“It's good to be the king,” Marc murmured in my ear, as we all climbed in, making me giggle.
Under no circumstances would Jessica and Marc allow themselves to be dumped somewhere safe. The argument got so heated that Sinclair pulled over on a quiet corner of Minnetonka (at this hour, every corner in Minnetonka was quiet) so we could disembark onto the sidewalk and discuss (read: shriek) it without endangering nearby traffic.
It was only when I saw Sinclair gliding behind Jessica when I realized (a) she couldn't hear him, and (b) what his plan was.
“Don't you dare knock her unconscious!”
“I wasn't going to!” Marc yelled back, flinching away from me.
“Or him, either,” I added, noticing Tina sidling up to Marc.
“It would have been for their own safety,” El Sneako grumbled.
“We're perfectly safe,” Marc said, but then, he would. He loved all things vampire. Given that he'd been about to hurl himself from a tall building to escape his boring life when I met him, I couldn't entirely blame him. “We've got the king and queen of the vampires with us and, a, um, shell of a vampire to bring up the rear.”
For Garrett had been no good at all since we got off the boat. He shivered, he shook, he tried to curl up. It was obvious that, since we weren't going to kill him, being outside made him miserable. For the first time I noticed how torn his clothing was, though his injuries had healed. Old, Sinclair had said, and that was certainly true. But not powerful. Never powerful. There had been a time after I brought him home like a stray when we thought... but no.
Old, but not powerful. Poor guy.
As we grumpily climbed back into the SUV, I wondered again about power. What, exactly, made a vampire powerful? Not age, certainly (I was two!), or at least, not just age. I had been told that, like me, Sinclair had risen strong. Most vampires went through a ten-?year phase where they'd do anything for blood and couldn't remember their own names.
Was determination a factor? Anger, hate, vanity? Hmm, that last could explain my meteoric rise to power...
“We're here,” Sinclair said abruptly, braking hard enough to make my seat belt lock (force of habit; no real reason to wear the thing these days). “And you two will stay here. I mean it, Marc. Jessica. Remain in this vehicle, or I will be cross.”
“Excuse me, captain my captain,” Marc said, “but do you know how many horror movies start out like this?”
“We probably shouldn't split up,” Jessica agreed. “Besides, if you really thought the Fiends were still here, you'd never have let us come. You'd have clocked Betsy, too, if it had come to that.”
Sinclair muttered something that the chime of the “door open” light drowned out; sounded like “wretched woman.” We all solemnly clambered out with him, knowing that even if Marc and Jess had won a victory, it was nothing to celebrate.
Chapter 9
We were okay until we found Alice 's body. Sure, there had been an obvious fight, the fence had been torn open in several places, there were splashes of blood on the ground, but... really, I was okay until we found her head.
While Marc supported Jessica as she threw up in the chokecherry bushes (he was pale, but had seen so much death as a doctor, even this couldn't make him sick) and I swayed dizzily on my feet,
(don't faint don't faint don't faint QUEENS DON'T FAINT!)
Tina and Sinclair prowled the area like vampiric bloodhounds, finding arms, legs, both halves of a torso.
“This is maybe a dumb question,” Marc began, smoothing Jessica's tight black cap of curls and letting her lean on his shoulder.
(don't faint don't faint don't faint)
Tina shook her head. “There's no chance of regeneration. Absolutely none. Frankly, I'd be amazed if the queen could handle this kind of punishment. My queen?” Her voice sharpened. “Are you all right?”
“Of course she's all right,” Sinclair said, squatting to examine another body part. “Queens don't faint.”
“Damn right! Look, Alice is obviously dead. What are you poking around for?”
“Oh, this and that,” he said vaguely. “I'm a little puzzled by the condition of the corpse.”
“I was thinking that exact thing,” Tina added.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, but they were ignoring me and having their own conversation.
“Did you call – ”
“Already done, my king.”
“Excellent.”
“Ah, and a mysterious van of vampires will show up and dispose of all the evidence,” Jessica managed, wiping her mouth.
“More or less.”
“I think we should go back now, can we please go back home now?”
Sinclair looked at Garrett with obvious distaste. “What makes you think it's safe?”
“I-I don't think they'd stay. Not if they couldn't find... her.”
Okay, so Garrett wasn't exactly being the stand-?up guy you read about in romance novels. But I felt sorry for him – it couldn't have been much fun getting the crap stomped out of him by half a dozen pissed off vampires, vampires he'd tried to help, and then come home to tell Sinclair what he'd done.
Sinclair didn't understand about fear, how it ate your guts, and how nobody came off like they did in the movies. He'd claimed, on occasion, to have feared for my safety, but frankly, I doubted it.
“Even if they are still there, it's our home, and a bunch of jerkoff vampires aren't keeping me out of it. I mean, you explained that to me once already, Sinclair. How we're not worthy of our crowns if our people can't find us.”
“Yay, Queen Betsy,” Jessica said.
“But they're sure as shit keeping you two out of it,” Marc teased.
“Boo, Queen Betsy.”
The argument raged all the way back home.
Chapter 10
Marc and Jessica's apparent casual attitude toward death was partly my fault. Make that totally. I'd saved their butts so many times (from suicide, murder, cancer) they just naturally felt impervious around me.
It didn't help that none of us were talking about it in any real detail. See, I'd always been different from other vampires. So different than even Tina (the oldest vampire I hadn't killed; she had made Sinclair way back when) didn't know much about me, or what I could do.
I had, completely by accident, cured Jessica's cancer and killed an eight-?hundred-?year-?old vampire librarian. And I'd done it without laying a finger on the librarian. I just sort of – pulled her into me. What was left wouldn't have filled an urn.
That didn't bother Sinclair or Tina especially, since I'd saved Sinclair at the time. What did bother them was that I had no idea how I'd done it and had been unable to do so again. Not that I'd tried. God, no. I figured somebody would have to die for me to try out my nifty new power. Pass.
Sinclair had been spending some time in the library perusing the Book of the Dead. He thought I didn't know. But I understood his puzzlement, and I knew he was being careful.
Read that thing too long – written on human skin with blood by a centuries-?dead insane vampire – and you
