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 bett
er. 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.”
“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.
CHAPTER TEN
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.
Undead for a Day Page 24
