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

by Rebecca Hamilton

  “I love her,” Owen said. “More than I ever imagined was possible. There’s nothing in this, or any future that could make me do anything but love her. As a Breaker, as a friend, I promise you.”

  Casper looked back at me. “Cress…” He said, but that was all. There were no proclamations, no goodbyes; nothing except those green eyes that had become as familiar to me as my own. And they were all I needed.

  “I know,” I reassured him. Because nothing we could ever say could encompass even a piece of what we were feeling. “I know.”

  I couldn’t watch as Owen did it. I couldn’t bear to see Casper’s face drain of any knowledge of me, and there was no way I could have watched him look at me as though I was a stranger. I waited in the car. When Owen was finished, and we were driving away, I watched my best friend in the whole world stumble confused in my rearview window. It would be difficult for him, but he’d be okay. And maybe that was enough. Still, there was a piece of me that hurt, and a bigger piece of me that wondered what on Earth cars would drive on now.

  “You did the right thing,” Owen said, as Casper faded out of view.

  “I know,” I said, but there were still tears in my eyes. “It’s just gonna take some time.”

  “About what he said back there,” Owen started, pursing his lips. “Everything happened so fast, and we never really got a chance to talk about it. But I would never hurt you. Nothing, nothing in heaven or hell could change that. I swear. I don’t care what some prophecy says.”

  He looked at me, fire lighting his blue eyes.

  “And don’t you ever start believing that garbage about you. You’re the best person I’ve ever known. You’re the love of my life. You’re the reason I’m even still alive. And you’re going to do great things; great things.”

  He reached across my lap and took my hand.

  “Forget the Bloodmoon and the dragon. We’re Owen and Cresta, and that’s a hell of a lot more impressive.”

  I leaned in, and kissed him. He was right, of course he was. Still, there was a voice in my head that repeated Wendy’s words.

  There is but one path, Cresta Karr.

  “What do we do now,” I asked, squeezing his hand.

  “When I was a kid, back when they thought I was going to die, my mom used to beg the Council of Masons for a way to stop it. She’d beat the ground and ask for prayers or blessings, anything that would help. But they never did anything. They kept calling me a fixed point. And they said that ‘One could sooner cut a star from the sky than change a fixed point.’ But I did, Cresta. I changed it. My mom changed it. So, we’ll do what I did all those years ago. We’ll do what my mom told me to do.”

  He turned to me, a smile as loving as a kiss but as unyielding as steel graced his face.

  “We’ll lie to the stars.”

  * * *

  Thanks for checking out THE BREAKER’S CODE. Be sure to check out the upcoming installments, starting with

  BOOK 2: BREAKER’S PROMISE

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  http://connerkressleybooks.weebly.com

  * * *

  About Conner Kressley

  Conner Kressley is a USA TODAY Bestselling Author. He is an avid reader and all around lover of storytelling. His book "The Breaker's Code" is the first in the epic "Fixed Points" series that pits free will against fate and true love against good intentions and bad situations.

  When he's not writing about teenagers who have way too much on their plates, Conner can be found in the back roads of Georgia watching old movies, geeking out over books (comic and otherwise), and planning the next of his (some would say way too frequent) trips to Disneyworld. He also loves nature, stories where people are running for their lives, and all things "Southern.”

  Read More by this author!

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  JUMP TO...

  A DOSE OF BRIMSTONE by NOREE COSPER

  END OF DREAMS by KIM FAULKS

  HAUNT by HEATHER HAMBEL CURLEY

  DARK CROSSINGS by ANN SIMKO

  HEADSPACE by CALINDA B

  THE OTHER F WORD by SUSAN STEC

  UNLEASHED by RACHEL MCCLELLAN

  HIDDEN INTENTIONS by STACY CLAFLIN

  THE COMPLETE BLOODLING SERIAL by AIMEE EASTERLING

  SHE WHO FIGHTS MONSTERS by KYOKO M

  ST. CHARLES AT DUSK by SARAH M. CRADIT

  WICKED BY NATURE by MADISON SEVIER

  UNDERLIFE by MARISSA FARRAR

  DRAGON’S REDEMPTION by EDEN ASHE

  MILAN’S RETURN by GRAE LILY

  THE BREAKERS CODE by CONNER KRESSLEY

  THE MEDIUM by MR GRAHAM

  WICCAN WARS by HEATHER MARIE ADKINS

  CARPE NOCTEM by KATIE SALIDAS

  A QUESTION OF FAITH by NICOLE ZOLTACK

  THE MEDIUM

  A Book of Lost Knowledge

  BY MR GRAHAM

  Copyright © 2013 by MR Graham

  Lenny is a defective vampire. Shy, insecure, and literally unable to kill, he tries very hard to avoid notice until the night he is kidnapped and imprisoned by Sebastian, a psychopath bent on turning him into what a vampire should be. The situation is only made worse by Lenny's dual nature: he is also a medium, a creature born for the sole purpose of aiding the dead, and Sebastian is definitely a dead thing in need of help. His only hope is Kim, a practical young wizard tasked with hunting Sebastian down, but her ancient and powerful family is not nearly as accepting as she. Trapped by Sebastian's mind control and by his own pathological need to heal his captor, Lenny quickly realizes just how easy it would be to slide into evil, himself.

  Copyright: The Medium © 2013 MR Graham, All rights reserved.

  liminality:

  Liminality: (From the Latin līmen, a threshold) The intermediate point of transition between two states or classes. An object or individual in the liminal state may be considered to belong to both classes simultaneously, or to neither. A prolonged liminal state may result in disorientation, alienation, and later inability to integrate into another state or class.

  Betweenness.

  Prologue

  the end

  SOMETIMES, HE STILL dreams about the girl.

  He is always blind in the dreams, must be blind, because there is no way it could be too dark for him to see. He is blind, but he can hear everything, feel everything, and reality dissolves.

  She gasps when his hand closes over her mouth, and he can feel that tiny suction, then the wriggling and flopping as he holds her tightly from behind, muffling her screams with his flesh. He whispers desperate consolation in her ear until the feeble spell of his voice finally takes hold, and she relaxes into his arms, shivering with the sobs that cannot quite escape.

  He tapes her arms and legs, wraps her in his jacket, and sits with her through the night. Her breath freezes on the air, and he can almost hear the chime of those ice-crystal clouds. His skin freezes and cracks. He would bleed, but he has no blood left, and the cold makes him tired, as if he were a reptile. He could almost sleep.

  Sebastian is in the dream, too. He plucks the telephone away and lashes out with a burning fist. Broken teeth, jaw, ribs. One punch, one kick, no more.

  “Too late,” he says. “I’m already back. Running to a teenager for help? Really, Hugo? You’re such a goddamn baby.”

  Sebastian’s hands are hot, and they can be soothing when they want to be. They stroke away the bruises, and he layers his voice with Power, whispering away the pain.

  “I’m Leonard. I’m n-not Hugo, I’m Leonard. Leonard…”

  “Shhh, don’t worry about it. You want the kid, that’s okay. You can have her. My gift.” His hot hands move south, gentle still. “Don’t cry, okay? I hate you when you cry.”

  She is waiting when they get there.

  She gasps when his hand closes over her mouth, and he can feel that tiny s
uction, then the wriggling and flopping as he holds her tightly from behind, muffling her screams with his flesh. His mouth is swollen and full of tears, and his voice is so much weaker than Sebastian’s. He cannot take away her fear, only make her stop twisting to give his poor ribs a rest.

  He sits with her through the night and listens to her hurting, but he can no longer manage to care. Sebastian is in his head, squeezing his heart so tight he can barely feel, stroking his mind into silence. His throat burns with thirst. His veins ache, empty and hollow and screaming with lust, but he can’t care. He leaves without speaking to her, even though she begs, even though her faith is shattering into sunbursts on the dusty floor.

  He sits in the car and presses himself close against the blasting heater. He is blind, but he seems to see deep brown eyes, slightly tilted, smiling, fringed with dark, sooty lashes. He could drown in those eyes, has drowned in them before, just like so many others. Bleak pools full of the drowned, full of bodies. The back of his mind is full of struggling, the clinking of chains. Sebastian is bleeding her. The blood is the life, and so much more. Teeth penetrate. Essence is shared. Eventually, she stops fighting.

  Tomorrow, he thinks. I’ll do it tomorrow. He won’t bleed her if she’s mine.

  But he doesn’t really care.

  When he pushes her down the stairs, she has Kate’s voice. “Lyonya,” she cries, but that never happened, and Kate was a thousand years ago, and she hurt him more than he could ever have hurt her.

  When he runs, the girl is probably dead. Sebastian’s voice is gone, and his skull echoes emptily.

  Sometimes, he still dreams about the girl, but when he wakes, the world is white, and his bones are ice, and his name has bled away with the last of his strength. They call it permafrost for a reason, you know, and his hands are bound up in dirt that does not sing and cannot heal. The ghosts here are pale and ancient. They speak in tongues he does not know.

  And freedom is bitter.

  Chapter 1

  LENNY NEVER COULD decide whether he and Mara were a thing. Sometimes, he thought they were, and sometimes they definitely weren't, and sometimes it was just completely impossible to say what they were. He knew he loved her. He thought she might have loved him back, but he was never sure whether either of them was ever in love. Maybe.

  He did know that she was exactly the right shape. She fit perfectly under his arm, up against his side, like they were puzzle pieces and that was where she was supposed to go. They matched.

  It was two in the morning, or maybe a little later. Lenny lounged on one end of the couch, and Mara was where she belonged, there beside him. His mouth still tasted like cheap wine, the kind that leaves a sweater on your tongue. It had been hours since the real television had stopped and the endless commercials had started. The light from the screen caught on the two glasses, two bottles on the table. It lit up Mara's face. She had fallen asleep.

  He let her stay there. Neither of them had anywhere to be in the morning. A night on the couch wouldn't hurt her any.

  Saturday came too early. He could still taste the wine, and it was even worse the next day. Mara had slid down from his chest to his thigh. He was okay with that. She was warm.

  He slid her off as carefully as he could, replacing himself with a rolled-up blanket, and shuffled off to make a pot of coffee. After a couple of cups, he could start to function.

  Mara stumbled in after him when the coffee maker started to growl. Her hair stuck up on one side, and a red fan-shape of creases crossed her cheek. Her eyes were puffy.

  “Morning?” she mumbled.

  “Yeah. Sorry to say, it is.”

  “No school.”

  “Nope. 'S Saturday.”

  “Good. That's good.”

  “C-considering it's almost t-ten, yeah.”

  She went around him and pulled down two mugs from the cabinet, set them on the counter and grabbed milk from the refrigerator. The calendar stopped her.

  “Your conference is next weekend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You packed?”

  “Nah. G-gotta laundry first.”

  The milk carton clunked down on the counter, and one of Mara's arms went around Lenny’s waist. Her chin fit perfectly into the crook of his neck and shoulder. "Bring me a tee shirt."

  “M'kay.”

  Just then, he was pretty sure they were a thing.

  The week went past like a greased cat. He re-administered a test and launched various objects across the football field with a catapult his students built. He didn’t get a moment’s peace until Thursday afternoon.

  He and Mara got home around five thirty. They were both dead beat, but teachers never have the option of kicking back. He had to go through one more time and make sure he had everything he was going to need. Mara disappeared into her half of the duplex for about an hour and then wandered back with a bowl of spaghetti. She symbolically offered him some, and as always, he declined.

  “You know,” she said, “I heard some of the kids talking. At least one of them is pretty sure the reason you never eat is because you’re actually a robot, and you go home and plug in at night to recharge.”

  She snickered. Lenny didn’t. He was too busy looking for one more pair of socks.

  “Yep. I c-can shoot lasers out of my eyes, t-too.”

  She laughed harder.

  “Got everything?” she asked, wiping a red smear of sauce off the tip of her nose.

  “Working on that.”

  “Clothes for three days?”

  He nodded.

  “Aspirin, notebook, pens...”

  That would go in his backpack, not his suitcase. He nodded and pointed to the pile in the corner.

  “Reading material for the bus? Or knitting stuff?”

  He wasn’t about to take knitting stuff on the bus. The last thing he needed was to make friends with yet another elderly lady or accidentally poke someone in the arm with a needle. It was tempting to go off to Austin and come back with one more sweater for Mara, but the logistics were just difficult. Knitting stuff is bulky.

  He held up a small stack of battered paperbacks he had snagged from the library’s too-old-to-keep box.

  “Bunny?”

  She was teasing, and he knew it, but he still couldn’t keep from shifting uncomfortably. The bunny in question was an antique toy, made of white wool, with a faded letter K stitched onto its chest in once-red silk. It sat on his bed during the day and sometimes at night, too. He didn’t sleep with a stuffed animal, he always insisted; he just liked the smell of it.

  “You c-can take care of the bunny while I’m gone.”

  “Looks like you’re set, then.”

  “Well... I hope so.”

  She snorted and pressed her cheek against his back, being careful not to get spaghetti sauce on him.

  “It’s weird,” she said, “thinking about you being gone for a weekend. Who am I gonna pester?”

  “You c-could go across the street and mess with G-gail.”

  “Ew. Her cats would eat me.”

  It was true. Most animals disliked Lenny, but Gail’s cats were abnormally aggressive. It had been a couple of weeks since that big black one had found its way into their house, but it would come back someday. It always did. Then it would hook itself into his leg and stay there until he could pry it off. Even Mara didn’t like Gail’s cats, and Mara was a cat person.

  He zipped up his suitcase and set it by the door, shoved his notebooks and novels into his backpack, zipped that, and flopped down onto the edge of the bed. He did not look forward to the trip in the morning.

  They got up early on Friday. At that time of year, they were always up before dawn, but he had somewhere to be, and Mara was his ride. He struggled into khakis, a sweater, and a windbreaker, and tossed his suitcase and backpack into the rear seat of Mara’s Datsun. He waited while she slapped on some makeup and shoved as much of her hair as she was able into a straining rubber band.

  He handed her coffee in
a vacuum mug and climbed into the car, sitting quietly while she peeled out of the driveway. He could handle early mornings, but until she had finished her first cup, Mara was only one bad joke away from homicide. She chugged most of it at the first light they hit.

  Abilene was not a big place, and the streets were dead empty before daylight. There were sure to be some cops on their rounds, some small business owners unlocking things, some local ranchers driving out from town, but the only car they passed was a gas tanker with a disgruntled driver. He was making about the same face as Mara.

  There was only one other car in the parking lot at the bus station. It was orange, some kind of sports car, and it was sprawled across three parking spaces. Mara screeched into a space on the far end and had jumped out of the car almost before the keys were out of the ignition. Lenny pulled himself out more slowly while she fished around in the back for his suitcase and backpack.

  “I am so sleeping through lunch today,” she growled. “Ugh. And study hall. Do you think they’ll rat on me?”

  He shrugged and slung his backpack over his shoulder. Mara’s breath steamed in the freezing air. His did not, and he prayed she did not notice. But then, she never had before. He was already losing feeling in his fingers.

  She smiled. “Have a good trip, Len.”

  He shifted his backpack and picked up his suitcase.

  And Mara bowled him into the side of the Datsun, pressed her hips against his, grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, and kissed him hard. Compared to the air, her lips were boiling hot. It’s strange what people remember from moments like that. Lenny remembered that she stepped on his foot and that she was the only person he had ever known who put honey in her coffee.