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

by Margo Bond Collins

  “Debatable,” Lash muttered.

  “Two questions,” Ana finally interrupted, and she saw Lash’s eyes in the mirror shift her away as Aderyn turned to face her.

  “Okay,” Aderyn’s voice was full of uncertainty. “Shoot.”

  “First, where are you taking us?” Ana asked, looking off in the distance, where the lights of the city were beginning to come into view. “Sure, this is the closest city, but it’s not like we had to go somewhere close, right? We’re all banished, so we could go anywhere. And you told Lash to head here, right? We’re not planning to pass through, are we? Which means there’s someplace here worth stopping, right? What place do you have in mind?”

  Aderyn followed her gaze toward the haunting glow of the city. “There is a place,” he admitted. “It’s kind of a mage commune. Mage tribes tend to keep to themselves, but they aren’t without their connections to one another. In all major cities, there’s a place where they collect and document what’s learned. If a mage speaks or writes of a theory or encounter, these places have a record of it.”

  “And you think that this place is going to have any more information than your old book or that old man?” Lash asked.

  “That’s what I’m hoping for, yes,” Aderyn said with a single nod.

  Ana felt the corners of her mouth curl with new hope. “Do you think somebody there might be willing to help us find what we need?”

  Aderyn frowned and shook his head. “Technically I’m no longer allowed to visit these types of places. Banishment from one mage tribe is banishment from all mage tribes, I’m afraid. And that means banishment from mage resources, as well.”

  Lash growled and slapped his right palm down on the steering wheel. “Then what good is this place to us?”

  “The place can be a source of the exact information we need,” Aderyn explained. “We need to be careful going in there. We can’t advertise ourselves, which means no asking anybody there for help. We either find it on our own, or we don’t find it at all and likely get killed for trespassing.”

  “Tough decision,” Ana almost heard Lash rolling his eyes. “So what makes you so certain this place is worth the risk?”

  Aderyn looked off toward the city once again. “The almaealij alkabir said that it was worth it to visit the Library. This would be the library he’d be hinting toward.”

  “Why would he need to hint toward it?” Ana asked.

  Aderyn shrugged. “Because technically I was already banished when he gave the advice. Telling a banished mage to enter such a place could make him an accomplice to the act, but by being vague…”

  “Clever old man,” Lash said with a chuckle.

  Aderyn nodded and then, looking at Ana, asked, “So what’s the second question?”

  Ana nodded and took a deep breath, turning the rest of her body to face him. “You said that mages need to be connected to a magic source, right? One that they’re in proximity to and that has enough energy for them to draw from?”

  Aderyn, confused about where she was going with this, gave a skeptical nodded.

  “So, hypothetically speaking, if you need a magic source and I am, for the time being, a nearly unlimited source, what’s keeping you from using this magic”—she motioned with her left arm so the mark was visible between them—“to keep your strength and have access to your spells?”

  Lash stiffened at that and glanced over his shoulder. “Would that even work?”

  Aderyn frowned, narrowing his eyes down at the mark for a moment before reaching out and, with a touch so soft it made the tiny hairs on Ana’s arm stand on end, passed his fingertips over it. “Theoretically.”

  Off to the right, the first rays of the sunrise cut over the horizon, challenging the lights of the city ahead of them.

  Chapter 14

  “Units one-through-six, I want full rooftop coverage for every corner of the city. If a rat steals a hotdog from a cart, I want to know about it and know I can have the whiskered SOB shot dead before he’s cleared the sidewalk. One psychic scanner per unit, and if I’m not hearing chatter on those waves then whoever’s on the other side of the walkie had better be dead or dying or they will be when I catch up with them.”

  Tybalt paused to pull on his jacket. “Units seven and nine, I want audio and video for every major street on this grid; every camera and device that we can hack had better be filling my handheld in half-an-hour. If there’s a part of the city that ain’t wired, wire it. I want the eyes and ears of God, Himself, in T-minus twenty-nine, fifty. Anybody who thinks I won’t be watching the seconds had better ask somebody who knows better. Units eight and ten,” Tybalt finished lining his jacket with all his tried and truest instruments of death and destruction before yanking a dagger that was still thrumming from its last kill. Grinning down at the freshly polished weapon, he finished with, “you’re with me.”

  The earpiece buzzed as the connected lines jumped to life all at once—every man on every unit answering the call—and a chorus of “Sir, yes sir!” chimed like a tolling from Heaven.

  “And remember, boys,” he added, slipping the dagger into its sheath at his side and starting for the door, “she’s a kid. Sooner this is over and done with, sooner I buy you all your first round for the night.”

  “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “We know, sibyl, you said that already. But it’s not your decision to make.”

  “It’s fine, Lash. I know you’ll be looking out for me the whole time. And don’t call him ‘sibyl’ anymore. He has a name, and I know you know it.”

  “Fine. Sorry. I’m just tired of hearing it.”

  “So am I.”

  “Fair enough. Sorry, Lash.”

  “Don’t care, mage; call me what you like. I still don’t think this is a good idea.”

  Both Ana and Aderyn looked toward him as they said “We know” in unison.

  Lash was whispering for some reason. The moment he’d parked Aderyn’s car in a far corner space in an otherwise vacant pawn shop parking lot, he’d been repeating himself in a quieter and quieter voice. Weirder still, his whispering had gotten the others whispering, as well. While Ana felt safer for it, it was also making her feel more nervous that somebody could be listening. Not that she thought anybody would be—who would care to?—but the paranoia came all the same. And so her voice got quieter and quieter, as well.

  “Look, Aderyn needs magic. That much is obvious. He might not be dying anymore, but we don’t know how long that’ll be the case. And, whether or not he’ll be able to help, it’s not like we can let him die. This thing—whatever it is—is magic. It’s horrible, awful magic, sure, but it’s magic all the same, and there’s a lot of it. So if it’ll keep Aderyn from dying and give him the extra push to be able to cast spells like he used to, then we can’t afford not to do this.”

  “Can I stop to tell you both how awesome it is that I’m being talked about as though I’m not here while the subject is my possible death by slow, agonizing magic deprivation,” Aderyn muttered.

  Lash glared back at him. “Would you rather we didn’t have the talk at all and simply let you die by slow, agonizing magic deprivation.”

  Aderyn blinked at him. “Anybody ever tell you that your bedside manner is charming beyond measure? You should consider nursing if you ever figure out how to get your head out of your—”

  “Being nice goes both ways, Aderyn,” Ana scolded him.

  Aderyn smirked. “So does—”

  “Aderyn.”

  The mage held up his hands in surrender as he had a chuckle at his own joke. “Sorry. Sorry. That last one was me playing, okay? Tense moment. Had to, y’know, ease the tension a bit.”

  Lash rolled his eyes and looked at Ana. “Any idea how to make this work?” he asked.

  “None,” she admitted. “But it knows what it’s doing. It’s proven that much so far. Provided I tell it what to do, it should do the…”

  Or we could kill him.

  You will not kil
l him. You will do whatever needs to be done to make him stronger and give him the magic he needs.

  You’re awful bossy suddenly.

  You wanted something to do, right?

  We wanted something to destroy. This hardly counts.

  It’s this or nothing. Now help him.

  We do this and we get to kill somebody.

  I won’t.

  Then we won’t.

  I can’t promise something like that.

  Then we wo—

  All right. All right! Ana suppressed the urge to vomit at the realization that her thoughts—her own, personal, non-dark thoughts—were taking this turn. There’s gotta be somebody that’s deserving, right?

  Well, well, well. The urge to laugh swelled and Ana belched up a chuckle that had both Lash and Aderyn looking at her with nervous eyes.

  “You know what?” Aderyn shifted away from her. “I’m not so sure I want to—HRRRP!” his voice stretched into silence as his throat extended—pushing his Adam ’s apple against his throat—and his head tilted back. With his jaw yanked open by the force, Ana was reminded of the sight of kids from her camp—the camp, she corrected—during a rainstorm when they’d rush from their trailers to try to catch drops on their tongues.

  “What in the…?” Lash started before Ana’s left arm shot up, hanging parallel with the backseat and occupying the distance between her and Aderyn.

  She couldn’t blame him for his stunned silence, though.

  Her arm was glowing.

  And she…

  She wished it surprised her.

  Instead she stared and let the laughter come.

  The centermost point of the mark, which was shining bone-white, started to turn a deep blue. Then, like a drop of paint in a puddle of clear water, it spread, consuming the whiteness in a sapphire glow. As it spread further out, the shade of the color seemed to exhaust itself and turn lighter, eventually shifting to green, as it finally came to occupy the outer edges. Then, as though the glow had jumped from her arms and continued its all-consuming trek, Aderyn’s eyes began to shimmer; the green of his irises beginning to glow with the same brilliance as Ana’s mark. After a moment of this, the glow began to dim, and the part of Ana that was terrified by this—the part not laughing in hysterics at it—started to feel better.

  The soft blue-green glow of the mark burst into a light of such violent redness that Ana wondered if her eyes had started to bleed.

  Aderyn’s eyes certainly looked like they were about to.

  The glow they shared with the mark now shared the same redness.

  “Whoa.” Lash shifted uncomfortably, turning to look at Ana. “Ana, stop this. Ana. Ana?”

  Ana only laughed.

  Lash, growling out a curse word, jumped between the divide in the same way he had earlier to claim the steering wheel and grabbed Ana by the shoulders.

  “Ana!”

  The contact blew the windows out from the car and flooded the street in a moment of red that was, just as quickly, gone and forgotten.

  But not by all.

  “Sir, I think we’ve got a rat stealing a hotdog.”

  “That had better be code for what I’m actually looking for, or I’m going to—”

  “Sir, no sir. I mean, yes sir. It is, sir. The anomaly. It’s flashing at us, sir.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Uh, because it’s literally flashing at us, sir. Well, it was. Car was strobing blue and green for a bit. Thought it was some kids getting freaky with some disco lights or something, then everything went red and, well, we think the car blew up.”

  “I’m sorry, cadet, I must have misheard you there. Did you say the car blew up?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, not like the ‘BANG’ kind of blew up—not like our toys, at least—but all the windows shattered at once and most of the parking lot is too dusty now to see a damn thing.”

  “And the psychic scanner? They got a bead on—”

  “Yes, sir. It’s them, sir. I’ve been telling you, they’re—”

  “Stay on them!”

  Aderyn was still giggling as they hurried around the corner of the pawn shop, staring at his hands as though a map to the universe was dancing across his palms. “Ho-o-o-o-oly shi—”

  “Be quiet,” Lash growled in his ongoing whisper. “I don’t care what’s going on with you, but if you got sense enough to follow us then you’d better have sense enough to shut up.”

  Ana was struggling to keep her breathing low and even, following Lash’s lead. Though she wasn’t sure what had happened in the car—neither what had led to all the broken windows or anything past that point—she remembered Lash yanking open the rear passenger-side door and pulling both her and Aderyn out and telling them to follow him. They had. Ana followed with the suspicious feeling that their lives depended on it; crouching to keep her head down and her breathing controlled to not be heard.

  Aderyn followed like it was all a game and he wasn’t interested in taking it seriously.

  He stood, fumbling on legs that barely seemed to remember how to work, and giggled at an untold joke as he looked at this-and-that as though he’d never seen sights before.

  “He’s going to get us killed,” Lash hissed.

  “Why do you say that?” Ana asked, her voice barely coming out and forcing Lash to more read her lips than listen. “What happened back there?”

  “Between you and him?” Lash glanced at the still-giggling, still-teetering Aderyn and shook his head. “I’m still not sure about that, but that…” he motioned off toward the top of a series of buildings that overlooked the street at the end of the block.

  “What?” Ana squinted to see what he was, trying to make out anything past the cloud of dust and the distance separating them. “I don’t see…”

  But then she did see.

  A movement, slight and sudden, but intentional all the same. In an instant it might have been a bird, but then it stopped, shifted, and then ducked. The calculated movements of somebody working not to be seen. And then she saw another, too far from the original source to be the same thing, and then…

  A flash of red.

  The first flash of red that day had been from the mark on her arm, and that had been bad enough. It was bright and ugly and massive and terrifying. The second was small and precise and deadly.

  “Don’t think whoever’s up there is playing with laser pointers,” Lash muttered, then, nodding back toward Aderyn, he repeated, “He’s going to get us killed.”

  “Aderyn,” Ana hissed up at him. “Shut up and get down.”

  Aderyn let out a soft giggle and looked down at them. “Why?” he asked, “What’s wro—”

  Neither had a chance to warn him as the narrow beam of red came to rest on his shoulder.

  “Do you have a shot?”

  “Not on the anomaly, sir? She’s moving; can’t get a bead through all the…”

  “What can you get a bead on?”

  “Besides one of the kids she’s traveling with, sir, not much? Like I said, half the lot’s a dust cloud.”

  “Then take out the kid.”

  “Sir?”

  “The target is a teenager. She’s not trained, not conditioned; she’ll be scared. When a host of that power is scared, they get sloppy. Sloppy will be easy to track, dust or no.”

  “Sir, he’s a—”

  “If I have to give you a rundown of every awful thing I’ve been forced to do in the name of global protection I would be prattling on for more years than your momma gave you, kid. More importantly, if I have to give the order a second time it will be to one of your colleagues on that rooftop and the first shot I order them to take will not be on a teenager squatting in a parking lot. Do you hear me, boy?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “‘Yes’ what?”

  “Yes, sir. I…uh, sir?”

  “What is it now?”

  “We might have a problem.”

  “Watch out!”

  “Oh god.” Ana
was fighting to reach even as Lash pulled her further away. “Aderyn!”

  The car that the two Sybii had caught sight of as it barreled over the divide between the street and the parking lot—kicking up mulch and tearing up several bushes along the way—hopped and squealed on a bad suspension as it careened toward them. Hearing this, Aderyn’s childish chuckling had dried up and he’d turned, tensing at the sight.

  But only for a moment.

  With Lash dragging her further and further away Ana wasn’t sure…

  But she thought she heard Aderyn say, “Hey, buddy.”

  An ear-piercing shriek cut through the parking lot.

  Ana wondered at first if it was Aderyn.

  Nope.

  She glanced back at Lash.

  Not him either.

  Then, stunned, she moved her hand to her own mouth, wondering if she’d been the one screaming all along.

  Her mouth hung open, but, no, no screams.

  Then, kicking up a cloud of smoking rubber, burnt oil, and bad ‘80s music, the car came to dramatic halt mere inches from Aderyn’s knees. The screaming stopped. With a choked giggle, Ana came to the realization that she’d been listening to the new car’s brakes as they worked to bring the car to a screeching halt.

  “Yo.” A familiar voice emerging from an unfamiliar face emerging from an unfamiliar car called, jumping between Aderyn and the two stunned Sybii. A slightly rounded head with a tussle of long, messy brown hair set on a frame that was built solid and wide, like a panting boulder ready to roll over whoever got in his way. He was not the sort of mage, Ana decided, that she wanted to mess with. “What’d you do to him, you—”

  “Ty?” Aderyn chuckled and patted the mage’s shoulder. “What’s with you, man?”

  The mage Ty—Ana remembered the name from back at Aderyn’s garage—paused at Aderyn’s calm voice and glanced over his shoulder. “They didn’t kidnap you, Ryn?”

  “Kidnap?” Aderyn raised an eyebrow. “You think I could have been kidnapped by them?”

  “Why not?” Lash asked, daring to stand from his crouched position and folding his arms in front of his chest.