Fashionably Dead (46 page)

It was too quiet. Was I wrong about where they had gone? Was I too late?

I pressed my body against the wall of the cave and quickly made my way through the corridor, looking for the Portal to Hell. I knew I was close. I could smell the sulfur and burning flesh. I squatted down and laid my palms on the limestone floor, absorbing as much Magic as my body would take in. I had depleted myself by transporting and I needed no weaknesses right now, real or perceived.

“Are you okay, Mommy?”

What the fu . . . ?
My pockets were talking. Four little grinning heads popped out. I slapped my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming.

“Oh my God, you scared me to death,” I chastised Ross, Honest Abe, Rachel and Beyonce. “How did you get into my pocket?” I whispered.

“We be here the whole time, Mommy,” Honest Abe giggled softly, “and you already dead.” Ross high-fived him for the death joke. I rolled my eyes.

“Your Mommy worse than my Mommy.” Beyonce shook her head in disgust. “She bad.”

“Yep,” I agreed. “You guys need to stay in my pocket. It’s going to get ugly and I want you safe. Do you understand me?”

I tried to be stern, but I was so happy to see them I almost cried. I was scared. Scared I would screw up, and there was simply no room for error.

“We hear you, Mommy,” Rachel said sweetly. The others nodded.

If I’d had time, I’d examine that answer a little deeper. It sounded as if they were acknowledging what I said without agreeing to abide by it. I had their number. I pulled that crap all the time with Nana growing up. I heard moaning and laughing. We all froze. I pushed them back into my pocket and moved toward the voices.

I got down on my stomach and shimmied to the archway of a magnificent room, with crystals cascading like diamond curtains from the ceiling to the floor. The King was bound with silver chains and my mother floated around him. She was agitated and angry.

“I despised you for not changing me.” Her lips were thin and her eyes were slits of fury. “Then I found out how noble you were, knowing how it would have killed me.” Her laugh was reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard. “I just hated you more, you stupid, stupid man.”

“What are you waiting for, Petra?” The King goaded her. Why was he doing that? Did he want to get his heart ripped out?

“I haven’t finished my story yet,” she snapped furiously at his challenging words. She was beginning to flicker and become more transparent. The angrier she got the more she faded. My King was a smart man.

“I have spent the last five hundred years building an army of Rogues,” she shrieked. She stilled suddenly and composed herself. “Our daughter helped me,” she smiled at him with intense pleasure. Her moods shifted on a dime, like a schizophrenic.

“How did you convince her?” he asked. I could tell Juliet was a painful subject for him. So could my mother.

“It didn’t take much,” she giggled. “I gave her all the affection she craved and then I withheld it until she begged,” she informed him icily. God, somebody should have tied her tubes hundreds of years ago. She was the sorriest excuse for a mother I’d ever seen.

“So you begat half Demons, Juliet turned them into Vampyres, and you turned them into monsters,” he said with disgust.

“Correct,” she cooed. She raised her hand and shot a bolt of lightning at his chest. He grunted in pain, but he did not cry out. God, he was tough. I had been ready to lose it after a graze on the shoulder, but he stayed quiet even when the equivalent of a jagged burning spear got shoved into his chest.

I could see blood seeping through his shirt and I watched in horror as she flew to him and lapped at it. She raised her head, her face was covered in his blood and she smiled.

“I did love you,” she whispered seductively. “You’re so pretty, but you loved that bitch Paloma more than you loved me,” she growled and went back to licking and sucking at his chest.

How was she doing that? She was a spirit. It had to be the caves. The level of Magic in this particular room was high. I could feel it wash over me. She was becoming less transparent the more blood she drank. Shit, this was bad. No, wait . . . it might be good. As long as she didn’t drain him completely, the more human she became, the better chance I had of killing her. It was difficult, but I waited.

“Get your skanky, skinny-ass, fucked up, demon-slut hands off of my man,” Pam bellowed and the room shook.

“You!” Unintelligible curses spewed from Petra’s mouth as she tried to clutch the King to her, but she wasn’t solid enough to accomplish it. Her face was a mask of rage. “You’re too late, whore,” she screamed. “He’s dead.”

Time for a change of plans.

“Of course he’s dead, he’s a Vampyre,” I yelled as if I was in a vaudeville show and I had the punch line of the joke. I placed myself directly in front of my mother, blocking her view of Pam.

Petra screeched like a harpy and buzzed around the room like the Tasmanian Devil, shooting lightning at the King with every pass. His body jerked and convulsed on the floor. He was bleeding heavily. Both Pam and I tried to make our way to him, but the lightning was too much. Every time we tried we were flung back into the walls.

Petra was insane. Her eyes blazed and she couldn’t seem to focus on any one thing. The King was almost dead. I wasn’t sure what she had done, but it wasn’t good. I needed to get him away from her before she ripped his heart out.

I flicked my fingers at Petra and knocked her across the room. Thank God. She was solid enough that some of my Magic would work.

“Pam, get the King,” I yelled to her. She didn’t need to be told twice. She transported across the room and covered his body with hers.

“I have been waiting five hundred years to get back in your pants,” she threatened him. “Don’t you dare die on me now.” Pam removed the silver, shook him and forced him to feed from her.

“I’m going to kill you,” my mother shrieked and flew at me like a freight train.

I ducked and shot a spray of silver bullets from my fingertips as she crossed over me, but they went right through her. Magic, yes. Conventional weapons, no.

I focused and yanked my spirit from my body and tried to enter her. Again, nothing. There was not enough of her to enter. How in the hell was I supposed to kill her?

Petra, not being one to give up, came back at me screaming like a banshee and shooting lightning from her hands.

I felt a piercing hot knife of lightning slice into my stomach. Oh God, no. No, no, no. I dropped to the floor and clutched my stomach. My hands were covered in blood. Rage boiled through me. I will kill her over and over again for the rest of my life if she harmed my baby. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t, not yet.

The tingling I’d felt earlier was gone. My little spark of life disappeared. My baby had died. I knew it, and the grief that ripped through my body was debilitating. I was consumed with a white hot fury. That woman had tried to destroy me, but I never let her. I was so much stronger than I had ever given myself credit for. I’d be goddamned if she was going to destroy my baby.

“Hear me, O Fairies,” I gasped through my pain. “Let my baby live . . . that is my wish.” I was glad I was on the floor as a wave of dizziness consumed me. My body convulsed and curled into a tight ball. My hands still clutched my stomach, so I was very aware that the bleeding had stopped.

A chilly blast of Magic engulfed me and it came back . . . the little spark of life came back. I could feel it smiling inside of me. My tears of joy made little pools of red on the limestone floor. I closed my eyes and I saw him. A beautiful little boy who looked just like his daddy. He tilted his little head to the side and blew me a wet baby kiss. I opened my eyes and the image disappeared, but his presence inside me remained strong.

I slowly lifted my head to gauge where the bitch would come from next, but she was gone. Where in the hell was she? I scanned the room. She was nowhere to be found. I crawled across the floor toward Pam and the King. If we could get out before she returned, there was a chance we would all live.

Something wasn’t right. Pam wasn’t feeding the King. She was feeding from the King. His body was limp in her arms and her face was dripping with his blood.

“What in the hell are you doing?” I dragged myself to my feet.

She grinned at me. Oh thank God, she was doing some weird Angel thing with the King to save him. Immortals had the strangest habits. “Pam, we have to get out of here.”

She nodded, and then she tore the King’s hand off and ate it.

What the fu . . . ? I staggered back in shock and disgust. I gagged as I watched her chew and swallow his hand.

“Pam.” I moved toward her. “Stop.”

She looked up. For a moment she was terrified and confused, then it was gone. She stared back at me with an expression of supreme satisfaction in her eyes, but they weren’t her eyes. They were Petra’s eyes. Son of a bitch, Petra had gone into Pam’s body and was going to fulfill her destiny through Pam. Her smile broadened and she winked at me.

I saw red. Since I’d become a Vampyre I’d been living one cliché’ after another. I had been rooted to the ground, felt thick silence, heard a pin drop, but none could compare to seeing red. A heat suffused my body and I trembled with an anger so deep it was boundless.

Pam was immortal . . . if I killed her she’d come back. Right? I needed to get her off the King before it was too late. I reached into my pocket to retrieve a throwing star. I would behead Pam and then when my mother left Pam’s body, I’d kill Petra with every bit of Magic I had left in me. Even if Pam didn’t come back, I knew she’d never be able to live with the fact she’d cannibalized and killed the love of her life. I would want the same done for me.

My pockets began to shriek as I went for my throwing stars. I looked down and Beyonce began to recite.

“Between this world and the next,

There’s only one way to kill.

A magic secret blown in the ear

Do not cave into yourself

Be strong like a rock and save us.”

Oh my God, Beyonce
was
a genius! That little ass-grabbing Sprite was telling the truth. It was in the poem all along. That was why Nana sent me the message. “Cave into yourself” says it’s in the caves. “Between this world and the next” is exactly where Petra was. To kill her I’d have to blow a magic secret into her ear. Secret, something not meant to be known by others. Magic . . . something wonderful.

I finally knew how to kill my mother, and damn, I was looking forward to it.

I watched in horror as Pam began to ingest the King’s arm. Dinnertime was so over. I flew across the room at over two hundred miles an hour and plowed into Pam, throwing her into the wall so hard I was sure I broke every bone in her body. The impact was so severe it knocked Petra right out of her.

Petra’s screams were inhuman. “No, I’m not done,” she wailed.

“Oh yes, you are,” I muttered, trapping her mostly solid body in the corner. She growled and snapped like an animal. I needed to calm her down. “Mother,” I hissed, “stop it. I knocked you out of her body so you can enter mine. I want to be the one who saves you, not her.”

It took her a few minutes to focus on me and comprehend what I had said. “Yes, yes darling,” she grunted, “that’s wonderful.” She smiled and her eyes rolled back in her head, “Hurry, I’m still hungry.”

Oh hell no . . . that was disgusting. “Mother, I want one thing from you.” I moved closer to her.

“What do you want, my sweet?” She was shaking with excitement. Her tongue was foamy and hanging out of her mouth like a rabid dog.

“No, Astrid,” Pam moaned. “Don’t.”

“Shut up,” Petra growled at her. “Can we kill her?” she whined like a spoiled child begging for a toy.

“Of course,” I told her lovingly. “Right after you grant my wish, I’ll kill her. I want to hug you and I want you to hug me back.”

She looked taken aback. “Why?”

Even when I was about to get her everything she ever wanted, she still couldn’t hide her disdain for me.

“Because you’ve never hugged me and that’s what I want,” I said.

She considered for a mere heartbeat. My mother lifted her arms to me, the very same way I had always dreamt her doing it. “Come hug Mommy, sweetheart.”

I leaned into her and she hugged me. My chest clenched and tears flooded my eyes. This was what I had wanted my whole life. She held me tight and it felt so good. I lay still in her arms for a moment, memorizing the feeling. I loved her as much as I hated her, but it was way too little . . . way too late.

“Mother?’ I whispered in her ear.

“Yes?” she answered. She trembled with excitement.

“I’m pregnant.”

It was definitely a secret and God knew it was Magic. I blew in her ear and she died in my arms. I stared at her beautiful dead body for what felt like an eternity. Why did I love this horrible woman? Was it simply because she was my mother and daughters were supposed to love their mothers?

I realized in that moment that I didn’t love her, not in the true sense of the word. I loved the idea of loving her. I didn’t hate her either. I felt nothing. She was nothing to me. When you die, the only things you leave behind are memories in the minds of those who loved you. That was how you lived on. My mother would not live on . . . at least not through me. I put her down on the cold floor and I walked away from her. Forever.