Ironbones

I write fiction for lots of reasons. One is power. I’m in charge when I write. So are you. You create the world of the story. You make the rules.

― Gail Carson Levine, Writing Magic:

Creating Stories That Fly

I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

NUMBER ONE FAN

JANE COOPER HAD A FACE on her like she’d been told a joke she couldn’t understand. Curled up on her couch, she was reading the book she’d bought three hours previously at a special midnight opening of Waterstones.

The forty-two-year-old spinster was in a world of her own. Or the world of Ironbones: The Last Dance, Kaz Payne’s tenth and final novel about the eponymous superhuman serial killer.

It was 4:00 am, October 31—Halloween.

The only light came from a reading lamp on the small foot stool next to Jane’s couch, which was older than her, full of holes, and reeked of cat piss. Music thumped from the flat upstairs; had done since Jane had got home three-and-a-half hours previously and started to read.

But she didn’t care. The book was all that mattered. The words, as she turned the pages. Kaz Payne’s words. Words Jane had devoured for more than a decade. Words that had kept her sane, kept her alive, given her hope. Words that were about to come to an end.

She shuddered at the prospect, and tears filled her eyes as she got ready to read the last few pages.

You can’t kill love, she thought, you just can’t.

She was filled with dread...

A decade of horror and pain was finally coming to an end for Detective Inspector Gabriel Messenger.

There was no escape this time. He wouldn’t allow it.

The years he’d spent hunting Ironbones had taken their toll. Friends dead. Family dead. Ambitions dead.

The rage simmered in his chest.

Often, he’d wondered if he’d lost a little of his sanity during this pursuit. His former bosses had thought so. They had ordered him to see psychiatrists. But Messenger always found an excuse not to go. And senior officers did no more than berate him. Until they had enough and kicked him off the force.

He was once a top cop. A star; the celebrity detective who, for nearly a decade, had been pursuing the most terrifying psychopath in history—a mythic monster many argued wasn’t real.

That was how some tabloids described Ironbones—monster; evil; demon—and Messenger couldn’t disagree.

But he knew it was much worse than that—much worse than what the public knew.

He’d seen the monster’s work up close and personal. The truly bad stuff was mostly kept out of the media. It would fuck up people’s heads if they knew.

It had probably fucked up Messenger’s.

Ten years ago he’d been an ambitious young detective sergeant, the future of the Metropolitan Police, many said. Media savvy. Politically astute. Pretty wife. Cute kids.

He was marked as a future Commissioner of the London force, the most senior job in British policing.

But then came Ironbones.

A killer from hell.

Seven-feet two-inches. Lethal and uncompromising. And as well as being enormous and powerful, some said he was also supernatural.

And Messenger had come to believe that over the years. He’d lost count of the times he thought he’d killed Ironbones. But the bastard just rose from the dead, over and over.

And he’d go back to what he did best—butchery.

No one was safe. Not even Messenger’s kids.

The grief nearly finished him. He spiralled out of control, turned to drink. His marriage fell apart.

But what doesn’t kill you makes you crazier.

And the copper came back mad. He came back cruel. He came back a monster himself.

His bosses pulled the plug: You’re out, Messenger.

But Ironbones was on the rampage again. Already thirty dead. The streets awash with blood. England cowering. And there was only one man for the job.

Gabriel Messenger.

You send a man used to fighting demons to fight a demon, surely: It’s not official, Messenger, this is off the books.

And here we are, he thought. I’ve got you at last.

Messenger was soaked through. The rain pelted down. He shivered but didn’t really feel the cold. It was probably adrenalin.

He stared up the slope of the Welsh slate mountain.

Moonlight streaked the fine-grained rock, which glistened in the rain—wet, slippery, precarious.

Messenger shut his eyes and listened. The rain hammered. The wind wailed. And the beast roared.

You can’t kill me, Messenger, came the furious cry.

It was in the distance, echoing across the hillsides—but however far, that voice had the power to chill the blood.

The ex-cop listened hard, enjoying the slight hint of fear that he was certain he could hear in Ironbones’s voice.

Metal rattled. The beast was caged, trying to escape.

But not this time. This time Messenger had planned everything. This time he had used every single bit of information he had gathered about Ironbones over the years to finally trap him—and he would at last put a stop to the bloodshed, to the madness.

He knew Ironbones better than he knew himself.

And the opposite was probably true.

It was almost as if they needed each other. Fed off each other. Ironbones had asked him once: Without me, what are you?

What was he, indeed? A shell, that’s what. Messenger had stared into the abyss and the abyss had well and truly stared right back and got in his head.

And he did wonder what would become of him without Ironbones.

But the future could wait.

Now he had a job to do.

He strode up the slope.

The mine shaft was lit only by a single bulb hanging from the damp, rocky ceiling. It dangled from a cable, like a hanged man swaying from the scaffold.

Messenger went down the passageway. His belly churned. This was it. He had trapped Ironbones. Tricked him and caged him.

And now he was going to kill him.

End this fucking thing once and for all. End it in the way it had begun. Using the forces that had created Ironbones to destroy him.

Get it done, the police commissioner had said during a meeting, shuffling papers, not looking Messenger in the eye.

Messenger had looked around the room.

The commissioner; the assistant commissioner in charge of Met Ops, one of the four business group that form the Metropolitan Police Service; the home secretary and some of her senior civil servants; representatives of M15 and the military.

Too many bloody bosses, Messenger had thought at the time.

None of them looked at him. He was a damaged ex-cop. He was poison. Look at him, they’d been infected.

He was more or less a hired killer, now. They were sending him out to face the monster. Not supplying any rules of engagement. No guidelines, no directions, no responsibility.

Get it done.

A civil servant said, Alive or dead.

Messenger had smiled before looking at every dignitary in the room. Still they didn’t make eye contact.

Loud and clear, he had thought.

And dead or alive meant dead.

End it.

And that’s what he would do.

He stepped out of the passageway and into the cavern. It was immense, a grim, rocky womb. A sort of cold, dark hell where a monster could be born. And where it would die.

And there was the monster in question—the devil himself.

You can’t kill me, Messenger, roared Ironbones, rattling the cage.

The enclosure hung from the ceiling on four chains.

Cage and chains were made of titanium—the strongest metal on earth to hold the strongest killer.

The metal had been used to build a submersible that withstood the pressure of deep-sea diving in the Mariana Trench, the deepest oceanic trench on earth. Titanium was used in planes, ships, spacecraft and missiles. It was heat resistant, wouldn’t corrode, so was used to store nuclear waste.

And now it was being used to hold Ironbones.

Messenger walked up to the cage, looked up at it. The monster was a massive silhouette behind the bars. Messenger knew what that silhouette looked like. He had looked into its eyes many times. He’d faced it and had the scars to prove it. Ironbones’s sickle—his weapon of choice—had sliced Messenger’s flesh, often nearly killing him.

The attack on his home three years previously, which left his eldest child gutted, had seen Messenger hospitalized for six months with severe injuries.

What doesn’t kill you makes you angrier.

Hands the size of spades reached through the bars. The pale flesh was covered in ritualistic tattoos.

What makes you think you can kill me this time, Messenger?

Its voice was quieter now, deep and guttural.

You’ve never managed it before.

Messenger said nothing. He strode over to the wall where there was a large flip-handle switch. He gripped it and looked up at the cage.

Ironbones lunged forward, his terrifying face caught the cave’s natural light.

I will not die, Messenger, he snarled. I am forever because someone loves me.

Messenger pulled the switch halfway down.

Blinding light filled the cave. Sparks flew in the cage. A roar shook the very mountain. Thousands and thousands of volts of electricity surged through cables, down the chains into the titanium cage.

Ironbones shrieked and was lit up like a firework.

He gripped the bars and rattled the cage violently, and his hands started to smoke and blacken.

He snarled at Messenger. Those sharpened teeth, which had torn human flesh so often, bared.

I’ll be back for you, he hissed.

Not this time, Messenger said. The dead should stay dead.

He pulled the lever all the way down. As sparks flew, Ironbones screamed, Only the unloved—

Is it true that he dies, Miss Payne?

Jane Cooper couldn’t help herself. She had to know. Her sweaty hand gripped the novel: Ironbones: The Last Dance by Kaz Payne.

She had been first in line at Waterstones, had been outside the bookstore at 6:00 pm to make sure she was first.

It hadn’t taken long for a queue to start forming behind her. Everyone wanted a copy of the book. But Jane was first.

She was the number one fan. She was the true believer. Knew every single line of every single Ironbones book.

Jane didn’t move from her spot at the front of the queue. She even peed herself. The so-called fans behind her turned up their noses; shifted back a bit.

They shouted at her, called her a fat pig, said she was disgusting.

But she didn’t care. She’d been shouted at and mocked all her life. She was waiting to get her hands on the final chapter in the story of the love of her life.

And the rumour was that Kaz Payne would be killing him off—for real this time.

Ironbones would die in the last book. There would not be another resurrection, apparently.

Who shall I make it out to? asked Kaz Payne, a small, neat woman with short, boyish blonde hair

Jane felt confused. You don’t remember?

Remind me.

Jane, I’m Jane, said Jane, stating the obvious.

Jane, said Kaz Payne, started to sign the book.

You’ve signed all my books. I come to all your events. I know everything.

Kaz Payne finished signing, shut the book, handed it back. Do you?

Are you in love with Gabriel Messenger?

The author glanced over at someone, then, I used to be.

Are you in love with Ironbones?

The author paused and stared deep into Jane’s eyes. He’s my child.

Then you’ve murdered your own child if you’ve killed him.

Jane was quickly moved