Undead and Unworthy (3 page)

It took a long time. The basement was as long as the house, which was a mansion on

Summit Avenue. And we had to wander around various tables and chairs, in and out of

mysterious rooms – I could count on one hand how often I'd been down here since we

moved a couple of years ago. I had never liked it, not even – especially even – when

Garrett was living down there, knitting afghans and learning to crochet.

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) The journey wasn't improved by the occasional yelps, as Jessica stubbed a toe or cracked

an elbow. Marc just snuggled deeper into my arms (ridiculous – he had thirty pounds of

muscle on me) and waited patiently for me to make him safe.

Story of my life, since I'd died.

We could hear faint crashings from upstairs; the Fiends, making a mess because they

couldn't find us. Chewing on my drapes; defecating on my carpet, ripping up my graphic

novels in their bloodthirsty rage. But surely they could follow their noses?

That's when Sinclair stopped walking and began tapping his knuckles on what looked like

a solid cement wall.

"I don't think you should do that," I said nervously. "They might hear."

"Over the sound of their own nonsense? Doubtful. "

I opened my mouth to object again (quietly) when the solid cement wall suddenly swung

wide to the left, revealing a narrow, dimly lit (with fluorescents, blinking on one by one

even as we stared) tunnel.

"Tunnel?" I asked, peering.

"Tunnel," Marc confirmed, peering with me. His grip tightened around my neck. "Did this come with the house, or did you put it in after?"

Good fucking question, which, I couldn't help notice, my husband didn't bother to answer.

"The lights and heat are motion activated." Sinclair turned to me, smiling with all his sharp teeth. "Usually, in our case, heat activation would do little good. After you, my queen."

Wondering what else about the Vampiric Mansion of Mystery I didn't know, I went.

"I'm tired," I whined after we'd been walking for a hundred years.

"It's only a bit farther," my lying bastard husband said.

"You keep
saying
that, and we keep not
being
there."

"I keep
dreaming
about divorce and not
being
divorced."

"Oh, very nice!" I raged, running to catch up with them, ignoring Marc's yelps as he was jolted in my arms. "Married not even a season, and you're looking for the door,
such
a typical guy, I knew you – hey!"

I had been lifted easily, effortlessly. "Now shush, Your Majesty," Tina said, shifting my and Marc's combined weight with no effort. "And we really are almost there."

"This," Marc announced over the distinctive gagging noise of Jessica stifling laughter, "is too much. My masculinity could stand being carried by Betsy, but – "

"The gay guy has concerns about masculinity?" Jessica managed, then broke down

completely.

"I'm gay, not a eunuch. Have you ever seen me in drag? Or even mascara? I'm a regular

guy in every way – "

"Except you like to put your penis in weird places," I said primly.

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"Can we please have one midnight getaway without having to talk about Marc's penis?"

Tina asked, aggrieved.

We all shut up as we navigated another set of stairs... and then another. I'd been living

here for months and months, and
nobody had told me about the secret vampire escape

tunnel.

I remembered that Sinclair had steered Jessica toward this house when we had to upgrade.

Back in the days when I thought I hated him. And here I thought it had been because he

was a history buff and liked old houses!

"I've never been bored, and scared, at the same time," Marc commented.

"What do you want me to do with that information?" Tina asked.

"Just put us down," he grumbled, and Tina did, hard enough to rattle my teeth. Marc and I groaned in unison.

Sinclair pressed another button, another wall raised, and I suddenly could hear flowing

water. He walked out into what must have looked like pure darkness to the others, except

I could hear his heels clanking on the boards of the dock. He sounded like a sheriff from

the Old West.

"We walked all the way to the Mississippi?" Marc goggled.

"What 'we'?" Jessica asked. "And it was, what? Seven, eight whole blocks?"

We heard Sinclair start up the Evinrude, and as he hit the lights Jessica and Marc cheered.

"Get the rope, will you, darling?" he asked casually, as if he didn't look, at that moment, like the coolest guy in the universe.

The dock was a memory a few seconds later, and when Sinclair opened 'er up, I decided I

wasn't mad anymore and allowed him to put his arm around me.

"All right, Garrett," my husband said about half an hour later. I had no idea where we

were, but we were out of the Fiends' reach, at least for now. He'd powered down the

motor, and we were floating between a couple of islands. City lights were visible, but far

off. I'd always sucked at geography; the lights could have been St. Paul or Minneapolis for

all I knew. "Suppose you tell us everything."

I realized that during our tunnel getaway and subsequent penis discussion, Garrett hadn't

said word one. And at some point, the Ant had disappeared. Thank goodness for small

etcetera.

Garrett, a slim, tall blond with hair almost as long as Marc's, was sitting low in the bow,

staring at his hands.

"Garrett? Helloooo? Time, if you didn't notice by the whole Fiends breaking down the

door and the tunnel escape, is not on our side."

"I am shamed," he said at last, still staring at his hands. "I feel ashamed."

"Well," Marc said reasonably, swiveling around in one of the captain's chairs, "what'd you do?"

He looked up at me, the moonlight bouncing off his face and making his eyes seem to

gleam. "You should kill me, dread queen. Right now."

"Blech! I mean, uh, no way, Garrett, you're one of the family." The giant extended family I

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) neither wanted nor asked for. To think, three years ago I was living in a two-bedroom in

Apple Valley, bitching because I hadn't had a date in over a month. My biggest problem

had been fixing the copy machine at my day job – management
would
try to fuck with the

machines, and often there was no hope afterward. "Besides, if I didn't kill you when you

were a Fiend, I'm sure not going to now and risk your girlfriend's wrath." Antonia-the-

werewolf was a high octane bitch when she was in a
good
mood. I never, never wanted to

see her when she was really mad.

"Antonia," Garrett said, almost sighed. "As you know, my mate has to leave me. Often, she leaves. More so, now that you changed her."

We nodded, like we'd been cued. We did know this. Antonia had to pop over to Cape Cod

now and again – the seat of werewolf power, pardon me while I snigger – and tend to

pack business. We assumed she didn't take Garrett, because traveling with a vampire could

get tricky.

Also, up until two months ago, she was a werewolf who had never changed during the full

moon. I had done something to her, something we all still didn't like to talk about, and

now she
did
change. The meetings on Cape Cod had increased as a result, but those of us

in the manse weren't talking about it.

"I stay," he continued, "because I'm afraid."

"Of what?" Jessica asked.

"The world," he replied simply. "The last time I went out in the world, I was captured and bound like a slave."

Thank you, Marjorie, you kidnapping fuck, may you roast in Hell for a zillion billion years.

"The time before that, I was killed. The monster got me. I don't go out in the world

anymore."

It occurred to me (it was going to be a night of discovering things that had been under my

nose) that except for going after Antonia last summer (and getting captured, as he put it,

and bound like a slave), I couldn't remember the last time he had left the mansion.

I imagined he fed on Antonia, but such things were none of my business, so I didn't ask.

As long as he wasn't hurting innocent people, I had no interest in where he was getting his

liquid diet.

"An agoraphobic vampire?" Marc asked, and I could tell he was trying very, very hard not to laugh.

"It's more common than you might think," Tina said, pacing the small deck. She was so

light on her feet, the boat didn't even rock. "Particularly when the vampire in question had

a bad death."

"Uh, excuse me, but don't you guys have to kill somebody for them to come back? Aren't

all vampires, by definition, murder victims? They all sound like bad deaths to me."

"Point," Jessica said, actually sticking her left index finger in the air to mark the point.

"So, didn't you guys all have bad deaths? Except for Betsy?"

"Call me the day after
you
get run over by an Aztec, and then we'll talk," I grumbled.

"We are not here to discuss such things with – with guests," Sinclair said, correcting

himself so smoothly Tina and I were probably the only ones who knew he'd been about to

say "outsiders" or "humans." "And you were telling us about Antonia."

"Other than my mate, I have no peers. All of you, even the humans, are smarter than I."

"What 'even'?" Marc said. "I'm a doctor."

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) Jessica put a soothing hand on Marc's arm. "Garrett, don't be so hard on yourself. You've

been out of it for, what? Sixty, seventy years? Crack a few modern history books, you'll be

up to speed in no time."

Garrett waited patiently until Jessica was finished. "It is not my place to befriend a queen, or a king. So when Antonia leaves me, I am lonely."

I was beginning to see where this was going. Oh, it'd be a lovely children's book:
Garrett

the Fiend Finds Friends!

"And it seemed to me that I was – that I was the way I am now – because the good queen

and the devil's daughter allowed me to feed off them. I thought perhaps if I gave my old

comrades my blood..."

Okay. This is a little embarrassing to explain, so I'm just gonna plunge in and get it over

with. See, I
had
let Garrett feed from me, ages ago. And as a sort of punishment, I'd

ordered the devil's daughter to do the same thing.

The devil's daughter being my half sister, Laura.

(I know. Bear with me.)

See, the Ant was possessed by the devil years back, only she was so fucking nasty nobody

noticed. And the devil didn't care for child rearing, so she dumped Laura and took off

back to Hell. Laura was adopted by (seriously, don't laugh) a minister and his wife.

How do you rebel against the evilest nastiest yuckiest entity in the universe (who looks

like Lena Olin and has an amazing shoe collection)?

You go to church. You teach Sunday school. You don't touch a drop of booze until your

twenty-first birthday.

And you conceal a hateful, murderous temper. Laura was going to blow one of these days,

but I just didn't have time to worry about it right now. Among other things, I had slavering

Fiends on my tail and thank-you cards to finish.

"So I began to visit them and let them feed off me."

"Eh?"

"Pay attention, Elizabeth."

"They didn't try to puree you or anything?" Marc asked.

Garrett shook his head. "Even though I had... changed, they still knew me as one of them.

They would never have hurt me. Or so I thought, until tonight. And I felt... bad. To see

them. I had everything, and they were drinking buckets of cow blood."

I was suddenly interested in studying my feet. I wouldn't have credited Garrett with a

guilty conscience. But then, I scarcely thought about him at all.

"I was not sure what would happen, but I kept trying. I had found so much happiness in –

"

"Your agoraphobia," Marc prompted.

" – in my new life, I felt it cost me nothing but blood to try to help my old friends. And

Antonia is generous with her blood. She regenerates quickly, as is part of her superior

genetic heritage."

"Superior genetic – " Tina began, equal parts outraged and interested (until a very short time ago, neither she nor Sinclair believed in werewolves), but Sinclair shook his head,

and she shut up without another word. God, I'd love to learn that trick. I'd only use it for

fighting evil, though.

"It worked. My friends were helped by my blood. The effect wasn't all at once. It took

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) many visits. It was – was – "

"Accumulative?" Jessica and Marc asked in unison.

Garrett nodded.

"But they weren't really friends, right?" I asked anxiously. "You guys didn't even know each other in life, right? Once in a while, ole Nostril would take it in his teeny brain and

toss another one of you into the snake pit and that was about it. Right?"

"We were prisoners together," Garrett said quietly, "for decades."

"Right, right, got that, sorry." I was so embarrassed I couldn't look at him. So I went back to studying my toes. "So, you had good intentions, right?"