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

by Margo Bond Collins

  “What do you want with my baby?”

  “It’s my baby now, and the time for questions has come and gone,” his laugh resounded, feeling more like the chatter of a rattlesnake against her ears. Suddenly she couldn’t remember what she saw in him in the first place. “The bet was made, you lost. Take the defeat with some dignity.”

  “Why? Why are doing you this?” she demanded as she narrowed her eyes, still working to regain focus. She kept repeating “why” then, hoping beyond hope that someone would hear and come to help her. She just had to keep him there long enough. “You… you killed him! You killed Damon!”

  “Do you think yourself clever? Do you believe me a fool?” he scoffed, tucking the baby under one arm to wag a blurred finger down at her. “You think I can’t see what you are doing?” Rumpel laughed once again, and his eyes—those damned eyes that were never out of focus to her!—continued to dance across her body. Though she couldn’t imagine there was anything to admire at that moment, pale and soaked in sweat and blood and tears only moments after giving birth, he still looked like there was more that he wanted. “Not that it matters, love. No one will hear; no one will come. It’s just you…” his hand unfurled and he pointed with too-long fingers down at her before they curled back up to aim at himself, “… and me.” He took a dancing step away and swayed the baby under his arm, earning a gurgled sound of confusion for his efforts. “And, besides, don’t sound so bereaved about the late hubby now; you did come out here to meet me tonight, remember? You’d already made the choice.”

  “No… no no no!” she protested between sobs, but no matter how many times she said it she couldn’t change the truth in the monster’s words.

  “The choice…”

  “NO NO NO!”

  “… to leave him!”

  “NO!” she howled at him. “That’s not true! It’s not!”

  The baby began to cry, and suddenly nothing else—not the monster nor his words—mattered to her.

  “Please!” she pleaded, reaching out to the blurred golden vision. “Let me hold my baby!”

  The sound of her child’s cries filled her ears, taunting and teasing her as she once again struggled against her body’s growing weakness. Even with her arms growing heavier, she fought to hold them out, fought to reach for her child. When the monster made no move to give her what she asked, she pushed to bring herself to her hands and knees, crying out as her body protested every movement. She whimpered, beginning to crawl forward, ignoring the growing pain between her legs and the fading of her gaze.

  She needed to save her child.

  She needed to make things right.

  She needed to stop Rumpelstiltskin.

  But, as she drew nearer, the monster’s body began to disappear from sight, turning from a blur to nothing at all.

  “N-no! NO! RETURN, DEMON! COME BACK HERE AND GIVE ME MY BABY!”

  It was too late. He was gone—gone with her child and with the blood of her husband still staining his hands—and she was left with only the fresh memory of her baby’s cries and… and the guilt.

  By the time the others had found her she was more dead than alive. Later, they’d tell her she was ranting—speaking of things that made no sense; of gold and lies and promises—and still reaching out with the two fingers of her right hand. She’d wake up to the sound of a baby’s cries, which would soon after fade but never truly leave her. And then there would be weeks of sorrow and pain and guilt. And, beyond that, months of ruthless training that was every bit a challenge to tear her body apart as it was to build herself into a weapon.

  The scream that welled in her throat wasn’t sure which point in that timeline it existed in, and so it roared out with the ferocity of all of them at once.

  HEAR ME, RUMPEL! the thoughts carried on the guttural, animalistic cry reached as far as it could to deliver the promise. I’LL FIND YOU! I’LL FIND YOU AND TAKE BACK WHAT’S MINE!

  Hear me, baby… her wailings reached out to the one soul she could hope to save. I will save you!

  She was intent on having herself be heard. One way or the other…

  She would be heard!

  “SHUT THE FUCK UP IN THERE! SOME PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO SLEEP ONE OFF!”

  Serafina jumped up at the sound of enraged banging and shouting. For a long moment she wasn’t sure if she was back from the dream or still trapped within it, and her screams carried on for a few seconds longer before she recognized the night-bathed interior of the motel room. Then, swallowing what screams she had left to offer, she panted and whimpered at the lingering ghosts of the dream. Then, certain that Rumpel wouldn’t be there behind the curtain of her eyelids, she clenched her eyes shut and clutched at the crescent moon pendant at her neck.

  The pounding and shouting went on a little while longer before whoever was on the other side of the wall decided that they’d made their point.

  Deciding that she would definitely not be getting anymore sleep—another restless night, she thought—Serafina stood and made her way to the bathroom. Flipping on the lights, she had to blink several times to let her eyes adjust to blinding wave of fluorescents. Blurry vision plagued her, and the dream cycled around and made her tremble. She swore to herself. Then she swore to everyone else. Finally, when her eyes could stand the light and the stream of cursing had run dry, she made her way to the shower.

  They don’t make water cold enough, she thought to herself as she worked the “C” knob with a sneer.

  Slipping out of her clothes, she stared down at the pile and frowned. She’d definitely need to find a laundromat soon. There was a blip of optimism that maybe, just maybe, the motel would have one on site, but it was more fantasy than anything else. Kicking the pile of clothes aside and ignoring her face in the mirror as she passed, she stepped into the already chilled tub and leaned against the tiled wall as she let the cold water pour over her body.

  “They don’t make water cold enough,” she repeated, this time aloud.

  She didn’t dare to offer herself the comfort of a hot shower anymore. She neither believed she deserved it, nor could she manage the sensation of hot liquid touching her skin.

  Every time she tried she just saw blood.

  And the haunting cries of a baby were never far behind.

  Clenching her eyes shut, she tried to focus on the image of her baby, but, as she’d never gotten a clear view—never even gotten to find out whether she’d had a son or a daughter—it was a pointless effort. Instead, she was rewarded with the memory of bright gold eyes gleaming menacingly down at her. Letting loose a growl, she slammed her fist into the wall, relishing in the pain it caused her. So she did it again. Then once more. Each time just a bit harder to bring the pain threshold just a little higher.

  It was just what she needed.

  She needed to feel again!

  Hatred was an ugly solo companion, after all.

  Finishing her shower, she slipped back into the bedroom. Not bothering to dry herself, she tugged herself into a pair of sweatpants and a tee-shirt that she blindly pulled from Damon’s old work bag. It was the only piece of luggage she’d brought, stuffing it with various odds and ends in a random and half-hearted flurry of effort leaving home. With the fabric still molding itself to her dampened skin, she let her body dip and finally fall to the floor before catching herself with her palms and fluidly beginning the first of one-hundred pushups. The ache and burn, what she’d come to crave during her training with Jerock, didn’t come until the ninety-seventh rise. It was a dull pain, and her lungs were barely protesting. She did a hundred more. If pain was the only way she’d be able to feel, then she’d reclaim sensations or make herself a machine for the trouble.

  And after this, she promised herself, come the crunches.

  Somewhere deep in her belly, her abdominals celebrated their upcoming torture.

  Chapter 2

  Serafina had been able to get a few more hours of sleep after relieving some of her aggression through working out. It hadn’
t been intentional. However, waking up in the ice bath she’d made for herself after barely making it to a hundred burpees, she’d been pleasantly surprised to find herself not screaming from nightmares.

  And not drowning was nice, too.

  Pulling herself out of the nearly overflowing tub—the ice long since having melted and bringing the water level high enough to slosh over the edges as she stood—she rubbed at her face. There was a momentary battle as she fought with herself regarding which was more comfortable—the over-starched sheets pulled too tight over the rock-like mattress or the jagged cubes from the angry ice machine sitting in the too-cramped tub of freezing water?—before she realized that she’d fallen asleep in her clothes. This, she found, seemed the oddest of all the things she’d woken up to, as she’d yet to secure a decent place to wash or, more importantly in this case, dry her clothes. Sighing, she peeled off the soaking garments and tossed them into the sink. She’d have to pick out something else to wear.

  But first…

  Knowing that nobody would want to offer information to a woman looking and smelling like a rat that had died in freezing waters and been left to thaw and rot, she returned to the bathroom. Then, remembering the prior night’s blinding encounter, she averted her gaze as she flipped the switch, giving a five-count before daring to look up again. Though very little daylight was allowed into the room through the drawn curtains, and, of that, even less was allowed into the bathroom, the fluorescents weren’t as intense as she’d remembered. Either she’d been losing her mind then, she was losing her mind now, or the fates were just eager to see her look foolish. At that moment, any of those possibilities seemed reasonable. A good portion of her slumber-bath still occupied the bottom of the tub as she started the shower, offering herself the small pleasure and moving the “H” knob to relieve a bit of the water’s bite. A quick shampoo and soap scrub later and she was done.

  Stepping from the shower, she decided to tempt fate further by balancing on a wet foot while she used the other to turn off the water. The way she saw it, if a thing like a fall in a motel bathroom was enough to kill her, then she had no business going out to track down Rumpel in the first place. Fate, as it turned out, wasn’t tempted. Sighing, Serafina wrung out her hair on the floor as she moved to the sink and, leaning against the porcelain—feeling the wad of cold, wet clothes against the pads of her thumbs as she did—glared at the mirror. A downside of not taking hot showers, she’d found, was not having the benefit of a steamed mirror to blur her reflection. She would have preferred it that way. More and more the face she found herself staring back at her was unrecognizable, and, more and more, she found herself hating whoever it was she was staring at. Sure, the brown hair that she used to love to style was still there, though it was hanging in tentacle-like clumps across the top of her head. Trying to test the mirror—eager to prove that, no, that wasn’t really her—she moved to rake the mess into something more hair-like. The reflection copied her motions and seemed to wince at the effort as it did. She knew, though she wanted to believe otherwise, that she, too, had flinched at the sudden tugging at her scalp. A few renegade strands clung to her fingers. These she cast aside in the sink, leaving them twisting and bending against the off-white surface to look like roads on a map. The reflection’s dark green eyes moved to watch her as hers rose to meet it. She half expected the face to look upset about the hairs she’d disregarded, but, like her, it didn’t seem to care. Like her, the reflection didn’t seem to afford itself any sense of vanity. If that meant being bald on the day when she stood against Rumpel then so be it. She’d step onto that battlefield a hideous hag if that’s what it took to get there. Unfortunately, ugly as she felt on the inside, the outside just refused to match. Even with her bloodshot eyes and the constant look of murderous rage plastered across her face, the “beautiful girl” everyone had prided her as never ceased to be far from the surface.

  Cursing and resigning that, yeah, that was still her in the mirror, she decided that maybe it would be worth it to take hotter showers. Steamy, blurry rooms and the horrific memory of being covered in her own blood suddenly seemed like a better option than staring at herself.

  After a quick towel dry, Serafina left the bathroom, closing the door on the mirror and any doppelgangers that might have been occupying it as she did, and going for another grab into her late-husband’s bag for a new outfit.

  This time, however, she opted for something that showed a little more forethought. Realizing it was better that she not just embark upon this most important of days in a sweat-drenched mess, she thanked herself for having the lack of foresight to simply fall asleep fully dressed in a tub of ice water. After all, it was the first day of her plan and she had several stops to make. The bulk of the information she had gotten so far had been accurate and, though she wasn’t about to fall victim to the bad habit of being optimistic, she was confident that the rest would serve her well. With that, and with the new information she was prepared to gather from it, she was certain she’d be ready to start making some worthwhile marks on her new maps of the Chicago area soon enough.

  And then came the planning.

  Since it was still worth it to look decent in public, she snagged a pair of tight jeans, kicking each leg into the pants as she pictured Rumpel’s face somewhere in each abyss, and then threw on a loose-fitting dress shirt. Though most would likely see it as a “showy” outfit, the truth was that, with no excess around the legs to trip her up and enough give in the top to execute a wide range of motions, it was perfect for her goals. Then, checking her bag to be sure she had enough blades to make her comfortable—and it took a lot of blades to make her comfortable—she yanked the motel key off the nightstand, threw it in with her knives, and strolled out the door. As she started around the building, she caught sight of a few people making their way to the check-in office and, remembering then that they offered breakfast, decided it would be worth it not to head out on an empty stomach. She knew, given the condition of the room, that whatever it was they had that might pass as food would be terrible, but she knew it was better to put a terrible taste in her mouth provided it helped fuel her body for the rest of the day. Though she had enough money on her to get something elsewhere, she knew it was unlikely that she’d find the discipline to push herself to consider something as mundane as eating twice in one day. Shuddering at the memory of all the greasy mementos littering the floor of her car, she hoped they at least had something approaching the vicinity of fresh.

  Following after a small family that more waddled than walked ahead of her, she (slowly) made her way inside. Seeing only one of four tables left, she made a note of dropping her bag on the waiting surface, claiming it as her own while the family began hunting for ways to fill their plates. The breakfast lineup consisted of two tables with stained white cloths draped over their uneven surfaces and housing a series of dented trays and dirty bowls filled with that morning’s selections. On one table was a layout of overcooked scrambled eggs, undercooked bacon, some muffins that didn’t look entirely burnt, and a mountain of fruit that was, fortunately, not all rotten. The other was a scattered setup of two carafes of coffee, one sporting a crooked length of masking tape that somebody had scribbled “DE” across, a small bowl of creamers, a pitcher of orange juice that didn’t have a glass’ worth left in it, and a gallon of milk that had more pale crust along the unlidded top than actual milk within it. Near the edge of the second table, as if it were a last minute thought, were three miniature boxes of cereal, none of the names for which Serafina recognized.

  Resisting the urge to skip breakfast, she grabbed a muffin that was either blueberry or chocolate chip—who has the time to check?—an apple that had proven itself the fresh king amongst the spoiled masses, and a small foam cup for coffee. Though she typically preferred milk and sugar, she decided to save herself the trouble of hunting for anything resembling a packet of sweetener and, knowing better than to try the carton of milk or the stuff passing for creamer, she decided
that, for that morning, she drank her coffee black. Turning back to the tables, she caught sight of the family’s frantic gazes as they realized there were no more places left to sit with their towering plates, and quietly slipped into a chair behind her waiting bag. As the doe-eyed family stared off, comatose to their next step, she gave the apple a cautionary pass over her shirt to wipe it off before taking a bite.

  “THESE EGGS ARE FUCKING COLD!” an unfriendly and, strangely enough, familiar voice roared from the table at the opposite end of the room.

  Looking up, Serafina spotted the speaker, a large and (unfortunately) attractive man as he stood, knocking his chair over in the process, and motioned to a woman in a white apron who would’ve been small to many but was downright mousy when compared to the tall, muscular buffoon calling her over.

  Still unsettled by the familiarity of the voice, she catalogued all the people she’d talked to since arriving at the motel. Finally, deciding that she’d only dealt with the young, cash-hating clerk, she began to pass it off as déjà vu and rolled her eyes at the idea of anyone complaining about free food at a dirt-cheap motel. Unable to look away, having long-since been drawn to chaos in the hopes that Rumpelstiltskin might be behind it, she continued to watch, deciding that, in another life and under far different circumstances, his moderate good looks might have earned him of admiring from her. He was cute, she’d give him that; perhaps go so far as to even call him handsome. But in that setting, with her life where it was, and with such an obvious mental disorder, she couldn’t even bring herself to give him that much.

  As she played out a fantasy in her mind of the mousy-maid losing it and releasing a fury of rodent-like strikes against his cinderblock skull, she watched and listened in without trying to seem obvious about watching and listening in.