“As I said in my message, the trail is cold. I think you may have to prepare yourself for the worst.”
“I've been doing that since I woke up dead,” I lied, trying to sound tougher than I felt.
“Uh-huh. But there is a somewhat larger problem We'll have to deal with.”
“Fabulous. Hit me.”
“The full moon, dear. It's in two days.”
“What?”
“The. Full. Moon. We. Will. Get. Hairy.”
“Cut that out. Sorry. The werewolf I lived— live — with doesn't do that.”
“Right. But the rest of us will, except Jeannie, who's human, and Lara, who's too young.”
Dimly, I heard, “Come on! Lemmee talk to her.”
“Shut up, or I'm calling your wife. Betsy? Are you there?”
“Yes,” I said, my patience stretched almost beyond endurance. “So you'll have to leave town?”
“Not at all. We'll stay.”
“You think the good people of Minneapolis won't notice werewolves running around on Nicollet Avenue?”
“Give us a little credit, Betsy. In fact, we might be able to find Antonia and her mate on all fours. Our senses are much, much keener when we run with the moon.”
“Well, do that. Run along with the moon. Have fun. Keep me posted.”
“I have a favor to ask.”
“Of course you do.”
“Would it be all right if my wife and cub stayed with you during the first night of the full moon? This is a strange city, and I prefer not to leave them unguarded while my Pack members and I go hunting.”
Dimly in the background: “I don't need a damned babysitter, Michael!”
“Uh, maybe you better run that one by the little woman first.”
“I will pretend,” he chuckled, “you didn't just call her that. May we impose?”
I sighed. I don't get these people. “Sure. Be nice to have some company. But Michael?”
“Yes?”
“Tell her to leave the gun at home.”
“Well, she'll keep it holstered,” he said, sounding almost shocked.
“When should I expect you?”
“Two days, maybe sooner. We'll call before coming by.”
“Oh, I can't wait. I'm all atingle,” I muttered, hanging up.
Derik was right. Definitely a cultural thing.
Chapter 26
“I think this is a sign from God," my half sister, Laura, told me after she took a sip of her orange pekoe.
I managed not to groan out loud. She'd swung by for tea, showing up about twenty minutes after I woke up (being the queen, I usually woke up around 4:00 p.m. or so, and could go outside without being sautéed).
As usual, she was indecently beautiful: about my height, with long buttercup-blond hair caught up in a sensible ponytail. No makeup. Tan capris and a faded blue oxford shirt. Navy blue Keds, one black sock and one navy blue sock. Big, gorgeous blue eyes framed by lashes that you usually only saw on little boys.
I'd given serious thought to not inviting her to my wedding, because, bottom line, she looked better on her worst day than I did on my best. Fortunately, I quickly came to my senses. Well. Six or seven days later, anyway.
“Really, I think God is trying to tell you something,” the daughter of the devil went on. (Have I mentioned? She rebelled against her mother, the Lady of Lies, by being a faithful churchgoer). “You should take it as a sign. I was praying over it just last night.”
“Laura, what the hell are you talking about?”
She frowned. “Don't talk like that. I'm saying that perhaps your wedding to the king of the vampires wasn't meant to be. He could have picked any other time to leave you, but he chose now?”
“That's the thing, Laura.” I ignored my own tea. I was ragingly, crazily thirsty, and I didn't give a damn. “I don't think he left me. I think someone snatched him.”
“But why? Why would someone do that? No, I think you should cancel your wedding and be thankful he didn't decide to pull this nonsense after you'd been married a hundred years. By then, you'd have been emotionally committed.”
"Laura, he didn't run out on me. Even Tina agrees.'
“Oh, her.” Laura waved Sinclair's most loyal friend away with her unmanicured hand. “Another vampire. What do you expect her to say? You're always complaining that she's more loyal to him than you.”
That was true, I had confided that to Laura. I never dreamed she'd toss it back in my face, though. And it was getting real hard to hold on to my temper. “She's worried about him. So am I.”
“She's a vampire. She lies.”
“I'm a vampire.”
“Yes, well. I know you're doing the best you can.”
“When you said you wanted to come over to help me figure out what to do, this was your big plan?”
“I'm helping,” she said, reaching for my hand. I snatched it away “You need friends now, Betsy. Besides your mother and a sick Jessica, I'm the only one left who really cares about you.”
“Laura. Darling? You're so full of shit your eyes are brown.”
She stiffened. “Don't talk like that.”
“Then cut the shit. Jeez! Did you really come to my house—”
“Jessica's house.”
“—to encourage me to forget about the man I love? Who's either dead or captured? To blow off Tina, who spends all her time trying to make our lives as comfortable and murder-free as she can?”
“God doesn't want you to throw in with the minions of Satan,” she sniffed. “Don't ignore the signs.”
“What the hell do you know about God, you murdering psychotic spawn of Satan?”
She was on her feet. So was I. “Don't talk to me like that!” she shrilled, our faces only inches apart.
“Or what? You'll give me shitty, insensitive advice?”
“It's not my fault that creature tricked our father, birthed me, then went back to Hell!”
“Well, it's not my fault I'm a vampire who fell in love with a vampire!”
“You can control who you live and—and fornicate with. I can't control my bloodline.”
I felt my eyes bulge. “Are we really playing Who's The Biggest Sinner?”
“You chose to throw your lot in with him,” she went on. “I didn't choose what happened to me.”
“Oh ho! The prude is rearing her ugly head, If not the wedding that's bugging you, it's the living in sin.”
“It's a sign,” she repeated stubbornly. “You're blind not to see it.”
A chilling thought occurred to me. “Laura. Honey? Did you snatch my fiancé? Did you stick him with that light-show sword of yours?”
“I did not .”
“I've seen your temper tantrums before, Laura, so don't get up too high on that horse. People usually die when you get pissed.”
“They do not! Not real people, anyway. And you're one to talk, you have to drink blood to keep walking around. You—and your kind—are abominations!”
“At least our socks match!”
“That's it!” She threw up her hands. “I'm leaving. I might have known you would spurn perfectly good advice.”
“Spurn this,” I said, and gave her the finger.
She looked like she'd found a minnow in her cereal, which was probably close to the expression on my own face. She turned, and I grabbed her shoulder and shoved her across the kitchen. She bounced off the wall, hit the floor, but was back on her feet in half a second. Just in time for me to grab her by the throat and slam her against the wall.
That's when I noticed the bright light just below my left eye. Her sword. She could call it up simply by force of will. It was made of Hellfire, and turned vampires into towers of flame, and then ash. Where it went when she wasn't using it, even she didn't know.
“Let go,” she grated.
“Put it away,” I snapped back.
“Let go.”
“Put it away.”
The light from her sword—if my eyes could have
watered, they would have. They would have been streaming by now. As it was, I couldn't see out of that eye at all.
“You're not leaving until you tell me what you did.”
“Put me down or I'll—”
“What? Kill me? Like you killed Sinclair?”
“I didn't kill him! I wouldn't do that to you!”
“No, you just suggested I leave him forever.”
“For your sake!”
“No, for yours. It's hard to pretend to be Miss Goody Goody of the universe if your sister is the queen of the vampires, isn't it?”
“You know what you're doing is wrong.”
“Says the girl with a temper-powered sword.”
“I don't mean to lose my temper.”
“Did you lose your temper with Sinclair?”
“No!”
“How about Antonia and Garrett? You nearly beat Garrett to death once. Did he piss you off again? Did you dispatch him with your handy-dandy sword, get rid of Antonia, and then lie yourself black in the face?”
“I don't lie!”
Ah. There we go. Her eyes were shifting from blue to poison green. Her blond hair was growing red streaks. She was losing her temper. She wasn't Laura, daughter of a pastor. She was the Devil's Own, and she was in my kitchen with a weapon that could kill me.
Excellent. “Fess up, Red. What'd you do?”
“I did nothing. Let me go or I'll—”
“Kill me?”
“Let me go,” she hissed. “Let me go or I'll kill you, and never mind if I'm sorry after.”
“Are you really going to stick me with that thing? Kill your only sister? Orphan Babyjon. . . twice in one week?”
"All that and more if you don't let me go now let me go let go of me right now, Vampire Queen, right now!”
“What'd you do, Laura?”
“Let go of me!” she screamed, and behind me, the window over the sink shattered.
“Whoa. New trick. Nice one, devil's daughter. Any other new stuff you want to share with the class?”
She was silent for a long moment, and I suddenly felt silly, hoisting my little sister by the neck a good foot off the ground, trying to avoid the sword pointing at my eye. Was this what happened when things went wrong all at once? You couldn't trust anybody?
“I see what you're doing. It won't work. Put me down, please.”
Her eyes were blue again, the red fading to blond. The sword disappeared in a flash. No, it didn't work. If she had done something, it likely would have come out when she was her other self, her darker self. When she was in a temper, she lost her mind. She wasn't sly, like her mother. Just red-rage pissed. Too pissed to lie.
But now she was calm again. Careful again. Now she could lie.
I put her down.
“Really, Betsy,” she fumed, straightening out her mussed shirt. “What would Jesus do?”
“Turn you into loaves and fishes?”
“I've had about enough of your blasphemy.” She started for the door, puffing her bangs out of her face as she stomped past me.
“You're a lot more interesting when you're pissed!” I yelled after her.
“Go to hell! And I mean that as a literal invitation.”
“Where do you think I am right now?” I cried, but the slamming of the front door (damn, she must have really booked down that long foyer) was my only answer.
Chapter 27
I didn't want to do it. In fact, I could think of about a thousand things I'd rather do, including having a root canal without anesthesia.
I resisted it as long as I could. Well, I resisted it for about ten minutes after I had the idea. But this could be considered “the beginning.”
It was also right around the time Nick would have realized I was a vampire, and that we had stomped all over his brain with big black boots. But Nick wasn't the only one we'd vampire mojoed and regretted it, after.
One phone call to Tina, who was in the middle of trying to cross the border into Switzerland, was all it took. This was a surprise. Not that she had the info. Frankly, I had no idea Switzerland was anywhere near France.
“Isn't that, like, way farther north? Like by Greenland?”
“My queen, how may I be of service?” Tina replied, sounding harassed.
“I need Jon Delk's home address.”
Long pause.
“Tina? Stupid cell phones. . .”
“My queen, what good would that information do you? As you have promised not to leave the house until I return.”
“Every day is another pint of Sinclair's blood, Tina, assuming he's still alive at all.” I could actually feel her wince through the phone. “Delk's old job was killing vampires, and he hates Sinclair more than anyone I know. It's worth paying a visit to the family farm, don't you think?”
Another pause, this one shorter. Then: “Bring Laura.”
“Sure,” I lied. Damn. I was getting good at lying through my fangs. I'd make it up to Tina once she got back.
“And please call me the minute you find out anything,” Tina was saying. “Or don't find out anything. It's an excellent idea, Majesty. I just wish I was there to run the errand for you.”
“You've got your hands full already, sunshine. Now hit me with the address, please.”
“I've text messaged it to your phone while we've been talking.”
“Sneaky and efficient. That's my girl.”
“Majesty, it's kind of you to pretend I'm actually being of assistance.”
“Stop that,” I ordered. “There's no point in beating yourself up. You had an important job to do, and you did it. Who could have predicted all this?”
“Someone,” she said, “my age with my IQ.”
“Whoever did this took him out from under my nose. Did all this shit right in front of me, and I didn't even notice. Whatever's happened. . . well, it's on me, that's all. Not you.”
“Kind,” she replied, “but untrue. Take all care, Majesty. How I adore thee.”
“What?”
“N-nothing.”
Awkward!
As we hung up, I found myself wondering about the mysterious Tina. How had she turned into a vampire? Who had done it, and why, and where were they now? I had no answers here, only her unabashed devotion. In fact, the only person I knew less about was my recently vamoosed fiancé.
How was it that these two vampires, who seemed to care so much about me, had remained so mysterious about their pasts?
Well, wondering wasn't getting me any closer to finding Sinclair. After some digging (I was always misplacing the damned thing), I found my cell in the bottom of an old Louis Vitton purse Jessica had bought me for my twenty-first birthday.
I noted not only the address but precise directions (I knew Tina would make sure she could track down a Blade Warrior if necessary), and got ready to make the long drive to the Delk family farm.
Chapter 28
Jon Delk's parents lived in a St. Paul suburb, but lately he was spending a lot of time at his grandparents' farm in Burlington, North Dakota. I made the fourteen-hour drive in nine hours, mostly because I didn't have to stop to pee or eat, and because I went ninety on the interstate almost the whole way. I was pulled over three times, all three times by single male state troopers. Didn't get a ticket once.
It was the next evening—I'd had to get a motel room just before sunrise, but was on the move again by 5:00 p.m. the next afternoon.
Long gone were the Minnesota cornfields I was used to; out here, close to the Canadian border, it was all wheat fields and sloughs. Got kind of monotonous after a while. At least cornfields were an interesting color.
I pulled into the mile-long drive and shut off the engine (I'd picked Sinclair's banana yellow Ferrari for this drive. . . ninety felt like fifty), staring at the neat, large cream-colored farmhouse with not a little trepidation. I wasn't at all looking forward to what was coming next.
For one thing, it was late—for farmers, anyway. Ten o'clock at night. For
another, Delk and I had not exactly parted on good terms. Specifically, he found out we'd stomped around inside his head and was not at all pleased. He expressed this by shooting me. (It was astonishing how often this sort of thing happened.) Then he'd stomped out, and we hadn't seen him since.
Making him a pretty good suspect for all the weird goings-on.
I stumbled up the gravel driveway, regretting my choice of footwear. I was wearing lavender kitten heels to go with my cream linen shorts and matching cardigan (sure, it was eighty degrees outside, but I felt cold almost constantly).
I went up the well-lit porch steps, inhaling myriad typical farm odors on my way: manure, wheat, animals, rosebushes, the exhaust from Sinclair's car. There were about a zillion crickets in the back field—or at least, that's what it sounded like.
I knocked on the porch door and was instantly distracted when a shirtless Delk answered.
“Betsy?” he gaped.
Farm Boy was built. Too young for me (not yet drinking age), blond, nice shoulders, fabbo six-pack. Tan, really tan. Blond hair almost white from being out in the sun all day. He smelled like soap and healthy young man. His hair was damp from a recent shower.
“What are you doing here?”
“Huh?”
His blue eyes went flinty and he squinted past me, trying to see past the porch light into the dark driveway. “You didn't bring anyone with you, did you?”
“I came by myself.”
“Well, I'm not inviting you in.” He crossed his (muscular, tanned) arms across his (ripped, tanned) chest and glared.
I opened the screen door and pushed my way past him, gently. “Old wives' tale,” I said. “Got any iced tea?”
Chapter 29
“My grandparents are asleep upstairs,“ he said, keeping the crossbow pointed in my general direction, while I dropped six sugar cubes into my tea. ”Twitch in their direction, and I won't take the arrow out."
“I tremble and obey. Got any lemon?”
“Yes, and you can't have any.”
“Crybaby.” I took a sip, then dropped in two more cubes. Delk knew that a stake (or wooden arrow) to the heart wouldn't kill me like it would any other vampire. . . but until he pulled it out, I'd do an excellent impersonation of a dead girl. “Don't worry, I grabbed a snack on the way.” From that pig of a Sleep E-Z Motel front desk guy who'd actually goosed me while I signed the register. I'd nearly bitten his fingers off. Settled instead for hauling him behind the registration desk and helping myself to a pint.
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