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

by Margo Bond Collins

  He skirted it, finding the swamp much larger than it appeared. He could see standing water a few dozen feet into the bog, but it was too hard to tell if it ended within his sight or went on for miles because the thick, muddy water looked much the same as more solid patches of ground. After more than an hour of walking along its edge, he decided it would be better to go back to camp.

  He had only traveled a half mile when he sensed something watching him.

  Aeden looked around discreetly. He didn’t want to tip off whatever—or whoever—was stalking him. He didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything, but the sensation of being under scrutiny would not go away. He hefted his spear, scanned his surroundings one more time without moving his head, and continued on. Hopefully, whatever watched was not so fast that it could reach him before he could bring his spear to bear. He thought maybe the easy part of the trial was over.

  Aeden started off again, heading toward his camp, head swiveling and eyes scanning the landscape. The few trees near the bog thinned into the rolling open spaces of the highlands. That was good. Fewer trees meant less cover for his hunter to hide behind. Then again, it also meant fewer objects for Aeden himself to hide behind when the attack finally came.

  But that was faulty thinking. We he not a warrior, or at least training to be one? He would face his pursuer and fight it like a clansman. If it was too strong for him, it would pay dearly to take his life. That Aeden swore.

  As he came upon a pile of rocks that looked as if they could have been a structure once, he caught a flash of movement off behind him and to his left. It was just a flicker, approximately the color of the weathered rocks. Not a bear then. Of course. Besides the color, that animal also did not stalk silently; it charged in and overwhelmed its prey.

  Aeden went through what it could be. A man? One of the large highland cats? A deer coincidentally going the same way? If it ended up being something harmless, he would be embarrassed, but better embarrassed than dead.

  As he passed around the rocks, he picked up three stones about half the size of his palm and held them in his left hand.

  Aeden only had a few miles left back to his camp. He saw rocks, clumps of bushes he recognized, even a smudged track he had made when leaving that morning. That made him feel better. The camp was familiar and he knew the terrain well. If he had to fight something, he would have his best advantage there.

  The clatter of a stone coming loose and tumbling down the rock pile made him turn his head.

  A gray-brown body flew right toward him, claws reaching out to shred him.

  Aeden dove at the ground and rolled, coming back up to his feet immediately. The large cat—bigger than he was—landed and turned to face him.

  He was sorry he’d guessed correctly. The highland cats were strong and fast as a striking snake. The warriors in the clan sometimes hunted them, but even with bows and well-made weapons, there were usually injuries. The cats were tenacious, vicious, and didn’t fear anything. He would not be able to injure it and chase it away. When this confrontation was over, one of them would be dead. Aeden aimed for that to be the cat.

  The feline’s back arched, its fur standing up on end. It hissed at him and moved toward him from ten feet away. When it got closer, it lifted its right paw, hooked as if to swipe, claws extended.

  Aeden threw the first rock.

  The stone struck the cat in the forehead, causing it to spit and hiss more loudly and to swipe at him, though he was not in range. Good. The madder it got, the more mindlessly it would attack him. If he couldn’t outfight it, he would have to outthink it.

  Aeden threw the other two rocks, one skipping off its head near the ear and the other one striking it on the shoulder. None of the stones did any damage, but they worked the cat into a frenzy. It was frothing mad now and didn’t wait to see if Aeden had any more projectiles. It leapt at him.

  It was the move Aeden had been waiting for. He dove to the side while bringing the spear up between them, hoping it would skewer the beast using its own momentum.

  The spear betrayed him.

  He scored a shallow cut along its ribs, causing it to shriek in pain and anger, but the spear did not puncture the animal as he had hoped. Aeden landed hard on his side, not able to roll properly with the awkward movement, but the claws had missed him. That time.

  The predator landed on its feet, wheeled, and swiped at Aeden again. He wasn’t able to bring his spear up all the way in time, and four stripes of fire raced across his arm. He swung the butt of the spear around and struck the cat on the top of the head so hard he thought the shaft might break. The cat backed up, looking dazed.

  The arm that was slashed seemed to work still, though pain blossomed and he felt weak in that arm. He had to take the opportunity now to finish the confrontation.

  Aeden lunged in with his spear as the cat was shaking its head to clear the dizziness. It swiped at the weapon, but only deflected it slightly. The sharp stone blade pierced the creature just under its front leg, causing it to stumble and screech in pain.

  The warrior-in-training danced back from the next swipe of the claw and swung the spear around in an arc. The blade made a savage slice in the cat’s hind quarters, and the cat lost its footing a second time. It regained its balance and eyed him hatefully.

  The cat’s eyes darted from its opponent to the rocks as if it sensed it could not win outside the range of its claws. It bunched itself and jumped at Aeden to close the distance. It was an awkward leap because of its injuries, but the hurtling body came right at Aeden, claws outstretched and mouth open, white fangs gleaming in the afternoon sun.

  The young Croagh was ready this time. As the cat hurtled through the air toward him, he dropped to his knee, brought the point of the spear up at an angle toward the airborne cat, and pushed upward with all his might.

  The spear blade entered the cat between two of its ribs, and the butt of the weapon slammed into the ground from its weight. Aeden dove to the side, receiving another swipe of claws to his left shoulder.

  “Cachten!”

  Aeden staggered to his feet. The cat struggled to get up, the spear still stuck in its side. Its weight and the force of its jump pushed the weapon entirely through the beast, several inches of the bloody stone blade protruding from its back. It panted, its eyes wild, its nostrils flaring as it tried to come to grips with its situation.

  Aeden went to it and, grasping the spear haft firmly, yanked it out. The cat screamed as the jagged stone blade ripped free. The beast lay there, breathing heavily, trying to get enough air into its lungs, but failing. Its eyes met Aeden’s and held them. The boy nodded.

  He held his spear up in front of him, perfectly vertical, a salute to an honorable foe. Then he drove the spear into the cat’s brain, their eyes locked the entire time.

  Chapter 7

  Aeden was bleeding and felt as if all his strength had fled after his combat with the cat. He found an elephant plant nearby and plucked some of the large leaves to stick to his wounds to clot the blood. He would dress them properly when he got back to his camp, but did not dare spend the time yet. The sun would be going down and he didn’t want to leave his kill to the scavengers.

  The cat weighed more than he did, but he was able to shoulder it, the stress on his injured shoulder and arm making him yelp. He picked up his spear, which he had leaned next to a nearby rock, and started the long trudge back to camp. It was less than two miles, but it took him over two hours.

  When he finally caught sight of his camp, Aeden thought he would cry out of happiness. He threw the lifeless cat to the ground halfway between the fire pit and the river, and went to the water to clean himself off.

  After cleaning the blood off his wounds, he was glad to find they didn’t seem deep enough to cause any permanent damage. He would have to take care against infection and it would take time for him to heal completely, but he thought he would survive. He had to survive.

  That seen to, he turned toward his kill. And sighed. It w
as going to take a lot of work. With no other alternative, he got to it.

  First was the skinning. Tying part of the rope he made to the back legs, he hoisted the carcass up onto a tree branch so it was hanging with the head down. He made a long slit down the body of the cat with his knife, using the spear hole as a starting point. Then he peeled the skin off the flesh, scraping the ligaments from the skin to allow it to separate as he removed it.

  Aeden soon had a whole hide in a bundle off to the side. This he put into his water bowl, full of water and ashes from the fire to make a murky solution. He agitated the skin and placed rocks on top of it to hold it underneath the liquid to soak.

  He opened up the belly of the flayed beast and took out the entrails. The intestines he wrapped in large leaves and set them to the side for later use. The others he threw into the river and watched as they washed downstream. The ground beneath the hanging body was soaked with blood. Aeden was glad it wasn’t too near his camp. It would start to smell in a few hours.

  Next was the meat. Aeden sliced off thick slabs of muscle from the cat. Hunting must have been good for the predator. There was plenty of flesh to cut off. As he cut them, Aeden skewered the pieces on sticks he had cut and sharpened. These he laid in large leaves.

  The entire process took several hours, and he only stopped to start a fire in a hastily-dug pit. The sun went down and it started to get cooler as he finished. Aeden’s stomach growled, and he realized he had not eaten for most of the day.

  Carrying the meat to camp wasn’t too difficult. The rest of the carcass and the hide he left where they were. He would deal with that the next day. As for the intestines, he wrapped them up tightly in several large leaves, tied a bit of rope to them, and hung them from a tree, out of reach of scavengers.

  Before going back to camp, he removed one of the cat’s shoulder blades and added it to his load.

  Rather than starting a fire from scratch, Aeden took a burning stick from the fire he had made in his skinning area and used it to make one in his camp fire pit. Soon, the meat was cooking over it, grease popping as it dripped into the flames. Aeden took some of the leaves he had gathered, made proper poultices of feverbane and scarlet bush stalks on two large elephant plant leaves, and tied them in place on his arm and shoulder. While the meat cooked, he scraped the shoulder blade clean of tissue and then rubbed it across a rough, flat rock to sharpen the curved side.

  He ate as much of the meat as he could, and then wrapped the remainder in some of the large leaves and tied them up to a tree branch also. After being sedentary for so long, his muscles and wounds had stiffened, so traveling to the river to drink was an ordeal. He did it, though, and drank his fill before going back to camp to sleep. As soon as he laid his head down in his shelter, spear by his side and knife in his hand, he fell into unconsciousness.

  When Aeden awoke, he could hardly move. His entire body was sore from combat the day before, and his wounds were laced with fire. He felt his own forehead, as if he would know if he had a fever from infection, but could tell nothing from it.

  Some animals had been in his camp the night before, no doubt smelling the meat and wanting some of it. It was still tied up, but there were footprints everywhere—most from rodents, but one that could have been a fox and one some type of dog—and the few items lying around had been moved. When he checked the carcass, it was the same thing. Some animals had even rifled through the skins, but didn’t try to eat them. They must not have been starving, then. The carcass and the hanging intestines were still right where he had left them, though there were marks on the cat’s body of something chewing what tissue was left there.

  Aeden moved slowly so that he did not tear open his wounds and pulled the skins from the bath he had been soaking them in. The water in which the cat’s pelt had been soaking was gray and smelled of rancid meat, musty fur, and a hint of smoke. He emptied it into the river and refilled the bucket to rinse the skins off.

  Spreading the hide on a nearby rock, Aeden started to scrape, using the cat’s sharpened shoulder blade. The bits of flesh still on the skin came off fairly easily after having soaked overnight. When he was done, he added the ash from last night’s fire to the bucket, swirled it around with a stick, and put the skin back into the liquid. He replaced the rocks on the skin to hold it under the solution.

  Aeden’s meals for the day were the leftover meat from his previous day’s kill, cooked again over the fire until it was almost burnt. Better to eat charred meat than to get sick, his instructors had told him. He drank plenty of water during the day, ate some of the vegetables and roots he had foraged and stored, and changed the poultice on his gashes. They were sore and oozed blood—how he wished he had needle and thread to sew them up properly—but they did not seem to be getting infected.

  Toward the afternoon, he felt up to gathering more herbs and checking the closest snares. He found two more rabbits that had fallen prey to his traps, so he brought those back to camp, dressed them, and saved the pelts. He had scraped clean the large skin from the cat and staked it to stretch it out so it could dry.

  Another day had passed, the fifth since he had been left out in the wilderness. He only had a day and a half left. If he could avoid calamity until then, he would survive.

  The next day when he awoke, the wound in his shoulder had puffed up, and red streaks led from the cuts toward the center of his chest. When he tried to stand up, his head spun and his knees buckled beneath him. He knew what that meant.

  Aeden had two choices. He could abandon his trial and head back to the village, or he could try to wrestle the fever and the infection himself, using the limited herb lore he had been taught.

  If he went back to the village, he could make it there in less than a day, even weakened to the point of crawling halfway. Failure in the trial of survival did not carry a death sentence like some of the other trials did, but if he failed it, he would never be a warrior of the clan. He could learn a trade or do menial work, but he would always be looked upon as lowly. He would shame his father and his family. Dying would be better.

  Aeden took the cat skin he had been working on, now dried and stiff. He finally took down the intestines he had hung days before. Slicing them open, he scooped out the reeking gelatinous mass within and started to rub it over the hide, working it in so that the oily material soaked into the leather. He had to take breaks in between rubbings, feeling like he would pass out from the exertion and the stench of the jelly, but in a few hours, he had done enough that the skin was pliable and soft, though the smell of it still made him gag.

  Twice during the time he worked on the hide, he felt fire rising up in him, so strong it seemed it would burn the flesh off his bones. He staggered to the river, to a swirling pool made by several large rocks blocking the main flow, and lowered himself into it up to his neck. Even then, it felt as if the water would boil from the heat he was generating. Once, his body also grew as cold as ice, his teeth chattering and his hands shaking as he worked on the hide. He moved closer to his fire—burning in the daylight to provide heat for him—but the chill would not leave him until the next episode of fire. So the day passed.

  He dosed himself with the ground leaves of scarlet bush, chewing on willow bark in between to dull the pain and fight the fever. And, of course, he cleaned the infected wound often, lancing it with the tip of his knife, draining it of the gray-brown pus that accumulated.

  By the time night had fallen, he had drunk water until he felt he would burst, nibbled on a few roots—the only thing he could get into his stomach without bringing it back up—and went to sleep by the fire, his new skin wrapped tightly around him. He barely slept, waking up too cold or too hot, not sure where he was, or even who he was at times.

  His last day dawned, finally time to go back to the village. The fever was still with him, but seemed to be in a lull. He was light-headed still but could think a bit more clearly than he had the day before. As he shuffled around to forage more medicinal herbs—if only he co
uld find one of the rare areas where ginger root grew—he cut all the snares he had set. There was no use in catching prey for other predators to eat.

  Leaning on his spear, his knife strapped to his leg and what remained of his rope tied into one long coil wrapped across his shoulders, Aeden took one last look at his camp and headed off.

  He had his pelt wrapped around him as he left, but removed it and replaced it as his journey went on. Every hour or so, he would stop, chew more of the roots he had brought with him, and try to gain enough strength to continue.

  It was mid-afternoon when he first realized he was lost. He knew the area around the village, should have been able to find it in the dark without trouble, yet nothing looked familiar to him. In fact, when he raised his hand to wipe the sweat from his eyes, his own arm looked foreign. He stopped at a small pool from the last rain and drank, splashing water on his face to cool himself.

  Before he got more than a few swallows down, ice ran up his back, and he had to pull his hide tight to fight it. He clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from clacking against each other and hugged himself as best he could with his injuries. All he could do was wait for it to pass.

  It did, finally. In a flash of lucidity, he recognized the rise of a nearby hill, three rocks perched on its top like sentinels. He could use those as a landmark to steer himself toward his home. It was only a few more miles, and if he hurried, he could get there before dark.

  He had to. He would not survive another night.

  Aeden propped his spear on the ground, levered himself up, and began shambling toward where he knew the village lay. It was a race, truly. He had to make it back. It would be less than half a day beyond the week he was to stay out, but still long enough to succeed. With a grim determination, he set his jaw, aching from clenching it during his last attack of chills, and moved forward at the fastest pace he could set.