Rebels and Realms: A Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection

by Heather Marie Adkins

  Tyler gave the flamethrower an experimental shake.

  “I think it's empty. Looks like the arrows were a good idea this time.” He didn't sound thrilled about it, but that could have been exhaustion. Adrenaline did that, even to sirens. He picked up the radio Ranger Leblanc had given him and pushed the button on the side. “Looks like we're done here. We'll be heading back.”

  Elias shook his head as Tyler clipped the radio to his belt. That feeling of something’s wrong swallowed him again, muffling and amplifying his thoughts at the same time.

  “Something isn't right,” he said, fumbling for another arrow. “There's something not right about this. About all of this.”

  “That's the adrenaline talking. Calm down, Elias.”

  “Don't try to siren mojo me. Something— Something isn't adding up.” What was it? What was he missing?

  Missing...

  Missing...

  “They only found half the bodies.” Elias’ words came out as a whisper.

  “You said it might be hoarding the rest somewhere.”

  “They only found half the bodies! There's another one out here, Tyler.”

  “Elias, you're paranoid and panicking. Even if you're not—”

  “I'm not!”

  “— we need to get back for more supplies. If you're right, you get to say you told me so. How’s that?”

  Elias shook his head, stepping back. Rational thought left him. There was another wendigo here, another predator, and they were sitting ducks. He had two arrows left, the flamethrower was empty, and he had no idea where the fuck they were.

  “Elias, you're spiralling. You need to breathe.”

  “You need to—”

  For a moment, Elias thought Tyler must have knocked him over, or that he must have stumbled into a hole. He didn't hear anything approaching over his own screaming. The bow fell from his hand, and his quiver fell from his shoulder. He scrambled to get up from under the weight crushing him to the ground, or to at least get onto his back so he could put up a fight. He felt the heat before the pain. A scream rang out, but he couldn't tell who or what it came from.

  Maybe it was a banshee. His step-aunt Delaney was one. She did that sometimes — dropped whatever she was doing, stood up and screamed for a few seconds before carrying on like nothing had happened. She brushed it off like it was no big deal, but it always scared the crap out of him. He’d broken a lot of plates because of it. Her screams were much more shrill than the ones ringing in Elias’ ears. No, that was all him.

  The stench of death and decay filled his nose over the burnt wendigo flesh. Was he dead already? No, not yet. If he was dead, he wouldn’t be bleeding so damn much.

  Claws tore through his side, wrapping around his stomach as he pushed himself over. They went through skin and fat and muscle like he was made of butter. Warm butter that had been sitting on the counter for a few days that nobody should have been eating, not butter that had been in the freezer. His instincts scrambled, and he grasped for an arrow or a rock or a stick to use as a weapon but all he could think about was why the hell his aunt Delaney always put butter in the freezer. Was it an Irish thing? If it was going to get used, why not just refrigerate it?

  The claws raked over his chest, his binder giving his breasts little protection.

  Blood spurted from his lips as he screamed. No more thoughts made it through the pain, not even the realization that his toes were going numb. An involuntary pulse of electricity through Elias’ hand singed the second wendigo’s skin. It screamed in that cartoon hyena sort of way and flinched back away from him. His periphery was spotted black, but he still had enough vision to see Tyler, his scales glittering in the moonlight, ram an arrow into the wendigo’s neck. Elias’s lips moved uselessly as he tried to explain the spell needed a certain force to work.

  It wasn't needed. Sirens were strong, stronger than humans. After a laboured breath, the shaft took and more burning flesh burned Elias' nostrils. A second arrow in its back and the wendigo stumbled away from him, shrieking and flailing much like the first had. All Elias could see was a light in the dark, the flames swallowing the wendigo as it ran. Something about it made Elias' eyes water in a way that had nothing to do with the pain tearing through every inch of his body. Sure, wendigo were the personifications of hunger, the least salvageable predator they had ever faced, but the way it beat its too-big hands against the flames swallowing it was almost human. These things were almost human. They had been human. Elias couldn’t say how long ago they’d become these twisted caricatures of themselves — years, decades — but at some point, they had been human.

  And as the second wendigo crumpled to the ground and the crackling flames began to shrink, Elias moved his bloody lips in a silent request to Brigit to salvage as much of their souls as she could, and his too, while she was at it. Who knew where his was going to end up? Nowhere, probably, but now seemed a good a time as any to start calling in any favours the Universe still owed him.

  Tyler didn't wait to make sure the wendigo were dead before crouching at Elias’ side and pressing his hands to his bloody everything.

  “Don't die on me, don't you fucking dare die on me.”

  Elias wasn't sure if the buzzing in his ears was from blood loss or siren mojo. Probably both. He reached for his partner’s hand, his skin too slick with blood to get a good grip. There wasn't much he could see anymore, and the part of his brain still getting blood told him it was because the flashlight was on the ground and not because the rest of his brain wasn’t getting blood.

  “I'm going to get you help, Elias. Leblanc is on her way out here. You're going to be fine.”

  Oh, yeah, of course. He was totally fine. But if he died, he had something to say first. Something Tyler needed to know.

  “I fucking—”

  Pale blue eyes locked on his face, a scowl tightening the corners of Tyler’s mouth. “Don't say it, you dumb son of a bitch,” he warned.

  “I fucking told you so.”

  Epilogue

  For what must have been the thousandth time since Elias had joined the RCMP, he was on a partial medical leave. No field work until a doctor cleared him, but he could do as much office work as he wanted. It gave him a good excuse to experiment with spells, nothing that used too much power. Callahan pretty much let him do whatever he wanted as long as nobody got hurt.

  He also managed to narrow down the identities of the two wendigo. An off- the-books hunting party of four had disappeared in Arrowhead Park some sixty winters ago. A storm had caught them off guard. One of the party had broken his leg and while another had gone for help, the other two had become stranded. By the time help arrived, the three were nowhere to be found. They could have both been the missing hunters, but Elias thought the second, the one that had given him so many lovely new scars, was younger. A girl who had gone hiking with her dog and a friend some five years ago. The dog had been found next to the friend’s corpse, both having been missing some pretty suspicious chunks of their bodies. At the time, it had been dismissed as a mountain lion attack, but Elias trusted his instincts. Mountain lions were never really mountain lions. He’d left the unpleasant task of contacting the families to Officer Hack and called it a day.

  The familiar buzz of the tattoo gun was drowned out by Sepultura’s greatest hits coming through the overhead speakers. Old World sirens loved their heavy metal.

  Elias stared up at the ceiling while Kallistos worked on repairing the tattoos on his side and stomach. Only a couple spells had gotten damaged, and Elias imagined them being stitched back together as Kal dabbed at the blood. It hurt like a bitch, but it was nowhere near as bad as getting torn apart had been. Now and then, the needle dug into a bit of still-healing tissue, and Elias winced.

  “Does that hurt?” Kal asked in the cello-toned and Greek-accented voice Elias had fallen in love with a million years ago.

  Sometimes, it was hard to remember why they’d split up. Part of him still loved Kal, probably always would,
and he sometimes wondered if Kal felt the same. When he ran through the what-ifs of his life, one of those what-ifs was always, what if Kal had never broken up with him to serve in the military? Maybe Elias never would have met Jackson or joined the RCMP. Maybe Kal wouldn’t have lost his leg. The circle of what-ifs never led him to a good place.

  “A little,” Elias admitted. Everything hurt.

  “Good. You deserve it.”

  Elias shouldn't have laughed but he couldn't stop himself. It was more than Jackson had said to him about it. Jackson had never wanted Elias to join the RCMP and right now, Elias didn't blame him. At the same time, he didn't want to quit. He liked this job.

  Park officials had managed to locate the missing bodies along the edge of the radius Elias and Tyler had identified. They were all decomposed and eaten enough to need dental records. As of Tyler’s last call, ranger Leblanc was leading a more thorough search that was turning up skeletal remains all over the park. They still hadn't found the missing search dogs, which didn't sit well in Elias’ mangled stomach, and Tyler promised he would pass the concern along.

  “When do you start back in the field?” Kal asked.

  “If I get the all clear from the doctor, I'm back on Monday. Ow!”

  A particularly hard jab of the needle seemed deliberate.

  “You tell that partner of yours that if he lets you get hurt again, I will tear his heart out with my bare hands and eat it.”

  “Excessive?”

  The cold glare of Kal’s sea foam eyes told Elias that not only did he not think it excessive, he would absolutely do it. Old World sirens were not the kind that should be fucked with. A few thousand years ago, Kal would have eaten Odysseus’ entire crew.

  Kal finished Elias’ tattoos, including the shiny new sigils for a GPS spell woven into a snake that lay over one of the scars on his chest. He gave Elias a cream for the tattoos, a cream for the injuries, a smack upside the head, and shoved him out the door.

  Despite Kal and Jackson’s obvious disapproval, Elias was back in the briefing room on Monday morning. It wasn't much of an occasion. Most of the people in M-Division had seen him the past couple weeks as he occupied himself in the Toronto office.

  Callahan stood in front of his lectern, and a hush fell over the room.

  “First of all, welcome back, Harper. We're all happy to see you're in one piece.”

  Elias held his index and pinky up in a devil’s horns sign, and Callahan looked like he was trying not to roll his eyes. The sergeant didn't waste any time divvying up assignments. Mutilated cattle and dead crops up near Timmins, a string of missing kids along the Alberta border, vampire sightings in Thunder Bay — probably another wendigo, Elias thought. The place was infested. The Ottawa office wanted Elias and Tyler down there to help with a possible incubus problem. As far as Elias was concerned, they got the better deal. He’d take cubi over another wendigo any day, and he did not envy the suckers stuck on that mission.

  “Oh, and Harper?” Callahan said as an afterthought upon dismissing them. “No flamethrowers.”

  The End

  Read more by Amir Lane in Shadow Maker: Morrighan House Witches Book One.

  http://amirlane.com/shadowmaker

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  About the Author

  http://amirlane.com/

  Amir Lane is an LGBT+ supernatural and urban fantasy writer from Sudbury, Ontario. Engineer by trade, they spend most of their writing time in a small home office or in front of the TV watching every cop procedural on Netflix. They live in a world where magic is an every day occurrence, and they strive to bring that world to paper.

  When not trying to figure out what kind of day job an incubus would have or what a necromancer would go to school for, Amir enjoys visiting the nearest Dairy Queen, getting killed in video games, absorbing the contents of comic books, and freaking out over how fluffy the neighbour's dog is.

  Blood in the Ashes

  Caroline A. Gill

  Blood In The Ashes © copyright 2018 Caroline A. Gill

  * * *

  Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, undead, gods, or confused characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  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.

  Blood in the Ashes

  Los Angeles is about to learn that Hell Hath No Fury like a vampire scorned.

  Widow of Dracula, Celestine DeBrenton awakes to find her crypt destroyed, her allies defeated. Everything she had worked to create, gone just like that, including the one creature who might save all vampires from the coming end of humanity and the hell of eternally unquenchable thirst. Vengeance is necessary. But so is rescue. One child to save the world? Celestine will stop at nothing to bring back her adopted daughter Peggy from the clutches of vampire hunters.

  Taking from the mortal world around her, Celestine turns any available fighters to her cause. But no matter her need, she cannot change one lone human being, Tristan St. Denis, dojo master armed only with a broken heart.

  When Celestine is injured in the rescue attempt, what hero will rise to save her broken soul? Who would move heaven and earth to redeem a monster? Can anyone reach her in the vampire's last fortress before Los Angeles falls?

  1

  Safety’s Price

  Celestine the Damned

  “Run! Run and don’t stop, no matter what you hear. They certainly won’t,” I heard him admonish Peggy. Determined and loyal, Tristan St. Denis didn’t take a moment to stop and chat.

  No time. No time.

  Stunned by the pain, my eyes closed. Still, I was aware of everything around me: the sharp, chilling wind, the brisk cold of the winter’s night, the sounds of traffic up and down the crowded city blocks. A stranger drunkenly sang a rock song off-key in the distance.

  The city began to wake—twilight before the dawn. Even as I faded, the sky lightened. If we didn’t reach cover, sunrise would kill me. Each passing second, the gift of Dracula’s undead kiss collapsed. With every step Tristan took, the silver in my chest dissolved my skin and bones. A peculiar warmth spread from the wound, not heat, not sunlight. Either of those would have killed me instantly.

  But I was plagued by an even worse monster: regret. I was filled with it. And that was just a poison too far. Silver wounded me, but regret would kill me in its draining vise.

  Damn that feeling of loss and every other bit of guilt. I had won! We had won a great victory in stealing back Peggy from the hands of stupid humans. Who knows what they would have done to her when they realized her true nature? Barely keeping soul and body bound together in Tristan’s arms, I shivered at the thought. I had troubles of my own. But Peggy, she had a chance now. Hunters were a bloody breed. Uncouth fools and unreasoning barbarians—the lot of them.

  Tristan’s arms held my shaking form. I dangled there—trapped, wanting to transform into a bat, wanting to fly away. But I couldn’t escape the pain. If I attempted any kind of undead power, I knew the cost: any link to the blood of Dracula would dissipate like dew in the sunlight. Instantly, the silver would stop the ancient magic that held me bound to this life, to this body.

  Even the little vial of his blood wouldn’t be enough.

  “Without her, they won’t stop at the door. Without Celestine... we’re food.” A young w
oman’s voice pierced my misery. Any time, anywhere, I would always recognize that voice: Peggy, my child. Our last chance at salvation.

  This very night, my newborn army rose to the crisis. We stole her back from the bastards. By hook and crook, we managed to rescue the very last chance to end an unending war.

  Praise the shadows of hellfire and Hades, she’s free.

  I tried to turn my head to see her familiar face, but the pain in my chest roared like a starving lion, savage and gutting. My ability to focus waned. Courage trickled out of my lungs even as Tristan ran for the last, clinging film of hope: my fortress. Gritting my fangs, I barely managed to bind body and soul together, desperately holding onto the fragile shards of life.

  Savagely, I grinned, relishing my victory—but only for a split second. Then I directed every dying ember of my black heart to staying alive.

  Like bats out of hell, we traveled through the back streets of Hollywood, the glittering land where you can reach out and touch the stars. All around us, hordes of tourists found a thousand odd things to see at every landmark. No one ever noticed the shadows or the secret entrances to my nests. Hidden under the paint and neon signs, safety came in blending in the middle of crowds. Only one fortress of mine was still untouched, undiscovered. Even if the hunters guessed its location, they wouldn’t dare burn it.