Familiar Magic: London Coven, #1

By David Bussell

Stella Familiar was created by the London Coven to protect the city from the monsters that lurk in the shadows.

She's fought against the darkness for decades, but now something new has come to town. Something that's torn her world apart.

This monster did the impossible: it murdered the three most powerful witches in London, putting the city in peril, and leaving Stella alone for the first time to fight back against a power she doesn't understand. 

An evil beyond anything she can imagine is loose; something with the power to crush her like a bug... and it's back to finish what it started.

Does Stella have what it takes to defeat a threat this powerful, or will the creature of her nightmares snuff out the Coven for good?

 

Mystery, scares, and fast-paced action collide in this thrilling urban fantasy series. Read Familiar Magic now for a page-turning tale of magic and mayhem you cannot put down.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.V. Stott
• Release date: Feb 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781393092698

Book preview

1

It was the absence of magic that first got me, hitting me like a punch in the gut.

I shuffled forward along the scuffed cobbles of the alleyway, my legs threatening to unhinge and drop me to the ground.

My name is Stella Familiar. I belong to the London Coven, a trio of urban witches, and I had just arrived home to find the door of our home hanging off its hinges. The entrance was dented and scorched, as though someone had blasted their way inside, which was impossible. I stood there, looking at the remains of the door for a few seconds, dumbfounded. Impossible. And yet, there it was.

The London Coven is in Hammersmith, West London, just a few streets away from the Underground station. It’s situated down a blind alley, the only building at the end of a short cobbled stretch. It’s called a blind alley because only those who know it exists can see it; a simple but effective layer of perception magic that makes the alley invisible to most, even when looking directly at it.

But back to that impossible lack of magic...

The coven and the blind alley that led to its door should have been noisy with arcane energy. Should have been alive with boiling, agitated power; great churning fractals of the stuff. It was home to my masters, Kala, Trin, and Feal, the three most powerful witches in England, and every inch of the place was infused with their sorcery. On top of that, there were the spells of protection; hundreds of them. Anyone that wasn’t meant to be within the coven’s walls could find themselves stepping into a patch of superheated air that melted the flesh from their bones, or perhaps they’d blink, and just before their heart gave out, find themselves wearing their insides on the outside. There were any number of ways it could happen. Any number of creative deaths to discover. With so many things of the dark seeking to slither inside and do us harm, the coven had to be locked up tight. It was impossible for anything to cross the threshold that wasn’t invited, and yet…

The door—

That lack of magic—

I tucked a stray lock of raven-black hair behind my ear, swallowed hard, and ducked through the gap created by the half-off door, straightening up slowly on the other side. A corridor stretched before me; walls of bare grey brick, floor made of exposed hardwood boards. A few doors stood either side of the corridor. Straight ahead was the coven’s common room.

The place was dead.

There wasn’t a whisper of magic to be heard anywhere. To be felt. To be tasted.

It was impossible.

I know I keep using that word, but that’s because it was true.

Every building, every street, every hill and river and grain of sand contains some residue of magic. It’s all around us every day. We swim around in it; an invisible sea of Uncanny energy. Even if this place hadn’t been a coven, hadn’t housed three of the most powerful magical creatures in the country, the very fact of its existence meant it should emit trace levels of magic.

But there was nothing.

I reached out with all of my senses, desperate for anything. For a ghost of some ancient incantation.

I came up empty.

‘Kala? Trin? Someone, please answer me.’

Silence.

I stepped into the first room; Kala’s reading room, piled high with trashy paperback romances. It was empty, but there were signs of a struggle. ‘Kala?’ Chairs lay on their sides, broken glass scattered across wooden floorboards. The coven smelt the same despite the lack of magic; that strange mix of cinnamon, freshly-cut grass, and lavender that seemed to permanently drift about the place, no matter which potion was cooked up, or what meal was prepared. The smell of my masters’ witchcraft.

I turned back and stepped into the hallway again. ‘Intruder, my name is Stella Familiar and you will show yourself or I… or I will…’

I pressed a palm against the wall to steady myself and swallowed, my throat dry. The emptiness was getting to me, giving me the shakes. All magical beings are connected to the power that radiates from the natural world, but few are more connected than my kind. As a familiar, I feed on the magic that naturally occurs, soaking it in like a sponge, night and day, without even thinking about it. It sustains me, makes me stronger, gives me the energy to cast spells. But now, in this place, this empty coven, I was like a junkie whose supply had been cut off after a lifetime of indulgence, my slim but powerful body trembling. I was going cold turkey, and it really, really hurt.

It was disturbing how quickly I was affected. A minute had passed, tops, and I was already a shaking, sweaty wreck, struggling to resist the urge to run from the coven, from the blind alley, so I could get a good, strong hit.

I grunted, straightened up, and tried to get my shit together. This was no time for weakness, no time to fall apart. My home had been attacked.

‘Intruder, my name is Stella Familiar, and you will show yourself to me!’ The words roared out of my mouth with a strength I didn’t feel.

There was no reply.

I placed a hand on the door to the coven’s common room and pushed.

I tasted death before I saw it; a metallic tang on the tongue that twisted my stomach and told me what I was going to see before my eyes had been given a chance to catch up. A taste like a gun barrel in my mouth.

The room was mostly as I’d left it: a few comfy chairs, a bookcase, a couch, and a long wooden table with ancient texts spread across it. A small cauldron hung in a fireplace, and beside that sat a television on a TV stand. Always the same. Except on this day, some extra items had been added.

There were three bodies on the floor.

Three bodies, but more than three pieces.

Kala, Trin, Feal—my masters, my creators, my coven’s high witches—had been torn to shreds and scattered around the room.

Eyes wide, hand to my mouth, I stepped inside.

‘No…’

Blood was sprayed across the grey brick walls and splattered across the floorboards, collecting in congealing red pools. It was a horror story. A world gone mad.

This couldn’t be happening.

Nothing was capable of doing this to the witches of the London Coven. Together, when connected, the three of them wielded enough power to crack open mountains, to turn the oceans into sand, to make demons weep, and yet my shoes were soaking in a pool of their collective blood.

I crouched and placed a hand on a hunk of meat that could have belonged to any one of my masters. It, like the coven itself, was empty. Not just of life, but of magic. Of power. Something had broken into a place it was impossible to plunder, bypassed the magical safeguards it was impossible to survive, and torn to…

…and murdered my masters. Murdered three creatures of immeasurable power. And then, to finish things off, they’d drained every last drop of magic from the place.

Impossible on top of impossible on top of impossible.

I stood, angry. Angry that I’d allowed fear to infect me. I hadn’t been created to feel fear, I’d been created to instil fear, and to bring about justice. I cradled the anger and blew upon it, igniting it like the first spark of a new fire. It didn’t matter that this was impossible, it had happened. It didn’t matter that the kind of power needed to have achieved any one of the unimaginable things done to this coven would be enough to turn me into a puddle of bubbling goo.

None of it mattered.

All that mattered was that the coven had been breached, and my creators, my mothers, had been murdered as though they were nothing. As though they were less than nothing. They’d been ripped and shredded and tossed aside. My nails dug into my palms and drew blood, but I didn’t flinch. It felt good.

I was going to find out who was behind this and do something impossible myself.

I was going to get bloody, horrifying revenge.

I was nothing but a lowly familiar, but I swore to every god I knew that I was going to avenge my slaughtered coven.

‘Listen to me,’ I hissed, ‘and listen closely. You have made a grave mistake. My name is Stella Familiar, and what has happened here today will be met with a fury you cannot even imagine. Do you hear me? I know you can. Whoever did this, I will find you, and when I do, I will rip your beating heart from your chest.’

A noise—

A movement in the corner of my eye—

I wasn’t alone.

And I was in terrible danger.

2

Whatever it was that was inside the coven with me, it was taking its time. It was trying to scare me. And it was working.

Normally in this sort of situation—with an unknown assailant stalking me, ready to leap out and tear my throat from my neck at any moment—I’d draw upon the surrounding magic and cast a spell that would turn the creature into confetti. Sling a spell first, ask questions later, that was my usual way of dealing with threats. But there was no surrounding magic. I extended my senses as far as I could, invisible tendrils firing out in all directions, desperately searching for a hint of the Uncanny to draw upon, but everything out there was cold.

This was a dead place, in more ways than one.

The creature unleashed a low, rumbling growl that shook the floor beneath me. I was in deep trouble. I tried to ignore the blood, the chunks of my dead masters, and I reached out again to try and make sense of what I was up against.

A voice—

A single word, repeated staccato—

Kill Kill Kill—

The words rolled in my head as I came upon the thing stalking me. It was a slippery creature, hard to get a clear grip on, but it was obvious it wasn’t the person behind this attack. No, this creature was a booby trap.

Time to take stock.

I had no magic to draw on, only the weak power I already had stored inside of me, and even that was dulled by my surroundings, as though my magic was shrinking back in confusion at the emptiness around me. Did the creature keeping just out of view know that? Did it realise I was running on empty? That I’d brought a slap to a gunfight?

No, I didn’t think so. It was just toying with me; that’s the only reason it hadn’t already pounced. It wanted to make me scared to death before death actually came calling.

‘Whatever you are, this is already getting boring. Show yourself, but know that I have enough juice in me to make your head go pop. Understand?’

A bluff, but I sold it as best I could. From what I could sense, it was a simple attack beast, left to take care of anyone who stumbled into the dead coven. To take care of me. Whatever this creature was, it was the monkey, not the organ grinder.

‘Do you hear me, you dumb beast? Show yourself or get the hell out of my house.’

A growl and the floor shook—

A wall in front of me exploded—

A creature erupted into the room, bursting through brick and plaster as though they were matchsticks and spit. The horned monster dog bore down on me, eyes burning with red fire, its slavering maw a jumble of razor-sharp teeth. It raised its great head, drool dripping from its mouth and splashing on the floor, mixing with the spilled blood of my masters.

I had to choose my next words carefully. ‘There there,’ I said. ‘Good dog…?’

No, not ideal.

A thought struck me: this monster was created by magic, which meant it must have magic available for me to feed on. I ignored the fact that I should have already been able to sense any magic in my vicinity, and tried to reach out to it, to draw in some of its power, but whoever had created this thing was no idiot. Some sort of extra spell had been cast upon the beast that made my mental feelers slide off it, like I was trying to push two magnets of the same pole together. So that was why I hadn’t been able to sense its presence, or its magic? The thing was shielded from me. Whoever had ripped apart my witches and left this booby trap didn’t plan on making things easy.

The demon dog took a step forward, a floorboard cracking beneath one of its heavy, cloven feet.

‘Stop. Stay there. Don’t take another step or you’re done for.’ I raised a hand by way of a threat and formed a weak cloud of sparks that swam around. I could only hope the monster took it for the beginnings of something more powerful. ‘You will tell me your name, beast, and the name of your master, or I will—’

I didn’t get to finish the sentence. The creature snorted and began to charge, drool trailing from its mouth.