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

by Rebecca Hamilton

  “Don’t let Allister Leeman hear you say that,” I smiled, pulling away from him. “He might get jealous.”

  “Allister Leeman is a lonely lunatic who had a bird tattooed on his neck so he wouldn’t have to be alone,” he answered. “And if he, or anybody else, for that matter, wants to marry you; they’re gonna have to get through me first.”

  My hands explored his back, tracing the hard muscles that wrapped his shoulders. “You have a tattoo though, don’t you? I mean, it isn’t a bird, but…”

  “I have no idea what it is actually,” He smiled, letting his hands rest at my lower back. “When I was a kid, some prophecy said I was going to die. My parents tried everything to get around it, but it was no use. The Council of Masons said it was a fixed point; that, no matter how hard they tried, I would never grow up.”

  Flashes of what I saw in Owen’s memories came back to me. He was standing with his mother, begging for help from the Council. And then, in the next flash, he was getting his tattoo, howling in pain.

  “So they gave you this?” I asked, tracing circles on the spot where the tattoo was.

  “They told me that it was special, that it would allow me to live.”

  “And it worked?” I asked.

  “Well, I’m not dead, so…”

  “Lucky me,” I said, kissing him again.

  “I asked my dad to tell me what the stupid thing was a hundred times,” he said.

  “It’s a blob, like a Rorschach thing,” I answered.

  “No it isn’t,” he laughed and squeezed my hand. “Dad said I didn’t need to know. He said nobody ever needed to know, so he turned it into an anchor. Anytime anyone looks directly at it, even Breakers, all they see is that stupid blob. Believe me, I’ve tried enough to know.”

  “So take a picture,” I shrugged.

  “You don’t know my dad. He’s very thorough. Besides, I don’t think it matters. It’s my angel,” he said, looking over his shoulder.

  “Because it saved your life?”

  “Because it brought me to you,” he smiled. “And because, even though my dad is thorough, he isn’t perfect. If I look over my shoulder-Like, if I’m not looking directly at it, I can sort of make out a piece of it.”

  “And what do you see?” I asked.

  He grinned and kissed me on the forehead.

  “Wings.”

  Chapter 18

  Fixed Points

  “SO, WHAT’S YOUR name anyway?” Casper asked the Girl in Tower. She was hunched in the corner of the 7-11, bracing herself against the walls with her hands. She had done this every time we stopped. At the gas station, where we stopped shortly after Owen and I had our motel parking lot moment(which was much less dirty than it sounded), the Girl in the Tower crouched under the car and stayed there until we filled up. At ‘Harvey Boy’s Used Car Emporium’, where Owen traded in Echo’s $90,000 luxury sports car for one of those Scooby Doo type vans that was probably out of date when my mom was in diapers (if Breaker babies even wore diapers. They were probably too evolved for that sort of thing), the Girl in the Tower hunched under Harvey Boy’s desk and started carving symbols into the wood. He didn’t seem to mind. Though that was probably because he was making $70,000 or so on the deal. Still, the van was roomier and Owen said we needed to drop Echo’s car to help cover our tracks.

  Here, at the 7-11, where we stopped to freshen up and grab dinner (a bag of loaded baked potato flavored Lays, chocolate milk, and two sticks of beef jerky), she was mumbling something about a white dress and hiding her face from the fluorescent light. Was this what they had done to here; broken her by keeping her locked away from people, from the world, her entire life? Why would they do that? What’s to be gained?

  “I do not understand the question,” The Girl in the Tower looked at him. The lights of the convenience store made her look even paler than she had before.

  “Your name,” he repeated, picking up a bag of Funyuns and a peach Nehi. “Traditionally, I like to know a girl’s name before she sticks her tongue down my throat, but I guess we’re sorta past that now.”

  “I apologize. I was simply trying to expedite the inevitable. Though, if the sensation was not physically pleasing to you, perhaps we can try again.”

  “No,” Casper shook his head. His face turned a shade of red almost as bright as his hair. “I mean, it was-It’s just- It’s not like I-. Look, I was pleased, okay. But that’s not what I meant. I just wanted to know your name, so I wouldn’t have to call you ‘that weird girl who frenched me’.”

  “Frenched?” She tilted her head.

  “And what do you mean by inevitable?” Casper asked, ignoring her question.

  “I have known you since before I knew myself,” she said, taking the bag of Funyons from his hands and eyeing it. “Onion flavored corn snack,” she read. “No. I will not enjoy the taste of these on your breath.” She put them back.

  “Listen sister-,”

  “You are the boy with hair bright like the sun. Our love will break the anchors.”

  “We’re not in love! I don’t even know your name!” Casper said, and gave me a ‘help me out here’ look. I just grinned and stayed silent.

  “No, not at the same time,” she muttered. “And I do not have a name, at least not in the way in which you do.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked bracing myself. Owen had gone to get supplies and Merrin was in the restroom; which sucked, given that I was pretty sure that their explanation of what the Girl had said would be simpler.

  “Unlike Owen and Papa, my abilities, the whole of who I am, are contingent on living outside of your world. Seers cannot be Breakers no more than Breakers can be humans. We are different, and cannot act or live as you do. To do so would be to strip away what makes us special,” she said.

  “That’s why your parents kept you locked away in that tower; because, if they didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to see the future,” I surmised.

  “Do not blame them. Their ways may be foreign to you, but the segregation of the seer is an ancient necessity. No one can touch the world and continue to see it as we do. It is an impossibility.”

  “They won’t even let you have a name?” Casper asked, with more than a little sadness in his voice. “That’s not cool.”

  “Names are for people,” she answered.

  “You are a person!” He answered her. “No. No, I’m not gonna let them get away with this. You’re not a thing. You’re not some chess piece. You’re a girl; a really weird girl with obvious boundary issues, but a girl nonetheless. And you deserve a name.” He leaned in closer to her and let that mischievous smile that I knew so well spread across his face. “I’m gonna give you a name.”

  “Can it be Wendy?” She asked in a small voice. “Papa used to sneak books into my cell. I believe I read Peter Pan 137 times before the pages began to wear. Wendy was always my favorite, because she got to grow up.”

  “Okay,” Casper answered, swallowing hard. “Wendy it is, I guess.”

  Owen and Merrin came rushing in from the hallway. They were together? Why?

  There was a worried look in Owen’s blue eyes. So, when he grabbed my arm and started pulling me toward the door, I was only sort of surprised.

  “Owen, what’s wrong?” We stopped in front of the 7-11’s plate glass wall, and he pointed out into the crowded parking lot. “What am I looking at?” I asked, looking at people pumping gas and children sitting in their car seats. It looked completely normal; nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Look closer,” he said breathlessly. His hand was curled tight around my arm, and it was shaking. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good. I peered out the window, looking for something, anything out of the ordinary. I was about to give up, until I saw a car at pump number two. Gas overflowed from the tank and spilled onto the ground, but the tall man pumping it didn’t seem to notice. He wasn’t moving at all. In fact, no one in the entire parking lot was moving.

  “They’re here,” he said. “We have
to move.”

  “Who, the Breakers?” My heart slammed against my rigcage.

  “Come on!” He pulled at me again.

  I didn’t move though. Something was happening; the same thing that happened when I saw the Seer’s Tower , or when the stars became my guide. The entire parking lot started glowing. People pinged, the air shifted. Suddenly, the shade lifted, and they were there.

  Breakers scoured the parking lot, searching through cars and trucks, looking through the surrounding woods, and even in dumpsters. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Three Breakers were seconds away from walking into the 7-11 and finding us. Even if we ran, there was no way we could get away. Amazingly, that still wasn’t the worst part, because one of the Breakers who was almost certainly going to find us, was Dahlia.

  “It’s too late. She’s here,” I whispered.

  “You can see it?” Owen asked.

  “It’s too late,” I repeated.

  “No it’s not,” he said, pulled me away from the window. We ran toward the back of the store, where Merrin was standing with Casper and the newly minted Wendy.

  “Stop wasting time,” Merrin snarled. “And put that down!” She jerked the Funyuns out of Casper’s hand.

  “She can see through the shade,” Owen said. The door of the 7-11 opened, though I was the only one who seemed to notice. As Dahlia and the others stepped in, the people in the store seemed to freeze. The cashier let the change she was about to give her customer fall and change loudly on the counter, her hand standing as steady as a statue.

  “Oh God,” I muttered.

  “Get down!” Owen said, pulling me behind giant Miller Light pyramid. The other folded into place behind us. “If you can see through the shade, it means that you might be able to manipulate it.”

  “I can’t. I don’t know how I’m evening seeing it,” I answered. “I never know how I see it.”

  “We don’t have time for your bouts of little girl self-consciousness,” Merrin said, leaning in. “You’re going to have to learn to do it, or this is over. You, Owen, your mother; it’s all over.” She grabbed my hands. “It’s just like when we snuck out of Weathersby. Just think it. Believe it, and it’ll happen.”

  “If it’s just like Weathersby, then you do,” I begged her.

  “I can’t. That was my shade in Weathersby. I can’t change other Breakers’ shades. I didn’t think anyone could.” She squeezed my hands tighter. “Just believe it.”

  Dahlia and the others were walking closer. Around the myriad of beer boxes, I could see the dahlia pin at her throat. It made me shudder.

  I closed my eyes.

  We’re not here. No one’s here. She can’t see us, because there’s nothing to see.

  I felt her energy all around me. It was strong, like a thousand jackhammers drilling against my brain. My body jerked. I could feel Owen’s hand making calming circles on my back. “Be strong,” he whispered.

  So, I was.

  With each step Dahlia made, her energy got stronger. Though my eyes were closed, I could see her; like we were connected somehow. I could feel her shade, notice the changes she was making in the world around her. She came to a stop just a few feet from the beer box pyramid. But I knew, feeling the way she manipulated the world around us, that it wasn’t the pyramid that was shielding us. It was me.

  Her presence hurt. It physically hurt. Tears stung my eyes and started to pour down my face in hot streams.

  “Is she okay?” Casper whispered. “Are you okay?”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t okay. Or, if I was, I didn’t feel okay. But I had to do this. We had come too far to stop now.

  “Are you sure this is the place?” One of the Breakers asked Dahlia. He was short and stocky, but there was an air about him that made me think he knew what he was doing.

  “I tracked her psychic signature here. She has to be here,” Dahlia answered.

  “That’s what you said about that motel too,” the short man said.

  “She was there!” Dahlia barked. “I’d bet my future on it.”

  “Dahlia, I think you’re too close to this. Maybe you should let someone do this who isn’t so emotionally involved. “

  “I am the best as what I do,” she answered. “If anyone is going to find her in time, it’ll be me. And of course, I’m emotionally involved in this. She’s the Bloodmoon. We should all be so involved.”

  “I meant because she has your daughter,” the short man said.

  Energy pulsed around me. My skull felt like it was going to crack wide open; like hot splinters were pricking at every inch of my body. I tried to focus on Owen’s hand on my back, on anything other than the pain. But it hurt so badly, and I was so tired.

  “Come on,” Dahlia said after a long moment. “She isn’t here.”

  Thank God. She’s leaving.

  I felt the pressure of Dahlia’s presence let up just a little, and then, it was too much. I felt my body go limp with exhaustion. I felt Owen’s arms bracing me, holding me up. And then, there was nothing.

  Seven. It was always seven.

  I woke with a start. It took me a second to realize that I was in the back of the van, and another, more sickening second, to understand how much time had passed. I felt better. I felt rested, and that was not a good thing. The solstice was tomorrow; my sixteenth birthday, the day I was supposed to be cemented as the Bloodmoon. That meant we didn’t have much time; that if we didn’t make it to whatever God awful place Allister Leeman had my mother held, he was going to kill her. Now was not the time to be rested.

  I felt something cool and wet on my forehead. When I reached for it, a hand slapped me.

  “I’ll do it. You’ll be woozy for a while. That’s how it is after the first time.” Merrin took what I now realized was a cold compress and placed it on the floor beside me.

  “The first time?” My voice was scratchy and hoarse.

  “The first time you really flex your powers. It can be disorienting.”

  “How long did I sleep?” I tried to sit up, but fell back down. She wasn’t kidding about the disorienting part.

  “Four hours,” Merrin said, lifting a bottle of water to my mouth. “Here, drink this.”

  “Four hours!” I said through choking coughs of water. “No, you should have waked me up. We don’t have time for this.” I tried to sit up again. This time, I didn’t have the chance to get dizzy. Merrin pushed me back down.

  “You needed rest. We all did. Besides, we had taken your instructions as far as we could. We can’t go any further until the sun goes down.” She motioned to the window on the van’s back door. “Which won’t be long now.”

  She was right. Without the stars to guide me, I’d pretty much be flying blind. Of course, that didn’t make it any easier.

  “Well, what if Dahlia and the Breakers find us?” I asked.

  “They won’t,” Merrin shook her head. “They’ve already been this way. They won’t circle back.”

  “Because they’ll figure we’d have kept going,” I complained.

  “Another reason we were right to stay. Now take another drink.” She came at me with the bottle again, but I grabbed it. Feeling a little better, I sat up slowly; letting the world spin and then settle. I pressed the bottle to my lips and took a drink.

  “Thanks,” I said. Merrin didn’t answer. In fact, she didn’t even look at me. I could never tell about Merrin. She had come to Weathersby with Dahlia; seemingly convinced that I was the Bloodmoon. But she was here, helping me break the Breaker rules. It was an enigma. “I’m not what you think I am,” I said

  “You’re not a girl who’s in love with my fiancé?”

  The color drained from my face. I wasn’t sure what to say. I opened my mouth, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “Let me be clear,” Merrin said flatly. “I don’t care about his time in Crestview. I’m sure that Owen has told you he loves you, and I’d even guess that part of him actually believes it. But that isn’t who he is. That’s no
t who we are. We were raised to put what’s best for our race, what’s best for the planet first. Sooner or later, Owen will remember that. Because deep down, he never really forget. And when that day comes, he’ll realize who he’s really meant to be with. And trust me Cresta, it won’t be some little girl who batted her eyes at him for a little while and made him forget who he was.”

  She stood and turned to go. Anger rose in my throat and reddened my face. “Why are you even here?!” I asked as loudly as my hoarse voice would allow.

  She stopped with her hand on the door handle, and spun around. “Not for you,” she said. “You have no idea how much Owen’s sacrificed for this, do you? The only way this isn’t a disaster for him, the only way his father ever speaks to him again, is if we do everything just right. I’m here to make sure that happens. But if it doesn’t-Well, a fixed point can only be changed one way, and for all his good points, Owen isn’t strong enough for that. He’d let the entire world go to hell trying to prove he was right, trying to prove that you’re worth it. If this entire thing falls apart, if you end up murdering someone and it turns out that you’re the Bloodmoon after all; I’ll kill you myself. That’s why I’m here.”

  With that, she left.

  Two minutes later, after I had gathered myself a little, I stepped out of the van to find two of the members of our party who hadn’t just promised to kill me, Casper and Wendy, surrounding a makeshift trashcan fire. We were in a rest area, though obviously not a popular one, as we seemed to be the only people there. The sun was setting, and I could feel the stars starting to pull at me again. Before long, I would be able to read them again, and hopefully find my mom. Truth be told, I couldn’t get going fast enough but, as I neared the others; noticing the cheeseburgers in their hands, the rumble in my stomach told me I needed to fuel up.