Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels

by Margo Bond Collins

“It doesn’t seem to be all of them. Just one or two,” I said. Alpha One had collapsed again. Hadrian wasn’t ordering the latest attack, at least not through his robot. “Let’s find this swirl key and get out. Lionel’s safe for the moment.”

  We exited the balcony and quickly searched the floor until we found a large steel box the size of a small room. I walked around it, running my fingers along the cool metal. Perfectly smooth and solid all the way around except for a single small slot, perfectly shaped to take the magtroller. While I was completing my loop, Harps entered. He attempted to climb the magsafe and wasn’t impressed that the smooth surface didn’t allow him to.

  Alessa put the magtroller into the slot, and we waited for it to open. Nothing happened.

  “Nothing’s happening,” I said. “Becca. We entered the magtroller, and it’s not working.”

  “The magtroller doesn’t open the safe,” Becca said. “It just allows the safe to be controlled by a mage. I set the magtroller up for Lionel to control it.”

  “Lionel?”

  The only reply was panting and the sound of distant shots.

  “Lionel,” Alessa repeated frantically.

  “They are shooting to kill. I don’t understand,” Lionel said, getting the words out between heavy breaths. “And I just saw a knife flying around like it has a life of its own.”

  “A knife.” A memory of the black-veined thing that had been offered to Alessa popped into my mind. “Grimstar is here. The mages may be under his control.”

  “How?” Lionel asked.

  “Zombies,” I said. The security guards from the Dulane Building had been turned into zombies fast. It had to have been that knife. “Lionel, we need you to get this safe open.”

  “Give him a chance,” Alessa said.

  “Hold on,” Lionel said. A door slammed, then he resumed speaking in a calmer manner. “I’ve lost my pursuers for the moment. Opening the magsafe now.”

  A metallic snick came from the safe in front of us, then another. It vibrated, then what had once been one smooth surface broke into dozens of separate plates. With the grinding noise of heavy gears whirring, the plates shifted, the entire structure coming apart and reforming. The final shape it turned into was similar to its original one, once again with a smooth silver exterior. Except the exterior didn’t extend all the way around anymore.

  The magsafe was open.

  Chapter 26

  Harps immediately scampered through the opening. I followed with Alessa behind me. The inside was rectangular and big enough to comfortably stand and walk around. While the outside had been all smooth silver, the inside was glistening white tile, with the walls, ceiling, and floor all decorated the same.

  It was relatively empty. A few boxes were piled up in one corner. In another, a filing cabinet looked out of place, out of time, even. Several laptops were piled on top of the cabinet.

  “What are we looking for?” Alessa asked.

  That was something we should have asked earlier. I’d just assumed it’d be obvious when we walked in. I took another few steps forward, then realized that, in actual fact, it was obvious. I hadn’t seen it immediately because it was white just like the interior of the safe. Beside the filing cabinet, an ivory statue of a woman sat, and I crouched down to examine it. The statue wasn’t large, perhaps the thickness of a closed fist, and two fists high. The woman held her arms aloft with palms upward. The strain in the expression of the woman’s face suggested she held something heavy, though her hands were empty.

  “Gabriel, the swirl key, is it a statue?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

  “Yes,” he said. “Do you have it?”

  A shiver ran through me as I curled my fingers around the statue. “I do.”

  “Then get out of there,” Gabriel said. “Danielle, can you get your seeing eye up to them? They may need your help.”

  I hurried out of the magsafe, then skidded to a stop, seeing a darkness I recognized too well spread across the floor. “Get back!” I shouted, turning to sprint away.

  It was too late. My third step sank deep into black mud, vines spouting upward all around me. “No!” I shouted, reaching into my coat and pulling out a knife. “Not again.” I cut through the first vine that came for me, then the second. I dragged my right foot free of the mud, getting another stride forward.

  It was hopeless. As I cut the third vine in hand, ten, twenty more came for me. As my right leg swung forward, my left leg sunk deeper. Within moments, I was thoroughly wrapped up, and so tightly did the vines encircle my chest that I was barely able to breathe. I turned my head, hoping that Alessa or Harps had escaped, but they were caught just as completely.

  Dactyl demons circled above us, and Harps shrieked as one dived toward him, but it pulled up without attacking. The bleak darkness of the underworld reflection had returned in full. The air was cold, the smell fetid, distant trees with sinuous black trunks swaying in response to a gale that didn’t exist. Each time Grimstar trapped me in it, the reflection expanded. This time, over a score of dactyls circled overhead, and beyond the trees, distant peaks loomed.

  Grimstar had a smug expression on his face, and his shiny shoes didn’t leave an indentation in the mud as he walked across it. The bowler hat on his head looked as ridiculous as ever. “Thank you for that.” He reached for the swirl key.

  My fingers clenched tighter around it.

  “Come now. A good loser knows when he’s beat.” Grimstar dug his fingers into the flesh on the underside of my wrist.

  My teeth ground together with the effort to hold on, but Grimstar was able to shake the swirl key loose. The gemin demon—I wasn’t sure where it had come from—leaped up and caught the statue before it hit the ground. It climbed up Grimstar’s clothes to his shoulder, then handed it over.

  Grimstar turned the statue over in his hands. “De-licious.” He looked around him, and spread his arms wide. “How do you think all this will look overlaid along the streets of Philadelphia? Good, yes? A lot of those who think themselves powerful will find out how insignificant they truly are.” Grimstar looked me in the eye. “I have to thank you for helping me, of course. What will your helsing family think of your role in this?”

  “I didn’t help you,” I said.

  “Of course you did. Getting the magsafe open. I couldn’t have done it without the talents of a whole mage team working together.” He smiled.

  “You know of the mage team? Who is it, who is the traitor?”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Grimstar said. “It was recommended to me that I give you the magtroller and let you do the hard work. And I’m glad I did. Now, let’s see what this thing can do.” Grimstar wrapped two hands around the swirl key and lifted it over his head. “No time like the present, as they say. I’m sure you’ll want to see the fruits of your efforts.”

  I glanced across at Alessa. She stared back in helpless frustration, straining against the vines. She’d been right that Grimstar wanted us to have the magtroller. We shouldn’t have acted so hastily. I should have warned her—and the others—about the traitor in our midst.

  Above Grimstar’s head, white light flared, followed immediately by green light, then blue light, then red light. A darkness fell on top of those four colors, and they began to whirl around, faster and faster, forming a bright multicolored funnel.

  The five colors, the five powers of the swirl.

  “It’s working!” Grimstar said exultantly.

  Overhead, the dactyl demons darted back and forth. Then one dived straight down into the multicolored funnel. It passed through it and out the bottom, then it flapped his leathery wings and rose back up into the air, only now it looked different, more transparent and more solid at the same time. It was no longer part of the reflection, I realized. It was inside our world, inside Cressington Tower. It gave a shriek of glee and flew out of the room.

  The other dactyls began to follow, fighting each other to be next through the portal.

&nbs
p; From far beyond the trees, a bloodcurdling scream rang out. Prickles of dread touched the back of my neck. With the light of the portal shining on Grimstar’s face, he barely looked human. He smiled. “The bigger demons are on their way. That one sounds hungry. You better hope he goes straight for the portal and doesn’t stop for a snack on the way.”

  The gemin demon, on Grimstar’s shoulder, crouched low. It winked, then sprang off Grimstar’s shoulder and dived into the whirling portal. It came out the bottom, landing on Grimstar’s shoulder once more. Again, it winked.

  I watched it closely. Did the wink mean anything, or was it just a reflex? Expecting help from a demon just because it made an unusual gesture was really grasping, but I was that desperate. I couldn’t move a muscle, and I was forced to watch as Grimstar flooded our world with demons. Through a portal I had helped him create.

  Just as I’d forced myself to dismiss the idea that the wink meant anything, the gemin demon acted. It opened its jaws wide, then bit down hard on the back of Grimstar’s neck.

  Grimstar’s scream was as bloodcurdling as the demon’s had been moments earlier.

  The gemin jumped away, and Grimstar fell to the ground, clutching his neck. The swirl key bounced into mud, and the portal disappeared. The remaining dactyls swerved back into the dark sky, then faded away as the underworld reflection disappeared. I lurched forward, able to move again as the vines turned to smoke.

  At that exact moment, Gabriel appeared at the doorway. He quickly scanned the room, taking everything in. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, immediately ducking back outside again.

  “What’s happening?” Alessa asked. “Why is a demon helping us? Where did Gabriel come from?”

  “I told you we could trust him.”

  “Dragongod ex-machina?”

  “Just come on.” I sprinted toward the door, Alessa by my side, scooping up Harps on the way. Out in the corridor, I turned back. “Wait! The statue.”

  Before I had a chance to return for it, the gemin demon ran past us, clutching the statue over its head. Grimstar sat up, clutching the back of his neck. “Come back here.” His voice was harsher than usual, his throat clogged up with pain. A bubble of darkness began to expand around him as he summoned the reflection once more.

  We ran, the gemin demon just ahead of me, Gabriel and Alessa on my heels. When we reached the fourteenth-floor balcony, we found the white globe of the seeing eye waiting for us. I put Harps down.

  “I’ve found you,” Danielle said. “What’s happened? What are they?” The seeing eye floated to the side, allowing full view of the central atrium, which the dactyls had claimed as their territory. They circled, swooped, and shrieked.

  A roar, twisted with pain, came from behind us. Grimstar. “Stop them!” he shouted.

  The dactyls responded, several immediately diving toward our balcony. I withdrew my knives from my coat and Alessa drew her katana, and we both struck at the same time. The first two dactyls were immediately felled.

  Stairs connected our balcony to ones above and below, and Gabriel started up one flight. “This way,” he said. The gemin demon followed him, still carrying the statue, with Harps just behind it. Alessa and I fought off another dactyl, then we followed the others. Grimstar was still a dozen paces back, one hand on a wall as he staggered toward us.

  Halfway up the flight of steps, another dactyl attacked. I stabbed my knife into its chest at the same time that its claw hooked into my upper arm. I struggled, locked against it, twisting the knife. The dactyl screamed and whipped its tail around my back, sending a lance of pain coursing through me. I pulled the knife free and stabbed it into another part of the dactyl’s chest, and it finally fell, its body careening against the railing below, then twisting in the air as it plummeted down through the atrium.

  I raced up the steps behind Alessa. On the fifteenth floor, Gabriel led us all back into the building rather than remain on the balconies, a choice I approved of.

  “We should use the back stairwell to descend,” I said, overtaking the others to get in the lead. The layouts of the floors were similar, so I was able to find the door to the stairwell on my first attempt. I opened it and cautiously poked my head inside.

  I was greeted by a bullet that whipped past my left shoulder and crashed into the wall behind me, and I threw myself backward.

  “In here!” Gabriel shouted, opening a door and guiding us all inside. Alessa, last to enter, slammed the door shut and leaned against it.

  “Lionel, Becca, check in,” I said. “What’s going on with you two?”

  “We are listening, trying to figure out what’s going on without interrupting,” Lionel said. “We have locked ourselves into one of the labs. Becca is trying to save the day by creating a black hole that will eat the universe.”

  “That’s silly. A black hole couldn’t eat the universe,” Becca said. “It’d swallow the Earth, of course.”

  “Wonderful,” Lionel said.

  “What are we doing here?” Alessa asked, looking around. “We are trapped.”

  We were in a meeting room. A large table occupied most of the space, with office chairs all around.

  “Danielle, can you magic us somewhere safe?” I asked the seeing eye.

  “Magic doesn’t work that way,” she said. From the tone in her voice, I imagined she was mentally glaring at me.

  “We must destroy the swirl key,” Gabriel said. “Give it here.” He held his hand out. The gemin demon climbed up onto the table, then placed the ivory statue in his hand. “He won’t stop while we have it. Once it’s destroyed, Grimstar will have no compelling reason to keep coming after us.”

  “After all we went through to get it,” Danielle said.

  “I’m the last person who wants to do this,” Gabriel said. “My family have spent generations defending this icon. But we always knew that a time would come when we might need to destroy it.”

  “I agree,” Alessa said.

  “You do?” I was surprised she was in favor. Something about the idea seemed wrong.

  “It makes sense.” Alessa stepped close to Gabriel and grabbed hold of the head of the statue. “Even if we escape Grimstar, another necro will one day come for it. Something this dangerous shouldn’t be allowed to exist. We should end it now while we have the chance.” She squeezed on the head of the statue to no effect. She took the statue off Gabriel and used both hands to try to crush it. Her hands shook with effort as she used all her strength, but the statue didn’t even crack.

  “Nothing that has lasted as long as this has is easy to destroy,” Gabriel said. “We must combine our strength.”

  As I watched Alessa’s attempt to destroy it, an image of another statue popped into my mind, one tucked away in the corner of a shelf, though I couldn’t place where the memory came from. “Is this the only swirl key?”

  “Why do you ask? Do you know of others?” Gabriel asked.

  I shook my head. “Just wondering how unique it is.”

  “Pretty unique.” Gabriel took the statue from Alessa and squeezed the center of the woman’s body. His blue aura extended to surround the statue. “Take its feet,” Gabriel told Alessa. She did so, and her red aura folded on top of Gabriel’s blue one. “Slate, add your strength to ours. Grab the head and arms.”

  I hesitated. The fleeting whispers of a dozen jumbled thoughts circled through my mind. When I tried to grasp one fragment of an idea, the other pieces slipped away.

  “Danielle,” Gabriel said. “Add your power to ours. Crush the statue.”

  The seeing eye floated closer, and white power flared around the statue. The gemin demon, still on the table, moved closer, and a clawed hand gripped one of the arms. The demon added its black power to the blue, white, and red forces already combining in an attempt to crush the statue.

  All five powers were needed to destroy it, I realized. My own green power was the only one missing.

  As I reached forward, the picture on the tarot card Judgment swam into my m
ind. This was it. This was the moment where the fate of the world teetered, and my actions made the difference. My fingers edged closer to the statue, and the air around it crackled with the energy of the four powers combined. My own green aura flared out, seeking the other colors. My fingers, though, hesitated.

  I couldn’t read the look on Gabriel’s face as he watched the swirl key about to be destroyed. Anticipation? Dread? Excitement? Regret? All of them at the same time?

  “Quickly,” Alessa said. “Grimstar or his men could be upon us at any moment. Destroy it now.”

  The Ancient created one time, two worlds, three dragongods, four pillars of creation, and five colors of the swirl.

  I’d heard that phrase recited many times, but it had never meant all that much. Fireplace stories were unimportant compared to the everyday life of foraging for food and finding monsters to hunt. Old men had gotten into blows arguing about small differences, but it had never mattered to me whether the Ancient created the two worlds or if the dragongods themselves had, and whether the pillars of creation were real or just a simple way of explaining balance.

  But now so much ancient mythology had coalesced into this moment. Five colors of the swirl. Two worlds connected. A dragongod.

  “What if it’s not a swirl key?” I asked. The image of the Judgment tarot card flashed into my mind again. A weight pressed down on my shoulders. I looked at the statue again and saw tension etched in the muscles of the woman’s arms. What did she hold up that was so heavy?

  “You saw it in action,” Alessa said. “It opened a portal to the underworld. What else could it be?”

  “The Ancient created one time, two worlds, three dragongods, four pillars of creation, and five colors of the swirl,” I said.

  “This is no time for ancient stories,” Gabriel said. “Crush the statue.”

  I pulled my hand back. “I can’t. Not until I’m sure.” Destruction was not something that could be undone.

  “Do it.” Gabriel’s eyes blazed with blue fury. “I command it.”

  I shook my head and backed further away. My mouth was dry.