifying of places: New Jersey. He’s also really not as mentally disturbed as he may seem. Promise.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The waves lapped against the shore. The beach was dark, illuminated only from the distant sparkling lights on the boardwalk, and the stands and the shops and the restaurants. Even that light faded to near nothingness and darkness reigned along the water line. The ocean was dark. The sea air was hot, a Monday night in late June, but the breeze was cool, and it ruffled the hair of the man standing in the darkness.

He wasn’t a particularly tall man, or a short one. He wasn’t fat or skinny. He was decidedly average looking, one who most would never look at twice should they pass on the street. This was to his benefit in many situations, including here in this Jersey Shore beach town. He had been walking the boardwalk for the last hour, looking into the faces of the young men and women, the partiers and the clubbers, the drunks and the druggies, the parents and their children. All of them seemed so happy, and why not? It was the Fourth of July this weekend, and the heart of the summer was fast approaching.

They didn’t know it, of course, but if the nondescript man got his way, they’d all be dead before the end of the weekend.

You couldn’t see the stars. That was the part of this forsaken town that the nondescript man hated the most. Sure, the light pollution along the shore wasn’t as bad as it was in Philadelphia or, Great Ones forbid, New York, but the lights of the Ferris wheel and the roller coasters were more than enough to drown out those great balls of fire, floating in their vast distances of blackness. Enough to turn them into pinpricks, and only that small percentage that were close enough that they could be seen at all.

It was a perversion of the natural order. Humanity was meant to huddle in caves, their only light—their only warmth—the fires they built themselves. But here, on the shores of this mighty ocean, they proclaimed their dominance over the earth with their unnatural towering lights.

But the Elders were patient. They were unstoppable and they were relentless. Given time, they would unleash their vengeance on this affront to the dignity of the Mother Earth.

The nondescript man was here to hurry along the process.

Of course, he couldn’t do it himself—even this mighty man—needed assistance. He needed people who could spread through the population and find him the things he needed. He needed people to fuel his quest. The man was not a wealthy one, and so he could not buy the loyalties of mercenaries. He wouldn’t, except as a last resort, even if he’d had the money. Money was crass, another perversion of the natural order. Strength was the only currency that he recognized. Strength and power, and he had both of those things in excess.

There are always others who will accept such currencies. Not as many as there used to be, perhaps, but there will always be men willing to do things in exchange for the promise of power. With such men, all one has to do is find them, and present the offer.

The shifting of sand on the beach behind him made him turn. An ordinary man wouldn’t have heard such a minute sound, not over the distant thrum of bass-heavy music blaring from the nearby boardwalk bar, but this, of course, was no ordinary man.

Excuse me, are you Exodus_13?

What foolishness. But then, that was to be expected when you recruited from the dark corners of the Internet.

Young and scrawny, with acne-scarred cheeks and dull eyes, the man—no, the boy, because that’s what he was, really—was wearing a polo shirt and cargo shorts. His shoes were old and scuffed from long years of use. He had a pair of glasses folded and sticking out of the breast pocket of his shirt.

Yes.

Wow, the boy said. It’s so cool to, like, finally meet you. In person, I mean. I’m KingWeasely403. Well, my real name is—

Sean. I know.

The boy—Sean—frowned. How—

Do I know that? Exodus—it was as good a name as any, and better than many—smiled his most enigmatic smile. It would set the hook, he knew, and draw the boy in closer. Wouldn’t I be something of a failure as a magician if I didn’t know?

In truth, there’s been no magic at all in what Exodus had done. He was no wizard with near-infinite reaches of power, so he needed to ration the use of magic. Instead, he had employed a follower, a journalist with a burning desire to taste real power, to track the boy’s name and contact information down.

Sean Kluwe—from a town called Freehold, New Jersey—was twenty years old. He attended a local community college, where he studied poetry. According to the journalist, who had gotten the information from the boy’s Facebook page, Sean had a taste for the Romantics. A nature lover, then. Exodus smiled indulgently at the boy. It would be a shame to kill him.

I guess so, yeah.

It’s good to meet you, too, Sean, Exodus said. Did you bring the item we spoke about in the chat?

Oh, right.

The boy was wearing a backpack. He set it down in the sand, unzipped the main compartment and dug around inside. It looked old and long-used, as if it were the same one he might have carried with him as he wandered, alone and uneasy, through the halls of whatever substandard public high school had educated him.

Those days must not have been easy for one such as Sean—his voice was nasal, which made every word he spoke sound like a whine. It had been some time since Exodus had set foot in a high school, but he recalled those days fondly. Not because he had been an especially good student or even because he had been popular. In point of fact, he’d been neither, but it had been his first exposure to the vagaries and whims of power and what it meant, both for those who possessed it and those who didn’t. A star running back could commit some embarrassing error—kissing a boy, say—and then he was a pariah. Some of the specifics might have changed since his time, but he doubted if the environments themselves had. High school was the first power struggle. From the looks of him, Sean wouldn’t have won many of those struggles.

Here it is.

He was holding an old book. The binding was leather, but of a strange color: a sort of olive-beige. The filigree which was inlaid into the cover was real gold—tarnished and ill cared-for, but gold nonetheless.

May I? Exodus was aware that his voice had dropped an octave or so, but he didn’t care. The change in volume would surely serve to set the hook in the boy’s mouth: the bait had been taken, the hook set, and now all Exodus had to do was reel him in.

Of course. Sean handed the book over.

As Exodus had known it would, when he touched the cover, it felt like shaking hands with a man whose skin had been toughened by years of exposure to hard elements. Of course, in a way, that was exactly what it was. There was no title on the cover, just the ornate patterns of swirls of gold. Exodus ran a hand over it and smiled. He knew, if he were to open the book here and now, he’d find the pages blank, yellowed with age, perhaps, but blank all the same.

Like I said online, Sean said, I traded a bag of bezoars for it to a guy at the Englishtown flea market. He smiled, looking pleased with himself. Dumbass had no idea what he had. Thought it was just something written in invisible ink. Don’t know if he tried to reveal the secrets with, like, lemon juice or anything, but—

Exodus waved a hand and Sean fell silent.

This is magnificent, Exodus whispered, and it was. Absolutely magnificent. Oh, Sean, I am so glad to have found you. He clapped his hands together, and thunder rumbled in the distance. A bolt of lightning cracked the night sky. A close observer might have noticed that the lightning was green. Now, I suppose we’ve come to the matter of your payment.

Right. Sean bit his lip and looked away. Well, I know we discussed five thousand, but I was thinking…

Exodus felt a surge of excitement, which he concealed under a grimace. He hoped Sean would take it as annoyance. He thought he would. The boy had no experience in matters such as this. Exodus, on the other hand, had much experience.

…I was thinking instead you could give me a taste of that power. You mentioned once that you knew how to transfer abilities like that, and I was wondering—

You’d like to feel the magic in your veins?

Well. Yeah.

Exodus smiled. That could be arranged. You understand what you’re asking, though, don’t you? The power like that? It’s not meant for any mortal to wield. If you’re not prepared, you could—

I know. Sean looked vaguely scandalized, as if shocked that he had dared to interrupt Exodus. For his part, Exodus merely smiled faintly, so Sean continued: I did my research. As long as you don’t put too much of it into me, I should be fine. I want to have real power. I want to be able to…to really rub it into the face of everyone who ever picked on me— Exodus thought: Indeed, a bully victim. Score one for my observational powers. —I want girls to notice me. I want to move out of my mother’s house and go to a real college. If you can give me any of that, I’ll consider it a totally fair trade.

More than fair, Exodus mused. A frown creased his forehead. Magic for material gain was something that he detested, that he had detested for a long time. It was another perversion of the natural order. Magic was beyond things like money. To use it as a shortcut in the acquisition of capital was insulting. Still, he supposed he couldn’t deny the boy’s request, not after he’d finally brought the book to him.

Very well. Give me your hand.

Sean swallowed and looked around. A fat seagull, which had been resting in the dunes, took wing and flew over their heads, disappearing into the darkness over the ocean.

And then the boy held out his hand.

Exodus’s hand was like a striking snake. It closed around the boy’s wrist and held tight with the firmness of a vise. He shut his eyes and he released a fraction of his power.

An electric crackle filled the air, and another bolt of green lightning illuminated the sky. The hairs on Sean’s arm rose. The boy gasped with an almost sexual pleasure.

"Oh, my god, that feels amazing."

I know, Exodus said, and he did. He was a wizard, who had been born with the ability to tap into the forces of the universe, but he had not had access to the teachings and trainings of the snobs in the Magic Council. He’d had to fight and claw for every scrap of the power that was now surging into Sean’s body. In a sense, he was a self-made man, and the thought made him grin.

Sean’s eyes opened, and they locked on Exodus’s. The whites were streaked with green lightning bolts, the blood vessels in the eye filling up with the power. He let out a low moan, his hips spasming. He almost fell, but Exodus’s hand held firm. Instead he dropped to his knees, his hand rising so that Exodus could maintain his grip.

OOOOOHHHHH. MY. GOD.

The first blood vessel burst. One of the veins in the temple of the boy’s head exploded, and blood ran down the side of his face. He seemed not to notice. A popping sound came out of his right ear, like the cork being ejected from a champagne bottle. A pile of wax sailed out, propelled by a geyser of blood. It splashed into the ocean, a macabre fountain.

Sean’s eyes were more green than white now. He looked up at Exodus, and now he understood that something was horribly wrong. What… are… you doing?

Paying you for the book. It’s not my fault that your body is unprepared to accept the payment. He tightened his grip and added another burst of power. The human form is not normally capable of handling magic. Not on its own. Some are born with a greater capacity than the rest of us, but they’re unusual, freaks of nature. Some times we can expand our reservoirs, but it must be done slowly, over the course of several years. You. my boy, are getting, oh, let’s call it ten years of power in one moment. Your body can’t handle it.

Why…

The green which had replaced the sclera in Sean’s eyes sparked, and the eyeballs exploded. He tried to scream, but all that came out was a torrent of bloody vomit. He spewed into the sand, making pathetic retching sounds.

I despise weakness, Sean, Exodus said. "I hate those who would seek to pervert the Art by using it for crass and selfish purposes. I’m doing this because you wanted me to use magic to pay you. You disgust me, but I needed this book. I told you I would pay you what you wanted. And so I am."

Sean collapsed onto his stomach. Exodus finally let him go. The magic that he’d released swirled around the dead boy’s body—because he was dead, and probably had been for a minute or more already—filling the air with flickering green afterimages. Exodus waved a hand, and the green light curled around the arms and legs, forming a sort of semi cocoon, and it floated towards the surf. The tide carried Sean’s body out to sea. The green lights of the magic flowed back, and Exodus absorbed it into his internal reservoirs effortlessly. He smiled a little, and shuddered with the pleasure as the magic entered his system, and he snapped his fingers.

A green rocket shot into the air over the ocean. It exploded like a firecracker. If anyone had noticed it, they would have thought it just someone getting started on the weekend’s festivities early. A moment later, there was another firecracker, this one more mundane, more orange. Good. His attendants had seen his message. They would come and take care of the body. In the meantime, Sean would float in the surf. If all went well, no one would notice him.

Exodus bent and placed the old book gingerly in the old backpack. He straightened up, put the bag over his shoulders, and began the long walk up the beach.

A couple of patrons—a muscle-bound man in a sleeveless T-shirt and board shorts and a woman in a bikini—of the nearby boardwalk bar had come out to watch the weird green lightning. They were leaning against the wooden railing, watching the dark ocean, and the man nodded respectfully as Exodus climbed the ramp that led from the beach to the boardwalk.

If a police officer—one investigating the disappearance of one Sean Kluwe, age twenty, from Freehold, say—had asked either of them, even five minutes later, to describe the man they’d seen emerge from the beach, they would have looked at each other and said, What are you talking about? We didn’t see any man.

Chapter 2

If there’s one thing people in New York love to complain about, it’s the smell. The streets smell like piss, out-of-town comics like to say, like it’s the most original thought in the world. And, yeah, okay, sometimes there’s a distinct urine smell in some parts of town. A lot of times the stench of garbage piles up, and you can practically see the smell, an actually visible weight in the air. I get that.

But if those people ever had cause to visit the nest of a family of ghouls, in the middle of summer, no less, they’d never again complain about a little piss in an alley or trash on the streets.

The cavern beneath the Queens cemetery smelled like rotting meat. A lot of rotting meat. Several carcasses had been shoved into one corner of the cave and covered with a thick tarp, in deference to my delicate human nose’s sensibilities. I had tied a bandana around my mouth and nose, which did a bit to filter the stink, but not nearly enough. My eyes were watering and the stench was bad enough that it stung the back of my throat.

A bunch of ghouls were standing in orderly rows in the center of the cavern, facing another one who stood on an altar in front of a crucifix that had been carved from bone. The one at the altar was named Perliastest, and he was the heir apparent to the Diggmr clan’s Bone Throne. Yeah, I know how that sounds. I guess it doesn’t rhyme in Ghoulish, so it sounds less Seuss-meets-Lovecraft.

Perliastest—Perry to his friends, which, god help me, included yours truly—was wearing a loose cotton robe and a large necklace with a cross on it. His eyes were closed in religious ecstasy and he said, Our mass has ended, brothers and sisters. Go in peace and serve the Lord in all things. Amen.

I hooked my thumbs through the thick leather belt at my waist and watched as the Fellowship of Christian Ghouls finished their prayers and made their way out of the makeshift ghoulish temple. A few glanced in my direction with their beady black gazes, but none made eye contact. These guys were still getting used to the idea of the Knights of the Round Table not wanting to skin them—old habits die hard, and few habits are older than fear.

Ghouls are roughly humanoid in shape, but their limbs are weirdly proportioned. Their hands practically drag on the ground, so they walk apelike, on all fours. Those hands—which, depending on the angle you look at them from, are more like paws—are broad and flat, like shovels. All the better for digging into graves with. They have weirdly furred bodies, which practically glisten with grease and oil, and their heads are small. The muzzles are mole-like, stubby and pointed, and they're full of sharp teeth. They communicate in a series of meeps and clicks, along with the occasional guttural scream. All of that adds up to a species that’s scavenger by nature, something that lives on the peripheries of just about every society.

Until about a hundred years ago, they were a major threat to humans, particularly in rural areas, because they weren’t always satisfied with feasting on the bodies of those who had already died and been buried. Those thick paws, which were designed to let them dig up graves, could also be used to crack open the foundations of people’s homes and to emerge in basements.

The clashes between the Knights of the Round Table and the ghoul clans had been brutal, but we’d won. Once we’d drilled it into their heads that we looked unkindly on ugly, overgrown rodents who killed and ate people—at the cost of a lot of dead knights and way more dead ghouls—they had adapted. Nowadays most ghouls are content with their underground networks of tunnels beneath cemeteries. They eat the bodies. It’s not a pleasant thing to think about, but it’s better than the alternative.

So I tried not to breathe too deeply, and I didn’t look too closely at the carcasses under the tarps.

Hey, Perry, I said when his congregation had finally drained out into the tunnels that surrounded the underground chamber. Interesting ceremony. Belated congratulations, by the way.

Perry smiled, showing me a mouthful of pointed teeth. Thank you, Captain. My sister’s marriage to Grelstir will bring an era of prosperity to both Digger and Rylomr clans. I also think it will lead to even more peaceful relations between our people and yours, praise God.

I hope so, I said.

We were only sorry you could not attend the wedding.

I ran a hand through my hair. Yeah, I’m sorry about that. There was an outbreak of Scandinavian Sleeping Flu outside of Rochester that weekend. Kinda an all-hands-on-deck situation.

Perry cocked his head. I hope everything worked out alright?

There were no casualties.

Thank God.

Right. I grinned sheepishly and looked around the cavern. I was still getting used to this diplomatic thing. I was the Round Table’s ranking officer in New York, which meant that I was responsible for outreach to the local supernatural communities. Until about eighteen months ago, I’d been able to delegate that responsibility to a fellow knight, who’d been active in the supernatural community for decades. Rob Haney had been killed by an uber-vampire last January, though, and since then I was the only knight in the area with the seniority to speak with the leaders and representatives of the various monster organizations. For instance, sometimes I had to attend prayer services in an underground cavern with a bunch of ghouls.

I wasn’t used to that. My preferred method for dealing with these sorts of creatures was a swift sword to the throat. But these days diplomacy was the best way to go, I guess. Besides, I actually sort of liked Perry—as much as you could like a corpse eater with a born-again Christian’s attitude. I just didn’t always know how to talk to him.

Anyway, it was good to see you, Perry. My best to your mother.

I was halfway turned around, ready to head up the dark ramp that would take me back to the surface, when the ghoul said, Wait.

Grimacing, then putting on a smile, I turned around. What’s up?

Perry, who’d taken off his cotton robe (he wore a Creed T-shirt underneath, which, of course he did), picked up a piece of wrought-iron fencing which had been sharpened into a spear. Despite their Christian persuasion (or maybe because of it), the F.C.G. were the most militant of the ghouls in ensuring that their people never found themselves in open hostility with the Round Table. They did everything they could to root out renegades in their ranks, and their justice could be quite brutal.

Not like I’m one to talk. I’m a knight of the Round Table— our code of justice was written during the medieval era, and we haven’t updated much since then. Eye for an eye and all of that.

The Fellowship is spreading. We have representatives in several ghoul clans in and around the city.

I nodded. Perry told me that every single time we spoke. I guessed he was mostly just proud that an organization he had started was taking off. I couldn’t blame him for that.

"There’s a clan—the Fertwirs—who have recently been joined by a small group of grorlps. According to Pastor Kirwil, these grorlps, these outsiders, are former members of the Crucible of the Dragon."

I whistled. The Crucible was an international, interspecies terrorist group which had been plaguing the Round Table for years now. I’d been part of the mission that had killed their leader, but they were still out there, disorganized and uncontrolled but still dangerous. If some of their members were in the area, that was something that needed to be looked into.

Fertwir, I said. I don’t know them. Where are they located?

Violet Bay, New Jersey. Their headquarters are beneath the Collins Crypt in Wilson Riviera Cemetery.

Down the shore, then. Okay. I could work with that.

I’ll look into it. Thanks, Perry.

You’re welcome, Captain Carver.

I went up the ramp. The floor was dirt; the walls were dirt, with bits of things that looked like ribs sticking out here and there; and the ceiling, as far as I could tell, was dirt. There were things moving inside the walls, making scratchy sounds like fingernails scraping along the insides of caskets, and I did my best to hurry up the ramp without looking like I was hurrying up the ramp.

The Diggmr clan are loose allies of the Round Table, but they’re still ghouls, you know. They’re still predators, and you never want to show anything like fear to a predator.

When I was back on the surface, I breathed a sigh of relief. I stepped out of the crypt and removed my bandana so I could taste the relatively fresh air of a late afternoon in early summer of Queens, New York. Take what you can get, you know? At least it smelled better than it had in the chambers. I was walking towards the gates when a voice called out, Dave Carver, that you?

I looked over my shoulder to see a heavyset man in a sweat-stained Knicks jersey and basketball shorts emerging from a nearby mausoleum. He had short, curly dark hair, and he’d grown a beard since the last time I’d seen him. His skin was heavily sunburned, and he had a messenger bag slung across his wide torso.

Steve Dallas, I said and waited for him to catch up. What’s up?

The proprietor of New York City’s only authentic magic shop—and one of the only practicing wizards in town—grinned and held out his hand. I shook it.

Just dropping some stuff off for Grelstir, Dallas said. The joints in her forepaws have been bothering her, so I put together some potions that might help.

The two of us began to walk along the path towards the cemetery gate. How’s the shop? I asked.

Business is booming, man, Dallas said. "I hired someone to run