Lost Hope Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Weird Start

  All Worth It

  It’s a Mad Life

  Why Do I Bother?

  Into the Lab

  Mommy’s Boy

  Didn’t See That Coming

  A Moment

  Time to Go

  Wagging Fingers

  A Telling Off

  One Thing After Another

  Sparkly Room

  Confusion

  Clutchy Hands

  What’s Next?

  Depressing Skies

  Searching for Clues

  Motivation

  A Brittle Bed

  Feeling Frisky

  Less Than Useless

  Frayed Nerves

  Hitting the Wall

  Sleepover From Hell

  Muppet in the House

  Rude Awakening

  A Mystery

  All Alone

  Priorities

  The Scene of the Crime

  Freaky Goings On

  Getting Annoyed

  Interrupted Musings

  Let’s Get it On

  That Wobbly Feeling

  Strange Plaything

  The Problem With Faeries

  A Trip Down Memory Lane

  A Clue, At a Price

  Telling Tales

  A Long Short Walk

  Reminiscing

  A Reality Check

  Wet

  Eerily Empty

  Stating the Obvious

  A Cliche

  Cells

  Contents

  Title Page

  Weird Start

  All Worth It

  It’s a Mad Life

  Why Do I Bother?

  Into the Lab

  Mommy’s Boy

  Didn’t See That Coming

  A Moment

  Time to Go

  Wagging Fingers

  A Telling Off

  One Thing After Another

  Sparkly Room

  Confusion

  Clutchy Hands

  What’s Next?

  Depressing Skies

  Searching for Clues

  Motivation

  A Brittle Bed

  Feeling Frisky

  Less Than Useless

  Frayed Nerves

  Hitting the Wall

  Sleepover From Hell

  Muppet in the House

  Rude Awakening

  A Mystery

  All Alone

  Priorities

  The Scene of the Crime

  Freaky Goings On

  Getting Annoyed

  Interrupted Musings

  Let’s Get it On

  That Wobbly Feeling

  Strange Plaything

  The Problem With Faeries

  A Trip Down Memory Lane

  A Clue, At a Price

  Telling Tales

  A Long Short Walk

  Reminiscing

  A Reality Check

  Wet

  Eerily Empty

  Stating the Obvious

  A Cliche

  Cells

  Lonesome Faeries

  Not What You Think

  Attempts at Madness

  Back in the Mad World

  Tug of War

  Good, or Very Bad?

  Naughty Boy

  The Gang’s All Here

  Casualties

  A Long Night

  A New Dawn

  Bad Timing

  A Strange Confession

  An Eyeful

  Big Reveal

  A Tangled Mess

  A Confrontation

  Who Are You?

  Pandemonium

  Great Timing

  Old Lady Wrath

  Looks Familiar

  A Realization

  Hunting

  Cat and Mouse

  True Colors

  Hardly a Surprise

  An End to Madness

  Last Minute Sleuthing

  More Questions

  Lost Hope

  Wildcat Wizard Book 6

  Al K. Line

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  Copyright © 2018, Al K. Line. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Weird Start

  Once, I had my genitals pierced by a magical hook used to capture wayward sprites that roamed the Nolands. I was the bait to lure them out. It wasn’t fun, and I still have the scars, but I got away, obviously. What confronted me now was on a whole other level.

  “Twist the fucking green tentacle thingy, you moron,” I shouted at Vicky, who, fair play, grasped the sticky, gelatinous writhing appendage on the panel of the semi-sentient machine before her and pumped it up and down.

  “Not like that! This isn’t a first date, you’re meant to—”

  “Oi, what do you think I am?”

  “Annoying,” I mumbled, then tried again. “Just twist it, don’t stroke it,” I screamed, the noise from the machinery and the beast it contained now reaching such a crescendo I wanted to stick Wand in my ears, wiggle him about, and remove my eardrums, maybe along with what little brain I had left.

  The great glass tank before us bubbled violently as the terrifying creature within writhed and thrashed, sending great geysers of acidic liquid splashing all over the floor, burning through anything it touched.

  I really wasn’t in the mood for this shit.

  The Scientist, a loon on a whole other level of nuttiness to the usual misfits I encountered, was already dealt with. He was now little but a pile of mangled flesh wrapped in a blood-stained lab coat beneath the long console Vicky and I were both frantically trying to make work. I was wishing I hadn’t been quite so heavy handed with how I’d stopped him trying to kill us.

  No point crying over spilled blood now; we had enough to worry about. I squirmed, and pulled an icky face, but nonetheless pushed my fingers into a pulsing pink sphincter set into the console and wiggled them even though I wanted to run away screaming about it being all yucky and moist. Ugh, moist. Why did the word feel so gross? Because this was like some kind of nightmare, that was why.

  Rogue wizards are not to be trusted, and the Scientist had been rogue for centuries. I should have turned down the job, I knew I should have, but I was so bloody depressed, and wasted from lack of sleep, I took it just to try to feel alive again.

  I got my wish.

  But for how much longer?

  “Try the switches,” I shouted to Vicky, who looked even smaller than usual as she pulled tentacles and fingered organic nodules, all whilst having to stand on tip-toe to reach. She was dressed in her usual uninspiring mom gear, sporting a tight blue sweater and skinny jeans with supermarket trainers completing the ensemble. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, making her look like she’d had a cheap face job, and she looked so out of place in this madman’s lab that I almost laughed.

  Almost. I’d lost my sense of humor, only had space for darkness in my mind at this time, and I was getting seriously pissed off with her even though she was doing what she always did on jobs. Namely, screw up and yet somehow manage to stay alive.

  “I don’t need this shit!” I shouted in anger to the world, but mainly to myself, and I slammed my fists down on something squishy.

  Green lights began to flash, there was a loud whirring, then the creature in the
tank quieted as the liquid turned milky and tubes that ran to myriad points on its body filled with a murky substance and began to feed it.

  “Right, in you go then,” I said jovially, plastering what I hoped looked like a sincere and optimistic smile on my face.

  Vicky glared at me, then her eyes widened. “Oh, you’re serious?”

  “Yup.” I took Grace, my hat, off my head, pushed my lank hair from my eyes, wiped my forehead with my jacket sleeve, then rubbed a sticky hand over my beard, which was a mistake. As I coughed and spluttered, Vicky stepped up to me, looked up into my eyes, and then, very carefully, very precisely, and to my utter surprise, punched me in the nuts.

  “No,” she said, as I doubled over and she glared at me with her hands on her hips.

  “You could have just said that. No need to be mean,” I gasped, what felt like a lifetime later.

  “Mean!?” my diminutive sidekick shrieked. “Look where we are. This place is disgusting. Everything’s all moist.” I shuddered. “And the computer is alive. And you want me to get in there,” she pointed at the tank, “with that thing.”

  “Just a suggestion,” I offered meekly, my wrinkled manhood hurting so bad I forgot I was depressed.

  “You do it,” she said.

  “No chance.”

  “How do we get the artifact then?” she asked, as she leaned a hand against the pulsing console. Something beeped, then something shrieked, and I swear there were eyes in amongst the gunk that coated every surface of this strange conglomeration of machine and organic. Then the tank began to crack.

  Faint lines appeared in the thick glass, or whatever it was that stopped the creature and its liquid environment from spilling out, and I grabbed the console and righted myself so I could see what she’d done.

  “What did you do?” I asked nervously, staring at the console then the tank as the cracks spread.

  “Just rested my arm,” she said defensively. “You’ve been pushing buttons, I just hit that one by accident.”

  “It’s bright red,” I said. “With the words, ‘Do NOT Push’ written next to it.”

  “I didn’t see it,” she growled.

  “And beneath it, it says, ‘Don’t Forget, This is Only if You Want to Die.’ Can’t you read?” I raised an eyebrow at her, then glanced around the rest of this madman’s lair at the endless notes and labels stuck to almost every surface. The Scientist obviously had a terrible memory and had labeled everything. A whole wall was full of journals, obviously there for his own reference for his mad experiments.

  “I had goo in my eye,” squeaked Vicky.

  “Idiot,” I muttered. I did a lot of muttering when in Vicky’s presence.

  Without fair warning, not even a phone call or at least a text, the tank broke. A giant thing with too many tentacles, pierced with countless tubes, and teeth like those creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean, but about a hundred times bigger, along with gallons of acidic liquid all exploded at us.

  I put up a hasty veil, or rather Wand did, as he had a refined sense of self-preservation, and then we were engulfed.

  Some days just suck. Unfortunately for me, my life is a series of such days.

  Hi, I’m Arthur “The Hat” Salzman. Gangster. Wizard. Depressed.

  All Worth It

  An oversized acid bath, plus its sole occupant, hammered at the shield I quickly helped stabilize, and good job too. The grubby floor tiles were eaten away in seconds, along with the sentient console, the breathing walls, the corpse of the Scientist, and everything else in the room.

  We plunged through the floor with thousands of gallons of acid, plus the thrashing creature, suffocating us as the shield wrapped tightly around us, making it impossible to breathe. This was too much for my energy levels to cope with, and Wand, drawing on the elements to help power our combined magic, was already fading fast, his insistent moaning becoming weaker as he drifted into a dreamless sleep. Talk about timing.

  We smacked into something hard, then the liquid cascaded as I shunted my will into the resting Wand and forced him back to life. He shuddered, then the protection fanned out, leaving Vicky and I gasping for air. We had half a second before the creature landed with a thud on top of the shield, almost breaking our necks. I heaved with all my might, magic crackling as it strained against the thing that weighed more than an elephant. I wondered how I’d explain this to Death when I met him in a few moments.

  But luck was on our side, and the thing suddenly collapsed in on itself, the difference in pressure, and maybe the weight of its own body, unable to keep it in its inflated form. It splatted as it squashed to little more than goo on the shield, then slid off in all directions, dripping from the globe that now encircled us, the only thing stopping the acid dissolving our bones.

  And then, God help me, I yanked Vicky upright, and as the sphere contracted, we used our hands and feet to move the ball of protection away from the knee-deep liquid like we were in one of those clear balls you see people playing in at pools.

  It was not a dignified escape.

  “Wait,” I ordered, knackered and yet still observant enough to spy something in the corner of this basement chock full of weird machinery, a memorial to the Scientist’s centuries of experimentation.

  Vicky stopped moving and I reached out, using the shield like a glove as it stretched with my hand. I clenched my fingers around the artifact, pulled back sharply, then pocketed my prize.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  “Go? Go where?” shrieked Vicky, looking about as panicked as I was annoyed by this whole venture.

  “There, to the bloody way up,” I said, pointing to the concrete stairway in the corner of the dissolving room.

  We moved exhausted limbs and made it to the steps. I said a thank you to Wand who grunted in reply then slept, and I pushed through the shield then helped Vicky.

  We ran up to ground level, found that the doors, walls, and most of the building had been eaten away, so did what we did best, and ran for all we were worth away from the scene of the crime, not stopping until we were the other side of the ancient pumping station that must have been the Scientist’s home for decades.

  We crumpled onto the muddy track next to the overgrown grass and watched as the building ate itself. The sun beat down, making life feel like a dream. Bees buzzed happily in the meadow, birds chirped from trees, and our rhythmic breathing eventually slowed.

  “Arthur, wake up.”

  I came back to consciousness to the sight of Vicky’s face inches from mine. She was poking a finger in my ear.

  “Geddof me. What are you doing?”

  “It’s time to go. I have to pick the girls up from school.”

  I took a moment to focus, then glanced at my watch, the display slowly coming into focus. “Hell, have we really been on this job all night and all day?” It had felt like it, but I’d assumed it would be early morning or something.

  “Yes, and I can’t be late. George took them but I didn’t ask her to pick them up.”

  I clambered to my feet and we stood there, bewildered by the remains of the building and its contents. It was little but a mound of bricks, roof tiles, some strange looking pieces of machinery, and a large lump of something gelatinous.

  I rummaged in my pocket and gripped tight when I felt something hard. I pulled it out and showed it to Vicky with a grim smile of satisfaction.

  “Nice,” she said. “What does it do again?”

  I spun the strange spiral object in my hands, the shiny metal catching the light, making rainbows in the air in front of us. It was beautiful, mesmerizing, and I could feel the magic it emanated do weird things to me. So lovely and shiny, but deadly, I reminded myself.

  “It turns you into that thing we saw,” I said with a bitter taste in my mouth. “But whatever floats your boat I guess.”

  “Ugh.” Vicky shuddered.

  “Come on, let’s collect the kids then get paid.”

  It’s a Mad Life

  I screec
hed to a halt outside the school gates. Vicky was out before the car had stopped, in full panic mode. She vaulted onto the bonnet and slid across, like she was auditioning for a remake of the Dukes of Hazard, except, I think they’d already done that a few times, and she was no Daisy. The studs in her jeans screeched as she scratched the shit out of the paintwork.

  Then, as I put my head in my hands and tried not to scream, she slid off the end, taking the aerial with her, and landed flat on her bony arse. Served her right.

  I got out of the car, waved at all the staring parents outside the school gates, and walked casually across the busy road, leaving Vicky moaning where she was.

  “Uncle Arthur,” shouted one vision in a blue blazer.

  “Hey, munchkin,” I said with a smile, my spirits lifting at the sight of the adorable girls with their hair in pigtails, blond locks shining in the sun, their smart uniforms, and their heavy bags. Why the hell kids of this age had to do homework is a mystery. It was a crime against childhood.

  “What you been doing?” asked the other nosy girl. “Is that slime on your hat?”

  I removed Grace and we all peered at the green substance coating her. “Could be. Me and your mum only just made it to pick you up. We were fighting a magical slime monster made by a mad rogue wizard and it got a bit messy.”

  “Ooh,” they gasped. “Do you have any snacks?”

  I patted my pockets, found two bent Finger of Fudge—I’d eaten the rest. I’d forgotten how amazing they were, if rather small—and handed them over.

  The innocence of childhood never ceased to amaze me. Here I was, telling them about the madness Vicky and I had been involved in, and they just took it in their stride, were more concerned about chocolate. What a beautiful headspace to be in.

  Ever since we began telling them more about the magical world, they’d been astonishingly relaxed about the whole thing. They believed what we said and got about their business. It was weird, and I wasn’t sure it boded well for the future. I also wondered when Vicky would tell them about her special “gift.” I also knew she, and me too, worried like hell they’d have inherited her ability to change into something nasty and hairy once a month. Neither of us would wish that on the girls, not for anything.

  But all the dark thoughts vanished as I stood outside the school gates and watched two little girls engrossed in their treats, unperturbed by what their Uncle Arthur and Mummy had been up to. They had their priorities right.

  Vicky shuffled over, rubbing at her backside and glaring at the other parents. They cringed and looked away, muttering to themselves.