Undead and Unworthy (2 page)

It was sweet of Marc to bring me a gin and tonic (which I loathed, but he didn't know

that), but I was so rattled I drank it off in one gulp, and it could have been paint thinner,

for all I knew.

"Is she still here?" he whispered.

"Of course I'm still here," my dead stepmother snapped. "I told you, I'm not going

anywhere."

"I'm the only one who can hear you," I shrilled, "so just shut up!"

"Bring her another drink," Sinclair muttered. We were still in his office, but Jessica had kindly brought robes to cover our shredded clothes. "Bring her three."

"I don't need booze, I need to get rid of you know what."

"Very funny," the Ant grumped.

She and my father had been killed in a gruesome, stupid car accident a couple of months

ago. Where she had been since her death, and why she had shown up now, I didn't know.

There were so many things about being the vampire queen I didn't know! And I didn't

want
to know.

But I was going to have to find out, because the ghosts never, ever went away, until I

solved their little problems for them.

And where
was
my dead dad, anyway? I sighed. Nonconfrontational in life as well as in

death.

"What do you want?"

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"I
told
you. To fix this."

"Fix
what?
"

"
You
know."

"This is so weird," Marc murmured to Jessica, forgetting, as usual, about superior vamp

hearing. "She's having a conversation with the chair."

"She is not. Quiet so I can hear."

"I
don't
know," I said to the chair – uh, the Ant. "I really, really don't. Please tell me."

"Stop playing games."

"I'm
not!
" I almost screamed. Then I felt Sinclair's soothing hands on my shoulders and sagged into him. Like our honeymoon hadn't been stressful enough, what with all the dead

kids and Jessica and her boyfriend crashing it and all. This was a hundred times worse.

"If you could just – " I began, when the office door crashed open, nearly smashing into

Marc, who yelped and jumped aside.

A bloody, stinking horror was framed in the doorway, then darted right at me like a goblin

in a fairy tale. Since I was a tad keyed up from the Ant popping in, my reflexes were in

excellent shape. I slugged the thing – it was a man, a big, bearish, shambling man – so

hard I knocked him halfway across the office. He hit the carpet so hard, buttons popped

off his shirt, which looked about ready for the ragbag anyway.

He was on his feet in a flash and looked wildly from Sinclair to me and back again. And he

was – there was something familiar about him. Something I couldn't put my finger on.

Sinclair and I started toward him in unison, and he backed up, pivoted, and
dived
out the

second story window.

"What the blue hell – ?" I began.

The office door crashed open, and I felt like clutching my heart. I couldn't stand many

more of these shocks to my system.

Garrett, the Fiend formerly known as George, stood in the doorway, panting. Since he

was seventy-some years old and didn't need to breathe, I knew at once something was

seriously wrong.

What fresh hell was this?

"They're awake," he gasped. "And they want to kill you."

"Who?" Sinclair, Jessica, Marc, and I asked in unison. It could be anyone. The guys who

delivered pizza from Green Mill. Other vampires. The Ant's book club. Werewolves.

Zombies. And, of course, the uninvited guest who'd jumped out the window. So many

enemies, so little –

"The other Fiends. I've been feeding them my blood, and they're pissed."

"You've what, and they're what?" I asked, horrified.

Garrett couldn't look at me – never a good sign. "They – they sort of 'woke up,' and now

they want to kill you."

"It's this lifestyle you lead," the Ant said smugly. "These things are bound to happen."

"Oh, shut up!" I barked. I actually had to clutch my head; which problem to tackle first?

"You couldn't have crashed into the office tomorrow? Or yesterday?"

"You'd better sit down and tell us everything," Sinclair said, reminding me he was the

vampire king. "The queen has just been attacked... and now you come bearing tales of

murder." Bam. Decision made. We'd deal with what Garrett had done first.

So take that, dead stepmother.

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Chapter 3

Like I wasn't dreading the coming winter already. These days I was always cold, even on

the hottest day in July; November was going to suck rocks. What I wanted to do was

adjust to married life, set up house (well, the house had been set up for more than a year,

thanks to Jessica and her big bucks, but I was still finding places for our wedding gifts),

finish writing thank-you notes (yawn), and settle down to the job of raising BabyJon, my

half brother and legal ward. (You remember, the whole my dad and the Ant being dead

thing.)

Yep, yep. Everything was normal. I was a newlywed and would-be parent. Nothing wrong

or weird here. Nope.

" – felt responsible," Garrett was yakking, which in itself was hard to get used to. He'd gone from slobbering Fiend to monosyllabic boyfriend (Antonia-the-werewolf's stud...

more on that later) to verbose old vampire. The fact that he
looked
about twenty-three

didn't fool anybody. "So I began visiting them. It didn't seem right that I was back to

myself while they were – were – well. You know."

Fine time for his newfound vocabulary to fail him! But we knew. The old king – the one

I'd killed to take the crown – liked to torture newly risen vampires by refusing to let them

feed. After a few months of this treatment, they went crazy. Worse than crazy – feral.

Forgot everything they ever knew, or could know, about being human. Think dangerous,

rabid wolves, wearing L.L. Bean.

Sinclair and his major domo, Tina, had asked me again and again to stake the Fiends

through the heart.

But I couldn't. It'd be like stomping puppies. Bloodthirsty, feral, dangerous puppies, yes,

but still – puppies. Had I made the puppies? No. Was any of it the puppies' fault? Nope.

Was I going to kill – worse yet, order to kill, wouldn't even have to get my hands dirty –

innocent puppies, no matter how many buckets of blood they drank a day?

No.

And now the puppies were going to eat out my soft human heart. You'd think I'd have

learned the essential Rule of the Undead by now: cuddly undead are still undead.

"How come nobody tried feeding them their own blood before?" Marc asked. "Why the

buckets of animal blood?"

"They're too dangerous to be allowed to hunt. They'll kill anyone they can find."

"Yeesh."

"I don't think we have time for a recap," Garrett said, nervously cocking his head to one side. "Recap," that was very good; man, he was sharp! Picking up slang like no tomorrow.

To think, six months ago he couldn't even purl, much less knit.

"But Garrett fed them his blood. 'Live' blood – so to speak. So, how come nobody tried

that before?"

"Nobody," Sinclair said, the corners of his mouth drawing down, "cares to get near them.

No offense, Garrett."

"None taken, my king," he said stiffly, not looking at my husband.

And there it was. The Fiends were the untouchables, the unwashed. In a society built of

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) nonhumans, of monsters, these guys were considered a level below that. A good trick, if

you sat down and thought it over.

I smacked my forehead with the palm of my hand. "I
knew
I recognized that guy! He's one of the Fiends? Jesus, he's really out?"

"Did somebody break a window?" Tina asked, walking into the office with what appeared

to be a ream of paperwork waiting for Sinclair's signature. Privately, my husband was the

king of the vampires; publicly, he owned several companies, tracts of land, and office

buildings and was ridiculously wealthy. Half mine now, under Minnesota law. I think. Or –

wait. Were we a community property state or – I guess I'd blocked out most of my mom

and dad's divorce –

"Garrett brought the Fiends back to life like some kind of moody 1920s Frankenstein, and

now they're on their way here to kill Betsy," Marc said in one breath, looking pleased at

his ability to spit out several words without passing out. Of all the nights for him not to be

on call at the ER! There'd be no shaking him off our heels tonight. Normally, we tried to

keep the respirating roommates out of vampire biz, for their own safety if nothing else.

"They're what? Who's here to
what?
" Tina's jaw sagged; papers fluttered. She was a doll of a woman with waist-length blond hair and enormous pansy eyes. She looked delicious

in knee-length shirtdresses and nonprescription glasses she didn't need. She was wearing

both, in navy and tortoiseshell. "Why are you all standing around? Why – "

"Also, the Ant has started haunting me."

"I was wondering when you'd remember I existed," the wretched woman snapped.

"Did you remember to pick up tampons?" Jessica asked, and now the
men
looked

appalled. That was a good question, actually. I sure didn't need them anymore, ergo Tina

didn't. Jessica's cycle had been all over the place since the cancer. Did Antonia – any

female werewolf, for that matter – need them? The ghost definitely didn't.

And what did it say about my life that I was living (again) with two women named

Antonia? Most people went their entire lives without running into an Antonia. When one

of them died, I figured I was home freaking free! Really, it was all –

"Majesty, will you focus!"

"Huh? Why?"

Sinclair actually laughed out loud while Tina stomped a tiny foot. "Angry vampires are on

their way here to kill you."

"It's hard to get worked up," I said truthfully as my husband bit back another laugh, "when the Ant is breathing over my shoulder. So to speak. And it's not exactly the first time

unwelcome guests have been on the way." I turned to Jessica. "Remember homecoming

1996?"

She shuddered. "I never thought you'd get the Dewar's out of the curtains."

"But I guess we'll just have to – "

Bam! Ka-Bam! BAM! BAM! BAM!

"
What
the – ?" Jessica wondered.

"That would be hordes of the ravenous undead, kicking in the front door," Tina said,

dropping the rest of the paperwork and whipping off her glasses. I waited for her to do a

Wonder Woman twirl (Wonder Vamp!), but she just looked alert and ready to flee.

Sinclair sighed, looking greatly put upon. But men who have interrupted sex tend to get

that look. "Shall we flee, or fight?"

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) Tina glanced at Jessica, who glared. "Ah. Flee, I think. At least until we know more about

this particular threat."

"Don't run off on my account," Jessica warned. But of course, that's exactly why we were choosing flight over fight. We couldn't risk Marc and Jessica's lives until we knew more

about what was going on. "I mean it, you guys."

Sinclair ignored her. "Very well. Let's take the tunnel."

Tunnel? We were taking a tunnel? We had the king, the queen, Tina, a former Fiend – the

odds were okay, I thought. But Tina had an excellent point – we had a couple of humans

to watch out for, too.

Tina led the way to one of the many doors leading to the basement, and I had to jog to

keep up. "What? We have a tunnel?"

"Betsy, come
on!
" Marc said, grabbing an elbow and giving such a yank I nearly fell down the stairs.

"Not without me, you're not," the Ant said triumphantly, and marched (Marched? Couldn't

she float?) behind me just as the door closed, leaving all of us in pure darkness.

Well. Not
pure.
I could see fine, as could Garrett, Tina, and Sinclair. But from the moans and whimpers coming from farther down the stairs, the humans were having more trouble.

"Stop that sniveling, Marc Spangler, or I'll detesticle you," Jessica snapped. When she was scared, she got pissed. Man, you should have seen her the day she got a false positive on

an EPT. We were buying new dishes for days.

"I can't see a fucking thing," he snarled back. There was an abrupt silence, a – I know how this sounds, but I could hear it – a flailing, and then a rattle of thumps, followed by moans

of pain.

"Getting eaten alive by the Fiends can't be worse than this," Marc groaned from the floor.

Ouch. He must have fallen at least ten steps. Onto cement.

"Be careful," Tina said.

"Thanks. At least someone cares."

"You could have broken your ankle on the way down and slowed our escape."

"I hate vampires," he replied. "So much."

I eased past Jessica on the stairs, went to Marc, and picked him up. "This is so romantic,"

he cooed, modestly kicking his unbroken foot.

"Shut up, or I'll use you for Fiend chum."

"Why," Jessica demanded, "have we decamped to the basement?"

"And why haven't we turned any lights on?" I asked.

"Tina, take Jessica's hand. Elizabeth, keep carrying Marc." Sinclair groaned softly in the dark, as if he couldn't believe he'd said such a thing. "Everyone else, follow me."