The Day of the Dead Read Free Page B

her. Amazingly, she seemed to be all right. There was a
shallow cut on her forehead and few scrapes and scratches here and
there, but nothing serious. It was little short of
miraculous.
    ‘ We need to talk, but we
ought to get out of here,’ she said, slinging her shotgun over her
back again. He’d heard her reloading while he fed. ‘Half the
village is likely to be here any minute.’
    Tomas sat down on the edge of a stone
bearing weathered Mayan hieroglyphs. ‘I doubt it,’ he said
wryly.
    She studied him silently for a moment,
then plopped down alongside. ‘Want to fill me in?’
    ‘ This is the Day of the
Dead. And in this area, that term has always had more than one
meaning.’ He spent a few minutes sketching out for her Alejandro’s
idea of a good time, making it as clinical and unemotional as he
could. It didn’t seem to help.
    ‘ Let me get this straight.
That son of a bitch has taken my brother to use in his stupid
games?’
    ‘ Possibly,’ Tomas agreed.
‘Although I can’t understand it. He never took magic users
before.’
    ‘ Maybe he got bored. Wanted
more of a challenge.’
    ‘ Does a cat get tired of
playing with lizards or mice, and attack the neighborhood dog
instead? Preying on weaker creatures is Alejandro’s nature. But if
your brother is a mage, he wouldn’t fall into that
category.’
    ‘ His type of magic isn’t
likely to help him much,’ she said curtly.
    ‘ I don’t
understand.’
    ‘ You don’t need to.’ She
stood up. ‘Just tell me where I can find this guy.’
    Tomas shook his head. ‘I can’t do
that.’
    ‘ Why not? Based on how his
vamps treated you, I got the impression you weren’t all that
close.’
    He smiled at the understatement. ‘We
aren’t. But helping you commit suicide won’t aid your
brother.’
    ‘ Tell me where to find this
Alejandro, and the only one dying will be him.’
    Tomas got slowly to his feet, gingerly
putting his weight on the injured knee. It held. ‘For what it’s
worth, I’ve come to kill him. If I succeed, it may cause enough
chaos to allow your brother to escape. Wish me luck.’
    He started to go, but a hand on his
arm stopped him. ‘I’ll do better than that. I’ll go with
you.’
    ‘ I told you – that would
not be wise.’
    ‘ Really? And you think
you’d have survived just now without me? It sounds like you going
alone isn’t so wise, either.’
    Tomas turned to face her, already
exasperated. He had enough on his plate tonight. He didn’t need
this. ‘You may be good with a gun, but that won’t keep you alive.
Alejandro was once my master. I know what he’s capable
of.’
    ‘ Uh huh. And can he break
off half a mountain because he loses his temper?’
    Tomas regarded her narrowly. ‘You’re
saying that was you?’
    ‘ That’s what I’m saying.
I’m a jinx.’
    ‘ I beg your
pardon?’
    Jinx. J.I.N.X. A walking disaster
area. Fault lines love me. Of course, so does just about anything
else that can go wrong.’
    ‘ An inconvenient
talent.’
    ‘ And an illegal one. If the
magical community ever finds out a jinx as powerful as me is
walking around, they’ll kill me. Which is why I got really good at
protecting myself – and other people – a long time ago. This
vampire has bought himself more trouble than he knows.’
    ‘ Bringing down a
mountainside won’t help your brother. If he’s where I think he is,
it would only bury him as well.’
    ‘ I can control it. And this
isn’t exactly my first time at the rodeo. I can take care of
myself.’
    Tomas hesitated, instinct warring with
dawning hope. ‘I tried to draw someone else into this recently, and
almost got her killed,’ he finally admitted. ‘I swore that I’d
never do that again. This is my fight – ’
    ‘ It was your fight. Once that bastard took
Jason, he made it mine.’ When Tomas just stared at her, trying to
think of some way to get rid of her that did not involve actual
violence, the ground grumbled beneath him. The