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

by Margo Bond Collins

  Becca closed her eyes, drawing on focus. She needed her stone.

  “That way,” she pointed. “A long way that way. Just going, and going.”

  “Why?” Robbie asked. “Why is she so far?”

  “Cemetery,” Becca said, laying back again. “She’s hurt.”

  She drifted again. Voices. Robbie, Grant. Dawn’s hands.

  “I’m fine,” Becca said, sitting up once more. “Where’s Billy. Is he okay?”

  “I’m here, girl,” Billy said. “You aren’t getting rid of me that easily.”

  Becca rubbed her face.

  “I shouldn’t have left her,” she said. “She’s hurt.”

  “That woman is going to make it to retirement to spite us all,” a strong voice said. Becca looked up and squinted against the sun. Bella took a step to the side. “Grant and Robbie are going to get her. Let Dawn take care of you.”

  “Fine,” Becca said. She’d meant to say ‘I’m fine’, but it didn’t all come out. That should have proven something to her, but she was too stubborn.

  “Where’d the barn go?” Becca heard someone ask. She turned her head to see Quinn limping up with Robbie and Grant supporting her. How long had she had her eyes closed?

  “I used the quartz,” Becca said. “Like you told me to.”

  “I did not,” Quinn said.

  “Yes you did,” Becca said.

  “Well, I was kidding,” Quinn said. “I said I was kidding.”

  “You did not,” Becca said, her voice rising childishly.

  “Well, I thought it,” Quinn said. Becca settled back onto her elbows.

  “She passed out,” Becca said. Dawn was watching after Quinn.

  “That’s a lot of blood,” she said with a worried tone.

  “I told you,” Becca said.

  “Go,” Bella said, kneeling next to Becca. “I can watch her. If anything changes, I’ll call you.”

  Dawn was gone at a moment and Bella put her hand on Becca’s forehead.

  “They were right,” she said.

  “About what?” Becca asked.

  “That you were the one who could save them,” Bella said. “There’s shrapnel all over the field. I don’t know who else would have recognized the eyes that you destroyed.”

  “Mmm,” Becca said. “They were there and so was I.”

  Bella smiled.

  “Well done.”

  Becca nodded and let her eyes slide for a moment, and then Dawn was over her again.

  “That woman,” Dawn muttered. Becca looked around.

  “Where’s Bella?”

  “Getting everyone loaded,” Dawn said. “I need to see if you can move, or if we need to do something special.”

  Becca shook her head. She was feeling much better, actually. The horizon stayed horizontal all the way around her, and she was actually able to look at the damage she’d done to the barn.

  “I did that?” she asked.

  “You did,” Dawn answered. “Not a bad day’s work, even if you did destroy my princess quartz in the process.”

  “Is everyone okay?” Becca asked.

  “Hard to say who’s the worst, you, Quinn, or Randy, but yeah. Everyone else is at least not as bad as you.”

  “I told you I’m fine,” Becca said.

  “With help from me,” Dawn muttered, then gave her a smile. “I’m proud of you.”

  “What, for blowing myself up in the end?” Becca asked. Dawn laughed.

  “No, for figuring it out and winning. Looking at all of the injuries I’m going to have to deal with, I’m glad we didn’t have to beat her with magic.”

  Becca nodded.

  “Can I get up now?”

  “Just take it slow,” Dawn said. “I still need to do a full checkout on you. I think you hit your head pretty hard. I don’t ever take it lightly when I have to roll someone over in the middle of a blast zone to see if they’re alive or not.”

  “Oh,” Becca said, leaning on Dawn to help her stand. “Sorry.”

  “You should be,” Dawn said. “Scared me to death, seeing you like that. But look at you. There isn’t a scratch on you. You blew up a pile of wrought iron disks. I mean, did you even stop to think about that before you did it? You literally built a bomb and then just set it off and ran. The eyes were all over the place.”

  “Someone should pick those up,” Becca said, halting to look around.

  “Did you count them?” Dawn asked with a tone that said she knew Becca hadn’t.

  “No,” Becca admitted sullenly.

  “Then you’re just going to have to trust that Billy and Grant did their best and let it go.”

  “Are you going to do any magicky stuff and try to find any ones that I missed?” Becca asked. Dawn stopped, holding Becca up by the shoulders.

  “Becca. You blew up the barn. We aren’t going to hang out here to see what happens next.”

  “I blew it up?” Becca asked. “Looked to me like it was already in pretty bad shape, by the time I got back.”

  Dawn snorted and slid back under Becca’s arm.

  “There is no barn, Becca,” Dawn said. “You did that.”

  At the trucks, Billy saw them coming and ran to help Becca.

  “I’m fine,” Becca said. “My legs work fine.”

  “When you’ve got that one giving you a lift, you aren’t fine,” Billy said, nearly dragging her off her feet as he pulled her arm across his shoulders. He had a back like an ox.

  “Ow,” she complained.

  “What?” Dawn asked. “Where?”

  “My armpit,” Becca squawked, shifting to try to get her weight to hang better. Billy grinned.

  “Nothing wrong with this one that a day sleeping in the back of the truck won’t fix.”

  “Is that your expert opinion?” Dawn chided.

  “You’ve got plenty to do,” Billy said more sincerely. “She’s not the top of your list by a long way. And that is my expert opinion.”

  Dawn sighed.

  “You’re not wrong. Get her in the truck and take off. I’ve got some more stabilizing to do, and then we’ll see you back at camp.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Billy teased with a wink for Becca. He waved at Jackson, who waved back, and then Becca was in the front seat of the truck and he was starting it.

  “She doesn’t make any indent on the seat at all,” Becca observed, looking back at the nest she’d made out of the back seat over the past year. Billy laughed.

  “That’s certainly true.”

  “Everyone really is all right?” Becca asked.

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “Dawn will put right what isn’t. You weren’t any too early, though.”

  Becca nodded, leaning her head against the glass.

  “I ran,” she said. “But the eyes were on fenceposts and had been for a hundred years. Took some work to get them off.” She sat up. “Someone checked to make sure she really was dead?”

  Billy nodded.

  “Unless she was toting a set of decoy bones with her, yeah. That would be her.”

  “What did you do with them?” Becca asked.

  He looked at her as if it were a dumb question. Maybe it was; she still wasn’t going to feel bad for asking it.

  “We burnt them and buried them,” he said. “Quick as we could, of course, but it’s done. No ghosting around for her.”

  Becca nodded.

  That was good.

  She hated to think what that kind of anger could do as a spirit.

  “And all of the people from the town got out?” she asked.

  “When you blew up the eyes, there was a bit of a circus there in the barn,” Billy said. “The whole thing was falling down, sure enough, but I think it was the spirits that did the most damage. They’d been fighting with her for a long time, I think, and they went after her the second you let them out. Hard to say what killed her - losing her power, the barn falling in on her, or that mad lot of spirits.”

  Becca shook her head.

  �
��Wonder how long she’s had them like that,” Becca said.

  “You saw the graveyard,” Billy said. “When did they die?”

  Becca laughed.

  “You know, I didn’t think to check at the time.”

  He nodded.

  “It’s over, anyway.”

  They drove in silence back to the camp, where Billy went to scrounge a breakfast for the two of them. The rest of the Makkai trickled in over the next fifteen minutes and several more of them pitched in to help Billy cook. Becca was sitting with her feet up on a trailer hitch when she saw the car come down the road.

  She jumped up as Jordan leaped out of his car.

  “Becca,” he called, running up to her. “Did you really level old man Warner’s barn?” he asked.

  “Um,” she said. “Yes?”

  He laughed.

  “That’s awesome. He’s a coot. My dad is the insurance agent in town, though, and Warner called him this morning. The police are over there, and a bunch of people are saying that you guys have been over there a bunch. They’re blaming you.”

  Becca turned to look over her shoulder. Jordan grabbed her arm, just gently.

  “I’m sure they can’t prove anything,” he said. “I just thought you should know.”

  She kissed his cheek.

  “Thank you,” she whispered quickly, with a sparkle, and trotted away, looking over her shoulder once and waving. He held up his hand, looking confused.

  “Police are on their way,” Becca called to Jackson. She looked at Grant as she went past him. “You still mad I kissed him?”

  Grant opened his mouth and closed it.

  “I didn’t say anything,” he said as she kept going. She turned backwards to watch him.

  “You haven’t spoken to me in two days,” she said, then spun again. All around her, the Makkai were packing. They would be gone in ten minutes, maybe less, just a memory on the ground.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jordan standing against his car watching, arms folded, face bemused. She thought about waving once more, but that just wasn’t her style.

  “No man is ever complete without a goal.

  “However big or small that goal might be, a man will search until he finds meaning in that goal, and then he will either accomplish it or he will let it sit in front of him, keeping him company. The man who completes his goals is a man always at risk of meaninglessness, but the man who holds his goals at arm’s length secretly knows he is already meaningless.

  “And so it is for the Makkai.

  “From the very beginning, even as the Makkai had first started wandering, before they understood the nature of their lives, the Makkai have been healers. Some Makkai are more gifted than others, and some care more than others, but there have always been those of us for whom care and gift overlap deeply, and these Makkai have wandered from town to town, village to village, practicing their art of healing.

  “The advent of crystal magic boosted the Makkai from well-meaning and well-educated practitioners to truly remarkable healers, but the new magics took time to learn, and even as little sisters did learn them, even before the beginning of the tribes, they had to communicate amongst themselves to find what worked and what didn’t, broadly.

  “It was during this time of learning that a family of Makkai took to a pasture outside of a small town, near to a deep, old wood, the type that made the locals tell stories to their children, in order to keep them out of it at night.

  “And it was that the men of the village were out in the wood, chopping down long-dead trees to drag them home for firewood, when one of them was crushed by his mule.

  “A mule is an animal that knows the meaning of its actions, and it is either moved or unmoved by the creatures around it. One may be a gentle caretaker to a herd of cows against any and all predators, while another would stand by and chew leaves while a pack of wolves feasted, so long as they didn’t bother him. This mule was one of the latter, an animal accustomed to hard work and willing enough at that, but the cries of his master as it dragged a great tree across him meant nothing, and it took three men to stop him some time later as he continued to drag the tree home.

  “The man, for his part, had been lucky, for the ground was wet and thick with moss, and where he fell, there were no rocks. They say that he left an imprint in the ground detailed enough that you could see that he still had all his fingers.

  “The men began the careful process of trying to take him home, but he wailed and screamed in agony any time they would touch him, and they were at a loss.

  “The closest people nearby were the Makkai, and they heard the commotion and came running. The family protector saw clearly what had happened and sent his mature son back to the camp to get the little sister, an aunt named Celia.

  “Celia’s mother had married an outsider, a dark-skinned man from some distance away, and Celia had the look of her father with the magical skills of her mother. Even the Makkai were sometimes untrusting of the woman, but if the Makkai would not openly approach her, how much more so was it true for the villagers, who had never seen such skin or such features in their lives.

  “In some places, they told stories that her mother had lain with a wolf or a bear, to bring forth such a child, and Celia was much scorned and much mocked, but she remained tender and willing, ever aware of the suffering of others, as if that awareness was fueled by her own frequent unhappiness.

  “In that spirit of willing helpfulness, she arrived upon the broken man and put her hands to him. He cried out and tried to move away from her, but Celia was patient and persistent, and with time she took the measurement of his injuries.

  “’He is injured to the point of death,’ she told his friends, ‘but if I am careful and if time is with me, I can give him a complete recovery.’

  “They spoke amongst themselves for quite a time as she continued to work, giving the man a broth that brought him peace, at least, from his pain. When they returned to her, it was with a sharply divided opinion, but the majority agreed that they would do as she said, because she spoke with a voice of quiet authority and because they could see how much comfort she had brought their friend, even in so short a time.

  “The rest of the men, though, said that Celia was an outsider, and an ugly one at that, and that they should banish her, send her away as quickly as possible, and send for the man at the village who tended the livestock when they were injured and delivered the babies.

  “These men resented that Celia sat so near to their friend, that she presumed to know how to heal his broken body without knowing him, or their customs, at all. The protector saw this resentment, but he allowed Celia to work nonetheless, because to force her to leave would be to punish her beyond anything the men could do.

  “And so she spent the day tending him, and when night began to fall and the men grew nervous, for the woods were full of dangers that grew worse and worse as darkness came, she sent for a tent to be pitched over herself and her charge, and she stayed with him all night, tending him sleeplessly by the light of a very small fire.

  “Through the next day, he woke and slept at intervals, and she stayed with him, bathing his face through fevers, and carefully setting bones and closing wounds so that the skin would grow straight again.

  “The second night, the man was awake, and he heard wolves outside.

  “’Go now,’ he told Celia. ‘Go or they will have us both.’

  “’Be at peace,’ she answered. ‘I do not fear any animal with fur and teeth.’

  “Again, the wolves outside called to each other, drawn by the smell of the man’s blood and sweat.

  “’Please, go,’ the man said. ‘I would not have your death on my head as well as my own.’

  “’I will not,’ she said. ‘I will not leave you and I will not fear them. They aren’t strong enough to reach us.’

  And as the man was about to argue a third time, he heard a crack and saw a bright light, and everywhere around him, there was the sound of thun
der and of wolves crying and fleeing. Celia did not so much as look up from her work, but he was greatly amazed.

  “The next day, his friends came to see his progress and he told them the story of what had happened, and while they could see the great skill that Celia had used in restoring their friend’s health, they were afraid of what she might be, and they encouraged him to flee.

  “’Look, see, you are able to walk,’ many of them said. ‘Come with us and heal in your own home. Leave her before she turns you into a goat or makes you her slave.’

  “’I will not leave this spot until she tells me I should,’ the man answered. ‘And you are fools to suspect her of any ill will.’

  “And they looked at her and they saw her unusual features and her dark eyes and they thought she had already enslaved their friend, and they began to plot against her.

  “In the meantime, Celia’s family had begun to grow concerned about the townspeople and their attitudes toward them and Celia, and they were ready to move on. A modern Makkai healer would have been able to move the man, by this time, but Celia did not have the benefit of their knowledge, and she was working through the process of healing him with many small mistakes and errors that slowed down his progress compared to what we are used to.

  “Perhaps he would have been fine to walk to the camp, or even to the village, but she resolved to keep him still one more night so that she would be sure his bones and his flesh would hold up as he came out of the woods. The protector did not argue with her, nor did the older sister, because of Celia’s passion and the real impact of her gift. And so she spent the next night in the woods again, sitting with the man, rubbing his flesh with her hands and setting healing crystals around him to give his body the energy to heal.

  “And the man saw the love she had for all men in her eyes, and the skill and strength of her hands, and he loved her. He had no wife, no, not even a mother or father to go home to, and he asked her in the quiet of the darkness if she would be his.

  “’I can’t say yes to that,’ Celia told him, pressing him back down onto his mats to rest. ‘You don’t know the sacrifice it would be, to be my husband.’

  “’What sacrifice could it be?’ he asked, ‘to spend my life with such a woman as you, so compassionate and kind? I will not let you say no.’