Chapter 49
Dude,
Betsy bundled me so efficiently and so quickly into the closet, I hardly had time to protest. And believe me, dude, the irony of me being back in the closet was not lost on me.
I hammered on the door, wanting to help them any way I could, but she must have jammed the knob with a chair or something.
Great. My friends were going to live or die ten feet from me, and I was helpless. I’d been helpless this entire week. No matter what I did, or tried, things just kept getting worse.
I’d been so happy to see Betsy and Sinclair. Now I wished I’d kept my mouth shut and kept them far, far away.
Chapter 50
Think about what you’re doing, Laura.”
“I told you never to speak of her around me.” She was striding forward and I was backing up—while trying to tell myself I wasn’t backing up. Laura’s hair went red when she was indulging a homicidal rage. My little sis definitely had a dark side.
“Can’t we talk this through—oooooh!”
This time I crashed, back first, into the fireplace. Luckily it was a mansion-?sized fireplace, not the little ones you usually see in houses these days. The thing was big enough to roast a sheep in. Or a vampire.
“All right, enough is fucking enough.” I crawled, coughing soot, out of the fireplace. “No more Mrs. Nice Guy. I’m not pulling any more—” That was as far as I got before I had to duck. Laura’s clenched fist whistled over my head and went right into the wall.
She hissed in pain, yanked her hand free, and whipped around so fast she’d given me an eye-?watering slap before I knew what was happening.
“This isn’t striking you as just a little bit psychotic?” I asked. Too bad Laura wasn’t bleeding; I could really have used my fangs about now.
“You’re the psychotic. Running around saving vampires instead of killing them, it’s nonsense.”
“I’ve killed some vampires,” I whined.
“I have been trying to save your soul.”
We were stalking each other, circling warily. “My soul’s fine. But you need to be on medication.”
I could hear tons of racket from the other room—Sinclair, taking on the thirty or so devil worshippers by himself. I couldn’t help him; I could only pray he wouldn’t get badly hurt.
“I destroy evil, so I should be medicated?”
“You’ve appointed yourself judge, jury, and executioner.”
“They’re vampires!”
“So am I. Are you going to kill me, too?”
“No,” she said sulkily. “At least, I don’t think so.”
“Laura, what’s wrong with you? What happened while we were gone?”
“Marc gave me an epiphany.”
“What is that, an STD?”
She rolled her eyes. “He solved a big problem for me. He showed me the light.”
“I’ll show you a light.” I seized her by the hair (cat fight!), yanked her down sharply, and brought my knee up into her nose, which broke with a soft crunch.
Laura screamed. My sister was screaming. And bleeding. Here came my fangs—at the worst possible time. Just what Laura needed to see—a physical reminder that I was one of the evil beings she was trying to wipe off the planet.
I brought my hand up to hide my lips. “Laura, I think if we dithcuth thith, we can—”
Something bright swung toward me, something that shone like a small sun, something that hurt to look at. I ducked . . . and Laura’s Hellfire sword whistled over my head.
Oh, this was getting better and better. First, the psychotic break. Then the red hair. Now her weapons. Laura could pull a sword, a crossbow, whatever, out of thin air and no matter what shape the weapon took, it was fatal to vampires.
And their queen.
Chapter 51
Dude,
The door actually split down the middle and, with judicious shoving, I freed myself . . . and promptly tripped over two unconscious devil worshippers.
Sinclair was a whirl of activity; I could only get the occasional glimpse of him when he managed to knock a bad guy away from him. And I realized why the door had been broken—he’d thrown someone into it so hard, the flimsy closet door had cracked.
I tried to figure out who to help. Calling the cops was out, for obvious reasons. Getting between Betsy and Laura would be a quick and painful way to commit suicide.
So when a hooded jerk ran past me I caught him by the back of his robe, yanked him back, and smashed my elbow into the hinge of his jaw.
“That’ll teach you to mess with a licensed physician,” I told the unconscious Satanist.
Then I ran to see if I could give Sinclair a hand.
Chapter 52
I ducked again as her Hellfire sword whistled over my head, and sidestepped so quickly I tripped over a chair. I was in such a hurry to scramble to my feet that for a few seconds I ran in place, like the Road Runner.
Then I was up and backing away again.
“You came back too soon,” Laura said, circling me. Her knuckles were white on the sword hilt. If my eyes could water, they would have. It was like she was holding the sun.
“Tell me about it,” I retorted. And I thought I had problems on the Cape? Good God, I didn’t know what problems were. “I should have left BabyJon in charge.”
“You never mind about him.”
“Your mother infected him, too,” I said brightly as a wonderful idea came to me.
“You shut up.”
“Yep. He’s got demonic unholy powers—just like you!”
“I said. Shut. Up.”
“You know what they say . . . like mother, like dau—”
She forgot about the sword and, the minute she wasn’t concentrating on it, it disappeared . . . back to hell, or whatever unholy armory her weapons came from.
She hooked her long, slender fingers into claws and ran straight at me. They looked very long and very sharp. And pink! Blech.
I managed to grab her by the wrists and keep her hands away from my face. Sure, it was a cliche, but she really was trying to dig her fingers into my eye sockets.
