Undead and Unstable

by Davidson, MaryJanice

  Undead and Unstable

  Titles by MaryJanice Davidson

  UNDEAD AND UNWED

  UNDEAD AND UNEMPLOYED

  UNDEAD AND UNAPPRECIATED

  UNDEAD AND UNRETURNABLE

  UNDEAD AND UNPOPULAR

  UNDEAD AND UNEASY

  UNDEAD AND UNWORTHY

  UNDEAD AND UNWELCOME

  UNDEAD AND UNFINISHED

  UNDEAD AND UNDERMINED

  UNDEAD AND UNSTABLE

  DERIK’S BANE

  WOLF AT THE DOOR

  SLEEPING WITH THE FISHES

  SWIMMING WITHOUT A NET

  FISH OUT OF WATER

  Titles by MaryJanice Davidson and Anthony Alongi

  JENNIFER SCALES AND THE ANCIENT FURNACE

  JENNIFER SCALES AND THE MESSENGER OF LIGHT

  THE SILVER MOON ELM: A JENNIFER SCALES NOVEL

  SERAPH OF SORROW: A JENNIFER SCALES NOVEL

  RISE OF THE POISON MOON: A JENNIFER SCALES NOVEL

  EVANGELINA: A JENNIFER SCALES NOVEL

  Anthologies

  CRAVINGS

  (with Laurell K. Hamilton, Rebecca York, Eileen Wilks)

  BITE

  (with Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, Angela Knight, Vickie Taylor)

  KICK ASS

  (with Maggie Shayne, Angela Knight, Jacey Ford)

  MEN AT WORK

  (with Janelle Denison, Nina Bangs)

  DEAD AND LOVING IT

  SURF’S UP

  (with Janelle Denison, Nina Bangs)

  MYSTERIA

  (with P. C. Cast, Gena Showalter, Susan Grant)

  OVER THE MOON

  (with Angela Knight, Virginia Kantra, Sunny)

  DEMON’S DELIGHT

  (with Emma Holly, Vickie Taylor, Catherine Spangler)

  DEAD OVER HEELS

  MYSTERIA LANE

  (with P. C. Cast, Gena Showalter, Susan Grant)

  MYSTERIA NIGHTS

  (includes Mysteria and Mysteria Lane, with P. C. Cast, Susan Grant, Gena Showalter)

  UNDERWATER LOVE

  (includes Sleeping with the Fishes, Swimming Without a Net, and Fish out of Water)

  UNDEAD

  UNSTABLE

  MaryJanice Davidson

  BERKLEY SENSATION, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2012 by MaryJanice Alongi.

  Cover illustration by Don Sipley.

  Cover design by Lesley Worrell.

  Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY SENSATION® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  FIRST EDITION: June 2012

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Davidson, MaryJanice.

  Undead and unstable / MaryJanice Davidson.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-56915-3

  1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. Taylor, Betsy (Fictitious character)—Fiction.

  3. Paranormal romance stories. I. Title.

  PS3604.A949U527 2012

  813’.6—dc23

  2012005332

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  For women in their ninth month of pregnancy:

  my sympathy.

  Nothing against the miracle of life,

  but being a fetal slumlord is no job for the cowardly.

  Author’s Note

  The events of this book take place just before the events of Wolf at the Door (Fall 2011). You don’t have to read WatD to follow Unstable, but it might be amusing. And not just for me.

  Also, I’m a dog person. No, really (though after reading this, you may have your doubts). Betsy and I have many things in common: the vanity thing, the not-learning-from-mistakes thing, the bitchy thing, the self-absorption thing, the shrill when freaked thing, the—you know what? I don’t have all day here, people. My point: of our many commonalities, her loathing of canines is not one of them. Dogs rule. Everybody knows.

  The Story So Far

  Betsy (“Please don’t call me Elizabeth”) Taylor was run over by a Pontiac Aztek about three years ago. Because she’d been attacked by several feral vampires days before, she didn’t die from their attack, but later at the hands of the Pontiac corporation. This was unprecedented in all things vampire, and she woke up their foretold queen and, in dazzling succession (but no real order), bit her friend Detective Nick Berry, moved from a Minnesota suburb to a mansion in St. Paul, solved various murders, attended the funerals of her father and stepmother, became her half brother’s guardian, avoids the room housing the Book of the Dead (Book of the Dead, noun: the vampire bible written by an insane vampire on human flesh, which causes madness if read too long in one sitting), cured her best friend’s cancer, visited her alcoholic grandfather (twice), solved a number of kidnappings, realized her husband/king, Eric Sinclair, could read her thoughts (she could always read his), and found out the Fiends had been up to no good (Fiend, noun: a vampire given only animal [dead] blood; a vampire who quickly goes feral).

  Also, roommate Antonia, a werewolf from Cape Cod, took a bullet in the brain for Betsy, saving her life. The stories about bullets not hurting vampires are not true; plug enough lead into brain matter and that particular denizen of the undead will never get up again. Garrett, Antonia’s lover, killed himself the instant he realized she was dead forever.

  As if this wasn’t enough of a buzzkill, Betsy soon found herself summoned to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where Antonia’s Pack leaders lived. Though they were indifferent to the caustic werewolf in life, now that she was dead in service to a vampire, several thousand pissed-off werewolves had a few questions. (“What, now? You care, now?”)

  While Betsy, Sinclair, BabyJon, and Jessica were on the Cape answering well-it’s-a-little-late-now questions, Tina, Marc, and Laura remained in Minnesota (Tina to help run things while her monarchs were away, Marc because he co
uldn’t get the vacation time, and Laura because she was quietly cracking up).

  They hadn’t been gone long before Tina disappeared and Marc noticed that devil worshipers kept showing up in praise of Laura, the Antichrist.

  In a muddled, misguided attempt to help (possibly brought on by the stress of his piss-poor love life… an ER doc, Marc worked hours that would make a unionless sweatshop manager cringe), he suggested to Laura that she put her “minions” to work helping in soup kitchens and such.

  As sometimes happens, Laura embraced the suggestion with zeal. Then she took it even further, eventually deciding her deluded worshipers could help get rid of all sorts of bad elements: loan officers, bail jumpers, contractors who overcharge, and… vampires.

  Meanwhile, on the Cape, Betsy spent time fencing with Michael Wyndham, the Pack leader responsible for 300,000 werewolves worldwide, and baby-sitting Lara Wyndham, future Pack leader and current first grader.

  With Sinclair’s help (and Jessica’s cheerful-yet-grudging baby-sitting of BabyJon), Betsy eventually convinced the werewolves she’d meant Antonia no harm, that she, in fact, had liked and respected the woman, that she was sorry Antonia was dead and would try to help Michael in the future… not exactly a debt, more an acknowledgment that because she valued Antonia and mourned her loss, she stood ready to assist Antonia’s Pack.

  Also, Betsy discovered that her half brother/ward was impervious to paranormal or magical interference. This was revealed when a juvenile werewolf Changed for the first time and attacked the baby, who found the entire experience amusing, after which he spit up milk and took a nap.

  Though the infant could be hurt, he could not be hurt by a werewolf’s bite, a vampire’s sarcasm, a witch’s spell, a fairy’s curse, a leprechaun’s dandruff… like that. Betsy was amazed—she suspected there was something off about the baby, but had no idea what it could be.

  Sinclair, who until now had merely tolerated the infant, instantly becomes besotted (“That’s my son, you know.”) and begins plotting—uh, thinking about the child’s education and other necessities.

  Back at the ranch (technically the mansion on Summit Avenue in St. Paul), Laura has more or less cracked up. She’s fixed it so Marc can’t call for help (when he discovers their cells no longer work, he sneaks off to find another line, only to be relentlessly followed by devil worshipers who politely but firmly prevent this), and she and her followers are hunting vampires.

  Betsy finally realizes something’s wrong (a badly garbled text secretly sent by a hysterical Marc), and they return to the mansion in time to be in the middle of a Vampires vs. Satanists Smackdown.

  Betsy wins, but only because Laura pulled the killing blow at the last moment.

  People went their separate ways, for a while. And nobody felt like talking.

  Three months later, Betsy decided to take the Antichrist by the, uh, horns, and invited her to go shoe shopping at the Mall of America. It was at this time she learned the Antichrist was fluent in every language on earth, and had little or no working knowledge of big-screen devils. Thus, Betsy hauls her sis home for a devil-a-thon (starting with The Omen and including Al Pacino’s Satan, Elizabeth Hurley’s sexy devil, and the baby in Rosemary’s Baby). It’s at this time Laura confesses that she feels guilty whenever she’s interested in finding out more about herself, her capabilities, or her mom, Satan. (“It’s like I’m slapping my adopted mom and dad in the face by wondering about her.”) It’s also at this time that Betsy realizes she’s sick of having a never-fail resource in her own home, the Book of the Dead, which she doesn’t dare use because anyone who reads it for longer than twenty minutes or so goes insane.

  So she and Satan strike a deal, which actually makes sense at the time: Betsy will help Laura embrace and use her supernatural powers, and in return the devil will fix it so Betsy can read the Book without the accompanying nut-jobbery.

  In addition to Laura’s weapons (stabbing weapons and a crossbow, which normally stay in hell unless she calls them up), she learns she can teleport almost anywhere. Cool, right? Yeah, not so much. In fact, that turns out to be a huge problem, as anywhere encompasses anywhen. In rapid, annoying succession, Betsy and Laura find themselves in Salem, Massachusetts, during the witch hunts of the 1600s; Hastings, Minnesota, before the spiral bridge was replaced (so, anywhere between 1895 and 1951); and the future.

  A thousand years in the future. Also, the future? Sucks. There was some sort of cataclysmic global thing-gummy, and Minnesota in the future has winters even worse than the ones it has now. Nobody wants to worry about heat exhaustion on the Fourth of July, but frostbite and hypothermia are just as bad… and since the average temperature in the year July 3015 is thirty below, nobody’s getting rich off selling sunscreen.

  In fact, nobody—except Future Betsy—is getting rich, period. They’re mostly hanging out in belowground enclaves and focusing on not dying.

  To make matters even yuckier, Future Marc is a vampire. And not just any vampire… after hundreds of years of being Betsy’s personal whipping vampire, he’s dangerously insane. So much so that Laura and Betsy can feel how wrong he is after a glance. In fact, neither of them can bear to look him in the eyes, or even be around him.

  BabyJon is there, too, and he’s as charismatic and charming as Marc is creepy and nutso. He won’t tell Betsy how he can be walking around one thousand years in the future and not be a vampire, though she tries and tries to wheedle it out of him.

  In the forty-five minutes or so they’re in the future, they discover Future Betsy has taken over (most of) the country, can raise and control zombies, and has a crippling lack of empathy for anyone. More troubling, Sinclair and Tina are nowhere to be found. Worse, no one will even talk about them… except Undead Marc, until Ancient Betsy shuts him up and sends him away. And BabyJon is wildly uncomfortable about the subject.

  They return vowing to figure out a way to save the future. Or undo it. Laura teleports Betsy back to the mansion and goes on her merry, hell-bound way.

  Betsy has returned to find out Tina and Sinclair remember meeting her in the past. They explain that they’ve always known Betsy would be headed on a time-travel romp, and the only way to help her was to stay out of the way.

  To Betsy’s amazement, Jessica is heavily pregnant by Nick Berry. And Nick is happy to see her, thoughtful and warm; since Betsy prevented her younger self from feeding on him, he didn’t experience any vamp trauma this time around. Also, in this timeline, he insists he goes by Dick. Which Betsy just can’t wrap her mind around.

  Now Betsy has to explain to her loved ones about the future, about the fact that they’re living in a tampered timeline, and figure out a way to, as Betsy would put it, “Get bad shit done.”

  Unfortunately, Betsy’s plan to get bad shit done involves fighting with the Antichrist and waking up in a Chicago morgue, realizing the Marc Thing followed her back from the future and told Human Marc enough dreadful things about what was in store for him that Marc killed himself. After which, Betsy killed the Marc Thing. But not before going back to hell (again) and persuading the devil to let Antonia live again, on earth, in the mansion. The devil also tries to tell Betsy that the Book of the Dead is Sinclair, but Betsy flat-out doesn’t believe the Lady of Lies, to the devil’s great delight. Laura then steals the Book of the Dead so Betsy can’t read it and find out what happens to Sinclair.

  Undermined ends with Betsy seeing that for something wonderful to happen in her life, something dreadful must also happen. She’s determined that it will not be like this, and decides to find a way to bring Marc back to life while not becoming the icy monster from the future, Ancient Betsy.

  Unstable opens not even a week after she comes to this conclusion…

  Pray… you never have to call us.

  —THE FROG BROTHERS, THE LOST BOYS

  Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.

  —1 CORINTHIANS 15:51

  You know what else the
Bible asks for death as a punishment? For adultery, prostitution, homosexuality, trespass upon sacred grounds, profanity on a Sabbath and contempt to parents.

  —SISTER HELEN PREJEAN, DEAD MAN WALKING

  I’m gonna kill ’em. Anyone that was involved. Anyone who profited from it. Anybody who opens their eyes at me.

  —JOHN CREASY, MAN ON FIRE

  The world will not be this way within the reach of my arm.

  —THOMAS HARRIS, HANNIBAL

  [Christian] Louboutin helped bring stilettos back into fashion in the 1990s and 2000s, designing dozens of styles… the designer’s professed goal is to “make a woman look sexy, beautiful, to make her legs look as long as they can”… Louboutin is generally associated with his dressier evening-wear designs incorporating jeweled straps, bows, feathers, patent leather and other similar decorative touches.

  —WIKIPEDIA

  A clear and innocent conscience fears nothing.

  —ELIZABETH TUDOR, HUMAN QUEEN

  I don’t have one of those.

  —ELIZABETH TAYLOR, VAMPIRE QUEEN

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven