Undead and Unstable (11 page)

FIFTEEN

“It’s here, okay? Turn left here, that’s what her directions say.”

“Her directions do not say anything; they read.”

“Oh, you’re channeling Alec Baldwin in
Malice
now?”

“I do not know what that means.”

“Means you’re being a jerk.”

“Is that more or less desirable than being a bitch?”

“God God God God God God God.”

“Stop that at once!” My husband shuddered all over and we nearly went into a ditch. Served him right for taking the Volkswagen. He had a garage full of really cool cars and he picked the Jetta? The romance was dead. “Really, Elizabeth. That is beneath you.”

“Ha! Shows what you know. There’s not much that’s beneath me.” Wait. Did I just insult myself?

“Indeed,” he muttered,
finally
turning left. We were in the boonies somewhere south of Mendota Heights, and the farm my sister wanted to meet us at looked deserted.

And it wasn’t much of a farm, either. There were no barns, no outbuildings of any kind except a big cream-colored garage, no livestock, no hay sheds, no corn cribs, no bores (except the one I was married to—hee!). Just a garage, a driveway, a short sidewalk leading to the house, and the house: two stories, cream siding with dark blue shutters. The place was dark except for what I assumed was the living room.

“Why’d Laura want to meet us here?”

“I dare not guess.”

“Well, dare not to park crooked again, too.”

“I have never once parked ‘crooked.’”

“Except for last week.”

“I was following the lines! That was a forty-five-degree parking spot!”

“Crooked. Very, very crooked is what it was, Sink Lair, crooked beyond belief, as crooked as your dark, dark heart, and you just can’t admit it, can you, how crooked it was?”

“Darling, do shut up.” I could actually see his teeth in a snarl as he stomped on the brake and jerked the parking brake so hard I heard the metal groan.

“We should probably have sex pretty soon.”

“Agreed. Just not with each other.” He flung himself out of the car and slammed the door so hard, the entire Jetta rocked.

“Oh,
real
mature!” I shouted at his back. I considered sticking my tongue out at him, then figured one of us ought to act like a grown-up. Proof! Proof things had gone from bad to terrible: when I was the one trying to set the example of adult behavior.

Marc being a zombie was ruining my life. Also my sex life. I unbuckled my seat belt (old habits died, etc.) and followed my bitchy husband up the driveway. “This isn’t a farm, this is just a house and a big smelly garage out in the country,” I whined. “With dogs … I can hear yelping. Gross. Stupid farm dogs.”

“Perhaps the Antichrist does not understand what a farm is.”

“Oh, that makes a lot of sense,” I snapped. “She might be the AC, but she grew up on Planet Earth just like you and me. She grew up in Minnesota! Gah, all I can smell is poop.”

Sink Lair muttered something I couldn’t quite catch … luckily for him.

“Her car is here,” he said, eyeing the modest black Ford Fusion. “And there’s a light on in the house.”

“Great job, Nancy Drew!”

He ignored me. “Curious … why such a large garage for such a small house?”

“Yeah, that’s the question that’s burning me up inside, too … come
on,
we don’t want to be
late
.”

He was standing stock-still, sniffing like … well, like Antonia did when she was scoping out Zombie Marc.

“Are you going to stand in the yard all damn night?” I could hear how shrill and bitchy I was, but couldn’t seem to stop. Who would have thought that
not
banging my husband would be so bad for our sex life? “Laura’s waiting, and we’ve got mysteries to solve and bad shit to stop, so c’mon already.”

“Ah,” he said, then flipped the latch on the garage door and slid it open. The smell of poop got much worse, much quicker.

“Wait!” I cried.

“See?” he said with the first happy smile I’d seen all night. He gestured and—
what
the?—bowed a little.

“Don’t!” Seconds too late, I figured it out. “Sinclair, you crumb! It’s not a
farm
farm, it’s a puppy farm, do
not
open that door any—”

Too late.

SIXTEEN

What sounded and smelled like a hundred black Lab puppies
swarmed over me, barking shrill puppy barks and licking everything they could reach and suffocating me with their foul puppy breath.

My cardigan! My Etienne Aigners! If one of those mangy little monsters so much as
thought
about taking a chomp on my shoes … oooh, just picturing it made me feel like I was going insane.

And Sinclair had
made this happen.
The betrayal! He really screwed me after he didn’t screw me, the treacherous bastard.

“Get them off. Get them off! Argh, it feels like they’re crawling all over me! Is this what withdrawal is like? Oh, those poor drug addicts! Why are you just standing there, you rat bastard? Help!”

While I writhed in a sea of puppies, the king of the vampires fell to his knees. His sinister plan had worked beautifully, and he was so delighted he gave in completely. For a guy who prided himself on keeping things under control, he was letting loose an awful lot this week.

“Stop it! You bum! Ack, get away…”

He’d collapsed to his knees and was holding his stomach while bellowing laughter. Every time he tried to get up and help me, he fell back down again. This only increased my puppy-induced fury.

A velvety black ear slipped into my mouth, probably because I was screeching threats at my husband, the puppies, the stars, the Antichrist for picking such a dreadful meeting place, and any bugs or telemarketers in the vicinity. I puffed it back out with a breath and struggled to sit up. Did I … was that? It was! My left shin was warm and wet. “Oh, Goddammit! That’s it. Gloves off. I’m gonna pull a Cruella de Vil and skin each of you. Starting with you!” I told Sinclair, and he finally stopped laughing.

“Now, darling,” he said reprovingly. “There is no need—”

“Don’t ‘darling’ me, butt monkey. You
knew
what would happen. You figured out what this place was, and you deliberately—get
away
!” I yelled at the puppies, and several of them scampered back toward the garage. Of course, several more ignored me and collapsed on their fat puppy butts, looking up at me with their puppy tongues hanging out of their puppy mouths. “Dogs and zombies. That’s what this Thanksgiving has for us, Sink Lair. Dogs and zombies.”

“Perhaps you might consider seeing if they bend to your will,” he suggested.

“Shut up.”

“Now, Elizabeth. You yourself said this sort of, uh, event…” The corner of his mouth twitched, but he managed to keep the grin off his face. If he’d still been human, his eyes would have watered with the effort. “This sort of thing did not happen to you in life. Perhaps you can control them in death.”

“I can’t even control my split ends, never mind the hounds of heck.”

He blinked. “I have no idea what that means. But as I said—”

“I wasn’t listening.”

“Perhaps you could dominate them.”

“I’m
still
not listening.”

“Oh, you’re here,” the Antichrist said. No doubt roused by my bitter screams of hatred, she’d come out of the house and was standing on the porch. She was pretty focused, too: she was looking straight at me, like Sinclair wasn’t there and, weirder, like thirty-some puppies weren’t, either. “Good. We’ve got to talk.”

“Boy, do we,” I said. “Also, do you know a good divorce attorney?”

Sinclair ignored me and was (ugh!) holding two of the black Lab puppies, which seemed delighted to be in his arms, judging from all the wriggling and licking. “They shall be mine,” he said, delighted, “and I shall name them Fur and Burr.”

“And the horror continues. Fur and Burr? Be serious. Uh … Laura … you wanna help us wrangle some of these dogs?” They were annoying, but that didn’t mean I wanted them to get lost or wander onto a highway and get squashed.

“Okay.” Laura came down the steps, crossed the driveway, and absently scooped up two more puppies. I’d rarely seen her look so solemn. And given that the Antichrist loved puppies, shelters, orphans, lemonade, babies, marshmallows, and the homeless, it was weird that she wasn’t going deep into cuddle mode. “But then we’ve got to talk.”

“That’s not all we’ve gotta do,” I muttered, aiming a kick at the vampire king, who easily dodged, and walked toward the house talking in a low voice to Fur and Burr.

SEVENTEEN

The Antichrist, in addition to her many other odious qualities,
was stunning.

Yeah. Completely thoroughly gorgeous. My half sister (we had the same dad) looked better on her worst day in torn jeans and with dirty hair than I looked in my wedding gown. I was pretty sure she’d never had a pimple. She had skin that would put an Irish milkmaid to shame, was leggy and statuesque (over six feet!), with long blond hair the color of corn silk and with nary a single split end. Eyes the color of a cloudless spring sky … except when she was having a bad day. Then her eyes went poison green, and her hair deepened to red. So, gorgeous while being evil, just a different kind of gorgeous. And in hell, she had long gorgeous brown wings with which she could fly and in general just be the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever seen, ever.

But such are the challenges I, as vampire queen, must face. So when my husband and I (and Burr and Fur) went into the little farmhouse, it was to find the Antichrist in black leggings, a St. Olaf sweatshirt (weird, since I was pretty sure she was a U of M student), muddy tennis shoes (we were on a puppy farm, so I let that pass), and one of her adopted dad’s old winter jackets. Her hair was yanked back in a messy ponytail, and her face was pale. Even for a blond Minnesotan. And gorgeous, of course. Proof! Proof she had sinister supernatural powers; no woman should look gorgeous with messy hair and a sweatshirt!

“Do you know who lives here?”

Fine, thanks, and you?
But I played along; Sinclair had exhausted my bitch reserves for the time being. “Someone who really, really likes black Labs?”

“Jon Delk.”

I waited for the name to mean something. My sister was getting good at interpreting my blank expressions, because she patiently prompted, “Of the Blade Warriors?”

I snorted.
That
Jon Delk. He and a few other weirdos had started their very own vampire-killing club a couple of years ago, complete with the
de rigueur
priest-as-team-leader and mysterious financial backer who turned out to be a villain. (Yawn.) Sinclair and I had encouraged their little club of vamp haters to disband and behave, or at least behave, and they had all gone back to their lives after the villain was trounced.

Jon had sort of fallen for me … yes, I know, it’s all about me, but it really was, and he did fall for me—I can’t help it if men sometimes find me irresistible. Which was why he couldn’t stand Sinclair (tonight, though, I could see the logic behind the dislike).

Even worse, I’d given Jon-boy my life story, which he wrote down and then sold to a publisher. But not before Sinclair mind-raped him into forgetting it was
my
story. So in a short time Jon went from loving me and hating my husband to hating me. And hating my husband (the latter I totally get now). And I couldn’t blame him. The whole mess was avoidable, and entirely on me.

In the old timeline, though, Jon lived on his grandparents’ farm. Which was an actual
farm
. And not outside Mendota Heights … it was in North Dakota, a fourteen-hour drive from the mansion. He did not live on a puppy farm just outside the Twin Cities.

“See anything unusual about the place?” the Antichrist asked.

“He really likes vampires now?” I guessed, eyeing the Dracula posters, the stacks and stacks of vampire books, the
Sweet Valley High Vampires
posters, several action figures with fangs … it was like being trapped in eBay’s forbidden basement.