Magic After Dark Boxed Set (Six Book Bundle)

by Deanna Chase

  I just wish we had a director somewhere to shout “cut”.

  My knuckles were bloody and I know for a fact if it wasn’t for all the adrenaline, I would have collapsed long ago. I caught a punch to the eye that sent me reeling into the arms of another doppelganger. She tried to hold me down so that the other me could run me through, but I spun her around and felt her catch the knife meant for me.

  Enough with the stabbing. Things were starting to get complicated. I could tell that the doppelgangers were starting to lose track over who was who. I pulled out my gun and started firing point blank. I heard the tourists start screaming.

  “Just special effects, folks!”

  I don’t think they believed me.

  I felt something crack across the back of my skull. I staggered to the ground and then rolled as quick as I could to my back, kicking with my feet as the doppelganger tried to land on top of me. I raised my gun and fired off a round straight into her heart. The kickback jarred my aching bones. It felt like all my cartilage had disappeared and there was no cushion in my joints. Another gal came at me and I fired again. And another and I squeezed off another shot.

  And then all was quiet. I could hear sirens in the distance. I guess the tourists weren’t buying my Hollywood bullshit.

  All the doppelgangers were gone, but Killian… ah god. Killian was lying prone in a puddle, face dripping with mud and gutter water.

  “Crap,” I muttered as I drug my aching body over to his. God, it just hurt to move. It was like I had an army of mutant bunny rabbits kicking out a drum beat inside my head. I pushed his shoulder and rolled him over to his back, hoping he hadn’t drowned in two inches of liquid. I couldn’t feel a pulse and he wasn’t breathing.

  “Come on, you bastard.”

  I beat out five paces on his heart and

  lowered my lips to his. Another five paces. Another two breaths.

  He came to life with a gasp like someone had punched him in the stomach, coughing and rolling onto his side.

  His eyes were dull, but he was alive.

  “I want to get you to a hospital.”

  “We’re on the wrong side,” he mumbled.

  Fuck him and his green elvish blood.

  “We’ll go back.”

  He gripped my arm softly, “I’m fine. We have to find your uncle.”

  “I’m not having the queen of the elfin empire knocking at my door at 2AM because I let you talk me out of getting medical attention.”

  He didn’t even give me much of a fight, and that scared me more than all the spooky things we had just fought off.

  “Come on, Killian,” I said, wrapping my body warm around his. “I’ll get you home.”

  World jumping from an unmarked point to another is idiotic at best. You don’t know if you’re jumping from safety to a spot 100 feet off the side of a cliff. But I couldn’t move Killian and I wasn’t going to let him get up and hobble to a car that may or may not be there.

  So we jumped.

  I felt the world tingle around me as I formed the new portal. It’s kind of like walking your way through a sheet of silly putty. You just have to push.

  There was a split second, though, a split second when out of the corner of my eye, there was a face in the ether between the two worlds. It was a face I recognized.

  It was my dad.

  And then it was gone as we fell through into a dry ravine bed.

  Killian landed on top of me. I didn’t have the strength to push him off and he was going in and out of consciousness.

  “Come on, Killian. Stay with me.”

  Shit, he wasn’t responding. In fact, he seemed to be getting heavier and heavier.

  “Come on, man. This is not cool. Wake up.”

  I heard rustling in the shrubs and I couldn’t reach a weapon under his deadweight. I hoped to god that it was friend and not foe. Ripping open portals through sheer willpower is like doing a 10k marathon in under an hour. Pretty much impossible, and even if you could, it would probably kill you.

  “Wake up, Killian,” I whispered.

  Chapter 30

  The crashing was getting louder. I turned my head and there were some of the most blessed dark-green-tights-emerging-from-the-tall-grasses I had ever seen.

  Elves. Never in my life had I been so grateful to see a pack of fucking elves. They swarmed us like medics on a battlefield. Killian was lifted and settled next to me on the ground as they checked his vitals. I saw the worried looks on the elves faces as they worked on him.

  Next thing I knew, hands were on me and a red-headed gent was peering into my eyes and taking my pulse.

  “How did you know we’d be here?” I asked.

  “Our seer prophesied this encounter.”

  My mom was probably having a fit. If an elf seer had been able to figure this out, Mom probably picked up on the same vibes and was downing cup after cup of loose leaf tea to make sure we were all right. Sunday dinner was not going to be fun.

  “I’m fine,” I said, struggling to rise.

  The elf doctor placed a soft hand upon my shoulder and pushed me down, “I beg of you, gentle lady, allow me to continue my examination.”

  With nothing particularly better to do at the moment, I decided to relax and let the elf do his job. He flexed my joints and felt my bones, listened to my heart and made sure my pupils were the same size.

  He rinsed off my boo-boos and took a canteen from his side, sitting me up to take a sip. God. Elf ambrosia. This is how most humans find themselves indebted to the race. It’s like liquid sunshine with a strawberry chocolate velvet aftertaste. I felt like I could take on the entire forces of darkness with one hand tied behind my back. I mean, I could still use a nap, but after the nap, I was pretty sure I could take them.

  “Thanks,” I said as he helped me to my feet.

  I looked as the elves loaded Killian onto a stretcher and trotted him out into the forest. My heart did a frozen hiccup and I tried to blink back the mist in my eyes as I watched him go.

  “That’s my partner!” I shouted after them. “You fix him up or I will hunt down every last one of you!” I finished lamely.

  I turned to the doctor, “Is he going to be okay?”

  He nodded as he helped me out of the ravine, “He knew of the danger when he chose to accompany you. All is as it should be.”

  Damned elves and their cryptic Zen-like baloney.

  “I shall accompany you to the forest entrance. We shall contact you when Killian of Greenwold has recovered.”

  “I can’t go with him?” I asked, trying to ignore the fact I sounded like a little kid who didn’t understand why she wasn’t invited.

  “It is forbidden,” the doctor said kindly.

  I’d only been to the elves’ capital city once in my life. It was one of those “get to know your neighbor” diversity appreciation thingies that the government had tried. After a couple of tourists had gotten eaten by some goblins during a tour of a more seedy part of the Other Side, the project was scrapped. I was sad I wouldn’t have a chance to see the elf capital again, but glad that the folks who knew best how to patch up my partner were on the job. Probably better I wasn’t there to gum things up, anyhow.

  As we wound our way to the entrance, I was glad that the doctor was kind enough to escort me, because I would have been lost at the second left turn at the rotting tree stump. We were about an hour into our journey, animals gallivanting about as if nothing was going on, when a red fox came charging at us. I was immediately struck with a sense that things were really, really wrong. You know, wrong beyond the fact a fox had tracked us down and started talking in regular old human speech.

  “The foxes of the west wood spotted the Shadow Elves---” said the fox breathlessly.

  “Shadow Elves?” I interrupted, thinking how nice it would be to not have to spend the rest of my life trying to track them down, “They’re here?”

  But as the doctor and the fox looked at me like I was a complete bonehead, I started get
ting the feeling that maybe strange things were afoot at the Circle Elf.

  “Yes,” confirmed the impatient fox as if he was explaining things to a kindergartener. He then turned to the doctor. I guess it was time for the grown-ups to talk. “There has been an attack. The Shadow Elves were intercepted. The queen says the jade lion has once more fallen into enemy hands. We need you, doctor.”

  I didn’t think someone so pale could pale even more, but the doctor made a liar out of me.

  “My deepest regrets that our journey to return you home must be delayed. I must see if I can be of aid,” he said as he bowed to me.

  Whoever attacked the Shadow Elves probably had the jade lion, which, I am pretty sure, landed this problem in my jurisdiction.

  “I’m right behind you,” I replied, clapping him on the shoulder.

  He gave me a grateful nod and then motioned at the fox to lead on. We were soon traveling at a quick trot. A fox trot, if you will.

  That heebie-jeebie feeling I really wished wasn’t always so right was batting a thousand.

  We arrived in the clearing and it was a slaughter. There were shadow elf bodies lying at awkward angles all over the forest floor. Blood was everywhere.

  It’s saying something about your foe if they were able to get a jump on a shadow elf.

  Several of the regular elves were already lighting pyres and placing corpses upon them before the bodies had a chance to reanimate at some awkward moment. Looking at the necks of the Shadow Elves, no one was overreacting. It had been a massacre and every one of those poor guys had gotten fanged in the carotid. I instinctively touched my neckguard, just reassuring myself it was still in place. No one should ever have to go that way.

  A tall woman with wheat colored hair stood to the side overseeing things. She wore a silver circlet on her head and the waves of power coming off of her were intense. It was the first time I had ever seen the queen of the elves and my first impression was that I wouldn’t want to meet her in a cold, dark alley. She was very still as we stepped onto the battleground.

  One of the elves came up to her and spoke in low tones. She gave a flick of her eye to me and I knew to hop to it.

  My escort and I walked across the clearing to follow her. We stopped in front of a shadow elf propped up against a tree and it took me a second to realize he was still alive. The doc was quicker on the uptake than me. He crouched right down next to the poor guy, trying to see what he could do. The shadow elf’s eyes were open, though his breath was coming in ragged gasps. His neck had been torn to shreds and the fact he hadn’t bled to death already was a frickin’ miracle.

  I could see how the Shadow Elves got their name. His skin was olive where Killian’s was fair, his hair as jet black as Killian’s was blonde. His dark eyes were glazed over with pain, but he obviously had been hanging on for us to get there.

  She knelt down beside him and clasped his hand in hers.

  “My queen, I have failed you,” he gasped.

  She made a shushing noise, “You gave your life in protection of our world. It is more than anyone could ever ask, more than I have right to ever ask of a subject.”

  “The vampires found us… they found us yesterday and stole the jade lion. They tried to create a portal, but were unsuccessful,” he said painfully. I could tell that every single word cost him. “We chased them here… we tried our best…”

  So that answered who had tried punching through the boundary there in Chinatown. Vampires. Vampires in cahoots with humans in cahoots with my uncle. This was getting better and better.

  “We shall get it back,” promised the queen.

  “You must,” said the dark elf, gripping her hand, “As they were leaving… I heard one say… I heard one say they were taking it to the master’s stronghold...”

  The queen looked over at me and I could read the directions in her face like she had written them out on a billboard in neon spray paint.

  Storm the master vampire’s keep.

  Steal back the jade lion.

  Piece of cake.

  I’d get it done before lunch.

  “Tell my family…” the shadow elf coughed.

  I rose and stepped away to let the poor guy have his last moments in private with the leader he had given his life for.

  It was all so senseless.

  But I knew that if I didn’t find that jade lion, this slaughter would become the norm here and on Earth. Vampires were top carnivores. If I failed, we were all in trouble. And though I didn’t know where to find a master vampire, I did know a file clerk who might.

  Chapter 31

  By the time I found my way out of the woods, the sun was hanging low in the sky, and I was really not keen at all about being caught in the dark. My car, unfortunately, was on Earth and I had left my purse in the church during our battle.

  I had only one option and I gritted my teeth, knowing I was in for it. I crossed the street to a local pub and asked to use their phone.

  “Hey Mom…” I said into the receiver, as nonchalantly as I could manage.

  The tirade that came down upon my head was enough to make me consider taking my chances with the nasties that come out at night.

  “Mom,” I interrupted, “Can you come give me a ride? You can yell at me in the car.”

  I guess that was not the way to phrase things because I called the Wrath of the Unappreciated down upon my head with that one. Once she had yelled herself out, though, she was out front in a matter of minutes.

  “Don’t you EVER give me that kind of scare again, young lady,” she scolded as I climbed in and fastened my seatbelt.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I wasn’t expecting to get attacked by an army of doppelgangers.”

  “Well, maybe if you would hone my side of your talents a little more…”

  I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to play my trump card, “Mom, Mindy has the sight.”

  That shut her up. Thank god.

  “She said she is seeing Dad,” I continued.

  Mom shifted sort of uncomfortably in her seat, “Well, that doesn’t mean anything.”

  This was a first.

  In the past, if Mindy or I expressed even the slightest hint of sight, Mom was acting like we were on our way to the Carnegie Hall of Seers.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “It was probably just her missing him,” she went on and then was awkwardly quiet.

  That got my senses all a tingle, “But Mom… um… Here’s the thing. When I was jumping through the portal, I thought I saw him, too.”

  “You saw nothing,” she snapped.

  This was a different kind of anger. Yes, she bickered and yelled, but it was all out of love. This was her slamming the door shut and I didn’t know what to make of it. This was the woman who had spent lonely nights convincing herself Dad was coming back, but now the combat boot was on the other foot.

  “Okay,” I replied slowly, “we were probably mistaken.”

  We rode in uncomfortable silence all the way to my house.

  “Do you have your keys?” she asked as I got out.

  “Yah,” I said. I had a hidden pair tucked inside a pile of fake cat poop in the garden.

  She nodded primly and pursed her lips, “I don’t want you to die anytime soon, do you hear me?”

  I have to say that I totally agreed.

  “I’ll try my best not to,” I replied. I shut the door and waved at her as she left.

  As I walked up the path, I flipped the conversation around in my head. This was a weird day. And coming from me, that was saying something.

  Chapter 32

  I stumbled towards the stairs to blindly make my way to the coffee pot, but the smell of beans already brewing made a tiny little corner of my heart leap with joy.

  Standing there in the kitchen, intently watching the java perk, was Killian and he was looking fit as a fiddle. I couldn’t believe it.

  I’m not much for displays of physical affection, but I went over to the big lug and hugged h
im tightly. And then socked him in the arm, “Don’t you ever scare me like that again.”

  He put me in a headlock and gave me a knuckle sandwich, “Your wish is my command.”

  The elf was definitely loosening up.

  I rolled out of the hold and pretty much breathed for the first time since I saw them carry him off on that stretcher.

  Christ. I couldn’t take it. I went over to the cupboard and grabbed some cups. “Shouldn’t you be laid up for a couple more days?” I asked.

  Killian rotated his arm in his cuff ruefully, “I ache, but elves have the benefit of magical healing. So, I am back.”

  “Don’t think I’m picking up any of your slack, Mr. Slacker McInjured Pants.”

  “Even half dead, I vanquished more doppelgangers than you.”

  “And here I thought I had finally gotten rid of you,” I sighed.

  “I am afraid you are stuck with me,” he said as he poured himself some cereal.

  I shook my head wistfully, “Maybe someday if I dream hard enough…”

  Crunching his granola bits, he asked, “So, how shall we try to die today?”

  While he seemed all patched up, I rested my hand on his shoulder seriously, “Are you sure you don’t want to be injured a couple more days? I could use the snow break.”

  Killian shook his head, “We do not have time.”

  It sucked to be in charge of making sure there was no rest for the wicked.

  “Well, I need to figure out how the heck we are going to get around with my car on the wrong side of the boundary. The jump point closest to Father Killarney’s church is in the middle of your elfin forest. Somewhere.” I finger combed my hair, “Killian? Do you elves have a car we could borrow?”

  Killian replied, “In light of my comprised state, the queen has already secured us transportation.”

  I couldn’t even imagine what sort of incredible ride that fairy royalty would “secure”. We walked outside and, yes, it was quite unimaginable.

  It looked like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and a Model-T had a baby, crank start and all.

  “She thought it had character,” Killian stated dryly.