The Day of the Dead (6 page)

Alejandro didn’t move, didn’t blink,
but Tomas knew what was coming. A flick of a guard’s wrist broke
the man’s neck, his body tumbling to the floor to join the others.
The young man who had been intended as the next victim fainted and
was dragged back into the waiting throng.

‘
Do it,’ Alejandro told the
girl, who was staring at the body of her fallen colleague as it was
arranged in line with the others. ‘Now.’

She transferred her stare to the
creature on the throne, and Tomas knew she couldn’t do as he asked.
It was written on her face, along with horror and revulsion and
abject terror. She was shaking just standing there, and he doubted
she could concentrate enough to remember her name at this point.
Much less how to manage a complex spell.

‘
She’ll fail,’ Sarah said
suddenly, ‘and my brother will be next.’

Tomas looked around frantically for
any sign that she had been overheard, but there was nothing. The
closest vamps, two guards a few yards away at the bottom of the
stairs, never even flinched. They were watching one of the
captives, who was busy vomiting up his dinner, the gasping, wet
sounds followed by painful dry gasps.

Tomas glanced at Sarah, who nodded at
the fanatic. He was clutching his bones and murmuring something
with a distracted air, as if everything below wasn’t enough to hold
his attention. ‘Silence shield,’ Sarah explained. ‘Have any
suggestions, or do you just want to wing it?’

Forkface had taken off his bulging
pack and was systematically tucking stoppered vials into his
already weapons-filled belt. It was pretty obvious how he was
voting. Too bad they’d all be dead within half a minute of an
attack.

‘
This is Alejandro’s power
base,’ he said, struggling to explain in terms a human could
understand. ‘In addition to his own, he can draw power from every
vampire in the room. A frontal assault will not be
successful.’

‘
Any idea what
will?’

Tomas’s eyes were on the woman
necromancer, who was crying and chanting at the same time, with
theatrically raised arms but no discernable effect on any of the
bodies. ‘Can he do a spell to allow you to move through the crowd
unseen?’ Tomas nodded at the fanatic.

‘
The best he can do in full
light is a shadow spell to make us less obvious. It works on humans
by redirecting attention away from us. But I don’t know what effect
it will have on vamps.’

She glanced at her
colleague, who was still muttering to himself but was now staring
at an old inscription in the rock. She kicked
him.
‘Yes, yes. Will not work on
master-level, but all else, yes.’

Tomas nodded. ‘I will distract
Alejandro. While he is occupied with me, slip through the crowd and
get your brother.’

‘
That won’t help everyone
else.’

‘
If I can defeat him, his
position will devolve onto me and they’ll be safe.’ But the odds
were a lot less in his favor than he’d hoped. Catching Alejandro
somewhere in the tunnels or the jungle, alone except for a few of
his closest attendants, he might have stood a chance. But nowhere
in his plans had he figured on anything like this.

His voice must have reflected some of
his doubt, because Sarah narrowed her eyes. ‘And if you
can’t?’

‘
Once they see me, the
court will likely have eyes for nothing else. Get as many people
out as you can while they are distracted.’

‘
Distracted killing you,
you mean. Bullshit.’

‘
I came here knowing this
was the likely outcome.’

‘
Another little thing you
forgot to mention. We’re gonna have to work on our
communication.’

Tomas decided he couldn’t waste more
time arguing. The woman necromancer had failed and Alejandro’s
power was boiling through the room, hot on his neck. He was
furious. And when he lost his temper, people died – a lot of them.
It would be perfectly within character for him to simply order
every human in the room put to death.

As if in response to Tomas’s thoughts,
the guard behind the woman started forward, hand raised.

Tomas was grateful for vampiric speed,
which allowed him to reach her before the guard could snap her
neck. He caught the vamp’s arm, but he needn’t have bothered. The
room had frozen.

‘
Tomas.’ The voice was the
one he remembered, echoing inside his head like cool silver, but
crawling under his skin like something alive. But the power behind
it, the force compelling him to do Alejandro’s will, was gone. For
the first time, Tomas had reason to be grateful for his current
master. As much as he hated the man, Louis-Cesar’s ownership
insured that Alejandro’s unspoken command exerted no more pull than
that of any other first-level master. A rank he currently
shared.

Tomas opened his hand and the guard
retreated in an undignified scramble. The rest of the court was
moving closer, not attacking, not yet, but on high alert. No one
had any doubts about why he was here.

Apparently, neither did Alejandro. The
moment Tomas made a move in his direction, a strong force pushed
against him, like a hundred invisible hands holding him back. Make
that two hundred, he thought, glancing about at the family he’d
once called his own.

The fifteen feet to the bottom of the
stairs felt like miles; he had to fight for every inch with eyes
burning into his spine like acid and a thick, roiling nausea in his
gut. He had a moment of vertigo, swaying on his feet like a drunk
trying to dance, and someone laughed, high and cold and mocking. It
wasn’t Alejandro. His eyes were glittering dangerously and he'd
lost the faintly amused smile that was his usual armor.

The stairwell leading up to his throne
had twenty steps. By the time Tomas reached them, he was panting
like he’d run a mile. ‘I challenged you once before,’ he said
around the mass that had risen in his throat, huge and cold and
sickening. ‘But you were too cowardly to face me. I have come –
’

It was a good thing he hadn’t worked
too hard on his speech, because he never got to give it. The
vampires had closed in on every side, jostling each other, trying
to get up the courage to attack him. Tomas had hoped that
Alejandro’s pride would force him to fight his old servant himself,
especially with the odds so heavily in his favor. But Alejandro
remained seated, letting his men get more and more worked up until,
finally, two broke away from the crowd and dashed in,
snarling.

They came from opposite sides, and
while Tomas was dealing with the one on the left, turning his own
knife back against him, the one on the right smashed something
heavy against his leg. It was the one he’d injured earlier, the one
that had yet to completely heal. He fell to his hands and knees,
the jar of landing on the shattered kneecap turning the whole room
white hot with blinding pain.

He pulled the knife out of the first
vamp, who retreated back into the crowd, howling and clawing at his
wound, and rolled in time to slash at the second’s throat. He
missed because the man dodged, lightening fast, at the last minute.
But Tomas didn’t need weapons to crush his throat with an
application of raw power.

The vamp was young and that
effectively put him out of commission. But it also used up power
Tomas couldn’t afford to lose. And there were plenty more that the
family would consider expendable if their deaths served to further
weaken him.

Tomas dragged himself back onto one
leg, momentarily crippled while his system fought to rebuild torn
cartilage and shattered bone. Alejandro leaned forward, still not
bothering to get to his feet. ‘Do you really believe you will make
it all the way up here, Tomas? Because I believe I will sit here
and watch them gut you as you try.’

Four more vampires rushed him, all
from the same side, and although he dealt with them and with the
low level master who had waited for them to distract him, he
missed the ax that someone threw from the crowd. Alejandro made a
small gesture and the assault halted, for the moment, while Tomas
shuddered and leaned his forehead against the slick, cold surface
of the third step, a buzzing uproar surging all around him. On the
third or fourth or tenth try, Tomas managed to take a couple of
shallow breaths. He brought up shaking hands and tore the weapon
out of his belly.

‘
Really, Tomas. I’m
disappointed. I remembered you as better than this.’ Alejandro had
finally bothered to get out of his seat, but he didn’t come any
closer. ‘And to think, I was contemplating offering you a position
at the head of my new army. I really will have to
reconsider.’

Hot tendrils of agony shot out from
his stomach wound as he tried to stand. At least he couldn’t feel
the throbbing in his leg anymore, Tomas thought, and laughed to
cover the scream that wanted to tear out of his chest. An all out
assault on Alejandro was the only chance he had. If he hurt him
badly enough, the family might back off, waiting to see the outcome
before they risked attacking the man who might be their new master.
Slogging slowly up these steps, one by one, being battered from all
sides and buffeted by Alejandro’s power, was a sure recipe for
disaster. But it was also the only hope the humans had.

He couldn’t hear anything from the
back of the cave, from the mass of four or five hundred people who
had been corralled there. And there was no way so many could remain
silent while witnessing something like this. Not unless they were
being shielded and hopefully guided out.

But it was a long way through the maze
of hallways, as countless mortals had learned to their terror, and
even further to the town beyond. He had to give them time, if they
were to have any chance at all. And in this slice of hell, time
meant pain.

Pain wasn’t a problem, Tomas decided,
looking into Alejandro’s amused black eyes. He’d brought it to
enough people through the years. It was his turn.

‘
Still a coward posing as a
gentleman,’ Tomas gasped, and threw the gory ax straight at
Alejandro.

His old master turned it aside with an
elegant wave of his hand, but anger and surprise caused his
attention to waver slightly, allowing Tomas to make headway against
the stream of power opposing him. He made it to the tenth stair
before the world spun around and dropped out from under him, and he
hit something hard and unyielding. Only when the pain receded a
fraction did he realize he'd been dumped on the floor by another
ax, this one to the spine.

And master or no, no one healed a
wound like that instantaneously. Suddenly, his limbs didn’t work,
his arms and legs flopping uselessly around him, his head falling
back into a puddle of his own blood. Alejandro waved off the guards
who were rushing in to finish him, as he slowly descended the
remaining stairs.

He stopped directly in Tomas’s line of
vision, his booted feet just touching the bloody pool. He
unsheathed a rapier, good quality Cordoba steel instead of wood,
making it obvious that this wasn’t going to end quickly. ‘How the
mighty have fallen. That is the phrase, isn’t it? From my
lieutenant to this, all because of ambition.’

Tomas tried to tell him that ambition
wasn’t the point, that it never had been, but his throat didn’t
seem to work either. Although that might have been because of the
sight that suddenly loomed up behind his former master. At first,
Tomas was sure he was imagining things. But not even in a
pain-induced near faint could his brain have come up with something
like that.

Behind Alejandro, a withered arm
encased in a few rotting rags appeared, a tracery of thin blue
veins pulsing under the long dead skin. A head followed, cadaverous
and brown, but with two enormous, glittering eyes rolling in the
too large sockets. They stared at Tomas for an instant, full of
terrible, ancient fury, before the arm caught Alejandro around the
waist and a mouth full of cracked and yellowed teeth clamped onto
his neck.

Alejandro gave one sharp gasp before
the others were on him, a crowd of dry, old bones and tanned
leather skins that glowed slightly from the inside, like someone
shining a flashlight through parchment. And although Alejandro’s
power still surged around Tomas like a hurricane, they didn’t seem
to feel it. There was a crack, a thick, watery sound, and then
silence – except for the ripping, chewing noises coming from the
middle of the once human mass.

The kings had returned.

Another pair of feet came to rest
beside him, just brushing his hair. Tomas looked up to see Jason,
slack-jawed no longer, but with a quiet intensity his eyes. It
seemed Alejandro had kidnapped one necromancer worth his salt,
after all.

‘
You brought them back,’ he
managed to croak after a moment.

Jason didn’t look away from the
creatures and their meal. ‘They brought themselves.’

Tomas didn’t have a chance to ask him
what he meant, because the earth began to move in a very familiar
manner. Jason grabbed him under the arms and pulled him backwards
down the stairs. No one tried to stop him. It was as if the court
was frozen in place, staring in disbelieving horror at the sight of
their master being attacked by supposedly harmless sacks of
bones.