Undead for a Day (25 page)

God, how she loved him.

The chin-length black hair falling to curtain his angular cheeks ruffled slightly in the sigh of her heated breath. His features were even and exceptional, his expression gentle and earnest.

Physically, Tristan was the epitome of every woman’s dream, from his height to his mounds of sculpted muscle that never diminished or atrophied by his nearly continual motionless state. He was damn near perfect.

His broad shoulders and expansive chest accentuated his narrow waist. The thinnest trickle of masculine hair brought her gaze to his impeccably taut stomach. Thoughts about his hips, what those hips could do, as well as what sometimes lay stiffening beneath them, were nearly as seductive as the light in his eyes. Tristan was a fierce, ardent lover; talented, way too competent, and possessed of endless sexual stamina.

She loved that he wasn’t shy about his nakedness, and stood beside her comfortably unconcerned. Tris. Strong, yet tender. Forceful, and caring. It was all there in one amazing package.

His was a soul worth fighting for. That’s why she had been doing so for nearly a hundred years.

She wanted more time just to look at him. She wanted time to be with him. But others were already coming in for the kill, in a game that got tougher every year. Teeth and talons were readying for a taste of Tristan,
the human who had exchanged places with a doomed soul so long ago, and had therefore become doomed, in turn.

Unfair or not, Izzy could feel those talons closing in.

Tristan tried out his voice. “Izzy?”

The woman threw her arms around him. “Yes.”

His mind flooded with images as her warmth caressed him. “I like this one,” he said, encircling her thin body with his arms, and coughing to clear his throat.

“I knew you would, Tris. You’ve always been a sucker for blondes.”

Touching Izzy was an exotic tactile sensation. After so much time spent in sensory stasis, every one of his cells was starved for feeling. The softness of the golden hair that fell to Izzy’s shoulders in cascading waves tickled his cheek, and made his gut clench in reaction. The feel of her body in his arms, with its slender hips and firm breasts pressed to his chest, caused a riot of internal pleasure.

He drew in a breath, inhaling a mixture of scents so unique he couldn’t separate out the individual components. His lover’s scent rarely varied. To him, she smelled like sex, promise, and musky feminine allure. He stood there, holding her close, stunned by the intensity of the moment and content to breathe her in.

“How are you, Izzy?” he whispered with his mouth in her hair.

“No time for a chat, Tris. It’s business as usual.”

She didn’t back that up by showing any desire to move. He wouldn’t have released her if she had.

“Who’s here first?” he asked, running both hands over her hips and down the sides of her fabric covered thighs, wanting to get inside her clothes, desiring to be lost inside Izzy’s lush private places, though his own body still trembled.

“The harp pluckers,” she said with an audible gasp as he cupped her backside and dragged her closer to him.

“Have their wings gotten bigger or something? They have so much further to go than the others,” he said.

She shook her head. “The monsters on the gallery have forgotten how to breathe. Each time they awaken, it takes them longer to get the hang of things. But they’re here, listening, readying, sharpening their nails.”

Tristan’s heart gave a quick, powerful thump. As if the sun had risen before its time, the area blazed with a beam of intense white light. Ducking away from it, Tristan pulled Izzy down to a crouch. The celestial search light meant that angels were indeed hovering. Everyone was here.

“Is the door bolted?” he asked, edging sideways.

“When has a bolt ever stopped us?” his beautiful companion replied, her chest rattling as she inhaled light particles that were noticeably detrimental to her health. Izzy, these days, was a creature of the night.

Tristan gripped her wrist tightly. “You don’t have to help me, Izzy. You can leave now, and leave me.”

“You’re insane if you believe that.”

Her large blue eyes were so wide with earnestness, he had to kiss her. Forget the angels and the monsters and the fact that there was no time for such things as sex. Just then, with the warmth of her sultry presence so close, Izzy was everything he needed.

Sealing his mouth to hers, Tristan swallowed the flames that animated her nowadays, and felt those flames parch his lungs. With both sides of the challenge closing in, he tossed her to the dirty floor of the gallery, onto her back, and arched over her on his hands and knees to protect her from the light, wanting her as badly as he always did. No matter what form she took, or how badly being this close to her had the potential to char his flesh, he wanted her.

“I’d burn you up if we tried what you’re thinking,” she warned, her voice faint and breathy when he stopped devouring her. “Even if we had time to do it.”

“Might be worth a burn or two,” he said.

“Say that again and I’ll show you what I can really do, now that I’ve had time to get used to what I am.”

“I’d like nothing more than to see what you can do,” Tristan said. “But of course, you’re right. We don’t have much time. And we have an audience.”

The female he loved with every fiber of his being nodded. The eyes that sought his were the same color as the first time he’d seen them, for all Izzy’s other outward changes. They were a lovely, pure sky-blue.

Her gaze drifted sideways as something heavy landed on the gallery not too far away, its arrival shaking the floor. Izzy’s face creased.

“Why am I doing this?” Tristan asked, turning his head to follow her gaze.

“Because you’re better than all the rest, stronger than most, and have a soft spot inside,” she replied.

“Ah, yes. I guess that’s it.”

The floor beneath them quaked.

“Plus, you love me,” she added. “Proving, at the moment, that you’re not
all
soft.”

Tristan smiled.

“It’s time,” Izzy said sadly. “I’m–”

Tristan put a warning finger to her lips to stop her apology. “All right,” he said, getting to his feet, feeling steadier.

The magic built into the walls and floors of the gallery moved like ripples in a disturbed pond as he pulled Izzy up beside him. Dimensions were merging, making the darkness of the night even darker. The stone shapes on the steeply pitched roof were moving with crawling sounds and radiating strange energies as they drew on the power around them.

Tristan felt the changes in the air, and listened to the oncoming storm of magic with distaste. He stood beside Izzy for several seconds more, waiting for something else to happen, sensing it would.

His hands were fisted. His jaw was clenched. The silvery light of a full moon that would tug the Underworld to the surface of the earth had replaced the high-beams of the angels. It was always the same on All Hallow’s Eve. Hell opened up doors and potholes for its creatures to slither through, while the angels backed off a pace, at least temporarily, as though there had been some kind of pact between the two opposing sides.

A sort of gentleman’s agreement.

But the angels didn’t go far. Their presence rolled across his nakedness like another glistening layer of skin. This layer, like some kind of angelic armor, would keep the heat and flames of Hades at bay for awhile, assuring him of a somewhat fairer contest until Heaven issued a ruling on the whole ordeal. After all, Izzy wasn’t on Heaven’s side,
per se,
and she was his companion in this crazy escapade.

Didn’t everyone expect Hell to cheat?

He saw a body drop from the roof. That one was quickly followed by a second entity of equal size and bulk. A third presence was already there somewhere, and the gallery walkway threatened to give way beneath the onslaught of three monstrous shapes converging to try to block his path to the door.

This would have been the usual start-of-the-contest fare, meant to show off some of Hell’s powerful crew and scare him into behaving...except for the sound of their jaws gnashing and a heavier than usual vibe of menace radiating off the creatures.

When animated, these beasts didn’t change much in appearance from their chiseled stone state. Dark gray in color, with the desiccated, mottled surfaces of timeworn granite, each of them bore a set of horns marking their unearthly origins, either protruding from their foreheads or next to their oversized ears. Their faces were distorted, as most of Hell’s watchdog’s faces were. Tristan supposed all that internal heat made them cranky.

“You’re cutting this short,” Izzy warned.

Behind the chesty disguise that he would have liked more time to explore, Tristan heard Izzy’s heart thundering. Though her anxiousness needled him, he wanted to take her back down to the floor where he would show her how much he had missed her and how hard he could become without the stone casing, in her honor.

Of course, a liaison like that really was out of the question. It had been out of the question for awhile.

The atmosphere on the gallery had thickened. Tristan glanced around. “I sense something else here that requires our attention,” he said, the hairs at the nape of his neck lifting. “I can’t quite see what it is.”

“Probably would be best to leave that thing alone, Tris.”

“What is it?”

“Demon, would be my guess.”

“You’re a demon.”

“Does it feel anything like me?”

He faced her. “Nothing feels like you.”

Izzy smiled briefly, almost innocently, Tristan thought, before her face smoothed back into an expression of concern.

“I’ll open the door, if you can get there,” she said.

“I will be right behind you.”

The woman who nowadays had a demon inside her took off, slipping through the shadows easily because she was one of them. The monsters in the way didn’t give Izzy a second look. Since like recognized like, they’d assume her to be a kindred spirit.

But this was a dangerous misconception. Izzy was different. Unlike most demons, she had been human once. The thing that set her apart from the others comprising her
side
was not only her free-flowing spirit of empathy, but her capacity for love. That capacity might have been somewhat diminished by all the scorching around her edges, but the brightness of the gleam in her blue eyes gave her away.

She had been a decent person for most of her life as a mortal, but then had started making one mistake after another. Her most unforgivable sin was that Izzy had shaken her fists at the heavens and issued a challenge of the “Prove you’re there” kind. In the small gap of misunderstanding she’d created, Hell, ever vigilant for loopholes, had snared her for a sadistic game of its own.

Tristan would never forget meeting her here, in this very place, on a night just like this one. Their attraction had been instantaneous, steamy, and overwhelming. After the cathedral’s doors had closed that night, they had ravaged each other in a place where unearthly spirits lived and reigned, beneath a bloated October moon.

He’d had her in every way possible, in and out, front to back, absorbing her cries with fevered kisses. In front of monsters, and under the stars, he had tasted Izzy and loved her with the unrelenting proof of his desire.

When it was done and they lay spent on the cold stone floor, she had explained about her strange sentence on the gallery, and about being trapped in stone as penance for her sins. One year later, after returning to Notre Dame to see the truth of this for himself, Tristan had agreed to set her free.

This hadn’t turned out as he had planned, though. Thinking to remove Izzy from her prison on the church’s roof, and imagining that she could redeem herself and live on in freedom, he had been surprised by the result of his sacrifice.

Instead of running, Izzy had remained by his side. In order to do so, and wield some control over a game where humans had no say and no power, she had gathered power to her in the fastest way open to mortals. She had given herself over to the Dark Side. She had done this so that she could be with him each time he woke. Izzy had made this further sacrifice for no other reason than that.

In his eyes, she had redeemed herself several times over. Still, he supposed it was hard for angels to see past the flames and the disguises.

Bless her demonic soul, Izzy was here each and every time he needed her most, as though years hadn’t passed in between, and as though they were merely lovers meeting when they could.

Not exactly the kind of trade he had anticipated.

Here she was again, tonight, hoping to help him. So, by way of thanks, he had to make her effort count. He had to reach the door and get off this roof to search for that one extraordinary person willing to do a truly good deed tonight, on the spur of the minute, and trade their freedom for his, their life for his. The way he had traded his for Izzy’s.

This was no easy task. There was no balance in the trade. He had hours only to accomplish this goal, when the result wasn’t anyone’s idea of a happy ending.

Do you want me to succeed, Izzy?

He wasn’t entirely sure she did. But he knew that each time he failed to find a replacement for his position on the gallery cost her. Izzy became more and more entrenched in Hell’s fires with each October that passed by. He saw this, felt this. She’d grown steadily stronger, and reeked of powerful magic.

I hate what my failure is doing to you, my love.

But besides being a willing candidate, his replacement on the gallery had to be strong enough to last in this game, which meant that not just any wayward soul would do. This was a game of patience and stamina. He wondered if it would ever truly end. Moreover, what would happen if he was released from this burden, and he and Izzy went their separate ways?

Could I stand being parted from you?

Tristan took a step to follow Izzy. She was dressed in black and looking fragile in her willowy body, when she was anything but fragile as she sprinted for the door. He didn’t want to know what lay beneath her beautiful, carefully cultivated disguise. Her soul was lovely, and that’s all that mattered. She had come back for him time and time again, and for this he loved her more than life itself.