"Ani," I murmured.
"Going to stake regular people next, you bimbo?" Jessica snapped. "You come into my house hunting my friend, you don’t even knock, you bring guns and knives into my home, and now you’re threatening me? Girlfriend, you should have kept your ass in bed today."
The children were shifting uneasily, and I couldn’t blame them. Hunting the Undead was one thing. Arousing the ire of the city’s—the state’s!—wealthiest citizen was quite another. Even without her money, Jessica Watkins would have been formidable. As I said, she was her father’s daughter.
"Look, let’s make a deal," the doctor said, neatly breaching the awkward silence. "Father, why don’t you go upstairs to Betsy’s room—"
"Betsy?" I repeated.
"—and toss some of your holy water on her. That should do the trick, right?"
"Marc," Jessica began, but he shook his head at her.
"Well." I coughed. "It will likely burn her severely. It could even kill her. Or blind her. Your friend."
"It’s a risk we’re willing to take," the doctor said cheerfully.
"We’re going with him," Jon said.
"Fine, but the toys stay down here. Just holy water. Ought to be enough for big-shit vampire killers like you guys, right?"
His words were rude, but he was still grinning at us in a friendly way. I tried to find the trap, but I couldn’t see it. "Right."
"So, then. Go on up. We’ll wait." He looked disturbingly cheerful, but, as I said, I couldn’t see the problem.
The children dutifully unholstered guns and unsheathed knives. There was quite a pile on the lovely cherry table when they finished unloading. As for myself, my cross and holy water had always been all I needed. The Undead always went after one of the children; they tended to steer clear of me.
"Right, then." I took a deep breath. "Let’s go. But first …" The children dropped their heads obediently, and I closed my eyes. "O Heavenly Father, please guide my hand and keep our family safe. In Your name, Amen."
"Amen," they echoed. Interestingly, the doctor and Jessica also said Amen.
"Third floor," he said helpfully. "Fifth door on the left. Watch the seventh step, it squeaks."
I couldn’t help but stare at him, and knew my bewilderment must have shown on my face. Odder and odder. But we had our duty, and even had permission to finish it.
I pulled the cork from the bottle of holy water and led the way upstairs.
Chapter 14
I opened the door and, to my total amazement, got a vial full of water thrown in my face. For a moment I just sputtered. Then I started to sneeze.
Oh, great. Holy water! The stuff was worse than hot pepper. I sneezed and coughed and gasped until my vision finally cleared.
There were several people crowded in the hallway, but I focused on the tall, old one in black, the one staring at me and holding a cross out.
"Thanks very much!" I snapped. "What’d I ever do to you, jerk? Here I am, minding my own business, and you throw holy water in my face! Look at my hair! And my shirt! Dammit, I just put this on!" I shook water off my feet—lucky for these guys they were last season’s sandals—and shouldered my way past him and the other weirdos. "Is this what they teach you in Jerkoff School? Do I come to your house and throw water on you?"
"We … uh …"
"Well, come on." I stomped down two levels and heard them sort of shuffling after me. Nobody was talking. Which was probably just as well, since I wasn’t done yelling. "And another thing! Haven’t you heard of knocking? I mean, how long were you lurking in my hallway, anyway? Not too creepy."
Marc and Jessica were waiting for me at the foot of the stairs. Marc was smirking, and Jessica was glaring. At least all was right with those two.
"Problems?"
"You wouldn’t believe it!" I ranted. "I open the door, and big idiot in black here throws holy water on me!"
"Not surprising. Marc told him to," Jessica said.
"You what?"
"We weren’t sure," big idiot in black said, looking confused and scared and apologetic, all at the same time. "We weren’t sure … we thought you were a vampire."
I was a heartless denizen of the undead, and I was unmoved. Who cared if he strongly resembled somebody’s grandpa? Okay, my grandpa. "I am a vampire, dumbass! I ought to pull all your teeth out and play craps with them."
"But … but that’s impossible!" one of the dorky teens blurted. I glared at him … and recognized him.
They all took a big step back as I rounded on them. "I know you guys! You’re the Broody Warthogs!"
"Blade Warriors," one of them, the surfer dude from last night, corrected in a mutter.
"You shoot up my car and now you’re here?" I whirled on Marc and Jessica. "They didn’t hurt you guys, did they?"
"Never," the big idiot in black said, sounding—the nerve!—offended. "We only kill the dead."
I finally realized the black suit was actually a priest’s outfit, and so resisted the urge to pull his head off his shoulders and use it as a soccer ball. Would I go to hell for calling a priest a dumbass? Even if he was one? A problem to worry about later.
"You guys …" I took a breath, ignoring the wave of dizziness that caused, and forced calm. "We’ve been looking for you guys."
"I’ll bet," the woman said. She was super pretty, and big—my height—but looked mean, like a tall, evil Lucy Liu with a bad haircut. "I’ll just bet."
"Hey, you think we’re not gonna notice if you guys are running around slaughtering vampires?" I lied, because, of course, I hadn’t. "Hardly! You’re in big trouble."
Oooh, wait till Sinclair found out I caught the Word Barriers! All by myself!
"I don’t think—" the priest began, trying yet again, but I was still too annoyed to let him finish a sentence.
"What’s the matter with all of you? What’d I ever do to any of you?"
"Well," big idiot in black said. "Ah. That is to say … nothing."
"She isn’t a vampire," surfer guy insisted.
"She is," shorter geek with black hair moussed in spikes and tipped in white insisted.
"Is not!"
"Is!"
"Isn’t!"
"Is!"
The Lucy Liu knockoff stepped to the big table in the entryway, pulled a knife as long as my forearm out of a heroic pile of weapons, and handed it to Marc, handle first, much to his surprise. "Would you please," she asked pleasantly, "drive this into my ear until I can’t hear anymore?"
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. And, as always, it was hard to hold onto my mad when I was giggling. Ridiculous, but there you go.
"I still say she’s not a vampire," Wild Bill, the kid who had the armadillo haircut, insisted half an hour later. He had cream on his lip, but I wasn’t going to tell him.
"You’ll just have to take my word for it," I said. We were in the Tea Room—one of the tea rooms—and Jessica was playing hostess to the people who had tried to kill me. Well, I guess it was slightly more civilized than biting them or pulling their arms off. "I really am. And we’d better figure out how to get along."
"You can’t blame us for being surprised," Ani said. Her name was Ani Goodman. Wasn’t that a great name for a vampire hunter? Give the girl a decent haircut, and she would be a force to be reckoned with. "It’s just that you’re awfully … uh …"
"Vain," Marc said.
"Shrill," Father Markus added.
"Annoying," Jessica piled on.
"Did someone already say vain?" Jon, the leader who looked like a surfer, said.
"You guys are hilarious." I crossed my arms over my chest and crossed my legs for good measure. "If everybody’s done having a good chuckle at my expense—"
"I’m not done," Marc said.
"This is awkward," Father Markus said.
"No kidding!"
"Because until now, we have felt we were doing God’s work."
"Oh. I thought we were still talking about me."
"I’m sure
we will be, soon enough," Ani soothed, and Jessica cracked up. They traded a look, and the mood of the room shifted a bit more toward the "can’t we all get along?" side.
"The vampires we killed—they were abominations." Boy, that Father Markus would not be shaken off a subject. "But now, given recent events …"
I squirmed. I knew how bad vamps could be. But I was the queen—laughable as the idea was—and I had a responsibility here. Too bad I hadn’t the faintest clue what it was.
"So you guys just woke up one day and decided to start staking vampires?" Marc asked. He leaned over and stuffed half an éclair into his mouth. I nearly drooled … the pastries looked sooooo good. Custard squirted out the end and puddled on his plate. I looked up and realized Jon was watching me watch the pastry. I tore my gaze away and contented myself with another gulp of tea. "What, it was in your horoscope or something?"
"No," Jon said. "Father Markus knows tons of people from his parish work, people the rest of us have never met, people from all over the world."
"Well, that’s true," Markus coughed modestly.
"And a few months ago he started getting these e-mails, and then money started showing up in our account for weapons and stuff, and then we’d get a list of names and addresses. Hangouts, like … and we’d go to work."
"How’d they know about you guys? How’d you even learn to fight?"
"They are orphans who avoided the system," Father Markus said quietly.
"So?" I asked, puzzled.
"Grew up on the streets," Ani said with her mouth full. She swallowed her sugar cookie and continued. "Good place to learn how to fight."
"I caught Jon and Bill trying to boost my tires behind the church," Markus said fondly, "and brought them under my wing. And they brought me the others."
"Awww, that’s so cute. Not that we give a shit." I snickered. So much for being a good hostess.
"Who’s financing you?" Jessica asked.
The Weird Warriors looked at each other. "Well, the thing is," Father Markus said delicately, "we don’t know. Our—"
"Puppet master," Jessica said.
"—patron wishes to remain anonymous."
Jessica rolled her eyes at Marc, who shrugged. I thought it was kind of weird, myself, but didn’t say anything. With Jessica in the room, I didn’t have to. "Uh-huh. So, you guys get everything you need to kill vampires, somebody just hands you all that stuff on a plate, and you don’t question it, you just start killing them off?"
"We questioned it at first," Ani said. "But we were more easily persuaded when the first vampire nearly killed Drake."
"Who’s Drake?"
"Drake doesn’t run with us anymore. He’s trying to learn how to walk again."
"Oh," Marc and I said.
"Anyway," she said briskly, "after that, it was easy. We certainly didn’t question the morality of it. Most of the time when we cornered a vampire they were about to eat somebody. Or were actively hurting someone just for fun."
I squirmed, but didn’t say anything.
"Until we ran into you, that is."
At last, I could say something in defense of vampires. "Actually, until you ran into Tina and Monique. They got away, too. And FYI, they’re good guys! Not that you bothered to check."
"Look, we’re sorry," Jon said, crumbling his vanilla biscuit in his agitation—what was he thinking? I wasn’t going to vacuum, that was for sure! "But who checks the bona fides of the undead? They’re vampires, ergo they’re evil, ergo they should be killed."
"I’ve got your ergos right here," I muttered. Unfortunately, he had a point. Not that I could tell them that. In fact, what could I tell them? Should I even be talking to them? Was I supposed to be killing them right now? I’d never killed anybody alive before.
And how could I kill them when they were drinking orange pekoe tea and eating cookies with us? Should I wait until they finished, or jump them when they were getting refills? Being a soulless denizen of the undead was really hard sometimes.
While I was pouring more tea and contemplating mass murder, I heard a door slam open one floor down, but didn’t say anything. We had enough problems without more uninvited guests.
There was a tap-tap on the window behind me, and I turned. And nearly spilled my tea. Tina was looking through the window, which was disturbing because we were two stories up.
We’re coming, she mouthed. Stay calm.
"For heaven’s sake," I said, standing, crossing the room, and opening the window. Everyone else jumped, and Jessica let out a little scream when she saw what was on the window. I realized I was the only one who’d heard Tina knock. "Come in here and have some tea like a civilized person. Eww, you’re just sort of hanging on the house like a blond moth! Get in here."
She glared at me but clambered in. Then she glared at the Warriors. "We’re here," she said with great dignity, "to rescue you from certain death."
"Biscuit?" Ani asked sweetly.
The door to the tea room slammed open and, big surprise, there was Sinclair. Uninvited, as usual. He didn’t stand still very long; the next thing I knew he had picked Jon up and was shaking him like a broken pepper grinder.
Pandemonium. Spilled tea. Biscuits on the floor, where they promptly got stepped on and ground into the two-hundred-year-old carpet.
I jumped in front of Sinclair, arms spread, just in time to get another face full of holy water. I shook my head to clear my eyes, then grabbed Jon and wrenched him out of Sinclair’s grip. A little too hard; the guy went sailing over the back of two chairs and hit the corner with a thud that shook the teacups.
"Stop it, stop it!" I yelled. "This isn’t helping, you retard!" Then I spun and sneezed on Sinclair’s lapels.
The two little guys—Wild Bill and Devo—were cowering behind Father Markus, who had his cross out, but Ani looked ready to rumble as she studied Sinclair and clutched a butter knife.
"It appears her Majesty does not need saving," Tina said, and she was studying Ani.
"No shit. Thanks for noticing. Why don’t you guys sit down, take a load off? Have some tea, and a cookie if they aren’t all squashed."
"Why," Sinclair demanded, whipping out a black handkerchief and wiping my face, "are you having tea with the vampire killers?"
"Because they’re too young to drink alcohol?" I guessed.
Tina brought her hand up to cover a grin.
"Hey, I recognize you!" Ani said suddenly, staring at Tina.
"No you don’t," I said quickly. "Never seen her before. Got her mixed up with another bloodsucker."
"Of course she does," Tina replied. "The last time I saw her, she was on the business end of a crossbow and I was running for my life."
Interestingly, Ani blushed. Sinclair, who’d been holding my shoulder while he wiped all the holy water off my face, suddenly tightened his grip and I yelped. "Don’t start, don’t start again!" I yelled, waving my arms frantically. "Let’s sit down and talk about this like civilized people!"
"Why?" he asked coldly.
"Uh … because I asked nicely?"
He stared at his handkerchief which, now that it wasn’t touching me, was starting to smolder. So, once holy water was, like, off my person, it could hurt a vampire? Weird! He tossed it in the waste-basket and scowled at the Blond Warriors.
"As my queen commands," he managed to spit out through gritted teeth, to my surprise and everyone else’s relief.
Chapter 15
"YOU guys get that you’re just a loaded gun someone else is aiming. A tool, a big, dumb, tool." Jessica popped another cracker into her mouth, chewed, then added, "You get that, right?"
"That’s not true," Wild Bill whined.
"Sure it is. You guys weren’t even a team before the Puppet Master came along. Now you’re running around staking dead people. And you don’t even know why."
Sinclair nodded approvingly and sipped his Earl Grey. The vampires were comfortably spread out on one side of the table, and everybody else was crammed together on the
other side. Father Markus had hung his crucifix around his neck, keeping it in plain sight, which made the other vamps a little antsy. They kept trying to look at him, and then their gaze would skitter away.
Across the table, the others jumped a foot whenever Tina or Sinclair reached for more tea. It was kind of funny.
"So who is the Puppet Master?" Tina asked. "Don’t any of you have any idea?"
"No," Ani replied.
"Oh, come now."
"I swear! Everything’s been anonymous. We assumed it was some rich vampire victim. You know, someone who lost a loved one to … to one of you."
"Ennnnhhhhh! Thanks for playing … what do we have for her, Johnny?"
"Quit doing your game show host schtick, Marc," I ordered. "You’re confusing the vampires. They’re not big TV watchers."
"Certainly not daytime television," Sinclair sniffed.
Marc smirked. "My point is, I doubt it. Remember, guys, we were talking about how it had to be a vampire, because he knew who was dead and who wasn’t? How would a regular person know that? It’s not like Eric keeps a list … oh, John Smith rose from the dead, better write that down."
"No," Sinclair said, and he was actually smiling. Thank God. "I don’t have a list."
"Actually, I was saying that," Jessica said, "and you’re right. The bad guy’s one of you," she said, pointing to the vampire half of the tea table. In fact, she was pointing right at me, and I batted her hand away. "You’ve got to figure out who, and why. And ouch, not so hard, Bets."
"Sorry. I get nervous when people make announcements about killers and then point at me. So, why? Why would a vampire want to kill other vampires?"
"If we knew the why, we’d know the who," Tina said, sounding like an undead Dr. Seuss.
"You at least know where your funding comes from," Sinclair said. It wasn’t a question.
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