Eine Kleine Nacht Maggie (Maggie MacKay Magical Tracker Book 9)

by Kate Danley

  "The chapel has been readied, my love! My king! Come meet your bride!" the sirens sang.

  I looked at Killian and he looked at me. We glanced over our shoulders as the candles I had lit suddenly turned into a fountain display of fire, their flames now four feet tall.

  "There's a portal opening," I muttered with dread as I turned to face the front of the church.

  "Where?" asked Killian.

  "On the altar. In between the two pictures."

  And, indeed, the religious pictures that had hung there had been replaced. Instead of paintings, there were mirrors. And the mirrors reflected an alien landscape of gray and mist.

  "Come forth, my brother, and play your sister's bridal march as she goes to join our king!" sang a siren outside.

  Killian and I turned and looked. The crowd had parted and a siren dressed in an ancient, mossy wedding dress of moldy-green and water-stained-white emerged. Behind her, Mortimer stood on a concrete planter, holding the trumpet of the archangel Gabriel.

  What I wouldn't have given for an asshole angel named Graham to have come around to grab it out of his mouth right about now. But there were no angels. It was just me and Killian at this moment.

  "Grab the end of the bench and block the fucking doors," I said to him.

  We ran and grabbed the first pew. And then the second. And then we piled up every single bench in the entire chapel and jammed them into the ground and tried to create some braces and fulcrums that could stand the force that was about to hit them.

  And the force was like a hurricane. I couldn't help it. I screamed as the horn blew. The windows shattered, raining glass and lead upon us. The doors blew open, turning the ancient wood into matchsticks and shattering the benches. I guess you don't have to try to struggle to break a barrier when you can just obliterate it.

  Because that's what the horn was milliseconds from doing. It would have happened, except Mortimer had run out of breath. I looked at the portal. I could see Mad King Cole riding towards us followed by an army, a fairy horde, behind him. Some were human-esque, but they were not human at all. Some looked like carnivorous horses. Some looked like cat people. Some flew in the sky, strange birdlike creatures who weren't going to be satisfied with millet treats.

  "CHARGE!!!" shouted a voice.

  I turned around. It was Fritz and the denizens of Little Bavaria. Evidently, they had enough. Even Gerta, the grumpy woman from the uniform shop, was there, carrying a pitchfork and chasing after the faeriefolk.

  I turned to Killian. "You have to break the horn."

  "What?" he replied, looking at me with panic in his eyes.

  "Break Gabriel's horn," I replied. "I have to close the portal."

  "Maggie..." he said grabbing at me. "You'll die."

  "Shut your mouth, Killian, I'll be right back." And I gave him a kiss. That shut him up. "I'm too fucking mean to die," I said with a smile.

  And with that, I raced up to the altar and harnessed the energy of the candles. I allowed the raw, elemental magic of the flames to run through me and feed into the portal.

  "MAGGIE!" I heard an anguished, distant cry.

  I reached into the ground and drew from the elemental magic of the earth and I blasted it into the portal. Still, it wasn't enough.

  The battle outside was growing distant. The room around me began to shimmer with sparkles of light and color.

  There was magic in this place, magic in this crazy Bavarian Village. It was what had drawn these people to this place, this bonkers parking lot, there was something special here. And it was that kernel of magic that I grabbed onto. It burned as I wrestled with it. It seared and writhed. It did not want to go back to where it belonged.

  But it was this little kernel of magic that allowed all this entire crap show to happen.

  It never belonged in this dimension.

  A magician had thought he had discovered something which brought clocks and wood to life. But it had been a trap. It had always been a trap. It was never meant to be brought across the ocean to a parking lot in Torrance.

  I saw the face of the Mad King Cole anger as he saw me discover his secret.

  I saw him spur his horse faster towards the portal. He was feet away.

  He had left this bit of magic on Earth, just waiting for someone to discover it, someone like Fritz's family who thought they could bring carvings to life in a world where such things should not have been possible.

  It was like the backdoor access hackers use to get into the toughest, most secure sites in the world.

  The Mad King Cole had left it here to come back to Earth when the time was right.

  But now I found it.

  And I just made the executive decision that the time would never be right.

  And so I took that little nodule of energy and I shoved it into that portal until it choked on it.

  And the world exploded.

  Chapter Eleven

  There was a note.

  A single note.

  I was aware of only the note.

  It seemed to say, Come to me.

  But I did not want to come.

  So I did not.

  There was a note.

  A second note.

  And this note was more persistent.

  It seemed to say, Your name is Maggie. And you will come to me.

  I thought about this for eternity. This thing called name. A note that called me Maggie and wished to separate me from the All.

  I did not wish to go.

  So I did not.

  But there was a third note.

  And this note was a command.

  And it would not be ignored.

  This note named me Maggie and gave me form. It told me I belonged and had a reason. It told me my existence in All was not yet. It gave me legs and arms and head and hands and ripped me from wherever I was...

  And I found myself gasping, coughing, hacking and I collapsed on the floor of a small chapel covered in shards of wood and glass.

  "OW!" I shouted. "THAT FUCKING HURT!"

  "MAGGIE!" Killian came running to me and wrapped me up in his arms and wouldn't let go. He just kept rocking me and rocking me and murmuring, "I thought I lost you... I thought I lost you..."

  "You're never gonna be so lucky, elf." I hurt so bad all over. "I told you I was too mean to die," I croaked.

  He laughed and kissed the top of my head. "Do not ever do that again."

  "Eh," I said, pulling myself up from the ground. My knees buckled like a newborn fawn, but I caught myself before I went down. Or maybe Killian caught me. I still wasn't entirely sure about what was him and what was me and how exactly things were separated from the All. Listen, you spend some time in eternity and you fucking tell me how much sense you make. "It wasn't so bad."

  I looked over at the door. Mortimer was standing there with Gabriel's Horn.

  "So, it does bring people back to life," I remarked.

  The strange little siren sighed sadly. "I wish you could have heard it. It was my finest performance! I almost feel I should retire. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, will ever accomplish the emotional heights of that concert. I shall forever be trying to recreate it, and never again will be able to." His eyes lit up. "Perhaps I should play an encore performance for you, Maggie!"

  I hauled myself over, grimacing, because evidently getting stuck in the border of Faerie and Earth doesn't mean all of your wounds heal up. I smiled gently and held out my two hands palms up. "May I examine Gabriel's Horn?" I asked.

  Reverently, Mortimer held it out for me, as if presenting a sword. I took it from him and gazed upon its beauty. It was a stunning piece of craftsmanship. It was solid gold and covered in etchings. It was infinity defined.

  And then I bent it over my knee.

  Mortimer gasped in horror.

  And then I started beating him with it. "DON'T YOU EVER TRY TO TEAR DOWN THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN EARTH AND FAERIE EVER AGAIN! DON'T YOU EVER PLAY THIS FUCKING HORN!"

  "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" he
yelped.

  "Encore performance..." I muttered. I took the horn and threw it to the side. It fell to the ground with a metallic clatter. "If I EVER hear of you taking any more apocalyptic gigs, I am going to haul your ass to the Other Side jail and tell them there will be NO musical therapy for you! Not for the rest of your unnatural born life."

  "Oh, you wouldn't, Maggie, would you?" he asked, cowering a little, but mostly just pouting.

  I pointed my finger in his face. "Don't test me." I turned to Killian. "I need a fucking beer."

  "I can do that for you!" he replied, scrambling out of the chapel.

  The courtyard was a war zone. Planters were on fire. Dead vampires and faeries were everywhere. Screams were coming from all over the place. Not "Help me! I'm hurt!" screams. More along the lines of "Oh crap! Some serious shit just went down but I'm fine!" screams.

  Fuming, I walked across the parking lot from the shopping center to the tent. Killian sped to keep up and gave me a brief recap of what I missed. "So, the villagers defeated the sirens and the faeries who were here. As soon as you disappeared into the border, the magic ceased working on Fritz's carvings, though. The humans who were in the tent ran screaming to their cars, which you are hearing right now, but appear to be exiting in an orderly fashion. Oh! And it appears Fritz's nutcrackers killed all the vampires, so that is a positive."

  I threw open the white canvas and stepped through into Oktoberfest.

  The tent was eerily empty. Tables and chairs had been knocked over. Food was left lying all over the ground. The Plexiglas in front of the bandstand was covered in red stains. I was going to pretend it was marinara sauce. Wordlessly, Killian went over to the beer stand and poured us two gigantic steins. He came over, placed one in front of me, straddled the bench, and sat down.

  I pointed to all the mess on the floor and tables. "Looks like you're the last of the cleaning crew."

  A smug little smile crossed his face. "I believe I quit." He sat a little straighter, pleased with himself.

  I took a great big breath and realized we were all okay. I raised my glass and we clinked before we took a well-deserved sip. I let out a deep sigh as every last ounce of tension left my body. "Hey! Maybe we're fired. At least then we can collect some unemployment."

  "How long do you believe they will require us to work to pay off our uniforms?"

  We both sized each other up. Killian's lederhosen was shredded. He lost his hat somewhere and he wasn't even bothering to hide his ears. The only thing keeping my dress on was the black corset. My sleeves were ripped, the white fabric covered in blood and tears, the skirt had been torn from the waistband and if it hadn't been for that damned frilly petticoat, I would have been mooning the room so bad, it would have caused a werewolf to shift.

  "I'm guessing until the next apocalypse," I said.

  "I wonder when that will be," Killian mused, lifting his stein to his lips.

  "Well, the queen knows you're alive. She's probably already dispatched her Shadow Elves to hunt us down. We epically failed on the 'deliver' part of the cuckoo clock front so Trovac is going to come after us. And while I managed to patch up the big hole, there's thinness all over the boundary between Earth and Faerie thanks to those sirens and that stupid horn. And Mindy is going to kick us out of her house the moment that baby arrives... but hey! At least the oompah band went home."

  "Well, there is some good news!" said Killian.

  "To another apocalypse together, partner!" I said with a smile, raising my glass to him as it really and truly dawned on me that we had actually survived another one.

  A great big grin spread across Killian's face as he clinked his glass against mine. "Prost!"

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  Maggie MacKay: Magical Tracker Series

  Book One – Maggie for Hire

  Book Two – Maggie Get Your Gun

  Book Three – Maggie on the Bounty

  Book Four – M&K Tracking

  Book Five – The M-Team

  Book Six – Maggie Goes to Hollywood

  Book Seven – Maggie Reloaded

  Book Eight – Maggie Goes Medieval

  Book Nine – Eine Kleine Nacht Maggie

  And more to come!

  Maggie MacKay Holiday Short Story Specials

  The Ghost and Ms. MacKay

  Red, White, and Maggie

  Be the first to hear all about upcoming Maggie MacKay books by subscribing to the Kate Danley Newsletter - http://www.katedanley.com/subscribe.html

  Author's Note

  That would be me on the right in a dirndl at the Texas State High School Championship German Folkdance Competition.

  We won 5th place.

  You're welcome.

  Kate Danley Bio

  Kate Danley is an award winning playwright and novelist. She spent over five weeks on the USA TODAY bestseller list and has sold over half-a-million books globally. She has been honored with the Garcia Award for Best Fiction Book of the Year (The Woodcutter), McDougall Previews Award for Best Fantasy Book of the Year (Queen Mab), and her series Maggie MacKay: Magical Tracker has been optioned for film and television development.

  Her first full-length script, the 1930s screwball comedy Building Madness, won the 2016 Panowski Playwriting Award and is available for license. Her second full-length script, Bureaucrazy, was a semi-finalist in the 2017 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. Her one-act Power was the overall winner of the Renegade Theatre Festival. Her short Kings of the World was honored as the 3rd place audience favorite in the 10x10x10 Festival, tallied from over 400 ballots. Her plays have been performed in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Ottawa (Canada), Bath (UK), Grande Prairie (Canada), Seattle, Houston, Baltimore, and Anchorage, among others. She graduated from Towson University with a BS in Theatre Summa cum Laude and was named a Maryland Distinguished Scholar in the Arts. She trained at RADA London, The Groundlings, Folger Shakespeare, Theatricum Botanicum, Acme Comedy Theater, and Seattle Rep. She performed her original stand-up at such clubs as The Comedy Store and The Icehouse. She belonged to the main company and wrote sketch for a weekly show in Hollywood. She won the Breckenridge Festival of Film Screenplay Competition for her feature script Fairy Blood. Her film shorts The Playhouse, Dog Days, Sock Zombie, SuperPout, and Sports Scents can be seen in festivals and on the internet.

  http://www.katedanley.com

  This is a work of fiction. All people and places are figments of the author's wild imagination or used fictitiously. There are no vampires in Los Angeles.

  I mean, other than the ones we all already know about.

  Copyright 2017. Kate Danley

  Cover Art by Bayou Cover Design