by Karen Chance
Author’s Note: This was the first Cassie Palmer short I ever did, about Tomas, a central character is the first two Cassie novels, Touch the Dark and Claimed by Shadow. It should be read after those two books or, alternatively, after Shatter the Earth, the tenth Cassie novel, with which it coincides.
I ’m looking for my brother,” the girl repeated, for the third time. Her accent was terrible, New Jersey meets Mexico City, making her difficult to understand, but Tomas doubted that that was the problem. The largely male crowd in the small cantina weren’t interested in a gaba with a sob story, even one who was tall and slim, with slanting hazel eyes and long black hair.
Japanese ancestry, Tomas decided, or maybe Korean. There might be some Italian, too, based on the slight wave in her hair and the Roman nose, which was a bit too prominent for her slender face. She was arresting, rather than pretty, the kind of woman you’d remember, although her outfit would probably have ensured that anyway. He approved of the tight cargo pants and the short leather jacket. But the shotgun she wore on a strap slung over her shoulder and the handgun at her waist took away from the effect.
“He’s nineteen,” she continued stubbornly. “Black hair, brown eyes, 6 foot 2—“
The bartender suddenly snapped to attention, but he wasn’t looking at her. His hand slid under the counter to rest on the shotgun he kept there. Tomas hadn’t seen it, but he’d smelled the gun oil and faint powder traces as soon as he walked in. But the man who slammed in through the door was nothing to worry about, being merely human.
“Hijole, Alcazar!” the bartender shouted, as the room exploded in yells of abuse. “What do you mean, bursting in here like that? Do you want to get shot?”
The man shook his head, looking vaguely green under the cantina’s bare bulbs. “I thought I heard something behind me,” he said shakily, joining a few friends at an already overcrowded table. “On the way back from the cemetery.”
“You shouldn’t have been there so late,” one of his friends reproached, sliding him a drink. “Not tonight.”
“I lost track of time. I was visiting Elia’s grave and—”
“¡Aguas! You will do your daughter no good by joining her!”
There was frightened muttering for a moment, and several patrons stopped fingering their weapons to actually draw them. Tomas had the distinct impression that the next time the door opened, whoever stood there was likely to get shot. Tension was running far too high for good sense.
Then the bartender suddenly let out a laugh, and slid another round onto the men’s table. “I wouldn’t worry,” he said heartily. “From what I hear, even your Consuela doesn’t want you. Why would the monsters?”
The room erupted into relieved laughter as the man, his fright forgotten, stood up to angrily defend his manhood. “She ran off with some wealthy bastard,” he said, shooting Tomas an evil look.
Tomas calmly sipped mescal and didn’t respond. But he wished for about the hundredth time that he’d given a little more thought to blending in. His reflection in the chipped mirror behind the bar, while not Anglo, stood out almost as much as the girl’s.
The high cheekbones and straight black hair of his Incan mother had mixed with the golden skin and European features of his Spanish father, resulting in a combination that many people seemed to find attractive. He’d always found it an inconvenient reminder of the domination of one half of his ancestry by the other. The conquest of a continent written on his face.
He couldn’t honestly blame the locals for mistaking him for a wealthy city dweller, despite the fact that he’d been born into a village even poorer than this one and was currently completely broke. He’d picked up his outfit, a dark blue suit and pale grey tie, at an airport shop at JFK. He’d needed a disguise, and the suit, along with a leather briefcase and a quick session with a pocket knife in front of a men’s room mirror, had changed him from a laid-back college student with a ponytail to a thirty-something businessman in a hurry.
He’d eluded his pursuers, but with no money he’d been forced to use a highly illegal suggestion on the clerk. Since then, he’d lost track of how many times he’d done something similar, using his abilities to fog the minds of airline employees, customs agents, and the taxi driver who had conveyed him a hundred miles to this tiny village clinging to the side of a mountain.
Every incident had been a serious infraction of the law, but what did that matter? If any of his kind caught up with him, he was dead anyway. He just wished he’d thought to find something else to wear after landing in Guadalajara. There weren’t a lot of locals in $1200 suits.
Tomas couldn’t see the outfit that helped him stand out like a sore thumb, because an altar to the souls of the dead had been placed in front of the mirror. Hand carved wooden skeletons in a variety of poses sat haphazardly on the multi-tiered edifice, each representing one of the bartender’s family members who was gone but not forgotten. One hairless skull seemed to grin at him, its tiny hand wrapped around an even tinier bottle of Dos Equis – presumably the man’s favorite drink. A regular-sized bottle stood nearby, a special treat for the spirit that would come to visit this night, for it was El Dia de la Muertos, the Day of the Dead.
A particularly fitting time, Tomas thought, for a vampire to return home.
At least resentment of the city slicker gave the men something to talk about other than their fear. They didn’t relax, being too busy shooting suspicious glances his way, but most of them let go of their weapons. Which is why everyone jumped when a shot exploded against the cracked plaster ceiling.
It was the girl, standing in the middle of the cantina, gun in hand, ignoring the dozen barrels suddenly focused on her head. “My. Brother,” she repeated, pointing the gun at the bartender, who had lost his forced joviality. “Where is he?”
“Put your weapon down, senorita. You have no enemies here,” he said, eyeing her with understandable concern. “And I told you already. No one has seen him.”
“His car is parked by the cemetery. The rental papers have his name on them. And the front seat has his handprint – in blood.”
She threw the papers on the bar, but neither they nor her speech seemed to impress the bartender. “Perhaps, but as I told you, this is a small town. If he had been here, someone would know.”
The glasses on the shelf behind him suddenly exploded, one by one, like a line of firecrackers. The gun remained in the girl’s hand, but she hadn’t used it. Tomas slowly set his drink back down.
“Someone here does know. And that someone had better tell me. Now.” Her eyes took in the bar, where most of the men’s weapons were still pointed at her. That fact didn’t seem to worry her nearly as much as it should have.
“I saw a stranger.” The voice piped up from a table near the door, and a short, stocky man, dressed in the local farmer’s uniform of faded jeans, cotton work shirt and straw hat, stood up. “He was taking photographs of the ceremony, out by the graves.”
“He’s a reporter,” the girl agreed. “He was doing a story on . . . something . . . but said he’d meet me here.”
“I told him to go away,” the man said. “This is a day for the dead and their families. We didn’t want him there.”
“But he didn’t leave. His car is still there!”
The man shrugged and sat back down. “He said he was going to photograph the church, and I saw him walking towards town. That’s all I know.”
“The church is the white building I saw driving in?”
“Yes.” The bartender spoke before the man could. “I can show you, if you like.” He motioned for the boy who’d been running in and out all night from the back, clearing off tables and wiping down the bar. “Paolo can take over for me here.”
“You’re going out?”
“But it’s almost dark!”
“Are you mad?”
The voices spoke up from all directions, but the bartender shrugged them off. He brought out the shotgun and patted it fondly. “Ocho ochenta. It’s only a s
hort way. And no one should go anywhere alone tonight.”
The murmuring didn’t die down, but no one attempted to stop him. Tomas watched them leave, the bartender solicitously opening the door for the girl. His broad smile never wavered, and something about it made Tomas’s instincts itch. He gave them a couple of minutes, then slid off his stool and followed.
There was little light, with the sky already dark overhead, the last orange-red rays of the sun boiling away to the west. But his eyes worked better in the dark. And in any case, he could have found his way blindfolded.
The village looked much the same as it had for the last three millennia. Many of its people could trace their ancestry back to the days when the Mayan Empire sent tax collectors here, to reap the benefits of the same plots these farmers still worked. The 500-year-old village where he’d grown up in what was now Peru seemed a young upstart by comparison. It was gone now, bulldozed to make way for a housing development on the rapidly expanding outskirts of Cuzco. But although he hadn’t been back here in almost a century, this place hadn’t changed.
A trail of bright yellow petals led the way to a small church with crumbling stone steps overlooking the jungle that floated like green clouds against the mountains. The church was still draped with the flor de muertos, garlands of marigolds, from the morning service. He went in to find the same old wooden crucifix on the altar, surrounded by flickering votive candles and facing rows of empty pews. He edged around it and paused by the back door, where the sweet, pungent smell of incense mingled with the damp, musty odor of the jungle. Somewhere, out in the twilight, he caught a whiff of the girl’s perfume.
The church faced the red earth of town’s only street. Behind it, the jungle washed up almost to the steps, except for the area where a small cemetery spilled down the hillside. It had never been moved despite each summer storm threatening to wash the bodies out of their shallow graves and into the valley below.
Tomas picked his way down a marigold-strewn path to the cemetery gate, pausing beside a statue of La Calaca. The skeleton lady was holding a placard with her usual warning: ‘Today me, tomorrow you.’ In many such villages, families stayed all night at the graves of their dead, waiting to welcome the spirits that returned to partake of their offerings. But not in this one. Only four people stood among the flower decked crosses and scattered graves, and only two of them were alive.
There was little light left, other than a few burning votives here and there, shining among the graves. But Tomas didn’t need it to recognize the new additions. The wind was blowing towards him and it carried their scents clearly: Rico and Miguel, two thugs in the employ of the monster he’d traveled a thousand miles to kill.
“I saw her. She shattered them with some kind of spell.” The bartender was talking, while Rico held onto the girl.
“Why carry all this?” Miguel held one of the girl’s guns negligently in one hand, with the rest tucked into his belt. “If she’s so powerful?”
“I’m telling you, she’s some kind of witch,” the bartender said stubbornly. “That mage I sent you this morning was her brother. She came looking for him.”
“Where did you take him?” The girl demanded, her voice full of cold, brittle anger.
Everyone ignored her. “Her aura feels strange,” Miguel said, running a hand an inch or so above her body. “Not human, but not exactly mage, either.”
“What are you girl?” Rico demanded, his breath in her face. She didn’t flinch, despite the fact that she had to be able to see his fangs at that range. If she hadn’t known what the villagers feared before, she certainly did now.
“Tell me what you’ve done with my brother or I’ll show you.” She sounded no more concerned about her predicament than she had at the bar. Tomas couldn’t tell if that was bravado or stupidity, but he was leaning toward the latter. Her heart rate had barely sped up, despite the obvious danger.
“What about me?” the bartender demanded. “You said if I brought you the mage, I was safe. I want my nephew’s safety in exchange for this one.”
“That will depend,” Rico said, jerking her close, “on what she can do. You had better hope one of them is what the master wants, or we’ll be taking out the price for our inconvenience in your blood.”
Tomas didn’t move, didn’t breathe, a lifetime’s habit keeping him so still that a small bird lit on a tree branch right in front of his face. But inside, he was reeling. It wasn’t the cavalier kidnapping that surprised him. The men’s master, a vampire named Alejandro, had been organizing hunts on the Day of the Dead for as long as Tomas had known him.
While families across Mexico were busily collecting delicacies for the dead—chocolate for mole, fresh eggs for the pan de muerto, cigarettes and mescal for the long-departed—Alejandro was collecting treats of his own. Strong, smart, cunning—they’d all had some advantage that made them attractive prey. Assembled together, they were always told the same thing: last until morning, or escape beyond the borders of Alejandro’s lands, and win your freedom. They were given flashlights, weapons and maps showing the extent of the ten-mile square area he claimed. Then, at midnight, they were released.
No one had ever lived to see dawn.
The participants had changed over the years, from Aztecs to conquistadors to local farmers sprinkled with the occasional American tourist. But one group Alejandro had always left strictly alone were magic users. He liked a challenge, but not prey capable of bringing down the wrath of the Silver Circle, the guardian body of the magical community, on his head. He was twisted, cruel and sadistic, but he wasn’t crazy. At least, he hadn’t been before. It seemed that some things had changed around here, after all.
“I told you to let go of me.”
The girl’s heart rate had finally sped up, but Tomas didn’t think it was from fear. Her complexion was flushed and her eyes were bright, but she wasn’t trembling, wasn’t panicking. And there was something wrong about that. Because even if she was a witch, at three to one odds, with two of the three being master vampires, most magic users would be more than a little intimidated. His estimate of her intelligence took another dive, just as what felt like a silent thunderclap exploded in the air all around him.
A shockwave ran across the ground and shivered through his body like a jolt to his funny bone. It shook the surrounding trees and caused the dusty soil to rise up like steam. The little bird took off in a startled flutter of wings and Tomas made a grab for the limb it had been sitting on, catching hold just as the ground beneath his feet began to buck and slide. Within seconds the slide became a torrent of red earth heading for the side of the mountain—and a drop of more than a mile.
The bartender lost his footing and went down, hitting his head against the side of a massive oak. It must have knocked him out, because the last Tomas saw of him was his body tumbling over the cliff, still limp as a ragdoll. The two vampires jumped for the trees on the opposite side of the path, out of the main rush of earth. They made it, but the girl wasn’t so lucky. She fell into the crashing stream of rocks, foliage and dirt, her scream lost in the roar of half a mountainside sluicing away.
Tomas hadn’t wanted to get close enough for the vampires to scent him, but it meant that she was too far away for him to grab. She managed to catch hold of a tree stump in the middle of the sliding mass, but she was getting pounded by a hail of debris. Tomas tried to tell himself that she could hold on, that he didn’t have to risk being seen by Alejandro’s men on a dangerous rescue attempt. He didn’t mind the thought of dying so much—considering what he was about to face, that was pretty much inevitable anyway—but he was damned if he wasn’t going to take Alejandro with him.
Then the church bell began to chime, its plaintive call cutting through the sound of the earthquake, reverberating across the valley only to be thrown back by the nearby hills. Tomas glanced behind him to see the back end of the old building hanging precariously over nothing at all, its foundation half gone in the landslide. With a shudder and a crack, th
e church broke in half, the heavy stones of its colonial-era construction beginning to crumble. Some of them were ancient, having been looted by the builders from nearby Mayan ruins, and weighed hundreds of pounds apiece. Even if the girl managed to hold on to her precarious perch, they would sweep her over the mountainside or break her into pieces where she lay.
Bile rolled up thick in his throat. Alejandro had wanted to make a monster of him, a carbon copy of himself. But he’d probably be pleased enough at the thought that he’d turned Tomas into someone who would stand by and watch an innocent die because saving her might cost him something. He might never live to kill that creature, but he wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.
Tomas let go of the limb and leapt for the one spot of color in the darkness, the girl’s pale face, using her as a beacon to guide him through the hail of falling debris. He reached her just before the first of the ancient stones did, grabbed her around the waist and leapt for the side of the path that remained half stable. It was the one where his old associates were trying to scramble to steadier ground, but at the moment, that seemed a minor issue.
Despite senses that made the falling hillside look as if it was doing so in slow motion, he couldn’t dodge everything. He twisted to avoid a stone taller than him, and slammed into a smaller one he hadn’t even seen. He heard his left knee break, but all he felt was a curious popping sensation, no real pain—not yet—and then they were landing on a surface that wasn’t falling but was far from steady.
Tomas rolled and got up on his good knee in time to block a savage kick from Miguel. He’d hoped that, in the confusion and danger, his old comrades might not have recognized him, but no such luck. Miguel hit a nearby tree hard, but flipped back onto his feet almost immediately and was back before Tomas could regain his stance.
Powerful hands choked him, setting spots dancing in front of his eyes as he grabbed his assailant’s arms, trying to keep his throat uncrushed. He pushed Miguel’s arm the wrong way back until he heard the elbow crack. The vamp didn’t let go, but his hold weakened enough for Tomas to twist and get an arm into his stomach, using all his strength to send him staggering into the path of the falling church. One of the tumbling pews caught Miguel on the side of his head, knocking him back against the newly created embankment, where the heavy wooden cross from the altar pinned him with the force of a sledgehammer.
