Paranormal After Dark: 20 Paranormal Tales of Demons, Shifters, Werewolves, Vampires, Fae, Witches, Magics, Ghosts and More

by Rebecca Hamilton

  Looking at her now, her dark shining eyes looking up at Owen, it was clear that she was decidedly not fake. Though, when she slid her hand along the small of Owen’s back, I sort of wanted her to be. He had kissed me, actually kissed me. After what seemed like a lifetime of waiting, Owen finally told me he liked me, and that he had liked me for a long time. And now, now she was here. And she had almond shaped eyes and perfect golden skin. She had hair like black silk and a body – Well, I’m not a girl’s girl or anything, but her body was sick.

  And the worst part, the absolute worst part, was that she didn’t look anything like the sun kissed supermodel I had pictured in my head. No, Merrin was even more beautiful than that.

  But wait. Breakers weren’t allowed to date, were they? They were shoved together based on genetics or something, with no consideration to the way they actually felt about each other. So Merrin couldn’t be his girlfriend. Owen couldn’t even have a girlfriend. She could be his sister for all I knew.

  When she finally let go of him and settled beside me, I caught of glimpse of her backside in the mirror.

  God, please let her be his sister.

  “I don’t-Merrin, what are you doing here?” Owen’s face was a wide eyed blank slate as he looked from her to me and back to her again. She didn’t seem to notice. In fact, if she even knew I was in the room at all, she didn’t give any indication of it.

  “You didn’t think I would leave you here, did you; that I’d find out you’re back and not come? “ Her voice was light and airy. Her hand slid from the small of his back and rested inside his back pocket.

  Okay, she’s not his sister.

  “You’re here, so this is where I belong. I’m yours. You’re mine. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?” She whipped toward me, like her words were an accusation. Did she know? Had she seen us kiss somehow? Maybe that was her Breaker power, the ability to tell the last twenty lips you’ve touched. But her eyes didn’t hold any anger or harshness, and when she smiled, it didn’t look forced.

  “I’m sorry for the impropriety. I’ve just been waiting so long to see Owen,” she reached her hand out to me. I took it. “I’m Merrin; Owen’s perfect.”

  “Well, I mean, he’s pretty awesome,” I said, a blush creeping up my neck. “I’m not sure I’d say perfect though.”

  “No. I’m his perfect,” she repeated in a tone that made me think I should have already known. “His genetic match. His-what’s that other word they use-fiancé.”

  “Merrin,” Owen said, his eyes still wide. “I’ve been gone for two years. I-I figured you had, you know, found somebody else by now.”

  “Oh they wanted me to,” she turned back to him, her hands planted on her narrow hips. “Everyone told me you were never coming back. They said you were a turncoat; a disgrace to your family, a siege on your bloodline, and that I was making a fool of myself for holding on to you. Well, who’s the fool now? I knew you could never turn your back on us, on me; at least not intentionally. And I was right. Here you are.” She looked him up and down. “A little worse for wear, but’s it’s nothing I can’t work with.”

  “Merrin,I allowed myself to be manipulated. I am a disgrace to my family. When Echo told my father about what had happened, he wouldn’t even talk to me. He said he never wanted to see me again.”

  I watched a flash of pain run though Owen’s eyes. He had been hurt in all of this too. It took me too long to realize that.

  “You’re being too hard on yourself,” she chirped. “No one expects you to be perfect. Breakers as far back as the originals have had missteps while trying to accomplish the greater good. And as for your father, leave him to me. You know he could never resist my crème brulee. One bite and he’ll go right back to naming grandchildren.”

  Crème brulee? Grandchildren? She could cook and she wanted to start a family.

  I think I’m gonna be sick.

  “Oh my God,” I said to myself, pulling my hand away. “This isn’t happening. And you really call yourself his perfect?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” She shrugged.” We’re perfectly matched. It’s in our DNA. Shouldn’t you know this?”

  “I guess there are a lot of things I should have known,” I said, shooting a pointed look in Owen’s direction.

  “I thought she was gone,” he said and turned to her. “I thought you were gone. I didn’t think you’d wait for me. They told me they’d find someone else for you; someone better suited.”

  “Someone better suited than my ideal match?” Merrin’s brows rose. “And who told you this, the same people who lied to you for two years?”

  She took his hands in hers, something that sent a pinch of anger running up my arm.

  “You know me well enough to know that I don’t settle, and I don’t give up easily,” she said, and raised his hands so that they were pressed against her chest, against her very full, well-proportioned chest. “And I know you too. I had faith in you; faith that, whatever it was that took you away from me, would bring you back. And it did. You are the person I was born to be with, my other half in every way that matters. Why would I accept anything less than that?”

  “Because life has a way of laughing at your expectations.” Dahlia’s voice, still cold, still domineering, sliced through the room like a machete. She was standing in the doorway, arms folded. She wore a black blouse and matching pants. Her dahlia pin sat in its position near her neck. If possible, she looked even more irritated with me than when she had left. “And you’d do well to remind these two to address you by your field name. Perfect or not, it’s protocol in Weathersby.”

  “Your field name?” Owen asked. His hands were still in hers, still pressed against her chest. “You-you graduated? You’re a Breaker now?”

  “For almost six months. The Council of Masons even sent me to Crestview with Merrin to be their proxy.” she beamed. “And it’s Shine now. My Breaker name is Shine.”

  “It suits you,” he said, but didn’t look her in the face.

  He was right. It was in her face, in the way she moved. There was brightness about her, a lightness that seemed to come from the inside. She shone.

  “Now, if I might pull you away from your emotional reunion, we have things to do. Let my husband know that we’ve returned and we’ll need an audience with him in his office,” Dahlia motioned to Merrin. “Owen, Cresta; Echo’s office, five minutes.”

  “You’re Cresta?” Merrin’s eyes got wide as she looked me up and down, sizing me up like a piece of meat at a butcher shop. “Cresta from Crestview? That’s not possible. You’re just a girl, just a slip of a thing. There’s no way you’re the-“

  “Shine! Now!” Dahlia shouted. Merrin straightened up and hurried out of the room without another word. Dahlia just stood there, examining Owen and I. Her nose crinkled up and she rolled her eyes. “Five minutes,” she repeated. “And try to get ahold of yourselves. This room reeks of hormones and yearning.”

  Five minutes later, I found myself in Echo’s office with Owen at my side. He had spent the intervening time trying to apologize to me about kissing me and Merrin; the whole thing. But I wasn’t mad, at least not at him. The truth was, I wanted him to kiss me. I had for a while, whether I always wanted to admit it or not. And as for Merrin-Well, my monumentally bad timing wasn’t something I could blame Owen for.

  Besides, the thing that really irked me about the entire situation was what Merrin had said about that ‘perfect’ crap, and the fact that part of me thought she might be right.

  We found her sitting on one of the wooden chairs in Echo’s office. Casper was sitting beside her, looking at her like she was a piece of cream cheese pie. Echo was across from them, strumming his fingers familiarly across his desk. Dahlia stood behind him with her hands on his shoulders, shooting me daggered glances. Dr. Static paced back and forth behind Casper, whispering to himself. He stopped short when he caught site of us.

  “Very interesting,” he mumbled, looking at me. “Very interesting.”

>   “Cresta, Owen, close the door behind you please,” Echo said, and motioned to a pair of free chairs. I tried not to look at him as I sat. I was too afraid I’d find some facial similarity that would prove what I didn’t want to be true; that Echo was my father. Was that what Merrin had found out in Crestview? Is that what had taken her so long? Is that why that, even now, she was staring at me like I had kicked her puppy?

  “As you know, Dahlia took a team that included Shine,” he pointed to Merrin, who was still receiving the hungry end of Casper’s eyes.” To Crestview in order to get to the bottom of what happened to you and your mother a few weeks ago,” he started, his fingers still drumming. There was a distance in his voice that worried me.

  “A charming place,” Dahlia scoffed. “Maybe in a decade or two they might even get a movie theatre.”

  “Hey! That’s my hometown you’re talking about,” Casper balked.

  “You’re a Neanderthal?” Merrin made a face like she had just smelled rotten fish and leaned as far away from him as she could while remaining seated.

  “I guess that means we’re not going to have a June wedding,” Casper quipped, but I could tell from the sting that settled in his eyes that the barb hurt.

  I was about to say something. God knows I would have loved to, but Echo beat me to the punch.

  “Enough!” His fingers beat heavier against his desk. “Casper is our guest. As long as you are Shine, I suggest you treat him with the same respect that you expect.”

  I smirked a little, but tried to keep it to myself.

  “As I was saying, when Dahlia and her team made it to Crestview, they found that cleaners had already been there,” Echo stated.

  “Cleaners?” It was a good thing I wasn’t shy about asking questions, because that seemed to be all I’d done since getting to Weathersby.

  “Cleaners are like mental garbage men. They purge psychic remnants from places so that people like Dahlia can’t pick up on them,” Owen answered, leaning closer so I could feel his breath on my ear.

  “There are no people like me, young man,” Dahlia made her way to the front of the desk. “I’m singularly talented. It took a while longer than I expected, but I was able to gleam the truth of what happened, at least, as much as was there.”

  “Wait? You know who came after me? You know who killed my mother?” My body stiffened. I rose in my chair.

  “Yes and no,” Dahlia said, turning back to Echo.

  He took over. “Cresta, the people you knew as your parents-”

  Oh God. This was it, when he told me that he was my father, that the man I lived with my entire life, the man I watched die, was little more than a placeholder.

  “You’re my dad?” The words were small and quiet, but I couldn’t stop them from coming.

  He jerked back, pulling his fingers from his desk. He looked at me for a long moment; deeply, like he was reading something in my eyes. “Oh darling, if only it were that simple. I’ll admit, the possibility crossed my mind, but no Cresta, I am not your father.”

  I breathed heavy, though I was unsure exactly how relieved I was. He had still said those words, ‘the people you knew as your parents’. What did that mean?

  “Sir,” I said, more breathlessly than I intended. “Would someone just tell me what’s going on?”

  Dahlia set herself. A flicker of something, maybe sympathy, moved across her eyes. As quickly as it came though, it left, and she started. “Given that Owen spent the most time physically in Crestview, it was his psionic energy that was most deeply embedded in town. As you know, we already got everything we could from that.”

  Owen nodded, rubbing the back of his head, where his memories had been extracted.

  “There were a few others though. The ones that gave us the most to go on originated from a man called Allister Leeman.”

  “Allister Leeman? The Raven?” For once, Owen seemed as confused as me. “Isn’t he a lunatic; some end of days nutjob? He’s a laughing stock.”

  “He may be,” Echo rubbed at his temples. “But he’s a laughing stock who’s garnered a small yet extremely loyal following since you’ve been away. We also believe that he may be the one behind your deception in the first place.”

  “That’s impossible,” Owen stood now. “There’s no way the Raven did this. I’d have seen through it.”

  “Yes, we’re all aware of how intuitive you are,” Dahlia motioned for him to sit back down, which he did. “That said, the fact that the Raven was there at all is very telling. And it’s not the only evidence we have.”

  “Stop,” I waved my hands. “I’m sure this story’s really fascinating to you guys, but we don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” I pointed back and forth between Casper and I, comfortable enough to speak for him. His expression, as dumbfounded as my own, told me I was right.

  “You’ve heard of our end of days prophecy, about the Bloodmoon and the dragon?” Echo looked at me.

  “Yeah, I won that capture the flag thing you guys had the other day,” I answered.

  “Really? This year’s recruits must be particularly disappointing,” Dahlia said.

  Echo gave her an impatient look and continued.”Allister Leeman is a rogue Breaker. He believes that the end times are upon us, that the Bloodmoon already walks the Earth.”

  “Walks?” Casper was beside me now with a hand across my shoulder. “How can a moon walk? Oh! Like moonwalk!”

  He started sliding backwards across Echo’s office.

  “This is what I have to treat with respect?” Merrin shook her head.

  Dr. Static shot past the still moonwalking Casper. He had been shuffling through a stack of books and had apparently found what he was looking for. Slamming a tattered old red book on the desk he pointed at a passage with fingers so long and thin that the slightest wind would certainly snap them in two.

  “Prophecies are rarely that straight forward, especially world changing prophecies. How a seer sees-Well, who knows how they see actually, but you can bet it isn’t the way the rest of us do. As a result, their reports usually take a little deciphering. This is often times more true with bigger prophecies, and you don’t get much bigger than the end of the world, do you?”

  A slight grin graced his painfully thin face, but it disappeared just as quickly when he saw no one else was smiling.

  “Anyway,” he shook his head. “Blut and Luna.”

  “Blut and Luna?” I repeated.

  “Yes. Blut is the German word for blood, while Luna is the Latin term meaning moon. That, in itself, means absolutely nothing, but when you take into consideration that they are also the surnames of two of the oldest Breaker bloodlines in existence-Well, it all makes sense doesn’t it?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Casper answered. He had stopped moonwalking and was sitting cross legged on the floor. “I know you’re really into it and everything and you were hoping it would, but it really doesn’t.”

  Dr. Static blustered. “In the prophecy, the Bloodmoon is generally thought to be the product of these two bloodlines joining. Blut and Luna; the blood and the moon. It’s so widely believed within the Breaker community that those two houses have been forbidden from ever procreating, regardless of even matching genetic testing.”

  “And this Allister dude thinks he’s the Bloodmoon?” I asked, brushing blond hair out of my eyes. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “No, no,” Dr. Static said, jamming his finger against the open book repeatedly. “He thinks he’s the Raven. According to the prophecies, the Raven is joined with the Bloodmoon in the bindings of matrimony. He thinks you’re the Bloodmoon.”

  Ezra’s words the day my mom died flashed through my mind.

  He’s looking for his wife.

  He meant-He was talking about me.

  I heard Owen choke back a gasp and watched as the tips of his fingers dug into the arms of his chair.

  “Me?” I balked. “Why the hell would he think that?”

  “Because i
n all likelihood, it’s true.” Dahlia’s eyes were violet steel burning into me.

  “No,” I shook my head. “That’s ridiculous.”

  Echo sighed loudly, and I could tell from the way his lips curved down at the ends, that he didn’t want to say what he was about to. Oddly enough, that made me want to listen even more. “Cresta, when Ash left for her final mission, the mission we all thought she died on, she didn’t go alone.” His fingers had stopped, hovering silently above the cherry wood of his desk. “There was an entire team with her. Two of those people were Breakers whose given names were Abram Blut and Laurel Luna.”

  As before, when images of the Crestview newscast appeared as big as life in front of us, the lights in Echo’s office dimmed. Two images appeared before us in stark clarity. A man and woman, or given the ages, a boy and girl walked through brick laden streets. Their clothes were plain and timeless, brown sack pants and white shirts, but their hairs dated back to what looked like the late nineties. They were surrounded by other passersby in a place that I quickly recognized from my time sifting through Owen’s memories as the Hourglass. They weren’t talking to each other though. In fact, it looked like they were taking pains not to interact with each other at all.

  The man was tall and handsome, with silvery blond hair and bright blue, almost purple eyes. The woman was less striking, though still pretty in her own way. She was short but lithe and the way her brown hair curled in the breeze pricked at me familiarly.

  “There were rumors that these two were lovers,” Echo said. “And, given their respective families, you can understand why that would be a problem.”

  Of course. It made sense to me now. The way they were walking side by side and not talking, not even looking at each other. They were trying so hard to make sure that no one suspected them of being together. That made me sad somehow; that those two young people were so in love and, because of some ridiculous prophecies and the fears of the lunatics they were unlucky enough to be born into, they couldn’t be together like normal people. Still, what did that have to do with me?