“So I began to visit them and let them feed off me.”
“Eh?”
“Pay attention, Elizabeth.”
“They didn't try to puree you or anything?” Marc asked.
Garrett shook his head. “Even though I had... changed, they still knew me as one of them. They would never have hurt me. Or so I thought, until tonight. And I felt... bad. To see them. I had everything, and they were drinking buckets of cow blood.”
I was suddenly interested in studying my feet. I wouldn't have credited Garrett with a guilty conscience. But then, I scarcely thought about him at all.
“I was not sure what would happen, but I kept trying. I had found so much happiness in – ”
“Your agoraphobia,” Marc prompted.
“ – in my new life, I felt it cost me nothing but blood to try to help my old friends. And Antonia is generous with her blood. She regenerates quickly, as is part of her superior genetic heritage.”
“Superior genetic – ” Tina began, equal parts outraged and interested (until a very short time ago, neither she nor Sinclair believed in werewolves), but Sinclair shook his head, and she shut up without another word. God, I'd love to learn that trick. I'd only use it for fighting evil, though.
“It worked. My friends were helped by my blood. The effect wasn't all at once. It took many visits. It was – was – ”
“Accumulative?” Jessica and Marc asked in unison.
Garrett nodded.
“But they weren't really friends, right?” I asked anxiously. “You guys didn't even know each other in life, right? Once in a while, ole Nostril would take it in his teeny brain and toss another one of you into the snake pit and that was about it. Right?”
“We were prisoners together,” Garrett said quietly, “for decades.”
“Right, right, got that, sorry.” I was so embarrassed I couldn't look at him. So I went back to studying my toes. “So, you had good intentions, right?”
“Exactly so, my queen,” he said eagerly. “I only wished – ”
“And in your loneliness and self-?exile, you put the queen's life in danger,” Sinclair said coldly. “You put her friends in danger, and my friend.” I noticed he didn't include himself in the pack. “I should have ignored Elizabeth's soft heart and staked you myself.”
I heard Tina flip open the seat on the stern (you could sit on it, but it held life jackets and things... sort of like a padded cedar chest), rummage around, and produce – ack! – a stake. The boat that had everything!
Garrett sank to his knees. “All you say is true, bold king,” he said to the deck.
“Marc, Jessica, step to the back. You don't want to get splashed.”
“Now wait just a fucking minute!” I slapped the stake out of Tina's hand so hard she nearly plunged overboard. (And what other nasty implements of death were in that chest?)
I marched over and hauled Garrett to his feet. The book rocked alarmingly, then steadied. “This is a monarchy, right, Sinclair? And if the Book of the Dead is right, I outrank you. I was born the queen; you had to fuck me to get your crown.”
And oh, boy, I still got pissed if I thought that one over too carefully.
“So I'll be the one to say who gets staked.” I shook Garrett, who drooped at the end of my arm. “Stand up straight! Defend yourself! Be a man of the early twentieth century, for God's sake – ignorant yet sure of your superiority.” (We were sure he'd been killed in the thirties or forties.)
“Ever the graceful hostess,” Sinclair commented.
“Besides, smart guy, you didn't even notice that every time Antonia left town, Garrett was leaving the house and feeding other vampires. Too busy looking for new companies to buy?”
“Touche,” Tina muttered, not looking happy about it. Watching over the estate, including the Fiend farm, was part of her job, but she knew I preferred to yell at Sinclair rather than her.
“So, Garrett, where were we? What's the rest of the story?”
“My plan worked,” he continued miserably. “Too well, I fear... my comrades wanted to know where they were, what had happened to them. Unlike me, they were – were displeased to find themselves – ”
“Stuck on an abandoned farm full of animal blood?” Jessica suggested.
“Exactly so. I tried to emphasize the queen's goodness in letting them live, tried to explain that she had set us free by killing our jailor, but they only became more enraged. Essentially, they could not understand – ”
“Why you and not them?” Marc asked.
“What?” I cried. “So this is my fault?”
“Looks like,” Jessica replied.
“They were so angry,” Garrett said dolefully.
“Angry? After you saved them? Ungrateful brutes. Besides, with Nostro dead, what's to be mad about?” Marc asked.
“Ah, let me count the ways,” Sinclair purred. And he did just that, ticking the points off on his long, slender fingers. “They are angry because they are old vampires with no real power. Deprived of live blood for so long, like Garrett, they will never have real power. They are angry about, as they see it, being dumped on a farm, and never mind that it was for the public's safety.”
“But it was!” I cried.
“The vampire queen puts vampires first, my dearest. As I have repeatedly told you. Next – ”
“I don't wanna hear any more,” I groaned.
“ – they are angry that a new queen has been in power for two years and done nothing to help them – ”
“Nothing! I stopped you from killing them about nine times!”
“ – angry that the new queen knows she could have 'cured' them at any time (case in point, the happily married, articulate Garrett), and, finally, extremely angry that they've been given silly nicknames.”
“That wasn't the queen,” Tina said loyally. “That was Alice.”
“Alice is dead,” Garrett said.
“Happy, Skippy, Trippy, Sandy, Benny, Clara, and Jane killed her?” I said, horrified.
“I tried to stop them, but they are many, and I am one. I only barely escaped myself. Alice...” He looked away, out over the water. “Died cursing me.”
“And then you led them straight to the queen.”
Garrett shivered. “I had not – thought of that. My only thought was to return to safety. One of them followed me. He must have picked up the queen's scent – from my clothes, I think – and – ”
“Blown past you, beat you to the mansion. You fell for the oldest trick in the book,” Marc said, not unkindly. “Leading the bad guys to the good guys.”
“I am a coward. I was afraid to be alone, and now I have endangered you all.”
“Well, now, uh, that's a little harder to defend,” I admitted, “but you didn't set out to do bad.”
Sinclair made a disgusted sound and threw his hands up in the air. “Elizabeth, really!”
“If I went around killing everyone who made a mistake, I'd be pretty damned lonely,” I snapped back. I actually patted the trembling Garrett. “Nobody's going to kill you, Garrett.”
“Well, maybe some of his old friends,” Jessica said helpfully.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “There's that. Ideas?”
Chapter 8
We (Sinclair) decided to go to the farm to check out the scene of the crime. We (Sinclair) figured it was best to see if things were as bad as Garrett intimated. And no one was in a rush to get back to the mansion.
Nostro had, once upon a time, owned this property, and I had been, once upon a time, a prisoner here. And getting here had taken no time at all... once Tina's cell got a signal, she made a call, Sinclair docked the boat at some teeny marina, and an empty, idling SUV was waiting for us.
