Undead and Undermined (23 page)

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Authors: MaryJanice Davidson

Tags: #Romance, #Fiction, #Religious, #Paranormal, #Vampires, #Taylor; Betsy (Fictitious Character), #Sinclair; Eric (Fictitious Character)

BOOK: Undead and Undermined
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“We have a
lot
to do,” she said again. “A lot to get ready for.” Laura sounded grim and resolute, which was pretty cool. I felt frazzled and freaked, which was pretty normal. I was glad Antonia was back, glad Garrett had his girlfriend back, glad I’d kicked the devil’s ass, glad Laura had sided with me at a crucial time, glad we weren’t fighting anymore.
But everything had happened so quickly! Shoot, two weeks ago I had never been to hell, to the past, to the future. Two weeks ago, Garrett and Antonia were dead and my mom was living the single life in Hastings. Two weeks ago, Christian Louboutin was getting ready for the rollout of his spring . . .
But that was too painful to think about.
“Maybe I’ll sow salt in my bedroom when those two are done. That seems to be the safest thing to do. That’s not an overreaction, right?”
“Yes, do that.” Laura sounded distracted, but she never wavered in her determination to haul me away from the scene of the (ongoing) crime. “Listen, we need to find Sinclair. And we need to talk to the Marc Thing.”
“Oh . . . shit!”
I’d forgotten. I’d completely forgotten. We had unfinished business, triumph in hell or no triumph.
The laurel-resting would have to wait, dammit.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
 
We rushed into the basement. Our dank, gross, creepy,
you’ve-seen-this-in-every-horror-movie basement. There had been corpses down there, good guys and bad guys, and don’t get me started on the tunnel system. Yeah.
Tunnel system.
I’d told Sinclair I felt like I was in a
Roadrunner
cartoon, but sometimes it was more like an episode of
Scooby Doo
. “And I would have gotten away with stealing the Book of the Dead if it wasn’t for you meddling kids.”
The basement stretched the length and width of the house, which was amazing any way you looked at it. The mansion, as the word implies, was not small.
We charged down the stairs, down a couple of hallways, past the kitchen (I could see someone in there but we were in too much of a hurry to slow down), down more stairs, and then we were in the gloom and stink of our ancient, dank, yucky basement.
I figured they must have been keeping him in one of the old wine cellars. Yeah, “one of,” implying we had more than one, and we did. But I could honestly say I didn’t know all that much about it . . . I disliked the basement almost as much as I disliked the attic (nothing good ever comes from the attic!). I was able to count on one hand the number of times I’d ventured down there, and that was the way I hoped to keep it.
Anyway, the wine cellars were solidly built, cool (but not damp or chilly), and best of all, they had enormous heavy wooden doors with old-fashioned bolts. Bolts! Like it was a medieval dungeon! Three of them (two more than anyone ever needed for anything,
ever
), each as thick as my wrist. What the previous owners needed bolts on the outside for I didn’t know and didn’t want to know.
It was a pretty good place to keep an insane, and insanely strong, vampire. Even if he wriggled or tore through eight rolls of duct tape, he had the bolts (three!) to contend with. It likely wouldn’t keep him forever, but long enough for someone to realize what the Marc Thing was up to and cough up the old standby: “Look out! He’s getting away!”
And I knew he was. I
knew
it. We hadn’t come far enough into the basement to see the wine cellar door, but I knew it would be hanging half off its hinges. I knew the door would be smashed and battered, and maybe a friend or relative lying nearby, unconscious or dead, and when we ventured into the room itself, we’d see splinters of chair and shreds of duct tape. We’d stare at each other in dismay and wonder how we could have been so stupid.
It would be like every movie that ever had a villain trussed in a corner (“Nobody puts Villain in the corner.”), except that unlike poor unsuspecting fictional characters,
I
should have known better. The villain would wait until there was sufficient distraction (like the heroine roaring off to see her mom and then falling abruptly out of touch with the home base because she ran into a streetlight and then went to hell), then escape just long enough to fuck things up all the way around. Then, recapture. Then defeat. But all too late to undo whatever it was the bad guy did while he was unfettered.
So, as we rushed around a corner, I already knew what to expect, was already pissed at myself for being such a movie cliché dumbass.
In fact, I was
so
sure of what we’d find, I ran into the closed and bolted door so hard I gave myself a nosebleed and actually grayed out for a minute.
It took a long, long time to fall down. Long enough for me to think about what a pleasant surprise it was, about how the movies didn’t necessarily get everything right, that I should have had more faith in my roommates, that . . .
. . . that . . .
(Ow.)
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
 
“. . . be all right?”
“. . . her a minute.”
“. . . right into the door, I couldn’t—”
“. . . bleeding stopped.”
“. . . anything I can do.”
Jumble. Jumble of soft, soft words in my soft, soft head. Getting clearer, though. Oh, goody. I was going to live. I just wasn’t going to live it
down.
“No one is blaming you, Laura.” My husband’s voice. And that was his hand, holding mine. “I’m going to carry her up to our bedroom, and—”
“No! God, no!” My eyes flew open. “Please. Please don’t go in there, and don’t take me in there. You don’t know, Sinclair. You just don’t.” I looked around the small circle of faces. Tina, N/Dick, Jessica, Laura. “None of you can understand the true horror of what’s happening in our room right now.”
“You’d better be concussed at the very least,” my best friend informed me. “Do you know how many stairs I gotta climb to get out of this shithole?”
“And Sinclair was wrong,” I told my sister. “I’m blaming you. Why didn’t you stop me?”
“How could I? You were like the bionic woman down here. I barely saw the door was locked before you smacked straight into it.”
“Well, I . . . I thought we would find something else.” I felt something wet on my lip and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. My entire face ached. My hand came away trickling my sluggish undead blood. “Dammit. Tell me I didn’t break my nose.”
“You seem fine,” Sinclair soothed.
“Ha! If you’ve got a medical degree, Sink Lair, it’s the first I’m hearing about it.” I started to sit up, ignoring the many helping hands. It’s not that I wasn’t grateful. Okay, I wasn’t grateful. But I was more embarrassed than anything else. So intent on rescue I ran smack into a closed door and knocked myself out . . . not
too
lame. “Where’s Marc? Shouldn’t he be trying to take my nonexistent pulse?”
“In there.” Tina pointed to the closed, bolted door.
“Not that Marc. The one that’s alive, sane, and not (too) creepy.”
“In there.”
I blinked, then realized what she’d said. “What? You’ve locked him in there with the Marc Thing? What, did he lose the coin toss?”
“No, it’s—”
“What the hell is the matter with all of you?” Sheesh. I go back to hell for a couple of hours and everyone back home checked their IQ at the door.
I was on my feet in a flash, fumbling with the bolts and then yanking them aside to open the door. Instead of helping, they just stood around and watched me. Unbelievable! I heaved it open (sucker was heavy) and made ready to dash into the room to save Marc from the profound idiocy of my room—
Both Marcs, who had been in deep discussion, looked up at me.
“What?” they said in unison.
I stared. I had to; it was an interesting sight to say the least. I saw in an instant why my roommates hadn’t been concerned: the Marc Thing was still trussed, and though our Marc had been locked in with him, he was festooned with crosses.
Yep. Crosses were hanging everywhere off our Marc . . . if he so much as shifted his weight, the Marc Thing flinched back and couldn’t look at him. And the duct tape was holding up beautifully.
The perfect interrogation technique. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Because who would the Marc Thing be most likely to talk to? His younger self, of course. And who’d be the best judge of whether his old dead self was prevaricating or covering up? His younger self, of course.
“Ohhhh.”
“Uh-huh,” Jessica said, smug.
“Hey.” Our Marc waved casually. “You’re back, finally.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been busy.”
“So we hear.” Sinclair had taken out a handkerchief (who still carried those?) and was tenderly wiping the blood off my face. “Besting the devil and freeing our friend’s soul.”
“I’m not sure how the soul/body thing works in hell,” I confessed. “Think about it . . . Antonia’s body was buried on Cape Cod. But now her body is back here, alive. It’s not her soul. She’s flesh and blood again.” Gah, didn’t I know it. Mustn’t . . . think . . . about bedroom . . . carnage . . . “I mean, how does that even work?”
Laura blinked. “Huh. I didn’t even think about that, Betsy. That
is
weird.”
“I have so much to tell you.” I realized I’d been leaning on Sinclair since I’d climbed to my feet. “And, um, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about going back to hell.”
“No. You are not.”
“Okay, well, I’m sorry I—”
“You are not.”
“Okay, okay, but look how great it turned out!”
“That,” my husband said, “is why you didn’t wake up on the bottom of the Mississippi River.”
“Please.” I flapped a hand at him. “Like you’d ever hurt me.”
He sighed. He looked grim, but then leaned forward, pulled me into his arms, and rubbed his chin on the top of my head. I guess I was supposed to find that loving and comforting, but all it did was mash my sore nose. “No, but I can dream.”
“I gotta get going,” our Marc said, standing. He backed out of the wine cell (I had decided the wine cellar needed a new name), which was smart. Dozens of crosses were pointed at the Marc Thing the whole time it took our Marc to cross to the doorway. He’d agreed to be locked in with it, but protected himself with tons of jewelry. Meanwhile, even if the Marc Thing
did
do something stupid, he still had the (three) bolts to get through. “I’ll see you guys later.”
“Don’t be a stranger!” the Marc Thing called with eerie, and inappropriate, cheer. Hearing that raspy cold voice sounding high and enthusiastic made me feel a little like throwing up. Or throwing myself at another locked cellar/ cell door. “Send me lots and lots and lots and lots of postcards! I love getting mail!”
Marc pushed past me and I let him. He’d had a look on his face I didn’t like, but understood. He looked sort of . . . it was hard to describe . . . unplugged? Sort of vaguely uneasy but also thoughtful . . . like he’d been given tons of info and was having trouble making sense of it.
That was probably exactly what he was going through.
We watched him climb the stairs like an old man. When he was out of sight, I said, “It can be pretty terrible, finding out about terrible things that you haven’t even done yet which will make the future terrible. I’ll go talk to him.”
“Give him a few minutes,” Sinclair advised.
“Yeah, you’re right. The Marc Thing probably blew his mind.”
“That is it
exactly
,” the Thing agreed. “We caught up on current events . . . I can’t grow hair in new and gorgeous ways anymore, but perhaps a wig? Perhaps . . . a Justin Bieber?”
“Perhaps gross,” I suggested.
“Is Antonia really back from hell? It’s not that I thought Laura was lying. It just seems . . . it’s incredible.”
“She’s here,” the Marc Thing said, “but she’s not here. Antonia’s dead. You just can’t help yourself, can you? You pretend you hate change, but it’s what you constantly bring us to.”
“Pull the other one, Fang. Tina, you haven’t even heard the whole story yet!” And wouldn’t for a while, since Laura and I were in full agreement that the gang didn’t need every single dull detail. I’d hit her with the highlights, emphasizing how cool and awesome I’d been in hell.
“Then lead on.” Sinclair courteously gestured to the stairs, bowing slightly at the waist. The bow did nothing to hide his amused grin. “And regale us, my own.”
So that’s what I did. That’s what kills me, that’s the part I couldn’t stop thinking about after. When I could bear to think about any of it at all.
I
did
.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
 
Half an hour later, we were back in smoothie central. I was
just getting to the (abbreviated) part where Satan asked me what she’d have to do to get me to leave hell (I’d been there, and I could still hardly believe it) when Garrett and Antonia walked in.

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