Undead and Undermined

by MaryJanice Davidson

  So I was out for blood the minute my big white butt was out the door. Except so was the bad guy, because although I was moving pretty quickly, he managed to grab my shoulders and shove me back, so hard and fast I couldn't even get a glimpse of his face in the shadows of the long hallway.

  I flew down the hall-like Supergirl! And crashed through a wall that was, luckily for me, over a hundred years old. Yerrggh, the smell of mouse poop was almost enough to distract me from the stabbing pain of my newly cracked ribs.

  A low chuckle out of the gloom. "Don't worry. It won't leave a mark. "

  Jessica . . . the baby . . .

  I crawled out of mouse poop, plaster, lath, and dust and stumbled . . . I'd been thrown so hard I'd been knocked out of my shoes. I abandoned them without a thought-

  (Oh, my poor scuffed Beverly Feldmans! Pal, you are so GONNA DIE!)

  -and ran past the door to the attic and back down the hall. Nothing good ever came out of the attic, and I was going to amend that to nothing good ever came out of the attic or the hallway near the attic. Whatever-it-was had lurked in that hallway, the longest one in the house, listening in on our conversation and smoothie-snorting. Creepy and lame.

  "Okay. Let's try that again. " That sounded cool and brave, right? Not at all like I was scared shitless, right? Excellent.

  "Okayyyyyyyyyyy. "

  I could almost see him in the gloom . . . and I was reminded of someone. There was something about the line of the jaw . . . too bad this was all happening at super-hypersonic speed, instead of real time. If I had five minutes, I'd be able to sit down and figure this out. I was not, at the best of times, a fast thinker.

  "Hope you're ready for round two, bitch!" Which sounded much more badass in my head than out loud. I could never pull off the generic "the price is wrong, bitch!" vulgarity. "Don't be fooled if I didn't sound as badass as I could have. You're about to get a face full of badass! Then you'll be sorry. "

  That's when somebody grabbed my sweater (argh! A gift from Jess . . . red cashmere!) and hauled me backward. I again flew through the air with the greatest of ease, at what I assumed was the speed of sound, but didn't break anything on this landing. Woo-hoo! In fact, I'd mostly slid along the highly waxed mellowly aged floors.

  That's when I realized: Sinclair had grabbed me and jerked me out of harm's way. That was my husband in a nutshell: he'd commit felony assault on me. To save me!

  "If this were the kind of movie my wife enjoys," Sinclair said coldly, standing-looming, really-and almost entirely blocking the doorway, "I would make an inane announcement. Something silly and time-wasting like, 'if you touch my wife again, I will kill you. ' Except you did touch my wife. And I am going to kill you. Because no one gets a chance to hurt her twice. "

  "Really?" There was obvious delight in the thing's voice. "Will you really? You'll kill me? That would be woooooonderful. " Then, lower and much more sly: "Betsy, I seeeeee youuuuuuuu. "

  "Who the hell-" Marc began. Dick had managed to keep Jessica in the kitchen, but he'd had no luck with Marc, who wasn't above a knee in the 'nads to get from point A to point B. His lust for excitement had gotten him into jams worse than this.

  Seeing Marc alive and well socked the memory home for me; I knew who our unwelcome visitor was.

  "Do you seeeee meeeeee?"

  The Marc Thing, from the future. Somehow he'd followed Laura and me back to the present. And now he was in my house.

  Shit. CHAPTER NINE

 

  "Following me back was a bad idea," I told the Marc Thing as I manfully cradled my cracked ribs. "The sort of idea that will get you staked a zillion times in the balls. "

  "Don't tease," it said.

  I glanced at Marc. His color was high; he had a look of avid curiosity on his face. He smelled like-it's hard to explain; he smelled like hot wiring. You know how you sometimes taste metal when you get an adrenaline rush? He smelled like how that tastes. Excited. A little afraid. But not enough afraid, and was that a good thing or a bad thing?

  How to explain this to him? Say, Marc, in the future I turned into Supremo Bitch-o of North America and tortured you for decades-after not saving you from being killed, oopsie!-until you went batshit nuts and now the you from the future is here to do all sorts of disgusting things to all of us, which is all my fault. Sorry. I owe you one, okay?

  "My queen is quite correct . . . you will be staked. Only not in the balls. " We all jumped; I jumped and groaned . . . reeeally wish the cracked ribs would heal already. Tina, one of the awesomest vampires I knew (I didn't know very many awesome vampires; shame it was such a short list) had snuck up on the Marc Thing and stuck the barrel of her 9mm Beretta in his ear.

  "Wonderful," the Marc Thing and Marc said in unison, which was just creepy.

  It always surprised me to see Tina wielding firearms; she was an expert with all sorts of guns and had been ever since I'd known her.

  Because she'd been born, or died, or whatever, during the Civil War, I was always amazed to see her handling modern weaponry. Which was dumb . . . it wasn't like I expected to see her running around in hoopskirts brandishing mint juleps. Such a capricious nature has man. Or something.

  Tina always looked good, but tonight she looked like an angel. And could have passed for one-she'd been killed in her late teens, or early twenties . . . something like that. Who can keep track of when everybody died? Anyway, she was mega-gorgeous, with a gorgeous fall of shiny blond hair and the biggest, prettiest brown eyes I'd ever seen. Pansy eyes, my mom called them.

  "Have I mentioned," Sinclair began, smiling for the first time since the Marc Thing made his presence known, "that I adore having you around?"

  "Oh yes, my king. You are good enough to make frequent mention of it. "

  "You're not really theeeeeere," the Marc Thing sang. He acted like standing in a hostile house surrounded by enemies, and with an earful of gun, was all in a day's work. Which it prob'ly was.

  "On your knees. Slowly, if you please. And . . . yes. " Tina kept the barrel of the gun socked tightly in his ear as she bent at the knees to accommodate the Marc Thing getting on his. "Now on your stomach. Yes. " Sinclair shifted so his foot was resting lightly on the Marc Thing's wrist. My husband smiled pleasantly at the Marc Thing, who leered back, and everyone in the hall knew that if the Marc Thing even twitched, Sinclair would grind his wrist into splintered bone. Which made it safe for Tina to pull back and step back. Still: maybe next time Sinclair should rest his foot on its neck. Call me hospitable.

  For the first time I realized Garrett had also come out of the kitchen, which was something of a shock. In my timeline, Garrett had been a wreck, a shell, a disaster of a man. A coward, but not without reason. He'd been murdered, then driven insane, then murdered some more . . . and in my timeline, it drove him to suicide.

  "Uh, maybe you should go back in the kitchen and keep an eye on Dee-Nick and Jessica. Back in the kitchen. And not in here. "

  "Dee-Nick sent me out here. " Garrett correctly read my look of surprise, because he lifted his left shoulder in a slight shrug and added, "Antonia died right in front of me. There's nothing to be scared of now. "

  He was wrong, of course. But I didn't have the heart to disabuse him of that sorry-ass notion. He was almost a hundred years old, but I'd always felt older than him in both timelines. CHAPTER TEN

 

  I caught Sinclair's eye and tipped my head to the left, indicating another hallway. Before things went even thirty seconds further, I had to talk to my husband.

  "Tina, if you please. "

  "Of course. "

  "Garrett-"

  "Yes, King Sinclair. "

  King Sink Lair. Hee! It wasn't the time or place (it so rarely was) but I couldn't swallow my giggle. There was an annoying amount of my king and Your Majesty and dread king, but I didn't think anyone had ever used King Sinclair in my hearing.

  "I shall not even ask why you found
that amusing," he sighed as we stepped into the darkened hallway. "Are you well, my own? Not hurt, yes?"

  "Not hurt, no. Okay. Real quick, because I don't like being out of the sight line of that crazy fuck . . . one of the skatey-eight zillion things I haven't had a chance to tell you about Laura and Betsy's Time Travel Follies is that we went to the future, too, a thousand years in the future, and in that future Ancient Betsy tortured Marc for decades and drove him insane. "

  Sinclair's composure, as much a part of him as his Cole Haan loafers and big dick, slipped, and he stared at me with wide eyes and a shocked expression.

  And I was ashamed . . . more than I had ever been in my life. Ashamed that I was capable of that, that I could grow into someone who could/would do that to Marc. And ashamed that, now, Sinclair knew, too. He wouldn't be the last person I told, either . . . I'd have to warn everyone. I'd have to let my friends and family know about the awful thing I hadn't done yet. Just when I thought their opinion of me couldn't plummet further . . .

  "I-I thought you should know. " I shook my head and stared at the floor. It was very hard to look my husband in the eyes just now. "I didn't want to tell you. "

  "No. I imagine you didn't. " He put a finger beneath my chin and raised my head. "Do you know, I haven't been afraid of anyone until you cured Jessica's cancer? After my twin was murdered, I feared nothing. I felt nothing. Now the only thing I fear is you. I shall pause so you can make a sarcastic observation. "

  "And a smoothie made with frozen, not fresh, strawberries! And having someone fill up your Jaguar with regular unleaded, not premium!" It nearly burst out of me. He knew me so well. "You're afraid of lots of things. "

  "Yes, thank you for comparing my fear to petrol. I don't mind, you know. "

  I was getting that surreal am-I-drunk-or-just-weirded-out feeling. "Don't mind what?"

  "Being afraid of you. Well. I mind, but it doesn't prey on me. And the reason it doesn't-"

  "Maybe we should be getting back in there with Marc and the Marc Thing and the others. " How long had we been yakking in this secluded hall, anyway? Time was a-wastin'.

  "-is because I love you more than I fear you. "

  "Okay. " That didn't seem adequate, so I added, "Thanks. I think you're neat-o, too. "

  Sinclair rubbed his forehead with a familiar I'm-getting-a-migraine-and-want-to-shoot-someone expression. "Frightened of an idiot; it is a shameful, shameful day for the House of Sinclair. "

  "The House of Sinclair?" I shrieked. Lame! So completely fully utterly laaaaaame! "House of Sinclair! Oh, that's a riot. What's our family crest, a cross with the international symbol for No slashed across it? A blender wrought in gold leaf?"

  "Thank you as always for your courteous attention and appropriate commentary. " He grabbed my wrist, swung around, and back to the kitchen we went. CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

  Nickie-Dickie-Tavvie (best Rudyard Kipling story ever) held a gun on the Marc Thing while Tina taped him to the fridge. I was gripping the cross on my necklace . . . one twitch, and maybe not even one, and I was gonna jam it through his forehead.

  I had to stare for a good thirty seconds to understand what I was seeing. I thought the hallway had been surreal? Sinclair was right; I was an idiot. (He was also a jerk: who calls the awesome and only love of his life an idiot? Note to me: jerk his testicles up to his nostrils, then twist. Then nobly accept his apology. Repeat. )

  Tina had yanked the fridge out from the wall and unplugged it. She'd found several rolls of duct tape-you know how most people have a junk drawer in their kitchen? Yeah, well, in our Green Mill-sized kitchen, we had a junk cabinet, and in that cabinet were many rolls of duct tape. (Also many rolls of regular tape, index cards, Post-its, pens and pencils, markers, string-who used string anymore?-and various envelopes. And that was only the first shelf. )

  Old vampires like Tina and Sinclair loved duct tape. Looooooved it. They didn't like just using it for what it was intended (e. g. , fixing, repairing, undoing), they made things out of it. Pretty much any vampire born before duct tape had been invented thought it was the coolest stuff on earth. Velcro-cool. IPod cool.

  Anyway, Tina was taping the Marc Thing to the fridge. And doing it at ramped-up vampire speed. So what I saw was basically a blur of Tina spooling tape all over the Marc Thing like Charlotte spewed web for Wilbur. Which the Marc Thing found hilarious.

  It was all surreal enough to almost make me forget the pain of my mashed ribs. Which, to be honest, were feeling better and better. I hadn't had any blood in-what century was I in? Okay, not quite right, I'd munched a bit on Sinclair before all the madness started (again), but it wasn't the first time I noticed I was needing less blood and healing faster.

  Something to wonder about, some other time.

  "You'd be surprised," Dickie/Nickie was telling Jessica, who looked as fascinated as I felt. "You can't break it-most people can't break it, and look how many rolls she's going through!-and you can't untie it. It's as good as rope made out of Holy Water. "

  "The things I learn when I've been knocked up," she commented.

  "So many questions," Marc agreed, "and none of them are tape-related. "

  "I have questions for youuuuuu, tooooo," the Marc Thing hummed.

  "Ech, why do you talk like that?" Jessica asked. "Are you trying to come off as batshit crazy?"

  "That is what I was going for, Big Round Jessica," he confessed, "yes. "

  "I guess I should defend your honor," Nickie/Dickie/ Tavvie said doubtfully, "but how? Kick him? Shoot him? Can I get a stake through all that tape?"

  "Save that for later," Sinclair said. He was watching the blur of Tina and tape with approval. Then he turned back to the Marc Thing. "Unchivalrous comments aside, perhaps I won't kill you. "

  It pouted, which was not a pretty sight. "Spoilsport. "

  "I will, however, require information. "

  "I require it, too," Marc added, and Jess and N/Dick both nodded.

  I didn't . . . I required him to die, leave, burst into flames, or turn into a new pair of Beverly Feldmans. But I had the feeling I wasn't going to get what I wanted, at least right away. It wasn't the first time no one gave a tin shit for my opinion. Queen-schmeen.

  Sinclair glanced at our friends with an expression we'd all seen before, because Jessica jumped right in. "Don't you start pulling that only-vampires-can-know-about-this crap, Sink Lair. "

  My husband closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids. He looked like the Before picture in a Pepto-Bismol commercial. "Please don't pronounce my name like that. "

  "Because we all live here; you're not in this alone! Yeah, we're not vampires-"

  "Not yet," Marc Thing said slyly, earning him a sharp rap on the top of his head ("Hey!") from Tina. If I were him, I wouldn't antagonize Tina any further . . . the next smack could cave in his skull.

  "-but it affects us, it affects all of us, the living and the undead, landlord and tenants. "

  "Not that you let any of us pay rent," N/Dick pointed out with a dammit-I'm-a-man-not-a-consort expression. "So you can't shut us out this time, Sinclair. "

  Sinclair's eyes opened slowly, like a lizard's. "Can't?"

  Jessica faltered for a second; her hand went to her gruesomely massive stomach and rubbed . . . I would have bet a thousand dollars that she wasn't aware of it. "Shouldn't. You shouldn't shut us out, is what we meant. "

  "Where have you even been?" I asked Tina, who was using the last of the seventh roll. "I forgot you were even in the house until you rode in like Marshal Dillon in a pastel green T-shirt. "

  "Waiting for you and the king to finish your lovemaking. " Tina smiled and brushed duct-fuzz from her perfect green shirt. Green was excellent on most blondes, and super-excellent on her. She looked like a sexy leprechaun. "I imagined that, once you renewed affectionate relations-"

  "I'm not having this conversation," I decided.

  "-you would debrief His Majesty. "r />
  "Oh. " Marc coughed. "Is that what the kids are calling it these days?"

  "You guys, let's not get sidetracked by my sex life," I begged.

  "Usually you can time it," Jessica said as they all (!) nodded with intent expressions. "They reunite, they bang, they talk, they bang again, they get thirsty, they make smoothies, we know it's safe to get close. "

  "None of that is so bad," N/Dick said, "but they don't stick to their bedroom. Shit, last week I was minding my own business, looking for the weed whacker-I know it's November, somebody please tell that to the weeds by the back gate-and they were doing it in the damn shed! I'll never look at bags of fertilizer the same way again. "

  "And now, neither will any of us," Marc said.

  "You guys," I pleaded. Unfortunately, he had me there. And even if he didn't, Marc had walked in on Sinclair and me not even three hours ago. (I'd been very, very, very, very, very glad to return from hell and reunite with my husband. ) "You can't blame us for occasionally following our instincts. "

  "Why do your instincts involve sex and rooms that people normally would not have sex in?"

  "If you go into the basement," Garrett said, "you can barely hear them, and if you go into the tunnel you can't hear them at all. "

  "That's a good idea! I'll remember that," Jessica said, and Dickie/Nickie nodded.

  Incredibly, Tina was also nodding. Like this wasn't a bizarro conversation. Like this was a normal thing in their lives. "I shall as well. But as I was explaining, I was waiting for Their Majesties to finish-it was the third time this week, so going by their pattern in the past-"

  "We should make a chart," N/Dick said.

  "That would be easier-you could just see at a glance-"

  "And you'd know which areas on the property to avoid!"

  "We're not having this conversation!"

  A short, sudden silence, broken by the Marc Thing: "It seems as though we are. "

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Shut up, you crazy fucking psycho vampire weirdo. "

  "Ouch," it said mildly. "Words can hurt, too, Vampire Queen. " CHAPTER TWELVE

 

  "Before things go any further, we need to call Laura. "

  "Good idea," I replied. "We were going to anyway, because of . . . " I eyed the Marc Thing. Why give the psycho more info than we had to? "Because of the errand I need to run later. "