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

by Rebecca Hamilton

  No. I wasn’t going to let myself think that way. I was me; just me, nobody else, dammit! I had a life, a good one. I hadn’t realized that before, but it was true. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to let these weirdos take that away from me.

  “I said where are we!” I came to a stop.

  Allister Leeman whirled around, half surprised, half elated. “There she is. That’s my girl.”

  “I’m not your anything!” I rushed him and jabbed a finger into his chest. “Now you’re going to bring me to my friends and my mother, and you’re going to do it now!”

  He grabbed my hand and kissed my fingers. The whole thing made me sick. I jerked my hand away and smacked him hard on the face again.

  A few of the bigger guys watching us started toward me, but Allister Leeman threw his hand up to stop them. “Anything for my bride,” he said, and they backed away. We walked further down the metal hallway, passing countless doors on either side.

  Suddenly, I remembered not only why I was here, but what Allister Leeman wanted from me. How long had I been unconscious? Maybe the sun was up. Maybe this entire thing was over. No, he wouldn’t have done that. He had this entire thing orchestrated. It wouldn’t make any sense for him to get me here just to be too late to fulfill that stupid prophecy, not when he wanted it so badly. Still, there was a chance. Wasn’t there? I looked in every direction. No windows.

  “What time is it?” I asked, when I couldn’t take the suspense any longer.

  “Don’t worry darling. It isn’t daylight yet,” he smiled, reading my mind. Was he actually reading my mind? Could he do that? Who could tell what Breakers could do, let alone crazy fringe cult leader Breakers who want to trap me into marrying them?

  We came up to what I thought was a dead end. Allister Leeman tapped on it, like he was checking to see if it was hollow, or knocking on a door. The wall began to lower, revealing a hidden room. As the wall melted into the ground, I caught a glimpse of what was on the other side. The first thing I noticed was the floor and that every inch of it was covered in bright pink flowers. Looking up, I saw rows of white chairs filled with elegantly dressed cult members, sprouting out from a large white gazebo. It had statues on either side, gothic stone angels that looked like they were in more pain than pleasure. That wasn’t the worst of it though. At the center of the gazebo, which looked out onto a pane glass window, Casper stood ; his face red and swollen, his eyes raw, and his hands shackled together. He was wearing a tuxedo and, in his bound hands, sat two rings.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Allister Leeman said as I gaped. “A male Maid of Honor is so out of the box. What can I say? I’m a sucker for the unpredictable. Now come on,” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me roughly toward what I now saw was an altar. “We’re getting hitched.”

  I jerked away from him and ran to Casper. On my way, I saw that Merrin and Wendy were sitting in the front row. Their hands were also bound. While it hurt to see them like this; to see Merrin’s perfect face marred with bruises, and Wendy’s pale knowing eyes heavy with anguish, and know that it was all because of me, they weren’t Casper. They weren’t my Casper. They weren’t the boy who snuck out of his house and met me in the park on nights when I couldn’t sleep. They weren’t the guy who insisted on taking me to the ‘Ho Down’ themed homecoming dance, even though half the freshman girls in school were giving him googly eyes. They weren’t the person who singlehandedly made my early days at Crestview bearable; my rock, my best friend.

  I crashed into him; wrapping my arms around him, and feeling tears come unbidden to my cheeks.

  “I’m okay,” he whispered. I could hear the smile in his voice; the one meant to make me feel better. “You worry too much. Did I ever tell you that? I should have. It’s true.”

  “You don’t look okay,” I said, running my fingers across the red blooms on his cheek.

  “Really?” He winced. “Cause I think it’s kinda sexy.”

  “Enough!” Allister Leeman spun me hard toward him.

  “What the hands, lunatic!” Casper yelled. A tall man with a dyed blue mohawk got up from his chair and punched Casper in the gut.

  “Stop it!” I screamed as he bowled over. “Let him go. “ The tears came again. “I’m here. Just let them all go, okay.”

  “Oh sweetheart,” Allister Leeman said, brushing my tears away with a rough thumb. “Not yet. Not until you start behaving. There’s much to do and little time left.”

  “I’m not marrying you,” I said shakily.

  “Of course you are,” he disagreed. “And I’ll show you why.” He walked through the gazebo, to the plate glass window. Looking down, he knitted his hands behind his back. “Come and see where it all ends, Cresta.

  I helped Casper to his feet. “Be careful,” he said. I nodded and hesitantly followed. Allister Leeman’s breath had fogged up the glass in front of him by the time I got there. It turned out that I wouldn’t have the same problem because, when I looked down, it felt as though all the breath left my body.

  Below us, in a large circular room, my mother paced nervously on a gridded metal floor. She looked thin and tired. Her hair seemed ratty and unkempt, and her clothes seemed worn and slept in. “…Mom,” I muttered. I beat loudly against the window, sending ripples through the glass.

  “She can’t hear you,” Allister Leeman told me. “Can’t see you either. So, don’t bother.”

  “I’m here!” I turned to him. “I did what you asked. What else do you want from me?”

  “Right now,” he pointed to a door at the end of the circle. “I want you to keep watching.”

  The door flung open. Owen, shirtless and similarly beaten, was thrown into the room. He got up, shaking his head, seemingly getting his bearings together. When he and my mom saw each other, they came together, hugging and talking. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could only imagine they were trading war stories, talking about all that had happened, all the had been through and, more than anything else, they were probably worrying about me.

  “I don’t get it,” I muttered.

  “You will,” the Raven grinned. “Did you ever stop to wonder why him? Why did, out of all the Breakers in the world, I chose Owen to help me? As you can see, I have hundreds of people who would gladly have given themselves to my cause, to our cause.” He brushed my cheek, which sent dinner racing back up my throat. “Many of them are young men. Many of them are handsome and, trust me, my little Bloodmoon, they would have had no trouble convincing you to open up to them. So what’s so special about Owen?”

  I looked back at Merrin, thinking she might know something I didn’t. Her eyes, narrowed quizzically, told me I couldn’t have been more wrong. I knew what made Owen so special; his heart, his bravery, the way he was willing to give himself wholeheartedly to do what was right. But something told me that wasn’t what Allister Leeman had in mind.

  “What?” I asked bitterly.

  “That.” Allister Leeman pointed to the blurry, masked tattoo on Owen’s back.

  “His angel?” I asked in a low voice.

  “That’s no angel,” Allister Leeman leaned close to me. “Go ahead. Look through the shade. See for yourself.”

  Sighing, I focused the way I had at the 7-11 when Dahlia almost found us, the way I had the first time I saw the Seer’s Tower. Slowly, the shade around Owen’s tattoo started to dissipate. It came into view; first the wings that spread across his shoulders and the full of his back, and then-

  “No. My God, no…”

  There was no angel on Owen’s back. That wasn’t what kept him safe, what changed his fate. Stretched across Owen’s body, with huge leathery wings and a forked tongue, was a dragon.

  Joined to the Raven, consumed by the Dragon.

  “He’s not the dragon,” I said weakly, but I knew the truth. It was obvious; obvious in the visions I had seen while swimming around Owen’s memories, obvious in the pain on his mother’s face, obvious in the words Wendy had told him.

&nb
sp; “I used to be a fixed point,” Owen had said.

  “You still are,” Wendy had answered. And she was right. Owen was supposed to die. It was a fixed point. Nothing could have changed it. So, they traded one fixed point for another. They turned him into the dragon; turned him into something else. They bought his future by giving him a destiny; a destiny that said he would kill the Bloodmoon. And that very likely meant that he would have to kill me.

  “No. He’s not the dragon,” I repeated, hoping that if I said it enough, it might make it true.

  “Yes, my darling. He is,” Allister Leeman circled me, his dark hair started to come loose and hang in his eyes.

  “How…Why did you-“

  “Why did I bring him to you?” He asked. “I’ll answer that question with another question. Imagine you had a puppy Cresta, and that your puppy meant more to you than anything else in the world. Now imagine you knew that, one day, someone would come along and kill your puppy. But they needed a certain knife to do it; a knife that you had, that you could get. What would you do?”

  There it was; laid out in front of me. Somehow Allister Leeman knew Owen’s secret, and he brought him to Crestview to exploit it. He wanted to keep an eye on him, to make sure he didn’t hurt me? No. My stomach started to churn sickeningly again as I realized the truth. He wanted Owen to care about me, to see me as a person, to love me. He wanted Owen to love me so much that he would never kill me.

  “I-I would dull the knife,” I answered, bile rising in my throat.

  “No, no darling. You don’t dull it. You sharpen it, and use it on those puppy killing bastards before they can get to you.”

  The man with the blue mohawk returned, handing Allister Leeman a small black square, about the size of a remote.

  Do you remember the phone calls,Cresta; the calls that you thought were calls from Merrin, and that Owen thought were exercises to keep him feeble mind sharp? In reality, they were programming sessions. I was seeping into his mind, making him ready.”

  “Ready for what?” I asked, my mind running a million miles an hour.

  “For now,” he said, holding up the remote. “If you look closely, you’ll see that I did away with those pesky devices that bound Owen’s powers.”

  He was right. Owen’s arms were bare. With his free hand, Allister Leeman pulled a knife from his jacket pocket and held it out to me.

  “The trigger in Owen’s mind is ready. If I press the sequence that he heard in those calls on this remote, it will turn Owen into a killing machine. He’ll destroy everything in sight, and he won’t stop until I enter a code telling him to.”

  The people in the white chairs got on their knees, pinning their eyes on the floor, and pushing Merrin and Wendy down with them. The blue mohawk man grabbed Casper, and put him in a similar position.

  “So, I’m giving you thirty seconds to kill one of these people. If you don’t, I’m going to sound the sequence and let Owen here go to town with your mother’s entrails.” He pushed the butt of the knife toward me again. “It’s your choice Cresta; kill one of these people, or watch the boy you love murder your mother.”

  Chapter 20

  All Fall Down

  THEY WERE JUST standing there; my mother and Owen, talking, embracing, seemingly oblivious to what Allister Leeman had just proposed to me, or the fact that I was even watching them at all. If only I were down there with them. If only I could grab them and pull them away from all this.

  “Tick tock, my darling.” The butt of that horrible knife was still pointed at me. Allister Leeman’s eyes , thin and menacing, tore at my sanity. “Your time’s almost up.”

  Maybe he was lying. Maybe Owen hadn’t been brainwashed. Maybe the tones were gibberish. Maybe Owen wasn’t really the dragon after all. No. The tones opened my mind up and allowed me to follow the stars. They led to a trap, true enough, but I was affected, nonetheless. And that was after just one session. Who knew how many times Owen had listened to those sounds?

  “Listen,” Allister Leeman said. Calm layered his tone. “It’s easy enough. It doesn’t have to be one of your friends.” The word came thick off his tongue. “Though, if it were me, I’d strongly consider killing the person who’s destined to kill me. That doesn’t seem likely though. So, I digress. Look at these people.” He motioned to the room full of people now on their knees. “You can choose anyone of them. Any of them would be honored to help you become who you’re meant to be.”

  “By dying?” My face twisted.

  “One life is a small price to pay to ensure the future,” he answered. “These people understand that. “ He took my hand, placed the knife’s handle in my palm, and closed my fingers around it. It felt foreign and heavy in my hand. It occurred to me that, while I had certainly held knives when cooking or doing other mundane things, I had never held a knife like this, not one that was meant to kill someone.

  “It isn’t murder, Cresta. They want you to do it. They’ve actually fought over who gets to be the one you choose.”

  My eyes, filling with tears that I refused to cry, scanned the people. They rested on Wendy, on her own pale seer’s eyes. Did she know how this was going to end, what I was going to do? And, if so, would she tell me? I thought Allister Leeman had noticed, because he marched toward her. But, instead of getting Wendy, he grabbed a handful of Merrin’s hair and pulled her toward me, still on her knees.

  “What about this one?” He grinned. “Tell me you haven’t thought about it, that it wouldn’t make your life easier if Owen’s perfect little perfect was out of the picture.”

  “The only thing that would make my life easier would be for you to die,” I spit at him.

  “Now, now, there’s no need to be crass,” he said, yanking Merrin’s head back and exposing her neck. She flinched, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of crying out. “Besides, I am the one person in this scenario that you cannot kill. It just doesn’t fit. Now, slit this bitch’s throat or watch your mother die.”

  I stood there, my hands shaking violently. I had never thought about killing anyone, never even seriously thought about hurting anybody. Sure, there was a time when I wanted nothing more than for Merrin to be out of the picture, and it hadn’t been even a day ago when she swore she would kill me herself if need be. But the black and white of my life had gotten increasingly gray lately and, for all our differences, Merrin didn’t deserve this; to wriggle around on the ground at the mercy of a madman.

  “Fine,” Allister Leeman huffed, sensing my hesitation. “We’ll see how you feel afterward.”

  He began pressing buttons. The tones rang out. “No!” I yelled, but I was too late. Casper charged him, crashing into him with 165 pounds of Georgia boy. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered Coach Allen saying that Casper was ‘too soft’ for the football team. Watching the way Allister Leeman flew against the plate glass window, the remote in his hand shattering, I wondered what Coach Allen would think now. The kneeling seat fillers charged us. I rushed to the window. Looking over, I saw Owen kneeling in pain on the floor. Slowly, he got up and, watching the way he moved, like a cat circling his prey, I knew Casper had been too late. Owen pounced at my mother. Stunned, he almost got her before she darted out of the way. He was going to kill her.

  I fought my way through the seat fillers, which wasn’t hard, given that it seemed they didn’t want to hurt me. I grabbed the remote, which was now in two pieces. I crammed the pieces back together, praying it would work. But I still needed the correct tones.

  “What is it?!” I lunged at Allister Leeman. “What’s the code?!”

  The blue mowhawked man grabbed me. I fought him, but he was huge, and it wasn’t long before he had lifted me off the ground, my feet kicking uselessly in the air.

  “Kill him Cresta,” Allister Leeman said. “It’s the way it has to be. Kill him, or he’ll kill your mother.” The crowd seemed to part, making a path for me that stretched toward the stairs. I met Casper’s eyes, looking for some sort of guidance. He was
pinned under two huge people; one man and one woman. His eyes, gleaming up at me, told me all I needed to know. I darted toward the stairs.

  I must have ran down a hundred steps before I knew it. The stupid dress kept getting tangled around my feet, and I was huffing like a racehorse, but none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was that two of the people I loved most in the world were going to rip each other apart, unless I stopped them. Of course, I had no clue how I was going to stop them. Still, I ran.

  When I made it to the end of the stairs, to a glistening silver door guarded by a man and woman who were dressed in a tuxedo and black evening gown (you know, for my hostage wedding), I grimaced. “Right this way,” the woman said, and flashed me a smile every bit as black as her dress.

  “Don’t worry,” she added. “He won’t hurt you. He’s not programmed to.”

  I wanted to pummel her, to tell her that Owen’s a person, and that he never should have been programmed in the first place. And while I was at it, I’d tell her that kidnapping someone’s mother in an attempt to force them to marry your insane cult leader, was both creepy and rude. But I didn’t have time. Owen and Mom needed me, so I shot the woman a look that would curdle milk, and ran inside.

  The first thing I saw was Owen’s foot connecting with my mother’s face. It sent her spiraling to the ground. The next thing I saw was my mo0ther’s blood splattered across the metal floor. Running to my mother, it occurred to me that I had seen too much of the people I love’s blood; too much of their tears, and their anguish. For too long I had watched them thrown into horrible situations because of me, because of what people hoped I either was or wasn’t.