Read Undead and Undermined Online
Authors: MaryJanice Davidson
Tags: #Romance, #Fiction, #Religious, #Paranormal, #Vampires, #Taylor; Betsy (Fictitious Character), #Sinclair; Eric (Fictitious Character)
Undead and Undermined (8 page)
“—is because I love you more than I fear you.”
“Okay.” That didn’t seem adequate, so I added, “Thanks. I think you’re neat-o, too.”
Sinclair rubbed his forehead with a familiar I’m-getting-a-migraine-and-want-to-shoot-someone expression. “Frightened of an idiot; it is a shameful, shameful day for the House of Sinclair.”
“The
House
of
Sinclair
?” I shrieked. Lame! So completely fully utterly laaaaaame! “House of Sinclair! Oh, that’s a riot. What’s our family crest, a cross with the international symbol for No slashed across it? A blender wrought in gold leaf?”
House
of
Sinclair
?” I shrieked. Lame! So completely fully utterly laaaaaame! “House of Sinclair! Oh, that’s a riot. What’s our family crest, a cross with the international symbol for No slashed across it? A blender wrought in gold leaf?”
“Thank you as always for your courteous attention and appropriate commentary.” He grabbed my wrist, swung around, and back to the kitchen we went.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nickie-Dickie-Tavvie (best Rudyard Kipling story ever) held
a gun on the Marc Thing while Tina taped him to the fridge. I was gripping the cross on my necklace . . . one twitch, and maybe not even one, and I was gonna jam it through his forehead.
a gun on the Marc Thing while Tina taped him to the fridge. I was gripping the cross on my necklace . . . one twitch, and maybe not even one, and I was gonna jam it through his forehead.
I had to stare for a good thirty seconds to understand what I was seeing. I thought the hallway had been surreal? Sinclair was right; I
was
an idiot. (He was also a jerk: who calls the awesome and only love of his life an idiot? Note to me: jerk his testicles up to his nostrils, then twist. Then nobly accept his apology. Repeat.)
was
an idiot. (He was also a jerk: who calls the awesome and only love of his life an idiot? Note to me: jerk his testicles up to his nostrils, then twist. Then nobly accept his apology. Repeat.)
Tina had yanked the fridge out from the wall and unplugged it. She’d found several rolls of duct tape—you know how most people have a junk drawer in their kitchen? Yeah, well, in our Green Mill–sized kitchen, we had a junk cabinet, and in that cabinet were many rolls of duct tape. (Also many rolls of regular tape, index cards, Post-its, pens and pencils, markers, string—who used string anymore?—and various envelopes. And that was only the first shelf.)
Old vampires like Tina and Sinclair loved duct tape. Looooooved it. They didn’t like just using it for what it was intended (e.g., fixing, repairing, undoing), they
made
things out of it. Pretty much any vampire born before duct tape had been invented thought it was the coolest stuff on earth. Velcro-cool. IPod cool.
made
things out of it. Pretty much any vampire born before duct tape had been invented thought it was the coolest stuff on earth. Velcro-cool. IPod cool.
Anyway, Tina was taping the Marc Thing to the fridge. And doing it at ramped-up vampire speed. So what I saw was basically a blur of Tina spooling tape all over the Marc Thing like Charlotte spewed web for Wilbur. Which the Marc Thing found hilarious.
It was all surreal enough to almost make me forget the pain of my mashed ribs. Which, to be honest, were feeling better and better. I hadn’t had any blood in—what century was I in? Okay, not quite right, I’d munched a bit on Sinclair before all the madness started (again), but it wasn’t the first time I noticed I was needing less blood and healing faster.
Something to wonder about, some
other
time.
other
time.
“You’d be surprised,” Dickie/Nickie was telling Jessica, who looked as fascinated as I felt. “You can’t break it—most people can’t break it, and look how many rolls she’s going through!—and you can’t untie it. It’s as good as rope made out of Holy Water.”
“The things I learn when I’ve been knocked up,” she commented.
“So many questions,” Marc agreed, “and none of them are tape-related.”
“I have questions for youuuuuu, tooooo,” the Marc Thing hummed.
“Ech, why do you talk like that?” Jessica asked. “Are you trying to come off as batshit crazy?”
“That is what I was going for, Big Round Jessica,” he confessed, “yes.”
“I guess I should defend your honor,” Nickie/Dickie/ Tavvie said doubtfully, “but how? Kick him? Shoot him? Can I get a stake through all that tape?”
“Save that for later,” Sinclair said. He was watching the blur of Tina and tape with approval. Then he turned back to the Marc Thing. “Unchivalrous comments aside, perhaps I won’t kill you.”
It pouted, which was not a pretty sight. “Spoilsport.”
“I will, however, require information.”
“I require it, too,” Marc added, and Jess and N/Dick both nodded.
I didn’t . . . I required him to die, leave, burst into flames, or turn into a new pair of Beverly Feldmans. But I had the feeling I wasn’t going to get what I wanted, at least right away. It wasn’t the first time no one gave a tin shit for my opinion. Queen-schmeen.
Sinclair glanced at our friends with an expression we’d all seen before, because Jessica jumped right in. “Don’t you start pulling that only-vampires-can-know-about-this crap, Sink Lair.”
My husband closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids. He looked like the Before picture in a Pepto-Bismol commercial. “Please don’t pronounce my name like that.”
“Because we all live here; you’re not in this alone! Yeah, we’re not vampires—”
“Not yet,” Marc Thing said slyly, earning him a sharp rap on the top of his head (“Hey!”) from Tina. If I were him, I wouldn’t antagonize Tina any further . . . the next smack could cave in his skull.
“—but it affects us, it affects all of us, the living and the undead, landlord
and
tenants.”
and
tenants.”
“Not that you let any of us pay rent,” N/Dick pointed out with a dammit-I’m-a-man-not-a-consort expression. “So you can’t shut us out this time, Sinclair.”
Sinclair’s eyes opened slowly, like a lizard’s. “Can’t?”
Jessica faltered for a second; her hand went to her gruesomely massive stomach and rubbed . . . I would have bet a thousand dollars that she wasn’t aware of it. “Shouldn’t. You shouldn’t shut us out, is what we meant.”
“Where have you even been?” I asked Tina, who was using the last of the seventh roll. “I forgot you were even in the house until you rode in like Marshal Dillon in a pastel green T-shirt.”
“Waiting for you and the king to finish your lovemaking.” Tina smiled and brushed duct-fuzz from her perfect green shirt. Green was excellent on most blondes, and super-excellent on her. She looked like a sexy leprechaun. “I imagined that, once you renewed affectionate relations—”
“I’m not having this conversation,” I decided.
“—you would debrief His Majesty.”
“Oh.” Marc coughed. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
“You guys, let’s not get sidetracked by my sex life,” I begged.
“Usually you can time it,” Jessica said as they all (!) nodded with intent expressions. “They reunite, they bang, they talk, they bang again, they get thirsty, they make smoothies, we know it’s safe to get close.”
“None of that is so bad,” N/Dick said, “but they don’t stick to their bedroom. Shit, last week I was minding my own business, looking for the weed whacker—I know it’s November, somebody please tell that to the weeds by the back gate—and they were doing it in the damn shed! I’ll never look at bags of fertilizer the same way again.”
“And now, neither will any of us,” Marc said.
“You guys,” I pleaded. Unfortunately, he had me there. And even if he didn’t, Marc had walked in on Sinclair and me not even three hours ago. (I’d been very, very, very, very, very glad to return from hell and reunite with my husband.) “You can’t blame us for occasionally following our instincts.”
“Why do your instincts involve sex and rooms that people normally would not have sex in?”
“If you go into the basement,” Garrett said, “you can barely hear them, and if you go into the tunnel you can’t hear them at all.”
“That’s a good idea! I’ll remember that,” Jessica said, and Dickie/Nickie nodded.
Incredibly, Tina was also nodding. Like this wasn’t a bizarro conversation. Like this was a normal thing in their lives. “I shall as well. But as I was explaining, I was waiting for Their Majesties to finish—it was the third time this week, so going by their pattern in the past—”
“We should make a chart,” N/Dick said.
“That would be easier—you could just see at a glance—”
“And you’d know which areas on the property to avoid!”
“We’re not having this conversation!”
A short, sudden silence, broken by the Marc Thing: “It seems as though we are.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Shut up, you crazy fucking psycho vampire weirdo.”
“Ouch,” it said mildly. “Words can hurt, too, Vampire Queen.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Before things go any further, we need to call Laura.”
“Good idea,” I replied. “We were going to anyway, because of . . .” I eyed the Marc Thing. Why give the psycho more info than we had to? “Because of the errand I need to run later.”
“Don’t you remember? You’re not very bright in this century, but don’t let that shame you for even a moment,” the Marc Thing soothed. His tone didn’t match his expression, so it was like being soothed by a rattlesnake. A creepy, well-dressed rattlesnake who would bite you, and be sorry after. Maybe. Needless to say, I wasn’t soothed. “You need your sister to take you to hell.”
“Anyway.” I glared. The Marc Thing smirked. I wondered if Advil would work on a vampire. I was getting a real bitchkitty of a tension headache. Maybe a hundred Advil? Actually, since we weren’t really prone to that sort of thing, my headache was likely psychological. How is it that, even if you know it’s all in your head, it still hurts? “We were going to reach out to her anyway.” I fumbled around in my pants for a good thirty seconds before I realized I must have lost my cell phone. Maybe . . . ?
My husband reached into his suit coat, extracted my phone, and silently (yet suavely) held it out to me. I had a dim memory of bursting, Hulk-like, out of my leggings a couple hours earlier when my cell phone flew with the greatest of ease . . . never mind. “Nobody say anything,” I warned, and stabbed the button for Laura.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Marc assured me.
“Me, either!” the Other Marc said.
“It’s ringing, it’s—”
“Hello?”
“Oh, good, your cell works in hell.”
“Betsy!” My sister sounded vaguely pleased. Well, just vague. Probably more distracted than anything else. “I’m heading to Goodwill . . . I’ve got a box of summer clothes I want to give away.”
I was taken aback by the mental image her statement conjured up. “They have Goodwill in hell?”
“I’m not
in
hell. I’m in Apple Valley.”
in
hell. I’m in Apple Valley.”
“Oh. Okay.” I let pass all the comments I could make about Apple Valley, which was a perfectly nice Twin Cities suburb if you liked cities with no personality of their own. “When did you get back?”
“I . . . I’m just back now.”
Weird. Was she trying my patience, or my temper? What was up with the vagueness? Oh, the hell with it. I had other fish to et cetera. “Listen, something’s come up and I really, really, really need you to come over as soon as you can.”
“Twenty minutes,” she promised, and clicked off.
“Twenty minutes,” I told them.
“What shaaaaaall we do until then?” the Marc Thing sang. He was made immobile by all the tape, but the creepy animation in his cold, cold face was jarring to say the least.
“We could take turns shooting you,” N/Dick said. There was real distaste in his voice, and I couldn’t blame him. Talking to the Marc Thing was like having a conversation with someone you couldn’t see but knew would bite you if he got the chance. It was like being trapped in an elevator with a great white shark. Who had live grenades taped to his fin. And a toothache, which didn’t help his mood. Baaaad shit.
“I am prepared—dying, really, no pun intended—fully prepared to undergo a grueling interrogation and scream out answers from a throat full of black blood.”
“Jeez,” Jessica complained, “do you have to?”
“Who killed me? And why? And what happened after? And why? And why did I follow you and the Anti-Laura back? And how? And how do I get my hair to look so good a thousand years in the past? I am,” he said, looking around the kitchen, “surrounded by primitives. Not to mention primitive hair and skin-care products. Just because I don’t have to shave doesn’t mean I don’t want to smell and look terrific. I can’t remember the last time I . . .” His gaze had been darting around and his eyes reminded me of a weasel’s . . . alert and mean . . . and hungry . . . at the same time.
But when he glanced out the kitchen window into the star-filled night, the nasty/fun tone went out of his voice and he just stared out the window for the next minute—I timed him, like Madonna timed Tom Hanks peeing in
A League of Their Own
, without saying anything.
A League of Their Own
, without saying anything.
Tina let out a delicate fake-cough to get his attention. “Oh, look. We’re being dreadful hosts.”
“Dreadful,” Sinclair agreed, sounding about as interested as a corpse. Which he sort of—yeesh, never mind.
“Perhaps after our discussion you might like to go outside,” she offered.
Awesome. That girl is smart. That girl who is almost two hundred years old is
super
smart. Me, I would have threatened him with a chainsaw nose job, followed by a lawn mower enema, but Tina instantly saw one of his weaknesses and moved in. You couldn’t teach that stuff, man. That shit had to be innate.
super
smart. Me, I would have threatened him with a chainsaw nose job, followed by a lawn mower enema, but Tina instantly saw one of his weaknesses and moved in. You couldn’t teach that stuff, man. That shit had to be innate.
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