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

by Margo Bond Collins

  “Anyway,” Lash continued, “a little while passed, and I’d moved on to other kid-related business, and then I hear Ana call to me again. So I turn to face her and she’s holding this out to me,” he held up the bracelet again. “She said that, since I couldn’t wear it on my head, she figured it’d be nice if I could wear it around my wrist. Or something like that, at least. You know, kid-talk never sounds that clear.

  “And yeah. I never stopped wearing it. Over the years I’ve had to fidget with it so that it would still fit, even had to use some of my own to make it long enough, but I’ve worn it every day since.” He sighed and looked up, “So, yeah, I love her. I admit it. But while others might see this and think it’s this creepy thing—maybe even imagine me peering through her windows or something and cutting fresh strands in her sleep to make this thing—nothing could be farther from the truth. See, there’s plenty of guys that have tried to gawk at her through her window and such, but I’ve always been the one pulling them down from their ledges and kicking their asses for perving on her like that. I’ve always believed she deserved better than that, because, in a world full of people like those kids who were laughing at me for having no hair—the ones who would push me down in my moment of weakness to pull themselves one rung higher—she was willing to knock herself down a peg so I wouldn’t feel low. That’s the sort of person she is, and I’ve been trying ever since to be something in her eyes like she’s been in mine since that day.”

  Aderyn stared at him for a moment, not saying anything. Then he nodded and glanced off. “You’re a good guy, Lash,” he finally said. “You hide it well—like, really well—but, damn, there it is. I really had you pegged all wrong.”

  “I’m sure a lot of people do,” Lash shrugged.

  Aderyn raised an eyebrow. “And that doesn’t bug you?” he asked. “I mean, I’d hate it if people had the wrong idea of me like that.”

  Another shrug. “So what if they do? I’m sure those kids thought all sorts of awful things about Ana after she made a show of cutting off her hair like that in front of them, but she didn’t even notice them while she did it; didn’t even care about them after she’d finished. I wear this to remind myself that people like her are out there, so what sort of person would I be if I ignored that lesson and worried what every person thought?”

  “You seemed to be pretty nervous about what I thought earlier,” Aderyn said.

  Lash blushed and shrugged. “Because she really seems to like you, and you really don’t seem to be trying to be liked. I guess I thought if I could, I don’t know, one up you or something then I’d…” he trailed off and groaned. “Look, just please don’t tell her any of this, okay? I’d rather go through life looking after her and having her friendship than having her run from me thinking I’m some sort of…”

  “Stalker?” Aderyn finished, then, as Lash started to groan again, added, “Kidding. Dude, I’m kidding. It’s fine.” He smiled and nodded. “It’s going to be okay. Your secret’s safe with me, buddy.”

  Lash smiled and nodded. “Thanks,” he said. Then, sighing, he shifted to better face the mage and said, “So now you gotta tell me something, right? That’s how this works. I spill out my deepest, darkest secret, so now I get to hear yours, right?”

  Aderyn stared at him. “A secret?”

  Lash nodded. “That’s the rule, isn’t it?”

  “Not one that I ever heard of,” he admitted.

  “Come on, man. Don’t make me the only red-faced SOB here,” Lash pleaded.

  Aderyn sighed and wiped his face with his free hand. “I don’t know. My father was kind of a power-hungry ass, and I guess you can say he instilled in me some piss-poor life lessons before getting himself banished.”

  Lash frowned at that. “He was banished, too?”

  Aderyn scowled and shrugged. “He was banished, as well, yes, though he was basically kicked out because everyone was too disgusted with him to even deal with him while I was…” His breath caught in his throat and he looked down. “I guess we weren’t so different, after all.”

  “So what did he do?” Lash asked.

  Aderyn seemed to be working to look anywhere but toward him suddenly. “He…” his voice was starting to break around the one word.

  “Ryn?” Lash, remembering the nickname his friend had used, leaned toward him a bit. “You okay?”

  “He killed my mom,” Aderyn croaked out as a tear slipped free and rolled down his cheek. “He learned how power disperses when a mage dies around another mage—their power reserves divide among the providers that are linked to them—and so he drove her out into the middle of nowhere and killed her because he thought it’d make him stronger.”

  Lash stammered and looked away. “Oh my, Aderyn, I’m so—”

  “Don’t say it, please,” Aderyn pleaded. “I am so tired of people looking at me like that—talking to me like that—and then they wonder why I lock myself away in my garage and tinker with my car and my magic books. They’re the only things left of that bastard that were worth anything. Anything he ever said or did was pretty much turned to garbage when he did what he did, and the twisted part of it is that he was actually spared the death penalty for it.”

  Lash sneered at that. “Why would they spare him if he did something so terrible?”

  “Because he absorbed my mother’s essence through her death,” Aderyn spat out the explanation like a poison thing. “And nobody—nobody—wanted to feel her remaining essence divided among all of them. The thought of gaining some sort of tarnished strength from him after what he’d done made them all too sick to do the job, so they kicked him out. His car and his books were left behind so that, with any luck, he’d die like I almost did with no other mages around.”

  “And did he?” Lash asked.

  “Who knows?” Aderyn shrugged. “More than likely, but the guy was more stubborn than even I am. So he might have found a way to beat death.” He sighed. “He always wanted more, more, more for himself without ever giving anything; pretty much the opposite of how magic should work.” He scoffed and said, “I’m sure he’d love the idea of getting cursed with what Ana’s got, to be honest.” Then, pulling away from the wall they’d been leaning on, he finished with, “So I’m sure if there was some way to cheat the system and survive then he’d find a way.”

  An awkward silence passed between the two as they shouldered the still-sleeping Ana. Both of them seemed to know that they needed to get moving again, and in their mutually shared discomfort at their confessions it seemed the only thing left for them to do was to trudge onward so that they didn’t have to dwell there with their thoughts.

  Fortunately, a remedy came to relieve them of their awkwardness and leave them eager to have it back.

  “Gentlemen,” an oily voice chimed from the top of the stairs, where a man in an expensive looking outfit and draped with an even more expensive looking jacket stared down at them. Five men, looking like any of the bodies that littered the floor inside the Library, stood on either side of him—two on his left and three on his right—but, despite their weapons and cold, determined stares, Lash found his guts twisting with more fear at the man himself than the collective group. Wetting his lips, the man took a single step on the descent toward them, saying, “I’d like to relieve you of that deadly burden that you’re carrying there.”

  Chapter 19

  “Oh man,” Aderyn groaned, already starting to move his palms together. “Brace yourself, Sybii, this is gonna suck.”

  Lash frowned at that, glancing first up the stairs at the approaching men and then back at Ana. “Should I wake—” he started.

  It proved unnecessary.

  “Hmm? H-huh? Oh, ow. OW. OW.” Ana’s eyes flew open and she grabbed at her arm, which had begun to glow under the sleeve that concealed most of it. “What’s going—huh? Who’s tha—AH!”

  Lash, letting out a similar cry that existed somewhere between shock, pain, and breathlessness, moved to keep her upright as he watched her
stumble under the force.

  Yup, Aderyn thought as he yanked his hands apart and tore through reality with the motion. Sucks, doesn’t it?

  He regretted not being able to say the words to them at that moment, but, as he’d yet to create oxygenated air for any of them to breathe in this new pocket dimension, trying would have been a death sentence.

  Just a moment longer, he silently willed the two as they thrashed around, clinging to their throats and making chaotic displays that, yes, there was indeed no air all of a sudden.

  It was likely an unusual sight for the two, who, without any landscape or design assigned to the new pocket, saw the world they’d been occupying a moment ago as though it existed on the other side of a window made of shimmering, gravity defying water. In fact, with the exception of feeling bone-dry—with the lack of air, bitter cold, and the shimmering view of the stairwell and the approaching man—Aderyn was sure the two were feeling exactly like they were drowning.

  Pinch at the palm, quarter turn pull, palm-to-close, counter-turn halfway, bring the fists together.

  The gestures seemed to move in slow motion here, and Aderyn kept hoping that the Sybii were decent at holding their breath as the actions lagged a few seconds behind the efforts to create them. Finally, feeling a mixture of dread and relief, he watched as his fists crashed together and, in a flurry of wind that felt like being dropped in the middle of a tornado, all three of them gasped and began dragging in deep breaths of air.

  “Ohmygodthatsucked.” Lash’s voice sounded like a sped-up and broken toy.

  Ana, croaking around her own tormented lungs, looked around. “Whathappened?Whydowe—”

  Okay, that’s already annoying. Aderyn sighed and, still panting himself, tapped the back of his hand, rotated it around to the palm, and, imagining a clock face there, moved his pointer finger along it in an effort to adjust the movement of time.

  “—sound this way? Oh.” Ana stopped as her words began coming out at a normal rate.

  “There,” Aderyn let out a relieved sigh and paused long enough to glare past the two at the man, who’d finally reached the bottom step and was glaring back through the rift in reality at them.

  “Can—” Lash paused, seeming startled that his own breath and words were working properly before continuing. “Can he get through?”

  “No,” Aderyn said, “he can still see us, but he can no more enter through here than walk through the concrete we were leaning against.”

  “Can he hear us?” Ana asked, taking a step closer to the shimmering, shifting wall that divided them.

  Aderyn frowned. “Do you want him to?”

  Ana only nodded.

  Sighing, Aderyn started to make the necessary gestures, silently thanking the seemingly bottomless reserve of Ana’s curse. Were it not for that, he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to get this far in creating his own pocket dimension. He was about to finish the cycle when…

  “Wait,” Lash held up a hand and turned to her. “Ana, are you sure you want to talk to this guy? He’s the one who sent those men to kill us.”—Aderyn decided against correcting that they’d likely only been sent to kill her—“And I doubt he’s going to have anything pleasant to say.”

  Ana gave him a single nod. “I need to know what this is about,” she explained. “Even if we don’t like what he has to say, at least we know we’re safe, right?”

  Aderyn caught sight of Lash moving his hand to the bracelet and giving it a small rotation around his wrist before giving her a nod.

  What sort of person would I be if I ignored that lesson and worried what every person thought?

  Suddenly the sibyl-boy made a lot of sense to Aderyn.

  Seeing that Ana’s mind was made up, he finished the process and allowed sound to come between the membrane dividing them.

  “…this sort of thing before,” the middle of the strange man’s explanation to his men cut into the pocket, making the two Sybii jump at the sudden new voice that echoed around them. “I’m afraid that, until they come out, there’s no way through.”

  “You’re damn right,” Aderyn called out to him as he stepped beside the others. The words, aside from getting a jab in at the creepy man, served the purpose of telling the others that they could be heard as well as they were hearing things from the other side. “And don’t think we’re done with you, either. My buddy got gunned down by your trigger-happy A-holes in there.”

  Ana held up a hand to stop Aderyn’s threats as she studied the man. Though in some ways he was an arm’s reach away, there was an immeasurable distance between them. The rift was inches away, sure, but the space between the here and there was wider than the universe.

  Ana looked as though she felt too close to the awful man and yet not close enough.

  She was probably right.

  It was a distance that was better calculated in laughter and tears than actual units of measurement.

  But Ana wasn’t the calculating sort.

  Instead, all she said was “Why?”

  Ana wasn’t sure how she’d managed to fall asleep in the wake of everything that had happened, but she had. And, despite all the things that she’d been through, it was one of the deepest, most rejuvenating rests she’d ever had.

  Coming out of it hadn’t been at all pleasant, though. The burning in her arm that she’d quickly come to recognize as Aderyn drawing on the curse’s power hadn’t been a picnic for her when he’d managed to deflect the many streams of bullets for the short time it had taken for the dark thoughts to finally push her to handle the situation. That was what she’d remembered them calling it as it was happening: “handling” the situation. That’s what all those deaths boiled down to.

  Yet, even after handling it, she’d slept like a baby—a realization that made her feel sick to her stomach—only to be awoken again by that fresh-yet-familiar burning. It was worse than before. A lot worse. Like she was being branded into the waking world. Then, before she got her bearings, she was yanked into a strange world of dry water and all the cold, suffocating horror that such a place had to offer.

  Best sleep of her life.

  Worst wakeup call ever.

  And now, face to face—but not really, right?—with a smirking man who was, apparently, out to kill her, she asked the only question that came to mind: Why?

  The word was every bit as easy as the first simple-yet-awful word she’d spoken only a short time earlier—They even rhyme, the dark thoughts mused, and the urge to clap rose and fell within her. How delightful—and every bit as loaded and terrible.

  Unfortunately, the weight of the response for the second word felt heavier than the deaths of thirty-seven soldiers who’d been killing everyone and anyone in an effort to get to her.

  “Yours is a truly tragic tale,” the man said, actually sounding sympathetic. “You didn’t ask for this, and you certainly don’t deserve this. However, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, I’m afraid.”

  “A person’s life is at stake and you’re reciting philosophy?” Aderyn said, disgust laced through his voice.

  The man shrugged. “I was actually quoting Star Trek. I’m something of a Spock lover.” His slight smile vanished and was replaced with a cold, emotionless glare. “But the logic is sound all the same, and that you chose that line of phrasing specifically—‘a person’s life is at stake’—is exactly the reason why you need to see things our way.” He leveled his gaze with Ana and sighed. “It is a tragedy that you have to die, but you do have to die, and I’m willing to sacrifice however many it takes—be it my men, innocents, or even myself—to see this through. Because no matter how many might die in my quest to destroy you and the power you carry, even more could die if you and it are allowed to go on living.”

  He stepped forward and put his hand as close as he could to the dividing barrier without actually touching it. “That is why, Analetta Lovelli. because, kind and well-mannered as you may seem—as you may very well be—you’re now the single greate
st threat to every man, woman, and child on this planet. Heck, you’re a threat to existence itself. And it’s my job to track and eliminate that threat every time it jumps to a new host.”

  Ana felt like she was about to cry. “That sounds like a very sad and lonely life. Moving from person to person, killing over and over but never knowing an end to it all.”

  The man nodded. “It’s very kind of you to see it that way. You’re honestly the first to recognize what we’re trying to do.” He looked down and sighed, “I have to imagine it’s something like the curse itself. always moving, never tiring, never stopping. And”—he forced a smile that had no joy behind it—“always killing.”

  We can see an end to one side of it very quickly, the thoughts rose.

  I don’t want to go through that again, Ana thought back.

  The urge to laugh grew. We will never not go through that again so long as he lives to send more after us.

  Ana felt a tear burn down her cheek. Please don’t make me.

  The man cocked his head, watching her stand on the other side of the divide, tears rolling down her face. “It’s talking to you now, isn’t it?”

  Ana nodded.

  “Telling you to kill me?”

  Another nod.

  “And why don’t you?”

  Ana looked up at him. “Because it’s not right.”

  Both Aderyn and Lash tensed at that, clearly not agreeing with her stance.