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

by Margo Bond Collins

  Well, that might have actually been obvious. She paused as the Makkai at the door tried again.

  “Can I do something?” Becca asked. Billy shook his head.

  “Not unless you’ve got a knack at jimmying magic locks,” he told her. “Just be patient. They’ll figure it out.”

  She nodded. Someone else ran up to help with the door, then the two of them both fell back. There was some quiet cursing as they regrouped. Urgent, hushed conversation, and four Makkai went at either side of the doors, pulling both outward. There was a quiet countdown, and then a pull on the doors with a popping noise at both corners.

  Still nothing happened.

  The Makkai were still at the doors when blue light rippled along the ground out the doors, stinging at them, and they fled, scrambling away. Becca watched close. Two of the men didn’t appear to be moving right, to her eye.

  “They’re hurt,” she whispered. She grabbed her focus stone to watch the nearest one. Leg, maybe an arm.

  “Watch the door,” Billy said. “Let Dawn worry about them. If they’re still moving, she can put them back together.”

  Becca grimaced, but he was right. She returned her attention to the door, making out the clear white panel around the sliding doors and… nothing inside. It was just too dark.

  “We need light,” she muttered, reaching into her skirts and pulling out a partially-treated copal. She charged it carefully in her palm, then looked at Billy.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She threw it. It cast a dim, red light as it rolled, and while it wasn’t enough to see clearly anything inside the huge space, it did silhouette a woman, just for a moment.

  She was tall and lean, with hair high and tight against her head, no stoop, no fray to her that Becca could see, even with her focus at its highest.

  “That’s her,” she said. It was inescapable. Like looking in a mirror. That was the woman whose mind she had seen through the evil eye. “That’s the witch.”

  “Hope so,” Billy said, pulling his knees up under him. “Otherwise there are two of them.”

  The silhouette was gone, but now at least there was a small light in the barn. The Makkai attacked the door again, this time with explosions that smashed at the wood.

  “When it goes, it’s going to go fast,” Billy said. “Be ready.”

  Becca nodded, drawing a knife from her waist and holding her focus stone close.

  “What will they do?” she asked.

  “I’d bet Bella would prefer to capture her, ask her questions, draw the magic out of her, and then let her go,” Billy said. “If they’re right about her, without her magic she’ll die pretty quickly, anyway.”

  Becca sat up.

  “What does that mean?”

  Billy pressed her back down.

  “What does what mean?” he hissed.

  “That she’ll die without her magic.”

  “Haven’t you been paying attention?” he asked. “It takes magic to keep someone alive past their natural age. Odds are that she’s keeping herself alive off of the magic in the evil eye, because that’s what she’s good at, but even if she’s got something else going on, it’s what’s keeping her alive. No guarantees she just shrivels up and dies, when we draw it out of her, but she’ll age and die at some rate and she won’t be our problem any more, because she can’t do any damage any more.”

  “The souls,” Becca said. “They’re keeping her alive.”

  “You could look at it that way,” Billy said.

  “No,” Becca said more urgently. “The souls themselves are keeping her alive. If they all got away…”

  Billy whistled, a low tone, soft enough that it might have just been a breeze.

  “Damn,” he said. “And here we’ve been keeping them penned in out there to make sure we got her.”

  “I need to find Dawn,” Becca said.

  There was another explosion in the barn and two Makkai at the doorway fled, one of them holding her arm. In the dark, Becca couldn’t tell who was who, but it might have been Quinn. Becca looked at Billy.

  “Go,” he said.

  She ran.

  “Dawn,” Becca hissed as she got back to the trucks. “Dawn, where are you?”

  “I’m here,” Dawn called, looking up from where she was bandaging Colin’s ankle, sitting on the gate of Jackson’s truck.

  “We need to let the souls go,” Becca said. “That’s where she’s getting her power.”

  “What?” Dawn asked.

  “Are you okay, Colin?” Becca asked.

  “Won’t walk so good for a few days, I expect, but I’ll be fine,” Colin said. “That’s some serious magic she’s got.”

  Becca nodded.

  “And she’s just going to keep hurting us, if we come at her from the front like this.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Dawn asked.

  “You have the quartz that let Louise out?” Becca asked.

  “Yes,” Dawn said.

  “We need to let them all out,” Becca said.

  “Becca,” Dawn said, glancing at Colin. “You don’t understand what you’re asking me to do.”

  “Okay,” Becca said after a beat. “Explain it to me.”

  “You want me to leave my post as little sister, go into the direct gaze of an evil eye with a screwball witch standing behind it, and expose a volatile crystal to an undead field in hopes of drawing souls into it.”

  Becca looked from Dawn to Colin.

  “Yeah. That sounds about right.”

  “I can’t do that,” Dawn said. “I can’t.”

  “Someone has to,” Becca said, instinctively ducking as a huge explosion of purple light cracked through the sky. The boom that followed it was one she felt in her chest.

  “No,” Dawn said. “I can’t. It’s not my nature. It’s not my role. If I tried to leave…” She shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “But I can,” Quinn said, coming to lean against the truck.

  “You’re wounded,” Dawn said, gathering up a basket and starting toward Quinn.

  “Sure, but I can still work a princess quartz and dispell spirits,” Quinn said. “And she’s right. If we don’t flush her out somehow, I’m not sure we’re getting in at all.”

  “It’s only a matter of time before someone gets killed,” Becca said. “We aren’t going to back down.”

  Dawn squeaked.

  “I just want everyone to be well,” she said.

  “I know,” Quinn said, reaching into the truck behind Dawn. “That’s why I’m going to go do this.”

  “The crystal could explode,” Dawn said. “It could kill both of you.”

  “Hell yeah it’s taking both of us,” Quinn said. “If I’m going, I’m not going by myself.”

  “It’s our best shot,” Becca said. “We have to set them free.”

  This tugged at a nerve and Dawn looked even more conflicted.

  “This isn’t your decision,” Colin said gently. “You take care of us when we come back. You don’t worry about what we do when we’re out there.”

  Dawn squeaked and shook her head.

  “Don’t die,” she finally said quickly and turned her back to look at Colin’s leg again. He jerked his chin and Quinn grabbed Dawn’s knapsack and Becca’s sleeve and they were running again.

  The far side of the barn was further than she remembered. Behind her, there was shouting and more explosions. It sounded like both sides had opened fire now.

  “We should tell them we have a plan,” Becca said.

  “We do that, she’s going to look through the hole in the evil eye and we’re both toast,” Quinn said. “We need them keeping her busy.”

  “I’m warded,” Becca argued, still looking back at the bright lights she could see around the side of the barn. Something was burning.

  “Not against that,” Quinn said, pointing at the evil eye. It looked like it was glowing, with all of the energy inside the barn behind it. Becca shuddered. It was true. Even with her
mother’s necklace, she could feel the twinge from the eye.

  “Hurry,” Becca said.

  “Don’t say that to me,” Quinn said, squatting and drawing the crystal out of Dawn’s bag. “I’m going to take my damned time and you aren’t going to rush me.”

  Becca felt like shaking her hands out and bouncing on her toes, she was so charged with energy, but she forced herself to stand still and wait for Quinn to tell her what to do.

  Would she be able to tell the difference between one of Quinn’s tall tales and the truth? She hoped so.

  It was only a few moments later that the crystal began to glow.

  “Back up,” Quinn said. “I have to let it stabilize before I can let it out, and this is when it’s most likely to blow up.”

  Becca ducked as something came flying off the barn and landed in the soil nearby. Quinn cursed, but kept working with crystals and stones around the quartz.

  It might have only been two or three minutes, but it felt like an eternity before she stood and looked back at Becca again.

  “I’m going to let it out now. I need you to place this crystal there,” she pointed, “exactly when I tell you. It’s going to ward the quartz from another soul getting in until it’s all the way cool again.”

  Becca nodded, taking the stone from Quinn and squatting over the place that the woman had indicated. Quinn nodded and moved one of the crystals. There was a shrill wheezing and a gray mist spewed from the crystal. This time, it didn’t coalesce at all, it just kept stretching up and up, spreading out until there was nothing left.

  “Now,” Quinn said. Becca placed the crystal and Quinn drew a deep breath and let it out.

  “One down,” she said. “How many of these did you say there were?”

  Becca tried to remember the busy street.

  “Maybe a dozen,” she said. “Maybe more.”

  Quinn grunted, stooping to put her hands on the quartz.

  “It was a good idea,” she said. “But this isn’t going to hold up to that. Its crystalline structure isn’t perfect enough, and it’s beginning to fracture.”

  Becca sighed.

  What now?

  “The barn wasn’t always here,” Becca said quietly.

  “Nope,” Quinn said.

  “How was she holding them before?”

  Quinn stood and put her hands on her hips.

  “You’re the evil eye girl. You tell me.”

  Becca scratched her head, searching for any idea.

  “Their graves,” she said suddenly. “They aren’t buried here. It’s not as powerful, putting an evil eye on a grave stone, because… really? But it might work.”

  “So where are they buried?” Quinn asked. Becca shrugged, feeling helpless.

  “No idea,” she said. They looked at each other for a long time as the barn behind them burned blue and green. There were shouts, and a scream.

  “Are they winning?” Becca asked.

  “Nope,” Quinn said. “That isn’t our magic.”

  Becca nodded. She’d been afraid of that.

  Quinn snapped.

  “There’s a lead,” she said.

  “What?” Becca asked.

  “I thought it was just pooling and running, but there’s a chance,” Quinn said. “Better than nothing.”

  Becca frowned, watching as Quinn ran away from her, pulling handful after handful of something out of her waistband and scattering it. White powder. Becca shook her head and ran after.

  They went a long way.

  The barn wasn’t visible behind them anymore, and she could only just hear the chaos of the fight, and still Quinn ran. Becca could just see in the dawning light that Quinn’s arm was dark with blood, but she hoped the woman knew her limits.

  And then she saw it.

  “There,” she said. “There. The wrought iron.”

  Quinn threw the last of her dust away and they ran to the fence. Becca jumped it, and Quinn leaned against it.

  “This is you,” Quinn puffed. “You’ve got to figure it out.”

  Becca looked at Quinn with concern, then a boom that shook the earth reminded her why she was here, and she set to work.

  She pushed weeds away from gravestones, reading them. Looking for anything that would tell her what to do next.

  She heard Quinn slide down the fence and land on the ground in a gentle huddle, but she kept working.

  There. There in the stones in the dirt. She found the old paint, worn by time and weather, on one of them: the eye.

  The right way to handle it would have been to scrub it clean, eliminate all traces of the magic.

  This was not a morning for doing things right.

  She threw the rock.

  The witch wouldn’t have been able to look through it. It hadn’t been a good cast, but it had been there.

  There would be more.

  Becca kept looking.

  She found a dozen more stones pained with the eye and she threw them all as far as she could in different directions. Dawn would have to track them all down, by light of day, for someone to wash them clean, but it would be good enough for now.

  And then she saw the fence.

  Every single fence post.

  She’d missed them in the dim, but the sun was coming up, and it was the holes that caught her attention. A whole row of pinholes in flat metal. Engraved eyes on top of every post, ones she could have looked through, could have painted years upon years ago, that would still have the magic in them.

  She spun, seeing them all the way around, a continuous loop of evil eyes.

  Becca suddenly realized how big a pit she was in, surrounded on all sides by eyes.

  She pulled at one and it ground against the fence, but wouldn’t give. She pulled harder, feeling that it was just sitting on top of the fence, but it was a good fit with decades of wear on it, and it wouldn’t come willingly. She needed a hammer.

  Needed some kind of tool that would put more force on it, so she could get it off.

  She stepped back, and the earth shook again.

  A hammer. A crow bar. A screwdriver. Any single thing Billy had ever used to work on the truck engine with. She went blitzing through the trailer in her mind, looking for anything that she could have used to pull off the metal discs.

  Rocks.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  She had been throwing rocks for ten minutes.

  She went back and found another one, the biggest she could easily wield, and she ran at the fence, hitting the post. There was a crunching noise, and she pulled at the eye again. It wiggled, but it didn’t come loose. Emboldened, she hit it again.

  This time it came loose. She dropped it on the ground, knowing that throwing these wasn’t going to do it. She was going to have to do something better with them. Something more destructive. She didn’t know what that was, yet, but she had some time to think, as she worked her way around the fence.

  Knowing what she was doing helped, but it still took time to get each post top off, and she grew a huge pile of them by the time she was done. She also found three more painted eyes and threw those, hoping she’d put a big enough dent in them.

  Old magic.

  No kidding.

  Finally, she got the last one free as the sun broke clear of the stand of trees nearby, casting light across the old cemetery.

  She looked down at the pile of wrought iron evil eyes, at a loss.

  “What are you waiting for?” Quinn asked, a mere breath. It was the first she’d stirred in quite some time.

  “Need to destroy them,” Becca said. “Waiting for inspiration.”

  “Take them back to the field behind the barn,” Quinn said. “Put them with the princess quartz. It’ll blow ‘em up good. Soul that does it will have the pleasure of ending that witch.”

  “Are you okay?” Becca asked.

  “Go,” Quinn said. “Send Dawn when you see her.”

  And she fell quiet. Becca felt awful, but she gathered up the eyes and started running
as fast as she could, back toward the sound of fighting.

  It kept getting worse.

  Purple and orange light flickered across the blue sky, and she tripped, getting back to her feet and grabbing the three eyes she’d dropped, finally getting back to the spot where the quartz was penned in by other crystals.

  She dumped the eyes next to it then stood, feeling that some kind of ceremony was necessary now, even as the Makkai and the witch tried to kill each other nearby.

  “Get her, guys,” she said. “It’s over.”

  She nodded firmly, then started to run toward the trucks, kicking over the crystal Quinn had given her on the way by, accelerating as fast as she could go and not looking back.

  The explosion knocked her on her face.

  The world was fuzzy and dark. Her head hurt, when she was aware enough to pay attention to it, but mostly it felt like breathing and bobbing in warm water, no feeling, no awareness, and it was going to take a big pull to get out of it.

  Someone was snapping at her.

  Her head still hurt.

  She dropped back away from it, the rise and fall of her chest all she really needed.

  The snapping persisted. And her name.

  She opened her eyes.

  “Becca,” Dawn said. “Come back to me.”

  She blinked.

  “Did we win?” she murmured. She wasn’t sure they understood her - she hadn’t understood her - so she tried again.

  “Don’t try to move,” Dawn said.

  Awareness. Sharp, painful awareness.

  She sat up.

  “I just said…” Dawn said.

  “Go get Quinn,” Becca said.

  “What about Quinn?” someone behind her said. Becca tried to turn and the world turned upside down. She caught herself on her elbow and blinked hard. The world wobbled like a marble in water.

  “Quinn,” she said. “Go get Quinn.”

  “Where is she?” Dawn asked, pushing her back onto the ground.

  “Where am I?” Becca asked, sitting up again. She gagged, her stomach rebelling from the erratic horizon and her splitting headache, but she held her dinner down.

  There was the barn. Well. What was left of the barn. She grinned at this.

  “We won,” she said.

  “Where is Quinn?” Dawn asked again.