precariously perched
pew gave up the struggle and slid down the hillside, only to go
sailing off into the void like a huge wooden bird. ‘Look, I’m not
asking you, I’m telling you. You think you’ve got troubles now? Try
leaving me behind. My brother is all I’ve got, and he is not dying
tonight.’
‘ It will not be easy,’ he
said, wondering how to even begin to explain what they were up
against.
The girl snorted. ‘Yeah. I kind of got
that.’ She held out her hand. ‘Sarah Lee. And no, I don’t
cook.’
‘ Tomas.’
‘ Well Tomas. We gonna stand
here exchanging pleasantries all night, or go kill a vampire?’
Tomas didn’t say anything, but he slowly took her hand. She
grinned. ‘Well, all right then.’
* * * * *
‘ Jason is a reporter for
the Oracle ,’ Sarah
said, as Tomas hotwired her brother’s rental car. Hers had been
parked in the part of the cemetery that hadn’t survived and was
currently exploring the bottom of the valley. ‘We were supposed to
meet up in Puerto Vallarta for a vacation, but when I got to the
hotel, he’d already left. All I found was a note telling me he’d
got a lead on a story and asking me to meet him here.’
‘ If Alejandro has started
kidnapping magic users, it would be front-page news,’ Tomas agreed,
as the engine on the old subcompact finally turned over. ‘Or your
brother could have found out about one of his other businesses. He
controls everything from magical narcotics to weapon sales in much
of Central and South America.’
‘ I know. I’ve dealt with
his people before.’ At Tomas’s sideways look, she shrugged. ‘I
can’t buy weapons from legitimate sources, not in the quantities I
need. The authorities monitor that kind of stuff.’
‘ Why would you need huge
quantities of magical weaponry?’
‘ Why do you want to kill
your old master?’ she countered. ‘I didn’t even think that was
possible.’
They bounced out onto the main road
through the village, with only the weak light of a quarter moon to
see by. ‘It wouldn’t be, if he were still my master. I challenged
him to combat, but he wouldn’t face me. He brought in a champion, a
French dueling master, instead. But rather than kill me as
Alejandro had wanted, after Louis-Cesare defeated me, he claimed me
as his slave. I only recently escaped.’
‘ And came straight back
here.’
‘ Yes.’
‘ That’s
very…heroic.’
Tomas didn’t think it qualified as
heroism if he had nothing left to lose. But he didn’t say so. Her
tone made it clear that the word she’d really been searching for
was ‘stupid’.
‘ Alejandro killed the
entire population of my village. There isn’t anyone else.’ If the
dead were ever to be avenged, it was up to him to do it. And after
four hundred years, they’d waited long enough.
‘ So you came back alone.’
She shook her head. ‘People like you are bad for
business.’
‘ You’re a mercenary.’ Tomas
supposed he should have figured it out before.
‘ We prefer the term
‘outside contractor’.’
‘ I couldn’t afford to hire
a team,’ Tomas said, turning onto the pitted road leading into the
mountains. ‘And you also came here alone.’
A dark shape suddenly loomed in front
of them, forcing Tomas to squeal tires and practically stand the
car on end to avoid hitting it. The shape resolved itself into a
tall, gaunt man, with the brilliant eyes of a fanatic set deep in
the hollows of his craggy face. ‘Not so much,’ Sarah said, climbing
out of the car. ‘Boys, glad you could make it.’
‘ Looks like we already
missed some of the fun,’ another man commented, stepping out of the
jungle that hedged the road on each side.
Tomas stared hard at the new arrival.
He hadn’t heard him approach, and that was unacceptable. Unless he
was a mage using magic to mask his breath, the sound of his heart
beating, his footfalls – all would have alerted Tomas to his
presence.
But he didn’t look like a mage. He had
a