Undead for a Day (13 page)

Linda, Chris, and I are thrilled to be working together to bring you urban fantasies from three of our favorite worlds. We can’t think of a better way to celebrate Halloween than sharing new dark tales with you.

Blessed Be,

Nancy

Enjoy this Halloween, Colin. It’s going to be your last
, Bridget thought grimly.

Gone was her amazing vampire costume; her annual Halloween party would have had to start without her. She’d taken two seconds to write a note and hang it on her door, but other than that, she’d barreled out of her condo like a bat out of hell, leaving artichoke dip, wine, and beer to grow warm in the sultry air.

Now she was crouched behind a trio of palm trees, gripping Colin’s Beretta in one hand and her temper in the other. She’d tucked her eye-catching red hair beneath a knitted cap, but it was just too hot to wear much else in the way of commando gear. Especially since she had no commando gear. She was a karate instructor, and she threw a few parties a year for her martial students and assorted friends. Halloween was her favorite, when everyone came as someone they weren’t—no karate uniforms allowed—and all the kids in the neighborhood stopped by for her homemade treats. This year it was marshmallow-and-rice-cereal bats. Or rather, it was supposed to be. Answering the door for little monsters was off the agenda, too.

“Damn it, Colin,” she muttered.

In a black tank top and khaki cropped pants, she offered a marked contrast to the formally-dressed crowd she was spying on. Maybe fifty people in tuxes and barely-there black gowns wore satin half-masks as they milled around a bonfire blazing in the center of a brick courtyard. Colorful embroidered shawls with black fringes hung loosely from the elbows of the women. Scarlet hibiscus blossoms were tucked behind their ears, accentuating their lush black hair.

The glow of orange flames danced on sharp, dramatic facial features—well-defined chins, broad foreheads, and straight, slightly hooked noses. A few of the men wore a single earring. They all resembled each other, as if they were related by blood. Given what she was wearing, there was no hope of blending in, just as there was no sign of a burly, redheaded, blue-eyed guest sporting a spectacular limp, a facial scar, and an eye patch.

No Colin, in other words.

Thirty yards beyond, a Spanish-style mansion loomed like a castle. Torches planted on either side of the entrance flickered in the balmy Miami breezes. Maybe her roguish brother was in the dungeon—if he could be in two places at once. He was already in the doghouse.

The note in Bridget’s fanny pack read
Marica, Shadow Island. HELP!!!!
According to the boat captain Bridget had cajoled into ferrying her from the mainland, this tiny, remote rich-people’s playground was Shadow Island. So she’d come to the right place.

Problem was, Bridget had no idea who Marica was.

And her twin had never, ever asked her for help before, even though she rescued him on a near-weekly basis. Actually, “rescued” was too strong a word; she
retrieved
him. Like a long-suffering parent, she had bailed him out of trouble many times since his honorable discharge from the Marine Corps he loved so much. War injuries had tagged him as disabled, no longer good in battle. He’d been offered a desk job, but he’d refused it. Then he had spiraled down, but not too far. She dragged him out of South Beach bar fights, covered his gambling debts. Lied to old girlfriends when they came to the door. All his antics had been annoying scrapes that he’d always, eventually made right.

But this time things felt different. This time, she couldn’t shake a conviction that he was in real danger.

She didn’t know how she knew—all those stories about twins having a special bond? She and Colin had never experienced that. She hadn’t felt a thing when he’d been shot and nearly died in a field hospital in Afghanistan. She never knew where to find him when he went on one of his binges. Instead, she relied on a network of sympathetic bartenders and working girls who phoned when it was time to pick up the pieces of Colin Brian Flynn.

But as flamenco guitar music carried toward her on a blessed breeze, she fought down real-time panic over the safety of her brother. She stared at the strangers with dread in her heart as if they were mass murderers. Had this Marica kidnapped him? Rolled him and robbed him? It was difficult for her to imagine anyone, man or woman, getting the upper hand on him, no matter his prosthetic leg and vision problems. And no one here needed money.

She squinted, surveying the scene, wishing she’d thought to bring Colin’s field glasses. Or that she had called the police. Colin was a bit notorious in law enforcement circles, but not in an extreme way: the cops respected the Marine Corps and understood the bitterness of a permanently benched warrior. They usually drove him home without issuing him a citation. If she’d asked for help, the South Beach division would have come.

Correction: Jack Stone would have come. An image of the easygoing Texas transplant—more cowboy than cop—rose in her mind, and she pushed it away. Their brief romance had been a disaster.  And besides, what would she say to Jack about the current crisis? That she had found a note containing a woman’s first name on the breakfast bar of her brother, who was infamous for getting into hot water because he got into too many beds? All that would get her was another pitying look and the inevitable lecture about enabling Colin’s irresponsibility. So no Jack. No anyone.

Colin and Jack both said that her biggest weakness was trying too hard to go it alone. She’d had a lot of practice.

Enough. She had to stay sharp, focused. Given the ice water washing up and down her spine, it was amazing to her that she could think of anything except finding Colin and getting the hell out of there.

Suddenly, there was a shift in the mood of the partygoers. Glances were traded; lips curled in whispery smiles. Bridget’s twitchy foreboding surged and she gripped the sweaty Beretta more tightly. Funny thing about firearms: even if you worked out every day in a dojo and threw punches that could knock bar bouncers on their butts, guns still weighed a lot. And thigh muscles still got progressively more irritated the longer you had to crouch.

One of the women placed a champagne flute on the tray of a passing waiter and pulled a shimmering beaded clip from her hair. She shook her head and ebony curls cascaded down her tanned back. She raised her hands above her head, rotating her wrists and spreading her fingers in a classic flamenco pose. Chin up, chest out. Yo. Big chest. Maybe this was Marica. That would explain a few things.

“
Andale
,” the woman said huskily, pronouncing it “An-da-lay.” Meaning, “let’s go.”

The word was taken up by a few of the others.  The atmosphere shifted again, intensifying, as if something more than dancing had been set in motion. An older man with a salt-and-pepper goatee began to clap out the rhythm of the guitar music. Still masked—they all were—a younger man faced the woman who had spoken; he grasped the lapels of his tuxedo jacket and thrust his elbows to each side. He stomped his foot once, twice, then broke into an elaborate staccato rhythm. The woman advanced on him, hips swaying sensuously, every inch of her body promising seduction.

“
Sí
, Anita,” another woman called out in encouragement. “Ya, José.”

Others paired up, beckoning, enticing without touching. They all danced the same steps, advancing, retreating, like fencers. It was the sexiest thing Bridget had ever seen, and her panic was overlaid by an erotic throb. She was surprised at the intensity of her reaction—she’d watched flamenco before—but this was more intimate, more sexual, and she felt like a voyeur peeping through someone’s bedroom window.

The man—José—unthreaded his tie and took off his jacket, handing them without looking to a waiter who stepped forward quickly to retrieve them. José put his hand on Anita’s shoulder and inched the thin black strap of her gown off one shoulder and then the other. The bodice draped perilously low over swells of smooth, bronzed flesh.

An older woman danced close to the bonfire. The man with the goatee came up behind her, placing his hands on her hips and gathering up the sides of her gown. The fabric slid up past toned calves and knees. Then he took off his shirt, revealing a pristine white sleeveless T-shirt stretched over solid pecs and a flat stomach.

The woman named Anita was busily taking the studs out of José’s shirt, and José was unzipping the back of her dress. José’s smile seemed to throw light against Anita’s face—not torchlight or firelight, but a hot glow from inside his body. And the same glow appeared to blaze from Anita and shine on José. Bridget was mesmerized.  How did they do that?

Snap out of it
, she thought, giving herself a mental shake. She didn’t know what to do. Maybe she had misunderstood the note. Maybe her brother had meant that he was coming here to help Marica, not that he needed help himself. But why leave her a note, then? He rarely checked in with Bridget about his comings and goings.

Anita and José kept undressing each other until they were almost completely naked, and…things… were progressing toward doing more than dancing. Their bodies were pressed tightly together and he cradled her head in a mixture of passion and tenderness that took Bridget’s breath away. The other dancers entwined themselves around each other, and everyone began making out like crazy.

She couldn’t, shouldn’t watch this. She began to crabwalk backwards, with plans to disappear among the palm trees and circle around to the back of the mansion.

That was when she ran into something very cold and very hard at the back of her head.

Something like a gun.

“Do not move,” a man said. His English was slightly accented. “Raise your hands.”

“I mean no harm,” she managed to say as she obeyed. Adrenaline spiked and she fought it down, looking for the inner place of serenity, the place of strength. All her martial arts training—taekwondo, kickboxing, Krav Maga—snapped into place and she waited for an opening. The first tenet of her discipline was to avoid confrontation, but the prime directive was to survive.

He grabbed the Beretta and she spun around and swept out her leg, hoping to catch him behind the knees and send him crashing to the ground. A blow came out of nowhere and she landed on her back instead. Pressure held her forcefully down.

But he stood ten feet away from her, masked like the others, dressed in a tux. Blue-black curls framed an angular bronzed face with the same aquiline, hooked nose she had observed on the others; and lips that might otherwise be soft and generous pursed together in a tight line. Raven brows raised above black satin as he looked at her.

The gun floated in the air beside him.  Defying gravity, it pointed downward as if suspended by a wire.

“What the hell?” she cried, struggling to get up. But something held her down—unseen, impossible to fight off.

She could no longer hear the flamenco music. Her own heartbeat thundered in her ears as she fought for calm so she could strategize. As the man approached her, colors like the metallic pastels of an abalone shell danced around him. His gaze on her was intent and as concentrated as a shark’s.

Without looking away from her, he held out a hand, and her gun glided into his grasp.

“Did she send you?” he asked Bridget.

She licked her lips. “Who?”

“Maria del Carmen, of course.”

“Marica” was the usual nickname in Spanish for Maria del Carmen. Bridget fought not to betray any emotion. He kept staring at her. She wished she could see his eyes. See if she could tell how much danger she was in.

If he had already flicked off the safety, and he might pull that trigger.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I, um, my boat engine stopped running and I paddled to your shore. And I…”

She trailed off, mortified. It was obvious to them both that she was lying. She was usually much better at dishonesty than this. Inventing excuses for Colin had become second-nature to her.

“Can you let me up?” she said, trying a different tack. “I’m sorry I came at you. You scared me.”

He cocked his head. The people at the party were stunning, but he was a cut above even them. He was so good-looking that he didn’t seem real. And with the way the strange lights danced around him, she was beginning to wonder if she’d unknowingly ingested some kind of drug while she’d been in Colin’s kitchen. She’d had some orange juice from the fridge. He’d sworn he was clean, finally free of his addictive painkillers. And she didn’t think painkillers could make you hallucinate.

“If Marica didn’t send you—and I can see no reason why she would,” he began, and then he stopped. His face hardened. “You’re Favored.”

“I’m what?”

“Don’t even try to lie to me. You’re Favored and you came here on Samhain without permission.”

He reached up and ripped his mask from his face. It tumbled to the earth beside him, and she looked into deep, dark penetrating eyes. They seemed to swirl like whirlpools of shadow, and she locked gazes with him, unable to blink. She felt dizzy, and exhilarated; terrified, and filled with a strange, fierce emotion that she didn’t know how to describe. She knew she had to get away from him.

But she didn’t want to.

“It is Samhain,” he repeated, “and I am completely within my rights to destroy you.”

“
Destroy
me?” Marica’s lackey blurted, and Xavier laughed mirthlessly in response. He was glad he had erected a barrier to shield their meeting from the eyes of the family—he would have to take up the lack of security with his little brother Emilio—because the matter of Marica’s atrocious behavior was already humiliating enough. Sending a Favored with a
gun
went beyond all bounds of decency.

An explosion of fury set his heart on fire. Choosing a year wife outside the family had been his idea, but instead of providing the Amayas with the new blood that they so desperately needed, Marica had stolen their most precious possession and absconded. In that treacherous act, she had broken the Amayas’ fragile truce with her family, the Caracols—known as Casa del Diablo—the House of the Devil.