Heroines and Hellions: a Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection

by Margo Bond Collins

  “No big deal that we don’t have the masks anymore…’Okasan needs a clean environment for the spell’…Turner, I swear to God, if we survive, I’ll kill you!” I thought, as I ran as far away from James and William’s location as I could, the giant worm on my tail. That thing suddenly grew two very long, steel-like claws on his back and started attacking me with them.

  “You know, you should get a makeover, go out more,” I said, back flipping to duck one of the new claws. “Then, maybe you’d be more…” I jumped aside, rolled on my hip, cut another caper. “…sociable, for a change!”

  He spat more poison at me. I managed to dodge it, but not one of the claws that cut through the Rain Man’s armour, grazing my skin. The wound was only superficial, but it was more than enough to knock me off balance. Waves of excruciating pain radiated from my leg to the rest of my body, nausea and vertigo prevented me from thinking straight. The whole monster was poisonous, not only his saliva. I crawled backwards until I was stopped by something big and hard behind me: the trunk of another giant plant. A few seconds, and the giant worm would be on me.

  “OK, that’s it,” I thought. “I’ve failed. I’m going to die here, killed by a major demon with bad hair. No one will ever find my body, I’ll be signed-off as missing. At least, mum and dad and Terry can take care of my dog, so that he won’t be lonely. My parents will never know what happened to me which is, in a way, a good thing overall. What’s not good is that I’ve failed, I’ve broken my promise to Megan and condemned my friends to die in here… it’s all my fault…”

  The demon was on me. He lifted one of his claws, ready to hit. I held my sword with both hands, ready to die with honour. But then, a warm, powerful light saturated the trees around us: The demon turned away, suddenly ignoring me. He looked…scared? Before I could wonder what was scaring him, the golden light became stronger, so powerful that it almost blinded me. Almost, since I could still see it wrapping itself around the monster, then penetrating him inexorably while he growled in pain until his body dissolved, consumed by the light. I instinctively turned to its source and there she was, in all her glory. She was burning with rejuvenating power, her wide, new wings, a rainbow of ever changing colours. She was exuding fairy power, so much, that it felt as if her body couldn’t contain it all.

  “Megan? Is that you?”

  She landed in front of me, smiling.

  “I thought you were dead!”

  “I was getting my wings, instead!” Her smile grew even wider.

  “But…how?”

  “No time, now. Let me take care of that,” she interrupted, placing a glowing hand on my wound. A second, maybe two, and the pain and dizziness were gone. Actually, I wasn’t only healed, but also quite invigorated.

  “Thanks! I feel great!” I said, jumping on my feet. “Let’s go kick some meta-human’s arse, shall we?”

  “You bet!” She replied, wrapping both of us in a spherical fairy barrier which immediately carried us off, as light as a bubble of soap.

  “All your friends are safe, protected by a barrier like this one,” she reassured me, as we went up and up, above the tall magic plants I’d let grow, above the gorge bubbling with lava, above the destroyed stone bridge whose ruins got blackened by the explosion which nearly killed James and me.

  Right there in front of me, towering on the other side of the gorge, was Okasan. That was the very first time I could see her clearly: she was twice the size of a regular human, supernaturally obese and, instead of two legs, she had a white, thick tail that was wrapped around her bubbling cauldron. The painted oval in the middle of the ceiling had now moved away completely, and both she and the cauldron were inundated by the moonlight and she was chanting magic words in some ancient language I couldn’t recognise.

  “Here we are,” Megan said. “She’s all yours. Be quick, she’s preparing to escape, see?” She pointed at Okasan and I suddenly noticed that she was slowly fading into the moonlight.

  “Escaping from whom? Not from us, for sure!” As much as I liked to think that the most powerful meta-human of the East was afraid of me, I knew that was impossible.

  “Purify the cauldron. And you’ll see,” Megan replied, giving me a mysterious smile.

  I gently pulled the golden rope tightening the catapult to my belt. As predicted by the Rain Man, the knot untied on its own accord. I clenched my right hand around the catapult, while using the other to grab the tiny bag containing the Hesperides powder. I put the bag in the catapult, stretched the elastic, aimed.

  “Let’s take that bitch down, once and for all!” I said, partly to myself, partly to Megan and partly to the catapult’s elastic while I was releasing it.

  The tiny magical bag described a perfect curve across the cave to land right in the middle of the cauldron and sank into it. In that moment, the potion bubbling in it solidified, the green energy pulsing in the stalactites was magically extinguished. The only light now came from the lava in the gorge, but it wasn’t lava anymore, it had turned a nasty shade of bile green, like the voodoo robots’ hearts. The bubbles in it were much bigger now and weren’t really bubbles, but instead monstrous faces appearing and disappearing on the boiling surface. Okasan screamed, sliding away from the cauldron. She was desperate to flee, but had nowhere to go, the bridge having been destroyed. It was then that part of the green lava stretched away from the surface, turning into a giant claw that grabbed the meta-human who screamed and screamed while the claw dragged her down into the lava and drowned her in it. There were a few more bubbles, then the lava turned solid: it wasn’t lava anymore, but grey stone. Or maybe even just banal concrete that had nothing to do with dark magic.

  “The spell she was trying to perform, wasn’t for her master,” Megan explained. “It was a spell to set her free from him. She was sick of being an ancient demon’s slave; she wanted to be free, but also to keep her powers, that’s why she needed the power of the Eye of Xipe,” the fairy explained as we were landing. “But once you’ve sold your soul to a major demon, you’re done.”

  27

  Call Me James

  “Miss Wise!”

  I turned toward James’s voice and saw him running towards us where we had landed on the border of the magic wood. He was smiling and holding the Eye of Xipe in one hand. Blue was sitting on his shoulder and William was floating right behind him.

  “Child, I’m so happy you are alright!” William greeted me, happy and relieved at the same time.

  “So am I, Miss Wise!” James said, giving me the biggest smile ever. As always, I couldn’t help but smile back. “I can’t believe we’re all alive and well, the odds were all against us!”

  “Wait, what happened to those worm demons chasing you?”

  “They just evaporated in front of us, the moment you purified the cauldron,” he replied. Then he turned to Megan and bowed. “I believe this belongs to you,” he said, handing her the talisman.

  “Thank you, wizard. I’ll tell my people about your bravery and generosity. I know your name, James Turner, and yours, William Burrow Duke of Worthington, thanks to my connection with Robyn: I assure you, your names will be forever remembered by my people and sung in our songs.”

  “I…I don’t know what to say!” He stuttered.

  “Me neither,” William added. “It was a great honour to help a noble being like you, Megan.”

  “Well, we all say that we are cool! We’ve made it!” I suggested, enthusiastically.

  “I help too!” Blue suddenly protested, jumping with frustration on James’ shoulder.

  “You’re right little creature, I was forgetting to thank you,” Megan apologised. “When you’ve actually helped me a lot: you opened my cage, you destroyed Okasan’s barrier. You are so tiny, yet so brave and smart! I know you’re tired of serving your master. Would you like to come with me to the Amazon Forest? I know you like shiny things and have already…helped yourself to some tengu gold,” she nodded at a tiny piece of gold protruding from Blue’s front pock
et. “If you come with me, I’ll give you many shiny things, gems buried deep in the ground, tiny, powerful seeds that sparkle like fireflies at night. What do you say?”

  “I say we do business!” Blue erupted, jumping from James’ shoulder directly onto Megan’s hand and then into the one pocket she had on her armour.

  “Robyn,” Megan then said, turning to me. “Nothing of this would have happened, without your help. If it weren’t for you, I’d be dead now and the talisman would have been lost forever. I owe you my life. Let me repay you.”

  “Look, it’s okay, I was helping a client and…”

  Without warning, she leaned over and hugged me. And while she was doing so, she whispered in my ear her real fairy name. “A day will come when you’ll need me and my help,” she told me, telepathically. “Call my fairy name three times and I’ll come to you.” She released me from her hug and smiled at me, while I stared at her with my jaw dropped. I had spoken to a number of fairies when I was little, but none of them had ever told me her real name. That was huge. Knowing a fairy’s name gives you power over her, I couldn’t believe it…

  “Please, do me one more favour,” she continued. “Your uncle is waiting for you in his car, right outside. He was supposed to go home, but he refused to. Daniel is with him, still unconscious. Daniel will lose his mind for good, if you don’t do what I tell you to.”

  “I’ll do it, no worries.”

  “Just whisper my name in his ear, while he’s still asleep,” she gave me a meaningful look: she clearly meant her fairy name. “He will forget everything and recover his mind at once. Then please take him back to his restaurant: it’s open all night. Tell the crew he got drunk at a party and you brought him there since you didn’t have another address. They will believe you. Tomorrow, neither Daniel nor his staff will remember you.”

  “Why do you want him to forget everything? He’ll forget you too and he loves you!” I protested.

  “He cannot remember me and forget the bad things he saw. He must either forget everything or remember everything. His mind couldn’t handle all this, I don’t want him to suffer…to ruin his life…” she said, sadness raising in her eyes. She hesitated for a moment. “I owe him my wings,” she finally said. “Each fairy gets her wings in a different way: in my case, I needed to know what real love feels like to earn my wings. Maybe that’s why my teacher sent me here, who knows. Maybe I had more than one mission to accomplish,” she continued, frowning. “I wouldn’t be me, without Daniel. I owe him a happy life. So, will you do it?”

  “Of course, I will!” I quickly replied. So, once again, I could kiss my money goodbye: that spineless idiot would forget everything, including my invoice. Oh, well…

  “Now, I must go,” she concluded. “Reginald is going to be here any second now and neither I, nor my new blue friend want to deal with him…”

  “Who’s Reginald?” James asked.

  “You know him as the Rain Man,” she replied. “Now he acts so cool and mysterious, but he was human once, a long time ago. His name was Reginald,” she moved her tapered hand in mid-air and suddenly a portal opened. A pure, exotic breeze filled with the scent of rain and tropical flowers hit my face and I could spot a thick wall of wild, luxurious vegetation on the other side of the portal, and a piece of the bluest sky I had ever seen. Megan stepped towards the opening, but turned once again to us: “Thank you again, everyone. Goodbye, Robyn Wise,” she said, looking me straight in the eye. “I know our paths will cross again,” she smiled, entered the portal, and disappeared.

  “Well, that was grand,” James said. “A real experience. It nearly cost my neck, but it was worth it.”

  “Shall we wait for the Rain Man, to retrieve our armours?” I asked.

  “Naah! Just leave them here, he’ll get them,” he replied, pressing the medallion on his chest: immediately, the magic armour got sucked into it. I did the same and we both left the medallions right at the entrance of the forest, so that it was impossible not to see them. “Now, let’s go: That giant bean plant should keep the Wizard Council at bay for a while, but you never know…really don’t feel like dealing with my brother right now.”

  “Of course, Mr Turner! Let us go to Terry, child, he must be worried sick,” William interjected. “And let us not forget, you have one last errand to attend to…”

  “Yep, I know. Making my client forget about everything, including the money he owes me,” I replied, dispirited. “All this for the glory, once again. Risked my life, faced tengus, meta-humans, but won’t get a penny…”

  “No, not a penny,” James corrected me. “But quite a lot of gold. I had time to pick up a rather good quantity of tengu gold, as the fairy called it, while we came back to you following the battle,” he opened his satchel to show me its contents while we walked towards the exit: it was literally exploding with gold! And that bag could contain God knew how much stuff! “I’m happy to give you all of it,” he continued. “I know a guy who’ll buy it without asking too many questions. I’ll make sure he pays you an honest price. It’s the least that I can do, considering what you’ve been through to save our lives and London.”

  “I…” I stuttered. “That’s awesome! I wasn’t really… Thank you JAMES!” The name simply shot out of my mouth before I could stop it. “I mean, sorry,” I immediately apologised, realising the mistake. “I mean, thanks Mr Turner.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Robyn!” He corrected me. “After all we’ve been through, James is more than right. Call me James.”

  “All right James,” I replied, grinning. “Quoting Casablanca: ‘I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship’.”

  I put my arm under his and we exited the house.

  Continue the Supernatural Freak Series in book one, Supernatural Fre

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  Trick of Shadows

  Alex Owens

  TRICK OF SHADOWS © copyright 2018 Alex Owens

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  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Trick of Shadows

  In the wrong hands, magic is dangerous. In hers, it’s deadly.

  When Quinn was eleven, she killed her nanny with one blast of magic to the chest. She’d been trying to save her at the time, not that it matters. Morgan’s still dead and Quinn still did it.

  That guilt drives her to eliminate wicked wizards, to freeze her coconuts off while hunting rogue wolves in snowstorms, and to stomp through graveyards, blessed sword in one hand and a fifth of Fireball in the other, doing her own version of zombie whack-a-mole. It's why she'll hunt the monsters and why they'll fear the hell out of her—she’s got nothing to lose and everything to atone for.

  But a girl's got to start somewhere and her first job isn't off to a blazing start. She’s already lost the thing she was sent to retrieve, there's a nerdy-hot guy who's all up in her business, and Quinn’s fanged employer is threatening to call her vampire Mother if she doesn’t get her act together and finish the job.

  Atonement sucks more than her mother. But just barely.

  1

  The rain whipped sidew
ays and stung my face, making a difficult job suck even harder. I hugged myself tighter and ducked into the doorway of a vacant storefront. Eyeballing my target one last time, my stomach twisted into a Gordian knot as magic flared from my fingertips.

  Pale blue sparks danced in the darkness as I reached for the heavy pendant around my neck, a totem of Hecate, goddess of witchcraft and crossroads, blind dispenser of Justice. My magic calmed immediately.

  Pulling in a deep breath, I clenched my fists and gave myself a quick pep-talk. It had to be done—walking away was not an option—if I did, I might as well crawl straight back to Mommy. She’d love that, redemption be damned.

  As if on cue, my phone chirped. I silenced it, stuffed it into my back pocket.

  Throwing my shoulders back and wiping my face of all expression, I marched across the street and didn’t hesitate when I reached the entrance to the bar. Tugging the worn handle with my left hand, I fingered the dagger tucked into my coat pocket with my right. Not that I’d use it if shit went down, but it was nice to have a backup to my usual talents.

  The bar was full of big, burly dudes at least twice my age and three times my size. All but one… he sat in a corner booth, nursed what looked to be a frozen, fruity concoction and absentmindedly pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. His eyes settled on me and he smiled way too much. It was the same expression my old puppy used to give me whenever I came home.

  I rolled my eyes and scanned further into the cavernous room. There, all the way at the back, past the hustlers and the bimbos, was my destination. I stiffened my spine and made a beeline for the bar, careful to avoid the drunken hipster dancing to imaginary techno in the center aisle.