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

by Margo Bond Collins

  “You powdered a cherry diamond?” Patricia asked. “Where did you even get one?”

  Becca pinched the powder and followed the same circle around Bella that Dawn and Quinn did around Aaron and Patricia.

  “Tonight, I need truth,” Bella said. “Fire.”

  Billy, Jackson, and Colin appeared from the sides with firewood.

  Stacks of it.

  Becca watched with some horror as they built up the campfire well beyond where it would even be survivable at the distance that Bella, Aaron, and Patricia were bound. The flames would be fifteen feet high, when they were done, and Becca would be hiding in the heat shadow from Bella’s post just to stay where she was.

  She turned her face away as the flame caught on the wood and the rest of the tribe backed away from the intense heat.

  Bella looked at Patricia.

  “Who is Handel?”

  “I don’t know,” Patricia said.

  “Think,” Bella said. “He’s important.”

  “I don’t know anyone called Handel.”

  Becca knew the magic well enough to know that if she wasn’t screaming from the heat, she was telling the truth; the cherry diamond would only protect her from the fire so long as she was truthful.

  “You do,” Bella answered.

  She was also telling the truth.

  Patricia looked at the ground for a minute, then her head jerked up.

  “You mean the kid in New Orleans,” she said. “What about him?”

  “Who was he?” Bella asked.

  “Just a kid,” Patricia said. She turned her face away, straining, and then yelled. “Okay. No. He wasn’t.”

  She breathed hard for a moment then glared at Bella.

  “Who was he?” Bella asked again.

  “I slept with him,” Patricia said. “A few times before I got married.”

  “He loved you,” Bella said sternly, again, an incantation.

  “Yes,” Patricia yelled, angrier. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not a part of this.”

  “You slept with an outsider in New Orleans?” Aaron asked. “You knew better.”

  “I was young,” Patricia said. “And he liked me.”

  “He loved you,” Bella said.

  “Fine, I liked that he loved me,” Patricia said. “Is that what you want? To shame me for something I did two decades ago?”

  “You opened the door,” Bella said, turning her head to Aaron. “And you killed her. But she caused the injury.”

  “What?” Aaron asked.

  “Did you sleep with Patricia?” Bella asked.

  “No,” Aaron answered. That might have been relief, finally getting to say it where everyone would know that he wasn’t lying.

  “Fine,” Patricia said. “I made that up, too…”

  “I don’t care about you any more,” Bella said. “You opened the door. That is all.” She looked back at Aaron. “She didn’t believe you.”

  “No,” he said, still angry.

  “She drove you away,” she said.

  “Yes,” he yelled over the roar of the fire, the sound of fury.

  “And you took another,” Bella said. Sharp. An accusation.

  “She didn’t want me,” Aaron said.

  “But you never forgave yourself,” Bella said.

  “For what?” he challenged.

  “For being unfaithful to her,” Bella said.

  He took a long time, now.

  “No,” he said finally. “No. I didn’t.”

  “His magic was mixed with Makkai,” Bella said. “I couldn’t figure out how Makkai magic was twisted up in it until Grant explained it to me. Your guilt. He used it against us.”

  Aaron’s head came up and he watched her with an almost broken expression.

  “What has this got to do with anything?” Patricia squawked. “Let me go.”

  “He loved you,” Bella shouted, actually angry this time. “And then your lover scorned you in favor of another woman. That was the story you told them. The story you told him wasn’t it?”

  “What if it…” Patricia started, then her mouth fell open.

  “He cast a curse to kill her,” Bella said. “To kill her slowly. Painfully. Not through physical torture. Through paranoia and fear and loss. A curse that was so strong, it lived on past him. Because Aaron loved Jasmine.”

  “He didn’t know Jasmine,” Patricia said, only just loud enough for Becca to hear her.

  “No,” Bella said. “He didn’t. He just knew that it was your protector Aaron and your queen.”

  “So it followed the queen,” Aaron said. “So long as I was with her.”

  “Yes,” Bella said. “And then your son after you.”

  Aaron looked tired.

  So very tired.

  “And he’s dead,” he said. “We can’t break it.”

  “We can’t break his curse, but we can heal our wound,” Bella said. “Dragon’s blood.”

  Becca was two beats late, this time, realizing that she was supposed to find the dragon’s blood in her pouch. She finally did, glancing over to find Dawn waiting for her attention before the little sister put the stone at the base of the post in front of her. Becca nearly had to lay on her belly to reach far enough to place the stone without burning her face, but she got it there, inching her way away and standing again.

  “You lied,” Bella said to Patricia. “To hurt him and to hurt Jasmine. But it was your contact with an outsider who loved you that brought this tribe to tragedy. So many things could have gone differently and nothing would have happened, but it isn’t for you to heal this.”

  She looked at Aaron.

  “Jasmine ended your relationship,” she said. “If she had kept you close, Makkai magic would have protected her and the curse would have failed. He needed your natural magic, your Makkai magic in order to get to her.”

  “What do I do?” he asked.

  “It was her fault,” Bella said.

  “So?” he asked. “I didn’t want her to die.”

  “Because you loved her,” Bella said.

  “Yes,” he said, his anger returning. “Because I loved her.”

  “Let her go,” Bella said. “It was her own lack of faith in you that brought this curse on your tribe, and there was nothing you could do to stop it. She did this.”

  “She was a great queen,” he shouted, his face going red. “Don’t say that about her.”

  “She was a great queen,” Bella shouted back. “But she made a grave, fatal mistake in not trusting you. It. Was. Her. Fault.”

  He strained against his ropes for a minute.

  “Green calcite,” Bella said.

  Becca was on it this time, getting out the stone and placing it carefully in between the toes of her boots just as Dawn and Quinn did.

  The fight went out of Aaron. Green calcite was part of healing magic, though Becca didn’t know enough about it to know how.

  “I love my wife,” Aaron said.

  “Go home to her,” Bella said. “Stop taking Jasmine home with you.”

  He slumped against the post, his head off to one side. Bella drew another big breath.

  “One glade opal on either side of my post, please, Becca,” she said, waiting a moment as Becca figured out how to do that as gracefully as she could.

  Why just Bella?

  Dawn and Quinn watched her as she worked, unmoving.

  Why just Bella?

  “This curse was on the queen,” Bella said. “It was because of love for a little sister, jealousy of a protector, cast through his guilt, but it was on the queen. And so, to lay this curse to rest, one last queen will die.”

  There were shouts as everyone in the circle reacted, including Dawn and Quinn, everyone rushing at Becca to stop whatever was going to happen next, but Bella was already chanting something that Becca couldn’t her over the shouts and the fire. The bag in her hand grew hot, unbearably hot, like holding a red coal in her palm, and her body reacted before her mind could stop it. She dr
opped the bag and the obsidian burned through the bag, landing in line with the dragon’s blood and the green calcite.

  The fire exploded out of its rock circle, knocking Becca physically back as it roared up over Bella’s post. The last thing Becca saw as she hit the ground was flame curling up and around Bella’s black hair.

  She woke up to stinging on her face.

  “Stop fighting,” Dawn said quietly. “I know it hurts.”

  “What?” Becca asked, still trying to get her hands up to protect her face.

  “I said stop fighting,” Dawn said again. “It burned your face.”

  “What happened?” Becca asked. “It’s dark.”

  “That’s because it’s dark,” Grant said.

  “Thank you,” Becca said, trying to sit up. Someone held her down by her shoulders.

  “Be still,” Dawn said. “Let me finish.”

  “What happened?” Becca asked. “Why did she do that?”

  “Because that’s how you break a curse,” Bella said.

  Becca jolted up. Just nothing the hands could do about it.

  “You didn’t die,” she said.

  “Glade opals are water crystals,” Dawn said.

  “You didn’t know that,” Becca said. “You thought she was going to kill herself.”

  “I didn’t figure it out until after,” Dawn said.

  “The fire went out,” Grant said, sounding in awe. “It just sucked itself up into the sky. The wood wasn’t even hot any more.”

  “Because it wanted to kill me,” Bella said. “I let it out, and I kept it from getting back in.”

  “You’re sure?” Grant asked.

  “I am,” Bella said. “Not even a shadow of a doubt.”

  “Will you let me finish?” Dawn asked. “You didn’t have a glade opal protecting you.”

  Becca lay back and let Dawn’s probing fingers continue to work over her skin. Her eyes finally adapted to the moonlight and she could pick out the features of Grant’s face.

  “You’ll stay?” she asked.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  “What happened to Patricia and Aaron?” Becca asked.

  “They didn’t want to stay,” Dawn said. “Colin and Robbie are driving them back home.

  “They’re already gone?” Becca asked.

  “It was a bad time,” Bella said, rising from where she was sitting. Becca realized that the queen’s seat had actually been the bonfire itself.

  “I’m going to get some sleep,” Bella said. “The sun will be up before too long, but don’t let that get you up. Tonight, we celebrate.”

  Grant watched after her as Bella left, then turned his attention back to Becca.

  “You’re okay?” he asked.

  “Dawn’s hurting my face more than anything that’s already going on there,” Becca said.

  “She wouldn’t let me do it, because I would have stopped her,” Dawn said. “I would have ruined it all.”

  “Well, here’s to ignorance,” Becca said with a yawn. Dawn let her up and Grant helped her to her feet.

  “Sleep,” Dawn said. “She’s right.”

  “No arguments from me,” Becca said, picking out the trailer she shared with Billy and Ursa from the sound of Ursa’s snoring and going in. She was asleep before her feet left the floor.

  There was food, there was music, there was dancing. When the Makkai had exhausted themselves, they fell into a contented ring around the fire, deep into the next night.

  “Tonight,” Jackson said, sitting forward and putting his hands on his knees. “Tonight, the Makkai have a new story. One that has never been told before. And tonight is the night to tell it.”

  Becca sat forward, excited to hear how he would shape it into words, but he looked at her.

  “I think that we should have a new voice tell it, though,” he said. “One who was there for more parts of it than anyone.”

  The entire tribe turned to look at her and Becca swallowed.

  She didn’t tell stories. Loved to listen, but she didn’t tell them. Didn’t have the knack.

  Jackson had a sparkle in his eye that said he wasn’t going to back down, and she swallowed, trying to figure out where a story like this would start.

  She nodded to herself.

  “It started, like most things, with a man who loved a woman.”

  The End

  Continue the Gypsy Queen Series in book two, Gypsy Dawn.

  https://blenderfiction.wordpress.com/gypsy-dawn

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  About the Author

  I'm Chloe and I am the conduit between my dreaming self and the paper (well, keyboard, since we live in the future). I write paranormal, sci-fi, fantasy, and whatever else goes bump in the night, I also write mystery/thriller as Mindy Saturn. When I'm not writing I steeplechase miniature horses and participate in ice cream eating contests. Not really, but I do tend to make things up for a living.

  Read More from Chloe Garner

  https://blenderfiction.wordpress.com/books/

  Renascent

  A Phoenix Dragon Prequel

  Paris Andren

  RENASCENT: A Phoenix Dragon Prequel

  Copyright © 2017 by Paris Andren.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Paris Andren/AnCor Press

  PO Box 46685

  Kansas City, MO/USA 64188

  www.pariswrites.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Ordering Information:

  Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the “Special Sales Department” at the address above.

  Cover Design: Deranged Doctor Designs

  Interior Design: M. Corwin and AnCor Press

  Editor: R. Smith, MA

  Renascent: A Phoenix Dragon Prequel/ Paris Andren. — 1st ed.

  ISBN 978-1-944599-08-9

  In loving memory of my Andrea.

  Renascent

  Only through death would her destiny be realized.

  Cursed with the ability to hear and feel the pains of lost and tortured souls, Charani is committed to an asylum to cure her of the insanity. After years of heinous therapies, she finally loses the will to live and embraces death. In that moment she is reborn into something ancient and powerful.

  Drawn in to a centuries-old war between dragons and drampires, Charani realizes her curse may actually be the ability needed to find the voices of the lost and the Amulet of the Dead, but only if she can learn to harness her gift. If she fails, the cost will be her life and that of her dragon brethren.

  Chapter 1

  I wasn’t always a bad-ass soul seeker.

  Through years of confinement, I’d been conditioned to accept the inevitable until my voice had been silenced by apathy. Until I no longer had the will to fight and I refused to beg. I was so dead on the inside that I eventually died in truth.

  In that moment of death, I embraced freedom once again.

  For fifteen years, I’d been shuffled between various private asylu
ms and hospitals in an attempt to find a cure for the voices that whispered and sometimes screamed through my mind.

  My parents had put all their faith in these various institutions, convinced they could help me. However, after my first admission, I was rarely allowed to come home and perhaps only a handful of times during that first year.

  My parents wanted their perfect little Snow White back—the eight year old me—before I had that first episode…

  I was eight years old and the United States was celebrating its freedom and independence from mother England. I can remember sitting on the cafeteria floor at an assembly and singing songs in celebration with my classmates and my best friend, Jenny. It’s a cherished memory—a moment when I was happy and carefree.

  Jenny sat next to me and played with the ends of my long black hair as it pooled on the floor around me. This would be the last moments of our friendship. If only I had known, I would’ve done something different. Found some way to make it special. But I had no way of knowing this would be my last day of freedom and we would never see each other again.

  The following night my parents, Sebastian and Helena, hosted a party for the Chicago elite, something they did on a regular basis. My father was in the finance industry and my mother sat on the board of several charity organizations. They were well connected and deeply revered.

  They looked so handsome together. He was tall with brown hair and grey eyes and towered over most of the guests. Tonight, he was dressed in a grey corduroy suit. My mother had on a light-blue chiffon pants suit that complemented her petite frame, blonde hair and midnight-blue eyes.

  They were an older couple or at least compared to my friends parents, as they were in their midforties. I loved watching them interact with each other and their guests. They were always so attentive to each other. It had been just the two of them for so long. They had bonded over their struggle to conceive—bringing them closer together, instead of driving them apart.