Undead for a Day

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

  *

  Izzy lunged for the winged devil in time to grab hold of Tristan’s legs as Tris was lifted off the ground. The bat-like creature had taken off with a dazzling rush of speed, and before she’d had time to anticipate what might come next.

  In a pinch, Tristan was no slouch, though. His hands were on the devil’s face, covering the red eyes, hanging on with his fingers.

  Temporarily blinded, the creature dropped Tris, who landed in a ball and rolled on the path before regaining his feet, unharmed. The devil let out a roar that rivaled the decibel of an air raid siren, and wheeled in the air. This time, it came for Izzy.

  There was no extra time allotted for frivolities or caring for secret disguises. Izzy’s instincts were automatic, and swift. The human persona covering burned away in an instant, melting, transforming, leaving her naked, and panting with the effort it had taken to shed her alternate identity so quickly.

  Her black hair returned, flying around her in an unnatural breeze, throwing shadows across her body. Her wings snapped open with the muffled sound of a flag whipping in the wind. This brought a reactionary gasp of surprise from Tris, but it was too late to do anything about it, and far too late to stop the changes.

  She sent her lover a sad smile of regret before soaring into the sky to meet the devilish creature. She wanted to tell Tris that if her vow to protect him was broken tonight, she was sorry, and that it wouldn’t be because of anything she would have wanted, or wished.

  Her body and the creature’s body met with the impact of two hurtling cars. Pain flashed through her, yet she recoiled and struck again.

  She could hear the winged devil’s thoughts as their bodies collided. “Not for you,” it recited mentally, over and over in the monotone of a chant. “Not...for...you.”

  “You’ve got that wrong,” she argued, her tone hard. “None of you understand this because you can’t love. You have never loved. You don’t possess the ability to care for anyone else.”

  “Not for you,” the devil repeated. As they hovered in the air, the devil’s hands found her right wing. Izzy felt the feathers tear, and a sharp snap of electrified pain. She cried out angrily “Go back where you belong. Leave us alone.”

  “Time’s up,” the creature’s thoughts told her as it tore her wing down to the bone with a flick of its strong wrists.

  Izzy started to fall, and caught herself with a good push of her healthy feathers. As she faced the devil and looked into its scarlet eyes, it did nothing else to hurt her. No further attack came. No intent to attack crossed its mind. Its crimson eyes stared back as if making a point she didn’t comprehend. The useless mouth was still. Its thoughts were quiet.

  What the hell?

  As if the sudden cease of activity was an omen of some kind, Izzy chilled up. She tore her gaze from the creature’s face and quickly looked down...to find Tristan gone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Tristan hadn’t seen this coming.

  Not this part.

  The winged devil with the blood colored eyes must have been a diversion. A good one, Tristan thought as he was broadsided by a body that hurtled in his direction with the speed and force of a runaway boulder.

  The fact that he and Izzy had fallen for the winged devil’s antics was a kink in the plans, but he couldn’t concentrate on that now. Izzy had transformed right in front of his eyes, and he knew this was the true Izzy, at last.

  She was glorious, sublime, wild, and outrageously seductive.

  She had wings.

  Row after row of iridescent, jet black feathers the same color as her sleek, waist-length hair formed fascinating patterns across a huge wingspan. In stunning contrast, her pale skin was completely colorless. The whitest of white. Nearly transparent.

  In brief glimpses of her face, Tristan saw features that were extremely thin, with sharp cheekbones and deep-set eyes. Her skin was luminous. Her dark hair flew around her like an aura, like some kind of living shadow. Dangerous, yes. Magnificent for sure. In reality, Izzy was as perfect as all of her former disguises, only more so by a factor of ten.

  She looked like an angel. A dark one. Some special species that was so incredibly graceful, it hurt him to take a fleeting glance. This is what has nestled at your core all along, and what you withheld from me, though I guessed it had to be something unique.

  He didn’t know why she had covered this up. The real Izzy wasn’t monstrous. Not even remotely close. She resembled nothing indicative of the Underworld’s other gangly creatures. And she thought this would turn him off? Scare him away? Jesus, he wanted to get up close and personal with her all over again, right that minute. He wanted to run his fingers over those black feathers, and lay a bare palm to her naked white skin. Izzy had assumed this image would hurt him, frighten him. He longed to tell her this wasn’t so.

  “Ah, hell,” he managed to gasp before his lungs were squeezed and he had no air left.

  A net, heavy as metal and very finely woven, fell over him, pinning him to the ground, cutting off his view of the ravishing creature that he had loved for a very long time.

  Like a power vacuum, the two sets of beating wings stirred the air above him. Izzy was too occupied with her nemesis to see what was going on beneath her.

  Tristan knuckled his eyes and scanned the edges of the net. There was a time when he might have been leery of what the immediate future had in store, but that time had passed. He felt anger stirring at last. This kind of attack didn’t make sense for a host of reasons that didn’t appear to matter to anyone but him.

  He wanted to shout at these guys I’m pretty sure we were going back to that blasted gallery already, without your help.

  Also, there would have been a replacement for me if I had succeeded, meaning no vacancy for the monster lineup.

  If everything ever said or written about the hand of fate is true, no fight or argument is going to change or alter the outcome, anyway.

  Proven now was the fact that he and Izzy weren’t alone in their acknowledgment of something else being at work here. There had to be more at stake than filling a spot on that gallery. Some larger thing was happening. He could almost taste it.

  Earlier that night, he had said to Izzy “Just once more,” before making love to her, but he would have given up a lot for that sentiment not to have been true. With their bodies pressed together, and with him buried inside Izzy’s incredibly lush depths, they both had been able to forget the issues, and about sides. That’s what true love did. It only happened to true soul mates.

  Briefly. One last time? I didn’t mean that. I don’t want it to end.

  Tristan felt himself lifted. He dangled limply in the net as the ground distanced. He lost sight of Izzy, and almost called out to her, but he didn’t need rescuing, and she would have tried. No one here, other than himself, knew exactly how capable the Light side actually was, or what nestled at his own core. He was willing to bet, however, that these annoying creatures and their ridiculous abduction were soon going to find out.

  Izzy’s voice trailed him through the air, growing as distant as the stars. Somewhere behind him, over the water and less than a half mile from the cathedral, Izzy, bless her pale, magnificent hide, was scrabbling with a devil demon for nothing.

  Tristan let his muscles go slack as he waited to be shown the next step in the completely unfair, hypocritical challenge of the ages. In his mind, two rights, in the form of personal sacrifice and a willingness to lay bare the goodness tucked inside them, had to result in an end to the game. This had to mean a ticket to a golden afterlife for somebody.

  He hoped to God that someone up there felt the same, and that tonight Izzy would get a break, and some long overdue peace.

  His lips moved in a silent prayer.

  *

  “One wing is better than none,” Izzy said, and the slimy devil let her go. The dark face across from her didn’t have the audacity to grin. Emotion, even in triumph, obviously wasn’t its forte.

  Tucking her damage
d wing close to her back, Izzy went into a free fall toward the ground. Landing in a crouch, she bounced back up to her feet, cocked her head, and scanned the night. Dozens of small creatures inhabited the shadows near the bank and under the bridge. Most of them hustled away from the stern expression on her face.

  “I’m nobody’s lackey,” she said. “You got that?”

  One creature ran toward her. She grabbed it by its tiny horn and pulled the brown, wrinkled, troll close. “Where did they go?”

  “To the cathedral,” a voice behind Izzy answered in place of the writhing creature in her two-fisted grip.

  Izzy turned with a quick flap of her one good wing.

  “I was passing by,” a woman said, explaining her sudden appearance. It was the woman in the pink sweater who had witch tendencies and was seemingly hard to ditch. She stood near the bottom of the stairs, a couple yards away.

  “What are you doing here?” Izzy demanded.

  “Following trouble,” the woman said. “That’s my M.O.”

  “Who are you really, and what do you want?” Izzy asked.

  “I’d like to be help, personified, if you’ll let me.”

  “I don’t need a Band-Aid.”

  “No. You need to follow your lover, and quickly, would be my guess. They put him in a net, and that can’t be comfortable.”

  Izzy stared at the woman who had yet to remark about Izzy’s nakedness, and the wings.

  “What can I do?” the woman asked.

  “Forget you saw me. Forget all of this, and get the hell out of here.”

  “Actually, I’m drawn here, and to you. I don’t exactly know why. I do know what you are.”

  “I can help to make you forget that,” Izzy said.

  “I can counter any spell, should you choose to use one,” the woman returned.

  “Somehow, I very much doubt that. A witch would be out of her league here.”

  “So, it seems, is a Recruiter.”

  Izzy felt herself blanch. “Recruiter is only part of my M.O.”

  “Yes. You go after lost souls, too.”

  “That’s the deal, and if you don’t get out of my way, I might go after yours.”

  Though the woman nodded, she said, “Empty threat. I’m not on your list, or you would already have me. Also, need I remind you of what night this is, and that the bewitching hour approaches? Even a Recruiter might have difficulty with someone like me at the midnight hour on All Hallow’s Eve.”

  Izzy did know something about witches. Real ones with tons of experience could draw upon the special energies of any midnight hour and shape those energies any way they chose to. On a night like All Hallow’s Eve, those energies quadrupled. But witches were mostly human in origin, and would be child’s play for an entity with powers derived from the pit.

  This witch was pale, though she didn’t appear to be the least bit afraid of Izzy, or what Izzy had just tangled with in the air. She hadn’t been shocked by Tristan’s abduction in a net.

  Izzy looked up, searching for the winged devil in case there was a repeat attack.

  “It’s gone.” The witch pointed to the cathedral. “There.”

  Drained, and tired of hiding from everyone, Izzy fluffed her feathers and turned to look at Notre Dame. “They’re blocking Tris,” she said. “And doing a decent job of it.”

  “Blocking him from what?” the witch asked. “From you?”

  Izzy gave her a scrutinizing onceover. The question had struck a strange cord, bringing chills first in waves, then in droves. Her wounded wing ached when she shivered.

  The witch’s question had opened up a rift in Izzy’s reality. Things she had formerly set aside came tumbling into focus, due to this woman’s odd slice of insight.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I thought at first that they were blocking him from reaching his goal. From winning. But that made no sense.”

  “Their eyes were on you,” the witch said. “Not on the angel.”

  A fresh round of chills dripped down Izzy’s bare back. She spun toward the witch with her heart racing. “What did you say?”

  “Their eyes were on you.”

  “The other part.”

  “They didn’t give much credence to the angel, though they were careful not to hurt him.”

  The ground was rushing up at Izzy. As she widened her stance, her wounded wing hurt so badly, she wanted to howl.

  “I got the impression they were attempting to keep you two apart,” the witch said. “Though anyone with two eyes in their heads and no psychic abilities whatsoever could have told them it was already too late for that.”

  “I have to go.” Izzy searched Notre Dame’s outline in the night, in a world that was fuzzing over. She had already spread her good wing, and half of the other.

  “They’re luring you back to them,” the witch warned. “Like a fish on a hook. But they needed to separate you first.”

  Striding toward the bridge, needing to keep grounded for a few more seconds before taking to the air, Izzy paused, mystified that the woman was still there, standing very still in the pink sweater that looked a lot like cotton candy in the moonlight.

  “I wonder why they would do that,” Izzy said, half to herself. But of course that’s exactly what these beasts had accomplished here. Distraction. Separation.

  There might be a surprise waiting for her if she reached the gallery, and when the witching hour arrived, topped by a full moon. Was that it? The path all this headed toward was that something would happen when the midnight hour arrived and the Underworld was at its strongest? When the Underworld might actually have a shot at besting the angels?

  Again, she looked to Notre Dame.

  Did they want her back in stone, as penance for cheating the biggest cheater of all time, Lucifer?

  Well, she would go to the gallery, of course. Nothing could stop her.

  “Possibly they’re attempting to prove a point about who is in charge?” the witch suggested thoughtfully. “Or else they might be showing your lover what you really are, hoping to break the bond between you?”

  And with that suggestion, which only somewhat paralleled her own recent thoughts, Izzy realized that there actually were no rules at all in this farce of a challenge, and that the whole damn thing had been rigged from the start. The goal had in fact been punishment. For her.

  She was the center of all this.

  The whole thing had been to keep her working for the Underworld until it was too late to in any way change that.

  A tiny pulse beat at her throat. She swallowed a curse. She had indeed gained power over the years since Tris had been imprisoned. Lots of Dark had seeped inside her. If this had been the plan, it had worked, and the Underworld had used her relationship with Tris to further her descent, and also to make sure that descent happened. She and Tris had played right into their hands.

  But what about Tris? What about the other side who observed this travesty? Angel. The witch who knew so much had used that term to describe Tris. Yet that couldn’t be right. Was there a possibility that the man her heart had broken for...

  The man she loved, and had known intimately...

  Wasn’t really a man at all?

  Could Tris be a goddamn angel? The heavenly kind? This whole time? An angel with enough cunning to keep his secret from her and what? Make a fool of her for years? Help see to it that there was no redemption for her?

  No. Not possible.

  Tris loved her as much as she loved him. If he was on the A-team, there was another reason he was involved. Like oil and water, Dark and Light didn’t mix. The two sides didn’t work together toward any outcome. But she and Tris had. Maybe Notre Dame’s gallery actually was ground zero for the land of Limbo; an actual gray zone, a middle ground where two opposing sides could meet and touch, at least for awhile, until their fates were sealed.

  Tris...

  The night was revolving, turning on a new axis that left Izzy feeling out of sorts. She was so stunned by this possibility o
f this new turn of events, there wasn’t any room for anger.

  “Interesting theory,” Izzy said to the witch, who, as a stranger, might have seen through the wrappings encasing this terrible chase, and had broken things down in twenty seconds flat when a Recruiter had missed all the pertinent signs. Every single one of them.

  The witch nodded her head. “You know it’s not over.”

  “How right you are,” Izzy agreed, reaching the first step near the bridge, and arching her wings.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Tristan was twenty feet off the ground and moving at a steady pace toward Notre Dame. Somebody really didn’t want him to succeed tonight. This was pretty clear. What remained fuzzy was how to decide which side was the holdup. Izzy’s side, or his?

  Two winged creatures carried him. Gargoyles. Their mouths were open, probably out of habit. Their stubby wings still looked like they were made of stone.

  “I suppose we’re going back to the gallery, and that you won’t tell me who sent you,” he said to his silent captors. “I suppose I can’t convince you to let me go before we get there.”

  For all he knew, his date with fate might include this abduction. He would give another year in stone for some definitive answers, though he and Izzy were very close now to finding those answers the hard way.

  The cathedral loomed like a great dark hole in his vision at last, and the gargoyles began climbing wind currents. The only sound Tristan heard as they crowned the cathedral was the sputter of his heart that signified the approach of the long overdue finale of a game that seemed to have lasted forever.

  He was set down on a steep portion of slippery slate roof. The gargoyles continued to hold him prisoner by stepping on the edges of the net with claws that clung to the slate like they were made of Velcro.

  Impatience growing, Tristan got to his feet by stretching the net. “Face time,” he said to whoever was listening. “Because I’ve just about had enough.”