Undead and Unworthy u-7 Page 13

  Richard's body was beaten, but his eyes were still full of defiance and distrust. “I see your true colors. No peace, my queen.”

  “My true colors. My true colors!” I felt my fangs spring from my gums and resisted the urge to bite him on the face. I raised the stake and brought it down faster than he could possibly move...

  ... right into his throat.

  I don't know what made me miss his heart. Maybe it was poor aim – swinging a stake in lavender pumps is harder than it looks. Maybe the part of me that wanted him dead wasn't as strong as the part of me that just wanted him to shut the hell up.

  Pulling the bloody stake from his throat, I turned to the others, who were still (willingly) on their knees. His body made a soft thump on the plush carpet behind me. Yes, he'd be out of action for hours. “And now, what to do with you two,” I said grimly, hands on hips. Richard's black blood dripped slowly onto my – oh no! – Ann Taylor linen pants. I quickly rearranged the stake.

  “I, um, think we should let her go,” Stephanie managed with her head down.

  “Perhaps there can be... forgiveness,” Jane said, also not looking up.

  “Maybe,” I agreed. “I guess that'th up to each of you.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” This was no time to let the Fiends know that I lisped whenever my fangs came out. It wouldn't exactly strike terror in their heart of hearts.

  I could hear the squeal of brakes outside the windows, familiar voices, the front door opening, and pounding footfalls.

  “In the thort time we have left alone together,” I suggested, “you two thould probably do everything you can to look ath – as – unthreatening as you possibly can.” Thank God, my fangs were retracting. I was still pretty thirsty, but it would appear that the energy I'd gotten from my family, as well as from Richard, were keeping the worst of the pangs away. “Because if you think I'm bad? You should see my husband in action.”

  They swarmed into the room like a pack of wolverines. I relaxed, smiled at the first face I saw, and felt some of the fire leave my blood.

  “Don't you bitches touch – oh.” Antonia skidded to a halt, then nearly went sprawling, as Sinclair almost ran her down. “Oomph! Um, we're here to save you.”

  “Go save Nick,” I suggested. “He's in the bushes on this side of the house.”

  “You will pay for – oh,” Sinclair said, straightening as he took in the three prostrate forms around me. The others piled in behind him and did the same. “Hmm.”

  “Yeah, so, thanks for showing up, but I took care of things. Pretty much. Of course, in the last week you guys whittled down their numbers for me. That was,” I decided, “a big help.”

  Tina and Antonia each nodded. Garrett, hiding behind Antonia, swallowed with what looked like a mixture of relief and lingering fear. He tried a shy smile, and I smiled back.

  “Stake 'em all!” Nick hollered, limping through the doorway and waving his arms like the Winter Carnival grand marshal. “Betsy, too!”

  Jessica rushed to Nick, clearly relieved that he was unharmed (well, it was possible he had a sprained ankle, and that was a helluva scratch on his forehead... and he seemed to be favoring the ribs on his left side... ).

  “Agreed,” Sinclair said, sighing at the three Fiends. “Well, not agreed about my wife. But the others must die now. In fact, it is long overdue.”

  “As you wish.” Tina pulled out a thin mahogany stake from somewhere within her navy blue wool sweater and skirt set (truly frightening efficiency), and stepped forward.

  “Forget it!” I said, holding up my hands. “We are going to be magnanimous in victory.”

  “Magnanimous equals pussy,” Antonia commented.

  “Again?” Tina whined. “We're going to let them live again?”

  “Elizabeth, they are too dangerous to simply – ”

  “I didn't say we were going to set them free. They'll have to earn their freedom.” I turned to the three Fiends – well, okay, the two that were conscious. “You had a grievance with me. You should have stuck with me. Had all seven of you done that, seven of you might be alive now. I'd like it if you three, at least, stayed alive. It's up to you.”

  “What – ” Stephanie swallowed, then tried again. “What do we have to do?”

  “You guys can be the queen's personal bodyguards and doers of annoying chores. Or I can leave the room, right now, and my husband and friends will chat with you. A lot. Until you have cavernous facial wounds.” I tilted my head toward the exit and not coincidentally to the people who would stay behind. “Your choice.”

  “Pick the stake,” Nick suggested, wiping streaks of blood from his face. God, that made me even hungrier. And wouldn't he just shit? “You don't want to spend the next thousand years doing that twit's dirty work.” He turned to me. “You almost killed me, you numb fucking twat! Again!”

  “I did not! I saved you.”

  “You threw me out a fucking window!” Nick was actually going purple with rage.

  I tried to hide my amazement. Unlike occurs in the movies, Nick clearly hadn't suddenly forgiven me and been warmed by my selfless act. We weren't going to ride off into the sunset together (so to speak) and get Blizzards from Dairy Queen.

  Frankly, I didn't get it. In the movies, when the heroine did something heroic and cool, everybody loved her at the end. Okay, I didn't really expect life to be like the movies... uh. That was maybe a lie.

  “You are a menace, and if I could make it stick, I'd throw your ass in jail for the next hundred years.”

  “Nicholas J. Berry!” Jessica gasped. “What is the matter with you?”

  “With me? You should have seen this psycho bitch in action.”

  “That is enough,” she snarled, hands on scrawny hips. “When are you going to get it through your head that Betsy isn't the cause of all your problems?”

  I was frantically trying to signal to Jessica, making a slashing motion across my throat, the universal gesture for “shush!” Although it made me sad, I felt Nick's rage was a perfectly appropriate reaction to the evening's festivities. I appreciated Jessica sticking up for me – she always stuck up for me – but she didn't have all the facts.

  He had been attacked. Again. Violated by vampires... again. I was amazed he hadn't gone fetal in the hedges.

  “How many times do I have to say it,” Jessica was saying. “How many times do you have to see it? She's a good guy!”

  “No, Jess, it's okay, he – ”

  “She drinks blood, because she's dead,” he said, spitting on the floor – spitting blood, I might add, and I was ashamed, because my fangs were out again. I didn't dare speak anymore; I didn't want him to know I wanted to drink and drink and drink. “She's a killer, and you know it.”

  “I love her, she's the sister I never got, and you know that.”

  “Ah, perhaps we could, ah, step into another room and discuss, ah, the new terms for surrender,” Tina said, because even the Fiends looked uncomfortable to be witnessing the lovers' quarrel.

  “Or maybe you could talk about this later, when everybody's calmed down,” I tried.

  “Don't make me choose,” Jessica warned, ignoring us. For her, the only person in the room was Nick.

  “I'm not making you choose. I'm choosing. We're done.” He wiped his face again, and we all pretended not to notice how his hand shook and how he couldn't look at her.

  “That's right,” Jessica replied coolly. “We are.”

  And just like that – it was over. They were over. We could all practically hear the snap.

  Chapter 44

  Stephanie and Jane were sullen, but agreeable – apparently being the doers of the queen's scut work was more appealing than being staked.

  I gave them permission to live on Nostro's property (by vampire law, when you killed a vampire all his stuff came to you, so technically, it was my property), and they agreed to be at my beck and call, as it were.

  I'd probably put at least one of them to work in my n
ightclub, Scratch. Another vampire property that had come to me by law – long story. Actually, that wasn't true. I had killed another badass vampire, and her property went to me about the time her soul went shrieking into Hell.

  Unlike their lives before, the Fiends wouldn't just frolic in the moonlight like undead puppies, but they'd live and read and watch TV like real people... which should be fun, since for all I knew Jane and Stephanie had no idea what a TV was.

  They could feed on each other – if they were comfortable with that – or they could snack on bad guys. We would help them figure out who it was all right to bite and who was off-​limits. Yep, they could make new lives for themselves, be almost like normal people.

  Unless I needed them, of course. Then they'd come on the run, or I'd know the reason why. Shit, with all the bad guys popping out of the woodwork these days, I needed bodyguards.

  Of course, we weren't going to just leave them to their own devices... Sinclair and I would have to think about who could keep an eye on them, maybe even live in the McMansion with them. For now, they were cowed enough by recent events that I felt safe leaving them there for the next few nights.

  “That was pretty anticlimactic,” Antonia bitched on our way out.

  “What can I say? It can't be bloody revenge and near-​death experiences every day.”

  “You're about to have a near-​death experience,” Sinclair promised grimly as we climbed into his Lexus (I noticed Nick's truck was also there and deduced they'd grabbed it when they woke up at his house after I'd put the whammy on them). “Specifically, you will never, ever sucker punch me like that again and run off into mortal danger.”

  “I didn't do it on purpose.” Not quite a lie.

  “Irrelevant.”

  “I'm not getting laid tonight, am I?”

  “Probably not.”

  I batted my eyes. “What if I let you punish me?”

  He paused, and his step actually faltered; I imagine he was thinking about my drawer full of scarves and our four-​poster bed. Then he straightened up and went back to being Sir Pissypants. “Do not change the subject. You must promise to never, ever – ”

  “I won't!” Strangely, I felt my blood start to heat up again. And I won't do that again, either. At least not right now. Who knew if my friends could take it again? Besides, I really had no right to their – their life essence, maybe? Whatever it was that I could feed on without touching them. It wasn't mine. And I wasn't a thief.

  With that in mind, I struggled to hold my temper, something I wasn't especially good at. “Sinclair, enough with the promises to stay safe and hidden from the world. It didn't suit me when I was alive, and I certainly can't comply now.”

  “I will not tolerate – ”

  “Are you listening, schmuck? You almost died this summer. Had I acted then like you wanted me to act this time, what would have happened? You'd be a pile of fucking ash, and you'd still be full of shit!”

  “Aw, that's romantic,” Antonia piped up.

  “Damn right it is.” I turned back to my idiot husband. “I love your arrogant ass, numbnuts, and I'm not going through something like this summer ever again. Besides, there are going to be times when we'll have to deal with problems alone... I mean, jeez. If I can figure that out, you can, too. You're just going to have to get used to the idea.”

  He sighed, and I could tell he wanted to smile at me but was forcing himself to remain stone-​faced. The better to intimidate you with, my dear. Too bad it didn't work on me. Never had. “I love your arrogant ass as well, my own, but I meant every word I said, and you will mind me, Elizabeth. In this one thing, you will mind me.”

  “Fuck you, lover. I'm the queen, and I'll do as I please.”

  “I am the husband, and you will do as you're told.”

  “Hi, I'm Betsy. Nice to meet you.”

  “Do not sass me.”

  “Do not piss me off.”

  He stomped his foot. Actually stomped it (clad in a Kenneth Cole loafer), like a kid having a tantrum. I managed not to laugh. Just barely. “This argument is over!”

  I stomped my heel, nearly staggering – damned vampire strength! If I ruined these pumps I'd never forgive myself. “You're fucking right it is. Go suck on a turnip.”

  Chapter 45

  We got out of the car, still not talking to each other. Even more awkward, Jessica and Nick had tagged along in his truck – I would have thought he'd had enough of me for a lifetime, but there wasn't room in Sinclair's SUV for me, Sinclair, Antonia, Garrett, and Jessica. Is there anything worse than being trapped in a car immediately after you've just broken up with your boyfriend? Eeesh.

  Worst of all, the Ant was waiting for me on the porch, knockoff-​clad toe tapping impatiently. “It's not over yet,” she warned.

  “Tell me about it,” I snarled. “It'll never be over, until you cough up why you're sticking around.” I walked through her, shivering (it was like walking through a curtain of freezing water) and opened our front door. “Why can't you go to hell like any other – ”

  Suddenly I was shoved so hard, I smacked into the wall and fell down. The impact forced a shower of plaster to rain down on me. There was the deafening boom of a pistol being fired several times over my head. We were trapped in the doorway like ants in a straw – nobody had any room.

  “That girl,” a new voice said, “had amazing reflexes. I haven't missed a shot in forty-​six years.”

  “Chief Hamlin?” Nick asked, horrified.

  I slowly sat up. The Minneapolis police chief, less than a year from retirement, was standing at the end of the foyer, smoke curling up from the barrel of his pistol. He was a tall, gray-​haired man in a neat dark blue suit, with wrinkles cutting deeply into his face, kind blue eyes, and a smoking gun.

  “My father told me about you over three weeks ago,” he said to (ulp) me. “How you left him for dead on that God-​awful farm.”

  “Wh-​what are you – ?”

  “I was just a boy when he disappeared – and died the first time, best I can tell. By the time he came back years later – last month, in fact – I was a police chief.”

  “But I don't understand why you – ”

  He was staring at me with exhausted eyes. “You were all he could think of. He was the gentlest man I'd ever known, and all he could think of was hurting people. Hurting you.”

  “So you set him to work,” Nick said shakily. “You sicced him on perps we couldn't put away. Pretended to figure out the pattern – which I bought, because you've got a great rep as a detective. Gave your dad cold guns, so we wouldn't think it was a vampire.”

  “But these guys had a caretaker at the farm/mansion place.” I was having a terrible time puzzling this out. “She never noticed your dad kept slipping off the property?”

  “Silly boy. They killed her a month ago.”

  That explained why Tina and Sinclair couldn't puzzle out Alice's remains. They hadn't been fresh. And it was entirely possible they had known and kept the info to themselves. It would be typical behavior. I bit the inside of my cheeks, so I wouldn't start shrieking at them.

  Secrets, secrets. Cripes. My life was stuffed with them.

  “Jeez, jeez,” Nick was saying, his hand on his hip. I could see his fingers wanted to pluck at a gun he wasn't wearing. “Your only mistake was sending him to me when you gave me the fake tags to check.”

  Chief Hamlin shook his head. “I didn't send him. He had been following your Betsy. And when he saw her on the street – ”

  “He snapped, and – ” I almost said, “My sister killed him,” but rapidly rephrased. I didn't want any of this fallout to poison Laura's life. “I killed him. But you didn't count on Nick getting his fingerprints off my purse strap. Once he had that info, it wouldn't have taken long until he knocked on your door.”

  The chief's lip trembled. “He was my father. He would not have hurt me.”

  I shook my head. “Oh, man, you're so wrong. Like, the earth is flat kind of wrong. I do
n't even know how to explain it to you. You don't understand what he had become.”

  “He was my father,” the chief repeated. It was clear he was trying to convince himself, more than anyone else. “Back – miraculously – from the dead. And only I could help him.” He shuddered at whatever memories of his father he had and looked past my shoulder. “A shame about your friend. I've never seen anyone move that fast in my life.”

  I didn't dare turn to find out whom he was talking about. “She'll be okay,” I said bravely, hoping that was true. “And you won't get a second chance.”

  “No,” he said politely. “She won't be okay. I used twenty-​two longs, you see. But you're right about me. I won't get a second chance. I have only the one gun, you see – and by my count, one bullet left. I figured I'd never get the chance to reload, given the size of your entourage.” He looked down at his gun. “I wish I had hit you and finished what my father started. I'll have to settle for hurting you. I hope your friend was important to you. Very, very important.”

  I still refused to turn around. Tears began to well in my eyes. “You're going to regret what you've done, asshole.”

  “No, I'm not. I have no intention of letting you turn me into what my father was.”

  Then he tucked the barrel under his chin and pulled the trigger.

  Nobody tried to stop him. In fact, before his body hit the floor, I was already turning to find out who had taken the bullets meant for me.

  Chapter 46

  I first realized who it was when I saw the cascade of black waves blowing in the chill Minnesota wind – our front door was still open. The body lying face-​down beneath that hair did not move.

  Tina was lifting one pale hand, checking for a pulse. Garrett was holding the other.

  “Why isn't she getting up?” I asked, rushing to Tina's side. “What kind of bullets were these? Were they silver?”

  “They didn't have to be silver,” Tina guessed as she examined Antonia's body. She knew more about guns than anyone I'd ever met. “Twenty-​two longs, as he said, quite perfect for the job. They ricocheted around her skull but didn't exit. That particular ammunition lowers the innocent bystander rate. He may have expected civilians – or perhaps Detective Berry – to be near you when he shot you.”