Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels

by Margo Bond Collins

  Hadrian walked all the way around me. “I know I don’t deserve her,” he said. “She’s an angel, and no one is good enough for her. But that only means I have to fight harder, you know? Strive to be better. A goal gives one strength, and the greater the goal, the higher one climbs. You know, I used to admire helsing warriors.”

  “You did?” It was good to keep him talking.

  “When I was younger, I read all about you. Your strength, your speed, all these stories about you; you guys were like real superheroes.”

  “People tell stories about us?”

  He shrugged. “I had to seek them out. Of course, when I got older, I figured out you might as well be from Marvel comics for how much you affected the world. You are the first helsing I’ve met, and you would have been a great disappointment if I’d met you when I was younger.”

  “And not now?”

  “And not now what?”

  “I would have been a great disappointment if you had met me when you were younger. And now I’m not?”

  “I’ve grown enough to know that heroes don’t exist. Not really. But still, I didn’t expect the first helsing I met to be our enemy.”

  “I’m not your enemy,” I said. Hadrian continued to circle me, slightly limping from when I’d injured him earlier. He kept his gun trained on me, but I sensed his focus was beginning to waver. I just needed to wait for my moment. “The necromancer will take the swirl key if we do not. You must persuade Christian to let us have it.”

  “Give it up to you and the hood mage. To the Italian mage and Lionel?” Hadrian chuckled. “Your lot can keep it safer than a magsafe in the middle of Cressington Tower?”

  Would it make a difference if I revealed who Gabriel was? Would Christian obey if a dragongod revealed himself? “I’ve fought Grimstar. He has real power, and you don’t realize what you are facing in him. And keeping the swirl key out of his hands is too important to leave to chance.”

  “How difficult was it to convince Lionel to betray his family?” Hadrian asked. “Probably not that difficult, right? His father gave him everything, and he threw it back in his face.”

  “Tell him he’s a weasel-faced oaf,” Lionel said through the earpiece.

  “Do you need help to get away, Slate?” Gabriel asked.

  “I wasn’t born to great power or great position. Not like you. Not like Lionel. I wa—” Hadrian drifted too close, and I whipped my hand out, grabbing his foot and pulling. At the same time, I threw myself forward, lowering myself while my yank forced Hadrian to topple back. Hadrian shot, and I felt a hot sting on my neck. I pulled Hadrian under me and grabbed his hand, wrenching it upward and forcing him to drop the gun. I picked it up and smashed the butt of it against his temple. His head gave a shudder, his eyes glazed over, and then the glow on his pendant dimmed.

  I quickly searched his jacket and found Danielle’s spellbook. I took it and checked to ensure he was still breathing—he was—then I left. I touched my hand to my neck where the bullet had struck. It was only a graze.

  “I’ve escaped Hadrian, and I’ve got Danielle,” I announced. “We are near the southeast of the property.”

  “The eastern boundary is the least guarded area right now,” Lionel said. “Head for there.”

  “I’ll drive the van around and collect you,” Gabriel said.

  “What happened to you two?”

  “I’ll explain after,” Gabriel said.

  “I shut off my earpiece while I was with my father,” Lionel said. “I’ve now slipped away, and am about to leave the grounds. Just been listening with amusement to Hadrian.”

  I slipped back through the bushes to rejoin Danielle. I put the spellbook in her hands. “Here you go,” I told her. “It doesn’t look like much, but I hear the calligraphy in it is out of this world.”

  “You retrieved my spellbook?” She leaned forward and gave me a hug. “Thank you.”

  A spark of warmth flared in my chest. It wasn’t much, but it was small victory. “We should make sure we get out of here before there is any talk of thanks. And I’m not giving it to you for nothing. I expect a spell that can break contact between a necromancer and a demon.”

  “Even if I learn the spell, I’ll nev—”

  “Let’s go.” I picked her up and began to move swiftly through the darkness, heading toward the eastern boundary. Despite what Lionel had said, I was surprised to make it all the way without running into any mages. The wall shimmered white, but wards on longer mattered. The alarm had long since been sounded. The wall was over ten feet high, with strands of barbed wire along the top, but it wasn’t difficult for me to climb over, even while carrying Danielle.

  Just as we landed on the other side, a pair of headlights picked us up. Danielle tensed in my arms, but I recognized the sound of the engine. “It’s okay. That’s Gabriel and Lionel.”

  I put her down as the van came to a stop in front of us. Danielle tottered toward the side of the van. One of her shoes had fallen off, but the other was still in place, doing its best to trip her up.

  I started after her, then swiveled around, sensing a presence. A shadow separated itself from the darkness to my left. The darkness took shape, resolving itself into the figure of Alessa striding toward me.

  She looked furious.

  Chapter 17

  I tensed up but held my ground. The headlights washed bright light over her, making her aura temporarily seem white rather than red. Her clothes were torn, and scratches marked her forehead. A patch of blood smudged her right cheek. “Your hand was on the handle,” she said. “A simple snap of your hand and you could have let me in.”

  “I decided not to.”

  She didn’t slow her stride, and it couldn’t have taken much more than a second for her to close the distance between us, but time seemed to slow. Anger pulsed off her so strongly, that alone almost forced me backward. Bloodlust had not come upon her, yet still her eyes blazed. By my side, my hands tightened into fists, but I did not raise them.

  When she pressed her face pressed close to mine, time sped up again. She grabbed the lapels of my jacket and lifted me in the air. “Is that all you have to say for yourself? You decided not to? Why not?”

  I struck out with both arms, hitting her wrists and knocking myself free of her grip. I landed back on the ground. “I warned you before. Don’t touch me.”

  She grabbed me again, and this time charged forward, using her all her speed and strength to smash me against the wall.

  My back crashed against stone, and my head whiplashed backward. I grunted in pain.

  “Why didn’t you?” she repeated, shouting the words into my face.

  “You’re a damned vampire!” I shouted back, grabbing hold of her shoulders and shoving back. “I don’t trust you, and I will never trust one of your kind.”

  We glared into each other’s eyes, nose to nose, frozen in position by the stalemate of our matched strengths straining against each other. Sparks of green and red light flew between us as even our auras clashed.

  “You know you wronged me,” she said, her voice tight.

  I opened my mouth to deny it, but nothing came out. The truth was I wasn’t sure I had done the right thing. Doubt clouded my mind, and my anger melted into a confusing tumult of emotion. I released her, and she rammed me against the wall again. Once, twice. Then she let go of me and stepped back. She took several deep breaths, her chest rising and falling.

  Lionel stuck his head out the side of the van. “Come, Essa. Get inside. We need to get out of here.”

  Without taking her gaze off me, Alessa reached across with her right hand, then ripped a patch of clothing off her left arm. She dug her fingers into a wound on her bicep. The contortions on her face showed the extent of her pain, but she made no sound. Dark blood trickled down her arm. She wrenched, and her hand came away with a bullet between her fingers. She cocked her wrist, and I raised my hands to protect my face. She thought better of throwing, though, and instead just dropped the mis
shapen bullet.

  “Essa,” Lionel repeated.

  “Dawn’s not far away,” she said. “I’ll be separating from you soon. Might as well do it now to avoid doing something I might later regret.” She went to Lionel and kissed him, then caressed his cheek and smiled at him. “We’ll talk soon.”

  She walked behind the van, paused to punch a dent in the back panel, then broke into a run, racing down the road. Her speed was such that her red aura followed in her wake like the tail of a comet. The road dipped, and she disappeared.

  “Slate,” Lionel said. “Let’s get out of here. Before someone sees us and decides we haven’t been shot at enough for one night.” He ducked back inside the van and held the door open. I entered and sat, and Lionel shut the door behind me. Gabriel reversed the van across the road, then turned it to go back the way it had come.

  “That wall looks pretty lopsided,” Danielle said as the beams of the van’s headlights briefly shone directly at the wall. “About to fall, even.”

  “Not surprising,” Lionel said.

  “I’d hate to see what damage the two of them would do if they really got into it,” Danielle said.

  “If Slate comes to his senses, perhaps we won’t have to find out,” Lionel said.

  “Me?” I objected.

  “Yes, you,” Lionel said.

  I didn’t have a good defense, but it was ridiculous that everyone was taking a vampire’s side over mine. What had the world come to? Another great reason—and they were piling up—to hate the city.

  Harps, I thought. Where are you?

  After a quick, but panicky scan of the van, I spotted him curled under a seat, fast asleep.

  “I think we are out of danger.” Gabriel let go of the wheel and clapped his hands together. “Well done, everyone. What fun that was!”

  Danielle sitting beside him in the front reached across and steadied the steering wheel. “Careful. And that was the opposite of fun.”

  “Alessa could have easily been killed,” Lionel said. “We are doing this because it’s important, not for shits and giggles.”

  “Just because a journey is important doesn’t mean you can’t have fun along the way,” Gabriel said. “All the more reason, in fact.”

  Gabriel had mentioned that he liked to work with humans because it was more fun that way. He’d also said that it’d be very bad for us if a necromancer opened a portal to the underworld. Bad for us, but not necessarily him. So Gabriel could afford to take the whole thing less seriously.

  “We failed,” I said. “Just like with our last mission. We are no closer to getting to the swirl key.”

  “No closer; are you sure about that?” Gabriel asked.

  “We rescued Danielle, but that only undid some of what went wrong at the Dulane Building. We didn’t get the magtroller codes.”

  “Whose fault is that?” Lionel asked pointedly.

  “Magtroller codes. What would they even look like?” Gabriel asked. He reached into a top pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. Danielle kept a suspicious eye on him, but he kept his other hand on the wheel and watched the road as he read. “Delta Five Five Bravo Four.”

  “What is that?” Lionel snatched the paper from his hand. He looked from the paper to Gabriel and back again. “You copied down the magtroller codes. But how?”

  “A good magician never reveals his tricks.”

  “We aren’t magicians, we are mages. And what we do aren’t tricks.”

  Gabriel shrugged. “Nevertheless.”

  That explained why Gabriel had gone dark on the earpiece for a time. “So if you could just pilfer the codes that easily, then why did the rest of us have to go into Cress House at all?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t easy,” Gabriel said. “And it was only because all the guards were searching for Alessa that it was even possible. I saw an opportunity and took it.”

  “We are supposed to work together,” Danielle said. “Instead, Alessa and Slate end up at each other’s throats, and Gabriel just goes off and does his own thing to save the day.”

  “If I’ve learned anything from watching buddy cop movies, spice is the most important element in teamwork,” Gabriel said. “And with a helsing and vampire on the team, we’ve got that in spades.”

  “The mage team isn’t held together by spice, but gunpowder,” Danielle said. “Individual moments of inspiration might get us through now and again, but when everything goes to shit, only by everyone pulling in the same direction will we succeed.”

  Gabriel giggled, and Danielle turned to glare at him. “What’s so funny?”

  “Just the mental image,” Gabriel said. “Rowing across a sea of shit.”

  “Nice,” Danielle said.

  “Don’t row too hard, or you’ll end up with splatter problems.” Gabriel smiled. “Listen, the important thing is that we succeeded. We have the codes, no one suspects we took them, and Danielle has been rescued.”

  “I thought the important thing was that we had fun,” Lionel said.

  “That too,” Gabriel agreed.

  We lapsed into silence, and not much was said for the rest of the journey back through the city to Camp Danielle. Lionel pulled off his earpiece, then Gabriel and I did the same. The streets were empty except for late-night taxis. A few stragglers wandered the sidewalks, most of those staggering rather than walking.

  After Gabriel parked the van, Lionel and Danielle quickly headed up to the apartment. I gently scooped up the sleeping Harps. He stirred, waving his paws in front of his face and making faint squeaking noises, then quieted again. I climbed out of the van. “Are you coming up?” I asked Gabriel, nodding toward the main door of the apartment building.

  “And stay in that dingy place? I don’t think so. I have a nice, comfortable hotel room waiting me.” He took a long breath and looked around. “There’s nothing quite like a city at night, is there? Lights all around winking down at you. It seems quiet, and it is quiet compared to during the day, of course, but if you listen, really listen, you can hear a multitude of sounds, some distant, some near, each sound with its own unique little story to reveal.” He focused on me. “Did you have something to tell me?”

  “I did.”

  “Well?”

  As I struggled for a way to phrase what I wanted to say, I remembered something else I needed to mention. “I talked to Becca. You sure were right about her being a magictech expert. Anyway, I think she might help us.”

  “Wonderful,” Gabriel said. “Tonight went even better than I expected. You should have told the others.”

  “I get the impression that Lionel won’t be too keen on his sister being involved.”

  Gabriel tilted his head to the side. “I guess that makes sense.” He paused, studying me. “There’s something else you wanted to say to me, isn’t there?”

  “I don’t think this is going to work out,” I blurted out.

  “Are you quitting on me?” Gabriel asked.

  “No, of course not. I wouldn’t do that. I’m a helsing warrior.”

  “You’re a helsing warrior. What does that mean to you? It obviously means more than just your powers.”

  “We don’t surrender. We don’t give up,” I said. “But more than that, we were born to fight the darkness, born to be the last line of defense, the salvation when all other hope is lost.”

  “So stopping Grimstar is what you were born to do.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “This team, the mage team, will fail. You saw what happened between me and the vampire tonight. We have no idea who this traitor might be. Danielle, well, she’s Danielle. Lionel is having doubts about going against his family. We have absolutely no answer to what Grimstar is capable of.”

  “This is the team I put together,” Gabriel noted. “I have my reasons.”

  “Let me talk to Dagger, tell him who you are, and what we are facing. He’ll arrive in no time, bringing Flint and Crystal, maybe others. He’ll
take charge and ensure we succeed.”

  “You don’t trust yourself to make the right decisions.”

  “No.” I remembered the tarot cards telling me that the fate of the world balanced on my actions. That was too much responsibility for me—too much for any one person, perhaps, but certainly too much for me.

  “You know what’s funny?” Gabriel said. Despite his words, for once he didn’t look amused.

  “What is?” I asked.

  “In under two days, you went from falling to your knees in front of me to questioning and disobeying me. What do I have to expect next, I wonder? Crucifixion?”

  “I haven’t disobeyed you.”

  “No? I told you to let Alessa into Cress House.”

  “I didn’t think of it as an order.”

  “You needn’t look so worried.” Gabriel clapped me on the back. “I told you I didn’t want you on your knees. A bit of questioning is fine. But you’ll have to trust me somewhat here. I have full confidence that the mage team will do the job. Now, go get some sleep. We made some progress, but we still don’t have a magtroller, and what we did tonight will make the Cressingtons even more determined to protect their safe.”

  Chapter 18

  I stood in the center of a clearing. Beneath my feet, the grass was a luminous green, and above my head, the sky was a shimmering indigo. What was I doing here? I looked into my hand and saw the knife, and then I remembered. I was practicing.

  Ten paces in front of me stood an old oak tree, its branches bare of leaves. On the bark of the trunk, lines whirled into a central knot. A target. I threw the knife.

  I missed, going far wide of the trunk.

  Another knife appeared in my hand, and I threw again. Then again. Knife after knife I threw, none hitting the trunk, never mind the knot that was the true target. After several misses, the tree began to get farther away with each additional throw.

  “You are afraid, child,” a man said.

  “I’m not…” I trailed off. I had been about to say that I wasn’t a child, but I couldn’t deny the truth. I was eleven years old. “I’m not afraid.” I had defeated three zombies in the desert a year earlier. After that, even Flint no longer accused me of being a coward. “Monsters are of the dark. Light only has to shine on them to rid us of our fear of them.”