Undead for a Day (26 page)

“Now!” she shouted, hitting the floor next to the smallest oncoming beast with a ball of fire that flew from her fingers as she raced by.

Following her directive, Tristan strode to the low wall edging the walkway. He heard more monsters stomping their nasty feet around him. There were said to be five thousand creatures inhabiting Notre Dame’s walls and roofline. Did some of them have other beings trapped inside? Would they wake up tonight and run for their lives in one twisted game or another?

Not going to wait and find out.

The gargoyles he passed were mostly benign designs intended to scare off evil spirits, much like scarecrows in a spiritual cornfield. The chimeras were another matter altogether, and too complex to read. Their presence on the gallery was live with the energy of warped intentions.

Izzy was at the door, scalding it open with a whispered spell. He inhaled the odors of the cooked, ancient wood, and frowned. It was time for his exit and, as always, he was loath to leave Izzy behind. This next part was solo. Izzy had to remain on the gallery. She had to wait.

Something astonishingly large stepped into his path as he reached her, halting him, making him stumble backward. Tristan looked up at the newcomer and shivered, not quite believing what he was seeing. It was a freak of the wildest caliber; a giant fiend.
Le Stryge,
the most famous of Notre Dame’s monsters, had joined the party.

Even without hearing Izzy’s audible curse, he would have known this was a sure sign that something was amiss. The back of his neck prickled. The hair on his arms stood up. This gallery’s smaller beasts were meant to intimidate, but what did a giant like
Le Stryge
want?

He and Izzy had once made love at this monster’s clawed feet. He was fairly sure now that the demon hadn’t appreciated the indiscretion and that, due to its awakening,
Le Stryge,
also called
The Vampire
because it scared the color right out of human faces, might have a special spot in Hell’s plans.

Tristan couldn’t help but wonder, as he stared up at the macabre horned creature barring his exit, if he was screwed.

Izzy had sensed the demon early on, but had discounted how fast the sucker might be. This was no mere watcher facing Tris. Watchers and blockers would have been acceptable according to the unwritten rules. Both sides had them, in different forms. This looming hulk facing Tris, in addition to his stone textured minions that were dropping from the roof, was an uncustomary hindrance.

Did Hell assume it could get away with this kind of breach?

“Need help!” she shouted, looking up at the moon. “You angels need to cry foul.”

No return came from above.

“You have no place here,” she heard Tristan say to the thing barring his path.

As she slid the red-hot bolt out of its housing and flung the door open, Tristan added, “You’re messing with my time schedule.”

Whirling back to him, Izzy observed how the massive creature that was the poster boy for the cathedral’s ugliest monsters cocked its head in a scrape of stone on stone. It didn’t speak. Maybe it couldn’t.

“If you stand there, I suppose I win by right of rule breakage,” Tris said, his voice stronger than hers would have been in his place. Then again, Tris was right in theory. Notre Dame’s big beast was out of bounds.

“Be gone, demon.” Izzy moved to stand at Tristan’s side. She needed to hurry him toward the door.

With another scrape of stone, the massive monster eyed her with an immovable face and a pair of seemingly endless empty black sockets. A trill of discomfort streaked through Izzy, freezing cold and deadly serious. Her head snapped back from the force of the icy blow. Her internal flame sputtered before flickering back to full strength.

“Be gone, I say,” she repeated in a voice reserved for dealing with her kind.

Stepping in front of Tristan, she edged him past the beast. “He’s right,” she said to
Le Stryge.
“You have no business here. Souls are my territory.”

They were a couple feet from the door. Tossing the monster a warning glance, she waited until Tristan was through the opening before ducking in after him.

“What the hell was that?” Tristan asked as he raced down the stairs dimly lit by moonlight seeping through fissures in the cathedral’s walls.

“A mistake,” Izzy said.

“I didn’t think there could be any new mistakes after all this time.”

“Surprise.”

“You have to leave me now, Izzy, or there will be another mistake added to the list.”

Tristan had stopped on a landing to wait for her. Izzy held her breath when she faced him.

“Maybe I’ll make it this time,” he said. “But it can’t be with more of your help. You know that.”

“They started this mess, Tris.”

“Things are different this round. Can’t you feel that?”

“I do feel it.”

Why were things different? Izzy wondered. What had animated the vampire beast, as well as the others surrounding it, and why had the movement of such a famous monster been allowed in a game where the major players on the physical field were supposed to be Tristan and herself?

Had someone caught on, at last, to the fact that she and Tris were loath to leave each other, and stretching things out?

Was Hell going to break more rules to hurry things along?

“You’ll wait for me?” Tristan’s voice was the consistency of sifted gravel.

“I’ll die inch by inch until you return,” she replied.

“That one special person is out there, Izzy. I can feel that, too.”

“Good.” She didn’t mean it. Not for real. The thought of never seeing Tristan again was worse than anything the Underworld might throw at her.

If Tris felt that something was about to happen, maybe both sides were gearing up for a showdown tonight. Maybe Heaven had finally made its decision about Tris helping a woman who was not one of their own, and tonight would be the finale.

No!

“We won’t be together either way, eventually,” Tristan said solemnly, and she knew the thought pained him.

“I’ll miss you terribly tonight,” she said, holding back the part about finding a way to end her existence forever if he did move on to clouds that were forbidden territory for someone like her. What kind of life was there in a place like Hell?

“Is that all you have to say, Izzy?”

Tris was ticking off more of his precious minutes, already hating the thought of a separation. In that hesitation, Izzy knew that anyone looking on would know for certain that he had manipulated his destiny, and that he didn’t want this to be over any more than she did.

Tris didn’t want to leave her for God, glory, or white gossamer wings, because he truly loved her as much as she loved him. The idea of never seeing her again was, for Tris, impossible to bear. More impossible than the torture he endured on her behalf.

They were both caught up in this web of challenge, trauma and deceit. But she was responsible for putting him here in the first place.

Izzy didn’t utter the protest she wanted to make. Her cheeks began to flush. One of her hands, raised while she was speaking to Tristan, alternated in color between golden ivory and something far darker, in flickers of a slipping visage.

She had spent too much time inside the cathedral’s walls. Her disguise wouldn’t last much longer. Notre Dame’s ghosts were peeling her apart, bit by bit, to get at what lay beneath. She might have enough power left to get through this phase, but
please
, she inwardly pleaded,
don’t let Tris see what has happened to me.

Tristan was in front of her. He took her face in his hands, and looked into her eyes. He was frowning, and breathing hard. She saw the distress behind his gentle touch.

“Good-bye for now, lover,” he said. “Wish me luck.”

She said nothing, at a loss. When his mouth found hers, she didn’t try to control the flames that rose to meet his lips.

Though he sucked in a breath beneath the extremes of the heat beating at him, Tristan kissed her deeply. His tongue swept her mouth as if he’d lap up the final fiery barrier keeping them apart. His palms slid slowly to her jaw, to her neck, continuing downward to brush briefly, longingly, over her breasts.

Eyes closed, Izzy reveled in the sensations. Yet time was fleeting. Her disguise was originally conceived of a power that was supposed to help to keep Tris rooted to the roof, and keep him from leaving her to start his search for a replacement. But she had learned to manipulate that power in order for Tris to have a shot at achieving those golden wings.

She had downplayed her ability to intoxicate him each time they met. Her disguises now were meant to get her up the stairs, to Tris, by allowing her to pass unrecognized through the cathedral’s holy territory. Only that.

Their love was real. No spell. None of Hell’s doings. She did owe Tris the chance to be free, and if he wanted to take it, she would accept the result, somehow.

“It was you who saved me from this heinous game,” she whispered to him with her mouth on his. “I’d still be up there, in stone, if it wasn’t for you.”

When he ran his tongue over her mouth, Izzy swayed.

“You were slated for better things, Tris, while it’s obvious that I never was. I’ve sucked you into the vortex of my world. Why don’t you despise me?”

His answer was to kiss her again.

And though she had sealed her fate by becoming a Recruiter for the Dark Side, the kiss seemed an acknowledgment that Tris knew she had given in to the pull of the Underworld only so that no other creature from Hell’s freakish hordes could hold sway over him as long as she was alive.

Who could have foreseen that I’d never want to give you up?
Izzy thought as she gave in to the pleasure of having Tris’s body pressed to hers.
Or that time would pass like this, year after year?

“Go,” she said, forming the word against his blistered lips. “I’ve stashed clothes by the entrance. Go, Tris.”

“All right,” he said.

He’d know the threat couldn’t come from the gallery now, and that those awakened monsters, moving around where they didn’t belong, would wait for his return, just as she would. Tris would also realize that Hell had upped the ante tonight by animating
Le Stryge,
and that it was a true sign of trouble brewing.

But Notre Dame’s monsters couldn’t enter the cathedral to give chase. Evil intentions weren’t tolerated inside these walls. The horned creatures on the loose were reduced to creeping around the exterior like the dark plague they were until something stopped them or the sun rose. Right now, they were anxiously awaiting the results of Tristan’s annual journey. Izzy heard them scraping at the door, like dogs searching for a buried bone.

“I’ll be back,” Tris said, drawing back for a good sized breath of cooler air.

Izzy took a good look at the pale face that had reddened by touching hers. She gazed longingly into Tris’s dark eyes. “Go,” she repeated, managing to get that out over the lump in her throat. Demons didn’t cry, yet she was very close to letting tears fall.

With one more pass of his lips across hers, he turned. After a few steps, Tris turned back with a question. “Will you be all right, Izzy?”

“You can count on it,” she said, thinking him wonderfully naïve if he believed her.

*

Tristan couldn’t take his eyes from Izzy, and had to make himself leave her. He noted the changes taking place in her appearance, sensing that she couldn’t stay within these walls for more than a few more precious minutes, and that each of those minutes would hurt her more than she’d ever let on.

Forcefully, he took hold of his willpower. Nodding to her, he started down the steps. Horrors awaited them both. Izzy would go back to the gallery, to the monsters populating it, and he’d see what Paris looked like this time, in a world where things changed drastically from one waking dream to another.

There was no longer any concept of time’s passage, other than when he was with Izzy and wanting less of it.

He heard her sigh, and the slamming of a door. Then he was off and running, in search of air that didn’t contain the stink of magic, mildew, and monsters, but the new threat of something far more harrowing. For a few hours, he’d have another chance at life.

Taking up a dangerous pace, he barreled down the steps. His bare feet hardly made a sound. His eyes had adjusted to the dark. When he’d reach the bottom floor, he would find the main door locked. The routine was always the same from this point on. Notre Dame remained one constant, and he thanked the heavens for that small bit of luck. He was intimately familiar with his exit strategy.

Gliding down the last series of steps, Tristan found the cubby hole in an area marked off for preservation, and where Izzy had stored his clothes. Quickly, he unfolded the bundle and pulled a brown burlap robe over his head. He was to be a monk this time, with a rope for a belt.

He had to laugh. It was, after all, a rather aggressive sexual liaison in Paris’s holiest location that had bonded him with Izzy in the first place.

“Nothing remotely monk-like in behavior,” he said, looking over his shoulder, half expecting to see his sexy paramour there, smiling at the jest.

“No matter,” he said, crawling through a square hole in the wall, where he found a hint of clear air at last.

With careful preparation, he dropped soundlessly onto a section of marble floor on the floor below, and picked up a pair of well-used sandals. He reached for the knob of a surprisingly unceremonious door that would let him outside, and into a night filled with people, lights, and the pandemonium of a strange October celebration.

Leaving the door ajar behind him, Tristan took a deep breath, settled his robes, stuck his feet into the borrowed shoes, and exited the cathedral. After a brief glance around, he strode across the square, aware of many eyes, and more than a few shadows, following him.