The Day of the Dead Part 3

His voice must have reflected some of his doubt, because Sarah narrowed her eyes. 'And if you can't?'

'Once they see me, the court will likely have eyes for nothing else. Get as many people out as you can while they are distracted.'

'Distracted killing you, you mean. Bulls.h.i.t.'

'I came here knowing this was the likely outcome.'

'Another little thing you forgot to mention. We're gonna have to work on our communication.'

Tomas decided he couldn't waste more time arguing. The woman necromancer had failed and Alejandro's power was boiling through the room, hot on his neck. He was furious. And when he lost his temper, people died a lot of them. It would be perfectly within character for him to simply order every human in the room put to death.

As if in response to Tomas's thoughts, the guard behind the woman started forward, hand raised.

Tomas was grateful for vampiric speed, which allowed him to reach her before the guard could snap her neck. He caught the vamp's arm, but he needn't have bothered. The room had frozen.

'Tomas.' The voice was the one he remembered, echoing inside his head like cool silver, but crawling under his skin like something alive. But the power behind it, the force compelling him to do Alejandro's will, was gone. For the first time, Tomas had reason to be grateful for his current master. As much as he hated the man, Louis-Cesar's ownership insured that Alejandro's unspoken command exerted no more pull than that of any other first-level master. A rank he currently shared.

Tomas opened his hand and the guard retreated in an undignified scramble. The rest of the court was moving closer, not attacking, not yet, but on high alert. No one had any doubts about why he was here.

Apparently, neither did Alejandro. The moment Tomas made a move in his direction, a strong force pushed against him, like a hundred invisible hands holding him back. Make that two hundred, he thought, glancing about at the family he'd once called his own.

The fifteen feet to the bottom of the stairs felt like miles; he had to fight for every inch with eyes burning into his spine like acid and a thick, roiling nausea in his gut. He had a moment of vertigo, swaying on his feet like a drunk trying to dance, and someone laughed, high and cold and mocking. It wasn't Alejandro. His eyes were glittering dangerously and he'd lost the faintly amused smile that was his usual armor.

The stairwell leading up to his throne had twenty steps. By the time Tomas reached them, he was panting like he'd run a mile. 'I challenged you once before,' he said around the ma.s.s that had risen in his throat, huge and cold and sickening. 'But you were too cowardly to face me. I have come '

It was a good thing he hadn't worked too hard on his speech, because he never got to give it. The vampires had closed in on every side, jostling each other, trying to get up the courage to attack him. Tomas had hoped that Alejandro's pride would force him to fight his old servant himself, especially with the odds so heavily in his favor. But Alejandro remained seated, letting his men get more and more worked up until, finally, two broke away from the crowd and dashed in, snarling.

They came from opposite sides, and while Tomas was dealing with the one on the left, turning his own knife back against him, the one on the right smashed something heavy against his leg. It was the one he'd injured earlier, the one that had yet to completely heal. He fell to his hands and knees, the jar of landing on the shattered kneecap turning the whole room white hot with blinding pain.

He pulled the knife out of the first vamp, who retreated back into the crowd, howling and clawing at his wound, and rolled in time to slash at the second's throat. He missed because the man dodged, lightening fast, at the last minute. But Tomas didn't need weapons to crush his throat with an application of raw power.

The vamp was young and that effectively put him out of commission. But it also used up power Tomas couldn't afford to lose. And there were plenty more that the family would consider expendable if their deaths served to further weaken him.

Tomas dragged himself back onto one leg, momentarily crippled while his system fought to rebuild torn cartilage and shattered bone. Alejandro leaned forward, still not bothering to get to his feet. 'Do you really believe you will make it all the way up here, Tomas? Because I believe I will sit here and watch them gut you as you try.'

Four more vampires rushed him, all from the same side, and although he dealt with them and with the low level master who had waitedfor them to distract him, he missed the ax that someone threw from the crowd. Alejandro made a small gesture and the a.s.sault halted, for the moment, while Tomas shuddered and leaned his forehead against the slick, cold surface of the third step, a buzzing uproar surging all around him. On the third or fourth or tenth try, Tomas managed to take a couple of shallow breaths. He brought up shaking hands and tore the weapon out of his belly.

'Really, Tomas. I'm disappointed. I remembered you as better than this.' Alejandro had finally bothered to get out of his seat, but he didn't come any closer. 'And to think, I was contemplating offering you a position at the head of my new army. I really will have to reconsider.'

Hot tendrils of agony shot out from his stomach wound as he tried to stand. At least he couldn't feel the throbbing in his leg anymore, Tomas thought, and laughed to cover the scream that wanted to tear out of his chest. An all out a.s.sault on Alejandro was the only chance he had. If he hurt him badly enough, the family might back off, waiting to see the outcome before they risked attacking the man who might be their new master. Slogging slowly up these steps, one by one, being battered from all sides and buffeted by Alejandro's power, was a sure recipe for disaster. But it was also the only hope the humans had.

He couldn't hear anything from the back of the cave, from the ma.s.s of four or five hundred people who had been corralled there. And there was no way so many could remain silent while witnessing something like this. Not unless they were being shielded and hopefully guided out.

But it was a long way through the maze of hallways, as countless mortals had learned to their terror, and even further to the town beyond. He had to give them time, if they were to have any chance at all. And in this slice of h.e.l.l, time meant pain.

Pain wasn't a problem, Tomas decided, looking into Alejandro's amused black eyes. He'd brought it to enough people through the years. It was his turn.

'Still a coward posing as a gentleman,' Tomas gasped, and threw the gory ax straight at Alejandro.

His old master turned it aside with an elegant wave of his hand, but anger and surprise caused his attention to waver slightly, allowing Tomas to make headway against the stream of power opposing him. He made it to the tenth stair before the world spun around and dropped out from under him, and he hit something hard and unyielding. Only when the pain receded a fraction did he realize he'd been dumped on the floor by another ax, this one to the spine.

And master or no, no one healed a wound like that instantaneously. Suddenly, his limbs didn't work, his arms and legs flopping uselessly around him, his head falling back into a puddle of his own blood. Alejandro waved off the guards who were rushing in to finish him, as he slowly descended the remaining stairs.

He stopped directly in Tomas's line of vision, his booted feet just touching the b.l.o.o.d.y pool. He unsheathed a rapier, good quality Cordoba steel instead of wood, making it obvious that this wasn't going to end quickly. 'How the mighty have fallen. That is the phrase, isn't it? From my lieutenant to this, all because of ambition.'

Tomas tried to tell him that ambition wasn't the point, that it never had been, but his throat didn't seem to work either. Although that might have been because of the sight that suddenly loomed up behind his former master. At first, Tomas was sure he was imagining things. But not even in a pain-induced near faint could his brain have come up with something like that.

Behind Alejandro, a withered arm encased in a few rotting rags appeared, a tracery of thin blue veins pulsing under the long dead skin. A head followed, cadaverous and brown, but with two enormous, glittering eyes rolling in the too large sockets. They stared at Tomas for an instant, full of terrible, ancient fury, before the arm caught Alejandro around the waist and a mouth full of cracked and yellowed teeth clamped onto his neck.

Alejandro gave one sharp gasp before the others were on him, a crowd of dry, old bones and tanned leather skins that glowed slightly from the inside, like someone shining a flashlight through parchment. And although Alejandro's power still surged around Tomas like a hurricane, they didn't seem to feel it. There was a crack, a thick, watery sound, and then silence except for the ripping, chewing noises coming from the middle of the once human ma.s.s.

The kings had returned.

Another pair of feet came to rest beside him, just brushing his hair. Tomas looked up to see Jason, slack-jawed no longer, but with a quiet intensity his eyes. It seemed Alejandro had kidnapped one necromancer worth his salt, after all.

'You brought them back,' he managed to croak after a moment.

Jason didn't look away from the creatures and their meal. 'They brought themselves.'

Tomas didn't have a chance to ask him what he meant, because the earth began to move in a very familiar manner. Jason grabbed him under the arms and pulled him backwards down the stairs. No one tried to stop him. It was as if the court was frozen in place, staring in disbelieving horror at the sight of their master being attacked by supposedly harmless sacks of bones.

They made it to the edge of what had been the holding pen before Alejandro's power suddenly cut off, like someone throwing a switch. A ripple went through his vampires as they felt it too and realized what it meant. They came back to life with a vengeance, but too late; half the roof collapsed in a cascade of limestone.

Sarah and one of her men ran up, dirty-faced and panting. Forkface grabbed Tomas, yanked the ax out of his back and threw him over a shoulder. Then they ran.

The doorway collapsed behind them, dust billowing into the air while rocks and gravel nipped at their heels. The entire tunnel system was buckling, floor heaving, ceiling threatening to crush them at any moment. His helper lost his footing and they both went down, Tomas managing to catch himself on arms that, while unsteady, actually seemed to work again.

He grabbed Sarah, attempting to shield her, at the same time that she grabbed for him. And amid stones falling and dust clouds choking them, they braced together, Sara saying things that Tomas couldn't hear over the roaring in his ears. But their small patch of ceiling held, and after they limped across the boundary from the caves to the old temple, the rumbling gradually petered off.

They emerged at last into the jungle, where a ma.s.s of dazed people huddled together in small groups under the dark, star-dusted sky. Forkface dumped Tomas unceremoniously beside a small pool just inside the temple, where people were scooping up water in hats, hands or flasks. It was a green and it stunk, with slimy ropes of algae clinging to sides, and n.o.body seemed to mind. Some were hugging, more were crying and one, amazingly, was laughing. Tomas blinked at them, disbelieving, seeing for the first time in four hundred years the Day of the Dead celebrated in this place by the living.

Jason brought him some water in an old canteen, and while Tomas didn't particularly need it, he drank it anyway. The fanatic came over to join them after a moment. It seemed he'd been delegated to lead the way out while Sarah and her remaining a.s.sociate remained behind to rescue Tomas. He seemed perturbed that they hadn't brought him any bones, and eyed Tomas speculatively for a moment before moving off, muttering.

Tomas's whole body hurt and he was ravenously hungry, but he was alive. It didn't seem quite real. 'How did you do it?' he finally asked Jason.

'I didn't. I only woke them up.'

'I don't understand.'

'The Incan kings were believed to watch over their people, even after death, and to demand good behavior of the living. Any who defied them soon learned that they also had within their power to reward or to punish.'

'That's a myth.'

Jason smiled, an odd, lopsided effort. 'Really. It seems strange, not to mention expensive, to tie up most of the revenues of the state in the care of creatures who have no ability to hurt you.' He shook his head. 'The ancient priests prepared the royal dead well. I only had to give them a nudge.'

'You mean '

His eyes went soft and dreamy. 'They said they had been watching Alejandro for a long time. And they were hungry.'

'Well, they'll have the whole court to snack on now, once they finish with him,' Sarah commented, stopping by after locating enough local people to serve as guides for everyone else. Tomas had a sudden image of vengeful Incan monarchs pursuing Alejandro's vampires through the halls where they had once done the same to humans. He smiled.

Attacking that thing on your own was insane,' Sarah said bluntly. 'I like that in a person. Want a job?'

Tomas just looked at her for a moment. He was a first-level master, one of only a handful in the world. The rest at his rank were either sitting in governing positions over his kind, or were powerful masters with their own courts. They were emphatically not running around with a motley crew of mercenaries carrying out jobs so crazy no one else would touch them.

He'd killed Alejandro, or close enough by vampire law. He could a.s.sume his position, round up whatever vampires had made it out before the cave-in, and claim to be the new head of the Latin American Senate. That would put him beyond the jurisdiction of the North American version which wanted him dead and his master who wanted him back in slavery. He could rebuild Alejandro's empire and walk these halls once more, this time as their master. He would be rich, powerful and feared ...

And, in time, just like Alejandro.

'Well?'

Sarah didn't seem to be the patient type. It was something else they were going to have to work on. They weren't touching, but she was standing so close that he could smell the vestiges of her perfume mingled with gunpowder and sweat. It was strangely comforting, like the lingering warmth of a touch even after it's gone. Tomas looked up at her face, surrounded by stars, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, he saw a future.

'Where do I sign?'

The End