Undead and Unstable (25 page)

Also: I should be paying attention. No sooner had that occurred to me than I managed to jerk back before her fist plowed through the wall where my head had just been. Were there any dentists for the undead? If the devil knocked my teeth down my throat, would they grow back, like a shark’s?

(The things you wonder when you’re trying not to be beaten to death.)

We had to leave. We had to get out of here. My stupid plan wouldn’t work here. And then, of course, there was Sinclair to worry about.

ELIZABETH!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’M COMING KEEP HER THERE KEEP HER THERE WHATEVER YOU DO DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT LET HER TAKE YOU KEEP HER IN THE HOUSE KEEP HER IN THE HOUSE DO NOT LET

“Time to change the venue,” she muttered, and the world fell away.

FORTY-ONE

Yes! We were in hell!

(This was what my life was. I was glad to fall through a hole in the world and plop into hell, where my sister was temping for the devil. Oh, and the devil was trying to goad me into killing her. Unless I’d guessed wrong, in which case the devil was gonna squash me like a grape.)

“Tricky, tricky,” she panted, easily dodging my fist. And then my kick. But my other kick landed—ha! A perfect day to wear my pointiest leather boots. Take that, Satan! And that! And—

“Ow!” She was pretty fast for someone at least five billion years old. What had I been thinking?

I remembered my theory. I remembered my utterly insane idea that this wouldn’t be a fair fight … and why that was actually good for me. Why it could be the saving of me … and him. And maybe even the future.

Because time is a wheel.

“You think … He loves you?”

“Really? We’re gonna chat about God while we’re trying to kill each other?” My ears weren’t ringing so much as booming. And it was suddenly almost impossible to see out of my left eye. Was that my blood or hers making everything look pinkish-red? Probably mine.

“It’s the last … conversation … I plan to have … with you. So answer.”

“Yeah, then. He does. Sure He does.”

“And me?”

“Of course … He still loves you … moron! That was never the issue … moron! You big stupid moron!” Normally I didn’t have to think of what to call people I was pissed at. Asshat, dumbshit, shitstain, fuckface, jizzbucket, fucktard, dickweed, cockknocker, jizzhole … it all usually came tripping off my tongue in a glorious rain of obscenity.

Had to work for the insults now, though. It was hard to think what with all the red stuff in my eyes and the booming in my ears, which I was pretty sure were also bleeding.

I felt her hot little hands close around my neck and start to squeeze. I punched. Punched. Punched—nothing. Should have found the time to take a martial arts course. Yoga couldn’t help me now.

It was tough work, bitching at the devil while being throttled, but I was up for the challenge. “How come … older you get … dumber y’get?”

“Yes, He does,” Satan replied, a thoughtful look on her bloody face. “I suppose He does. He must, you know. It’s one of His rules. I think I…”

“Gggsssshat!”

“I think I want … I’d like … to go home.”

“Stop it!” Laura, yelling from a galaxy far, far away. “Stop it, don’t, you’re killing her,
stop killing her
!”

No idea. No idea who she was talking to. Her mom? Her sister? A player to be named later? Wow, look at all the blood coming out of me! Almost as much as a live person. Weird.

“Don’t! Don’t! What are you doing? Let go!”

It was good that Laura was here. Was almost here. What was keeping her, anyway? I needed her here. My plan wouldn’t work without her here.
Oh, Laura, I’m so sorry you’re here.

Lena Olin grinned at me through bloody teeth. Her hair had been yanked from its neat coiffure and she looked kind of Medusa-esque. With luck she’d need a deep-conditioning treatment after she’d beaten me to death. “Uh-oh.”

“My thought … xxxactly,” I gurgled.

“You’ll have to do it in front of her.”

“… kkk…”

“You’ll have to steal her future while she watches.”

“… nnn…”

“Him or her, Betsy? Now’s when we see.”

“… favor…”

“What?” I actually landed a good one—
splat!
—in the middle of her narrow face. Finally, I’d surprised her. Really surprised her. Not the fake stuff she usually showed me. Had been showing me all along. “What, stupid girl?”

“… want one … favor … a wish … want it…”

It was probably all the skull fractures, but her eyes, usually brown, and recently dead black like a night sky without stars, seemed to burn. Eyes on fire, that’s what they looked like—and it wasn’t quite right. She wasn’t human, this was an angel, I was killing an angel and she was killing me and she was a creature I did not understand, could never have understood, asking for an explanation had been a waste of time and had only increased her contempt and her eyes were like nothing I’d ever seen, her eyes her eyes oh God oh please help me now God her terrible terrible eyes…

“Yes! One! For what you’ll do. Now do it! Your worst, vampire queen, show me your worst and
choose
!”

I almost didn’t. Almost couldn’t. I had never been so frightened, never. In the end it was my essential stubborn nature

(fuck you Lena Olin you’re scary but you’re gonna die or I’m gonna and I’m fine with dying again because time is a wheel)

that allowed me to reach for nothing

“Stop! Stop! Stop!”

and grasp the Antichrist’s hellfire sword

“Don’t! Betsy! Motherrrrr! Don’t!”

which only Laura or one of her blood could wield

“Let go of me! What are you—let go!”

and shoved it into the devil’s heart. Or where the devil’s heart would have been, had she ever had one.

Laura’s last shriek cut off like someone had thrown a switch. Maybe someone had.

Shocked, Satan looked down at the piece of light sticking out of her chest. I have to admit, I was surprised, too, though I was pretty sure this had been what she wanted, what she had been planning from the minute Laura was born, the minute I’d come back from the dead.

But knowing wasn’t the same as doing. Astonished together, we looked at the chunk of Laura’s soul, the pieces of her self she made into weapons that could kill angels and vampires, and then at each other. Neither of us knew what to do.

So I shoved the sword in harder. I dunno … it just seemed like the thing to do. So I went with it.

“Finally,” said Satan, and died.

I wasn’t falling for it, though. I mean, probably she was dead.

But because Dr. Taylor didn’t raise no fools, I took off her head with the back swing. “I chose,” I told her head as it bounced past me. “Happy now?”

FORTY-TWO

“Betsy, my God!”

Had I ever been so tired? I looked up as my sister finally reached me. It seemed like she had been screaming forever. No more screaming. I’d had my fill of screaming for the day. Night?

I hoped she wasn’t going to be difficult about giving me a ride back home. “Just Betsy,” I said. I wiped some of the blood from my eyes. “Not your God.”

“What are you doing?”

“Taunting your mom’s severed head.” It had stopped rolling, and I stifled the urge to boot it farther away. My sister wasn’t likely to take that well. And it was pretty disturbing that I wanted to do it, even. “There’s no way to make that sound not crazy, is there?”

“Why did you—why were you—” The Antichrist burst into tears. “Why? Why?”

“To save him. And me.” It sounded simplistic. The truth did, sometimes. It didn’t matter what I said, anyway. Laura was never going to forgive me. We were probably going to become really bad enemies over this. At the least, she was gonna blow off Thanksgiving.

Oh. Thanksgiving. Since Satan hadn’t killed me, I still had
that
to worry about.

“And you! What did you think you were doing? My mother respected you! My mother—”

“Was right to fear me.” Ancient Betsy, looking as close to happy as I’d ever seen her. We stared at each other for a long moment, and then she said, “This. This is what I was waiting for.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Sure,
now
it was obvious. She couldn’t have said, “I kind of need you to kill the devil to save the future”? Was that such a difficult fucking speech? “Thanks for all the help.” Actually, judging from the bruises slowly purpling her face, it looked like Laura had fought like a, well, hellcat.

But Sneaky Evil Me didn’t have to entirely prevent Laura. Just figure out the right time to follow her to hell—did she ask Laura to take her? Or could she move back and forth on her own after all these centuries of hanging with the devil? Anyway, she only had to slow Laura for a few crucial seconds.

And she had.

“I am really hating your face right now,” I told Crooked Wily Me.

“Yours is almost unrecognizable!” she replied with what sounded like sincere admiration. “Satan really made you her bitch before you cut off her head. My condolences, Laura,” she added.

“Shut the fuck up!”

“Laura!” we both gasped. Okay, under the circumstances, Laura’s response was one hundred percent appropriate. It was just a shock to hear the Antichrist make with the potty mouth.

“You,” she said to (aw, nuts) me. “You … what you did here … it’s not just unfathomable. It was stupid.”

“Ah,” Ancient Me mused. “A day without the Antichrist sitting in judgment on you is a day without sunshine.”

“Give her a break, we just decapitated her mom.” God, was I really gonna turn into that vicious chilly bitch? Just … appalling, really. The idea. The
horror.

“I didn’t know you hated her so much. When I was you, I didn’t hate her. That came later.”

“It’s not that I hated her so much,” I explained to myself, “but that I love Sinclair so much.”

She smiled. “Yes. You did. You do. I never killed the devil. That’s the—”

“Thing you were waiting for, yeah, yeah. And as for ‘stupid,’ Laura, I’m aware that me killing your mom while Other Me slowed you down is gonna make things awkward for a while.”

“For a
while
?” Laura looked like she couldn’t decide whether to cry or choke me or rage or kick me or barf. I sympathized, as much as I could.

“I know it seems horrible—”

“Seems?”

“—okay, good point, but this way I won’t write the
Book of the Dead
eighty zillion years from now. The devil—” Made me do it, I almost said, recognizing at the last second what a huge cop-out that was. “Satan and Old Yucky Me were allies, right? And through that relationship, you and I were allies in the future. But now that Satan 1.0 isn’t around, she won’t spend the next bunch of centuries helping me do all sorts of nasty things, like scribbling my blog on Sinclair’s skin.”

“And you know that, how?”

“Uh…” A lucky guess? Instinct? My super secret vampire queen decoder ring? “Old Me didn’t do that.” Pointing at her mother’s severed head. “Ergo, the future will be different than the one you and I fell into. Because I
did
do that.” Probably. But this was no time to insinuate in any way that I wasn’t 100% confident my impromptu plan would work.

The devil was dead, and that was maybe worth celebrating. Except I knew things, in one respect, weren’t gonna change. Not really. The devil was dead, long live the devil.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“What?” My sister’s face, her voice. Her mouth was smiling. Her eyes weren’t. “Laura?”

“You’ll regret it.”

Oh, sure. Add it to the list! I had gobs of regrets. Getting drunk at senior prom and barfing all over my science teacher’s/dance chaperone’s shoes. Falling for a Jimmy Choo knockoff when I was thirteen. Signing up for the Miss Burnsville pageant of my own volition. So long a life, so many regrets.

“You shouldn’t have killed my mother.”

“Yeah, I was afraid that’s where this was going.”

“If for no other reason,” she said, and her voice was calm, and her hair was bleeding red through the blond and getting redder and redder, so I was getting scareder and scareder, “than because you created a job opening.”