The Day of the Dead Read Free Page A

reach his heart, but his knee wouldn’t support him and he
stumbled. He felt the hillside disintegrate under his foot, then he
was falling, tumbling halfway down the side of the embankment. He
grasped the top of a coffin, one of many now sticking out of the
newly churned earth, and the lid popped open just in time to
intercept another slice from Rico’s stake. A pale, silverfish-grey
arm flopped out of the tilted casket, and Tomas sent its owner a
silent apology before breaking off the limb to use as a makeshift
weapon.
    He spun to see Rico a few feet away,
his hand raised as if to strike. Only the blow never fell. Rico
jerked once, twice, then he dropped, falling along with the last of
the debris into the valley below. For a moment, Tomas didn’t
understand what had happened. Then a cascade of spent shotgun
shells tumbled down the embankment, rattling against the coffin lid
like bones, and he looked up to see a pair of slanting hazel eyes
staring down at him.
    ‘ Are you all right?’ The
girl’s blood was dripping onto his face, a soft wet plucking like a
light rain.
    ‘ I should be asking you
that,’ he said, struggling to get back over the edge with only one
good leg.
    He felt it when his skin absorbed her
blood, soaking it up like water on parched earth, using it to begin
repairs on the damage he’d suffered. But it wasn’t enough to do
much good. What he needed was a true feeding, something he hadn’t
taken time for recently. It had cost him in the fight; he couldn’t
afford to let it lessen his already slim chances against
Alejandro.
    He paused by Miguel’s impaled body,
still full of the blood he’d recently stolen, some of it already
pooling in his eye sockets. The sight worked on Tomas the way the
smell of a feast would on a starving human. His mouth began to
water and his fangs to lengthen without any conscious command from
him. He would have delayed it, would have gotten rid of the girl
first, but he couldn’t risk having the blood coagulate and lose the
energy it contained.
    ‘ I have to feed,’ he said
simply.
    Instead of recoiling as he’d expected,
she merely took in his injuries with an experienced eye. ‘Yeah.
Heroics have a way of coming back and biting you in the ass. But
when you’re done, we need to talk.’
    He nodded and hunched over Miguel so
at least she wouldn’t have to watch. Tomas couldn’t remember the
last time he’d fed from another vampire, but he quickly recalled
why it wasn’t a common practice. The reused blood nourished him,
the lightheaded rush of feeding giving the same almost narcotic
high as always, but the taste was like metal in his
mouth.
    He forced himself to finish, trying to
concentrate on the feel of his cracked ribs re-knitting, on the
tear in his side mending and on the grating sensation in his knee
slowly fading. The healing of wounds, especially if done so
quickly, was excruciating and this was no exception. Tears had
leaked out of the corners of his eyes by the time he was finished,
forced out by the pain, but Tomas didn’t mind. Pain was good. Pain
meant he was still alive.
    ‘ I hate it when that
happens.’
    Tomas looked up to find the girl
scowling around at the cemetery. Or what was left of it. A huge
swath had been carved out of the middle, where nothing but slick
red earth remained. On either side, coffins stuck out of the ground
like bony fingers, with a few marigold crosses scattered here and
there haphazardly.
    Up above, on the crest of the hill,
the remaining half of the church swayed dangerously on its ancient
foundations. One last pew teetered precariously on the edge of the
abyss, half in and half out of the structure.  Inside the
church, a single candle still burned.
    ‘ You handle yourself pretty
well in a fight,’ she continued, as Tomas rose from Miguel’s
exsanguinated corpse.
    ‘ I’ve had some
practice.’
    She gave a sputtering laugh, short and
mocking. ‘Yeah. I bet.’
    Tomas pulled himself over the edge and
examined