Undead and Unworthy (4 page)

"Exactly so, my queen," he said eagerly. "I only wished – "

"And in your loneliness and self-exile, you put the queen's life in danger," Sinclair said coldly. "You put her friends in danger, and my friend." I noticed he didn't include himself in the pack. "I should have ignored Elizabeth's soft heart and staked you myself."

I heard Tina flip open the seat on the stern (you could sit on it, but it held life jackets and

things... sort of like a padded cedar chest), rummage around, and produce – ack! – a

stake. The boat that had everything!

Garrett sank to his knees. "All you say is true, bold king," he said to the deck.

"Marc, Jessica, step to the back. You don't want to get splashed."

"Now wait just a fucking minute!" I slapped the stake out of Tina's hand so hard she

nearly plunged overboard. (And what other nasty implements of death were in that chest?)

I marched over and hauled Garrett to his feet. The book rocked alarmingly, then steadied.

"This is a monarchy, right, Sinclair? And if the Book of the Dead is right,
I
outrank
you.
I was
born
the queen; you had to fuck me to get your crown."

And oh, boy, I still got pissed if I thought that one over too carefully.

"So I'll be the one to say who gets staked." I shook Garrett, who drooped at the end of my arm. "Stand up straight! Defend yourself! Be a man of the early twentieth century, for

God's sake – ignorant yet sure of your superiority." (We were sure he'd been killed in the

thirties or forties.)

"Ever the graceful hostess," Sinclair commented.

"Besides, smart guy, you didn't even notice that every time Antonia left town, Garrett was

leaving the house and feeding other vampires. Too busy looking for new companies to

buy?"

"Touché," Tina muttered, not looking happy about it. Watching over the estate, including the Fiend farm, was part of her job, but she knew I preferred to yell at Sinclair rather than

her.

"So, Garrett, where were we? What's the rest of the story?"

"My plan worked," he continued miserably. "Too well, I fear... my comrades wanted to know where they were, what had happened to them. Unlike me, they were – were

displeased to find themselves – "

"Stuck on an abandoned farm full of animal blood?" Jessica suggested.

"Exactly so. I tried to emphasize the queen's goodness in letting them live, tried to explain that she had set us free by killing our jailor, but they only became more enraged.

Essentially, they could not understand – "

"Why you and not them?" Marc asked.

"What?" I cried. "So this is
my
fault?"

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"Looks like," Jessica replied.

"They were so angry," Garrett said dolefully.

"Angry? After you saved them? Ungrateful brutes. Besides, with Nostro dead, what's to be

mad about?" Marc asked.

"Ah, let me count the ways," Sinclair purred. And he did just that, ticking the points off on his long, slender fingers. "They are angry because they are old vampires with no real

power. Deprived of live blood for so long, like Garrett, they will never have real power.

They are angry about, as they see it, being dumped on a farm, and never mind that it was

for the public's safety."

"But it was!" I cried.

"The vampire queen puts vampires first, my dearest. As I have repeatedly told you. Next –

"

"I don't wanna hear any more," I groaned.

" – they are angry that a new queen has been in power for two years and done nothing to

help them – "

"Nothing! I stopped you from killing them about nine times!"

" – angry that the new queen knows she could have 'cured' them at any time (case in point,

the happily married, articulate Garrett), and, finally, extremely angry that they've been

given silly nicknames."

"That wasn't the queen," Tina said loyally. "That was Alice."

"Alice is dead," Garrett said.

"Happy, Skippy, Trippy, Sandy, Benny, Clara, and Jane killed her?" I said, horrified.

"I tried to stop them, but they are many, and I am one. I only barely escaped myself.

Alice..." He looked away, out over the water. "Died cursing me."

"And then you led them straight to the queen."

Garrett shivered. "I had not – thought of that. My only thought was to return to safety.

One of them followed me. He must have picked up the queen's scent – from my clothes, I

think – and – "

"Blown past you, beat you to the mansion. You fell for the oldest trick in the book," Marc said, not unkindly. "Leading the bad guys to the good guys."

"I am a coward. I was afraid to be alone, and now I have endangered you all."

"Well, now, uh, that's a little harder to defend," I admitted, "but you didn't set out to do bad."

Sinclair made a disgusted sound and threw his hands up in the air. "Elizabeth, really!"

"If I went around killing everyone who made a mistake, I'd be pretty damned lonely," I

snapped back. I actually patted the trembling Garrett. "Nobody's going to kill you,

Garrett."

"Well, maybe some of his old friends," Jessica said helpfully.

"Yeah," I sighed. "There's that. Ideas?"

We (Sinclair) decided to go to the farm to check out the scene of the crime. We (Sinclair)

figured it was best to see if things were as bad as Garrett intimated. And no one was in a

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) rush to get back to the mansion.

Nostro had, once upon a time, owned this property, and I had been, once upon a time, a

prisoner here. And getting here had taken no time at all... once Tina's cell got a signal, she

made a call, Sinclair docked the boat at some teeny marina, and an empty, idling SUV was

waiting for us.

"It's good to be the king," Marc murmured in my ear, as we all climbed in, making me

giggle.

Under no circumstances would Jessica and Marc allow themselves to be dumped

somewhere safe. The argument got so heated that Sinclair pulled over on a quiet corner of

Minnetonka (at this hour, every corner in Minnetonka was quiet) so we could disembark

onto the sidewalk and discuss (read: shriek) it without endangering nearby traffic.

It was only when I saw Sinclair gliding behind Jessica when I realized (a) she couldn't hear

him, and (b) what his plan was.

"Don't you
dare
knock her unconscious!"

"I wasn't going to!" Marc yelled back, flinching away from me.

"Or him, either," I added, noticing Tina sidling up to Marc.

"It would have been for their own safety," El Sneako grumbled.

"We're perfectly safe," Marc said, but then, he would. He loved all things vampire. Given that he'd been about to hurl himself from a tall building to escape his boring life when I

met him, I couldn't entirely blame him. "We've got the king and queen of the vampires

with us and, a, um, shell of a vampire to bring up the rear."

For Garrett had been no good at all since we got off the boat. He shivered, he shook, he

tried to curl up. It was obvious that, since we weren't going to kill him, being outside

made him miserable. For the first time I noticed how torn his clothing was, though his

injuries had healed. Old, Sinclair had said, and that was certainly true. But not powerful.

Never powerful. There had been a time after I brought him home like a stray when we

thought... but no.

Old, but not powerful. Poor guy.

As we grumpily climbed back into the SUV, I wondered again about power. What,

exactly, made a vampire powerful? Not age, certainly (I was two!), or at least, not
just

age. I had been told that, like me, Sinclair had risen strong. Most vampires went through a

ten-year phase where they'd do anything for blood and couldn't remember their own

names.

Was determination a factor? Anger, hate, vanity? Hmm, that last could explain my

meteoric rise to power...

"We're here," Sinclair said abruptly, braking hard enough to make my seat belt lock (force of habit; no real reason to wear the thing these days). "And you two will
stay here.
I mean it, Marc. Jessica. Remain
in this vehicle,
or I will be cross."

"Excuse me, captain my captain," Marc said, "but do you know how many horror movies start out like this?"

"We probably shouldn't split up," Jessica agreed. "Besides, if you really thought the Fiends were still here, you'd never have let us come. You'd have clocked Betsy, too, if it had

come to that."

Sinclair muttered something that the chime of the "door open" light drowned out; sounded like "wretched woman." We all solemnly clambered out with him, knowing that even if

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) Marc and Jess had won a victory, it was nothing to celebrate.

We were okay until we found Alice's body. Sure, there had been an obvious fight, the

fence had been torn open in several places, there were splashes of blood on the ground,

but... really, I was okay until we found her head.

While Marc supported Jessica as she threw up in the chokecherry bushes (he was pale, but

had seen so much death as a doctor, even this couldn't make him sick) and I swayed

dizzily on my feet,

(don't faint don't faint don't faint QUEENS DON'T FAINT!)

Tina and Sinclair prowled the area like vampiric bloodhounds, finding arms, legs, both

halves of a torso.

"This is maybe a dumb question," Marc began, smoothing Jessica's tight black cap of curls and letting her lean on his shoulder.

(don't faint don't faint don't faint)

Tina shook her head. "There's no chance of regeneration. Absolutely none. Frankly, I'd be

amazed if the queen could handle this kind of punishment. My queen?" Her voice

sharpened. "Are you all right?"

"Of course she's all right," Sinclair said, squatting to examine another body part. "Queens don't faint."

"Damn right! Look, Alice is obviously dead. What are you poking around for?"

"Oh, this and that," he said vaguely. "I'm a little puzzled by the condition of the corpse."

"I was thinking that exact thing," Tina added.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, but they were ignoring me and having their own

conversation.

"Did you call – "

"Already done, my king."

"Excellent."

"Ah, and a mysterious van of vampires will show up and dispose of all the evidence,"

Jessica managed, wiping her mouth.

"More or less."

"I think we should go back now, can we please go back home now?"

Sinclair looked at Garrett with obvious distaste. "What makes you think it's safe?"

"I-I don't think they'd stay. Not if they couldn't find... her."

Okay, so Garrett wasn't exactly being the stand-up guy you read about in romance novels.

But I felt sorry for him – it couldn't have been much fun getting the crap stomped out of

him by half a dozen pissed off vampires, vampires he'd tried to
help,
and then come home

to tell Sinclair what he'd done.

Sinclair didn't understand about fear, how it ate your guts, and how nobody came off like

they did in the movies. He'd claimed, on occasion, to have feared for my safety, but

frankly, I doubted it.

"Even if they are still there, it's our home, and a bunch of jerkoff vampires aren't keeping

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) me out of it. I mean, you explained that to me once already, Sinclair. How we're not

worthy of our crowns if our people can't find us."

"Yay, Queen Betsy," Jessica said.

"But they're sure as shit keeping you two out of it," Marc teased.

"Boo, Queen Betsy."

The argument raged all the way back home.

Marc and Jessica's apparent casual attitude toward death was partly my fault. Make that

totally. I'd saved their butts so many times (from suicide, murder, cancer) they just

naturally felt impervious around me.

It didn't help that none of us were talking about it in any real detail. See, I'd always been

different from other vampires. So different than even Tina (the oldest vampire I hadn't

killed; she had made Sinclair way back when) didn't know much about me, or what I could

do.

I had, completely by accident, cured Jessica's cancer and killed an eight-hundred-year-old

vampire librarian. And I'd done it without laying a finger on the librarian. I just sort of –

pulled
her into me. What was left wouldn't have filled an urn.

That didn't bother Sinclair or Tina especially, since I'd saved Sinclair at the time. What
did
bother them was that I had no idea how I'd done it and had been unable to do so again.

Not that I'd tried.
God,
no. I figured somebody would have to die for me to try out my

nifty new power. Pass.

Sinclair had been spending some time in the library perusing the Book of the Dead. He

thought I didn't know. But I understood his puzzlement, and I knew he was being careful.

Read that thing too long – written on human skin with blood by a centuries-dead insane

vampire – and you went crazy. Upside was, it was always right. Downside, there was no

index or table of contents. You just opened it and took your chances that you'd actually

read something, y'know, useful.

Worst of all, it always came back to me. It had been set on fire and thrown into the