Undead and Unappreciated (12 page)

“C
heaters!” I cried.

“We were so happy to make your sister’s acquaintance.”

“I’ll bet, ya big cheater.”

“Eric canceled our meeting,” she said, “and I had a free evening, so I thought I’d come and see you.”

“Well, next time, call first.”

“I got that,” she said.

“It was almost too good to be true,” Asshole said. “It’s so rare to find a vampire with any living relatives. And to have one walk into our hands…”

“Right! Rare. Don’t you guys think that’s weird? I mean, look how young she is. She’s not my great-great-granddaughter, she’s my kid sister. Doesn’t that tell you something about me? Like maybe you shouldn’t be messing with me?”

“I figure they don’t like their working conditions,” Laura said helpfully, still clutching the vampire’s hand. “But this seems kind of extreme.”

“Maybe your
mother
could help us out,” I said, then waited. We all waited. Laura looked puzzled—or maybe she was rolling her eyes, I couldn’t tell. “You know, your
mother
could show up and, you know, give us a hand.”

Nothing. Humph! Typical. The devil: never around when you needed her.

“Look, you don’t want to do this,” I told Klaus and the cow at the bar and Tommy Hilfiger. “You really don’t.”

“I think she’s right,” Laura said, practically up on her toes. “I think you should try a walkout first. I think hostage-taking should be a second resort. Maybe third.”

The vampire jerked her head, and she cried out.

I rubbed my eyes. I had to admit, I hadn’t foreseen this.

What should I do? What if I lied and told them they could have their sheep and their homicide and their kill-one-get-one-free Thursdays, got Laura out of danger, then reneged? Could a queen go back on her word? The other vampires might lose respect for me…well, more respect.

“Before we get into this any further, I just want to clarify: What exactly do you guys think happened to Nostro and Monique?”

“The king helped you.”

“Okay. And, just for the record, do you see the king around anywhere right now?”

Klaus hesitated. “No.”

“I better leave one of you alive, then. I’m getting really tired of this ‘Sinclair must have helped her’ bullshit. If one of you spreads the word about me, that would really help me out.”

“Ouch! That
really
hurts,” Laura said to the vampire fisting her hair. “Will you please let go?”

“Shut up, sheep.”

“Are you particularly attached to this man?” Laura asked me.

“I’ve never even
met
him.”

“Oh, okay. I really, really hope this doesn’t give you the wrong impression.”

“Wh—” was as far as I got before a shaft of reddish gold light burst from the vampire’s stomach, and he evaporated. Or vaporized. Or something—he didn’t even have time to scream, it was that fast.

I
screamed. Not very monarchlike, it’s true. But I couldn’t help it. See, in real life, vampires didn’t disappear when they were killed. They didn’t collapse into a dramatic dust pile or burst into flames, short of direct exposure to sunlight. They didn’t even die when you poked them in the gut.

You stuck a stake in their chests and/or cut their heads off, and they died forever. They didn’t get back up. Well, I did that one time, but that was a special case.

But other than sunlight cases, there was always a body, no matter what you did.

Laura was standing by herself, patting her hair down with her right hand and holding a—I guess it was sword of sorts—in her left. Proof! Proof she was hell spawned…she was a lefty!

“Sorry about that,” she said. “But I just couldn’t stand to have his hands on me another second. Yuck.”

“What is
that
?” I gasped.

She glanced at the flame-colored sword. It glowed with such heat, it was actually a little hard to look at. “Oh, this?” she asked, like I was asking her about a new bracelet. “Well. I can forge weapons from hellfire.”

“And you can
kill
people with that?”

“Not people,” she said helpfully. “I’ll be glad to fill you in later.”

“This—ah—this changes—changes nothing,” Klaus said, looking like he was trying not to barf. I knew the feeling. “We still—we still—ah—demand—demand—”

“You have to get close with that,” Tommy Hilfiger said. “You can’t get us all in arrgghh!” He said “arrgghh” because, quick as thought, Laura’s sword changed to a crossbow, and she shot Tommy from across the room. He vanished in a puff of light, just like the other one.

She lowered the crossbow to her side and looked modest. Which she actually pulled off. She was so beautiful, she looked like a fairy-tale princess. With a weapon of mass vampire destruction.

“Ha-
ha
!” I crowed. “How about that, Klaus the mouse? Hah? Hah?”

“Wait a minute.” I turned to Laura. “You know we’re all vampires?”

“Sure.”

“And you were going to tell me when?”

“I was waiting for you to tell
me,
” she said, having the nerve to sound offended.

“But how did you
know
?”

“Sometimes I just…figure things out. I guess I get that from my mother.” She looked disgusted, like having anything in common with her mother was a revolting thought.

“Your mother.”

More disgust. “The devil.”

“You know. Your mom. Is the devil.”

“Her mom is the devil?” the lady at the bar asked in a hushed voice.

“And you let me take you to the Ant’s baby shower and never said anything? And brought her a present? And had
two
slices of carrot cake? And
talked
to her?” I was trying to figure out which was more annoying: yet another vampire coup or Laura keeping her mouth shut all this time.

“Well,
you
never told me you were the queen of the vampires,” she said hotly.

“That’s totally a different thing!” I cried.

“I wanted to get a chance to meet the woman who carried me for nine months.”

“And then
dumped
you at a hospital.”

“Yes, but when you compare that to, you know, being Satan, it doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, it’s downright friendly.”

She had me on that one. “Laura, don’t you get what this means? Your
mom
is
Satan
!”

“Of course I get what it means. Besides, I don’t think your parents define who you are,” she reasoned.

I opened my mouth to yell some more, only to get cut off. “Excuse me,” Klaus said, sounding peeved, “but you have other business to attend to right now.”

“It’s not more interesting than this, pal,” I said. “Vampires being sneaky and up to no good is so
not
anything new.”

“She’s too dangerous,” the woman at the bar said, “to live another five minutes.”

“Which one of us is she talking about?”

“Does it matter?” Laura asked.

Klaus said something in rapid French—I think it was French. The door to the back room opened, as did the front door, and all kinds of waitresses and bartenders and bouncers started streaming in. They were all pale and twitchy and pissed-off.

“As far as plans go, it’s not the worst one I’ve ever seen,” Laura said. “But you’ll die if you all try to jump us at once.”

“You got what he said?”

“Oh, I’m really good at languages.”

“Which ones?” I asked, curious.

“All of them.”

Of course. “Look, she’s right. Can’t we sit down and discuss this like civilized dead people and hell spawn?”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“I’m sorry! Just please don’t shoot me or stab me.”

Laura looked mildly crushed. “I wouldn’t do that, Betsy.”

“Sorry again.”

“You can’t—” Klaus said, and then lunged at me. Aha! The old ‘keep a placid look on your face and talk normally and then jump them’ trick. Unfortunately, it totally worked; he bowled right into me, and we went sprawling backward, knocking a table aside. Several vampires, I was sorry to see, leapt onto us to help.

“Nothing—is—more—important—than—this!” Klaus shouted, punctuating each word by smacking my head onto the floor. It was fairly easy for him because he had both hands around my throat. The guy was quick
and
strong; he had a grip like an angry anaconda.

“Au contraire,”
I gurgled, and then I couldn’t say anything at all. What was he doing, strangling a dead girl? That couldn’t really hurt me; it was mostly just annoying.
Must be plenty pissed,
I thought.

I was digging my fingers into his hands to pry them off, but his grip never loosened, and the flesh was just peeling away in strips. Blurgh! Death loomed (again),
and
I was grossed out. It was the worst week ever. Again.

“N
ot like this!” a vampire I didn’t know was shouting into Klaus’s ear. “We can’t attack the queen! We all agreed not to attack the queen!”

Yeah, I wanted to shout, but couldn’t say a word. I just made an agreeable sort of peep while I clawed at his hands some more.

“She’s not the queen,” he muttered and jerked one of his elbows back, straight into Sane and Helpful Vampire’s throat. It didn’t appear to hurt the guy, but it knocked him back. Even better, it caused Klaus’s grip to loosen. I managed to get my hands up between his and shoved and kicked at the same time. He didn’t get off me, but his grip fell away.

“It’s times like this when I like to say a prayer,” I said, still kicking and clawing for all I was worth, trying to get out from under him. It was the Homecoming Dance all over again! “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. Also, God is great, God is good, let us thank him for this food. Also, Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Since Klaus was now screaming and clutching his ears, when I kicked him again, he finally flew off me. I rose up on my elbows and finished triumphantly, “And
God bless this mess
!”

I was fresh out of Bible verses, but the damage had been done. Sane and Helpful Vampire had already flung the door open and was frantically gesturing for the others to follow him. Some did—I’d worry about them later—but a distressing number stayed. Including Klaus, who had backed all the way up to the bar, his face twisted with hate and fear, his hands still clamped over his ears.

Laura was coughing a little and waving her hand in front of her face, and I saw that the half dozen or so vampires that had been around her were now—gone. Vaporized. All but the last one. Laura’s crossbow was a sword again, and she blocked a fist with her forearm, then stuck the woman (formerly “the woman at the bar”) right in the chest. Bye-bye, annoying barfly.

“Ha-
ha!
” I crowed, pointing. “How about that? Hah?
Hah?
Didn’t figure on her being hell sp—I mean, the devil’s daughter when you grabbed her, didja?” Another vampire had me by the hair and was yanking me backward, but I didn’t care.
“Didja?”
I was practically delirious with triumph.

“Betsy—” was as far as my wonderful, supertalented, too-cool sister got before she had her hands full again. I noticed that in addition to the kickass hellfire weapons, she was a pretty fair hand-to-hand fighter. Sometime in the last few years while she was finishing Bible school and volunteering for church bake sales, she’d picked up a black belt or two along the way. Now if I could just get her to wear some decent clothes…

“Don’t worry about me,” I called, though my skull was throbbing like a rotten tooth. “Everything’s under contr—yeeouch!”

“Shut up, bitch,” someone growled.

“Oh,
you
shut up,” I snapped back. “Do you have any idea how often this happens to me? It’s almost boring.” And terrifying. But mostly boring.

Two more—not that there were that many left, thanks to Laura and their cowardice—came straight at me, and I heard the ominous sound of a chair leg being snapped off. The other one had me in a firm grip, his arm across my throat, his other hand still in my hair. Holding me nice and still. Well, the joke was on him! Stakes in the chest didn’t work on me, so there. Of course, it was going to hurt like hell, and ruin my shirt, and if they decided to give 110 percent and cut my head off after, that could pose difficulties. I could buy a new shirt, but I kind of needed the head I had.

I opened my mouth to torture them with more psalms, when Laura got to the one on the right—stab, poof! It was amazing. I could never describe how cool it was, not in a thousand pages. She looked like an avenging angel with her shiny hair and demure bangs, her nondescript clothing, and the sword that actually hurt to look at, held so comfortably in her fist.

The vampire on the left was suddenly yanked out of sight, and there was a sickening crunch as he hit the wall. Courtesy of—I nearly gasped—Eric Sinclair. He’d come out of nowhere—probably pushing his way past the stream of frantically exiting vampires—and just grabbed the nearest one and shoved. The vampire bounced off the wall and hit the floor, and I could see where his entire face had actually been pushed in by the force of smacking into the concrete. The worst part of it was, it hadn’t killed him. He moved feebly on the floor like a stunned beetle, trying to grow his nose back.

“Oh, guh-
ross
!” I screamed.

“Wow,” Laura goggled.

“Take your hands off her,” Sinclair told the guy behind me, “or they’ll write books about what I’ll do to you.”

The vampire let go of me so quick, he yanked out a handful of my hair. I yelped and shook free of him.

Suddenly, surprisingly, it was just the three of us in Scratch—two vampires had picked up the guy who needed a new face, and they scrammed.

Oh, wait—four. Klaus was in the corner, showing his teeth like one of those little ratty dogs that liked to challenge everyone from the mailman to the preschooler.

Sinclair turned to him, but I held up a hand. “Tut, tut, my good man. I’ll take care of this. Strike on
me,
will you? Form a union in
my
club, willya?”

“For shame,” Laura added.

“Shut up, devil’s whore,” Klaus spat.

“Don’t you call her that!” I said, shocked. “She’s the farthest thing from a whore in the whole world. You’re just mad because death is imminent.”

He snarled at me. It would have been scarier if Eric hadn’t been right at my elbow. “This isn’t over yet,
Betsy
.”

“Excellent,” I said. “I would also have accepted ‘You haven’t seen the last of me’ and ‘You’ll regret this.’” Then I picked up the discarded chair leg and ran it into his chest. (You’d think, since it was a vampire bar, they’d have metal chairs.) Sayonara, Slight Overbite.

Unlike Laura’s more dramatic death-dealing, he just toppled over, which forced the stake farther into his body (ugh), and lay there like a big old dead bug.

Now that
that
was over with, I had several impulses. I picked one and rushed to Laura and hugged her. “Wow, Laura, you were amazing! I’m so sorry I got you into such a mess, but wow! How cool were you?”

“I hope you don’t think I’m a bad person,” she explained. “Violence isn’t usually the answer. But they didn’t seem amenable to listening to reason, and I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

“You didn’t want
me
to get hurt? Laura, you’re amazing! How did you do that? How come it’s a sword sometimes and a bow some other times? Can it do anything else? Did your mother give it to you?”

She laughed and twirled the sword in a small circle so the hilt was in her palm and not her fist, then sheathed it at her right hip—except she wasn’t wearing a sheath. The sword just disappeared. Except I had the distinct impression it was still there.

Waiting.

I turned to Sinclair. “And you! Not that I’m not glad to see you, but—”

“Elizabeth!” I eeped and nearly cowered away from him; I’d never seen him so furious. His dark eyes were slits, and even his hair looked angry—it was messy and I squished the urge to straighten it with my fingers. His white shirt was open at the throat, and he was sockless and coatless. He’d come in a hurry. “What were you thinking, instigating a brawl with two dozen vampires?”

“I didn’t start it,” I said, shocked. He was holding my shoulders, and his fingers were actually biting into me. “I told them they couldn’t kill people, and then they went on strike! Which isn’t as nonviolent as it sounds, by the way.”

“You might have been killed,” he said through gritted teeth. “You must never,
never
do such a thing again.”

“But
I
didn’t do anythinmmmmph!” He’d yanked me to him and planted one on me, effectively cutting off my protest. I was so surprised he was kissing me—surprised he was mad at all—I just stood there for a moment and took it. Then I managed to pull away—or at least pull my lips away. My head was arched back like a snake’s, but our chests were touching.

“Wait, wait, wait. I’m really glad to see you. But I’m confused.”

He quirked a small smile at me. “Thus, the universe resumes its axis.”

“Never mind about the universe.” I gave in to my impulse, managed to free an arm, and straightened his hair. “I thought you were making moves on Laura.”

“I’ve been meeting with her,” he replied, looking confused.

“Right, but I thought—you know, after what happened, after I made you have sex with me—”

“Twice,” he added. I could tell he was trying not to laugh. “After you raped me twice. Well, one and a half times.”

“Um, yeah. I thought you didn’t like me anymore.”

He looked astonished. “Didn’t
like
you?”

“And then Laura—she’s so beautiful and her breasts are so perky.”

“Thank you,” Laura called from behind the bar, where she was fixing herself a Shirley Temple.

“And you were so mean to me—”

“I was a little cold,” he admitted, his grip loosening. He didn’t let go entirely, I noticed.

“A little?”

“It hurt me that you only made love with me because you had gone insane.”

“I can’t hear any of this,” Laura announced, dropping a cherry into her drink. “Just carry on like I’m not here.”

We did. “I’m sorry. But I wouldn’t want you to think I only want to have sex with you when I’m crazy.”

“I don’t. I hung on to the notion that you were motivated by more than the impulse to hurt. And, truthfully, I could never leave you. Certainly not after you were vulnerable to the Book. I thought it was odd that the devil’s own should show up—was so easily found—right after you read the Book. I dislike coincidences. So I resolved to find out as much about her as I could.”

“So they were like—like business meetings?” I was starting to feel dumber than usual. He was looking at me so earnestly, and he still hadn’t let go. Maybe because I hadn’t asked him to. “You weren’t interested in her as, like, a date?”

“I couldn’t be with
him,
” Laura said, so shocked she actually set down her drink with a clunk and a slosh. “He’s a vampire!”

“And I couldn’t be with her,” he said, “because she isn’t you. Oh, and for your information, dear,” he added mildly, glancing over at her, “once you go undead, you never go back.”

“Yuck! And Betsy. I can’t believe you thought I’d try to steal your boyfriend,” she said reproachfully.

“Consort,” Sinclair corrected.

“I’m sorry. To both of you, I’m sorry. I guess I jumped to some pretty dumb conclusions.” I hugged him. “I’ve never been so happy to be wrong! And with all the practice I have, you’d think—”

He pulled back and looked at me. “Elizabeth, even if I did not adore you, you are my queen. We’re fated to be together. I’ve known that since the moment I saw you in the crypt.”

“That’s so romantic,” Laura sighed, rinsing her glass.

“Sinclair—Eric—” Why did the most meaningful moments of my life happen in front of witnesses? “I—I adore you, too. Well, I don’t know if I adore you. That’s not really the word I’d use. But I—I—” I managed to wrench it out. God, this was hard! “I love you.”

“Of course you do,” he said, totally unsurprised.

“
What
? I finally tell you my deepest, most personal feelings and you’re all, ‘Yeah, I already got that memo’? This,
this
is why you drive me nuts! This is why it’s hard to tell you things! I take it back.”

“You can’t take it back,” he said smugly.

“I do, too, take it back! And don’t you dare kiss me again!” I cried when he leaned forward. “Why do you have to be so annoying and smug all the time?”

“Because with you by my side, I can do anything.”

I calmed down a little. He was still acting way too superior, but that was kind of sweet. In a frightening, world-domineering way. “Well…well, I guess I don’t take it back. Not entirely.”

“Of course you don’t.”

I almost snarled. “I guess I really do love you.”

“And I you, darling Elizabeth. I cherish you, my own, my dear one.”

Okay, now I was
really
calming down. “Well. Okay.”

“Where are the darned napkins?” Laura sobbed from the bar.

He reached out and smoothed a lock of my hair behind my ear. “You’re wearing my necklace.”

I touched the small platinum shoe he had given me when he got back from Europe—had it only been a few days ago? “Well, yeah. I wanted it tonight…for luck, you know?”

He smiled. “Were you really jealous? You thought I was wooing Laura?”

“Maybe a little. You’re not smirking, are you?”

“No, no.” He smothered a snicker. “I am sorry for giving you cause for doubt.”

“Oh, like you didn’t notice she’s fantastically beautiful,” I bitched.

“She is not you,” he replied simply, which was flattering, yet slippery of him.

“Eric…the thing about doubt…” I groped for the words. This was my chance. Maybe my only one. He was an all-powerful vampire king, but he wasn’t a telepath. “I would feel more—together—with you, I mean—if we—if you and I—if we got married.”

“But we are married,” he said, puzzled.

“Not Book of the Dead married.
Really
married, with a minister—well, a judge—and my mom there and cake and hymns—songs—and a ring and dancing.”

“Oh.” He looked sort of horrified. “Well. Ah. I see.”

“You see? Now? Why not before? It’s one of the things I complain about constantly.”

“Question asked, question answered.”

I let that pass. “Look, I know this is probably getting old, but I was kind of shoved into this whole consort thing. I don’t know a lot about you; we don’t have this deep, meaningful relationship.”

“To be fair, I think that’s just as much your fault as his,” Laura said, munching on olives. When we both looked at her, she said, “I’m sorry. But that’s the impression I got.”

“
Anyway.
A real-person wedding would—I would really love that.”

“But we are already married.” Sinclair seemed to be having trouble actually grasping my essential problem.