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

by Rebecca Hamilton

  “They were paired off and married to others,” Echo continued. “But rumors of their continued affair made their way to the Council of Masons. Of course, their perceived deaths silenced whatever concerns the Council had.”

  The striking man in the hologram before us stopped to talk to someone. The girl paused and pretended to take in her surroundings, though it was clear she was waiting for him. She put her index finger in front of her lips and tapped absentmindedly.

  “That’s funny,” I said without thinking. “That’s the same thing-“

  Oh God. That’s why she looked so familiar. Her thin frame, her friendly face, the way her brown hair settled into soft ringlets; the girl in front of me that everyone knew as Laurel Luna was actually Dr. Conyers.

  “That’s my therapist,” I said breathlessly.

  “You went to therapy?” Owen looked at me, his brows scrunched.

  I didn’t answer.

  “I told you she was still alive,” Dahlia shot a superior look to her husband.

  “It’s more than that, I’m afraid,” Echo gritted his teeth. “We found DNA samplings in our database from Laurel and Abram and ran them against the ones from your physical. They were a match.”

  I stood, sure I didn’t want to hear the next words he was about to say. That didn’t stop him though.

  “Cresta. These people are your biological parents.”

  I stared at the moving image in front of me; at a young Dr. Conyers, at the striking man she loved. There they were. The similarities I had tried not to look for in Echo’s face were all over these two. He had my nose. She had my eyes and, when the man he was talking to told a joke, I realized he had my laugh too.

  But that couldn’t be right. That meant that not only was my dad not my dad, but my mom wasn’t really my mom either.

  “No. No,” I mumbled and started backing away. “It’s not true.”

  “Cresta, I know this is a lot to take in,” Echo stood. “Damnit! Lights.”

  With his words, the lights flared back up and the hologram disappeared.

  “I promise it’ll be all right. It doesn’t mean you’re the Bloodmoon,” Echo made his way around his desk, but I was close to the door. It was just like my first night at Weathersby , with Echo telling me I’d be okay and me backing away from him, too stunned to do anything else.

  He had told me the truth that night, but could I really trust him now?

  “Echo, I know my parents.”

  “I know you do sweetheart,” he answered. My back was against the door now, but this time, I didn’t open it. Where would I go anyway?

  “Your mother was a wonderful woman, and I have little doubt she loved you with everything in her.” He reached out and wiped a tear from my face. “It doesn’t matter who gave birth to you. Julie Karr was your mother. Ash was your mother, and you were the most important thing in the world to her. So important that, when she realized she couldn’t keep you safe, she sent you to me. I would never betray a trust like that, Cresta. Your mother died so that I might keep you safe. So please, let me honor her memory by protecting you. Come, sit down, and let’s get to the bottom of this; for your mother.”

  I wiped my eyes, took a deep breath, and did as he asked. I sat back down with Casper and Owen on either side of me. I could tell both of them wanted to reach out to me, but I bristled, so they didn’t.

  “We went back to the explosion site, where your parents allegedly died all those years ago,” Dahlia picked back up. The fact that she was using the words parents and not talking about the people who raised me, the people I loved more than even myself, sent a dagger into my heart. And the tone she used while saying it, like an IRS agent going through a list of deductibles, twisted that dagger. “Once I knew what I was looking for, it didn’t take long to work past the shades and anchors. The mental images I picked up from the ruins led me to their mission hideout, and once there, the entire thing opened up.”

  She sat atop the front of Echo’s desk and crossed her legs. “The Luna girl and the Blut boy had continued their relationship. It was selfish, it put everyone at risk, and it broke the sacred vows they took when accepting their genetically ideal matches. But I suppose all that paled in the face of young love.” She scoffed, cleared her throat, and continued. “A few weeks before their fateful mission, the Luna girl found out she was pregnant. Since she was less than physically thrilled with her sanctioned spouse; her perfect, she had little doubt about whose child it was. This left them in quite a bind. Once the child was born, the requisite tests would prove that it belonged to the Blut boy. They would both be severely punished, and the baby-Well, the baby would be the Bloodmoon. So, the Council would have done what it had to in order to avert the apocalypse. To stop that from happening, the Luna girl concocted a plan. She had always been friends with your mo- with Ash, so once she got her assigned to the Moscow mission, the rest wrote itself. They would set off the explosion, fake their deaths, and ensure your survival.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but Dahlia silenced me with a palm. “You couldn’t be raised by your birth parents though. That was too risky. Instead, your mother left you in the care of her best friend, my Echo’s first wife; who, it turns out, left him for you.”

  She glared back at her husband. Echo gave her a look that was halfway between frustration and exhaustion.

  “It doesn’t mean that you’re the Bloodmoon though,” he looked at me. “It’s possible that you’re just a girl, just the product of two Breakers’ forbidden love, and not-“

  “What? Not the antichrist?” I scoffed and stood up. “Are you people even serious. I’m nothing. I’m nobody. I’m an asthmatic girl who’s barely five feet tall. I don’t weight a hundred pounds soaking wet.”

  “You never had asthma,” Dahlia said. “And you’re not an ordinary girl. You’re a Breaker; a Breaker who’s had no training and whose powers have not only been suppressed for years, but have also gone unchecked. I can’t think of anything more dangerous.”

  “This-this doesn’t matter,” Dr. Static said, finger pressed against his still open book. “There are other prophecies, other prerequisites that she’d have to meet before we could even entertain the idea that Cresta might be the Bloodmoon.”

  “Prerequisites that we’ve already accounted for,” Dahlia said. She plucked Dr. Static’s book from his hands and started reading from it. “Consumed by the dragon and joined to the raven, her body is marked with the tears of those who will die beneath her foot.”

  “Yes, I’m well aware of that stanza,” Dr. Static crossed his arms, giving him the illusion of having a bit of physical depth.

  “The physical we ran on Cresta showed that she has three teardrop shaped moles along her inner thigh.” Dahlia seemed to be relishing proving her case so easily.

  “The world will linger in darkness on the day of her birth. The sun will hide from her coming,” Dahlia turned to me. “That, lingering in darkness, is believed to speak of your birthday; the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. What’s more, the winter solstice of fifteen years ago was followed by a solar eclipse that further delayed sunrise for seven extra minutes.” She closed the book triumphantly. “The sun will hide from her coming.”

  “Wait a sec!” Casper stepped forward. “Cress’ birthday is in March. Is the winter solstice in March? Is winter even in March?”

  Clumsily made, but it was a point nonetheless.

  “Her birthday isn’t in March,” Echo said, looking at his desk.

  “Yes it is,” I answered.

  “They lied to you,” Dahlia said. She grabbed at a manila folder on Echo’s desk and handed me a slip of paper from inside. “This is your birth certificate, your real one. A baby Jane Doe was left on the doorstep of a hospital on the night of the winter solstice almost sixteen years ago. She was reported as being stolen from the hospital three days later. You showed up in Chicago three months after that, but all records of your birth in March are falsified. Ash led you to believe you were born
in the spring because she knew your actual birthday was further proof that you are, in fact, the Bloodmoon.”

  My fingers curled up into fists. Dahlia’s lips, though not quite smiling, were certainly ticking up at the ends. She loved this; proving that Ash’s daughter was nothing but trouble, proving that Ash herself was a traitor of apocalyptic proportions. “I’m not some damn moon,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “None of us control fate, my dear,” Dahlia hissed at me. The forms her hands take as they wrap around our lives are of her solitary choosing.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked, not caring how much disdain slipped into my words.

  “It means that we are what we are,” Dahlia answered. She had taken a cue from me and was now visibly upset. Her eyes flashed with anger and her mouth pursed together violently. “And like it or not, you’ll have to get used to it.”

  “No it doesn’t,” Owen stood up beside me. “We are Breakers, after all. Isn’t that what we do, change what is? It’s our entire reason for being.”

  “This is a fixed point. You know that,” Dahlia’s eyes shot over to him.

  “A fixed point?” Casper asked when he saw I wasn’t going to.

  “Some events cannot be changed regardless of how much we try,” Echo said in a surrendering voice. “They’re called fixed points because they have to come to pass. Breakers have been trying to avert the Moonblood for over a hundred years now, but regardless of our efforts, the prophecies never change. The Moonblood will come.”

  “The Moonblood is here,” Dahlia answered defiantly.

  “We don’t know that,” Dr. Static looked up from his book.

  “How much proof do you need Silas?” Dahlia asked him.

  Silas Static? Really?

  “The events of her birth were enough to convince Ash and the two lovebirds to run away from the only lives they’d ever known. They were enough to get Allister Leeman sniffing around her very well hidden doorstep. He even manipulated this one into doing his dirty work for him,” Dahlia pointed to Owen.

  “But why?” Dr. Static rubbed at his pointed chin. “We know Allister Leeman believes that Cresta is the Bloodmoon, but what purpose did he have for plucking young Owen away from the Hourglass? He has plenty of followers of his own who could have done the job just as efficiently, and whose allegiance wouldn’t have to be fabricated.”

  I watched Owen’s eyes narrow into slits. Certainly he had thought about those questions as well. Though, if Dr. Static didn’t have an answer, I doubted Owen did either.

  “That’s a question for the Masons,” Dahlia answered immediately. “As is the question of what to do with Cresta.”

  “You can’t be serious!” Echo jumped up. The resigned lull in his voice had vanished, replaced with a hardened steel edge. “If you bring Cresta in front of those people, you know what will happen.”

  “What?” I asked shakily. “What’ll happen?” This didn’t sound good.

  “Those people are our superiors,” Dahlia reminded him, ignoring me. “And our protocol, the law by which we live, is very clear. We bring this to the Masons and let them tend to the matter.”

  “Dahlia,” Echo looked at me, blinked hard, and then looked back at his wife. “There’s no reason to be drastic.” His voice was light and steady, like a father trying to convince his child everything would be okay. “There’s time to think this through. We don’t have to do anything we can’t take back.”

  “What. Is. Going. To. Happen?” I asked again.

  “The only way to avert a fixed point is to take the players off the board,” Owen said quietly.

  “Stop talking like a fortune cookie,” I demanded. I was tired; tired of being jerked around, tired of questions that no one wanted to answer.

  “Death!” He answered sharply. I turned to find tears shining in his eyes. “If the Council of Masons thinks you’re the Bloodmoon, they’ll kill you. “

  I stumbled backward, not really sure of what to do next. I knew that they had been talking about me, about my future and their ridiculous prophecies, but it hadn’t occurred to me that there’d be these kinds of consequences. I certainly hadn’t imagined they would be debating my death.

  I felt a hand on mine and a jolt ran through me. Who was it? What did they want to do to me? I turned to swat it away but found Casper beside me. His face was a stern but pale sheet.

  “Come on, we’re leaving,” he said, and tugged at me. He looked back as we made our way toward the door. “Have fun with your little murder cult guys. Send us a postcard from Crazyville, mmkay.”

  “Stop!” Echo shouted.

  “Stop?” Casper laughed. “Why, so you can serve my girl’s head up on a silver platter. No thanks. Go find another sacrifice for your stupid Mason council.”

  “No one is going to be a sacrifice, not on my watch,” Echo walked toward us. Casper didn’t stop. For my part, I was a limp noodle being pulled around. “I won’t stop you from leaving us, Cresta.” He glared back at Dahlia. “You’ve been through a lot, given a lot of information, and judging from our behavior, I can’t say I blame you. But know that if you walk out that door, Allister Leeman will most likely be waiting for you. I can keep you safe here.”

  “Until when?” The words poured out of me as if someone else was saying them, as if I wasn’t connected to it at all. “Until your wife convinces you to have me put down?”

  “Of course not.” His voice was light again, comforting. “There was a reason your mother sent you to me. I would never-” He huffed and shook his head, frustrated. Looking at Dahlia, he hissed, “Are you proud of yourself?”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me that way!” She yelled. “This is what we do. It’s who we are. You know what this girl does. You’ve read it. You’ve been taught it since birth. It’s horrific!”

  “She’s just a girl, Dahlia!” Echo’s voice matched hers now, loud, rough, and passionate. “Do you really want us to be responsible for killing a girl?”

  “What about all the girls she’s going to grow up and kill, Morgan? What do we tell their parents? What do we tell ourselves when we’re watching it happen?”

  “You’re being ridiculous,” Owen’s voice was a whisper among the shouts. “I know Cresta. She doesn’t have that sort of evil in her. She’s good. She’s so-“

  “You’ve proven how fundamentally wrong you can be, son,” Dahlia said. “Why don’t you quit before you prove yourself even denser than we all imagined?”

  “Dahlia-“ Echo started.

  “Hitler was a child once too,” She cut him off. “If you had the chance to stop him, wouldn’t you?”

  Hitler? Did she really just compare me to Hitler?

  “You know that’s not the same thing,” Echo began marching toward his wife.

  “You’re right,” she said, herself bridging the gap between them. “It’s worse. Hitler was satisfied to focus his hatred on a few choice groups. This girl will take her boot to the entire world.”

  Oh, okay. I’m worse than Hitler.

  “What you want; there’s no going back from that,” Echo shouted. They were in each other’s faces now. His eyes were wide and free of the surrender that had painted them just minutes ago. “If we send her to the Hourglass, she dies. That’s how that ends. Is that who you want to be, a murderer?”

  “You’re a murderer!” As loud as Echo could shout, he couldn’t come close to the decibels Dahlia could reach. “If you leave her here, if you allow her to be who she’s going to become, then there’s blood on your hands as well as hers. That’s not who you are, Morgan. It’s not who I ever thought you’d be.”

  “Who I am is a man who refuses to let an innocent girl be killed for something she might not ever do.” He turned from her.

  “I won’t do it,” I said. “Whatever it is you think I’m going to do, I wouldn’t hurt anybody, and I damn sure wouldn’t kill anybody.” I pulled away from Casper’s hand, walking toward the others. Still, I felt Casper hovering protec
tively at my back.

  Dahlia’s eyes softened a bit as she took me in. “I’m sure you think that.” Her voice cracked. “But you have no way of knowing where fate will take you in ten years, in five years, even in five minutes. I couldn’t count on both hands the number of people I’ve known in my life who’ve promised and sworn they would never be what prophecies have painted them as. And all of them, every single one, were changed. They all bent to fate’s will and, in the end, they became what they were always going to be.”

  She pointed to Dr. Static, whose face was still planted in his book. I wondered what he was even looking for at this point. “Because when it’s all said and done, what we want doesn’t matter,” Dahlia went on. “Fate has her hands on us even before our birth. The fact that you’re here at all is proof of that. I know that you probably think I hate you Cresta, but I don’t. The truth is, you have no more control over what you are than any of us. You just happened to draw the short straw.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder, but I shuddered away.

  “You say you’re a good person, and I believe you. But that doesn’t mean you’ll always be. Who you’ll become has already been written. It’s already in those books, and I know you don’t want that. It’s because you’re a good person that you don’t want that. I’m telling you that there is a way that you don’t have to become that. There’s a way you can save all of the people who are destined to be hurt by you. You can save the whole world.”

  Casper read her eyes an instant before I did. He pulled me back and planted himself between us. “Get away from her, you witch,” he spit out.

  “It won’t hurt Cresta,” she talked through him. “There are humane ways to end this. You’ll be comfortable. It’s the only way.”

  “Those are big words,” Echo walked in front of Casper, further blocking me from Dahlia. “For someone who keeps her own daughter locked in a tower.”