Dead Over Heels

  “We’ll get him, Betsy. We won’t leave New York until he’s in flames or bristling with so many stakes he looks like a hedgehog.”

  I laughed; I couldn’t help it. Quite the mental image!

  “There now, that’s better.” She tucked a hand under my elbow. “And can you slow down? We’re not all six feet tall, y’know?”

  “I know, how do you stand it? Is it like being a bug? Or is it more like, you know, being an inanimate object? With no real clue what it’s like to not be a midget?”

  “Shut up, Miss Thang,” she ordered, but naturally I disobeyed.

  “You don’t even—hey!” I stopped, which jerked Jessica to a stop. Sitting on the hotel lobby steps was the girl we’d seen earlier. Thank God! “Hey, you! We’ve been looking for you!”

  “Try to sound a little more menacing, why don’t you?” Jess muttered.

  The gorgeous child pointed at me. “I know you! We were playing tag earlier!”

  “Uh, not exactly. Listen, where are your folks? This is so not a place for a little kid to be by herself, okay?”

  “I’m not a little kid.”

  “Right, whatever, where are they?”

  “They’re dead.”

  Jessica and I traded glances. That explained why the kid was up at practically midnight.

  “But what are you doing here?”

  “I live here.” She had a high, sweet voice. “The staff takes care of me.”

  “Uh . . . about the staff . . . I’ve got some news you’re not going to like, but you can’t stay here another night. Another minute. Y’see—”

  “The hotel is run by vampires?”

  Jessica and I looked at each other again.

  “Well, yes,” Jessica answered. “You, um, knew that?”

  “Sure.” The child idly examined her nails, which were brutally short—probably because she bit them. “Vampires killed my folks, and the staff felt bad, so they took me in.”

  “But what about school?”

  “Tutors.”

  “What about a proper bedtime?”

  “I sleep during the day, like my guardians.”

  “But-but . . .” There were things wrong with this scenario, right? Then why couldn’t I think of any?

  “But don’t you want a normal life?” Jessica asked. “I bet a looker like you would get adopted in about five seconds.”

  “And go live in the suburbs and attend public school and do chores for an allowance and fight with siblings?” The child rolled her eyes. “When I’m living in the greatest city in the world, with no bedtime, brilliant tutors, and thirty parents who watch out for me? Not to mention twenty-four-hour room service?”

  “You’ve got us there,” I admitted. “What’s your name?”

  “Bernadette, but everybody calls me Bernie.”

  “Well, Bernie, I guess I’m one of your guardians now, too. See, I’m the vampire queen.”

  Bernie blinked, then started to laugh. She actually rolled around on the steps, she was laughing so hard.

  “It’s not that ludicrous,” I mumbled.

  “It really kind of is,” Jessica whispered back.

  “You! Oh! Oh, not you! It’s not you! You’re not the queen!”

  I stomped my bare foot and realized anew I was wearing nothing but a hotel robe. “I am, too!”

  “What is going on here?” Sinclair said, startling me badly. I’d never heard him come up behind me.

  “Hey, it’s her!” Nick said happily, coming up on Jessica’s left. “And she’s okay!”

  “Who is ‘her’?” Sinclair asked icily. I guess he was still pissed about the tantrum I’d thrown in the alley. Well, I’d make it up to him later.

  “This is Bernie, the kid I was telling you about. But she’s safe!”

  “That,” Sinclair said, “is no child.”

  Bernie abruptly quit laughing. “Now him,” she said to me, smiling prettily, “he’s the king, yes. I can believe that. They told me you were young, but there is no way in hell you killed Nostro and Marjorie. You spent the evening shoe shopping!” She looked at Jessica. “And it’s not you, either. You’re just a human. So where is she? Where’s the real queen?”

  “Wh-what are you talking about?”

  “You’re making a fatal mistake, Bernie, and you won’t be the first to underestimate The One.”

  The kid scowled. “Oh, hush up, Vampire King. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Your greed—and your bite marks—gave you away,” Sinclair informed the kid. “Too narrow for an adult vampire.”

  I whirled on him. “You knew a kid was doing this?”

  “I suspected. The second victim confirmed it. Really, Bernie. Five bites? It’s a wonder you haven’t been caught before.”

  “The staff,” Jessica rasped, then cleared her throat. “The staff protects her.”

  Bernie stood, so quickly it was like she teleported to her feet. “The staff fears me,” she said, “as should you. Now get out of my hotel.”

  And with that, she turned and bounded up the steps into the Grange Hotel.

  We all stared at each other, and then I broke the silence with an unoriginal, but heartfelt, “Get that little bitch!”

  And up the steps we went.

  Chapter 18

  We chased her through the lobby and across the lounge, around tables like a crazy game of tag. Which I’m betting Bernie thought this was. The staff and guests stared at us, or ignored us—I guess the true (human) New Yorkers were the ones who were ignoring us.

  “Help me!” Bernie shrieked as we closed the distance (we had adult legs, after all). “They’re going to kill me!”

  I didn’t dare look back to see if anyone was coming to the rescue; Bernie had proved before that she could disappear like a rabbit in a hat. I had no intention of taking my gaze off her.

  Then, in a case of truly awful timing, the elevator dinged, the doors slid open, and a family of four stepped out. Who the hell goes sightseeing at midnight? Quick as thought, Bernie snatched the toddler right out of his stroller, holding him up by his neck. The parents didn’t even have time to scream before the doors slid closed and she was gone.

  “Text me!” I yelled as Sinclair shoved the stairwell door open and started pounding up the stairs. I followed him, fishing out my phone.

  “8888888888888888888888!” Jess texted.

  “That’s our floor,” I muttered. What with the window fixers and the crazy vampires, it was gonna get mighty crowded up there. “What the—eighth floor!” I called up to my husband, who was already a flight ahead of me. I heard the door slam open again and knew Nick was doing his best to back us up, though he was four floors away.

  In a few more seconds, we were in our hallway and Bernie was holding the squalling toddler and kicking at our door. “Let me in, you idiot!” she was screaming, while the kid wailed and wriggled.

  Sinclair wrenched a lamp fixture off the wall and flung it straight at Bernie’s head. It landed dead on; she shrieked, clutched her head, and forgot all about the kid, who she dropped.

  I ran as fast as I could, slid on my knees the last couple of feet (argh, rug burn!), and just caught him before he hit the carpet. I knew the room next to us was unoccupied—at least, I’d never heard anyone in there the entire time we’d been at the Grange—so I bounded to my feet, kicked that door open, tossed the kid into the middle of the king-sized bed, and shut the door with one hand while texting Jess, “Kid in 810 SAFE!”

  I emerged just in time to get knocked sprawling as Bernie and Sinclair fought. She was on him like a cat, clawing and biting and shrieking, and he was slamming his back against the wall, trying to shake her loose.

  “Oh no you don’t!” I yelled, and seized two handfuls of her gorgeous hair. Then I yanked. Hard.

  She yowled (I just couldn’t get the cat metaphors out of my head) and twisted with frightening speed and agility, and then her little hands were around my throat and I jerked my head back just in time to avoi
d her slashing fangs. God, she was fast! Those kids never had a chance. Frankly, the outcome of this fight was in doubt, and I was three feet taller.

  I wrenched her hands off and threw her—hard—into the wall. Plaster cracked and dust fell everywhere. Nobody was breathing, so nobody cared.

  She sprang at me again, and again I batted her away like a fly—barely. And still she came at me, so this time I hit her with a closed fist. I could feel the bones in her face break, and still she wouldn’t quit.

  Meanwhile, I could hear Sinclair frantically searching rooms—I was betting for a wooden chair leg.

  “Bernie, just stop!” Wincing—I couldn’t believe I was beating up a child—I hit her again. This time her nose broke, and black blood trickled down to her lips.

  “I can’t! You have to kill me. Why would I stop?”

  Because I can’t bear to hurt you. Because even though you’re a monster, you look like an angel. Because somebody, a long time ago, really hurt you, and I want to make that up to you.

  One of her little fists got past me and all of a sudden there was a ringing in my left ear. I shook it off and heard the stairwell door open, heard Nick run past us to the room where the toddler was still crying. Thank God. Thank God.

  I caught her next fist in mid fly and broke her wrist. She screamed and tried to kick me. So I did what any asshole would do; I let go of her wrist, grabbed her by the ears, and twisted.

  She fell to the carpet, all the fight out of her. But the awful thing was, she was looking up at me and trying to smile. Looking up at me, with her head twisted halfway around. I’d broken her neck, but she was still alive.

  “I guess . . . I guess you really are the queen.”

  I dropped to my knees beside her. “Bernie, I’m so sorry. I-I-It wouldn’t have been my choice to kill you. If only you weren’t so fucking bloodthirsty!”

  “It’s all right,” she said faintly. “It was bound to happen eventually. I just didn’t think a blond fashionista would do it.”

  “Well, uh, thank you.”

  “I lied.”

  “Which time?”

  She reached for me and, wary of a trick, I took her hand. But she only squeezed it and said, “The staff—it’s not their fault. I’m small, but I’m old. I was made when they were building the Brooklyn Bridge. No one else here is more than forty, and they’re afraid. It’s why they didn’t help—didn’t help the others. Don’t—punish them.”

  “I won’t.” Maybe. “But who did this to you, Bernie?”

  “You idiot, is your attention span so limited? You did!”

  “I meant, who made you into a vampire?”

  “Oh.” Bernie managed a nod—it was a gruesome sight—over my shoulder. I looked—and saw Sinclair standing there with a snapped-off chair leg.

  “No!” I almost screamed. “No, no, no, it’s not true!”

  Then Sinclair ducked, and the redheaded bellboy (bellman) went sailing over his shoulder.

  “Robert,” Bernie said faintly. “At last.”

  I nearly swooned onto the carpet. “Ha! I knew Sinclair hadn’t killed you. And what were you doing in our room?”

  “Snooping,” he admitted.

  Robert slowly got to his feet, pale even for a vampire. “Oh, Bernadette, what did they do?” He glared at me. “You’ll die screaming, you pretender! You—”

  “You did all this? You killed her parents, killed her? Made her into this-this thing that eats kids? And then took your time coming to the rescue, you fucking coward? She was kicking our door and screaming for help and you only came out now?”

  “I can hear you, you know,” Bernie murmured. “And of course he’s a coward. He preys on children. Of course,” she added thoughtfully, “so do I. But that’s more a size issue for me.”

  Robert rushed at me (I guess he wasn’t interested in answering any of my questions), and I was bracing myself for the attack when there were three quick shots and his head exploded. Just when I thought the week couldn’t get yuckier.

  He fell, barely two feet from Bernadette’s body, and then I saw Nick, who had the toddler on one hip and his gun in his right hand.

  Sinclair snapped the chair leg in half (luckily, it was a nice, long slender one) and plunged a piece into Robert’s back, all the way through him and into the carpet.

  Then he handed the other piece to me.

  “I can’t,” I cried.

  “You’d better,” Bernie wheezed. “I’ll look ridiculous walking around like this. And as for catching prey? No chance.”

  I raised the chair leg. “I’m sorry, Bernie. And I forgive you for the others.”

  “I’m not at all sorry and you’re a fool to forgive. Good-bye, Vampire Queen.”

  I shoved the stake all the way in and the light went out of those beautiful blue eyes. Her hand tightened on mine, then went limp.

  I pulled her into my embrace, shuddering at the way her head lolled and rolled, and rocked her back and forth, crying. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m—”

  The elevator dinged and then Jessica was kneeling beside me. “Oh, Betsy. You had to.”

  “—sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—”

  “Elizabeth, we must—”

  “Is everybody okay? I gotta get this kid back to his parents.”

  “—I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—”

  “Elizabeth—please—”

  “I think she’s in shock,” Nick worried. “Can vampires go into shock?”

  In the end, it took all three of them to wrench her out of my arms and I think—I think I fainted or something, because I don’t remember much after that.

  Chapter 19

  I opened my eyes to a familiar sight . . . a ring of concerned faces hovering over me.

  “Sorry,” I said faintly. I covered my eyes. “That was—that was bad there. For a minute.”

  “It was fairly awful for all of us, so don’t beat yourself up,” Jessica assured me. “We’re just glad you and Sinclair are all right.”

  Silence. Then I heard Jess stomp on Nick’s foot, and his stifled yelp. “Aren’t we?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Thanks for killing the bellman,” I said. “That must have felt good.”

  “I only shot him in the head. I have no idea if that kills you guys. I think Sinclair delivered the coup de grace, as it were.”

  “But he was coming after me. He was coming after me, and you shot him three times in the head.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  I smiled for the first time in what felt like weeks.

  “My poor Elizabeth,” Sinclair said, sitting down beside me on the bed. He picked up my hand—my killing hand, my stake-wielding hand—and kissed it. “You won’t be naïve much longer at this rate. Pity.”

  “Right now I feel about a thousand years old.”

  “Well, you look great,” Jessica assured me. “Your hair isn’t even messed up.”

  That cheered me up a little. “So what happens now?”

  “The staff helps us cover this up, of course. They’re walking around on eggshells right now, wondering what we’ll do to them.”

  “I promised Bernie we’d leave them alone.”

  “That doesn’t mean,” Sinclair said grimly, “that we can’t stop in now and again and check on them.”

  “You mean, like a second honeymoon?” Jessica teased.

  I groaned. “Jesus Christ, let me recover from this one first!”

  As jokes went, it was fairly lame, but we were all so stressed out we laughed anyway. And then it was better.

  I was just glad I didn’t have nightmares since coming back from the dead, because I knew Bernie’d be haunting my thoughts plenty when I was awake.

  But that was a worry for another time; right now I had to focus on getting rid of Jess and Nick, and finishing my honeymoon without worrying about dead children popping up and ruining the mood.

  And that’s exactly what I did.

  Survivors br />
  The Whiskers are trying to survive in a hostile new area after being evicted from their manor by the vicious Commandos.

  —MEERKAT MANOR, ANIMAL PLANET

  SURVIVOR: noun. 1) One who lives through affliction. 2) One who outlives another. 3) An animal that survives in spite of adversity.

  Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,

  A tale of a fateful trip

  That started from this tropic port

  Aboard this tiny ship.

  —“THE BALLAD OF GILLIGAN’S ISLAND,” by George Wyle and Sherwood Schwartz

  For my children,

  who got me hooked on Animal Planet.

  Now you’ll all have to suffer for it.

  Author’s Note

  The events of this novella take place after Swimming Without a Net, the second Fred the Mermaid book.

  Chapter 1

  This is Con ‘Bad Baby’ Conlinson. I’m just like you . . . only I’m on TV. I’ve gotten really close to the summit of Everest, spent the night in the Everglades (MotelTM), faced down numerous angry dogs and cats, gotten thrown out of no less than seven—seven—bars, surfed the insanity of Lake Ontario, stayed dry in Seattle, and been audited twice.

  “I’ve been through it all, and I’ll show you how to survive all that and worse in . . . Con Con the Survivin’ Man (pronounced ‘mahn,’ or so I keep reminding my producer). Tonight’s episode, Con Conlinson stupidly tells the crew to take their boat and separate, resulting in THE GIANT FUCKING MESS I find myself in this evening.”

  Newly stranded, Animal World™’s Conwin Edmund Conlinson sighed and stared at the sky. The glorified rowboat rocked and swayed in this, a more or less unoccupied stretch of the Pacific Ocean.

  And it hadn’t seemed like that much of a storm, either.

  Con sighed again. When he stretched out, the boat was a foot longer than his head and his feet. The craft itself was little more than a couple of life jackets, a tarp, a first aid kit (which he hadn’t needed; he’d come through the storm without a scratch . . . or a crew), a knife, a flint, a notebook that he took to be some sort of log, and a box of blue Bics.