Undead and Unworthy (17 page)

what was going on (as opposed to, you know, now), and almost before I knew it, people

were bowing and calling me queen. It had been more bizarre than senior prom.

Nobody answered, so I tried the knob – unlocked. Ah, a welcoming killer mob. Good

times.

I knew my way around a little, but proceeded cautiously. Frankly, tracking them in the

bland-smelling house was pretty easy – even from a floor away I could smell their reek.

I passed a sitting room, a library, a bathroom, two bedrooms, and an office on the way.

Unlike our mansion, the McMansion had much larger rooms (older houses tended to have

tons of little rooms).

In fact, the place seemed too big and rather empty; there was dust on a lot of the tables

and countertops. Of course, Alice had been the only one staying here... before she was

killed and dismembered, the poor girl...

There weren't any paintings or pictures on the walls and, weirder, no books. No books

anywhere. The bookcases held wine bottles and lamps that looked old-fashioned but

operated on electricity. No magazines, even.

At least all the lights were on, which made the whole thing seem less scary – I don't know

why. I sure as shit knew that things went bump in the night even
with
all the lights on.

The carpet was so thick in each room that my footsteps made no noise, but I didn't much

care, because I wasn't trying to sneak in. Instead I walked straight into the upstairs living

room and was greeted with, "Who the hell invited you, blondie?"

l blinked, more than a little surprised. Mostly at the fact that there was an
upstairs
living room; I'd never seen that before. Just more proof of Nostro's essential nuttiness. And I'd

had more pleasant greetings. Shoot, the IRS guy had been nicer.

Focus, Betsy!

A bloody and battered Nick was slumped in a dining room chair. There was a row of

floor-to-ceiling windows behind him and, weirdly, three of them were open. There was

quite the breeze whipping through the room – I guess the Fiends, used to living outside,

didn't much notice the cold.

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) Then I remembered that they'd been kept outside all year round, like dogs you didn't mind

having around but didn't want to spend much time with, either.

They ripped up anything they got near; it's not like they were aware enough to sleep in

beds, or even on a carpeted floor. You're acting like they were POWs and you were a Viet

Cong!

Nick wasn't tied to the chair or anything – why would they? But he sure was pissed.

"Well, uh, they sort of did," I answered, gesturing to the Fiends. "Invited me, I mean."

"You just
had
to come and save the day, didn't you?"

"Alone," one of the Fiends said – it was Stephanie, and she wasn't bothering to hide her surprise. "She came alone."

"Of course I came! What, you think I'd stop for cocktails instead?" The Fiends stared at me, unblinking, while I bragged, "You have no idea who you're dealing with." Okay, to be fair to them,
I
had no idea who they were dealing with. "You think you can get what you want by grabbing my friend – "

"I'm not your friend," Nick whined.

"Fine, you grabbed my best friend's boyfriend, and now you think you're going to get what

you want. But you don't even know what you want, do you?"

The Fiends looked at each other, while Nick, looking thoroughly disgusted to be there,

rolled his eyes.

I examined them as closely as I could without making it obvious I was staring. Happy,

Jane, and Clara looked a little better – something in the eyes, I guess. They didn't seem as

savage or as confused.

Wonder of wonders, although they didn't appear to have showered, they were at least

wearing clean clothes. It occurred to me that the bedrooms in the McMansion probably

still had dressers with clothes in them. And these guys had eventually fed enough, or

remembered enough, to realize that.

Jane had long, dirty blond hair – it hung halfway down her back in greasy strings. Her

mouth was a thin line, and her fingernails were filthy, but, incongruously with the rest of

her, she had bright blue eyes, definitely her best feature.

Clara and Happy also had long hair but of course Happy, being a guy, towered over them

both. He was one of those fellas who are so big they slump to try to look smaller, which

only drew attention to his sheer bulk.

Happy had the tip-tilted eyes of an Asian American and would have been pretty good

looking, if not for the hate-filled expression on his face. His jeans and shirt were clean, but

he needed to wash the dried blood off his chin.

I wondered if anything was driving the Fiends now
besides
hate for me.

"Look, guys, let's talk about this. I think there's been enough killing, don't you?"

"No," Happy said.

"Because this could get a lot worse, you know. Before it gets better."

"It will never be better," Clara – also known as Stephanie, but I wasn't going to let on –

said sadly. "I thought maybe – " She cut herself off, and I knew why. Even now, she

couldn't let on to what she had been up to earlier. She was as much a prisoner as Nick.

"Not ever."

"Then what's your goal?"

"You must pay for what you've done," Jane said.

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"Pay as in kill? I didn't kill you, I didn't make you vampires and starve you – I tried to
help
you. You know what your problem is? The one you really want to hurt is dead. Nostro's

out of your reach, and you can't fucking stand it."

"Stated with Kissingerian diplomacy," Nick snarked.

"Quiet, Chair Boy. Look, I'll apologize again, okay?"

"No," Happy said.

"Then what do you want? You want to go back in time? Because that's the only way to –

wait." I thought for a second. And then another one.

I thought about Jessica, and how much she loved Nick. I thought about these Fiends, and

the lives they had before they became my subjects – yes, my subjects. And even if the old

king, Nostro, had done this to them, I was still responsible for them.

So what would a queen do, for her subjects? What kind of queen did I want to be?

"Okay. Let Nick go, and I'll stay, and you can have at me."

The three Fiends glanced at each other.

"Maim, kill, fold, spindle, mutilate. Whatever. Just let Nick go."

"You offer yourself in his place?" Stephanie/Clara seemed genuinely shocked by the offer.

"Yup."

"This is not a trick?"

"Uh, I don't think so."

"You are not setting a trap?"

I lifted my bare hands. "If this were a trap, wouldn't I have sprung it by now? I'm here

alone. I'm not here to trick you. I don't want to kill you. I want you to get better. If the

only way you can get better is to deal with me alone, then this is your chance. So what the

hell are you waiting for?"

Happy moved in and sniffed the air around me. "You are serious."

I made an effort not to lean away from him; yeesh, he stank. "Yes."

"It may be painful."

"It might be." I tried not to shake. I tried to sound brave. I guess I didn't, though, because he almost smiled.

"We give you no guarantees," he warned. "We may come after your friend here, anyway, after you're gone."

I thought of Sinclair. "My friend," I sighed, "will be the least of your problems, if you kill me."

"We are afraid of no one. Not even our queen."

I shrugged. "Obviously not."

Happy looked over his stooped shoulders at the other two. They gave no sign, but he

seemed to understand them anyway.

"We accept. Your friend can go."

"No fucking way!"

The four of us stared at Nick.

"Oh no you don't," he hollered, white-faced with blood loss. "You don't get to save me, no way, uh-uh. They kill me, and you feel like shit for, what is it? A thousand years?
That's

the way it's supposed to be. You're supposed to live with failure, not be the hero. Hear

that? You're not the hero, Betsy Taylor! So hit the bricks! Get lost! Crawl back into your

mansion basement and hide again!"

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"He does not want to go," Happy observed after a short silence.

"Yeah, no shit."

"Are you sure you wish to take his place?"

"I'm having second thoughts," I admitted grimly.

"Perhaps he is not the friend to her we thought he was," Stephanie told the others.

"Damn right we're not friends!" Nick hollered.

"Will you stop screaming? And no," I sighed. "We used to be, sort of, but no, not

anymore. But the offer still stands. Let him go, and I'll stick around, and we'll see what

we'll see."

"I have doubts," Stephanie told her comrades. Aha! I silently congratulated myself for

stopping Sinclair and Tina from killing her.

"What d'you mean?" Jane asked. Happy looked like he was wondering the same thing.

Both of them had a little suspicion in their eyes, and I prayed Stephanie would be careful

with her next words, so she wouldn't give herself away.

"She is not what we expected." Stephanie circled me and Nick. "Nothing about her. Not her friends, not those she calls her friends but are not – " She stopped and sniffed Nick,

who made a batting motion at her with his hands, like he was shooing away a fly. "She is

not the queen we thought. She is not smart, or powerful, or terrifying. Not like a real

queen."

"More like a commoner," Happy added.

"Thanks?" I called out.

"She might help us," Stephanie added.

"How?" Jane asked, shaking tangled hair out of her face. "If she is not like a real queen, what can she give us?"

"We could start with your names," I suggested, still hoping to avoid hostilities. "I'd like to know them."

My request confused them, until Stephanie cleared her throat. "My name is Stephanie,"

she told me, as if for the first time.

Happy licked his lips. His tongue was weirdly long. "Richard," he finally said.

"Jane," the third one said.

Huh,
I told myself.
Jane's name is actually Jane! What are the chances?

l took a shallow breath and let it out. Okay. Things were going – if not exactly well, at

least it wasn't the disaster on wheels I'd been envisioning five minutes ago. Names were a

good start. Now to keep the lines of communication open.

"Stephanie. Richard. Jane. I... well, I can't say it's wonderful to meet all of you, just like I know you weren't exactly thrilled about meeting me. But I can say I'm glad I've learned

who you really are. I, uh, felt bad about the silly nicknames."

"You did?" Jane asked, open skepticism in her voice.

"Well, sure. See, I – "

"Don't be fooled!" Nick warned them. "She's got this annoying weird charm thing going on. It's hideous. Like head lice. Everything she touches turns to shit."

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"Would that include Jessica?" I snapped.

"Well," he snarled, "she didn't have cancer before she moved in with you and a bunch of other mutant bloodsucking freaks."

I didn't even want to respond to that. Emotionally exhausted, I sat on the arm of the couch

next to him and waited to see what the Fiends would do.

And for the first time, I noticed Nick was bleeding – from the inside of his elbows, his

neck. There were more serious cuts up and down his arms – from the fight at his house, I

assumed. Maybe he'd rolled on some of the broken glass on the carpet? Maybe he'd –

Oh, God, his neck. They'd – they'd fed on him while waiting for me. His skin must still be

crawling.

I imagine he felt raped and suddenly couldn't look at him.

"We have to deal with this one before we do anything else," Richard said, hauling Nick

out of the chair. "They don't care for each other, so he's officially become useless."

"Useless?" Nick yelped, outraged.

"Hey, a minute ago you were ready to die just to make me feel like shit for the next

thousand years. Now you're all mystified because you might be executed? "

"We should kill him," Richard decided.

"What about the queen?" Stephanie asked, looking around nervously as if the queen's

guard was going to burst out of the walls at any moment. Ha! If only. I could use a last-

minute rescue. Dammit, why,
why
wasn't my life more like a movie?

Richard squinted at me, and I got a decidedly distrustful vibe from him. "We should kill

her anyway."

Then I got a stroke of real luck. Nick tried to pull away from Richard and briefly

succeeded, separating himself for a bare second from his supernaturally strong grasp.

Quick as thought, I stood up, snatched Nick by the back of his neck and the seat of his

pants, and tossed him out the bank of windows.

"You biiiiiiiitch," he yowled all the way down. Then, thank God, I heard him cursing as he thrashed around in the hedges.

"She lies!" Jane shrieked, and came at me.

God, I was
so sick
of people just launching themselves at me without warning. Big-time

rude, not to mention hell on my nerves. I backpedaled like mad, physically and verbally.