Undead and Unforgiven

  “You don’t ask them anything! You’re their lord, they’re the damned, your word is law.”

  “Yes,” I replied, pleased he’d fallen into my little trap. “It is. And my word is now changing the law. Look, I get that I’m probably not qualified for this—” I ignored the snort at “probably.” “But tough nuts, because I’m the only one doing it. The Antichrist couldn’t be bothered, the devil is dead, and that leaves me.” And Sinclair, if I allowed it. But Markus’s response to my new plan reminded me, again, why that would be a bad idea.

  “I think it’s brilliant.”

  “Thanks, T—” Whoa. Tina hadn’t said a thing. “Um. Thank you, Ant—Antonia.” God, had I ever used my stepmother’s full name to her face before?

  At least the pressure was off me, because now they were staring at the Ant. “What?” she snapped, shifting in her seat. As always, her body moved but her tall hair stayed perfectly still. “It’s an idea whose time has come. Hell needs to be modernized just like any other long-term system of levying punishment. We don’t still do things the way they did them during the Salem witch trials. Why should we do the same thing in Hell for millions of years? People change and times change, too. Betsy’s right. And she’s right to not want to argue it to death, either, rather than make changes that will end agony for so many now.”

  “I expected more from you, Antonia,” Father Markus said coldly.

  “Why?” The Ant had a puzzled frown on her face. (She may have been a Botoxed mannequin lady in life, but in Hell she could make facial expressions.) “You don’t know me. We’ve served on a committee together for a month.” She looked around the table. “I think Betsy’s onto something. I’ve seen things here. We all have. Some of these people absolutely do not deserve what they’re enduring.”

  Markus had no reply to that. Instead he climbed to his feet and put his hands behind his back, I guessed to keep from throttling me. “May I have your leave to go?”

  I thought about refusing him, but I’d made my point. Anything else was just me indulging in being a petty bitch. Which I’d normally be fine with, but not just now. “Sure.”

  He tipped his head toward me in a small nod. Looked around the Lego table, nodded at everyone else. Let himself out without another word.

  Marc blew out an unnecessary breath. “Wow! I thought he was going to hit you. Who would have thought a Catholic priest would be so resistant to change?”

  “I had that same thought earlier.”

  “He was a lot nicer when he was alive.”

  The Ant snorted and Tina hid a smile. Cathie remained quiet, but wore her “too much to think about right now, can’t talk” look, so I left her alone.

  “He’ll come around. Change is hard.” My private thoughts weren’t so charitable. My private thoughts, in fact, were more along the lines of: cry me a river, pal.

  In the past half dozen years, I’d died, come back as a vampire, found myself the queen of the vampires, been tricked into marrying and making Sinclair king, lost a friend to cancer, cured her cancer, been snatched and rescued, rescued those who had been snatched, died, killed, lost Marc to suicide, rediscovered him as a zombie, watched my friend endure a supernatural pregnancy and then give birth to her weird babies just a few rooms away from where I regularly banged my husband, and tolerated those same weird babies when they were five and sixteen and two years and four weeks, and currently I wasn’t speaking to my husband, who was sulking because I wasn’t letting him trick me into letting him take over Hell.

  Change is hard, Father Markus, but it’s also inevitable: I suggest you suck it up.

  I looked at my stepmother. “Thanks. For your support. I appreciate it.”

  She shrugged. “A good idea is a good idea, no matter who— Uh, you’re welcome.”

  “It’s weird, but your reflexive bitchiness really broke the tension,” Marc said, and the Ant surprised me for the second time in ten minutes by laughing out loud.

  I was tempted to make it snow in Hell, just to add to the general surrealness. That was a word, right? Surrealness?

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  For the tenth time I checked my phone, and for the tenth time I didn’t have a text from Sinclair. I doubted that was AT&T’s fault; it was entirely on Sinclair. The big undead baby was no doubt still pouting because I wasn’t letting him Flintstone Hell.

  I was thirsty—no surprise, I always was, it was a downside to vampirism—but didn’t need blood in Hell. I didn’t need blood as much as any of the other vampires (queen thing), and less in Hell (Satan 2.0 thing), but still: thirsty. So I headed to the food court to slake said unnatural thirst and also to check on my project.

  I started to pull out my phone again, realized what I was doing, and made myself stop. Yes, that’s right, just stop. He’s almost as stubborn as you are; he won’t be texting anytime soon unless it’s an emergency. And maybe not even then.

  God, am I doing this right? Any of this? As they did now and again, my internal thoughts switched over to prayer. Or, as I called it, bitching at my maker. If You have a better idea, or a better candidate, You should speak up anytime. If not, could You at least smite my enemies? They’re, like, legion.

  Please help me get this right, and help me figure out how to juggle Hell, the vampire kingdom, my husband, my friends, my unholy thirst for blood, my lessening hatred for the Ant, my increasing hatred for the Antichrist, and the upcoming Gucci sample sale. Thank you, amen.

  “Um, hello?”

  I’d been so busy praying, I hadn’t realized I’d been standing in front of the Orange Julius counter doing an imitation of a statue. A praying statue running low on sleep, blood, and sex.

  “Hi, girls.” Argh. Jennifer Palmer, despite appearances, hadn’t been a girl for a long time. Cindy, who was a girl, didn’t like being reminded. “How’s the buddy system going?”

  “Fine,” Jennifer said quickly, already reaching for a cup. “You want the usual?”

  “Please.”

  “Oh, don’t!” Cindy said, putting a hand over the cup before Jennifer could fill it. “You won’t like it; it’ll taste terrible.”

  “Not for her,” Jennifer said, gently pulling the cup away. “It’ll work for her. We talked about this.”

  “Oh.” To me: “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize for that. You were trying to help me not suck down a cup of awful.” What would the Orange Julius of the damned taste like for me? Hell was tailored; everyone’s experience was different and uniquely terrible. There were probably people here who hated Orange Juliuses, so everything they drank tasted like something Julius. For me, an Orange Julius made with rotten bananas would have been pretty hellish.

  “Um, if you don’t mind my asking, what were you doing when you were just standing there? I mean, I know what it looked like, but that can’t be right.” Cindy asked this in a tone of voice more appropriate for “Why were you taking your clothes off and twerking?”

  I ignored Jennifer’s shushing motions, probably because they were aimed at Cindy. “Praying.”

  “But . . . why?” To Jennifer: “Stop pinching me. It’s okay to ask questions.”

  “It’s really not,” she hissed back and gave Cindy another pinch for good measure. “Or at least not personal ones.”

  “She’s right, Jennifer, it’s fine.” Cindy had known me (briefly) in life and hadn’t been impressed (I blamed the Peach Parlor: who could come across as an authority figure when they were bathed in peach?). Small wonder she wasn’t as in awe of me here. “As to why I was praying . . . why not? Have you tried it since you got here?”

  “No,” Cindy said, sounding shocked.

  “Well, think about it. Even if you don’t believe in God it can be like meditation.” Marc had babbled this theory to me a while back, and it stuck with me. Like Velcro! “It can be a way to get in touch with your inner—?
??

  “I never said I didn’t believe in God!” Shocked, shocked at the very idea! While standing behind the Orange Julius counter talking to Satan 2.0 in Hell. It was kind of funny.

  “—cheerleader.”

  “I believe in God!”

  Right, right, that’s why she’s here. Why a lot of them are here. “Okay. So. Why not pray, then?”

  “Because I’m a vampire!”

  “So am I.”

  “I mean I was a vampire on earth—”

  “Yeah, for a whole, what? Forty hours? Those two nights didn’t negate the previous sixteen years.”

  “—when you killed me, and now I’m in Hell.”

  “So am I.”

  “No, I mean—I died. And went to Hell.”

  “So did I. Well, I died first; getting to Hell took a couple of years. Look,” I added, because she seemed (to be kind) deeply confused. “Just try it. It’s not against the rules.” Wait, was it? I made a note to check with the Ant. “And if it is, it isn’t anymore.”

  “It isn’t?” Jennifer asked.

  “Wait, was that a rule? Back in the day?” Meaning, prior to a couple of months ago?

  “Noooo.” I could see Jennifer giving her reply careful thought. Whatever she’d been in life (accidental arsonist, eighties fashion victim), she was a cautious, troubled woman in death. “It’s just—why bother? How would it help? How would God help? I mean . . . we’re here. What’s there to pray for?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, then spotted Father Markus and the Ant—not a couple I’d ever seen together; ooh, could this be the start of a rom-com sitcom?—with their heads together in intimate conversation at the other end of the food court. I whistled to get their attention and waved them over. They traded glances I had no trouble interpreting and hurried over.

  (Ugh, what’s she want now?)

  Though it was possible I was projecting.

  “Of course prayer is allowed in Hell,” the Ant said when I straight-out asked. “It’d be crazy to eliminate it.”

  “Oh. Well, good. That’s one rule I won’t have to unilaterally abolish.”

  “Where better?” Father Markus added, giving Jennifer and Cindy polite nods. “If anything, prayer should be encouraged. Knowing God will never hear them or help them just deepens the despair. Which is the point.”

  “Um.” For a kindly priest, Father Markus could be kind of a hard-ass when he was inclined. Either he was kind of a dickwank in life or Hell was making him mean. I had a hunch which it was, and I didn’t like it. If I was right, it didn’t bode well for Sinclair coming back here anytime soon. “Well, I happen to disagree—I think God would listen. But anyway.” I turned back to the girls. Women. The damned women of the Orange Julius booth of the damned. “Pray away, ladies.”

  “Good to know,” Jennifer replied, and she actually smiled when Cindy giggled. The Ant rolled her eyes, while Father Markus just looked disapproving. I saw Marc and Tina in animated conversation a few tables away and waved (what, was it break time?), and when they spotted me they got up and came right over.

  “Hi,” Marc said to Cindy. “Do you remember me?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said at once in a small voice, looking anywhere but his face.

  “So, that’d be a yes?” He smiled, trying to put her at ease. “Hey, don’t sweat it. No permanent damage. See?” He rolled up his sleeves and bared his arms. Not a mark. “It’s a perk when you live with what’s-her-face, here.”

  “Having you in my life is the ultimate mixed blessing.” I sighed. What’s-her-face? Really?

  “What are you?” Cindy asked, staring at him. “I remember you tasted all wrong. It just made me . . . madder and—and hungrier.”

  “It’s a long story,” he replied just as my hip vibrated. Text! Ah, here came the sweet anticipated apology from Sinclair, whom I would eventually forgive because I loved him and also because he liked to express remorse via oral sex. “And I come off really zombie-ish in it . . . What? Betsy? ’S’matter?”

  I gulped and reread it.

  Remain in your solitary kingdom if you will, but know that the Antichrist and I will be locked in a battle to the death by the end of the week.

  “Holy shit!” Marc practically screamed, rudely reading over my shoulder again.

  And we require ice and strawberries.

  “What the zombie said,” I replied grimly, and I looked up at my friends. “Time to go.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “They are here. They move among you. They hunt among you. All the old stories we were told as children to frighten us into behaving are true: there are monsters. They exist whether we behave or not. I should know: the queen of the vampires is my half sister, a blight on my life and a danger to all of you.”

  “Notice she left out her own title,” Tina pointed out.

  “And her own blight-eyness,” Jessica added.

  Of course she did. The Antichrist is the biggest hypocrite I’ve ever known. Not that I could say any of that out loud. I was pretty much rendered speechless.

  “This is everywhere?” Jessica asked with wide eyes. We had gathered in the kitchen and everyone was awake, and most of us were even alert. She had one of her as-yet-unnamed babies slung over one shoulder and was rubbing his/her back, while Dick was feeding his/her sibling, cradling her/him in his arms while he watched the level in the bottle go steadily down. A baby glutted on milk was hilariously cute.

  “Yes, she’s made several YouTube presentations, started a Facebook page with over two hundred thousand Likes and rising, and #vampiresarereal is trending.”

  At last I found my voice. “That alone is enough to make me throw up in my mouth a little.” I looked at Sinclair. “Thanks for texting me.”

  “As my queen commands,” was the chilly response, and I managed not to roll my eyes (I was trying to cut back on that).

  “People don’t actually believe this—this campaign to expose us,” Tina asked, looking like someone had nailed her with a punch between the eyes. “Do they? Surely not.”

  “Never underestimate the stupidity of herd animals,” was my husband’s grim retort. “There have been times we were nearly exposed, and that was before the plague that is social media. The more man embraces science over spirit, the harder it is for us to hide.”

  “Oh, come on. This is just the latest Internet thing, the supernatural version of ‘is this dress blue or gold,’ right? In a month no one will care. They’ll be on to, I dunno, reillegalizing marijuana or something.”

  “Not so fast.” The kitchen door swung in and Marc entered, lugging an armful of junk. He put everything down on the counter, turned, and said, “Ah, excellent. You’re probably all wondering why I’ve called you here.”

  “You didn’t call us here,” I replied, eyeing the poster boards and the tripod with more than a little trepidation. “We were just here. Where’d you disappear to?”

  “We have a tripod?” Jessica asked.

  “All right, this is your resident research geek speaking, so everyone put your petty woes—”

  “Petty?” Sinclair asked, and I was not to be outdone: “Woes? Who says that?”

  He ignored our interruptions, pulled an old wooden pointer from somewhere (the same place he got the tripod?), and thwacked the first poster.

  “Reasons why the Antichrist’s YouTube crap will probably go viral if it hasn’t already,” he said, and damn if that wasn’t the title of the poster. He pulled the top page away, exposing the second. Another thwack!

  “She’s hot.” Hot was right at the top of the page in big red letters and with, if I may say so, a ridiculous number of exclamation marks. “I know it’s dumb—”

  “She’s not that hot,” I mumbled, probably fooling no one. That was normally Sinclair’s cue to say something reassuringly sexy, but . . . nope.
Not today, it seemed.

  “—but people want to believe beautiful people are telling the truth and are intrinsically good. It’s dumb, but hotties get the benefit of the doubt all the time.”

  Thwack!

  “Er . . . surely there is a quicker way to do this,” Sinclair began, but Marc was well into lecture mode.

  Legions was next, this time in black, and with only two exclamation marks, thank goodness. “She’s got hordes of Satan worshippers who will do anything, literally anything, she asks.”

  This was true, though I often forgot about it, because Laura found her followers extremely embarrassing, didn’t talk about them, and didn’t let them come around. Hard to pretend to have the moral high ground when people were constantly tracking her down (something to do with astrology and the Bible helping them find her, don’t ask me how it works) and pledging to do her evil will. Which in this case was . . .

  “She wants to expose vampires and she’s got an army of asshats to help her.”

  “This is the most organized I’ve ever seen you,” I commented. Hey, it kept him busy, it wasn’t gross, no dead animals were harmed and later stored in our freezer—I had no complaints. Well, I did, but not about Marc’s process.

  “Yes, well, to continue: Her minions shouldn’t be discounted. They’re not just helping her with the YouTube stuff, they’re spreading this stuff all over social media. And plenty of them are coming across as credible, because she’s keeping mum about that whole Antichrist thing, and she’s not letting them sacrifice babies or otherwise be evil when the cameras are on. She’s got lawyers and cops and politicians on her side.”

  “So do we,” Tina said.

  “Dead lawyers,” he explained, “dead politicians. You can’t point to one of them and be all, ‘See? That thing about vampires being real is a hoax—just ask this vampire lawyer, who will sue you and suck your blood if you slander us.’”

  Another poster. This one was a still shot of the “Leave Britney alone!” guy. Crazy hot was in green, sans exclamation points. “She’s just the right amount of crazy: she’s not a foaming-at-the-mouth psychopath and she’s not boring, like someone with a phobia. So you’re scared of spiders or can’t handle small spaces, big deal. But Laura? She’s just crazy enough to be intriguing. And she’s got a fuckload of charisma to back it up. People want to hear what she’s got to say. And they keep coming back to hear what else she’s got to say. And then they tell their friends and forward links.”