Undead for a Day (31 page)

“Like they haven’t cheated?” Tristan reminded her. “Wasn’t cheating to be expected when the details of this challenge were never set in stone like the game’s participants?”

He looked into her eyes. “Do you deserve this, if it’s about you? Surely you are only one small fish in a great big ocean of challenges and mistakes? There are murderers out there. Real criminals. If as much time and effort was spent on those guys, this particular challenge would have been over before it even began.”

The first of the monsters chose that moment to advance, rounding the corner with its teeth bared and its head down so that its horns preceded it menacingly, much like a raging bull.

“All right,” Tristan said, eyeing the creature. “I’ve made up my mind. I know what I have to do.”

After looking lovingly at Izzy once more, Tristan closed his eyes.

Izzy wouldn’t allow this challenge to become a fantastical rendition of the children’s game of Tag. Tris’s questions had stirred things up inside her.

“Trust me,” she said, ignoring what he had just said about making up his mind. “We will get to the bottom of it this time.”

She took off at a sprint after making sure Tristan was right behind her. They ran parallel to the water, high above it, with Notre Dame’s exterior lights gleaming in the distance. She didn’t give her lover a chance to slow her down.

For all their stony legs and creaking invisible joints, two of the monsters that had shared the gallery with Tris came lumbering on. Izzy ran, with Tris easily keeping pace. When they reached the bridge, they charged down the connecting stairs and onto the path next to the water.

“We can’t run forever,” Tris called out.

“We can if we have to,” she replied, hoping the steep angle of the stairs would slow the approach of the inflexible monsters.

She and Tris were gaining on the cathedral, sprinting as if their lives depended on them reaching Notre Dame, when both sides, Light and Dark, likely knew this wasn’t exactly the case. What they were moving away from was the probability of a hard landing, that’s all, and being forced by a hand other than their own to face an artificial fate.

Someone on some side was calling the shots, and pulling the strings. Everything about this challenge had taken on the aspect of a terrible, ongoing joke.

“That damn gallery isn’t a proper end,” she said. “It’s Limbo. Eventually this game has to stop. It has to.”

Where
it would stop, though, was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

Was tonight the night that ending could be forced?

Izzy regretted that she hadn’t asked Tris what his decision was when he’d said he had made one. She had been afraid of hearing the answer. His features had been strained for the first time that she could recall.

She had her own theory now about how this would turn out, and went over it as she ran. If fate was preordained, all roads eventually had to lead to the same place, regardless of how long it took to get there. The issue to be challenged here was whether
chance
had a say in the outcome.

Could some seemingly accidental action change fate if it veered far enough sideways? That being the case, would confronting demons and monsters and angels, rather than running from them, make a difference?

It was worth a try.

They would go back to the gallery and demand satisfaction. If it didn’t work, no way could they be worse off.

She swore aloud as a dark shape in the sky drew her attention, and she had to slow down to look up. The wind carried a beating sound. Air drifted in swirls similar to eddies in the water, caused by a blur of darkness that blocked out the moonlight. Something foul was coming. Something worse than the stone freaks behind them. It was arriving from the sky.

Had the bad guys heard her plea to the heavens? Were they royally pissed?

The sigils carved into her skin began to burn. Her wings, folded tightly and nestled between her shoulder blades, rippled with the desire to shed her human semblance and confront this new round of trouble. She wanted to face what was coming on its own terms, and didn’t dare with Tris beside her.

“Under the bridge!” she shouted to him. “Take cover!”

No low overpass would stop anything with wings, she knew. It wouldn’t have stopped her. Nevertheless, it might slow down whatever this thing in the sky was until she got a good, long look at it.

Some moments later, she noticed that Tris had stopped running, and that the echo of his footsteps no longer rang out.

Izzy felt her color drain as she whirled with her heart in her throat.

He was standing on the edge of the water, staring up at the sky. Whatever this thing in the air was had wings as black as hers, and it left an oily feel behind it that made the air feel slick.

With an anxious, feral insight, Izzy knew what this intruder had to be. Without thinking, she hurled herself back the way she had come, hoping she’d get to Tristan first.

*

“Duck!” Tristan heard Izzy shout. He glanced back to see her running toward him. She was waving her arms.

He couldn’t see anything that would make Izzy so worried. The horned beasts from the gallery were above them on the bridge, and hadn’t yet managed the stairs. The creatures were slow, and not exactly the worst kind of threat he could imagine.

“Tris!” Izzy yelled as the great weight he had earlier experienced on another street returned to press heavily on his shoulders. He tried to shake it off. Couldn’t.

“It’s camouflaged, vicious,” Izzy shouted. “Duck!”

She was agitated, riled up. Tristan did as she suggested and fell to one knee at the same time the point of something very sharp parted his hair, a scant millimeter from his scalp.

Again, he looked up, thinking he saw that same smear of darker black above him that he’d seen earlier that night. Only this time, the wind it rode on stank of rotten fruit.

Izzy reached him. Her face was angry. Her voice was flat, acidic, and dangerous as she said to whatever flew above them “Care to pick on someone nearer to your own species?”

A reptilian reply came in the form of a wail. There were no words attached to the disturbing utterance for Tristan to decipher or translate. The wail had been reminiscent of something prehistoric.

“Then come and get me,” Izzy said.

The streetlight above the bridge blew out, glass shattering on the concrete. Seconds later, another light on the bank shattered, throwing the path beside the water into darkness.

The area was silent for a short time before the whoosh of beating wings returned; big wings that took a long time to flap. The thing attached to those wings advanced, dropping by degrees, fanning the air until it touched down.

The air around it reeked so badly, Tristan covered his nose. He had to concentrate hard to try to discern what kind of creature had taken Izzy up on her offer. When he finally perceived its outline, he blanched.

A great horned head turned in his direction, larger than anything he’d come across, and like nothing he had ever seen. This creature was all black, and blended with the sky. If he looked at it from different angles, he could just make out its outline.

What this newcomer most resembled at first glance was a giant winged bat with human arms and legs. A nightmare’s nightmare. More frighteningly than anything had a right to be, the most notable detail was its eyes. They were a deep blood red, and glowing in the dark like a set of modern tail lights.

“What do you want?” Tristan demanded when the red eyes locked on him. “Who asked you to butt in?”

“It’s a devil,” Izzy said. “A copy of the real one, and another of the big guns.”

“You’ve met one of these guys before?”

“Never. I don’t think they’re allowed out very often.”

“Then the honor is ours?”

“Looks like it,” Izzy said.

“To what do we owe this unscheduled appearance?” Tristan asked the black, horned freak.

“If it speaks, our ear drums might burst,” Izzy warned. “I might not have a who’s who list, but my gut tells me that.”

The devil moved its attention to Izzy with a slow turn of its head. Its maw of a mouth opened. No sound came out.

“Hard for you to make yourself heard in this dimension, I guess,” Izzy remarked. “Any chance you know sign language?”

“What does it want? How will we know?” Tristan asked.

“We’ll know as soon as it assimilates our scent. Like a snake or lizard, it probably fills in details with receptors on its tongue.”

“Interesting,” Tristan said.

Izzy gave him a look.

The devil spread its wings, using them as an agitation indicator. The point was taken. Tristan backed up a pace.

“We’ll be going now,” he said to the creature.

Again, its red eyes found him.

“Until what’s happening here tonight is spelled out, we can’t do anything other than what we’re supposed to do,” Izzy said to it. “The Dark wants to hinder us. That must be clear, even to you.”

The devil raised a clawed hand and pointed at Izzy.

“We’ll go back to the gallery if I get someone’s word that everyone else will return there, as well,” she said. “Including you, if that’s where you hailed from.”

She added, “Oh, wait. That’s right. You all lie, so what good would your word be if you did find our voice? I believe your kind created the term
forked tongue?”

The stink of this devil was so pungent, Tristan blinked away tears. Bad idea, blinking. In the time it took for him to reopen his watery eyes, the devil was on him.

*

Izzy lunged for the winged devil in time to grab hold of Tristan’s legs as Tris was lifted off the ground. The bat-like creature had taken off with a dazzling rush of speed, and before she’d had time to anticipate what might come next.

In a pinch, Tristan was no slouch, though. His hands were on the devil’s face, covering the red eyes, hanging on with his fingers.

Temporarily blinded, the creature dropped Tris, who landed in a ball and rolled on the path before regaining his feet, unharmed. The devil let out a roar that rivaled the decibel of an air raid siren, and wheeled in the air. This time, it came for Izzy.

There was no extra time allotted for frivolities or caring for secret disguises. Izzy’s instincts were automatic, and swift. The human persona covering burned away in an instant, melting, transforming, leaving her naked, and panting with the effort it had taken to shed her alternate identity so quickly.

Her black hair returned, flying around her in an unnatural breeze, throwing shadows across her body. Her wings snapped open with the muffled sound of a flag whipping in the wind. This brought a reactionary gasp of surprise from Tris, but it was too late to do anything about it, and far too late to stop the changes.

She sent her lover a sad smile of regret before soaring into the sky to meet the devilish creature. She wanted to tell Tris that if her vow to protect him was broken tonight, she was sorry, and that it wouldn’t be because of anything she would have wanted, or wished.

Her body and the creature’s body met with the impact of two hurtling cars. Pain flashed through her, yet she recoiled and struck again.

She could hear the winged devil’s thoughts as their bodies collided. “Not for you,” it recited mentally, over and over in the monotone of a chant. “Not...for...you.”

“You’ve got that wrong,” she argued, her tone hard. “None of you understand this because you can’t love. You have never loved. You don’t possess the ability to care for anyone else.”

“Not for you,” the devil repeated. As they hovered in the air, the devil’s hands found her right wing. Izzy felt the feathers tear, and a sharp snap of electrified pain. She cried out angrily “Go back where you belong. Leave us alone.”

“Time’s up,” the creature’s thoughts told her as it tore her wing down to the bone with a flick of its strong wrists.

Izzy started to fall, and caught herself with a good push of her healthy feathers. As she faced the devil and looked into its scarlet eyes, it did nothing else to hurt her. No further attack came. No intent to attack crossed its mind. Its crimson eyes stared back as if making a point she didn’t comprehend. The useless mouth was still. Its thoughts were quiet.

What the hell?

As if the sudden cease of activity was an omen of some kind, Izzy chilled up. She tore her gaze from the creature’s face and quickly looked down...to find Tristan gone.

Tristan hadn’t seen this coming.

Not this part.

The winged devil with the blood colored eyes must have been a diversion. A good one, Tristan thought as he was broadsided by a body that hurtled in his direction with the speed and force of a runaway boulder.

The fact that he and Izzy had fallen for the winged devil’s antics was a kink in the plans, but he couldn’t concentrate on that now. Izzy had transformed right in front of his eyes, and he knew this was the true Izzy, at last.

She was glorious, sublime, wild, and outrageously seductive.

She had wings.

Row after row of iridescent, jet black feathers the same color as her sleek, waist-length hair formed fascinating patterns across a huge wingspan. In stunning contrast, her pale skin was completely colorless. The whitest of white. Nearly transparent.

In brief glimpses of her face, Tristan saw features that were extremely thin, with sharp cheekbones and deep-set eyes. Her skin was luminous. Her dark hair flew around her like an aura, like some kind of living shadow. Dangerous, yes. Magnificent for sure. In reality, Izzy was as perfect as all of her former disguises, only more so by a factor of ten.

She looked like an angel. A dark one. Some special species that was so incredibly graceful, it hurt him to take a fleeting glance.
This is what has nestled at your core all along, and what you withheld from me, though I guessed it had to be something unique.

He didn’t know why she had covered this up. The real Izzy wasn’t monstrous. Not even remotely close. She resembled nothing indicative of the Underworld’s other gangly creatures. And she thought this would turn him off? Scare him away? Jesus, he wanted to get up close and personal with her all over again, right that minute. He wanted to run his fingers over those black feathers, and lay a bare palm to her naked white skin. Izzy had assumed this image would hurt him, frighten him. He longed to tell her this wasn’t so.