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

by Margo Bond Collins

  “Maybe it’s trying to tell us where to go, like a compass,” Raki said. “We still need to find a bridge or crossing to get on the right side of the river.”

  “It could be,” Aeden said, “but the spell is called Pieces of Evil. That doesn’t sound like a direction-finding spell to me. It sounds like something we want to avoid.”

  “Well, whatever it does, it’s pretty,” Fahtin said. “The world doesn’t have enough pretty things.”

  Aeden looked at her. “You’re such a girl,” he said.

  Fahtin smoothed her hair back over her shoulder while raising her chin. “I am. So nice of you to notice.”

  Aeden laughed.

  “We had better go to the others and get started with another day of travel. Maybe we’ll find that bridge today.”

  “I’ll bet it’s where the light pointed, even if the name of the spell doesn’t make sense,” Raki said.

  Aeden hoped so, but he didn’t really feel that would be the case. He thought maybe he was cynical because his foes were still out there looking for him. You could never be too careful, though. The three went back to the shack, and soon all of them were on their way again.

  Aeden walked along, caught up in his own thoughts. The others spoke softly with each other, but seemed subdued also. Aila wasn’t even taking part in conversation, just silently walking along. Maybe it was the constant travel without any recognizable progress. He didn’t know. He dwelled on the magic and how he could learn it faster. He would need it, he was sure about that. But when? That was the question. Would he be ready when he did require it?

  “We’re nearing the Tarshuk region now,” Tere Chizzit said. Aeden came out of his reverie and looked around. He hadn’t realized it, but the trees had grown sparse. That was different than the last few days of picking their paths through the underbrush and trees growing closely together.

  Not only were the trees more spread out here, but they were stunted, too, the tallest only reaching twenty feet or so. That was small compared to the mammoth plants they had been traveling through. They had traveled from the domain of majestic oak and towering pine trees to that of the more moderately-sized bristlecone pine and dogwood trees.

  “Just to the southwest, about twenty miles from here, there is a bridge,” the tracker continued. “We’ll finally be able to cross and make our way toward the Academy. We should make better time after that. There are a lot of roads on the other side of the river, and even if we want to stay off them, the land is not as tangled as what we’ve been passing through.”

  The welcome news seemed to lift the others’ spirits. Finally, they would be getting back on track and moving directly away from the animaru.

  The Academy. Aeden hadn’t really thought before about what he’d find there. Would they take him seriously? Would they tell him he was this Malatirsay, or would they laugh at him and tell him to leave? If they helped him at all, what could they do? He wondered if the animaru would chase them all the way there. If they did, he could imagine a grand battle between the heroes of the Academy and the dark creatures. It would be nice to have more allies on his side.

  But he was getting ahead of himself. They still hadn’t crossed the river. There were sure to be other hazards on their way, black monsters or not. Best he keep his mind focused and stay wary.

  As they continued, Aeden saw Tere Chizzit glancing to the southeast more often than he did the other directions. When he did, his brows drew down and a half-frown came onto his mouth.

  “What is it?” Aeden asked Tere when he scanned in that direction and made that expression for the tenth time in three hours.

  “I don’t know,” the blind man said. “There is something that way. Something wrong. I can’t put my finger on it, but I sense it.”

  It was in the same direction Aeden’s lights had pointed when he cast Pieces of Evil.

  Aeden told Tere about the spell and how it had pointed toward that general direction. The tracker’s mouth pointed downward into a full frown.

  “Everyone, keep your eyes sharp,” Tere said. “There may be trouble from that direction.” He pointed “It may be nothing, but be ready in case it’s not.”

  The terrain grew more rugged, and they were forced to travel farther away from the river. The cliffs and rocks conspired to move them in a way they didn’t want to go. Toward the southeast.

  Tere Chizzit found a winding pathway through the rocky outcroppings. It was barely wide enough for two to travel side by side. The tracker swiveled his head back and forth as if he expected something to jump out at them. Aeden could only think that this would be an ideal place for an ambush. A few archers placed on those cliffs, and there would be no way for the party to survive an assault. There were more dangers in Dizhelim than monsters from another world. Common bandits could easily take their lives without ever being seen.

  When the little canyon they were in started to widen out, Aeden breathed a little easier. Fahtin was pale and her eyes were half-lidded. Her mouth was pinched like she was going to be sick, and Raki’s eyes were wide and darting. Aeden was surprised that Urun seemed least nervous about where they were. Was he that brave and confident, or was he so out of touch that he didn’t feel the tension? He was singing one of those nonsense songs to himself again.

  Aeden began to walk more quickly, trying to get out of the canyon. They hadn’t seen bandits or anything else, but the sooner they were out, the better. Then it hit him. They hadn’t seen anything else. No animals, no birds, nothing. It could be that there were few trees and not enough food to sustain an animal population, but he had seen more rugged terrain teeming with life.

  He turned to mention it to Tere Chizzit, but the words never came. The tracker had nocked an arrow and was scanning the rock formations off to the left.

  “Prepare yourselves,” he said, white eyes glinting in the sun. “We have company.”

  No sooner had everyone drawn their weapons than a mass of animaru, eerily quiet for such a large number, rushed out from behind them and to the left. Their foes, it seemed, had not only found them, but also set an ambush.

  Chapter 49

  “Quickly,” Aeden said. “Bring your weapons to me so I can infuse them with magic that will allow you to harm the animaru.” He dropped his pack where he stood, and his friends did the same with theirs.

  The others drew their weapons and held them out to Aeden. He cast Light to Conquer Darkness on them to prepare them for the battle. When he cast this spell in the manner the clan had taught him, it infused items with the power of life magic.

  He had found that when he cast the spells exactly as he had been taught by the clan, there were different effects than when he cast with the choreographed movements while singing the Song. Different, and less powerful. He wondered what Light to Conquer Darkness would do when he worked out how to cast the more powerful version.

  Aeden drew his swords. He still wasn’t confident in his abilities to cast the magic in the way that would be needed. He ran his thumbs over the coarse cord wrapping on the hilt of his swords. The wooden peg securing the handle to the blade stuck out just a bit and was a familiar comfort. These small details of combat were old friends that made him believe he could conquer anything.

  Then he saw the masses arrayed against him as they streamed into sight around the rock formations. There had to be more than two thousand of the creatures, far too many for the little party to survive.

  “We have to run,” he said to Tere Chizzit.

  “Can’t,” the tracker said as he scanned the line of enemies for his first target. “They have us neatly bottled up. The ones coming up from behind have blocked our escape into the canyon, and those in front are a wall pushing us toward the others. There’s no river to jump into this time. We have to fight. I dearly hope you have learned your magic, or this is where our quest, and our lives, end.”

  Aeden swallowed hard, trying to force the lump in his throat down. Taking a precious few seconds to look at his friends, he hoped he had
learned his magic effectively as well. Fahtin had two knives out, longer than her typical throwing knives. Aeden wondered where she had gotten them. She swallowed and, when she noticed him looking, forced a smile. Raki was barely visible, low to the ground and hiding to strike from the edges, as was his specialty. Aila, beautiful in her dark clothes, her hair tied into a ponytail, had those strange weapons of hers in her palms. Tere Chizzit, of course, had his bow raised and an arrow nocked. He put his right hand down to the long knives belted to his waist, nearly as large as Aeden’s own short swords, and made sure they were loose in the scabbards. Urun Chinowa met Aeden’s gaze, put on a small smile, and nodded. Then he closed his eyes, tilted his head toward the sky, and mouthed words Aeden couldn’t read on his lips. They were as ready as they could be. Was he?

  The creatures closest to them quickened their loping strides into sprints. In the forefront of those coming from behind, the pale-colored animaru was among the first of the enemies, and that large, hairy monster led the charge from the forces on the other side. These two were obviously the commanders, taking the lead like they had done on top of the cliff. The two had battled Aeden and Urun to a standstill there, with far fewer troops. Aeden licked his lips and tightened his grip on his swords. He went over the two spells he had mastered with his new dance choreography. Well, maybe not mastered, but they were more powerful than what he had learned when with the clans.

  In the last several hours, it had come to him that the movements he had developed for the spells could be modified slightly to be done with weapons in the hands. Would that make the spell more powerful, or less so? Mentally chastising himself for not trying it sooner, he prayed it would work out.

  “Codaghan,” he said, “If you have any concern for us wee humans, please grant me some of your strength now. This will be a battle worthy of your name.”

  And then wave of the creatures crashed upon them.

  Aeden dropped his left shoulder and rolled under swiping claws, coming up while cutting at the exposed abdomens of the attackers. The creatures screamed as the magic-infused weapons cut deeply into them, and their sickly dark blood, a deep red, almost a brown, sprayed those coming up behind. He parried other claws, relying on his reflexes and instinct, not even knowing how many were in front of him, taking fingers, whole claws, and a head from the black monsters.

  Suddenly, the tall, lighter-colored animaru appeared before him. The commander had her twin swords out as well, her mouth set in what could have been a smirk or a smile of contentment. His eyes widened when she nodded to him and crossed her swords in front of her. Was she saluting him? When he returned the gesture, her mouth turned upwards just a hair more. A smile of pleasure, then, not a smirk.

  She attacked.

  Aeden’s foe was as fast and skilled as he remembered. She wore little clothing, so her movement was not hindered in any way. They ranged across the area, him sometimes dodging her attacks even as he cut down her allies, and her sometimes avoiding one of the others in Aeden’s party as they struck out at her. But their attention was only on each other. It was as if all the other bodies in the fray were simply obstacles to be passed to continue their own fight.

  As they sliced, blocked, lunged, and parried, Aeden fell into a calm that he had only ever reached when fully absorbed in combat. Her techniques were not unlike his, her tempo a fitting counterpoint to his own pace and rhythm of combat. He found himself smiling, though it shocked him to think about it.

  An animaru slashed at Aeden’s left leg and he deftly lifted it, kicked the thing in the face, and blocked one of the commander’s slashes with his right weapon and her lunge with the other, his left arm beneath the right. With a flick of his right wrist, his sword completed a short arc and carved a shallow gash across her cheek. Placing his kicking foot on the ground again, he moved back one step to dodge her counterslash by a fraction of an inch. Her eyes widened in surprise that she had been struck.

  In the brief pause, during which she put a finger to her wound and looked at the blood on it, Aeden noticed that she didn’t have a scar anywhere on her. He had seen scars on the bodies of some of the animaru before, but did she not scar, or was she so skilled that she had never been struck? Her reaction hinted at the latter.

  Aeden glanced around him as the two squared off again. Creatures still came at them, a sustained push that the casualties his friends were inflicting could not match. He saw flashes of red on his friends, but they were still fighting in a group to try to prevent themselves from being overwhelmed. None were down yet, for which he was thankful.

  Still, they could not keep this up. Urun seemed to be having a silent war with the hairy, magic-using creature, but he looked to be tiring. What would happen when he failed and the magic was brought against the rest of the party?

  It was time to gamble.

  Aeden began to sing, and as he did so, he started incorporating the gestures for the spell into his movements to combat his foe. She attacked again, a flurry of slashes, thrusts, and strikes with her feet. Aeden stumbled and received a cut to his forearm. He moved out of the way quickly, preventing a deeper gash. His opponent looked puzzled. He could imagine what she thought. Her opponent had started singing and, for all appearances, dancing. She must have thought him mad.

  Magic built in him as he sang and as he fought, trying to tie each of his movements into the choreography he had determined for the spell. It was all he could do to keep from being killed, so he didn’t counterattack, only moved, sang, and tried to work in his defensive techniques.

  Slash, lunge, kick, thrust, the pale-colored animaru attacked him relentlessly. All the while, the magic built.

  When he felt that he had enough power, Aeden punctuated the Song with a harsh, hard syllable.

  “Ekosin!”

  The energy flew out of him in a wave in all directions.

  Several of the lesser animaru closest to him were destroyed in an instant. Those further out took a few seconds to stop moving. Every one of them within twenty feet were forced back as if hurricane winds had assaulted them. Aeden’s friends fared better, but were also pushed away from him. The real power in the spell was its ability to destroy the creatures from another world, so though his friends were pushed away, they were not injured. His pale opponent, inches away, wasn’t destroyed, but she was thrown, head over heels, until she landed ungracefully a dozen feet away.

  The power still infused Aeden. It hadn’t all been spent as it was when he used his magic before he learned to choreograph his movements to the Song. He repeated the words and his actions, preparing to use the spell again. If he could only keep his strength up, he might be able to give his friends a chance to survive.

  He had the time he needed while his foes regrouped and charged again. Aeden took a mental inventory of his friends and found that they were all present, most of them coming back to their feet. Urun was shaking his head, Fahtin was looking around for her enemies, Tere Chizzit was shooting the last few arrows in his quiver, and Raki and Aila were regaining their positions back-to-back to resume fighting.

  Aeden’s main foe, the light-colored female, picked herself up off the ground and looked at him with incredulity. The hairy, magic-using monster was nowhere to be seen. Had it been destroyed?

  Three more times Aeden used Dawn’s Warning, and each time he used it at exactly the moment that would destroy the most animaru. He waited until the last second, when they crowded around him to overwhelm and tear him to shreds. He noticed that the commander did not charge him after the first time, staying back and watching, waiting. Aeden’s respect for her intelligence increased at that. She would bide her time until he grew tired, and then she would go in for the kill. She was sacrificing her troops for a chance to kill him.

  There seemed to be a shift in the way his foes were attacking. The hairy commander wasn’t there, and groups of the animaru fled back toward where he and his troops had come from. Just a little while longer and there would be no foes left. At least, that’s what Aeden hope
d.

  The time came when there was only his foe and her swords, along with a few dozen of the normal animaru forces. She considered him for a moment, looked toward the retreating creatures, frowned fiercely, and rushed him. She, at least, would not flee. More was the pity.

  Her swords spun as she engaged Aeden, but he was too tired to fight her in the way she wanted. Just before she reached him with two blows simultaneously, he put all his remaining energy into pouring the magic into her.

  Aeden’s power picked her up as if she was a toy and threw her thirty feet to hit a large boulder. The other animaru, all those around him, caught only collateral force, but it was enough to shred many of them. In part of his tired mind, Aeden wondered what this attack did to his friends, but he didn’t have time to contemplate. He rushed to where the commander had slid down the rock. She was still moving, though weakly.

  He saluted her as before, then quickly used both swords, one from each direction, to separate her head from her shoulders.

  Aeden looked around. Ink-black bodies lay everywhere. There would have been more if his magic hadn’t caused some simply to cease to exist. He picked out the movements of his friends, but none of any enemies, and only then slumped, putting his hands on his knees and breathing deeply. He was so tired. So tired.

  Tere Chizzit came up to him, his bow slung across his shoulders and a blood-covered long knife in each hand. He nodded to Aeden. The man looked like he had aged ten years since the battle started. The others gathered around him, too. They all were dirty and covered in blood, hopefully not their own, but they were there.

  Urun Chinowa limped up to them, a wicked gash on his right thigh. The canyon was eerily quiet compared to the screams and other sounds of battle that until moments before was their whole world.

  “Where is Fahtin?” he asked, looking around.

  Aeden started. He scanned the battlefield and realized that she was not among them. Aila, Raki, Tere, and Urun were all there, but no Fahtin. Where was she?