Undead for a Day

by Chris Marie Green, Nancy Holder, Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  “Well, shit,” she blurted.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Doors flew open along the corridor. Heads poked out. A bald Asian guy about Colin’s age was holding a gun. Without a moment’s hesitation he raised it and pointed it straight at her. Her heart triphammered as she stared at the gun.

  “It’s all right,” Leo announced. “Stand down.”

  The Asian guy didn’t move.

  “Ron, it’s okay,” Leo said.

  The guy—Ron—slowly narrowed his almond-shaped eyes and swept his gaze up and down Bridget, as if he were memorizing her. He slowly lowered his weapon—a bit too slowly for Bridget’s comfort level—and she thought about doing her fling-o magical thing again, but she didn’t know if it would work or if he would shoot her first.

  Finally his door shut and Bridget nearly crumpled to the floor in relief. She turned her attention to Leo, who was getting up off the floor. His black hair was mussed and hanging in his eyes. He lifted a hand and pushed it away from his forehead. Just as instantaneously as she had thrown him, she saw an image of the two of them getting it on in bed, and him smoothing back her hair in just the same way. Echoes of pleasure washed through her.

  Nonplussed, Leo stared at Bridget. Then he grinned at her in astonished delight. “Dios,” he said.

  “What happened?” she asked him, and he chuckled.

  “You used your power. You’re very strong, Bridget.”

  “I have a black belt in karate,” she said, which was an absurd thing to say. That wouldn’t account for what she had just done.

  He cocked his head. “Would you humor me? Can we try a few things?”

  “Now?” Then she realized that this could be the first step toward getting out of there. She didn’t know what time it was, but she wasn’t tired. In fact, she felt better than she had in a long time. “No. We’ve already tried more than enough.”

  “We see it differently than you,” he began. “Sex…” He gave a wave of his hand. “You grew up in Untouched America. So puritanical. Taught always to be wary of sensuality, enjoyment. While we seek it out, and use it.”

  “I’m so happy for you. I can see what a useful approach that is. Since you’re being bombed and all.”

  “And your world, is it so much better?” he countered. “People starving in the richest country in the world. Dying of curable diseases. Wars all over the globe. We take care of our own. And we haven’t had a war in three hundred years. Not one.”

  “Boo-yah,” she said, feeling immature and frightened and suddenly, very angry. Because she did not do frightened well.

  And what was she doing about being scared? Rushing off to her room.

  To regroup, she told herself.

  To hide, she thought, more honestly.

  A better way to deal with it would be to kick his ass.

  “Hey, so, okay,” she said. “Let’s go to the dojo. Hash it out.”

  A dark brow arched over one brown eye. A faint smile quirked his movie-star lips.

  “No cheating with magic,” she added quickly, and he chortled.

  “That’s not cheating. Not using it would be cheating.” He pointed to the wall. “You just threw me across the corridor with magic. Let’s see what else you’ve got.”

  Before she could respond, he led the way down yet more hallways until she recognized the route to the dojo. There were no explosions to accompany her bold steps across the threshold into a room that suddenly had a straw floor and banners emblazoned with a laughing red devil and a green Celtic knot.

  “For the Flynn family,” he said. “Who, I hope, will formally join our House.”

  In a pig’s eye, she thought, as she walked past him and walked to a black lacquer pedestal. There she found two fresh gi’s, one for her and one for him. Convenient, or magical?

  “You can dress in there,” he told her, pointing to a sliding rice paper door across the straw mat, and she almost dropped her bathrobe on the spot just to be contrary. She went into a beautiful room paneled in black brush paintings and a spray of white orchids, set down her clothes, took off the bathrobe, and put on the black top and white pants.

  When she came back out, he was wearing only his white uniform pants, barefoot like her, and he had begun the movements of basic tai chi. His body was a masculine triangle of broad shoulders and nearly nonexistent hips. There was a sprinkling of black hair on his broad chest. She watched his fluid, assured movements, muscles shifting under smooth skin. He moved with uncanny grace. She had another flash of being with him in bed. It had been really, really good.

  She came beside him and joined in, feeling some of the jitters subsiding as her well-trained mind and body traced well-worn paths to the jing state. Balance, serenity, the place of power. As they moved in unison in the dancelike steps of tai chi, he looked over at her with an intensity that flustered her. She steeled herself against liking him. He was not her friend. He was a danger to her. How far would she go to get away from him? She saw Xavier in her mind’s eye, lying dead in his enemy’s graveyard.

  Then without warning, Leo moved against her, sending out some kind of force that knocked her to the floor. She remembered fighting beneath Xavier’s spell, bewildered and afraid. On her back in the dojo, she tried a different approach, submitting to the energy rather than fighting against it, the same way she would in karate. Then she made as if to brush the power off her body like dirt. She easily bounced back onto the balls of her feet and saw her own energy whooshing out of her body. The impact was impressive—he flew across the room again. When he tried to get up, she sent more out.

  For a few seconds, he couldn’t get up. Her victory made her grin, and he laughed aloud. He picked up the pace and hurled greater and greater intensities of magic at her. Soon they were both sweaty, and she was exhausted. The way he moved was hypnotic. And magic was an easy weapon once you mastered the basics.

  “Good, very good. Muy bien,” he said over and over. “You’re sure you didn’t grow up in a Favored household?”

  “Can’t say. There never seemed to be anything like that.”

  “I don’t know what it’s like to grow up Untouched,” he said. “I can move in that world, but I don’t belong to it.”

  “But you’re dismissive of it,” she replied.

  “No. Mostly sad for them. We could help them with magic. But we’ve agreed not to interfere. That’s been a source of tension. Some of the Houses want to mingle with them. But what they really want is to control. Domination.”

  “And to live in bunkers,” she said. “I see the allure.”

  “This isn’t our permanent home,” he said. “This is a safe house. Marica brought you here because it’s closer. Our home is magnificent.”

  She cocked her head. “You’re so modest.”

  “Why? Why be modest?” he asked her. “What is wrong with pride?”

  “Because it leads to domination?” She gathered up her hair to get it off her neck. She watched him watching her and took a few steps away from him.

  “Not if we stay well away from the Untouched.” He hesitated. “Did Xavier tell you what the sphere is for?”

  “We never got past saying hi and leaping into the fire,” she said.

  He nodded. His face became a mask, and she waited.

  “Well,” he said, crossing to two towels and water bottles that she didn’t remember, “maybe that’s enough for tonight. I’m on call. We’ve erected protective barriers and the Amayas have stopped the bombardment for now. They’re marshaling their forces, I’m sure. I’m anticipating a request to parlay and I need to be on my game.”

  He’s not going to tell me why they want the sphere, she thought, as he handed her a bottle and a towel. He doesn’t trust me. She filed that away, cracked open the bottle, and drank deeply. It made sense. They barely knew each other.

  And if she had anything to say about it, they never would.

  “Will they call off the war?” she asked him.

  “They’re going to want revenge,�
� he said. “Payback.”

  She felt a thrill of fear. Marica had said that the Amayas would assume that she, Bridget, had killed Xavier. Maybe they would demand that the Caracols hand her over. That might be the real reason Leo was so keen on keeping her and Colin “safe.”

  “No,” he declared. “They won’t call off the war.”

  “And neither will we.”

  *

  He told her they should shower together, for safety’s sake. She refused, and he stood outside the shower door with his back turned. She would never have admitted that she was relieved he was there. She got dressed.

  He told her he would shower later; sweaty, he walked her to her room. She handed him the bathrobe. His scent was all over it.

  “Do you need something to help you sleep?” he asked her as he walked her inside. He bent forward and for a second she thought he was going to kiss her goodnight.

  “No, don’t touch me,” she blurted.

  He paused as if he were about to say something. He dipped his head and said, “I’m going to fortify the wards around your room so that no one can get to you.”

  “And I can’t get out?” she asked sharply. “Because I am your prisoner?”

  “No. I’ll prove it to you.” He gestured to the threshold. “Try to walk out. Nothing will prevent you.”

  She walked into the hall without any problem. Of course, that didn’t mean things would stay that way after he left. But she could stand there all night arguing with him.

  “Well, that’s so reassuring,” she said.

  He lingered, then finally left. She felt a few tremors of anxiety and scanned the perimeter for Xavier’s ghost as she pulled out her phone to call Colin. This time it didn’t go through. She wished for it to be magically boosted but nothing happened, so she dressed in her clothes and jumped over the transom into the hall. No zap. No trap.

  She began searching for his room. Tiptoeing down halls, she tried to force the twin-thing that had been powerful enough to keep boulders and debris from raining down on them. She concentrated on him and put her hand to the wall. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  She felt half-dead. Scared. What would she do if Xavier’s ghost reappeared? She didn’t know. But she did know that she had to find Colin.

  She turned left, right, and left again, and she was about to give up when she realized that she was hopelessly lost. She had no idea how to get back to her own room. So she might as well keep looking for his.

  And then suddenly she knew that she had to turn right and go down one more hallway. It was like a vibration in her head, some kind of psychic bond, and she also knew that Colin was safe. There was his door, gray metal like hers. She rapped softly on the door and Colin opened it.

  “Oh, my God, Bridge,” he said. He put his finger to his lips and then made a circle that took in most of the room. Bugged, he mouthed. Maybe.

  Nodding, she followed him across the threshold, seeing a cot with mussed-up white sheets, and a chair, and a desk with nothing on it but a crookneck lamp. Her bed was nicer.

  She smelled Versace. Marica had been there, confirming the booty call. So both Flynns had slept with a Caracol tonight.

  Have you got a pen? he mouthed, and she shook her head.

  “You are not going to believe what’s been going on,” they both whispered in unison.

  “Whatever you’ve got, I can top it,” Bridget murmured, and she described her near-death experience, waking up in Leo’s bed, and their training session.

  “I was kicking his ass,” she crowed.

  “You screwed him? Then your essences have mingled,” he said, using Marica-speak. “Maybe it gave you a boost. Either way, I’m killing him.”

  “I’m killing him first,” she said. “Let’s don’t talk about it. It weirds me out.”

  He crossed his arms and sat in the chair. She took the edge of the cot. “Well, here’s weirdness: While we were doing it, and I was, um, coming, I read her mind. That’s why I was so terse on the phone. I didn’t want to lose the, ah, momentum.”

  She blinked. “Come again?”

  He forced down a smirk. “Well, I did come again, and I read her mind again. I don’t think she knew I was doing it. And I found out what the sphere does.”

  She leaned forward. He got the strangest look on his face, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was going to tell her.

  “Colin,” she said impatiently. “Don’t hang up on me now, bro. Spill.”

  “Time travel.” He spread his arms wide. “The sphere makes it happen.”

  She expelled a guffaw, and then she realized he was serious. “No way.”

  “And the Amayas don’t know that you can use it for time travel,” he went on. “They used it as some kind of power booster. Like a battery. You can use it for that, but the real secret is that you can time-travel with it.”

  “And this was in Marica’s mind when you were coming.” Which she really didn’t want to picture, because Colin was her brother.

  He nodded. “Remember how their parents are absent? That’s because they’re in the nineteenth century. And I guess they’ve been stuck there for eighty-two years.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “But if that’s the case, and they’re Leo and Marica’s parents…”

  He nodded. “I know, right? It means that Leo and Marica are probably a lot older than they look.”

  She went silent. The surprises just kept coming. She felt even more invaded.

  “So, like, did she take you back in time to before you got wounded and you still had your eye and your leg?”

  “She just said some magic words and then I was all better.”

  “So did Marica steal the sphere to get their parents back?”

  “Yeah, but there’s something more to it. Time travel is part of some big plan they have, but I don’t know what for.”

  “But that means we might live that long,” she said slowly, as the implication dawned on her. “Oh, my God, Colin, we’re magical. I mean, we are, right?”

  He nodded. “And that’s why we have to get out of here. We’re pawns. Bargaining chips. Marica wants to parade us around all these other families to get them to join the war on their side.”

  Her thoughts went to the warning from Xavier’s ghost.

  “The Amayas and the Caracols hate each other. They’ve been gunning to get rid of each other for centuries. They’re the two superpowers of the Favored world,” he explained.

  “And we’re in the middle of their war,” she said. “And we did nothing to deserve it.”

  He glowered. “Listen, Bridge. I did four tours in Afghanistan before it all went FUBAR and I am not going to be anyone’s prisoner of war or a trophy or any other bullshit.”

  “Agreed,” she said fiercely. “This is total crap.”

  He clamped his jaw and his gaze went steely; she saw a bit of the old Colin—the hardened, fearless warrior. Was he thinking what she was thinking? That they could somehow bust out of here? Maybe the Caracols wouldn’t bother going after them. They had bigger problems.

  Except that we might be an answer to those problems, she thought. With our twin-thing.

  “It gets better. They believe there’s more like us—people with magical powers who don’t know they have them. And they’ve already sent out recon patrols to locate and capture them.”

  “Capture?” Bridget echoed, alarmed.

  “That was the exact word in her head,” Colin said. “I swear to God, she is one creepy spider woman up there in her brain. Devious and mean.” He grunted. “I know how to pick them.”

  “You always have,” she said wanly. She thought about Leo and all his talk about protecting them. What a load. She flared with humiliation that he had manipulated her body and her mind. She still had no memory of having had sex with him, while he, of course, would have remembered every moment. And they had killed Xavier, and would have killed her, too, if they hadn’t been able to change their curse in time. Or was all that a lie? Had Marica deliberately misle
d Colin into thinking they were going to Shadow Island?

  It was too complicated for her to figure out, and there was no way she could answer her own questions. Bottom line: The Caracols were just as diabolical as the Amayas. Untrustworthy and dangerous. They really were the House of the Devil.

  “You’re right, Colin. We have to get the hell out of here.” Her thoughts turned, inexplicably, to Jack Stone. In her mind’s eye, she saw his face as clearly as if he were standing directly in front of her.

  “I’m the one,” his voice echoed in her head. She jerked, hard, and Colin’s brows shot up.

  “Did you just say something?” she asked him. He looked even more confused.

  “Besides ‘I know how to pick them’?”

  “Colin, I just saw Jack Stone in my head. As if he were standing right here with us. He said, ‘I’m the one.’”

  “You did? The one what?” Colin asked.

  She shook her head. “No clue.”

  “Maybe you were reading his mind. Maybe he’s a magic person.” His eyes widened. “Maybe he knows about all this. If we could get a call out to him, maybe he could come here, get us out.”

  “My phone isn’t working,” she said. “What about yours?”

  He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his phone. He tried putting a call through to his landline, then showed her the faceplate: NO SERVICE.

  “Wait,” she said, and took his hand. “Try again.”

  He did. Nothing.

  “Maybe it’s just as well. If he showed up, they’d nab him,” Colin said. “Plus if we tell him about this, his life is in danger.”

  “So why did I have a vision of him?” She blew air out of her cheeks. “As soon as we escape, let’s go straight to him.”

  “Unless that’s what they want us to do.”

  “We can’t second-guess ourselves at every turn or we’re going to go crazy. We have to act.” She tapped her fingers on her knee. “So how can we escape?”