The Day of the Dead (2 page)

‘
What are you girl?’ Rico
demanded, his breath in her face. She didn’t flinch, despite the
fact that she had to be able to see his fangs at that range. If she
hadn’t known what the villagers feared before, she certainly did
now.

‘
Tell me what you’ve done
with my brother or I’ll show you.’ She sounded no more concerned
about her predicament than she had at the bar. Tomas couldn’t tell
if that was bravado or stupidity, but he was leaning toward the
latter. Her heart rate had barely sped up, despite the obvious
danger.

‘
What about me?’ the
bartender demanded. ‘You said if I brought you the mage, I was
safe. I want my nephew’s safety in exchange for this
one.’

‘
That will depend,’ Rico
said, jerking her close, ‘on what she can do. You had better hope
one of them is what the master wants, or we’ll be taking out the
price for our inconvenience in your blood.’

Tomas didn’t move, didn’t breathe, a
lifetime’s habit keeping him so still that a small bird lit on a
tree branch right in front of his face. But inside, he was reeling.
It wasn’t the cavalier kidnapping that surprised him. The men’s
master, a vampire named Alejandro, had been organizing hunts on the
Day of the Dead for as long as Tomas had known him.

While families across
Mexico were busily collecting delicacies for the dead – chocolate
for
mole
, fresh
eggs for the
pan de
muerto
, cigarettes and mescal – Alejandro
was collecting treats of his own. Strong, smart, cunning – they’d
all had some advantage that made them attractive prey. Assembled
together, they were always told the same thing: last until morning
or escape beyond the borders of Alejandro’s lands and win your
freedom. They were given flashlights, weapons and maps showing the
extent of the ten mile square area he claimed. Then, at midnight,
they were released.

No one ever lived to see
dawn.

The participants had changed over the
years, from Aztecs to conquistadors to local farmers sprinkled with
the occasional American tourist. But one group Alejandro had always
left strictly alone were magic users. He liked a challenge, but not
prey capable of bringing down the wrath of the Silver Circle, the
guardian body of the magical community, on his head. He was
twisted, cruel and sadistic, but he wasn’t crazy. At least, he
hadn’t been before. It seemed that some things had changed around
here, after all.

‘
I told you to let go of
me.’

The girl’s heart rate had finally sped
up, but Tomas didn’t think it was from fear. Her complexion was
flushed and her eyes were bright, but she wasn’t trembling, wasn’t
panicking. And there was something wrong about that. Because even
if she was a witch, at three to one odds, with two of the three
being master vampires, most magic users would be more than a little
intimidated. His estimate of her intelligence took another dive,
just as what felt like a silent thunderclap exploded in the air all
around him.

A shockwave ran through the ground,
shivering through his body like a jolt to his funny bone. It shook
the surrounding trees and caused the dusty soil to rise up like
steam. The little bird took off in a startled flutter of wings and
Tomas made a grab for the limb it had been sitting on, catching
hold just as the ground beneath his feet began to buck and slide.
Within seconds the slide became a torrent of red earth heading for
the side of the mountain – and a drop of more than a
mile.

The bartender lost his footing and
went down, hitting his head against the side of a massive oak. It
must have knocked him out, because the last Tomas saw of him was
his body tumbling over the cliff, still limp as a ragdoll. The two
vampires jumped for the trees on the opposite side of the path, out
of the main rush of earth. They made it, but the girl wasn’t so
lucky. She fell into the crashing stream of rocks, foliage and
dirt, her scream lost in the roar of half a mountainside sluicing
away.

Tomas hadn’t wanted to get close
enough for the vampires to scent him, but it meant that she was too
far away for him to grab. She managed to catch hold of a tree stump
in the middle of the sliding mass, but she was getting pounded by a
hail of debris. Tomas tried to tell himself that she could hold on,
that he didn’t have to risk being seen by Alejandro’s men on a
dangerous rescue attempt. He didn’t mind the thought of dying so
much – considering what he was about to face, that was pretty much
inevitable – but he was damned if he wasn’t going to take Alejandro
with him.

Then the church bell began to chime,
its plaintive call cutting through the sound of the earthquake,
reverberating across the valley only to be thrown back by the
nearby hills. Tomas glanced behind him to see the back end of the
old building hanging precariously over nothing at all, its
foundation half gone in the landslide. With a shudder and a crack,
the church broke in half, the heavy stones of its colonial-era
construction beginning to crumble. Some of them were ancient,
having been looted by the builders from nearby Mayan ruins, and
weighed hundreds of pounds apiece. Even if the girl managed to hold
on to her precarious perch, they would sweep her over the
mountainside or break her into pieces where she lay.

Bile rolled up thick in his throat.
Alejandro had wanted to make a monster of him, a carbon copy of
himself. But he’d probably be pleased enough at the thought that
he’d turned Tomas into someone who would stand by and watch an
innocent die because saving her might cost him something. He might
never live to kill that creature, but he wouldn’t give him that
satisfaction.

Tomas let go of the limb and leapt for
the one spot of color in the darkness, the girl’s pale face, using
her as a beacon to guide him through the hail of falling debris. He
reached her just before the first of the ancient stones did,
grabbed her around the waist and leapt for the side of the path
that remained half stable. It was the one where his old associates
were trying to scramble to steadier ground, but at the moment, that
seemed a minor issue.

Despite senses that made the falling
hillside look as if it was doing so in slow motion, he couldn’t
dodge everything. He twisted to avoid a stone taller than him, and
slammed into a smaller one he hadn’t even seen. He heard his left
knee break, but all he felt was a curious popping sensation, no
real pain – not yet – and then they were landing on a surface that
wasn’t falling but was far from steady.

Tomas rolled and got up on his good
knee in time to block a savage kick from Miguel. He’d hoped that,
in the confusion and danger, his old comrades might not have
recognized him, but no such luck. Miguel hit a nearby tree hard,
but flipped back onto his feet almost immediately and was back
before Tomas could regain his stance.

Powerful hands choked him, setting
spots dancing in front of his eyes as he grabbed his assailant’s
arms, trying to keep his throat uncrushed. He pushed Miguel’s arm
the wrong way back until he heard the elbow crack. The vamp didn’t
let go, but his hold weakened enough for Tomas to twist and get an
arm into his stomach, using all his strength to send him staggering
into the path of the falling church. One of the tumbling pews
caught Miguel on the side of his head, knocking him back against
the newly created embankment, where the heavy wooden cross from the
altar pinned him with the force of a sledgehammer.

It wasn’t quite a stake, but it seemed
to do the trick, Tomas thought dazedly, right before something long
and sharp slammed into his side. ‘So the traitor has come back at
last,’ Rico hissed in his ear, twisting a shard of wood so that it
scraped along his ribs, sending stabs of hot pain all up and down
his midsection. ‘Allow me to be the first to welcome you
home.’

Tomas jerked away before the sliver
could reach his heart, but his knee wouldn’t support him and he
stumbled. He felt the hillside disintegrate under his foot, then he
was falling, tumbling halfway down the side of the embankment. He
grasped the top of a coffin, one of many now sticking out of the
newly churned earth, and the lid popped open just in time to
intercept another slice from Rico’s stake. A pale, silverfish-grey
arm flopped out of the tilted casket, and Tomas sent its owner a
silent apology before breaking off the limb to use as a makeshift
weapon.

He spun to see Rico a few feet away,
his hand raised as if to strike. Only the blow never fell. Rico
jerked once, twice, then he dropped, falling along with the last of
the debris into the valley below. For a moment, Tomas didn’t
understand what had happened. Then a cascade of spent shotgun
shells tumbled down the embankment, rattling against the coffin lid
like bones, and he looked up to see a pair of slanting hazel eyes
staring down at him.

‘
Are you all right?’ The
girl’s blood was dripping onto his face, a soft wet plucking like a
light rain.

‘
I should be asking you
that,’ he said, struggling to get back over the edge with only one
good leg.

He felt it when his skin absorbed her
blood, soaking it up like water on parched earth, using it to begin
repairs on the damage he’d suffered. But it wasn’t enough to do
much good. What he needed was a true feeding, something he hadn’t
taken time for recently. It had cost him in the fight; he couldn’t
afford to let it lessen his already slim chances against
Alejandro.

He paused by Miguel’s impaled body,
still full of the blood he’d recently stolen, some of it already
pooling in his eye sockets. The sight worked on Tomas the way the
smell of a feast would on a starving human. His mouth began to
water and his fangs to lengthen without any conscious command from
him. He would have delayed it, would have gotten rid of the girl
first, but he couldn’t risk having the blood coagulate and lose the
energy it contained.

‘
I have to feed,’ he said
simply.

Instead of recoiling as he’d expected,
she merely took in his injuries with an experienced eye. ‘Yeah.
Heroics have a way of coming back and biting you in the ass. But
when you’re done, we need to talk.’

He nodded and hunched over Miguel so
at least she wouldn’t have to watch. Tomas couldn’t remember the
last time he’d fed from another vampire, but he quickly recalled
why it wasn’t a common practice. The reused blood nourished him,
the lightheaded rush of feeding giving the same almost narcotic
high as always, but the taste was like metal in his
mouth.

He forced himself to finish, trying to
concentrate on the feel of his cracked ribs re-knitting, on the
tear in his side mending and on the grating sensation in his knee
slowly fading. The healing of wounds, especially if done so
quickly, was excruciating and this was no exception. Tears had
leaked out of the corners of his eyes by the time he was finished,
forced out by the pain, but Tomas didn’t mind. Pain was good. Pain
meant he was still alive.

‘
I hate it when that
happens.’

Tomas looked up to find the girl
scowling around at the cemetery. Or what was left of it. A huge
swath had been carved out of the middle, where nothing but slick
red earth remained. On either side, coffins stuck out of the ground
like bony fingers, with a few marigold crosses scattered here and
there haphazardly.

Up above, on the crest of the hill,
the remaining half of the church swayed dangerously on its ancient
foundations. One last pew teetered precariously on the edge of the
abyss, half in and half out of the structure.  Inside the
church, a single candle still burned.

‘
You handle yourself pretty
well in a fight,’ she continued, as Tomas rose from Miguel’s
exsanguinated corpse.

‘
I’ve had some
practice.’

She gave a sputtering laugh, short and
mocking. ‘Yeah. I bet.’

Tomas pulled himself over the edge and
examined her. Amazingly, she seemed to be all right. There was a
shallow cut on her forehead and few scrapes and scratches here and
there, but nothing serious. It was little short of
miraculous.

‘
We need to talk, but we
ought to get out of here,’ she said, slinging her shotgun over her
back again. He’d heard her reloading while he fed. ‘Half the
village is likely to be here any minute.’

Tomas sat down on the edge of a stone
bearing weathered Mayan hieroglyphs. ‘I doubt it,’ he said
wryly.

She studied him silently for a moment,
then plopped down alongside. ‘Want to fill me in?’

‘
This is the Day of the
Dead. And in this area, that term has always had more than one
meaning.’ He spent a few minutes sketching out for her Alejandro’s
idea of a good time, making it as clinical and unemotional as he
could. It didn’t seem to help.

‘
Let me get this straight.
That son of a bitch has taken my brother to use in his stupid
games?’

‘
Possibly,’ Tomas agreed.
‘Although I can’t understand it. He never took magic users
before.’

‘
Maybe he got bored. Wanted
more of a challenge.’

‘
Does a cat get tired of
playing with lizards or mice, and attack the neighborhood dog
instead? Preying on weaker creatures is Alejandro’s nature. But if
your brother is a mage, he wouldn’t fall into that
category.’