Undead and Unworthy (14 page)

"You think?"

"Who else could stand to be with either one of them?"

"Point," my sister conceded, and we both laughed.

I asked after BabyJon, whom Laura had been watching, before dropping him off at my

mother's for the day.

"She'll be underwhelmed," she pointed out diplomatically, when I suggested BabyJon

might need to stay there longer.

"Laura, I know she thought her baby-rearing days were long over – "

"And don't forget BabyJon is a constant reminder of her late ex-husband's infidelity."

" – and I respect that. But she still loves BabyJon, kind of, and she won't want him

harmed. If we laid it out for her, told her he could either stay here and maybe get nibbled

by Fiends, or stay with her and spit up on her Civil War bullet collection, you know which

one she'd pick. But please don't tell her why BabyJon needs to stay. She'll just worry."

"I'll come up with something," Laura promised at once. God, she was so low maintenance.

When she wasn't in the grip of a simmering, murderous rage. "It wouldn't be such a big

deal, but I think your mother is still taking your father's death kind of hard. Harder than – I

mean, hard."

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) Laura had corrected herself because she'd been about to say "harder than you," which was nothing but the truth. I'd been fairly indifferent about my dad in life and wasn't sure how I

felt about him dying. It was even partly my
fault
he was dead and I wasn't sure how I felt.

When
I
had died and come back as a vampire, he'd essentially told me to stay away.

Seemed only fair that I return the favor... to seem like I didn't care if he was gone forever.

But then, that sounded so cold and mean, I couldn't stand it. He was my
father.

"Which reminds me," I sighed, slumping in my seat, "you won't even guess who's been hanging around."

"Umm... Detective Berry?"

"Well, yeah, but also my stepmother... and your birth mother."

Laura had been polishing an apple on her immaculate buttercup yellow wool blazer, but

stopped. "She's haunting you?"

"Yeppers."

"What does she need you to do?"

"That's the super fun part. She won't tell me."

Laura shook her head; gorgeous blond strands flew about her face and then settled

perfectly. "That does it. I can no longer stay away from your house for more than a week.

I miss too much!"

"It's not always like this," I sighed.

"In fact, I'm going to stick to you like cow poop on a Furragrammo."

"It's Fair-uh-gahm-oh... and don't even say it!" I begged, but it turned out she wasn't

exaggerating.

"I still don't understand why Midwestern Barbie is along for the ride," Detective Nick

whined as we pulled onto the highway.

"One of the three of us in this horrid little car has my sister's best interests at heart. One of them isn't you," Laura said sweetly, "and the other isn't her."

I forced a cough. "Any luck with that, um, errand Jessica asked you to run?" After some

discussion, Tina, Sinclair, and I had agreed Jessica was the best person to ask Nick to

keep an eye out for unusual murders.

"You mean have your runaway pets mangled any citizens? Not that we can tell. Yet. And

again, if I didn't make this clear: nice one, doorknob."

"I
said
I was sorry," I grumped, slumping against the backseat. (Yes, he'd dumped me in the back – at least it was a plain car and not a cruiser.)

"You stop picking on her," Laura ordered. "She's doing the best she can. Although when she shuts out family members it only makes things – "

"I'm sitting right behind you. I can, sorry to say, hear everything. Where are we going,

anyway?"

"Got a tip that our bad guys might be meeting down here."

"Wait, 'bad guys' the Fiends? Or – "

"No, my bad guys, dummy. I hate to break this to you for the twentieth time, but it's not

always about you, Betsy."

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) I disagreed, but let it pass. "And a fellow cop showing up isn't going to scare the alleged

bad guys away?"

"We think they're actually contracting out – giving the info to one of their perps, a guy (or gal) they can count on to pull the trigger. Do a few of those, and the triggerman

disappears."

"So... wait. You think they aren't just killing bad guys, they're getting other bad guys to

kill bad guys, and then killing
those
bad guys?" Laura sounded truly horrified, but I had to admit it was fiendishly logical.

"Hey, I know it sounds bad, but our stats look great. Crime's down across the board

almost eighteen percent."

"Nick Berry!"

"I know, I know." He slumped against the steering wheel. Luckily he'd gotten off the

highway and we were at a red light. "We gotta put a stop to it. Tell me something I wasn't

the first to figure out. Why do you think the chief's been riding my ass?"

"The entire force should be out on this, not just you," Laura continued, snug in her cocoon of moral superiority. "It dishonors all of you. Your chief should understand that."

"The last thing we need is the papers getting ahold of this tidbit. So it's on the down low

for now."

"You worry too much about the papers. Also, nobody says
down low
anymore," I

announced.

Nick sighed. "Bad enough you have to come along. Next time," he said, catching my gaze

in the rearview mirror, "Pollyanna stays home."

I shrugged. "See if
you
can make her."

We were in a fairly beat-up Minneapolis neighborhood, one of those places that might

have been pretty a few decades ago, but had suffered from a few too many absentee

landlords, and not quite enough good jobs.

Nick parked, and we all got out. The street was dimly lit, and clumps of teenagers and

twenty-somethings stood out like mushrooms sprouting on various corners. We got a few

looks, but nobody came over – or appeared to recognize Nick as a cop.

The storefronts were all empty, some with windows soaped over. The sidewalks were a

mess; paper, beer bottles, and cigarette butts all over the place. If I hadn't been dead (or

with the devil's daughter), I never would have gotten out of the car.

At least it wasn't too cold out yet; it was nearly seventy degrees, not too shabby for

nighttime in September. It was funny; I'd always had contempt for California and Florida

transplants who bitched about how cold the weather got in my home state. Shoot, I used

to wear shorts in February and sneer at the whiners.

That was all over with, now.
O, irony, you are a harsh
mistress.
I actually had a pair of gloves in my Burberry handbag... how was
that
for wimpy?

"I've just got a tag number," Nick was saying, "but I don't know if it ties in to – "

I didn't hear the rest, because I was distracted by rapidly approaching footfalls and turned

just in time to get slammed off my feet. The chilly sidewalk rushed up to smack into my

back, and I cracked my head hard enough to see black roses.

Then someone with truly awful breath was yanking me off the ground by my purse strap,

which, to my amazement, held. I had no idea if I was mad or glad. It
had
been a gift from

Jessica. It was my only designer handbag. But then, if it had snapped free, I wouldn't have

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) a stranger's hands around my neck right now. Decisions, decisions.

"Leave her alone!" Laura shrieked, while around her, teens fled. "Let her down! Detective Berry! Do something!"

"Freeze?" he suggested.

Bad Breath Boy and I were spinning around on the sidewalk in a tight little dance, and the

stench of fresh, drying, and old blood was making me nuts.

"A Fiend," I managed, trying to break his grip – he was much taller, much broader. "It's a Fiend, don't get too close." Here? Now? What the
fuck?
Had they followed me from the house? Worse, had they followed Laura? That could be extremely awful.

"I could shoot it, but might kill Betsy by mistake. Ah, well," Nick said cheerfully, and I could hear him unsnap his holster. "A risk I'm willing – hey!"

There was a blinding light, like someone was holding a bolt of lightning, and then the light

swung through both of us. It didn't do a thing to me but make me blink furiously.

But the effect was devastating on the Fiend, who didn't so much burst into flame as burst

into ash. This was actually really weird for a vampire – unlike in the movies, where most

vampires, when killed, just laid there, dead forever.

Not this one; he was a puddle of ash inside filthy clothes. Oddly, there was no smell, and

no real flash of heat, just that blinding, gorgeous light. This made sense, as it wasn't
real

heat that had demolished the Fiend.

I coughed explosively, spitting dead Fiend out of my mouth and wiping it out of my eyes.

"Holy shit!" Nick said from the sidewalk where Laura had shoved him. "What the hell did you do?"

"
Hell
being the right word," I muttered, straightening out the kinks in my back, groaning and spitting. I was pretty sure Nick didn't know Laura was the spawn of Satan, so I kept

the explanation brief, yet truthful. "That's her hellfire sword."

"You said that like 'that's her third cup of coffee.' "

"You know how some girls get pearls for their sweet sixteen? Laura's mom gave her

weapons made of hellfire."

"You guys never tell me anything. I should have guessed your sister would be a freak like

you," he bitched, climbing to his feet – only to get kicked over on his back by Laura, who

was still holding her sword made of light.

"Now, Laura," I started, trying to swallow my nervousness.

"She was in trouble, and you just
stood
there," my sweet, good-natured, murderously dangerous sister hissed. "She might have been hurt or killed! Protect and serve, my ass!"

Uh-oh. She'd said
ass
instead of butt. Really mad, then.

"That was a Fiend! She said that was a Fiend! You
led us down here,
and a Fiend jumped her! Did you plan it? Do you have something up your sleeve besides catching rogue

cops?" She jammed her sword under his chin, and his eyes watered at the light. It was pure

bluff; her sword only disrupted unnatural magic: vampires, werewolves, spells. And only

when she wanted them to, which is why it didn't work on me.

But Nick didn't know that.

"Get that thing out of my face," he snarled, not quite daring to bat it aside. "Think I would have brought a damn witness if I was trying to eighty-six your sister? Or are you as dumb

as you look?"

"Stop it, that's enough, just – quit!" I gently pulled my sister away. "Laura, put that thing

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) away before half the street sees it."

Laura sullenly complied, sheathing her sword into... well, nothing, as far as I could tell.

Nobody knew where her weapons went when she wasn't wreaking havoc with them.

"And you!" Nick, climbing to his feet, nearly fell over when I rounded on him. "She makes a good point, you know. A Fiend just
happens
to burst out of nowhere and try to kill me,

and you just stand there?"

"What the fuck do I know about killing vampires? My bullets won't kill you. I don't think."

The truth was, we didn't know. His bullets
had
killed a vampire... once. On my

honeymoon, no less. "Why would they kill that thing? Do you think we have a police

training course on arresting the undead? Do you think I've got Fiend Hunter tattooed on

my forehead? "

"No, you've got Brutal Imbecile tattooed on your forehead," Laura interrupted.

"When I want your opinion, Barbie, I'll pull the string on your back."

"Give it a try," she snarled. "See how many fingers you pull back."

"You wanna go, Barbie? Because we'll go."

"Shut up!" I howled. "I'm not a queen, I'm not a wife, I'm not a big sister, I'm a WWF

referee! Sorry, Nick. This expedition is
over.
Everyone get in the car
right now!
"

Meekly, they did. This was more like it – Eric and Tina never did a damned thing I asked

them to. But first, Nick carefully eased my purse off my shoulder... I guessed he was

going to try to get some fingerprints off it. We sure couldn't print the pile of ash on the

sidewalk. I warned him not to use any of my credit cards and to leave the strawberry Blo-

Pops alone. Sometimes I went through a dozen a day. It helped keep the blood craving

down.

"Heir to the John Deere fortune, remember? I've got more money than
you
do, honey."

"Good. Then you can bring me to Wendy's," I commanded, all queen-like. "Being the

victim of assault and battery gives me a craving for a chocolate shake."

"That is strange," Sinclair admitted. After Wendy's, we'd ended up going back to the

mansion and telling him and Tina what had happened. It was the first night of the full

moon; Antonia was running around somewhere on all fours. Garrett had probably gone

with her.

Jessica was visiting Marc at his new digs at The Grand, and I hoped he'd be able to come

home soon. Things weren't the same without him. Besides, people disappearing out of our