Undead for a Day (30 page)

“They don’t give us handbooks, Tris. Nor do they provide us with a list of who’s who.”

Tris shook his head, scattering locks of shiny hair that were as black as obsidian, and moments ago had hung in a sexy fringe over his forehead. His dark brown eyes were wide.

“What if we stay here and wait for the beast to arrive?” he proposed. “Find out what it wants?”

“You’d do that?”

“I’m tired of running.”

“Tired enough to bring an end to the challenge, whatever the end might be?”

A voice rang out, startling them both. They spun toward the sound still holding hands.

“Hey. I know you. From the church today. The stairs.”

Izzy scanned the gloom and zeroed in on the form of a woman, slowly approaching with one hand raised in greeting.

Forgetting at first that she had looked completely different earlier, and that there was no way this woman in the pink sweater could have recognized her, as is, when she remembered, Izzy frowned and said, “Stop right there.”

The woman stopped.

“You must be mistaken. I’m quite sure I don’t know you,” Izzy said.

The woman was middle-aged. Not overweight, but carrying a few pounds too many. She had short brown hair, a pleasant face with deep-set green eyes, and a long, tapered nose. Izzy wouldn’t have known her if it hadn’t been for the pink sweater and the voice. She’d barely looked at the woman on the narrow stairway leading to the gallery that afternoon. Her mind had been elsewhere.

When the ground shook again, the woman in pink dropped her hand. “Gosh. I didn’t know they had earthquakes in France.”

More shaking came, accompanied by the distant scrape of heavy, dragging footsteps. Izzy looked to Tris. He shrugged.

His nonchalance scared the heck out of her. Was Tris tired enough of the game to give up without a fight? What would happen if he allowed the monsters to herd him back to the gallery?

The dilemma, as usual, sucked.

She stared at the woman in pink, trying to read the thoughts inside the newcomer’s head.

“Who sent you?” she asked, tipping when the ground rocked beneath her feet.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “Maybe I was mistaken?”

Focusing on Tris, the woman spoke again. “It’s just that I’m psychic, and know you’re in trouble. Sometimes, in cases like this, I have to butt in.”

“Really?” Tris said. “Psychic? The real deal?”

The woman nodded.

“Do you know what’s causing the quakes?” Tris asked.

“Yes,” the woman replied.

“What?” Tris pressed.

“Monsters. Four, or maybe five of them. I can’t see what their intentions are because their minds are missing. They seem to be running on someone else’s command. I think they might be coming for you.”

Izzy swayed without the ground moving. “You say ‘monsters’ as though you’re familiar with them, not like they’re new to you.”

The woman nodded again. “My gift can at times be a curse. I see plenty of things others can’t.”

“Who are you?” Izzy demanded.

“Just a visitor with information I thought you might need.”

“Thank you.” Tris inclined his head to the woman.

“Don’t mention it,” she said, reaching into her pink patent leather purse and pulling out an item she offered to him. It was a Band-aid. After Tris took it, the woman turned to go.

“Wait,” Izzy called out, staring at the bandage.

The woman hesitated, looking over her shoulder. “I’ll admit that I saw how he got injured.”

“What else did you see?”

“The light that came afterward.”

Izzy waved that away. “You thought you knew me.”

“Oh, I never forget a thought pattern. Yours were telegraphing loud and clear on the stairway.”

The woman took a step in the opposite direction before stopping again to glance back. The ghost of a smile blinked on and off, lifting her unpainted lips. “I’m glad you found him. I was beginning to worry that you had made him up.”

She walked off and was soon swallowed up by the night, leaving Izzy and Tristan to stare after her.

“Four or five monsters,” Tris said. “Shouldn’t we get a move on?”

“Yes,” Izzy agreed.

“Will there be a place that’s safe from their interference?”

“The gallery. Possibly they really are trying to circle us back there, sensing your intuition about tonight.”

“They
sense trouble? That’s rich.”

Izzy grimaced. “It’s not that simple. This may be about me, Tris, who knows? But losing you will mean consequences for the little guys, and for others that are calling the shots.”

“What about you?” Tris asked. “What will you do if the game were to end?”

“Cry.” She smiled weakly over the sarcastic sound of her reply, though it was the absolute truth. “Crying might have the added benefit of dowsing some of these damn flames, you know,” she added. “For now, we should keep moving and see what turns up.”

Tris tugged her back to him and wrapped both of his arms around her, keeping her close when the pavement rocked again.

“I have a request,” he said.

“You mean like a last meal or something? That kind of a final request? I’d prefer not to go there.”

He wasn’t grinning when she looked.

“What is it?” she finally asked.

“Show me.”

She was horrified, speechless for once, understanding what he was asking. He wanted so see what she had become. The real Izzy, without the finery.

“No matter what you’d show me, I would love you just the same,” he said.

“You’re creeping me out, Tris, by actually making this sound like good-bye.”

His smile, open, honest, almost beseeching, shocked her back into action. She couldn’t take much more of this end-game stuff; couldn’t stand the thought of losing Tris for good.

“Please,” she said. “Not now. Let me be with you for a while longer. The only way that might be possible is to let this play out.”

He nodded. “All right. Where do we go?”

“To the party. The closest one with lots of people and pizzazz.”

“No.” Tristan again shook his head. “I want to spend the rest of my time with you. Only you. Danger be damned.”

How could she refuse him? She had never been able to.

“That woman saw through me, Tris. She recognized me like this.”

She felt his fingers close over hers, and had to use a good portion of her strength to keep from leaning against him.

“Everything about that is unique,” she explained. “The woman has Dark in her.”

“What kind of Dark?”

“Witch, would be my guess.”

“A witch with a medical kit in her purse, and no broom?”

Izzy laughed. For the first time in memory, she experienced a moment of weightlessness that didn’t involve sex with the man beside her. Laughter felt good. It felt so wonderfully right, when everything else was wrong.

“To the water,” she said, peeling the wrapper from the bandage and covering Tris’s wound. “We should head for the water and take our chances there.”

When his smile widened further, Izzy knew she had made the correct decision in withholding certain information about herself from him for now, after the intimacy they had shared. He didn’t need to see what had surrendered to him, or the real thing he so desperately desired. Without his desire, she was nothing but a servant for the ugly and the intolerant.

“The situation is indeed dire if a traveling witch recognized the unusual vibrations around here and came to tell us about it,” she said.

Glancing to the east, Izzy sensed the oncoming monsters. They were slow, yet too close for comfort. Their approach sent streaks of red-hot pain through her, the way the nearness of all supernatural entities did. Pain was an Underworld calling card. There were no friends or companions in her world. Dark repelled Dark. Hell saw to that.

“Running water might deter the beasts,” she suggested. “It’s one thing they can’t abide.”

To Tris’s credit, he did not mutter the words, “Wouldn’t the water hurt you, as well?”

His smile remained fixed. His features weren’t tight. Tristan honestly didn’t seem to care about how this ended, as long as he was with her when it did.

How could she make him see what was going on? If
Le Stryge
had been released tonight with the goal of pounding Tris into submission in order to keep him from his task, the implication here was that Tris had been right, and she was the objective of all this. Could the fact that as each year passed she took on more and more dark powers be a part of the plan? Did the Underworld want her to become as bad as possible, eventually becoming another Wanda?

There was no other viable explanation for the Underworld wanting Tris to remain on that gallery, other than if he stayed, she stayed by his side.

God.
Her heart shuddered as she looked up.
Big guy in the sky who hates me, hear my plea. If this isn’t about Tristan, you have to set him free. I will give him up, I swear, if you take him. Until then, I will do anything to be with him and keep him safe. Show us the way, and what you want him to do. Give us a clue. Name your demands.

Just say it.

*

Picking up on the sadness flowing through Izzy, Tristan headed out in what he assumed to be the direction of the Seine. She was right about water probably being a decent deterrent for the hot side. One dunk would cool them off properly, if that could be arranged. The heavier creatures might sink.

The night was exceedingly warm and growing warmer. He was damp around the collar and could have used a breeze, but he clung to Izzy’s hand, absorbing each wave of heat her body emitted.

Tonight, he felt stronger than usual, and keener. His surroundings fed him with sensory input, seemingly from bottomless fount. Sight, scents, feelings, crowded him like never before. The night was as crisp as it was endless, and Izzy remained the brightest thing in it.

They hustled at a trotting pace, distancing themselves from the side streets and shuddering sidewalks. All the while, Tristan wanted to look behind him for a glimpse of the woman in pink whose presence still tickled him behind the ears. There was indeed more to that stranger than met the eye. Both he and Izzy knew this.

Izzy looked relieved when they reached the bank. Tristan gave the river a long glance without letting his gaze wander downwind to the cathedral that was always a short hop away. Again, he heard the strange echo of hooves and wheels in the distance. Only Izzy’s hand, tight in his fist, warded off the discomfort he felt that accompanied those sounds.

Izzy rubbed up against him with her chin lifted.

“How long have I been out here, Izzy? It seems like days,” he said, loving how her eyes shone.

“It’s like that when you don’t have a goal, Tris. You’re supposed to be doing something, remember? Spending your time wisely. Trying to get ahead, or at least off that damn gallery.”

“How could I forget?”

“Yes. How could you forget?”

Oh, yeah,
Tris thought. Izzy was well aware of his hesitancy regarding his replacement. She almost always saw through him.
Almost.

“Should I help you, Tris? I can, you know.”

“More than you have already?”

“More, yes.”

“I didn’t think you were allowed to help. You’ve never come out here with me before.”

“I’ve never really tried.”

“Because of the rules?”

“Out of the fear that breaking those rules might make things worse,” she said.

Tristan sighed heavily. “They could get worse?”

Izzy didn’t have a ready answer for that question. Or if she did, she didn’t share it. Her expression was serious.

“What if we both just ran away?” he asked her, gazing into her bottomless blue eyes. “Together.”

She didn’t reply.

“What if we jumped into the water and ended it all?” he asked.

“I’d prefer you didn’t joke about such things, Tris.”

“Because we’re dead already?”

She tilted her head. “Why would you be here, waiting for the afterlife, if you could have already attained it?”

It was a good question.

Souls were supposed to move on when life ended. That’s what everyone assumed, anyway. But his soul had touched hers, as if they were still alive. Were they now merely souls in stasis, due to all that time spent on the gallery?

“Less than a few minutes until they find us,” Izzy warned, snapping to full alert. “They’re just about on top of us now.”

“Let them come,” Tristan said. “It’s the only way to find out what they want.”

Izzy’s eyes held a haunted cast. “If you don’t want to play tonight, come back to the gallery. If they know you’ve failed, maybe they will be satisfied. You’ll be safe.”

“Until next year,” Tristan said.

Izzy maintained eye contact. Her long lashes fluttered over her eyes.

“We’re skirting the issue on the table, Izzy,” he said. “I’m supposed to find a replacement, but your side wants to hinder me from doing so. The rational thing would be to confirm whether any of this is really about me, or whether there’s a possibility this whole game has been meant as some kind of continuous punishment for you. Maybe somebody truly wicked wants your torture to endure.”

She blinked slowly, almost painfully, he noticed.

“It would smack of justice, somehow, if it did mean that,” she said.

“Justice? I’m not buying it. Shall I tell you about what’s inside you, and what your soul is like? If the Underworld wanted you so badly, why didn’t they take the rest of you that remained? Why leave your soul intact?”

“Doesn’t matter what my soul is like. It’s been contracted elsewhere, along with the rest of me. It belongs to someone else now.”

She gave him a sorrowful look. Stepping away from him, she added, “You deserve better. You deserve to be free, in any case. I know what you’ve done for me. So decide now, once and for all, what you want to do. Find a replacement and see what happens next, or continue to circle the issue. We can’t fool everyone much longer. We’ve twisted their rules out of recognition and it’s obvious they’re as fed-up as we are.”

She pointed to herself. “I have twisted the rules. I’ve allowed you to skip the replacement, knowing you were cheating year to year, and selfishly applauding it.”