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

by Rebecca Hamilton

  “You can use my card,” she said, and he gave her a look of pure adoration.

  “That’s the spirit,” a woman’s voice commented.

  Kim turned around and grinned. “Books are good,” she agreed. “Hey, Miz Ainslie. I came to talk to you.”

  Miz Ainslie was five feet tall, or perhaps a little less. She was built like a lawn gnome, with a physicist’s crazy white hair and a cattle rancher’s leathery skin. A pocket-covered photography vest strained to cover her gut; most of the pockets seemed to be full of pens. She watched Rocky’s progress with fascination.

  “Oh?” she asked.

  “Yeah, some stuff has come up. I may or may not be coming in Monday. Actually, it could be a while. But if you send me the stuff, I can get it collated and stuff.”

  “Stuff, right. You’re probably going to Vegas or something and planning for an extra-long hangover.”

  “Darn, you caught me.”

  Ainslie cuffed her on the shoulder and jammed her hands into her pockets.

  “No problem,” she said. “I’ll leave the materials in your box, and you pick them up when you can. This won’t be messing with any deadlines, will it?”

  “I don’t think so. If it does, I’ll let you know in plenty of time.”

  “Good enough for me. Go take care of your stuff.” Ainslie turned an amused eye on the growing pile of books Rocky was collecting.

  “Do you want me to find your friend a bag?” she asked.

  They left with as many books as the two of them could carry.

  Rocky read all the way back to Kim’s apartment. He stumbled up the stairs with his nose stuck in a mystery, lodged himself in a corner on the floor, and read. He read, ignoring Kim as she cleaned the couch and picked up papers. And when she turned off the lights, threw the electric blanket over him, and went to bed, he read through the dark until he fell asleep.

  For the second time, he was not alone.

  This time, though, the sensations were confused, blurred. The other mind was quiet, as though it too was asleep. It wasn’t aware of him. That was fine. That was safe. Even asleep, though, it was powerful, and it gradually absorbed him into someone else’s dream.

  It began with a sense of déjà vu, a sense that some part of him knew what was coming and an equally strong conviction that it was all completely new. He didn’t try to pull away.

  There was something smooth beneath his fingertips. The feeling was blunted, something dimly remembered from long ago. It resolved into the dry, slightly curved surface of paper. A book. Light swirled, pulsed, and gained form. Rough wooden desk. Candle flame. It wasn’t a book. It was the Book. He couldn’t understand the words, but nothing else could be written in that straight, angular script, red Latin letters, meticulously painted on fresh, stiff vellum.

  It was beautiful, but the words swam in front of his eyes.

  et ait illis: hic est sanguis meus novi testamenti qui pro multis effunditur

  He could not read the rest. His fingers traveled up the page and tracked over the ornate border that surrounded the words, coming to rest on the stylized form of a lamb. He had a vague memory of having drawn it himself. Ink, pigment, gold foil. For someone, it would be a ridiculous extravagance. For him, it had been a meditation.

  He cupped his hand around the candle flame and blew it out. The darkness rushed in on him, too dense for human eyes, and it carried sounds. Somewhere in the building, other people were moving. He could hear their voices. One was shouting, but the others were laughing. That seemed familiar, but he couldn’t remember what it meant.

  A bell…

  The dream slipped away, and he let it go. His own dreams were nothing but color and noise, dizzying and meaningless.

  When he woke outside, he supposed he must have been walking in his sleep. He looked down at Kim and let her take his hand to lead him back inside.

  Chapter 7

  COYOTE ARRIVED AT ten o’clock sharp.

  “Got anything to tell me?” he demanded, but no one had much to say; they were distracted by the geometric designs he had traced onto his face in dark red paint.

  “You look freaking awesome,” Kim told him flatly, and she stood out of his way while he made a circuit of the room, toeing piles of books out of his way.

  He shoved the coffee table up against the wall and cleared the debris from the couch, took the telephone off the hook, piled a stack of magazines on top of the television, and moved a glass of water into the kitchen. Then he sat in the dead center of the sofa and gestured imperiously for everyone else to clear out.

  “I have to find my focus,” he declared.

  The wizard, the vampire, and the ghost shuffled into the bedroom and shut the door, because finding a focus was evidently a very private process.

  Rocky sat against the wall, curled up beneath his electric blanket.

  “I thought we were t-t-taking a w-walk,” he said, giving the door a deeply troubled frown. Disturbed though he was, his eyes flicked periodically toward Vickie, who shifted uncomfortably until she faded from sight. He kept watching the place where she had been, then watched a place near the foot of Kim’s bed, then blinked and looked at Kim. She guessed Vickie had beat it.

  “It’s what he calls it,” Kim explained. “Spirit walk. Probably diagnostic only, the first time. He’s a special kind of telepath. Basically, the plan is for him to give you a guided tour of your own mind, help you figure out what’s gone wrong, and then make a plan for fixing it.”

  He paled and began to stutter a protest, but the words wouldn’t come out.

  “He won’t do anything you don’t want him to,” she hurried to reassure him. “That’s not how he rolls. And he won’t spill your deep, dark secrets or anything.” She grinned. “Witchdoctor-patient confidentiality.”

  His forehead creased, and he went very still. She didn’t think he was breathing.

  “You can trust Coyote,” she pressed. “He’s one of the good guys.” And then, on a whim, she ventured further. “Like you, I think.”

  He frowned, shook his head, and looked away.

  They sat in silence until Coyote called them back into the living room.

  There was no setup. No candles or incense, no plant matter strewn on the floor, no circles or triangles or mood music. Coyote leaned on his aluminum cane with its rubber feet, one fist on his hip.

  “Sit,” he growled, pointing to the couch.

  The vampire put up a visible internal struggle, but he sat.

  “No flailing,” Coyote warned. “If you feel like freaking out, you let me know.”

  The vampire nodded.

  And just like there was no setup, there was no ritual, either.

  “Readysetgo!” Coyote barked. That was all the warning he gave.

  Rocky collapsed. Coyote scowled.

  “Like I thought,” he said. “Kid’s fubar’d. It’s like a goddamn funhouse in here.”

  Kim went to make coffee while Coyote growled and griped under his breath.

  “Yep!” he sang out. “I called it. He’s booby-trapped. Some kind of trigger. Clumsy, though. I’m betting it’s only level one. Yep. There’s level two. Son of a gun. He’s pretty well neutered, here. No natural defenses left. Might be permanent.”

  The coffee maker rumbled and sputtered, and Coyote kept up a running commentary – declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, experiential memory. All shot to hell, locked down, data corrupted. He sank into the chair and laid his cane across his knees, letting his eyes drift out of focus.

  “No good for nothing,” he said. “I can maybe clean out enough of this crap to give him a foothold, but it’ll take a while. And these safeguards are hell. Don’t want to trip a suicide switch. Goddamn tabula rasa. Goddamn Gordian Knot. Everything sealed up like Fort Knox. Nothing sloppy, either. Duran’s good. You know, in the worst possible sense.”

  He fell silent. Kim poured two cups of coffee and then poured a third, just in case. She dumped powdered milk in one and carried them in to set th
em on the table. The other two might be cold by the time it was all finished, but that’s what microwaves are for. She sat on the edge of the table and sipped quietly.

  “Hang on,” Coyote muttered. “Loose end? Let’s see about this.” He shut his eyes and folded his hands tightly in his lap. A bead of sweat slid down between his eyebrows, smudging his face paint.

  The vampire stiffened and then sat up straight, his eyes wide with surprise. His pupils dilated until there was no blue left around them.

  “I didn’t,” he got out, and then he choked. His gaze darted from Coyote to Kim to the door.

  There was a knock.

  It had to be Zeb, Kim thought, and she nearly called out for him to come in.

  But that was wrong. Coyote was hauling himself to his feet, slamming his cane into the floor with enough force to make a nearby book jump. Rocky was sliding off the couch, shuffling cautiously toward the door. Kim got in front of him and flung her arms out to hold him back. Coyote grabbed the vampire’s elbow and shoved him none too gently away from the door, whirled around more quickly than an old man should, and pressed his eye to the peep hole.

  “Damn,” he spat. He backed away from the door.

  Rocky moved forward again. His eyes were huge and empty. Kim knocked him over and sat on him, for lack of any better restraint.

  The knock came again.

  A man’s voice slithered in, heavy with power.

  “That’s mine,” he said.

  Rocky squirmed, but he wasn’t yet strong enough to throw Kim off, and when he couldn’t get up, he cried. Kim had felt sorry for him before, but there was something vile and perverse about these tears. He wasn’t crying because he wanted to go; it was because it hurt him to stay still.

  A long silence began to grow. The hair on Kim’s arms rose. She held her breath. Coyote crossed the entryway and disappeared for a moment into Kim’s bedroom. He came back with Kim’s semiautomatic and Zeb’s revolver.

  “Are you really going to push me on this?” the voice said from outside.

  It had to be Duran. Kim had never heard his voice, but it fit. The smooth accents of Spain, tinged with Mexico’s consonants. Mild tone, gently coaxing. Even with the protection of her threshold between them, that voice was strong enough that she put an actual moment of thought into letting him in.

  “I’m being outrageously reasonable,” he said in a whisper that carried straight to the nape of Kim’s neck. “If we were being fair, an eye for an eye, I should steal something of yours. Burn something of yours. Maybe your car. Or this building. But I’m not going to be fair, I’m going to be nice. If you give him back, I’ll go away.”

  It was outrageously reasonable, she had to admit, assuming he kept his word. She could open the door to let Rocky out. Duran couldn’t get in unless she invited him, and that wasn’t going to happen. But there were too many uncertainties. She had been watching closely enough to know that Duran was completely unpredictable. He might turn around and burn her alive once he had his property safely out of the way. Even if he did keep his word, she had no way of knowing what he would do with Rocky once he had him; he might want him back just so he could punish him for escaping. The poor little man could die, really die, and it wasn’t just her need for a witness that made Kim object to that prospect.

  But if she didn’t open the door, there was nothing to keep him from burning her out. She didn’t dare hope that he would back off for fear of hurting Rocky.

  She caught Coyote’s eye and saw that he was thinking the same thing. She also saw that he wasn’t going to let her take unnecessary risks.

  So she stood, slowly, keeping a firm grip on Rocky’s arms as she helped him up. Touch had seemed to ground him, before, but with the puppet master right outside, he was lost. He leaned forward, cautiously testing the strength of her grip. She let him go, and he propelled himself into the door to fumble frantically at the locks. A horrible expression stretched his face, not so much a grin as a spasm.

  In that moment, Kim hated herself.

  Coyote tossed the semiauto at her, and she caught it as he trained Zeb’s revolver on the door.

  It opened; Rocky was outside.

  Beyond him, Kim could see Duran. She knew what he looked like, had seen sketches and specially-treated photographs that could capture a dead man, had stalked him all over the city of Austin ever since she had gotten on the job a year before. He was a hell of a lot bigger, up close.

  He loomed like a tower, tight white shirt straining to contain acres of muscle, sleeves riding up over mountainous biceps. His hair had gone longer than it had been in the photographs she kept, and it covered his forehead and the tops of his ears in inky curls. She knew that his eyes would be stunning, rich brown with flecks of gold and thick, dark lashes, but she knew better than to look. It didn’t seem fair that someone so putrid could be so pretty.

  He didn’t lunge forward. He didn’t have a gun, though he looked at theirs with a faint smile. He had a good smile, one that made him look like he actually cared. He didn’t even have a matchbook to carry out his threat.

  “Much obliged,” he said, voice mocking through that kind smile. He placed huge hands on his prisoner’s shoulders, shockingly gentle. The smaller man shivered. A sour feeling rose in Kim’s throat.

  “He was calling me. Crying out. How could I not come?”

  Then they were gone, and it was over.

  Coyote shut the door and locked it, then crossed to the kitchen and grabbed the fire extinguisher from under the sink.

  Kim picked up the phone and dialed Amarillo.

  “It’s Kimberly Reed,” she said, cutting off the man who answered, “calling about the Austin business. I need to speak with either Tony or Edith.”

  * * *

  THEY DIDN’T DRIVE. Sebastian led him along tenderly, whispering him deeper and deeper down until he forgot that he had remembered how to think. It was all very familiar, comfortable. There was even a poisonous sort of sweetness to the way Sebastian helped him walk, kept him from tripping, always touching, petting, filling his brain with sensation so there would be no room for memory.

  “It’s okay. Don’t worry, it’s okay. I know you didn’t mean to. You would never go, wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”

  “Never.”

  They stepped into Sebastian’s apartment, the same musty hole with the same green wallpaper, tables strewn with tattered westerns, pervasive pall of muted suffering.

  The ghosts drifted out of the walls to watch. They remembered this one, the one who could see them. This time, though, he didn’t look. Sebastian had his whole attention.

  The Spaniard slammed the door and bolted it shut. He taped another layer of foil across the windows, a layer across the air vents. Then he crouched in the chair and regarded the other man with quiet speculation.

  “Tell me what happened,” he ordered. “Tell me everything.”

  He told him everything – everything that he had done, everything that had been done to him, everything that had passed through his mind. It took hours, working around his painful stutter. He talked about the memory with no face, and the ghost, and the young woman who touched him without leaving marks.

  “So that’s why you didn’t try to leave. You want to stay there, don’t you?”

  Blue eyes met brown and saw that he was not really forgiven. It wasn’t okay.

  “N-no, I t-t-tried, b-but I didn’t…”

  “A token effort. Just so you could say you tried. You think I’m stupid? You think you’re stronger than me?”

  “No!”

  “You’re dirt. You’re lower than dirt. You’re nothing and no-one. You don’t have anything but me. I am the only thing standing between you and them. You think they wouldn’t kill you as soon as you gave them what they wanted?”

  “I t-tried!”

  “They’ll kill me, and then they’ll kill you. Because you’re an animal, a killer.”

  That was impossible, but possibility didn’t matter, becaus
e when Sebastian said it, it was true. The no-one bowed his head in shame.

  “I tried.”

  A hand tangled itself in his hair and jerked his head back so hard, his neck cracked. He felt a flash of numbness, then a spreading pain. Then he met Sebastian’s eyes, and the pain receded. He felt nothing, and then… anticipation.

  “You thought about going back, didn’t you? You like that worthless witch. You know what? Too bad. I conquered you. I own you. No one takes what’s mine. No one defies me. No one resists.”

  The hand tightened and pulled him up off his feet, dangling him by his hair. He hung limply, waiting. A fingertip traced his carotid artery, riding the ridges of scar tissue, inducing a shiver. His chest jumped with a minute gasp; his pupils dilated.

  “You don’t have anything but me. I am your pain, and I am your pleasure. I am your will. And now I’m going to cripple you, and you’re going to love it.”

  Sebastian’s teeth pierced his throat.

  His brain liquefied and seeped into his veins, and each time Sebastian gulped him down, he took a little more memory, a little more self.

  Losing himself like that was bliss. It pounded through his body, pulsing in the pit of his belly like his absent heartbeat. It resonated through his mind. Ever weakening, he lost the strength for worry, for fear. The emptiness was exquisite. He envisioned his spirit being drawn out and dispersing, the core of himself being destroyed. There was a kind of freedom in that idea. It would be so good to be free, to give up, give in, let Sebastian think his thoughts for him, let Sebastian possess his flesh. It would be easy, restful, peaceful. He couldn’t imagine how three days had made him forget that, how necessary it was that he quiet himself and obey.

  That admission brought its own wave of pleasure, seductive warmth that relaxed his mind further and drew a sigh out of him.

  Sebastian dropped him, and his head hit the corner of the table, but he didn’t feel it. The stars that filled his vision were beautiful.