Undead and Unworthy u-7 Page 10

  “And don't forget BabyJon is a constant reminder of her late ex-​husband's infidelity.”

  “ – and I respect that. But she still loves BabyJon, kind of, and she won't want him harmed. If we laid it out for her, told her he could either stay here and maybe get nibbled by Fiends, or stay with her and spit up on her Civil War bullet collection, you know which one she'd pick. But please don't tell her why BabyJon needs to stay. She'll just worry.”

  “I'll come up with something,” Laura promised at once. God, she was so low maintenance. When she wasn't in the grip of a simmering, murderous rage. “It wouldn't be such a big deal, but I think your mother is still taking your father's death kind of hard. Harder than – I mean, hard.”

  Laura had corrected herself because she'd been about to say “harder than you,” which was nothing but the truth. I'd been fairly indifferent about my dad in life and wasn't sure how I felt about him dying. It was even partly my fault he was dead and I wasn't sure how I felt.

  When I had died and come back as a vampire, he'd essentially told me to stay away. Seemed only fair that I return the favor... to seem like I didn't care if he was gone forever. But then, that sounded so cold and mean, I couldn't stand it. He was my father.

  “Which reminds me,” I sighed, slumping in my seat, “you won't even guess who's been hanging around.”

  “Umm... Detective Berry?”

  “Well, yeah, but also my stepmother... and your birth mother.”

  Laura had been polishing an apple on her immaculate buttercup yellow wool blazer, but stopped. “She's haunting you?”

  “Yeppers.”

  “What does she need you to do?”

  “That's the super fun part. She won't tell me.”

  Laura shook her head; gorgeous blond strands flew about her face and then settled perfectly. “That does it. I can no longer stay away from your house for more than a week. I miss too much!”

  “It's not always like this,” I sighed.

  “In fact, I'm going to stick to you like cow poop on a Furragrammo.”

  “It's Fair-​uh-​gahm-​oh... and don't even say it!” I begged, but it turned out she wasn't exaggerating.

  Chapter 35

  “I still don't understand why Midwestern Barbie is along for the ride,” Detective Nick whined as we pulled onto the highway.

  “One of the three of us in this horrid little car has my sister's best interests at heart. One of them isn't you,” Laura said sweetly, “and the other isn't her.”

  I forced a cough. “Any luck with that, um, errand Jessica asked you to run?” After some discussion, Tina, Sinclair, and I had agreed Jessica was the best person to ask Nick to keep an eye out for unusual murders.

  “You mean have your runaway pets mangled any citizens? Not that we can tell. Yet. And again, if I didn't make this clear: nice one, doorknob.”

  “I said I was sorry,” I grumped, slumping against the backseat. (Yes, he'd dumped me in the back – at least it was a plain car and not a cruiser.)

  “You stop picking on her,” Laura ordered. “She's doing the best she can. Although when she shuts out family members it only makes things – ”

  “I'm sitting right behind you. I can, sorry to say, hear everything. Where are we going, anyway?”

  “Got a tip that our bad guys might be meeting down here.”

  “Wait, 'bad guys' the Fiends? Or – ”

  “No, my bad guys, dummy. I hate to break this to you for the twentieth time, but it's not always about you, Betsy.”

  I disagreed, but let it pass. “And a fellow cop showing up isn't going to scare the alleged bad guys away?”

  “We think they're actually contracting out – giving the info to one of their perps, a guy (or gal) they can count on to pull the trigger. Do a few of those, and the triggerman disappears.”

  “So... wait. You think they aren't just killing bad guys, they're getting other bad guys to kill bad guys, and then killing those bad guys?” Laura sounded truly horrified, but I had to admit it was fiendishly logical.

  “Hey, I know it sounds bad, but our stats look great. Crime's down across the board almost eighteen percent.”

  “Nick Berry!”

  “I know, I know.” He slumped against the steering wheel. Luckily he'd gotten off the highway and we were at a red light. “We gotta put a stop to it. Tell me something I wasn't the first to figure out. Why do you think the chief's been riding my ass?”

  “The entire force should be out on this, not just you,” Laura continued, snug in her cocoon of moral superiority. “It dishonors all of you. Your chief should understand that.”

  “The last thing we need is the papers getting ahold of this tidbit. So it's on the down low for now.”

  “You worry too much about the papers. Also, nobody says down low anymore,” I announced.

  Nick sighed. “Bad enough you have to come along. Next time,” he said, catching my gaze in the rearview mirror, “Pollyanna stays home.”

  I shrugged. “See if you can make her.”

  We were in a fairly beat-​up Minneapolis neighborhood, one of those places that might have been pretty a few decades ago, but had suffered from a few too many absentee landlords, and not quite enough good jobs.

  Nick parked, and we all got out. The street was dimly lit, and clumps of teenagers and twenty-​somethings stood out like mushrooms sprouting on various corners. We got a few looks, but nobody came over – or appeared to recognize Nick as a cop.

  The storefronts were all empty, some with windows soaped over. The sidewalks were a mess; paper, beer bottles, and cigarette butts all over the place. If I hadn't been dead (or with the devil's daughter), I never would have gotten out of the car.

  At least it wasn't too cold out yet; it was nearly seventy degrees, not too shabby for nighttime in September. It was funny; I'd always had contempt for California and Florida transplants who bitched about how cold the weather got in my home state. Shoot, I used to wear shorts in February and sneer at the whiners.

  That was all over with, now. O, irony, you are a harsh mistress. I actually had a pair of gloves in my Burberry handbag... how was that for wimpy?

  “I've just got a tag number,” Nick was saying, “but I don't know if it ties in to – ”

  I didn't hear the rest, because I was distracted by rapidly approaching footfalls and turned just in time to get slammed off my feet. The chilly sidewalk rushed up to smack into my back, and I cracked my head hard enough to see black roses.

  Then someone with truly awful breath was yanking me off the ground by my purse strap, which, to my amazement, held. I had no idea if I was mad or glad. It had been a gift from Jessica. It was my only designer handbag. But then, if it had snapped free, I wouldn't have a stranger's hands around my neck right now. Decisions, decisions.

  “Leave her alone!” Laura shrieked, while around her, teens fled. “Let her down! Detective Berry! Do something!”

  “Freeze?” he suggested.

  Bad Breath Boy and I were spinning around on the sidewalk in a tight little dance, and the stench of fresh, drying, and old blood was making me nuts.

  “A Fiend,” I managed, trying to break his grip – he was much taller, much broader. “It's a Fiend, don't get too close.” Here? Now? What the fuck? Had they followed me from the house? Worse, had they followed Laura? That could be extremely awful.

  “I could shoot it, but might kill Betsy by mistake. Ah, well,” Nick said cheerfully, and I could hear him unsnap his holster. “A risk I'm willing – hey!”

  There was a blinding light, like someone was holding a bolt of lightning, and then the light swung through both of us. It didn't do a thing to me but make me blink furiously.

  But the effect was devastating on the Fiend, who didn't so much burst into flame as burst into ash. This was actually really weird for a vampire – unlike in the movies, where most vampires, when killed, just laid there, dead forever.

  Not this one; he was a puddle of ash inside filthy clothes. Oddly
, there was no smell, and no real flash of heat, just that blinding, gorgeous light. This made sense, as it wasn't real heat that had demolished the Fiend.

  I coughed explosively, spitting dead Fiend out of my mouth and wiping it out of my eyes.

  “Holy shit!” Nick said from the sidewalk where Laura had shoved him. “What the hell did you do?”

  “Hell being the right word,” I muttered, straightening out the kinks in my back, groaning and spitting. I was pretty sure Nick didn't know Laura was the spawn of Satan, so I kept the explanation brief, yet truthful. “That's her hellfire sword.”

  “You said that like 'that's her third cup of coffee.' ”

  “You know how some girls get pearls for their sweet sixteen? Laura's mom gave her weapons made of hellfire.”

  “You guys never tell me anything. I should have guessed your sister would be a freak like you,” he bitched, climbing to his feet – only to get kicked over on his back by Laura, who was still holding her sword made of light.

  “Now, Laura,” I started, trying to swallow my nervousness.

  “She was in trouble, and you just stood there,” my sweet, good-​natured, murderously dangerous sister hissed. “She might have been hurt or killed! Protect and serve, my ass!”

  Uh-​oh. She'd said ass instead of butt. Really mad, then.

  “That was a Fiend! She said that was a Fiend! You led us down here, and a Fiend jumped her! Did you plan it? Do you have something up your sleeve besides catching rogue cops?” She jammed her sword under his chin, and his eyes watered at the light. It was pure bluff; her sword only disrupted unnatural magic: vampires, werewolves, spells. And only when she wanted them to, which is why it didn't work on me.

  But Nick didn't know that.

  “Get that thing out of my face,” he snarled, not quite daring to bat it aside. “Think I would have brought a damn witness if I was trying to eighty-​six your sister? Or are you as dumb as you look?”

  “Stop it, that's enough, just – quit!” I gently pulled my sister away. “Laura, put that thing away before half the street sees it.”

  Laura sullenly complied, sheathing her sword into... well, nothing, as far as I could tell. Nobody knew where her weapons went when she wasn't wreaking havoc with them.

  “And you!” Nick, climbing to his feet, nearly fell over when I rounded on him. “She makes a good point, you know. A Fiend just happens to burst out of nowhere and try to kill me, and you just stand there?”

  “What the fuck do I know about killing vampires? My bullets won't kill you. I don't think.” The truth was, we didn't know. His bullets had killed a vampire... once. On my honeymoon, no less. “Why would they kill that thing? Do you think we have a police training course on arresting the undead? Do you think I've got Fiend Hunter tattooed on my forehead? ”

  “No, you've got Brutal Imbecile tattooed on your forehead,” Laura interrupted.

  “When I want your opinion, Barbie, I'll pull the string on your back.”

  “Give it a try,” she snarled. “See how many fingers you pull back.”

  “You wanna go, Barbie? Because we'll go.”

  “Shut up!” I howled. “I'm not a queen, I'm not a wife, I'm not a big sister, I'm a WWF referee! Sorry, Nick. This expedition is over. Everyone get in the car right now!”

  Meekly, they did. This was more like it – Eric and Tina never did a damned thing I asked them to. But first, Nick carefully eased my purse off my shoulder... I guessed he was going to try to get some fingerprints off it. We sure couldn't print the pile of ash on the sidewalk. I warned him not to use any of my credit cards and to leave the strawberry Blo-​Pops alone. Sometimes I went through a dozen a day. It helped keep the blood craving down.

  “Heir to the John Deere fortune, remember? I've got more money than you do, honey.”

  “Good. Then you can bring me to Wendy's,” I commanded, all queen-​like. “Being the victim of assault and battery gives me a craving for a chocolate shake.”

  Chapter 36

  “That is strange,” Sinclair admitted. After Wendy's, we'd ended up going back to the mansion and telling him and Tina what had happened. It was the first night of the full moon; Antonia was running around somewhere on all fours. Garrett had probably gone with her.

  Jessica was visiting Marc at his new digs at The Grand, and I hoped he'd be able to come home soon. Things weren't the same without him. Besides, people disappearing out of our house brought back bad memories of last summer, when I was all alone.

  Shoot, I even missed BabyJon's shitty diapers.

  “Which part is strange?” Nick said dryly, bringing me back to my consideration of Sinclair's comment. “The part about my receiving a call and being sent to a bad neighborhood on what might have been a phony tip? The part where a Fiend just happened to run into us? Or the part where your wife's sister pulled a fucking flame brand out of thin air and killed said Fiend, before threatening to do the same thing to me?”

  Hearing that Laura had threatened the officer didn't seem to perturb Sinclair one bit. “You say the chief is the one who gave you this assignment?”

  “Yeah. And don't go there, pal, he's a stand-​up guy.”

  “Oh, Nick.” I shook my head sorrowfully. “Nobody says 'don't go there' anymore. Seriously. I'm so embarrassed for you right now. More so than usual, even.”

  He ignored me. “The chief's a year away from forced retirement – it's no time for him to fuck up a perfect record. It'd be the closest thing to suicide – this guy's job means everything to him. That's why Chief Hamlin wants these rogue cops caught, but he doesn't want to trash the police department's rep at the same time. Hell, he's the one who figured out the pattern – and the killings have been going on less than a month.”

  “I would think the reputation of his house would be the least of his problems,” Tina ventured.

  “Yeah? Come on, they're still making jokes about the LAPD, and how many years ago was Rodney King?”

  “Some might say,” I said carefully, “that there've been one or two incidents in that department since the King videotape.”

  Laura beamed at me. “You're right, Betsy. Some police departments deserve the reputations they have.”

  I shrugged under Nick's withering stare. “I don't have a problem with cops,” I said apologetically. “But I've been known to channel Jessica's point of view, from time to time.”

  “Getting back to the issue at hand,” Sinclair suggested, “I wonder why this Fiend came alone. Did any of you get a look at which one it was?”

  “Skippy,” I said immediately.

  “Skippy?” Nick asked, incredulous. “Friggin' Frankenstein was named Skippy? He was almost seven feet tall!”

  I was embarrassed to hear the nickname repeated; what had at first sounded fun now seemed stupid, careless, and immature. Worse, nobody'd ever know the dead guy's real name now. The least I could have done when they came by was ask their real names. Mistake number 1,429 in what was turning into a shitty week.

  “I am in your debt, Ms. Goodman, for the assistance you rendered my wife.”

  Laura blushed to her eyebrows. “Oh, no, Eric, it's fine. We're family. I'm just happy I was there to help.” She sharpened her words by narrowing her eyes at Nick.

  “Hey, hey,” he protested. “The whole thing happened in about two seconds. I could have got a shot off, but I might have blown a hole in your pretty wife's head. I mean, I could have lived with it, but – ”

  Sinclair silenced him with a wave of his kingly hand, which I could tell irritated Nick to no end.

  “So what are you going to tell your boss? The chief?”

  “That I couldn't find the tag, but I'll go back and look again.”

  “Alone,” Sinclair said. We all noticed it wasn't a request. “You will go back and look again alone.”

  “You think I want those two PMS poster babies along for the ride? Ha!”

  “Then allow me to escort you out,” Tina said politely, getting up from the table.
<
br />   “I'll see my own damned self out. In fact, I'm gonna start hanging out at The Grand instead of this house of freaks.”

  “The door can stick a bit,” Tina yawned. “Make sure you pull it shut all the way behind you.”

  “Me-​yow,” I smirked as the door swung fully shut a few moments later.

  Tina's bored expression vanished, nearly startling me into a yelp. “Curious.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “What?” I resisted the urge to yank my hair out by the double handful. “Oh, God, what now?”

  “He insists the queen assist him in a delicate matter. He seems determined to put her in harm's way. He has made no secret of his contempt for and fear of her. And now, tonight – a Fiend happens to show up.”

  “You're not thinking – wait. What are you thinking?”

  “But Nick couldn't be the rogue killer,” Laura said – and thank goodness someone else was catching on. “He's the one killing all the bad guys, and he tells us all about it, and brings Betsy in to help him? You're saying it's an elaborate trap so he can kill her?”

  “No way.” I was shaking my head, though it did make a sneaky amount of sense. “He wouldn't dare.”

  “He does seem to dislike you a lot,” my sister said thoughtfully.

  “Yeah, but you guys are forgetting the Jessica factor. He wouldn't dare risk their relationship just to get me. I don't think he'd risk anything if it meant Jessica would toss him like hot vomit.”

  “An appealing image,” Tina said, stifling a giggle. “But I still suggest we take a closer look at the good detective. A pity the body was essentially vaporized; I would love to have gotten his fingerprints.”

  “Why?”

  “Knowing who they used to be would be helpful, I'm sure. If nothing else, Detective Nick could see if they had priors, when they were born – like that.”

  “Sorry,” Laura said. “That's the trouble when hellfire meets vampire. Poof!”

  “Yeah, it's cool, but then you've got dead vampire in your hair for hours. But Nick might have some luck with my purse. I'd better get that back from him, the crumb bum. Which reminds me, if the festivities are over for the night, I'm gonna shower.”