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

by SM Reine

  In the stillness, she looked up and noticed that the swarm of crows had vanished from the power lines.

  “Something wrong?” Tasha asked.

  Lilith turned her back on the feather. “No. Let’s get this over with so you can get your friend back to the hotel.”

  When she heard the first shriek, Lilith didn’t think it was anything unusual.

  That was the problem living and working in a tourist town. You got used to people acting in ways that would get them locked up if they did the same thing back home. They indulged in all kinds of stupid shit and thought nothing of it, like they’d passed into some kind of no-consequences zone the minute they loaded their suitcases into the SUV and pulled out of the driveway.

  Then there were the teens who thronged the boardwalk along the beach. There were always loud and traveled in packs.

  But they didn’t fly.

  A huge shadow swooped over Tasha’s head like a giant bird dive-bombing a picnic table. She stopped and looked up, one hand raised protectively over her face. “What was that?”

  Another shriek echoed from above. Tasha jumped and stumbled backward a few steps. Lilith’s heart banged in her chest.

  “You heard that, right?” Lilith asked.

  “They probably heard it in Portland.” Tasha’s voice was calm, but her eyes were wide, and she’d gone pale.

  “Not everyone.” Lilith gestured at the crowd clustered outside the theatre. It was a couple of blocks away and on the other side of the wide main drag, but clearly visible. A throng stood about chatting and waiting for the doors to open. The shrieks had been as loud as the weekly tsunami-warning siren. No way the moviegoers would have failed to hear it. They might not have been alarmed, thinking it a test, but they would have looked up. They would have done something. They wouldn’t just stand there ignoring it…

  Or would they?

  Fear closed down over Lilith. Her vision zoomed small until the movie marquee lights flashed like an orange beacon.

  Two more shrieks pierced the night. Tasha clapped her hands over her ears. Still, Lilith’s gaze trained on the movie crowd, who did not move. In fact, they’d totally stilled. Like God had pressed pause on the remote, and the whole world stopped.

  Apprehension clogged Lilith’s throat, and a kind of fear she hadn’t felt in years roiled deep in her gut. It was a level of terror that went with howls in the night. Whatever these sounds were, they did not come from werewolves. She struggled to think, but it was like her brain was moving through molasses.

  Fighting for words, Lilith finally said, “We need to get off the street.” She was certain her voice had come out distorted, like a recording slowed to half-speed.

  Tasha whirled, as if unaffected by the malaise swamping Lilith, and started back toward the parking lot.

  With effort, Lilith punched through the fog that seemed to surround her. “Whoa, wrong way.”

  “No, I’ve got to get back to Erin.”

  “She’s inside the car. She’ll be fine.” With any luck, that would be the truth.

  Lilith shook herself, thinking furiously.

  They were only five blocks from Chill. Five blocks away from a secure location where she’d pre-installed wards that could be activated with a word. She gave Tasha a shove more to prove to herself that she could than anything else. “We’ve got to move.”

  Tasha tottered a few steps on her stilettos before halting to hop out of them and thread the skinny ankle straps through her fingers. Fear made Lilith’s heart pound harder, faster. The strange slowdown had lifted and things moved faster now.

  As if reality had turned into roller coaster ride and there was nothing she could do but hang on.

  She wanted to scream. It was all she could do to not scream at Tasha to leave the damned shoes and run. Run and scream because they were in danger. Run because something was wrong. Time had gone wrong, and the sounds scared her, sounds ripped out of some abyss of evil that should have been sealed, and if she didn’t know what it was, if a witch didn’t know what it was, then it was bad, really, really bad and maybe screaming was all she could do and maybe she was going to scream because it was building in her throat and all she had to do was open her mouth and let it rip and then—

  “I want the blonde.”

  Lilith froze. The bell jar of quiet and stillness descended again, but this time it shut her off from the rest of the world.

  The voice was almost male, reedy and sounded like it had been blown through a hollow tube. It came from a shadow that looked like clumps of used steel wool stretched thin and then clumped together with dabs of foamy soap and burned bits from the bottom of a fry pan. It smelled of rotting garbage left in the sun. Behind her, Lilith thought she heard Tasha gag.

  A second one descended. Lilith backed up a step, pushing Tasha, as well. It was larger than the first, and topped ten feet in length. The marquee bulbs from the theatre up the street shone through the murky bulk.

  “What are those things?” Tasha whispered.

  “Wants the bright yellow,” the second one crooned in an eerily melodic voice.

  “Mine,” said the first one.

  “Mine,” said the second one.

  The two forms coiled together like intertwined snakes, hissing and rustling.

  Lilith could feel Tasha quivering behind her like a leaf in a brisk wind, but she didn’t have time for the woman. She clutched at facts randomly, trying to understand.

  This…whatever it was…was the source of the strange energies she’d been feeling all night. The harshness, the discordant flows. Frantically, Lilith flipped through everything she’d ever learned about demons, succubi and the various denizens of the shadowlands that bordered conventional reality. She’d memorized at least three catalogues of horrors over her long life, but found nothing to match what faced her.

  She didn’t know what it was, but she supposed the closest comparison might be a demon. However, Lilith hadn’t seen a proper demon in the last hundred years or so, and none at all since she’d sailed from Europe.

  Why she hadn’t seen demons in North America was something she’d never given much thought. It was like discovering a chipped plate you’d stashed in the back of the cabinet was missing. You’d never noticed the absence previously. It was only when you remembered the time you’d chipped the damned thing against the porcelain-coated, cast iron sink and tried to recall what you’d done with it, and then it was like oh yeah, I put it on the top shelf…

  She shook herself, and her skin tingled like a pianist played drills with a feather-light touch up and down her arms.

  The things had done this, she realized: thrown an otherworldly net of dullness over the two of them.

  She didn’t need to read a magickal encyclopedia entry to recognize the act of a predator.

  Pure menace rolled off the swarming, tangling things like the stink from an open landfill.

  Lilith dragged herself up from the web of malaise and lifted one hand. It felt like she was lifting a full keg. The muscles in her arm quivered with effort. When her arm reached shoulder level, something cracked, and then she could move freely again.

  With fingers flying so fast that sparks flew, she sketched a protection spell. When the last link of the red and gold pattern joined and the spell took form, she stepped back, also propelling Tasha further away and allowed herself to breathe again. It wouldn’t hold them off forever, but maybe long enough for Tasha to run and grant Lilith precious seconds to figure out what she was dealing with.

  The protection spell hovered in the darkness between the women and the creatures. The shadows flowed and bumped against it, murmuring and chattering.

  “Tasha,” Lilith said softly, “they’re going to break through my spell any minute now.”

  “Oh, crap.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Got another spell?”

  “Nope.”

  “What’re we going to do?”

  “When they break through,” Lilith said, “you need to run
.”

  “What about you?” Tasha’s voice had gone up an octave.

  “I’m going to go the other way and meet you back at Chill.”

  “What if—”

  “The dark one is mine,” the second shadow said with finality, as it had won a contest. It swelled larger and a puff of stench fanned outward.

  “Ride the bitch,” said the first shadow, and the twin shreds of blackness surged forward, shattering Lilith’s spell.

  “Run,” Lilith screamed.

  Tasha hesitated.

  Lilith screamed again.

  Tasha took off, one of her shoes clattering to the sidewalk.

  The first shadow shivered, and when it looked like it might follow Tasha, Lilith uttered a curse—an old one, from a language so ancient no record of it survived save in the secret books of witches.

  Both shadows stilled and turned toward her, their shapes shifting and shredding and re-forming with every movement. Whether the pulsing was due to the evening breeze or the winds of another reality, Lilith couldn’t tell. It was enough that Tasha had escaped, and they had not followed her.

  The demons liked the old curse and seemed to be drawn to it, almost quivering with excitement.

  Lilith grabbed hold of this fact like a lifeline.

  She retreated slowly, all the while singing variations on the ancient curse, teasing them to follow her. They hissed and whispered, the roundish parts that might have been heads, leaning close then drifting apart.

  Follow her they did, leaving a trail of black and rotten fragments on the sidewalk with their passing.

  As she pulled them out of the cone of light from the parking lot street lamps and into deeper dark down the street, Lilith noticed something shining orange deep within the gloom that formed the creatures. It was a glow more than a thing, but it pulsed in an odd pattern. They’d gone far enough downhill that the marquee lights no longer shown through the creatures, and Lilith realized she’d assumed the orange glow was from the theatre lights.

  Not.

  They stretched and lengthened, the top roundish parts spreading into funnel shapes. Another sound emerged, but this one sliced through the veils between the worlds, and Lilith felt it not in her body of bone and blood, but along the luminous fibers of her witch’s soul. It grated like a physical thing, and she knew if she stood here and allowed them to call power, she would die, and not only her body, but the second death.

  From that end, there was no return.

  A wave of blind terror swept through her. But she had not survived seven hundred years only to die like a dog on the street. She would not. Could not.

  She would live, but if she intended to survive this night, she needed to do…something.

  The demons floated closer, coiling and twisting like diaphanous snakes until the forms merged. Deep inside the murk, the two blobs of throbbing orange joined and formed an internal sun.

  It flowed toward her, reeking of wet and rot and the grave.

  Lilith ran and dove for Tasha’s abandoned shoe with its skinny blade of a heel.

  She hit the ground shoulder first. Pain exploded through her neck as she rolled, scooping the shoe into her hand.

  The cloud of impenetrable darkness descended.

  She screamed the ancient curse again, her voice harsh and guttural and drove the stiletto into the pulsing orange heart of evil.

  Blinding light flashed, followed by a powerful explosion that shook the ground and rattled windows in nearby houses.

  Lilith curled into a ball and knew no more.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Remy Lemarchal paced the length of the shabby banquet room counting the tan squares in the worn teal and burgundy carpet. Even though smoking had been banned indoors years ago, every footfall released a puff of dust that reeked of tobacco and grease and a thousand forgettable meals. How anyone stomached the glop that passed for food on land, he’d never know.

  The crash of the waves against the shore was louder on this side of the bar and restaurant. The lure of the water tugged at his soul. Because Lost Legacy’s alpha had asked him to keep an eye on things, Remy hadn’t shifted at the last full moon. As a consequence, it had been more than seven weeks since he’d felt the soothing caress of salt water. Three more days before he could go home again.

  He’d remained on land without shifting for longer periods in the past, but it was getting to him this time, and he didn’t know why. His skin felt dry, and his eyes itched and burned. Every morning when he woke up, it was with a jerk and a frantic gasp for air until he realized he was tangled in his sheets in his bed in his cabin at the Lost Legacy Preserve. He would stumble into the shower, crank the nozzle and let the needles of spray pound his body until his skin turned red, and he was ready to face another day on two legs.

  He reached the far wall, pivoted and paced again.

  Two hours gone, and no sign of Lilith.

  He couldn’t guess what was keeping her, but his mind kept veering into what he’d have to do if she failed to show up. He didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to believe she’d do anything so foolhardy as renig on a deal with the Pacific Range alpha. She was a smart woman and a clever witch. Sometimes too smart for her own good, in his opinion.

  Making an enemy of Gideon Black pretty much defined too-stupid-to-live.

  He didn’t want to believe that of Lilith, but the alternative reasons for her continued absence all fell into the category labeled: Working Some Angle of her Own.

  He raked a hand through his hair and sighed.

  Owen slouched in a chair by the window staring into space. Probably feeling sorry for himself, if Remy was any judge. Owen had been his first friend when he’d been sent to live among the werewolves as a curious fifteen-year old, and they’d been inseparable.

  Things were different now nearly ten years later. Different for him in that he was responsible for the security of the pack and all who lived within the boundary of the Lost Legacy Preserve.

  Little had changed for Owen.

  Remy chalked it up to the fact that Owen had been protected by his brother from the rough-and-tumble for survival and status that most young werewolves endured. Living like an untouchable prince had led Owen to believe he could get away with anything. Take any female he fancied. Leave his mark where he willed and never face the consequences.

  Lan acted like an overindulgent father instead of a brother, and now Owen was paying the price for his easy life.

  He didn’t blame Lilith for targeting Owen. He’d meant what he’d said when he’d defended her. Owen White was a weak link in the Lost Legacy pack; her move had been strategic.

  Too bad the consequences for Owen had arrived all at once and delivered by Gideon Black. He was the kind of alpha who made Landelarc Sable of the Lost Legacy pack look positively warm and fuzzy.

  Lost in his thoughts, Remy stopped only when his toes hit the inclined ramp by the glass rear door of the banquet room that led out to the terrace beyond. It brought him back to reality, snapping him out of his meditation on Owen’s faults.

  Bottom line, Owen had done the one thing that he believed could save Tasha McNeil and salvage what could be saved from the situation.

  Honorable as far as it went.

  However, the move had been merely a tactic and not a well-thought-out strategy. Remy would bet his life that Owen had not thought through all the possible consequences. Every time he’d tried to discuss them, Owen had changed the subject or gotten drunk or disappeared.

  If Lilith didn’t return with the woman, Remy was going to have to clean up the mess.

  If she did return with the woman, Remy was going to have to clean up another sort of mess.

  How exactly he’d accomplish that miracle, he didn’t know.

  Remy might not be an official member of the Lost Legacy pack, but he loved Lan and Owen and the rest of the hairy, howling lot like brothers. Hot-tempered brothers with fangs, but brothers all the same. Not to mention the fact that Lan had left him in charge. Sor
t of.

  Whenever Lan’s leg healed sufficiently, he’d return and demand answers.

  That is, if Gideon didn’t start a war first.

  Remy walked up the short ramp and leaned one shoulder against the cool glass of the door, watched Owen, waited until the were felt his gaze. Owen straightened in his chair, his eyes cutting to Gideon who’d commandeered the only upholstered piece of furniture in the room where he sat head back with his long legs extended and crossed at the ankle, his hands clasped on his stomach, snoring lightly.

  About thirty minutes ago, Gideon’s weres, Bear and Creason, had vanished as well. Back to the bar, Remy assumed. The blond waitress had been eyeing them all night. If he’d been thinking more clearly earlier (always a problem when he was near Lilith), he’d have slipped the woman something to make sure Bear and Creason stayed preoccupied.

  After studying Gideon’s breathing to make sure he was asleep, Remy crossed to Owen. “I’m going after her.”

  “Good,” Owen said. “She doesn’t understand any of this. Maybe you can get through to her better than I did.”

  “Lilith. I’m going to find Lilith.”

  Owen swore.

  “Tasha couldn’t have gone that far. Lilith should be back with her by now,” Remy said.

  “Fucking witch. Don’t trust her. This is all her fault.”

  “She’s a witch, but she’s not stupid. I’m worried something has happened. I’m going to go see if I can find her. Them. Whatever.”

  Owen stood. “I’m going with you.”

  “Going where?” Gideon’s voice was a sleepy rumble from the corner.

  “He’s not leaving, my lord, but I am,” Remy said. “The witch should have returned by now. Allow me to find out what’s causing the delay.”

  “I should go with him,” Owen insisted.

  “No,” Gideon said.

  “It’s my right.”

  “You have no rights. Boy.” Owen visibly shrank under Gideon’s inspection.

  The alpha regarded Remy. Remy didn’t know how or why the big were had come by this knowledge, but Gideon had known Lilith would not return. Planned for it in advance. The certainty of premeditation filled his words. “You have until the full moon to bring the woman and the witch to me. Three days, and tell my friend Landelarc he’s welcome to join the party.”