"It's creepy, is what it is. Creepy dead librarians keeping track of your whole life, lurking here waiting for you to come back… yech!"
"It's a pretty logical system, actually—what the hell?"
"What, what?"
She froze the screen. Under Affiliations, there was a single name: Sinclair.
"What's a Sinclair?"
"I have no idea. I don't affiliate with any vampires."
"Shit, you barely affiliate with me."
"I wish we could cross-reference my file with Sinclair's to find the—whoa." The computer unfroze and started to do exactly that. In a few seconds, they were staring at the screen, which read:
04/06/00. His Majesty King Sinclair, passing through Des Moines on business. See transcript.
"Let's see it," she ordered.
Instantly a dark, slightly amused voice came out of the computer. "I was passing through town—this was a couple of years before I became Elizabeth's consort—and back-trailed a young vampire. It was a chilly night; I thought she might need a hand. She was very young; I doubt she knew her own name at the time. She was afraid and wouldn't come with me. I made a few attempts and left her to her own devices. See if her description matches anyone in your files: about five foot six, shoulder-length brown hair, brown eyes, pale coloring—hereditary, not as a condition of being dead—slender, no tattoos or birthmarks that I could see, but she had a beauty mark high on her left cheek. Transmission ends."
"Holy shit," Daniel said, poking her beauty mark. "You met up with the king of the dead guys!"
"I remember him, too," she said faintly. "I was too scared to talk to him. I'm not surprised he's Elizabeth's consort. Still, it was nice of him to try to help me."
Daniel snorted. "He barely tried and gave you up as a bad job quick enough."
"It's not really in a vampire's nature to help another vampire," she explained. "For him, for what he was, he went above and beyond, believe me."
"Well, d'you want to look up more toothy dead guys, or finish what we came to do?"
She was tempted to remain in the library—to sleep in the library!—but Daniel was right, they were just postponing the inevitable. She had no desire to look up Elizabeth's file—for one thing, it was probably forbidden, and for another, why find out more information that was just going to scare her? And she had no wish to look up Nostro's file, since he was dead and gone.
"Elizabeth must be a thousand years old," Andrea muttered. "Maybe more."
Daniel puffed out his chest. "Well, she's no match for the baby and the sheep, tell you that right now."
Andrea had to smile. "Still got that map?"
"No, in the three minutes since Marjie gave it to me, I've managed to lose it. Yes, I've got the damned map."
"All right, then. Let's go find the queen."
Chapter 11
« ^ »
" THIS place is so totally creepy," Daniel commented, his hand firmly in the center of her back as they moved through the ankle-high grass of the lawn. "I feel like Shaggy on Scooby-Doo."
"The resemblance," she agreed, "is remarkable."
"Man, if you hadn't told me a ton of badass vampires lived here, I'd have totally figured it out on my own."
"Sure you would have. Stay close."
"Don't worry, Andy. Anything comes shooting out of the dark, I'll kick their ass."
"Don't call me that. And if anything comes out of the dark, you get down and you stay down and you let me handle it, do you understand?"
"Sure. Not too lame," he muttered.
She could hear a chain-link fence rattling and, after a moment's effort, could see it, barely illuminated by the cold sliver of the moon. "There. That way."
"What way?" he complained, stumbling beside her. "It's darker than a woodchuck's asshole out here."
"Never mind. I can see."
"What, you've got flashlights for eyes now? Is that, like, a vampire power?"
"Daniel, hush up." To her left, she heard a low, feral growl, and stopped suddenly. Another to her right.
"What?" His voice seemed very loud in the night air; booming. "What's the matter? Change your mind? Because we could be back in Chicago in—"
"Shhhhh."
Another, flanking them… no, two of them. No, three. Shit. She didn't worry for herself—what did she care if she was ripped to pieces? But Daniel was easy meat. She wasn't about to stand and watch one of these things eat his dear face.
She heard them coil to charge and jerked him behind her ("Hey!") and got ready. She felt her fangs come out; part of her was always ready for a fight, welcomed a fight, and that was the true tragedy of her condition.
She could see their attackers now, scrambling toward them on all fours, but they weren't wild dogs, as she had first thought. Or even wolves. They were too big, too long-limbed, too… pale?
They were… they were people.
She could smell their breath; old blood, and death. She could see their eyes; devil's eyes, all black, like pits, but far down, sullen red light… their pupils? Their pupils were red? She could see their fur—hair, rather—long and falling to their shoulders in greasy clots. She could—
"Hey! Stop! Quit it, you guys! Bad fiends. Baaaaaaad fiends!"
Blinking, she saw a tall blond woman stumbling after the—the whatever-they-were. The woman's progress was impeded by her footgear… ridiculously high heels in electric blue, with white toes. She was wearing a black skirt and a black double-breasted jacket, sleeveless. Her arms were slender; the wrists tiny, barely two inches across. Odd, on such a tall woman. Her hair was light blond and curled under at the ends, framing an attractive face with high cheekbones. Her eyes were bright green. Andrea had never seen such green eyes before.
There was a gold cross nestled in the hollow of the woman's throat; it made her slightly sick to look at it.
Perhaps oddest of all: the things were listening to the woman.
"Bad, bad, bad!" she was saying as she neared them. The things cowered and whimpered but kept their distance. "You guys! Gross! I mean, just stop it now! You just had, like, ten buckets of blood apiece, how could you possibly be hungry? Bad!" She turned to Andrea and Daniel, and covered her eyes with her hands. Her nails were beautifully French manicured, Andrea saw, and the fingers were long and slender. No rings. "This is, like, so embarrassing. I'm not with these fiends, you know. I mean, I'm with them, but I'm not with them with them, y'know?"
"Sure," Daniel said, which was a relief, because Andrea was completely mystified. It's like the woman was speaking another language. One Daniel could understand! Thank goodness she'd brought her own interpreter.
"Like, just really gross-out, you know?"
"Totally," Daniel said.
"Thank you! Usually people don't get it, but it's just… yech!"
"Not to mention massively bogus 'n' stuff."
"I know!" The blonde shook her head and rested her hands on her hips. "So, what brings you guys to Hell's Acre? In case you missed the memo, it's so totally dangerous out here. Probably looking for a nice place to make out but this is so not it. I hate to be a hardass, but I'm really gonna have to ask you to leave."
"Hello," Daniel muttered. It was obvious his eyes had finally adjusted to the dark… while remaining oblivious of the danger. "Babe alert."
"Down boy," Andrea muttered. Louder, she said, "We'll be glad to go, miss, but we can't just yet. We're in town for—never mind. Thanks for helping us. Are these your… ah…"
"They're mine, all right," the woman said grimly. "Unfortunately. Don't get me started. I mean, yech! We try to keep them clean, but they're like puppies… they roll in everything."
"Sure," Andrea said, humoring the woman. Puppies. Undeniably evil puppies with foul dispositions and the appetites of rabid, starving tigers. All righty. "Well, thanks for calling them off. Listen, this might sound kind of weird, and I promise we're not crazy, but we're looking for a vampire."
"Oh, yeah?" she said, totally unfazed. "Which one?"
"Well, the, uh, the queen. Of the vampires."
"Whyyyyyyyy?" the blonde whined. "I mean, you've got nothing better to do with your time? What do you want?"
The blonde was weirdly unfazed by this… maybe she was a what-do-you-call-it, a sheep. Before Andrea could answer, Daniel was bulling in.
"Well, she's here to pay her respects n' all, and I'm here to kick the queen's ass if she tries to do anything to my girl."
"Oh."
"Daniel!"
The blonde snickered. "Well, the queen is me, and I don't want to kick anybody's ass."
"Don't be ridiculous," Andrea snapped, her nerves almost at the breaking point. "You're not a vampire."
"Am, too!"
"You certainly are not."
"I am, too!"
"Oh, now just stop it! You can't be a vampire, and you certainly aren't an all-powerful queen. For one thing—" Andrea pointed triumphantly. "You're wearing a cross."
"Oh, that." She shrugged. "It was a present from El Jerko, aka Eric Sinclair."
"Eric Sinclair? As in the Sinclair?"
"Guy gets around," Daniel muttered, then gasped as a fiend licked his hand with her cold tongue. "Uh… nice kitty. Go away."
Andrea, puzzled, said, "But Eric's the consort of—"
"Let's not talk about it," the blonde said thinly. "Look, you're just going to have to take my word for it: I'm a vampire. The—uh—the queen." She choked back a giggle. "Believe me, I know how it sounds."
"This isn't fair!" Andrea wailed. "I come all this way—I was scared, but I came anyway—and you won't take me to the queen! You're just playing games!"
"Look, babe, do I have to write it on my forehead? I'm the queen. I sicced these guys…" Indicating the fiends. "… on Nostro. They had him for lunch. I didn't know that by doing that I'd end up the queen; I thought I was just saving my friends. Now I'm stuck with this fucking crown and that sneak, Sinclair, and frankly, I'm pretty pissed off about it!" She was shaking her perfectly manicured finger in Andrea's face, while Andrea was trying not to vomit from being so close to the woman's cross. "So believe me or don't, but either way, get lost!"
"Perhaps I can be of some assistance?"
"Aaaaagggghhhhhh!" all three of them howled in unison.
Andrea literally couldn't speak, and Daniel was busy sucking gasps of oxygen into his lungs. So only the woman whirled on the darkness that had approached them. "God damn it, Sinclair! Stop doing that! And stop following me, it's so fucking creepy and you know I can't stand it!"
"Good evening to you, too, Elizabeth. Away, fiends," he said, snapping his fingers, and the poor things scattered.
"My heart," Daniel muttered, "is not having a good day."
"I do apologize," Sinclair said smoothly. "I didn't mean to startle you. Elizabeth, aren't you going to introduce me to your—" He saw Andrea and his black eyes narrowed. "You. Iowa?"
"Yes, we ran across each other there, sir," she said faintly. It made her extremely nervous to be chitchatting with the king. He was just as terrifying, just as powerful, just as frighteningly polite as he had been that long-ago snowy night. He was, in fact, everything Elizabeth, the One, was not.
"You seem better now. In fact, you're a couple of years ahead of schedule." He carelessly turned his back on her. "Why are you here, Elizabeth? We have staff to take care of the grounds. If you won't live here, why can't you stay away?"
"If you won't fuck off and die, why do you keep bugging me?" she snapped back. Andrea was filled with admiration: the woman seemed more irritated than terrified. "These guys are here to pay homage to the—" She gnashed her teeth and finally spat it out. "The queen, but they didn't believe me when I told 'em—"
"We believe you now," Daniel and Andrea chorused.
"Oh. What gave it away? My innate royalness? My fabulous highlights? My shoes, did you see my shoes?" She propped one of her feet up on its heel, showing off her slender ankle. "Aren't they cute? I knew if Kate Spade put her mind to it she could do decent pumps."
"Actually," Daniel said, jerking a thumb toward Sinclair, who looked gratified, "it was him."
"Welllllll, isn't that great." Elizabeth, the One, scowled at them, then whirled on Sinclair. "Dammit! You told me this was going to stop eventually! It's like some sort of twisted The Incredible Journey, except with dead people instead of animals." She turned back to Andrea and Daniel. "Why, why, why do you all have to be so dumb and dependent? Can't you just migrate somewhere else? Like to North Dakota, or the Antarctic Ocean?"
Daniel snickered and poked Andrea. "Queen says you're dumb."
"Shut up, sheep," she muttered. Then, louder, "But you—you've been calling me!"
"Nuh-uh!"
Sinclair ahem'ed. "It's a function of your power as sovereign," he explained. "You probably have been calling them. Her. And the others who have been—"
"Well, shit!"
"Yup," Daniel said.
The queen frowned. "What do you want, anyway?"
"N-nothing," Andrea managed. "Just to see you. To make myself—"
"Us," Daniel corrected firmly.
"—known to you."
"Well, that's nice and all, but you sure didn't have to come all this way just to see me. Ever heard of e-mail?"
Daniel laughed, and the queen smirked as he exclaimed, "Don't even tell me we could have avoided this whole trip!"
"Okay, I won't tell you, but you could have. What's your name?"
"Baaaaaaaaa," Daniel said.
Andrea smacked his arm. "Very funny. I'm Andrea Mercer, and this is my friend, Daniel Harris." She shook the queen's—the queen's!—hand. "It's very nice to meet Your Majesty."
"Betsy, for the love of God. Sorry," she added, seeing Andrea flinch and Sinclair wince. "I keep forgetting."
"Hey, I do that all the time, too! Whoa." Daniel made the time-out sign. "You can swear? And wear crosses?"
"Uh-huh. Don't ask me why."
"Okay, I won't, but then you can't get mad at people when they don't think you're a vampire."
"Can, too! If I'm the queen I figure I can do whatever the heck I want, so there. Although I have to say it's nice to meet a vampire who has a sense of humor—"
"He's not a vampire," Sinclair and Andrea said in unison.
"Oh. My bad. I usually can't tell until they jump on me and start chewing, anyway."
"You mean vampires attack the queen of the vampires because they don't know you're a vampire?"
"My life," she sighed, "in a nutshell."
"And he's not my sheep, either," Andrea blurted out, glaring at Sinclair, who was looking entirely too smug. "He's—he's my—"
"Hot love monkey," Daniel supplied helpfully.
Andrea buried her face in her hands. "Anyway," she said to her fingers, "if Your Majesty doesn't require anything of me at this time—"
"Go hit a Dairy Queen, have a shake, go crazy," Betsy said carelessly. "Have fun with your love monkey."
"As long as we're on the subject of hot monkey love," Sinclair began.
"Forget it, pal! The last time I got naked with you, I got stuck with a crown. And you. I'd rather have gotten a hemorrhoid!"
Andrea grabbed Daniel's elbow and began to slowly lead him away. "Well… we'll be going, then…"
"Ah, Elizabeth, you really should succumb to the inevitable."
"How about if instead I set your shoes on fire!"
"You wouldn't: they're Kenneth Coles."
"Nice meeting you!" Daniel called.
Faintly, the queen: "I didn't ask you to come out here, FYI."
"Ah, my queen, you know I can't stay away."
Louder, the queen: "Well, you better!"
"Good-bye!" Andrea yelled and, holding hands, they ran to the car.
"What's the rush?" Daniel gasped, keeping stride.
"Do you want to be around if they start throwing punches?"
He picked her up and ran the rest of the way.
Chapter 12
« ^ »
"
SO now what?" Daniel asked. They were in yet another anonymous hotel room, this one the downtown Minneapolis Marriott. Andrea had to admit it was much nicer than the others. "Do we stay? Do we go back to Chicago? Do we keep driving west, running from the rising sun? What?"
"I don't know. I—I didn't expect to still be alive. Or in charge of my own destiny. I thought she'd kill me or enslave me."
Daniel snorted. "Her? The only thing she'd enslave is a pair of high heels. She was cute, though. Really cute. If you like 'em annoying, flighty, and fashion-obsessed."
"Which you do," she said thinly.
He tackled her, bringing her to the bed. "Nope. Used to like 'em that way." He nuzzled her nose. "Now I like them stuck-up and brainy and on a liquid diet."
"Daniel, that's so—"
"And the dude with her! Cripes! It was like the devil showed up in her backyard!"
"Tell me."
"No wonder you got the hell away from him when you were still a drooling baby vamp."
"Yes, rushing off while fueled by cowardice was one of my finest moments."
"Don't knock yourself, Andy. He was scary. I don't know how she's gonna keep him in line."
"Oh, that's obvious enough." For some delightful reason, Daniel was nuzzling her earlobe. She'd thought, once his obligation had been discharged, he'd be long gone. It was odd that he was lingering, but nice. "Did you see how he looked at her? He loves her. And not like a subject loves a queen, I think."
"Mmmph."
"Stop it, that tickles."
"Nuh-uh. I've got something else to tickle you with, by the way."
She laughed. "That's terrible!"
"So, look." He straightened up and propped his chin on his elbow. "You gonna ditch me?"
"I was sort of waiting for you to ditch me," she admitted.
"Because the way I see it, you can go to that weird library and reactivate all your accounts, your credit cards and stuff. And get a vampire-type job. So you don't really need me anymore."
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