Undead for a Day

by Chris Marie Green, Nancy Holder, Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  “Just for one year,” he said. “And once it’s done, we’re done. Unless you feel differently by then.”

  “I probably won’t,” she informed him flatly.

  “Pity.” His voice was soft, his word tender. “I already do.”

  “I know you want me to make up my mind fast,” she said. “Like last time. Wait. I’m not jumping over a bonfire.”

  “You have until the last stroke of midnight. And there won’t be any bonfire. Not this time.” He picked up a simple white taper in a candleholder where none had been before. He took her hand in his, and passed them both above the flame. “If we do this again at the proper time, with the proper incantations, we’ll be married.”

  His hand was large and his grip strong. Ginger and jasmine mingled with candle wax. And as the flames were reflected in his eyes, a sharp, deep stab of pleasure shuddered through her body. Light emanated from his face and she felt her skin go even warmer all over. His brows raised and he looked very pleased.

  “You’re glowing with desire, Red Hair. For me,” he whispered. “I’ll bring you so much pleasure, Bridget. I’ll share my power, and my spells. I’ll teach you our ways—your ways. If you wish, I’ll take you back in time. If you decide not to renew our marriage, you and your brother can live when you want.”

  “Where’s the other crystal?” she asked suddenly, looking for the catch, the trap. “The third one?”

  He shook his head. “We don’t know. Maybe the Caracols have it. Maybe someone else.”

  Jack’s image mushroomed in her head again. She looked down at the candle flame and said nothing about it. Whatever that was all about, she needed to put it on hold. There were too many steps to take at the moment to get from here to Jack—if he was a destination at all. Xavier was right. She needed safe harbor now.

  And besides, the glow from Xavier’s face bathed her in a dizzying, pleasing light, tempting her to draw closer. To touch him.

  Feel him.

  “What about the deep freeze in the bathroom? Your ghost tried to kill me. Plus it warned me.” So did it try to kill me?

  “I told you. That wasn’t me. As best as I can tell, someone hijacked my appearance and sent it to you. They must have used someone dead to penetrate the Caracol defense line. It was Samhain, when the dead walk. Or maybe it was the Caracols themselves. We can find out the answers to these questions more easily if we’re married.”

  “If,” she emphasized.

  “If,” he agreed. Then he reached out an arm as if he were going to gather up her hair, and instead wrapped his hand around the flame, to keep it from blowing out. “This moment between you and me is very fragile,” he said. “And you have no reason to trust me. But it’s Samhain, the night for bold moves and new alliances. So there’s hope that you’ll say yes.”

  “You really think that?”

  Two flutes of champagne nested in a profusion of gold, silver, and white ribbons on the table. She recognized the ribbons from their previous marriage rite, when Xavier’s father had tied and knotted their wrists together.

  “I really think that,” he said.

  “You’re cocky.”

  “I’m Gitano. Gypsy. My family is old and powerful. I have a lot to offer you, Bridget Flynn. And you need someone on your side. You need that more than you know.”

  “I’ve gotten the message, thanks,” she shot back. “I just wish I had more time to figure it all out.”

  “Is that a real wish?” he said softly, in a silken, sexy voice. Then, before she could answer, the sphere appeared on the table and began to pulsate and swirl.

  “Wait,” she said, alarmed. “Xavier, hold off.”

  “Don’t be afraid. Never be afraid of me.”

  Then he enfolded her in his arms, and his lips found hers. And it was the best, most amazing kiss she had ever had in her entire life. Of their own accord, her arms wrapped around his neck as she kissed him back, losing herself in delicious, overwhelming sensation.

  “I can make this moment last forever,” he whispered against her hair. “Or any other moment of your choosing. I can give you time to think. Or to savor.”

  What the hell, she thought. If this was the night for bold moves, she’d better make some.

  “What about my brother?”

  “He will be fine. He’s among friends. I swear it to you. And you’ll see him again.”

  She took a deep breath. “Then do it, Gypsy witch,” she said. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  “Trick or treat, Bridget,” he murmured.

  And the walls and the flowers began to melt away.

  THE END

  Nancy Holder is the author of the New York Times bestselling Wicked Saga, co-written with Debbie Viguié. She and Debbie have written two other dark fantasy series, Crusade and The Wolf Springs Chronicles. They also write thrillers together. She is well-known for dozens of projects based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, and she has also worked in such universes as Teen Wolf, Smallville, Hellboy, Highlander, The Domino Lady, The Spider, The Avenger, Honey West, Zorro, Sherlock Holmes, Kolchak the Night Stalker, and many others. She received a Scribe Award for her novel, Saving Grace: Tough Love, based on the TV show of the same name and a Pioneer Award from Romantic Times. She has also received five Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers Association for her supernatural fiction. She has also written for Harlequin, including the Athena Force series and the Nocturne line.

  She writes and edits pulp fiction and comic books for Moonstone Books, and she serves on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing Program offered through the University of Southern Maine.

  Please contact Nancy at:

  www.nancyholder.com,

  @nancyholder,

  or https://www.facebook.com/holder.nancy.

  Trapped

  in

  Stone

  A Dark vs Light series story

  by

  Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  Dear reader,

  It’s been a while since I’ve been able to get back to my Light vs Dark stories, first begun with my early novel, Café Heaven, an Autobiography of the Afterlife. I’m thrilled to begin again with this GothicScapes urban fantasy series. In this anthology, I’ve penned Trapped in Stone, where the forces of Good and Evil face off atop Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris over the soul of one man, and the kick-a woman (term used loosely), who fights for him and vows to win. It’s not my usual vampires, immortals or werewolves, but something more. . . Another layer of the fabric of the world that caught my imagination and has taken wing. I hope you’ll come along on this new adventure, and then come back again in December for more Strange Spirits. Fingers are crossed that you will.

  Cheers for now, and good Karma to all.

  Linda

  CHAPTER ONE

  Tristan ran toward the light, marveling how it never got closer. His breath was all but gone; what was left came in great incompetent gasps.

  His body still had some life in it, though that life had been terribly diminished. Legs moved, arms cut through the cold night air, his chest rose and fell, stretching for each breath, but he knew he wouldn’t make it this time, and that his pursuers would win. They were very good at what they did, and had powerful magic on their side.

  He was so very tired of running.

  If he closed his eyes, this would be over. If he slowed down, it would mean the end.

  Damn it all to hell and back, the nightmare was about to catch up with him...again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “It has to be this way.”

  Izzy didn’t know how many times she’d muttered that phrase, but it had to be a million. Each time, emotion threatened to get the better of her.

  Her nerves were revved. Her heartbeat sounded like a big bass drum. She felt feverish, as if she had swallowed a live flame about to burn her from the inside out. Waiting for this night to arrive had been an excruciating ordeal, and in under an hour everything she’d waited for, dreaded, dreamed about, was going
to happen.

  She’d see him again.

  Tristan.

  Remorse rode her emotions like a hitchhiker. So did guilt. She’d soon see her lover, and her heart would break, just as it had broken so many times before. Because if all went well tonight, she’d be free to leave Notre Dame Cathedral when the sun rose again, while he...

  While Tristan...

  Had to stay.

  “I’m so sorry, my love,” she said aloud as if Tristan could hear her and understand. They had, after all, been through all this before.

  Yet hope stirred in her, as it always did when the game was about to begin. She prayed that someone bigger than all the rest and stronger than all the rest would finally interfere in this wicked contest by taking the upper hand, ashamed that it had gone on for so long.

  Did God know what was happening here? Or the Devil?

  Were those two entities actually involved?

  “Can you feel me, Tris?”

  Izzy shivered in anticipation of a final culmination of the contest that kept her coming back to Notre Dame year after year; kept her climbing the narrow, winding staircase to the Gallerie des Chimeres, high above the city of Paris, where Tristan waited in his caged, motionless incarnation, his body and his soul trapped in a grotesque stone form.

  “Paris. The city of light, and of love.”

  She wondered if anyone else climbing these stairs with her knew about the real Paris, and what took place after the sun went down. People would run for cover if they did, just like she’d like to run away right now. But she couldn’t leave Tristan on that gallery. She couldn’t allow him to waken from his catatonic state alone, no matter what side she worked for. She had promised to remain by him.

  “I’m here,” she said in the dank stairway, where she was swept along in her upward climb by an exuberant, chatty group of twenty-five tourists paying for the privilege of climbing to the gallery to see the famous Notre Dame gargoyles and the view. She had a more important objective for reaching that gallery, and thinking about it caused her stomach to tighten.

  “Not long now, Tris.”

  Her comment was lost among the raised voices of the crowd around her. She felt nervous, edgy. It was impossible to recall how many times she had faced what waited on that gallery. Remembering made her sick.

  “Will I win, my love, when the odds against succeeding are piling up?”

  Without truly divine intervention, no end was in sight for the kind of challenge about to take place. Until there was true interference from a hand higher than the angels and the demons, Tristan remained in limbo. She would reluctantly let go of her lover for good and forever only if a final decree came from the higher realms that the game was over.

  Very reluctantly would she let Tris go, even then.

  “You deserve better than this. No one knows it better than I do.”

  The middle-aged woman in front of Izzy in the narrow stairwell glanced back. Izzy didn’t acknowledge that look. What good were a few tourist coins in the cathedral’s coffers when the fate of her lover rested on the head of a pin?

  If anyone could be plucked from the masses to take part in such an ongoing power play between the forces of Good and Evil, how many people were safe, whether they were saints or sinners?

  Tris was already too far removed from his former life to be able to return to it. The only way he could get off Notre Dame’s roof now was to be allowed to ascend to a golden afterlife when the game was finished, or if someone volunteered to take his place here, the way he had voluntarily taken hers. The word for this travesty was trade, one soul willingly giving up its freedom in order for another soul to be freed.

  Another name for it was sacrifice.

  Problem was, she had never been entirely sure that Tris wanted anyone else to suffer through the sacrifice this kind of trade entailed, since it meant giving up life as most mortals knew it. Tris hadn’t yet found that volunteer to take his place in the body of a monstrous carved stone statue on Notre Dame’s upper gallery. She was afraid that his altruistic principles wouldn’t actually allow for him to find a replacement.

  If this was true, they were merely going through the motions, time after time, in a continual loop, with Tristan’s motives being extraordinarily unselfish and saintly.

  So, okay. If she had to play out this same routine a hundred times more, she would. If she had to continue to seem to hurt Tris by winning this game, round after round, so be it. Because though he was shackled to Notre Dame’s roof like a perpetual prisoner, she could see him for one night every year. She could be with him for a brief time, and mere moments, only seconds, were better than nothing.

  Tonight, Tristan would shed his cocoon of stone, and live. He would breathe, move, run. And she would be waiting for him.

  “I’m coming, Tris.”

  The words she spoke were hoarse. The rawness of her guilt made her stumble as she climbed the stairs that would take her to him. It was her fault Tris was here. No one had to remind her of that fact. There was no way to turn back time and change things. And despite what she had done, Tris would look at her with loving, understanding eyes when he woke tonight...and she’d be damned all over again.

  “God. Tris.”

  The woman in front of Izzy stopped, halting Izzy and the whole line of people behind them. “Are you all right?” the woman asked over a pink sweater clad shoulder.

  “No,” Izzy said. “But I’ll manage.”

  Was there any way for a Recruiter for the Dark Side to actually be okay? Already, her body was throwing off heat. Small licks of flame were spreading through her like wildfire. The palms of her hands were hot. Her mouth had gone dry.

  The line was moving too slowly, and she wasn’t supposed to be here at all. Anyone associated with the Underworld was forbidden access to the inside of the cathedral’s great, holy carcass. Her presence was sacrilege, blasphemy. Her disguise would only last a short time before burning away.

  The inquisitive woman on the step above her shrugged and moved on. Izzy followed, climbing with her eyes closed, familiar with every twist and turn in an ascent that never got shorter or less burdened. She could have found her way to that gallery in the dark.

  “There’s a plaque about the Hunchback of Notre Dame,” the man behind her said in an amused tone.

  “Cool,” said the young woman behind him. “I saw the cartoon.”

  Cartoon?

  Hell...

  Her head had begun to hurt with a pressurized ache, as if the walls of the cathedral had noticed her disguise and were closing in. It had been a year between visits, and seemed like twenty. Climbing took effort she barely had. A hint of an evening chill penetrated her black sweater as if the building were alive and breathing down her neck.

  Maybe it was.

  The signs of Notre Dame’s battle scars had been showing for a very long time. She felt eyes watching, sensed ears listening. Walls whispered. Floorboards groaned as the cathedral’s gaping hulk, supported by flying buttresses and tons of scaffolding, sent shockwaves of vibrations through the close, slightly humid air.

  She recognized those vibrations.

  Heaven was coming.

  Her nerves hummed like twanged harp strings, causing a spiked adrenaline surge. She could feel Tristan beginning to wake.

  Not long now, my love.

  She would soon face not only her lover, but what she had become in order to be with him. Punisher. Torturer. Gatherer of lost souls. One of Lucifer’s hellions.

  Tonight she would again butt heads with angels, and coax Tristan back to his prison of stone if he didn’t find a worthy substitute for himself.

  If he attained the game’s objective and found someone to take his place on the gallery, his tie with the spirits binding him to the cathedral’s roof would be severed. Tristan would go on to his glorious afterlife, gossamer wings and all, and she would fall even further from grace.

  Hell didn’t like to lose.

  “Hey, do you smell something burning?” t
he man behind her remarked.

  Izzy fisted her hands to seal off the little orange flames dancing there, scorching her skin, searing the edges of her sweater. She kept looking up, concentrating on exactly how long it would be until the sun went down.

  Thirty minutes, tops.

  After the guards swept the place clean of tourists at closing time and the cathedral’s massive doors shut, the Gallerie des Chimeres would come alive. The monsters populating the gallery would open their eyes, Tristan among them.

  Izzy shuddered as the tiny flames danced across her skin. External forces were galloping in to attend the start of this game. Between her tense shoulder blades, her tattooed sigils were twitching, taking on a life of their own.

  “Notre Dame de Paris is quite literally the center of Paris,” the man behind her said.

  “Cool,” the young girl with the single word vocabulary said.

  It was, Izzy, wanted to shout, as far from cool as possible, and about to get a whole lot hotter.

  Nowhere did any guidebook mention that this cathedral was ground zero for a war that had raged for centuries, or that the battle was now a tug-of-war for the soul of man. One man in particular. The lover she had bedded, and more or less betrayed. The man she had dived head first into the bottomless pit of Hades for.

  Help me, beating heart. Keep me strong.

  The approach of the angels, so like a kick to her backside, had to be acknowledged. Soon those angels, who weren’t allowed to touch her lover physically, would help to make Tristan’s heart beat. But she would be there to warm him after his year-long, stone cold state. And damn his beautiful hide, Tristan would forgive her for what she was, and what she had to do to remain by his side, like he always did. That was his nature. He would forgive her when she looked into his eyes and cursed him all over again—taking away his freedom, trapping him in an immovable shape.