Cravings (16 page)

"Holy shit," Daniel said, poking her beauty mark. "You met up with the king
of the dead guys!"

"I remember him, too," she said faintly. "I was too scared to talk to him.
I'm not surprised he's Elizabeth's consort. Still, it was nice of him to try to
help me."

Daniel snorted. "He barely tried and gave you up as a bad job quick enough."

"It's not really in a vampire's nature to help another vampire," she
explained. "For him, for what he was, he went above and beyond, believe me."

"Well, d'you want to look up more toothy dead guys, or finish what we came to
do?"

She was tempted to remain in the library—to sleep in the library!—but Daniel
was right, they were just postponing the inevitable. She had no desire to look
up Elizabeth's file—for one thing, it was probably forbidden, and for another,
why find out more information that was just going to scare her? And she had no
wish to look up Nostro's file, since he was dead and gone.

"Elizabeth must be a thousand years old," Andrea muttered. "Maybe more."

Daniel puffed out his chest. "Well, she's no match for the baby and the
sheep, tell you that right now."

Andrea had to smile. "Still got that map?"

"No, in the three minutes since Marjie gave it to me, I've managed to lose
it. Yes, I've got the damned map."

"All right, then. Let's go find the queen."

" THIS place is so totally creepy," Daniel commented, his hand firmly in the
center of her back as they moved through the ankle-high grass of the lawn. "I
feel like Shaggy on
Scooby-Doo
."

"The resemblance," she agreed, "is remarkable."

"Man, if you hadn't told me a ton of badass vampires lived here, I'd have
totally figured it out on my own."

"Sure you would have. Stay close."

"Don't worry, Andy. Anything comes shooting out of the dark, I'll kick their
ass."

"Don't call me that. And if anything comes out of the dark, you get down and
you stay down and you let me handle it, do you understand?"

"Sure. Not too lame," he muttered.

She could hear a chain-link fence rattling and, after a moment's effort,
could see it, barely illuminated by the cold sliver of the moon. "There. That
way."

"
What
way?" he complained, stumbling beside her. "It's darker than a
woodchuck's asshole out here."

"Never mind. I can see."

"What, you've got flashlights for eyes now? Is that, like, a vampire power?"

"Daniel,
hush up
." To her left, she heard a low, feral growl, and
stopped suddenly. Another to her right.

"What?" His voice seemed very loud in the night air; booming. "What's the
matter? Change your mind? Because we could be back in Chicago in—"

"Shhhhh."

Another, flanking them… no, two of them. No, three. Shit. She didn't worry
for herself—what did she care if she was ripped to pieces? But Daniel was easy
meat. She wasn't about to stand and watch one of these things eat his dear face.

She heard them coil to charge and jerked him behind her ("Hey!") and got
ready. She felt her fangs come out; part of her was always ready for a fight,
welcomed
a fight, and that was the true tragedy of her condition.

She could see their attackers now, scrambling toward them on all fours, but
they weren't wild dogs, as she had first thought. Or even wolves. They were too
big, too long-limbed, too… pale?

They were… they were
people
.

She could smell their breath; old blood, and death. She could see their eyes;
devil's eyes, all black, like pits, but far down, sullen red light… their
pupils? Their pupils were red? She could see their fur—hair, rather—long and
falling to their shoulders in greasy clots. She could—

"Hey! Stop! Quit it, you guys!
Bad
fiends. Baaaaaaad fiends!"

Blinking, she saw a tall blond woman stumbling after the—the
whatever-they-were. The woman's progress was impeded by her footgear…
ridiculously high heels in electric blue, with white toes. She was wearing a
black skirt and a black double-breasted jacket, sleeveless. Her arms were
slender; the wrists tiny, barely two inches across. Odd, on such a tall woman.
Her hair was light blond and curled under at the ends, framing an attractive
face with high cheekbones. Her eyes were bright green. Andrea had never seen
such green eyes before.

There was a gold cross nestled in the hollow of the woman's throat; it made
her slightly sick to look at it.

Perhaps oddest of all: the things were listening to the woman.

"Bad, bad, bad!" she was saying as she neared them. The things cowered and
whimpered but kept their distance. "You guys! Gross! I mean, just stop it now!
You just had, like, ten buckets of blood apiece, how could you possibly be
hungry? Bad!" She turned to Andrea and Daniel, and covered her eyes with her
hands. Her nails were beautifully French manicured, Andrea saw, and the fingers
were long and slender. No rings. "This is, like,
so
embarrassing. I'm
not with these fiends, you know. I mean, I'm
with
them, but I'm not
with
them with them, y'know?"

"Sure," Daniel said, which was a relief, because Andrea was completely
mystified. It's like the woman was speaking another language. One Daniel could
understand! Thank goodness she'd brought her own interpreter.

"Like, just really gross-out, you know?"

"Totally," Daniel said.

"
Thank
you! Usually people don't get it, but it's just… yech!"

"Not to mention massively bogus 'n' stuff."

"I
know
!" The blonde shook her head and rested her hands on her
hips. "So, what brings you guys to Hell's Acre? In case you missed the memo,
it's so
totally
dangerous out here. Probably looking for a nice place
to make out but this is so
not
it. I hate to be a hardass, but I'm
really gonna have to ask you to leave."

"Hello," Daniel muttered. It was obvious his eyes had finally adjusted to the
dark… while remaining oblivious of the danger. "Babe alert."

"Down boy," Andrea muttered. Louder, she said, "We'll be glad to go, miss,
but we can't just yet. We're in town for—never mind. Thanks for helping us. Are
these your… ah…"

"They're mine, all right," the woman said grimly. "Unfortunately. Don't get
me started. I mean, yech! We try to keep them clean, but they're like puppies…
they roll in
everything
."

"Sure," Andrea said, humoring the woman. Puppies. Undeniably evil puppies
with foul dispositions and the appetites of rabid, starving tigers. All righty.
"Well, thanks for calling them off. Listen, this might sound kind of weird, and
I promise we're not crazy, but we're looking for a vampire."

"Oh, yeah?" she said, totally unfazed. "Which one?"

"Well, the, uh, the queen. Of the vampires."

"Whyyyyyyyy?" the blonde whined. "I mean, you've got nothing better to do
with your time? What do you want?"

The blonde was weirdly unfazed by this… maybe she was a what-do-you-call-it,
a sheep. Before Andrea could answer, Daniel was bulling in.

"Well,
she's
here to pay her respects n' all, and I'm here to kick
the queen's ass if she tries to do anything to my girl."

"Oh."

"Daniel!"

The blonde snickered. "Well, the queen is me, and I don't want to kick
anybody's ass."

"Don't be ridiculous," Andrea snapped, her nerves almost at the breaking
point. "You're not a vampire."

"Am, too!"

"You certainly are not."

"I am, too!"

"Oh, now just stop it! You can't be a vampire, and you certainly aren't an
all-powerful queen. For one thing—" Andrea pointed triumphantly. "You're wearing
a cross."

"Oh, that." She shrugged. "It was a present from El Jerko, aka Eric
Sinclair."

"Eric Sinclair? As in
the
Sinclair?"

"Guy gets around," Daniel muttered, then gasped as a fiend licked his hand
with her cold tongue. "Uh… nice kitty. Go away."

Andrea, puzzled, said, "But Eric's the consort of—"

"Let's not talk about it," the blonde said thinly. "Look, you're just going
to have to take my word for it: I'm a vampire. The—uh—the queen." She choked
back a giggle. "Believe me, I know how it sounds."

"This isn't fair!" Andrea wailed. "I come all this way—I was scared, but I
came anyway—and you won't take me to the queen! You're just playing games!"

"Look, babe, do I have to write it on my forehead?
I'm the queen
. I
sicced these guys…" Indicating the fiends. "… on Nostro. They had him for lunch.
I didn't
know
that by doing that I'd end up the queen; I thought I was
just saving my friends. Now I'm stuck with this fucking crown and that sneak,
Sinclair, and frankly, I'm pretty pissed off about it!" She was shaking her
perfectly manicured finger in Andrea's face, while Andrea was trying not to
vomit from being so close to the woman's cross. "So believe me or don't, but
either way, get lost!"

"Perhaps I can be of some assistance?"

"Aaaaagggghhhhhh!" all three of them howled in unison.

Andrea literally couldn't speak, and Daniel was busy sucking gasps of oxygen
into his lungs. So only the woman whirled on the darkness that had approached
them. "God
damn
it, Sinclair! Stop doing that! And stop following me,
it's so fucking creepy and you
know
I can't stand it!"

"Good evening to you, too, Elizabeth. Away, fiends," he said, snapping his
fingers, and the poor things scattered.

"My heart," Daniel muttered, "is not having a good day."

"I do apologize," Sinclair said smoothly. "I didn't mean to startle you.
Elizabeth, aren't you going to introduce me to your—" He saw Andrea and his
black eyes narrowed. "You. Iowa?"

"Yes, we ran across each other there, sir," she said faintly. It made her
extremely nervous to be chitchatting with the king. He was just as terrifying,
just as powerful, just as frighteningly polite as he had been that long-ago
snowy night. He was, in fact, everything Elizabeth, the One, was not.

"You seem better now. In fact, you're a couple of years ahead of schedule."
He carelessly turned his back on her. "Why are you here, Elizabeth? We have
staff to take care of the grounds. If you won't live here, why can't you stay
away?"

"If you won't fuck off and die, why do you keep bugging me?" she snapped
back. Andrea was filled with admiration: the woman seemed more irritated than
terrified. "These guys are here to pay homage to the—" She gnashed her teeth and
finally spat it out. "The
queen
, but they didn't believe me when I told
'em—"

"We believe you now," Daniel and Andrea chorused.

"Oh. What gave it away? My innate royalness? My fabulous highlights? My
shoes, did you see my shoes?" She propped one of her feet up on its heel,
showing off her slender ankle. "Aren't they cute? I knew if Kate Spade put her
mind to it she could do decent pumps."

"Actually," Daniel said, jerking a thumb toward Sinclair, who looked
gratified, "it was him."

"Welllllll, isn't that
great
." Elizabeth, the One, scowled at them,
then whirled on Sinclair. "Dammit! You told me this was going to stop
eventually! It's like some sort of twisted
The Incredible Journey
,
except with dead people instead of animals." She turned back to Andrea and
Daniel. "Why, why,
why
do you all have to be so dumb and dependent?
Can't you just migrate somewhere else? Like to North Dakota, or the Antarctic
Ocean?"

Daniel snickered and poked Andrea. "Queen says you're dumb."

"Shut up, sheep," she muttered. Then, louder, "But you—you've been calling
me!"

"Nuh-uh!"

Sinclair ahem'ed. "It's a function of your power as sovereign," he explained.
"You probably
have
been calling them. Her. And the others who have
been—"

"Well, shit!"

"Yup," Daniel said.

The queen frowned. "What do you want, anyway?"

"N-nothing," Andrea managed. "Just to see you. To make myself—"

"Us," Daniel corrected firmly.

"—known to you."

"Well, that's nice and all, but you sure didn't have to come all this way
just to see me. Ever heard of e-mail?"

Daniel laughed, and the queen smirked as he exclaimed, "Don't even tell me we
could have avoided this whole trip!"

"Okay, I won't tell you, but you could have. What's your name?"

"Baaaaaaaaa," Daniel said.

Andrea smacked his arm. "Very funny. I'm Andrea Mercer, and this is my
friend, Daniel Harris." She shook the queen's—the queen's!—hand. "It's very nice
to meet Your Majesty."

"Betsy, for the love of God. Sorry," she added, seeing Andrea flinch and
Sinclair wince. "I keep forgetting."

"Hey, I do that all the time, too! Whoa." Daniel made the time-out sign. "You
can swear? And wear crosses?"

"Uh-huh. Don't ask me why."

"Okay, I won't, but then you can't get mad at people when they don't think
you're a vampire."

"Can, too! If I'm the queen I figure I can do whatever the heck I want, so
there. Although I have to say it's nice to meet a vampire who has a sense of
humor—"

"He's not a vampire," Sinclair and Andrea said in unison.

"Oh. My bad. I usually can't tell until they jump on me and start chewing,
anyway."

"You mean vampires attack the queen of the vampires because they don't know
you're a vampire?"

"My life," she sighed, "in a nutshell."

"And he's not my sheep, either," Andrea blurted out, glaring at Sinclair, who
was looking entirely too smug. "He's—he's my—"

"Hot love monkey," Daniel supplied helpfully.

Andrea buried her face in her hands. "Anyway," she said to her fingers, "if
Your Majesty doesn't require anything of me at this time—"

"Go hit a Dairy Queen, have a shake, go crazy," Betsy said carelessly. "Have
fun with your love monkey."

"As long as we're on the subject of hot monkey love," Sinclair began.

"Forget it, pal! The last time I got naked with
you
, I got stuck
with a crown. And
you
. I'd rather have gotten a hemorrhoid!"

Andrea grabbed Daniel's elbow and began to slowly lead him away. "Well… we'll
be going, then…"

"Ah, Elizabeth, you really should succumb to the inevitable."

"How about if instead I set your shoes on fire!"

"You wouldn't: they're Kenneth Coles."

"Nice meeting you!" Daniel called.

Faintly, the queen: "I didn't ask you to come out here, FYI."

"Ah, my queen, you know I can't stay away."

Louder, the queen: "Well, you better!"

"Good-bye!" Andrea yelled and, holding hands, they ran to the car.

"What's the rush?" Daniel gasped, keeping stride.

"Do you want to be around if they start throwing punches?"

He picked her up and ran the rest of the way.