Microsoft Word - The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance.doc (68 page)

“Christie.” Just her name, but it held a wealth of emotion.

“Erik! How did you find me?”

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“Your blood,” he murmured, his dark gaze searching her

face. “It led me to you.”

“I didn’t think you ever left the opera house.”

“I would risk anything to see you again.”

“I missed you too,” she said and, taking him by the hand.

She drew him into the house and shut the door. “I tried to find

you.”

“I know.”

“Why did you hide from me?”

He shrugged; an elegant shifting of one shoulder. “I thought it best to let you go, but I realized my life has no meaning without you. And so I came here, to ask you to be my Christine for always. Will you share my love, Christie, be part of my life?”

She knew what he was asking. Being a vampire  had once seemed repulsive; now it would open the door to an eternity with the man she loved.

With a nod, she went into his embrace. No words were necessary. Gazing up into his dark eyes, she canted her head to the side, granting him access to her throat.

Murmuring her name, the Phantom enfolded his Christine in his arms and, with one sweet kiss, he joined their lives together, forever.

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The D ay of the

D ead

Karen Chance

“
 
I

’m looking for my brother,” the girl repeated, for

the third time. Her accent was terrible, New Jersey  meets Mexico City, making her difficult to understand, but  Tomas doubted that that was the problem. The largely male  crowd in the small cantina weren’t interested in the
 
gaba
 
with  the sob story, even one who was tall and slim, with slanting  hazel eyes and long black hair.

Japanese ancestry, Tomas decided, or maybe Korean. There might be some Italian too, based on the slight wave in her hair and the Roman nose, which was a little too prominent for her slender face. She was arresting, rather than pretty, the kind of woman you’d remember, although her outfit would probably have ensured that anyway. He approved of the light cargo pants and the short leather jacket. But the shotgun she wore on a strap slung over her shoulder and the handgun at her waist took away from the effect.

“He’s nineteen,” she continued stubbornly. “Black hair,

brown eyes, six foot two  ”–

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The bartender suddenly snapped to attention, but he wasn’t looking at her. His hand slid under the counter to rest on the shotgun he kept there. Tomas hadn’t seen it, but he’d smelled the old gun oil and faint powder traces as soon as he’d walked in. But the man who slammed in through the door was merely human.

“
Hijole
 
, Alcazar!” the bartender shouted, as the room  exploded in yells of abuse. “What do you mean, bursting in here  like that? Do you want to get shot?”

The man shook his head, looking faintly green under the cantina’s bare bulbs. “I thought I heard something behind me,” he said shakily, joining a few friends at an already overcrowded table. “On the way back from the cemetery.”

“You shouldn’t have been there so late,” one of his friends

reproached, sliding him a drink. “Not tonight.”

“I lost track of time. I was visiting Elia’s grave and ”–

“
¡Aguas!
 
You will do your daughter no good by joining

her!”

There was frightened muttering for a moment, and several patrons stopped fingering their weapons to actually draw them.  Tomas had the distinct impression that the next time the door opened, whoever stood there was likely to get shot. Tension was running far too high for good sense.

Then the bartender suddenly let out a laugh, and slid another round onto the men’s table. “I wouldn’t worry,” he said heartily.  “From what I hear, even your Consuela doesn’t  want you. Why would  the monsters?”

The room erupted into relieved laughter as the man, his fright forgotten, stood up to angrily defend his manhood. “She

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ran off with some wealthy bastard,” he said, shooting Tomas an

evil look.

Tomas calmly sipped mescal out of a reused Coca-Cola bottle and didn’t respond. But he wished for about the hundredth time that he’d given a little more thought to blending in. His reflection in the chipped mirror behind the bar, while not Anglo, stood out as much as the girl’s. The high cheekbones and straight black hair of his Incan mother had mixed with the golden skin and European features of his Spanish father, resulting in a combination that many people seemed to find attractive. He’d always found it an inconvenient reminder of the domination of  one half of his ancestry by the other: the conquest of a continent written on his face.

He couldn’t honestly blame the locals for mistaking him for a wealthy city dweller, despite the fact that he’d been born into a village even poorer than this one and was currently completely broke. He’d picked up his outfit, a dark blue suit and pale grey tie, at an airport shop at JFK. He’d needed a disguise, and the suit, along with a leather briefcase and a quick session with a pocket knife in front of a men’s room mirror, had changed him from a laid-back college student with a ponytail to a 30-something businessman in a hurry.

He’d eluded his pursuers, but with no money he’d been forced to use a highly illegal suggestion on the clerk. Since then, he’d lost track of  how many times he’d done something similar, using his abilities to fog the minds of airline employees, customs agents and the taxi driver who had conveyed him 100 miles to this tiny village clinging to the side of a mountain.  Every incident had been a serious infraction of the law, but what did that matter? If  any of his kind caught up with him, he was dead anyway. He just wished he’d thought to find something else to wear after landing in Guadalajara. There weren’t a lot of locals in 1,200-dollar suits.

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Tomas couldn’t see the outfit that made him stand out like a

sore thumb, because an altar to the souls of the dead had been  placed in front of the mirror. Hand carved wooden skeletons in a  variety of poses sat haphazardly on the multi-tiered edifice, each

representing one of the bartender’s family members who was  gone but not forgotten. One hairless skull seemed to grin at him;  its tiny hand wrapped around an even tinier bottle of Dos Equis

–  presumably the man’s favourite drink. A regular-sized bottle  stood  nearby, a special treat for the spirit that would come to  visit this night. It was El Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the  Dead.

A particularly fitting time, Tomas thought, for a vampire to

return home.

At least resentment of the city slicker gave the mensomething to talk about other than their fear. They didn’t relax, being too busy shooting suspicious glances his way, but most of them let go of their weapons. Which is why everyone jumped when a shot exploded against the cracked plaster ceiling.

It was  the girl, standing in the middle of the cantina, gun in hand, ignoring the dozen barrels suddenly focused on her head.  “My brother,” she repeated, pointing the gun at the bartender, who had lost his forced joviality. “Where is he?”

“Put your weapon down,
 
señorita
. You  have no enemies  here,” he said, eyeing her with understandable concern. “And I  told you already. No one has seen him.”

“His car is parked in the cemetery. The rental papers have  his name on them. And the front seat has his handprint  –  in  blood.”

She threw the papers on the bar, but neither they nor her speech seemed to impress the bartender. “Perhaps, but as I told

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you, this is a small town. If he had been here, someone would

know.”

The glasses on the shelf behind him suddenly exploded, oneby one, like a line of firecrackers. The gun remained in the girl’s hand, but she hadn’t used it. Tomas slowly set his drink back down.

“Someone here does know. And that someone had better tell

me. Now.” Her eyes took in the bar, where most of the men’s  weapons were still pointed at her. That fact didn’t seem to worry  her nearly as much as it should have.

“I saw a stranger.” The voice piped up from a table near the  door, and a short, stocky man, dressed in the local farmer’s  uniform of faded jeans, cotton work shirt and straw hat, stood  up. “He was taking photographs of the cemetery, out by the  graves.”

“He’s a reporter,” the girl agreed. “He was doing a story on

. . . something . . . but said he’d meet me here.”

“I told him to go away,” the man said. “This is a day for the

dead and their families. We didn’t want him there.”

“But he didn’t leave. His car is still there!”

The man shrugged and sat back down. “He said he was going to photograph the church, and I saw him walking towards town. That’s all I  know.”

“The church is the white building I saw driving in?”

“Yes.” The bartender spoke before the man could. “I can  show you, if you like.” He motioned for the boy who’d been  running in and out all night from the back, clearing off tables  and wiping down  the bar. “Paolo can take over for me here.”

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“You’re going out?”

“But it’s almost dark!”

“Are you mad?”

The voices spoke up from all directions, but the bartender shrugged them off. He brought out the shotgun and patted fondly. “
Ocho ochenta
.  It’s only  a short way. And no one should go anywhere alone tonight.”

The murmuring didn’t die down, but no one attempted to stop him. Tomas watched them leave, the bartender solicitously opening the door for the girl. His broad smile never wavered, and something about it made Tomas’ instincts itch. He gave them a couple of minutes, then slid off his stool and followed.

There was little light, with the sky already dark overhead, the last orange-red rays of the sun boiling away to the west. But his eyes worked better  in the dark and, in any case, he could have found his way blindfolded. The village looked much the same as it had for the last three millennia. Many of its people could trace their ancestry back to the days when the Mayan  Empire sent tax collectors here,  to reap the benefits of the same plots these farmers still worked. The 500-year-old village where he’d grown up in what was now Peru seemed a young upstart by comparison. It was gone now, bulldozed to make way for a housing development on the rapidly expanding outskirts of  Cuzco.   But although he hadn’t been back here in almost a century, nothing seemed to have changed.

A trail of bright yellow petals led the way to a small church with crumbling stone steps overlooking the jungle that floated like green clouds against the mountains of the Oaxaca. The church was still draped with the
 
flor de muertos
, garlands of marigolds, from the morning service. He went in to find the same old wooden crucifix on the alter, surrounded by flickering

573

votive candles and facing rows of empty pews. He edged around  it and paused by the back door, where the sweet, pungent smell  of incense mingled with the damp, musty odour of the jungle.  Beyond it, out in the twilight, he caught a whiff of the girl’s  perfume.

The church faced the  red earth of the town’s only street, but behind it the jungle washed up almost to the steps, except for the area where a small cemetery spilled down the hillside. It had never been moved despite each summer storm threatening to wash the bodies out of their shallow graves and into the valley below. Tomas picked his way down a marigold-strewn path to the cemetery gate, pausing beside a statue of La Calaca. The skeleton lady was holding a placard with her usual warning.  ‘TODAY ME, TOMORROW YOU’. In many such  villages, families stayed all night at the graves of their dead, waiting to welcome the spirits that returned to partake of their offerings.  But not in this one. Only four people stood among the flower-decked crosses and scattered graves, and only two of them were alive.

There was little light left, other than a few burning votives here and there, shining among the graves. But Tomas didn’t need it to recognize the new additions. The wind was blowing towards him and it carried their scents clearly: Rico and  Miguel, two thugs in the employ of the monster he’d travelled 1,000 miles to kill.