Masters of Blood and Bone

By Craig Saunders

Holland's a man who's good with death - a killer for hire - but is he a match for a God?

When his daughter goes missing, Holland finds himself pitted against powerful enemies; a changeling, a mage, and a god who wants to destroy the world.

Holland's daughter isn't just a girl, though, and she's far from an easy mark.

Masters of Blood and Bone is an epic clash between good and evil, life versus death, gods against mortals, a timeless story of power and corruption and one man's fight to protect what he loves at any cost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dark Fable Books
• Release date: Nov 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781980289555

Craig Saunders

Craig Saunders is the author of forty (or so) novels and novellas, including 'ALT-Reich', 'Vigil' and 'Hangman', and has written over a hundred short stories, available in anthologies and magazines, 'best of' collections and audio formats. He tends to write science fiction as Craig Robert Saunders, fantasy as Craig R. Saunders, and most fiction as Craig Saunders...although sometimes the lines are blurred. Imprints: Dark Fable Books/Fable Books.  Likes: Nice people, games, books, and doggos. Dislikes: Weird smells, surprises, and gang fights in Chinatown alleyways.  He's happy to talk mostly anything over at: www.craigrsaunders.blogspot.com  @Grumblesprout Praise for Craig Saunders: [Masters of Blood and Bone] '...combines the quirkiness of Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas series with the hardcore mythology of Clive Barker to create an adventure that is both entertaining and terrifying.' - examiner.com [Vigil] 'A gripping accomplishment.' - Murder, Mayhem and More. 'Saunders is fast becoming a must read author...' - Scream. [Bloodeye] '...razor-sharp prose.' Wayne Simmons, author of Flu and Plastic Jesus. 'Plain and simple, this guy can write.' - Edward Lorn, author of Bay's End.  [Deadlift] 'Noir-like, graphic novel-like horror/thriller/awesomeness.' - David Bernstein, author of Relic of Death and Witch Island. 'A master of the genre.' Iain Rob Wright. [Spiggot] 'Incredibly tasteless, shamelessly lowbrow, and very, very funny.' - Jeff Strand.  [A Home by the Sea] 'Brutal and poetic...' - Bill Hussey, author of Through a Glass, Darkly. [Rain] '...the best book I've read in a year.' - The Horror Zine. [Cold Fire] '...full of emotion and heart.' - Ginger Nuts of Horror.

Book preview

BOOK ONE: NORFOLK, ENGLAND

I.

THE MAN BORN IN A BOOK

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for?

—Franz Kafka

1

It’s impossible to fake being a wizard. You can fake many, many things: Tans, orgasms, speeding car and fart noises for small children.

But true wizards are not prestidigitators, just as books are not lies. They are magic.

Magic.

2

The man sitting on an uncomfortable bench between the car park and the shopping center had a sore ass. His ass was sore because of two bowls of chili, three enchiladas, and a black bean burrito.

He was in a heroically bad mood.

Oi, shouted someone behind him. Some people behind him. The bench and thus the man with the sore ass and a penchant for Mexican food faced the shopping precinct. The voice—now voices—came from the car park. He didn’t bother to turn, but read the last line of the strange little book before him once again.

Magic.

The man nodded, though he was none the wiser, then closed the book, closed his eyes against the bright lights, and listened to the shuffling approach of three or four drunk lads.

Fat cunt! I’m talking to you!

Giggles. The fat cunt who liked Mexican food listened hard. It sounded as though there were three or four of them, but most likely four. Drunk, young, stupid. Drunk and young for sure. Hopefully not too stupid.

Got a sore ass, said the man. I’m not turning around. If you want something, come over here. I’m not getting up. I’m fat. I’m tired. And I’ve got a sore ass.

Fucking hell, mate, didn’t ask, don’t give a fuck, said one young lad. Their charming spokesperson, the fat man figured.

But they came toward him, like he knew they would. Youngsters, full of beer, were generally quite wordy. And stupid.

Four, then, he thought, as they stood in front of him. Fat man wore a suit—a bit shiny, a bit crumpled. He looked a little like a tramp, except you don’t see that many really fat tramps. Fat man was pretty fat.

I was reading, he said. He tapped his fingernail against the book on his lap, in case this little gang were stupid as well as drunk.

Looks fucking gay.

Fat man nodded, noncommittal. You mind? You’re in the light.

Fuck you. Got cigarettes? Got money?

Yes, yes, and no.

No?

No, you can’t have either.

I’m not asking.

Yes, you were. If you want a cigarette, there’s a 24-hour garage about five minutes that way, said the fat man. Otherwise, I’m going to read my book, and you’re going to go away. Either way, get out of the light. I’m not asking.

I’m going to fucking—

The fat man interrupted. I’m bored of you, and the book is interesting. I’m going to explain something to all of you, because you’re drunk and young and a little bit stupid. Maybe all the way stupid, but I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt.

Fuck...

SHUT UP! I’M TALKING!

The fat man’s heart didn’t like shouting, but he really did want to read the book.

The drunk people who might be some kind of threat, but probably not, shut up.

See that lamppost with no lights behind me? The one with the round dome? That’s the CCTV for the car park. There is no CCTV for the precinct, because the car park cameras cover it just fine. My back, you’ll notice, is to the camera. You four, on the other hand, are looking straight at it. That’s the first thing you should note. Sobering, isn’t it? The second, he said, seeing that there might be a glimmer of intelligence in the lads after all, because they didn’t interrupt. The second thing is this. I ate way too much Mexican food earlier today and it’s kind of percolated in my fat old guts. I’m a big man, with big spicy shits. So, in closing, would you like my balls on your chin, or your nose?

What?

Simple enough, he said, looking at the lads in turn. Balls. Chin. Nose.

What?

Fat man sighed. Which way I sit when I take a shit in your mouth. Got enough to go around.

Fucking psycho.

Fat man nodded.

Balls. Chin or nose? Five seconds. One...two...

The lads turned and walked on. Their swagger didn’t return until they were a good way gone.

The big man sighed, more from sadness than relief. He took a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, beside his small pistol in a shoulder holster that nestled between his back-fat and his left man-boob. He lit the cigarette.

The kids shouted something but the man was gone, reading his book again, this time holding it in one heavy hand. The other held a cigarette, which glowed before his lips now and then.

Fat man’s name was Matthew Doyle Holland and he didn’t like shooting kids. He’d kill most anything but kids. Not even the stupid ones.

3

Holland walked back to his car just after five in the morning. He drove away from the car park, the rising sun to his right on the long road to his home in the north, on the coast, where the summer would be hot and full of tourists. 5 a.m. was the golden hour, though...nothing on the roads, the sun rising, languid, and his daughter waiting for him.

Even a sore ass and his gut squashed against the steering wheel couldn’t dampen his spirits, because he was going home, and it was a good home. Eighteen years’ worth of it. Not the stuff, like the television, or the bricks. That cost money and wasn’t worth much else.

Ank, his daughter. She was the one who made it home.

If it’d been just him, he wouldn’t care for a home, the bricks, the wardrobes.

If it’d been just him, he knew, he’d be long dead. Probably would’ve just given in, crumbled, like a man made of nothing more than dust.

But he hadn’t died, and he kept on not dying, until it had become kind of a habit, like cigarettes and bacon.

Morning was well underway when Holland first felt the sea, like a tickle on his skin, before he smelled or saw it. His nostrils seemed to dry, his skin puckered. The car window was down, but it was more than the early morning chill.

As the sense of the sea became stronger, he smiled and forgot the discomfort of driving.

There always came a peculiar kind of release the closer he got to home. The tension in his shoulders, which was damn near permanent, seemed to travel down along his arms and fizzle free of his large fingers, almost as though he were some kind of hedge wizard discharging magic from his hands.

The smell came next, brine and a hint of pollution, sewage, but overall a cleansing smell, one of the few things he could smell with a thirty-a-day cigarette habit. As long as he could smell the sea (and maybe bacon), he’d be happy enough.

Grinning now, the sea came into sight in the day’s earliest light. Pre-light, nearly—a hint of the day that waited in the wings.

The sea itself was almost black in the lowest of light, with a hint of silver moonlight playing on the calm waves on the one side, and a growing tinge of red from the rising sun on the other.

And there, a lonely cottage set back from the shore, outlined against the sea. His home.

He coasted to a stop beside the cottage. Southern England at his back, the sea filling his vision, and the cottage on his left. He closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of the North Sea. Then he pushed himself free of the car with a grunt, took out his walking stick and stood looking out across the sea and sand while he smoked a cigarette.

4

Ank Holland stood at the window watching her father as he took a long, happy pull on his cigarette. She wasn’t quite shaking her head, but she was thinking about it. He knew she’d seen him.

Even through the kitchen window, even with the breeze, she could smell the cigarette.

Some people smoked like their lives depended on the next drag. Not Holland. He enjoyed every taste of smoke. He understood that the match was important. No lighters. The striking and the sulphurous sting of match-smoke in the eyes. The initial crackle of the tobacco and paper catching. The sound of smoking. Smoking was a quiet thing, something to do alone on a beach or in your kitchen late at night. Not in a crowded beer garden. Not in the wind or while driving or walking, but sitting or standing and taking time out. A small offering of peace, a burnt offering to time and solitude.

Ank couldn’t help herself. She smiled, watching him, despite her disapproval.

Like anything I say would ever make a difference.

Holland turned his head and winked at her.

Daft old bastard, she thought, but her smile stayed. Always Holland to her, never Dad. Just one of those things, like people called red-haired people Ginger, or tall people Lofty. Dad was Holland to her, always would be. It was just a name, true, but it seemed to fit him better. He was a big lump, after all.

Seemed right he be named for a country.

Ank wished she had a name that fit. She hated her full name and he knew it. He called her Ank, never the other thing.

He was a good dad. Other people, she knew, they’d want to name her, to own her, to shape her into their thing.

He let her breathe.

She didn’t know many other people, nor did she care to. Holland was people enough for her. Maybe one day that might change.

But not today, she thought. Not today. She pointed to the cigarette and shook her head.

He blew her a kiss and opened the back door.

5

A coarse rug lay on a cold stone floor in an immense room—like a royal chamber, within some ancient palace, but for the absence of doors and windows. A high bed took up the center of the room.  It was too high to reach. Tantalizing, though, with smooth, cool sheets and many thick pillows full of feathers. But much, much, too high to climb up. High as the ceiling of the room in which the wizard in the book found himself upon waking, the pattern of that uncomfortable rug imprinted on his cheek.

He was a wizard, not a bird. He looked up at the bed, towering up and up, maybe fifty meters high. The bed’s width and length were perfectly normal— in fact, being a tall man, the wizard’s feet probably would have hung over the edge.

When he’d been a child, he seemed to remember thinking that if a part of him fell over the edge of his bed while he slept, that part would grow larger than the rest of him.

It wasn’t true, though, because that had been in his head, and not in the book.

The book was the only other thing in the room.

Woven rug on stone, a gigantically tall bed, and the book. Him, too, of course.

And a trail. A glistening trail, across the stone, and onto the rug.

Slug trail, he thought. He hated slugs.

He sat up, wincing at the terrific pain the movement caused. He looked all around him. There were no slugs.

He shrugged. He hadn’t expected easy, or comfortable. He crawled over to the book, which rested a couple of meters away. The wizard’s legs were broken and he couldn’t walk.

The crawling hurt, but he was a fast healer and while he hurt, he knew he wasn’t dead.

He picked up the book, opened it to his page, and read.

"Night fell slow. The wizard lost his fight against sleep that night, as every night before. His eyelids flickered, fire and ice warring in the wizard’s terrible mind, until his eyelids closed on the awful lights that played behind his eyes.

"He dreamed that night. Of the silver trails across the rug that served as his bed. The silver trails that did not go anywhere. Dreamed and woke and dreamed and woke. The trails never did go anywhere. His captors never came, and he always woke sated. Not once, in all his long captivity, did he hunger.

The wizard woke at last to the reality of his continued existence with something sliding down his throat and woke with a scream in the stone room...

And the wizard woke, slugs swarming over his tongue, sliding down into his belly, filling him up.

He screamed and vomited a hundred slugs or more on the carpet. His legs, knitted while he slept/ read the book, unfurled beneath him as he stood creaking to his full height.

What torment next? he roared at the empty room. What torment?!

No reply came.

But there would be an answer, one day. An answer was in the book, waiting for him...and that was torment enough because the book was nearly at an end.

6

After a short sleep, sweating in his bed like only a fat man can, Holland woke to the smell of frying bacon.

Ank didn’t muck about with grilling his food, and he liked that. He heaved himself out of the double bed that was all Holland could fit in. Ank, seventeen going on thirty, told him he sounded like a dying walrus when he snored. Holland liked that, too. Apt, he thought, because he was pretty sure he was well on the way to killing himself, even if he didn’t weigh quite as much as a walrus. Yet.

Slippers, gown, stick. His morning ritual. Anything else could wait until breakfast was done.

When he finally made his lopsided way to the kitchen table, sea view through the window and patio door, he saw only the top of Ank’s head. Her lank teenager hair that could have looked good, but was marred by a purple dye, hung across her face.

She was studious—always had been. She didn’t notice him.

Ank?

She looked up from a book.

The book.

Ah, fuck, said Holland.

Indeed, she said. But her mouth was set, too. Set and unafraid, which was good, Holland figured. It meant she hadn’t read the whole thing.

He had, and he was fucking terrified.

7

What makes a book? Is it the form of the thing? Did it need a spine, pages, binding? Or was it a matter—like murder—of intent?

Holland could’ve looked up a definition, but he didn’t like doing that. It was a book. Not published, not typed. Handwritten, yes, but in an ornate hand. Not crazy person’s tight little scribbles, but luxurious writing. It looks like it might even have been written with a quill. There were traces of sand in the binding, too.

It looked old.

It wasn’t bound with bone glue, or covered in human skin. He thought it was most likely vellum; calfskin. People didn’t make vellum books anymore. People didn’t write with quills, not like this, and they certainly didn’t

Reviews for Masters of Blood and Bone

[donaldmcobb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is...a weird book. The story follows two characters: Holland, an assassin that works in the supernatural world (though it's never made clear whether he himself is supernatural or just an extraordinary human) and his daughter Ank (who is definitely supernatural). Holland has let himself since the death of Ank's mother, but he is still a formidable individual. The story opens as Holland is investigating a brutal murder and discovers some definite supernatural elements. As he continues to look in to things, nothing ever quite adds up. I don't want to say anything more because I'll risk spoiling something and a major draw of this book is the surprising turns the plot takes.Speaking of which, having the plot run off in a direction that the reader never expects is becoming something of a hallmark for Craig Saunders. It's present in the novellas he's done for DarkFuse, albeit to a lesser degree (owing, I'm sure, to the shorter format), but the surprising twists and turns come hard and fast in this book. I find that's often a hard thing for a writer to pull off effectively and continuously, but Saunders is holding steady so far.One of the more appealing things (to me, at least) in this book is how Saunders has taken several mythologies and combined them all to form the backbone of his story. By the halfway point, Roman and Jewish/Christian icons have taken center stage, with the Greeks making an appearance by the end of the story to help wrap everything up. On top of this, there are hints throughout that a number of other mythologies are real and Holland has interacted with them in some capacity in the past. Again, this is a tricky thing for a writer to pull off successfully because robbing from existing mythologies can very easily lead to a situation where an author is just standing on the shoulders of giants if they do not bring something fresh and entirely their own to the table. Rest assured, Craig Saunders does that in spades with this book.Probably my only real complaint is that even at the end of the story, I still wasn't sure what, exactly, Holland was. It's stated several times that he's just an exceptional human, but as I mentioned earlier, there are a number of hints throughout that that isn't the whole story. I think it may be my own relative unfamiliarity with the mythologies Saunders pulled from that leave me with this minor bit of confusion. But even accounting for that (and recognizing that it's largely an issue with me as a reader rather than Saunders as a writer), I wholeheartedly recommend Masters of Blood and Bone.

[edward.lorn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

All the imagination of a Clive Barker novel in a succinct, easy-to-read package. All fun. Zero filler. Craig Saunders has done it again.

Holland and Ank are two of the coolest, most lovable characters I've read. These two alone make the book hard as shit to put down. Add in the crazy, over-the-top fantasy/wizardry/mythology plot and you're bound to read this novel in a single sitting. The chapters are uber short, and Saunders's writing it lightning fast. But don't let the easy reading fool you. There's depth here.

Yeah, this review is short. That's because I haven't a negative thing to say about this gem of a book. It glimmers with wit and originality. Highly recommended to fans of dark fantasy and anyone looking for a tale that hasn't been told a trillion times.

May I have a sequel, please? Thank you.

In summation: A quote: "But does a book ever really end? Is there not, always, a story that exists somewhere, a thread, waiting for someone curious to come along and tug?"