Undead and Unstable

by Davidson, MaryJanice

  “Now, darling,” he said reprovingly. “There is no need—”

  “Don’t ‘darling’ me, butt monkey. You knew what would happen. You figured out what this place was, and you deliberately—get away!” I yelled at the puppies, and several of them scampered back toward the garage. Of course, several more ignored me and collapsed on their fat puppy butts, looking up at me with their puppy tongues hanging out of their puppy mouths. “Dogs and zombies. That’s what this Thanksgiving has for us, Sink Lair. Dogs and zombies.”

  “Perhaps you might consider seeing if they bend to your will,” he suggested.

  “Shut up.”

  “Now, Elizabeth. You yourself said this sort of, uh, event…” The corner of his mouth twitched, but he managed to keep the grin off his face. If he’d still been human, his eyes would have watered with the effort. “This sort of thing did not happen to you in life. Perhaps you can control them in death.”

  “I can’t even control my split ends, never mind the hounds of heck.”

  He blinked. “I have no idea what that means. But as I said—”

  “I wasn’t listening.”

  “Perhaps you could dominate them.”

  “I’m still not listening.”

  “Oh, you’re here,” the Antichrist said. No doubt roused by my bitter screams of hatred, she’d come out of the house and was standing on the porch. She was pretty focused, too: she was looking straight at me, like Sinclair wasn’t there and, weirder, like thirty-some puppies weren’t, either. “Good. We’ve got to talk.”

  “Boy, do we,” I said. “Also, do you know a good divorce attorney?”

  Sinclair ignored me and was (ugh!) holding two of the black Lab puppies, which seemed delighted to be in his arms, judging from all the wriggling and licking. “They shall be mine,” he said, delighted, “and I shall name them Fur and Burr.”

  “And the horror continues. Fur and Burr? Be serious. Uh … Laura … you wanna help us wrangle some of these dogs?” They were annoying, but that didn’t mean I wanted them to get lost or wander onto a highway and get squashed.

  “Okay.” Laura came down the steps, crossed the driveway, and absently scooped up two more puppies. I’d rarely seen her look so solemn. And given that the Antichrist loved puppies, shelters, orphans, lemonade, babies, marshmallows, and the homeless, it was weird that she wasn’t going deep into cuddle mode. “But then we’ve got to talk.”

  “That’s not all we’ve gotta do,” I muttered, aiming a kick at the vampire king, who easily dodged, and walked toward the house talking in a low voice to Fur and Burr.

  SEVENTEEN

  The Antichrist, in addition to her many other odious qualities, was stunning.

  Yeah. Completely thoroughly gorgeous. My half sister (we had the same dad) looked better on her worst day in torn jeans and with dirty hair than I looked in my wedding gown. I was pretty sure she’d never had a pimple. She had skin that would put an Irish milkmaid to shame, was leggy and statuesque (over six feet!), with long blond hair the color of corn silk and with nary a single split end. Eyes the color of a cloudless spring sky … except when she was having a bad day. Then her eyes went poison green, and her hair deepened to red. So, gorgeous while being evil, just a different kind of gorgeous. And in hell, she had long gorgeous brown wings with which she could fly and in general just be the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever seen, ever.

  But such are the challenges I, as vampire queen, must face. So when my husband and I (and Burr and Fur) went into the little farmhouse, it was to find the Antichrist in black leggings, a St. Olaf sweatshirt (weird, since I was pretty sure she was a U of M student), muddy tennis shoes (we were on a puppy farm, so I let that pass), and one of her adopted dad’s old winter jackets. Her hair was yanked back in a messy ponytail, and her face was pale. Even for a blond Minnesotan. And gorgeous, of course. Proof! Proof she had sinister supernatural powers; no woman should look gorgeous with messy hair and a sweatshirt!

  “Do you know who lives here?”

  Fine, thanks, and you? But I played along; Sinclair had exhausted my bitch reserves for the time being. “Someone who really, really likes black Labs?”

  “Jon Delk.”

  I waited for the name to mean something. My sister was getting good at interpreting my blank expressions, because she patiently prompted, “Of the Blade Warriors?”

  I snorted. That Jon Delk. He and a few other weirdos had started their very own vampire-killing club a couple of years ago, complete with the de rigueur priest-as-team-leader and mysterious financial backer who turned out to be a villain. (Yawn.) Sinclair and I had encouraged their little club of vamp haters to disband and behave, or at least behave, and they had all gone back to their lives after the villain was trounced.

  Jon had sort of fallen for me … yes, I know, it’s all about me, but it really was, and he did fall for me—I can’t help it if men sometimes find me irresistible. Which was why he couldn’t stand Sinclair (tonight, though, I could see the logic behind the dislike).

  Even worse, I’d given Jon-boy my life story, which he wrote down and then sold to a publisher. But not before Sinclair mind-raped him into forgetting it was my story. So in a short time Jon went from loving me and hating my husband to hating me. And hating my husband (the latter I totally get now). And I couldn’t blame him. The whole mess was avoidable, and entirely on me.

  In the old timeline, though, Jon lived on his grandparents’ farm. Which was an actual farm. And not outside Mendota Heights … it was in North Dakota, a fourteen-hour drive from the mansion. He did not live on a puppy farm just outside the Twin Cities.

  “See anything unusual about the place?” the Antichrist asked.

  “He really likes vampires now?” I guessed, eyeing the Dracula posters, the stacks and stacks of vampire books, the Sweet Valley High Vampires posters, several action figures with fangs … it was like being trapped in eBay’s forbidden basement.

  “No, everybody really likes vampires. In this timeline, he wrote your life story and it went on to be a big hit, prompting all sorts of other books about modern flaky selfish—”

  “Hey!”

  “—sorry—hip vampires to hit the shelves. Which spawned movies. Which spawned TV shows. Vampires are huge now, Betsy. Huuuuuge. And Jon Delk started it all. That’s what he thinks. Except you did. You started it all. Your stupid story started it all.”

  “Okay.” I took another look around the living room. No signs that Jon lived with his folks. This was the lair of a single (geeky) man. “So where is he?”

  “Book tour. And then he’s off to L.A. to oversee the TV series they’re making based on his books. Because vampires are huge now.”

  “Okay.” I traded glances with Sinclair. Burr was snoring; Fur looked like she was going to start any second, if her glazed puppy eyes were any indication. Sinclair, I was relieved to see, looked as puzzled as I felt. “And we should be terrified because…”

  Laura folded her arms across her smudged sweatshirt. She could pull off imposing, even dressed like she was on a prom committee, and she was pulling it off now. I was starting to get nervous, with no idea why, which made me irritable and nervous. “Vampires were not huge before we screwed up the timeline.”

  “Yes, I remember.” Specifically, I remembered thinking, I’m the queen of the vampires? Vampires? How thoroughly lame.

  “But they are now.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Because of us.”

  I glanced at Sinclair again. Um … help?

  My own, I do not see the danger here…

  Our telepathic link had been many things to me: cool, weird, big-time hot. This time it was comforting … as dim as I knew I could be, at least I wasn’t the only one in the room without a clue. There was comfort in our mutual ignorance.

  It’s nice not to be the only stupid one in the room.

  I do not know that I would have phrased it quite like that…

  “Betsy!” Laura made a grabbing motion, and I knew in he
r mind she’d seized my shoulders and was shaking me like a maraca. “Think! You’ve accidentally made vampires into the new big trendy thing! They are huge now, and it’s only gonna get worse!”

  “Worse how?” Merchandising to go with, I dunno, movie rights? Vampire iPod apps? Vampire beach towels? Vampire tote bags? Half of Barnes and Noble dedicated to all things vampire: cookbooks, teen-angst stories, bookmarks? “What, exactly, is the danger here?”

  If anything, vampires being cool and trendy might actually make our lives easier…

  Do not think like that, my own! Sinclair, I realized, was finally getting it. That made two of us, and neither of them was me.

  “I think this is the beginning…” Laura raked her fingers through her ponytail, mussing it even more. Why? Why did she treat her hair like this and never get split ends? “I think this might lead to your eventual takeover.”

  “Not mine … you mean…” It was too awful to think about, never mind say out loud, but I did, anyway. “Ancient Betsy? You think vampires being trendy somehow leads to Ancient Me taking over the country after that future nuclear winter thing?”

  “Yes. That’s what I think.”

  I looked at the Antichrist. She looked back at me. We both looked at the vampire king, who was cradling Fur and Burr and looking at us.

  “Well, shit,” I said, because really, what else was there to say?

  EIGHTEEN

  “Sinclair.”

  More silence. Ye gods. The sexiest coolest most maddening man I’d ever met, a guy I loved more than my own life, and he was sulking. Over Fur and Burr! Yerrggh, I could still smell the little monsters all over him.

  “Sinclair, you couldn’t just steal those puppies.”

  Nothing. Argh, he knew I hated the silent treatment. I’d honestly rather be at a poetry reading. Or scrubbing toilets at the airport. The silent treatment was just so … silent. The only thing it left me with were my thoughts. And that was awful.

  “Come on! Count up all the reasons this is a terrible idea: we don’t have leashes, we don’t have puppy chow, we don’t know what shots they’ve had and if they need more, we’re not set up for puppies, what with all the vampires and zombies and werewolves living at the mansion these—”

  “Zombie, singular. Werewolf, singular.”

  “We’re not set up for it! Plus we live in a big gorgeous expensive mansion full to the attic with antiques and old wood and also the undead … can you imagine the havoc two puppies could wreak?”

  From the slight smile on his face, he could. Meanwhile, just the thought of what those two could get up to with their puppy shenanigans left me cold(er) all over. Giselle wasn’t the, um, cuddliest pet, but she knew where to poop and she stayed the hell out of my way. As a return courtesy, I stayed the hell out of hers. It worked! It was, come to think of it, a perfect relationship…

  “Okay, shouldn’t have used that last as an example. You should see your eyes, man, they lit up like a pinball machine!”

  “My eyes do not light up.”

  “Oh yes they do. Listen, back to my point—”

  “Your interminable point.”

  “You know how needy dogs are … someone’s always got to walk them or play with them or give them shots or … you know … all the dog stuff you’ve gotta do with dogs all the time, and how’s that gonna work? Sinclair, you can’t go out during the day without doing an impression of a comet hitting the earth’s atmosphere! You can’t take care of puppies. And are they really your puppies if someone else is doing all the work?”

  The second it was out, I wished I could take it back. Wished I’d never opened my stupid flapping mouth in the first place. I was the only vampire who could bear sunlight. And my husband, my king, the child of farmers and the earth and the sun, missed sunlight almost as much as he missed his long-dead family. If he’d been born during the right decade, he could have been a flower child, that’s how into nature the poor schmuck was.

  “Point,” was all he said.

  I still felt shitty, though. And the best way to leave my faux pas in the dust was to barrel on ahead to the next faux pas, to wit: “And—and they aren’t our puppies to take, anyway. What’s poor Jon Delk gonna think when he gets back from his eleventh huge book tour only to find he’s two dogs short? Didn’t we do enough to almost ruin his life in the old timeline? Now we’ve gotta steal dogs in the new one? Hmm … Delk running to me was actually a good thing … that’s so weird, me being an asset and not the other thing.”

  “I doubt he would notice … he left them.”

  I could almost hear his teeth grinding, which was a scary thought. I tucked my legs beneath me so I could face him. “Now, come on. You heard Laura … he’s got dog sitters or whatever coming over four times a day for feedings and walks and, I dunno, puppy pedicures and stuff. We’re lucky we missed them.”

  “They’re lucky.”

  “Stop that. Jon set all that stuff up before he even left for the first city on his tour.” Laura had known all about Jon’s book tour and dog-sitting plans. When I asked her how she’d stumbled across all this, I’d gotten a mysterious, “I followed some bread crumbs my mother left,” for an answer. Which didn’t make me feel any better, or more secure, but I had other things to obsess over.

  “Besides,” I summed up, “we’ve got bigger problems. Vampires are trendy now.”

  “Truly a nightmare vision of a horrifying future.”

  “Well. Yeah.” We really needed to have sex soon. Almost everything he said was pissing me off, and I was sure almost everything I said was pissing him off. More so than usual, even. Terrifying thought. “And we’ve still got to figure out Marc’s deal. And his dad.”

  “Sorry?” Sinclair stopped glaring through the windshield long enough to look at me. “His father?”

  “Well, yeah. Did we even notify him that Marc was dead? I didn’t. I didn’t have that homophobic idiot’s address or anything, and frankly, I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to look. Marc didn’t leave a will, just his journal. He forbade a funeral—he wasn’t even buried (and now we know why). Only now Marc’s … back. So do we tell his dad, Colonel Homophobia? Or not?”

  “Likely we should ask Marc,” he said, looking thoughtful. “Interesting that we can ask Marc, but it does not change the fact…”

  “We fucked up.”

  “We were careless,” he amended. “But not without cause.”

  “So with cause. We had tons of cause! But it’s another one of the little details that always seem to bite us on the ass. If I were gonna take over the world—and I won’t—but if I was—and I’m not—I’d hire a whole team of people whose only job would be taking care of the ass-biting details I always forget about.”

  “A whole team, beloved?”

  “A squadron.”

  “The ass-biting team?”

  “A battalion.”

  He laughed, and I did, too. So it was a little better.

  For a while.

  NINETEEN

  “You stupid, stupid, stupid woman.” It was safe to say the Antichrist was displeased. “After what we saw in the future, and the past? Oh, Betsy! How could you be so stupid?”

  “Hey, hey! Two stupids are all you’re gonna need to cover my many mental deficiencies. And I didn’t do”—I pointed to Marc—“that. In fact, I was wondering if you did it. Look! Look at what you may or may not have done, you bad, bad Antichrist!”

  “I have a name,” Marc the Zombie said.

  “See? He’s talking and he has a name! The dead guy is talking and has a name … somebody has to answer for this grossness.”

  The zombie looked irked. “Well, I love you, too, Betsy.”

  I shrugged my shoulders in apology. “I know, sorry, but you know what I mean, Marc—the main reason you let yourself be seen was so you could find out the answers to those exact same questions, so this is a bad time to get picky. Now shush. The grown-ups are talking.”

  “This is bad.” Laura sat down so quickly, I
had the feeling it was plop onto the sofa or fall down. Poor kid … I knew how she felt. “This is…”

  “Bad?” Marc asked politely.

  “Do the others…” Laura asked in a near whisper, glancing toward the entrance hall. We were in the first parlor off the hall, with almost the whole rest of the house beyond that parlor. “Do they know about this?”

  “Oh yeah. No need to lower your voice. Like, at all.”

  “Oh.” She thought about it for a second, then looked alarmed. “Oh.”

  “Yeah. See, Jessica knows so much she brained me with a kitchen chair, and Nick/Dick’s kept her out of the way ever since. I won’t say I didn’t have it coming, but it was still pretty rude. Antonia knows so much she didn’t give a shit, and Garrett knows so much he was politely interested for half a second and then ran off to crochet a grill cover or whatever the heck he’s working on now.”

  “Oh my God.” At Sinclair’s near-imperceptible flinch (was it me, or was he getting better at handling the G word?), Laura managed a smile. “Sorry, Eric. But this…”

  “Let me guess. It’s bad?” Marc asked.

  “Sorry.” The Antichrist was huge with the apologies. And you’d never get a more beautifully written thank-you note than the one Laura popped in the mail on real stationery. “Marc … please don’t misunderstand … I’m glad for you—I—” She raised her arms, and he slowly crossed the room to her, bent, and gave her a stiff hug. She didn’t stand, just sort of halfheartedly raised her arms and hugged-shrugged back. I couldn’t tell if the awkward body language was because he had to move his creaky zombie arms, or because he was embarrassed and unsure how hard to hug her back. Or even if he should have hugged at all. I’ve seen hugs between people suing each other that had more warmth and spontaneity. “Are you glad for you?”

  Really good question, one I was instantly embarrassed not to have thought of. So I gave Marc my full attention.