Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, & Magic

by SM Reine

  “So she knew about Feyland all along?”

  “Aye,” Puck said. “And you should have heeded her warnings.”

  Aran wrapped his fingers around his cup. Thinking back to SimCon, she had warned him—in a totally oblique way. Not that it would have made any difference, even if he’d understood what she was saying.

  “Why are you still here?” Thomas asked. “Spark battled her way deep into the realm to free you, sustaining injuries along the way. Puck stood ready to open the gate. Every shred of mortal sense would have you gone from the realm, and yet you remain.”

  Damn right he’d stayed—mostly out of pride, and stubbornness, and the burning desire to fit somewhere. And the pure thrill of unlocking the puzzle of code. He was close on that one. Not to mention the reward.

  Aran drained the last of his tea and set the cup on the table. “Even if it’s dangerous here, at least I’m doing something. Helping the magic.”

  “The magic needs no assistance from you,” Thomas said. “The queen has more than enough power at her command.”

  “Fine, then. Send me back.” Aran folded his arms, betting on the fact the bard couldn’t directly cross the queen. “I’ll go.”

  Thomas gave him a long, weary look. “Would that I could, but your presence here is not so easily undone. Deep magic summoned you, and only deep magic can return you to the mortal world again. You missed one chance. Pray that you do not miss another.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The next morning, Spark ordered room service. She felt clumsy, and didn’t want to explain her injury. Or deal with the Terabins. As soon as her breakfast arrived, she pulled out her messager and keyed in Jennet.

  :You there?: Spark sent.

  A full minute later, the reply came.

  :Barely. It’s two hours earlier here, you know.:

  :Yeah, sorry. But I have bad news.:

  :No luck getting into Feyland?: Jennet’s message appeared slowly. Clearly her fingers were slow to wake up, too.

  :Oh, I got in-game no problem. I even found the person who was sucked into the Dark Realm.:

  Spark paused, trying to think of how to phrase her next words. Ah, hell. Jennet was her friend. She deserved complete honesty.

  :And?: Jennet prompted.

  :And not only did it turn out to be the guy I met at SimCon, he’s still in the realm. I failed.: There, she’d gotten the worst of it over with.

  :?! Give me a sec.:

  Spark grabbed her tea and took a big gulp, then fiddled with the bunch of grapes on the room service tray.

  :Did you lose a battle with the queen?: Jennet finally asked.

  :No—I didn’t fail that way. Aran simply refused to return to our world.:

  :So push him into the faerie ring.:

  :I was hurt.:

  :What? Stop already with the epic reveals. Are you all right?: Jennet’s messages were coming quicker now. Probably Spark’s news was shaking the drowsiness right out of her head.

  :It’s just a sprained wrist. Hurt a lot, though.:

  :Don’t do it again.:

  :Yeah, well, I don’t know when I can get back in Feyland again. Could you and Tam—:

  :Of course,: Jennet sent. :Though neither of us have heard even a whisper from the Elder Fey. We’ll see if we can find your guy and pull him out.:

  :He’s not my guy.: Most definitely not, after their last encounter. :Let me know. And thanks.:

  :Hey, friend, it’s what we do. Right?:

  :Right. See you when.:

  Jennet sent a smiley wave icon in farewell.

  Still tired, Spark leaned back against her pillows to finish her tea. She hoped Jennet and Tam could succeed where she’d failed. After all, they were the experts.

  After picking at her breakfast, getting packed, then burning an hour watching stupid cat vids, it was time to go. Spark was careful to stay behind the Terabins as they boarded the tour bus. With one hand out of commission, she knew she’d make a tempting target.

  “Did you fall down?” Cora asked, looking at Jennet’s splint as she passed. “I know you’re uncoordinated, but I thought you at least knew how to walk.”

  “She’s taking the easy way out,” Roc said, sprawling along a whole row. “Now she has an excuse for why our scores and gameplay will be so much better than hers.”

  Spark felt her cheeks heat with anger, but she didn’t give them the satisfaction of a reply. Head high, she sidestepped Cora’s attempt to trip her and headed for the middle of the bus. Niteesh was already there, and Spark settled across the aisle from him.

  “Nice timing on that,” he said, nodding to Spark’s splinted wrist.

  “Like I sprained it on purpose.”

  “No.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “But this way the Terribles can rule supreme without having to take you out. And you can still appear onstage at Bella Boingo’s concert tonight.”

  “Oh joy.” The pop star’s music had never been to Spark’s taste. The singer’s fan base overlapped with hers, though, so VirtuMax had set up the special guest appearance.

  Originally, Spark was scheduled to run a quick demo on the FullD, but her injury made that impossible. Vonda had scrambled and arranged for footage of Spark’s SimCon demo to be shown instead.

  “I know why you sprained it.” Niteesh flashed her a smile. “You won’t have to sign autographs.”

  “I’m right-handed, goof.” She rolled her eyes at him. “Still, it feels like a cheat, just to show up and do nothing at the concert.”

  “Nah. Your fans want to see you. That’s enough.”

  “Well, that and the extra VirtuMax swag the company will be handing out.” She yawned. The swaying of the tour bus, on top of her pain meds, was making her groggy.

  “Here.” Niteesh handed her a pillow. “I’ll wake you up when we get to the next hotel.”

  Spark tucked the pillow under her head and tried to get comfortable. Impatience and worry beat through her, throbbing in time with her wrist.

  Jennet hadn’t messaged her back yet, and the taste of failure was bitter ash on her tongue. Some Feyguard she’d turned out to be. She dozed as the bus flashed through quiet towns and winter-bare fields.

  Niteesh’s hand on her shoulder roused her from fragmented dreaming.

  “We’re almost there,” he said. “Hotel sweet hotel.”

  She sat up and rubbed her blurry eyes.

  “Hey,” she said. “Do you think you could talk Vonda into letting you have a FullD in your room, for extra practice?”

  “So you can sneak onto the system?” Niteesh frowned and glanced at her wrist. “Seriously? You can’t play, Sparky. What’s the big hurry?”

  “I have to try.”

  “If this is about the Terribles, I don’t think you need to worry about them.”

  He glanced to the front of the bus, where it seemed Roc and Cora had been behaving themselves. Spark almost protested that the twins had nothing to do with her need to get back into Feyland. But they provided a good excuse.

  “Help me, Nit. Please?”

  He blew out a breath. “I’ll ask,” he said. “But no promises.”

  Aran woke after sleeping for hours. In the real world, he’d call it morning, but that word didn’t belong in the Dark Realm’s unchanging darkness. He pulled on his clothes, then grabbed his tablet. The dinosaur was a comforting lump in his jeans pocket, though he didn’t plan on contacting the human realm today.

  No, he was going to concentrate on that wall between the realms. Soon as he opened that, he could collect his reward from the queen and return to the real world a rich man.

  And the first thing he planned to do was find Spark Jaxley. They had all kinds of unfinished business between them.

  Without waiting for Thomas, Aran tucked his tablet under his arm and left the tent. He was pretty sure he could find his way back to the clearing Thomas had shown him yesterday. And since the queen wanted him to work on the wall, he figured the magic of the realm would help lead him
there.

  After one wrong turn that dead-ended in a marsh, Aran backtracked along the path and found the clearing. With a deep breath, he stepped into the mushroom ring. The wind rose around him, and he welcomed its familiar, sharp bite.

  When the wind stopped buffeting him, he was even gladder to see he’d arrived at the mirror-image clearings. Slowly, he walked toward the middle clearing, one hand outstretched. He encountered the invisible wall and traced its slight curve until he felt the thin crack under his fingertips.

  Time to see if he had the skills. Adrenaline rushed through him—half fear of failure, half excitement at the challenge.

  He settled on the soft mosses of the clearing, the wall firmly at his back, and powered up his tablet. It flickered to life, showing the normal menu screen. Now—how to get the tablet to display the code, so that he could modify it?

  After a frustrating half hour, Aran set his tablet down. Leaning forward, he rested his head against his bent knees. Nothing he tried worked. Not inputting search terms like “faerie realm computer code,” or holding his tablet flat against the wall, or even wading through the guts of the tablet’s operating system, hoping to find a new, hidden protocol.

  Something was digging into his thigh. He shifted uncomfortably, then froze. Oh, he’d been an idiot. The dinosaur was the missing link. He knelt and pulled it out of his pocket. Holding his breath, he set the garish toy on top of the tablet.

  The display emitted a bright flash, and for a horrible second Aran thought he’d burned it out. Then the light steadied, forming glowing lines of code marching across the screen. Yes!

  Leaning over the tablet, Aran scrolled through, looking for something familiar—a chink he could slide through, a gap in the programming. At last, his vision blurry from staring at the screen, he found it.

  Despite the excitement rushing through him, his fingers were steady as he typed out commands. The first two did nothing—just lay there, limp as dead worms. When he ran his third script, he felt the wall beside him shudder. Not only that, it became visible, the code revealed in glowing green rows.

  That was the tactic, then: a subversion of the ENOX to PH converter on the back end. He could work with that. A tweak here, a nudge there, mapping to the underlying conversion and adding bigger parameters…

  The wall shook again. Then, with a sound like a hundred china plates breaking, the crack widened a full two feet. Aran scrambled to his feet, then turned to admire his work.

  The light from the middle clearing spilled through the passage, tangling with the shadows of the Dark Realm to create an intricate knotwork pattern. The air shimmered with magic, and promise.

  The way to the mortal world was open.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Spark’s head throbbed in time to Bella Boingo’s latest hit. The singer’s voice reverberated through the stadium, and the thick, warm air barely felt breathable. Spark hoped the painkiller she’d taken kicked in soon, because her cue to go onstage was in twenty seconds.

  The dancers hopped frenetically around the stage, and a synchronized light show flashed overhead while Bella sang. It was so loud, Spark only caught a few of the words—something about boys and candy and flying.

  Bella ended the song and struck a pose, her mirrored costume throwing shards of light all over the stage, and the crowd roared. Really roared, like some hungry, devouring beast. Spark had experienced her fair share of adoration, but this was a whole new level of fame. Under Bella’s bubbly-sweet exterior, she must be tough as rocks to handle that kind of adulation night after night.

  “I have such an exciting surprise for you tonight!” Bella said into her mic, once the crowd quieted a little.

  Spark’s appearance wasn’t really a surprise, but hey—she could go with it. She slipped her wrist splint off and set it on a nearby table, then picked up her mic. No need to let the world know about her injury.

  “Help me welcome superstar gamer Spark Jaxley to the stage!”

  The crowd went wild again as Spark strode forward into the blinding lights. She could just make out some members of the audience waving magenta light sticks in her honor, and the sight turned her smile more genuine.

  She waved to the crowd, then turned her mic on and joined Bella.

  “Thanks for sharing your stage with me tonight,” Spark said. “It’s a real pleasure to be here in Landover.”

  Bella put her hand on Spark’s shoulder. “Thank you for emerging from the amazing world of Feyland to say hello. Speaking of which—we have some killer footage of Spark in-game. Check it out!”

  The stage lights dimmed as the screens flared to life. Spark wasn’t sure she liked the implication that she was actually a character inside a game, but whatever. VirtuMax and Bella’s PR people had scripted the dialogue, and they generally knew what they were doing.

  The audience screamed and applauded as highlights of Spark’s SimCon demo played. Her defeat of the basilisk got a cheer that vibrated the bones of her skull.

  The vid finished, and in the split second before the stage lights came up, everything went sideways.

  A mournful wail cut through the air, loud enough to bring the crowd’s cheers down to a low murmur. Spark’s breath caught in her throat as an unwilling shiver raced over her skin. The call of the Wild Hunt! She looked wildly around for a weapon. The nearest thing was a backup singer’s mic stand.

  Spark ripped the mic off the stand, handed it to the startled singer, then took up a position next to Bella. Despite the hot twinges of pain in her wrist, Spark hefted the stand, holding it crosswise like a staff.

  The air in the center of the stadium roiled, forming an unearthly ball of light. It hung, suspended in the middle of the vast space. Then red-eyed hounds emerged from the sickly glow. Baying, they lunged forward through the thin air, heading straight for the stage. Behind them, mounted on horses with flaming hooves, came the rest of the hunt: elfin lords and fey creatures, their terrible beauty almost too much for mortal eyes. And towering above them all, the antlers of the huntsman. Spark gulped in a breath of sweaty air.

  Thing had just gotten very, very serious.

  “What’s going on?” Bella asked, keeping her mic off. “Is this some kind of VirtuMax special effect?”

  “Get ready to fight,” Spark said. There wasn’t time to explain.

  The first hound reached the stage. Spark swung at it, using the heavy base of the mic stand for momentum. She connected, and the hound went flying. Beside her, Bella kicked out, her high-heeled boots surprisingly effective.

  The rest of the band got into the action as hounds swarmed the stage. The musicians and dancers were laughing and shouting, bashing away with mic stands. They had no idea it wasn’t a VirtuMax special effects show, but something far more dangerous.

  Floating in midair, the huntsman watched from the center of the stadium, his eyes black pools. He raised his ivory horn to his lips and blew a sharp blast. The hounds turned and ran back to their master, and the audience went into a frenzy of clapping and cheering. Damn—they all thought it was part of the performance.

  Spark’s breath came in quick bursts, and she set down the heavy stand. The fingers of her left hand were numb, and she hoped she hadn’t damaged herself beyond repair.

  The huntsman gestured, and this time the riders of the hunt galloped across the air. Instead of targeting the stage, they began to fan out over the audience, pale hands outstretched. Fear spiked through her. They were looking for humans to harvest and take back into the realm. There was no way she could stop them, not by herself.

  “No!” Spark yelled. “Elder Fey, help!”

  A thunderclap shook the dome, and the Wild Hunt halted, some mere inches from their intended victims. From the darkness at the roof of the stadium, a dim form took shape. Winged and ancient, outlined in eerie purple light, the creature spoke.

  *Cease,* it said—though it was more like a voice sounding through her bones than any word said aloud.

  “Our prey,” the huntsman sai
d, his voice the shadows of deep night.

  *No. Begone.* The Elder Fey clapped its wings together, sending a blast of wind screaming through the stadium.

  Spark closed her eyes against that fierce gust. When she opened them again, the Wild Hunt was gone—the last hound leaping through the portal. The glowing ball of light shrank to a pinpoint, then winked out.

  The audience went mad—jumping to their feet and shouting until the stage vibrated. Beneath that surge of sound, the creature spoke to Spark.

  *The way between this word and the realm is open, Feyguard. You must close it.* As suddenly as it had appeared, the Elder Fey was gone.

  Somebody at the light board was quick-witted enough to bring up the flashing stage lights. Bella’s drummer laid down a beat, and her rhythm guitar player started strumming along.

  “Nice show,” the singer said to Spark. “VirtuMax has some prime special effects.”

  “Yeah.” Spark hung on to the mic stand, suddenly dizzy.

  “Thanks for coming,” Bella said, then flicked her mic back on. “Let’s give Spark and the whole VirtuMax crew a Bella Boingo wave!”

  The singer lifted her arms high overhead, then brought them down. Most of the stadium followed her action, the glow sticks and illuminated messagers flashing in a river of light.

  Spark waved goodbye, careful not to move her left arm. Keeping her head high, she strode off the stage as Bella segued into the next song on her set list.

  For all everyone knew, VirtuMax had just put on an incredible holographic show. Spark swayed, lightheaded and sick. She had to get that gateway closed.

  “You did what?” Thomas shouted—actually shouted—and jumped up from the table, spilling his cup of tea.

  Aran took a step back toward the tent door.

  “I reverse-hacked the wall between the realm and the human world. Just like the queen asked me to. Now, will you come with me or should I go talk to her by myself?”

  Even though he’d been successful, the Dark Queen scared Aran. He’d rather have someone else along when he went to demand his reward. Although Thomas wasn’t exactly being supportive.