The Day of the Dead (3 page)

‘
His type of magic isn’t
likely to help him much,’ she said curtly.

‘
I don’t
understand.’

‘
You don’t need to.’ She
stood up. ‘Just tell me where I can find this guy.’

Tomas shook his head. ‘I can’t do
that.’

‘
Why not? Based on how his
vamps treated you, I got the impression you weren’t all that
close.’

He smiled at the understatement. ‘We
aren’t. But helping you commit suicide won’t aid your
brother.’

‘
Tell me where to find this
Alejandro, and the only one dying will be him.’

Tomas got slowly to his feet, gingerly
putting his weight on the injured knee. It held. ‘For what it’s
worth, I’ve come to kill him. If I succeed, it may cause enough
chaos to allow your brother to escape. Wish me luck.’

He started to go, but a hand on his
arm stopped him. ‘I’ll do better than that. I’ll go with
you.’

‘
I told you – that would
not be wise.’

‘
Really? And you think
you’d have survived just now without me? It sounds like you going
alone isn’t so wise, either.’

Tomas turned to face her, already
exasperated. He had enough on his plate tonight. He didn’t need
this. ‘You may be good with a gun, but that won’t keep you alive.
Alejandro was once my master. I know what he’s capable
of.’

‘
Uh huh. And can he break
off half a mountain because he loses his temper?’

Tomas regarded her narrowly. ‘You’re
saying that was you?’

‘
That’s what I’m saying.
I’m a jinx.’

‘
I beg your
pardon?’

Jinx. J.I.N.X. A walking disaster
area. Fault lines love me. Of course, so does just about anything
else that can go wrong.’

‘
An inconvenient
talent.’

‘
And an illegal one. If the
magical community ever finds out a jinx as powerful as me is
walking around, they’ll kill me. Which is why I got really good at
protecting myself – and other people – a long time ago. This
vampire has bought himself more trouble than he knows.’

‘
Bringing down a
mountainside won’t help your brother. If he’s where I think he is,
it would only bury him as well.’

‘
I can control it. And this
isn’t exactly my first time at the rodeo. I can take care of
myself.’

Tomas hesitated, instinct warring with
dawning hope. ‘I tried to draw someone else into this recently, and
almost got her killed,’ he finally admitted. ‘I swore that I’d
never do that again. This is my fight – ’

‘
It
was
your fight. Once that bastard took
Jason, he made it mine.’ When Tomas just stared at her, trying to
think of some way to get rid of her that did not involve actual
violence, the ground grumbled beneath him. The precariously perched
pew gave up the struggle and slid down the hillside, only to go
sailing off into the void like a huge wooden bird. ‘Look, I’m not
asking you, I’m telling you. You think you’ve got troubles now? Try
leaving me behind. My brother is all I’ve got, and he is
not
dying
tonight.’

‘
It will not be easy,’ he
said, wondering how to even begin to explain what they were up
against.

The girl snorted. ‘Yeah. I kind of got
that.’ She held out her hand. ‘Sarah Lee. And no, I don’t
cook.’

‘
Tomas.’

‘
Well Tomas. We gonna stand
here exchanging pleasantries all night, or go kill a vampire?’
Tomas didn’t say anything, but he slowly took her hand. She
grinned. ‘Well, all right then.’

* * * * *

‘
Jason is a reporter for
the
Oracle
,’ Sarah
said, as Tomas hotwired her brother’s rental car. Hers had been
parked in the part of the cemetery that hadn’t survived and was
currently exploring the bottom of the valley. ‘We were supposed to
meet up in Puerto Vallarta for a vacation, but when I got to the
hotel, he’d already left. All I found was a note telling me he’d
got a lead on a story and asking me to meet him here.’

‘
If Alejandro has started
kidnapping magic users, it would be front-page news,’ Tomas agreed,
as the engine on the old subcompact finally turned over. ‘Or your
brother could have found out about one of his other businesses. He
controls everything from magical narcotics to weapon sales in much
of Central and South America.’

‘
I know. I’ve dealt with
his people before.’ At Tomas’s sideways look, she shrugged. ‘I
can’t buy weapons from legitimate sources, not in the quantities I
need. The authorities monitor that kind of stuff.’

‘
Why would you need huge
quantities of magical weaponry?’

‘
Why do you want to kill
your old master?’ she countered. ‘I didn’t even think that was
possible.’

They bounced out onto the main road
through the village, with only the weak light of a quarter moon to
see by. ‘It wouldn’t be, if he were still my master. I challenged
him to combat, but he wouldn’t face me. He brought in a champion, a
French dueling master, instead. But rather than kill me as
Alejandro had wanted, after Louis-Cesare defeated me, he claimed me
as his slave. I only recently escaped.’

‘
And came straight back
here.’

‘
Yes.’

‘
That’s
very…heroic.’

Tomas didn’t think it qualified as
heroism if he had nothing left to lose. But he didn’t say so. Her
tone made it clear that the word she’d really been searching for
was ‘stupid’.

‘
Alejandro killed the
entire population of my village. There isn’t anyone else.’ If the
dead were ever to be avenged, it was up to him to do it. And after
four hundred years, they’d waited long enough.

‘
So you came back alone.’
She shook her head. ‘People like you are bad for
business.’

‘
You’re a mercenary.’ Tomas
supposed he should have figured it out before.

‘
We prefer the term
‘outside contractor’.’

‘
I couldn’t afford to hire
a team,’ Tomas said, turning onto the pitted road leading into the
mountains. ‘And you also came here alone.’

A dark shape suddenly loomed in front
of them, forcing Tomas to squeal tires and practically stand the
car on end to avoid hitting it. The shape resolved itself into a
tall, gaunt man, with the brilliant eyes of a fanatic set deep in
the hollows of his craggy face. ‘Not so much,’ Sarah said, climbing
out of the car. ‘Boys, glad you could make it.’

‘
Looks like we already
missed some of the fun,’ another man commented, stepping out of the
jungle that hedged the road on each side.

Tomas stared hard at the new arrival.
He hadn’t heard him approach, and that was unacceptable. Unless he
was a mage using magic to mask his breath, the sound of his heart
beating, his footfalls – all would have alerted Tomas to his
presence.

But he didn’t look like a mage. He had
a jagged, ugly scar on his right cheek, as if someone had dragged a
fork with sharpened tines over his skin. It was the sort of thing
that could be fixed by magical healers or covered by a glamourie.
Unless, of course, its owner preferred to look like an extra from a
horror flick.

‘
Meet my knife and gun
club,’ Sarah said, slapping the man on the back. ‘At least the ones
close enough to get here in time for the festivities.’

The men didn’t greet him, and nobody
offered any names, but they also didn’t demand to know what Sarah
was doing with some strange vampire. Of course, she didn’t give
them much of a chance, launching directly into an explanation of
the problem. If Tomas had had a doubt about their profession, it
would have been quieted by their reaction to the news that they
were about to raid a vampire stronghold.

‘
Can I keep the bones?’ the
fanatic hissed, speaking for the first time. ‘They’re useful in
some spells.’

‘
Knock yourself out,’ Sarah
said, shrugging. ‘But no collecting until we have Jason,
understood?’

The man gave a quick nod that reminded
Tomas of a lizard or some other kind of reptile. It wasn’t a human
movement. The other man didn’t say anything at all, just switched
out a couple of the weapons in the collection draped over his body
for several others he drew from a pack on his back. Then everybody
got in the car.

Tomas pulled off the road a few miles
to the north, where a burbling stream snaked its way through the
dense jungle. ‘We walk from here,’ he said, pushing the car off the
road in case any of Alejandro’s men were out a little
early.

‘
I don’t see a house,’
Sarah had pulled night- vision goggles out of her associate’s pack,
and was staring around.

‘
There isn’t one. Alejandro
lives underground.’

‘
Come again?’

‘
There are some Mayan ruins
near here, with a maze of underground passages beneath them. He’s
lived there for centuries.’

‘
Great.’ She sounded less
than enthused.

‘
What is it?’

'Nothing. What about
guards?’

‘
Normally, the entrances
are all watched. That’s why I picked tonight to return. They will
be open for the hunt, as the prisoners’ first challenge is to find
their way out of the maze. Many never do.’

‘
We need to reach them
before they’re released, then. Otherwise, they’ll be scattered in
the tunnels, in the jungle – we’ll never find them all.’

‘
I thought the plan was to
rescue your brother.’

‘
Yeah. Like I’m going to
leave you and the rest to be prey to that thing.’

Tomas glanced at her, but it was
difficult to see much of an expression behind the absurd goggles.
She’d sounded sincere enough, though. And he couldn’t let her go in
thinking that way.

‘
I know where they used to
keep the prisoners. We’ll go there first. And if we’re lucky enough
to locate your brother alive, you need to take him and
go.’

‘
I don’t abandon a
colleague in the middle of a mission. We go in together, we leave
together. That’s how it works.’

‘
Not if you want to stay
alive!’ Tomas grasped her arm. ‘I have the best chance of reaching
Alejandro alone. If you stay to help me, both you and your brother
will die. Not to mention that you will almost certainly cause me to
fail at my task.’

She stopped, looking from the hand on
her arm to his face. He released her, but the steady stare didn’t
change. ‘If you don’t want my help, why are you taking me along?’
she demanded.

‘
Because you wouldn’t find
your brother alone. Not in time.’

‘
And why would you care
about that? You don’t even know him.’

‘
I might not know your
brother, but I’ve known plenty of others.’ A thousand faces, ten
thousand, he’d lost count over the years. All of those eyes begging
him to help them, to save them. They’d seen his face, the one that
had prompted Alejandro to nickname him ‘my angel,’ and assumed he
was their savior. Only to realize with horror that he was one of
those hunting them.

‘
What?’

‘
Alejandro forced me to
help with the hunts,’ Tomas said bluntly, ‘because he knew how much
I hated it.’ Telling her was unnecessary, but it was probably his
last chance for confession. He didn’t remember the last time he’d
talked with a priest, not even the last time he’d wanted to, and
she couldn’t absolve him anyway. But then, considering some of the
things he’d done, he doubted that anyone could. ‘I’ve killed
hundreds just like Jason,’ he added, trying to keep his voice
neutral. ‘And the only mercy I could show them was to make it
quick. For once, I’d like to help someone survive. And to have
Alejandro be the one wallowing in his own blood.’

‘
That’s a plan I can get
behind,’ she said, fingering her automatic.

Tomas shook his head and didn’t
comment. Once she saw what was waiting for them, her bravado would
fade. Just like everyone else’s always did. The two men didn’t say
anything. But when he and Sara stepped into the undergrowth, they
followed.

The next hour was taken up with
slipping through a jungle through which no paths had ever been
carved, followed closely by a damp cloud of mosquitoes. Sara
managed it better than Tomas had expected; it wasn’t easy going
even for him. Alejandro had left the jungle intact for exactly that
reason: it formed an added layer of protection. It also added to
the fun of his hunts, watching mere mortals flounder around in the
endless green sea until he chose to put them out of their
misery.

They finally reached an old temple on
the edge of Alejandro’s lands. The place was beautiful, silvered
with moonbeams, the stones seeming to glow with a delicate light
just bright enough to pick out shapes. Weeds and vines had half
obscured the entrance and small trees were growing out of the
tumbled stones over the lintel.

A crop of wild orchids had moved in,
settling among the ruins like nesting birds, their white and orange
petals spotted with brown like freckles. Tomas reached out to touch
one and found it softly furred beneath the pad of his finger – like
skin. A sudden shiver flashed up and down his spine, before
twisting like a snake in his gut. For a moment, it felt like the
last century had never happened, like he was returning from a
mission for his master with blood on his hands, and all the rest
was merely a dream.