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

by Margo Bond Collins

  “It’s not that easy,” Lionel said. “The two of you are much bigger and already moving too fast.”

  “We aren’t looking for excuses,” Alessa said. “Just a miracle.”

  “No pressure, then,” Lionel said.

  On all sides, balconies careened past us ever faster as we continued to pick up speed.

  “Lionel, any moment now,” Alessa said.

  “It’s not working,” Lionel said.

  The dactyls stopped diving alongside us; they flapped their wings and rose. I glanced down. The courtyard rushed at us.

  “Lionel,” Alessa repeated, a strain of nervousness in her voice for the first time.

  Suddenly, I was wrapped up in a white glow. I felt a tug, something holding me, slowing the fall if only marginally.

  Maybe it was enough. “Separate from me!” I shouted at Alessa. “And brace for impact.”

  Alessa gave a quick nod and leaped away.

  I spun until I was facing feet down, my knees slightly bent. I concentrated on the ground, preparing for the exact instant of impact. Someone screamed. As the soles of my feet were driven against the courtyard, I allowed my knees to buckle and threw myself to the side and into a roll, wrapping my arms around my head.

  My bones were jolted about violently as I rolled across the floor. A bang on my knee numbed my leg, and one on my temple made my head ring. The statue fell out of my coat and pinged off the courtyard paving stones several times. When my roll came to a stop and my head stopped ringing enough that I could convince myself I was still alive, I rose dizzily to my feet and staggered across to the statue. I examined it, unsurprised, yet still relieved that the fall hadn’t damaged it. If throwing a pillar of creation off a tall building would’ve been enough to destroy it, Gabriel would have had a much easier job of it.

  Another scream rang out, and I looked for Alessa. She was gingerly getting to her feet, shaken, but she was not the source of the scream. Playing the sound back in my mind, I realized it had been Becca’s voice, I realized.

  Lionel raced across the courtyard in front of me, and I ran after him, jumping over the broken robot to overtake him. Becca was jammed into a corner, and two zombie mages were trying to get at her but someone was fighting both of them off.

  I grabbed one of the zombies and dragged him back. It tried to raise its machine gun, and when I knocked it out of its grasp, it jumped at me, its teeth going for my chest. I shoved it to the ground, then turned to look for the other zombie. Alessa was taking care of that one, so I used an elbow to pin the zombie in front of me to the ground, then took a knife from my jacket and sliced into its neck.

  Blood splashed up against my eyes, blinding me, but I kept sawing through until the head came off. I then wiped my eyes clear and looked up in time to see Alessa beheading the other zombie with her katana.

  Becca knelt, cradling the head of the one who had protected her. Blood caked his face and clothes, so it took me a moment to recognize Hadrian.

  “Can you heal him?” Alessa asked Lionel.

  “You simply have to,” Becca said. “He saved me.”

  Hadrian was in terrible shape. Savage bite marks on his neck and cheek had ripped off half his face, and his chest was peppered with bullet wounds.

  Hadrian reached up a hand and ran it down Becca’s face, leaving a trail of blood down her cheek. “Of course I saved you.” His voice was a whisper, and small bubbles of blood trailed out the side of his mouth. “That’s what I was born to do.”

  “How cute,” Grimstar said. “Love amidst bloody, headless zombies. It has a certain poetry.”

  I leaped to my feet, staring upward. Grimstar was descending on wings of shadow. He landed close to us, the wings turning to smoke and disappearing.

  My muscles tensed as I prepared to run, but I didn’t know whether to flee or charge. It was already too late for either—the underworld reflection fell upon me once more, and my feet sank into mud. Fetid pools bubbled up all around us, and the trees of the stormy forest swung back and forth with more violence than before. The reflection was angry.

  I ground my teeth in frustration. After everything, after Harps’s sacrifice, after Alessa and Lionel had helped me survive the crazy death dive, I had allowed myself to be captured by the underworld reflection once more.

  Grimstar laughed. “You can’t defeat me.”

  “I know I can’t defeat you.” I looked to one side of me where Lionel and Becca had risen away from Hadrian to stand and to the other where Alessa stood in a swordswoman’s stance with her katana drawn. “But we can. Together. And we will.” Then under my breath, I said, “Danielle, where are you?”

  “I’m coming up to the courtyard now,” Danielle said through the earpiece.

  She was the only one of us not captured; if we were to beat him, it had to be with her help. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Danielle slowly approaching. “No closer,” I whispered under my breath. “You know what you have to do. The spell we talked of.” The one that blocked the demon who gave Grimstar his power.

  “Here, I can deal with four as easy as one.” Grimstar raised his hands and vines sprang from the ground around him. No, this time they weren’t vines. This time they had little faces and teeth. Grimstar had summoned a thousand serpents more vicious-looking than moray eels. “A vampire. Two Cressingtons attacking their own headquarters. And a helsing. Odd bedfellows,” Grimstar said. “But it matters not. Throw the statue across to me.”

  “Or what?” I touched my jacket to make sure the statue was still in place.

  “You are right, no reason for you to comply. You die either way.” Grimstar smiled. “I’ll just have to take the swirl key from your lifeless body.” He made a downward motion with his hand, and the serpents came for us.

  “You better have a plan?” Alessa said to me, raising her katana over her shoulder, preparing to strike.

  “We have to keep him distracted as long as possible.”

  Before Alessa could act, Becca stepped in front of her. I hadn’t noticed that Becca was wearing her maser bracer earlier; she now had opened them up and formed the mini-cannon of a maser gun.

  “You think you are all-powerful!” Becca shouted at Grimstar. “With your black snakes and your bubbling mud. You have never seen the power of a maser gun.”

  “A maser gun.” Grimstar took a step back, a note of worry in his voice for the first time. The black serpents paused their attack.

  “I see you’ve heard of the technology,” Becca said. “You didn’t know it had been perfected.”

  Becca’s gun made a whirring and a revving noise, and I held my breath. I hadn’t imagined Becca could have fixed her equipment in such a short time. Light sparked in the center of the maser gun. Lionel jerked forward, then stopped himself. He had always distrusted this technology, but if there was ever a time to take a risk, this was it.

  The whirring of the gun increased in frequency. Becca leaned back and pointed the gun directly at Grimstar. “I’ll give you this one chance to get away,” she said.

  Grimstar was uncertain for only an instant, then he smiled at her. “Do your worst.” He waved his hands in a circular manner, and his serpents surrounded him, forming a protective barrier.

  The machinery of Becca’s gun whirled faster and faster; there was a crackle, then a splutter, and the gun powered back down again.

  Grimstar smile turned into of roar of laughter. “Of course, a bluff. Well played, young woman. Well played indeed.”

  Becca divided the circle of her gun into two halves and reattached each half back into a forearm bracer, then gave a little shrug. “It’s really, really close.”

  Becca hadn’t expected it to work, I realized. I had asked for a distraction, and she had supplied one. Grimstar sent his serpents into the air above us, and the already dark underworld reflection became blacker still.

  Alessa sword slashed upward, knocking the head off the first serpent that got close. I drew two knives and stood beside her.

  I
glanced back at Danielle, who had her spellbook in hand, her mouth opening and closing as she incanted. Then the book fell from her hand, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Danielle!” I shouted. “You have to be strong.” A serpent wrapped itself around my chest, biting as it came for my face. I grabbed its neck, holding it away from me, then cut off the head.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do this,” Danielle said.

  This was it, then. Fight until hope is lost, then fight some more, Dagger’s voice said in my head. All our bullets had been expended. Gabriel had turned against us; Becca’s maser gun didn’t work; Danielle’s spell had failed. Grimstar had us at his mercy.

  All we could do was fight until the end. Alessa and I danced among the darting serpents, back to back, our feet sticking in the mud so neither of us moved with our usual fluidity. Still, a great many heads were chopped off before their numbers overwhelmed us. The serpents wrapped their bodies around my arms and legs. My back arched, and I cried out in pain as several bites sunk in at once.

  You need to break your fear, destroy the cycle of failure. Another voice in my head, this time not Dagger’s, but Knoll Forester’s from the dream. What if the message my subconscious had sent wasn’t meant for me, but instead meant for me to help someone else?

  “Danielle,” I said, twisting my head around so I could see her. “Try again. Don’t think this time. Just act.”

  “Don’t think? I can’t do magic without thinking about it,” Danielle said. She picked up the spellbook again, though.

  “Leave it,” I said. “You just recited the spell. You know it. Close your eyes and think only of the words. See only the spell. Don’t let thinking get in the way. Don’t let doubt cloud your mind.”

  “You know nothing of magic,” she said.

  “I know about fear,” I said. “Break the cycle of failure under pressure. Picture only the words. Then recite them.”

  While I spoke, Grimstar had become aware of Danielle, and he extended the underworld reflection to include her.

  I scanned the area until I spotted the crimson eyes watching us. “The demon is watching from your left, Danielle!” I shouted. “Block the connection from the underworld.”

  Danielle turned in the direction of the crimson eyes, and she began her spell. I heard Becca scream, and I shuddered with pain as the serpents continued to bite me. Blood dribbled down the skin of my arms, my chest, my legs, all over. I ignored all that and concentrated on Danielle.

  Her eyes were shut, strain showing in her face as she continued to incant. Serpents sprung from the ground at her feet and wrapped around her legs. They bit into her thighs.

  “Nothing but the spell!” I shouted. “Focus only on that. Don’t let anything distract you.”

  Moments later, Danielle’s muscles went slack as she stopped incanting. She had either completed the spell or given up. And it hadn’t worked.

  The serpents squeezed ever tighter around me, constricting my breathing. The world went blacker still, and a sickening disappointment settled down upon me. We had failed. I was dying the way I had always imagined I would, fighting to the end, but I had lost Harps, and Becca would never finish her grandfather’s work, Danielle wouldn’t fill her spellbook, Lionel would never get free of his father’s shadow, and Alessa wouldn’t get a chance to find redemption.

  The tightening eased, then my breathing began to come easier, and suddenly the serpents sloughed off me like dead skin.

  “Noooo!” Grimstar screamed. “Don’t leave me now. We are so close.”

  Over the stormy forest, the eyes of the demon were no longer watching. The ground beneath me firmed, and I sprinted toward Grimstar. Danielle’s spell had worked, but who knew for how long?

  Alessa, also freed, reached the necromancer ahead of me. Her sword slashed toward his neck, but she diverted her strike at the last moment so passed harmlessly to Grimstar’s side. I stepped around Alessa and didn’t hesitate, plunging both knives simultaneously into Grimstar’s chest. I released my knives and let his body collapse to the ground.

  He was dead before he hit the ground.

  Chapter 31

  The underworld reflection disappeared completely. Grimstar’s eyes stared sightlessly up at the atrium roof, his face frozen into the expression of mischievous evil that he employed whenever he said de-licious.

  I ran to Danielle, picked her up, and twirled her around. “Danielle, you did it,” I told her. “Your spell worked.”

  “I did?” she said, her eyes still clenched shut.

  “Yes. You did.”

  She opened her eyes and looked around, giving a small smile at finding the world back to normal. “I guess I did.”

  “Lionel, over here!” Becca shouted.

  Becca had returned to Hadrian’s side, kneeling down by his head. We all gathered around the two of them. Hadrian appeared unconscious, perhaps already dead. Lionel crouched down, took his pendant in one hand, and placed his other hand on his cousin’s forehead. He closed his eyes, concentrating, and white magic glowed around Hadrian’s body.

  The brief hope that he could be cured was quenched when Lionel opened his eyes and gave a slow shake of his head. “I’m sorry.”

  “He saved me,” Becca said.

  Hadrian gave a little groan, and a trickle of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. Becca lifted his head onto her lap. “Hush, don’t strain yourself. Rest. I’ll take care of you.”

  “Becca, is that you?” He blinked. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Of course. I’m here for you.”

  “I have to tell you something.”

  “Not now, Hadrian.”

  “For as long as I can remember, I have loved you.”

  “Hush, Hadrian.”

  “I know I don’t deserve… But I requested permission… I was waiting for… I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

  “You have it wrong, Hadrian. It’s me who’s not good enough for you.” Tears streamed down Becca’s cheeks. “Our wedding would have been glorious. Mom really wanted us to marry, so nothing would have been too extravagant.”

  “You would have said yes?”

  “Of course I would have. We would have been so happy together.”

  “I feared…”

  “Hush,” Becca said. “Rest your head against me. You’ll never have to fear anything again.”

  Lionel reached forward and clasped Hadrian’s forearm. “You’re a good guy. The family will miss you.” He swallowed. “I’ll miss you.”

  I backed away. I hadn’t known Hadrian that well, and he’d been more enemy than friend, but I couldn’t help sharing the family’s grief.

  I needed to get to the top floor, find Harps. Perhaps he was still alive. “Alessa,” I said. “I ha—”

  “Look.” She pointed upward at the dactyls in the atrium.

  “They passed though the portal, so they wouldn’t have disappeared with the rest of the reflection,” I said.

  “No, it’s not that. Look at the lowest one. It’s descending, and there’s something riding on its back. It’s…”

  I strained my eyes. “It’s the gemin demon. And something else. No, it couldn’t be.”

  “The demon seems to have your familiar,” Alessa said.

  I waited, unsure what to expect. The dactyl landed, and the gemin demon lifted Harps off the dactyl’s back and placed him on the floor. It then gave me another wink, climbed back onto the dactyl, and took off.

  I rushed over to him. Harps’s eyes were closed, but he looked alive. “Danielle!” I shouted. “Can you heal him?” I ran my fingers through Harps’s fur, seeking a pulse, a sign he was breathing.

  Danielle arrived and pushed me aside, flicking through her spellbook until she came to the page she sought. I waited impatiently while she incanted, watching a white glow surround Harps.

  Just like with Hadrian, though, the magic faded away without any sign of improvement.

  “Harps.” I pushed past Danielle and put my hand gently under
his head. “Harps.”

  Harps opened his eyes.

  “Danielle, you did it!” I kissed her on the mouth. “You’re a wizard.”

  Danielle stood up and backed away, scrubbing at her mouth with the back of her hand. “I won’t be helping you again.” She looked pleased, though.

  I helped Harps sit up. How are you feeling?

  Woozy.

  That’s not so bad, all things considered. Actually, it’s pretty great.

  I’m sorry, Slate, that I got captured. I let him use me as a hostage.

  Don’t worry about that. You saved me, Harps. You saved us all.

  I did good?

  “You did wonderful, Harps,” I said out loud, blinking back tears. “Just wonderful.”

  “We better get out of here,” Alessa said. “Things are quiet now, but that won’t last.”

  I nodded, picking up Harps. I opened the side of my jacket. How about a rest?

  Harps nodded toward the statue on the other side of my jacket. I have a new neighbor. I hope it won’t cause trouble.

  You and the rest of the world, Harps. You and the rest of the world.

  Lionel was guiding Becca across the courtyard toward the exit. He gestured with his head back toward Hadrian. “He was always a good person. He wouldn’t want to… Well, you know.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” Hadrian had received enough zombie bites that he could come back to life before the night was over. “Danielle, go with Becca and Lionel. Alessa, can you lend me your sword? My knives found a good home in Grimstar’s chest.”

  Alessa hesitated, and I suddenly realized what I was asking. If I had intended to kill her when everything was over, and that had been on my mind plenty since I’d arrived in Philadelphia, I wouldn’t get a better opportunity. “Or you could—”

  “No, it’s okay.” Alessa drew her katana and offered it to me. As I took hold of the grip of the sword, our hands briefly touched. A tingle of electricity ran through my skin, and our green and red auras mingled and flared. We stared at each other, then both looked away at the same time.

  “I’ll just…” I began.