Wolf at the Door (15 page)

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Authors: MaryJanice Davidson

BOOK: Wolf at the Door
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The zombie hadn’t hurt him, right? Hadn’t hurt anybody as far as Edward could see. In fact, the shambling undead thing had gone out of its way to be polite and helpful. It might be premature to call Boo. He needed to do more recon.
And it had nothing,
at all
, to do with the fact that once Boo flew to town and kicked some collective undead ass, his work here would be done. There’d be nothing to prevent him from going back home.
It had
nothing
to do with that. He just didn’t want to waste Boo’s time. He wanted to be sure before he loosed the beast on an unsuspecting undead populace.
It had nothing to do with wanting more bluff sex. And how he couldn’t wait to watch Rache put away, oh, half a dozen Subway foot-longs.
It didn’t.
It
didn’t.
So: he’d recon. Right now.
Twenty-seven
 
Though they never knew, Rachael woke up the instant Edward did. The only difference was, she knew exactly where she was, how she’d gotten there, and why she was naked.
“Bluff sex,” she mused aloud, and shook her head. And laughed at the sheer silliness of it. The man was good for a laugh, if nothing else. And he was good for plenty else;
nothing
never entered into it.
Her good humor lasted until she picked up her cell and saw a cryptic text from one of two people who had her texting info: “There’s been another one.”
Cain, with an update. Definitely not Edward.
“Shit,” she said, her good mood vanishing. She’d decided against her chat with the vampire queen, and there was a fresh corpse to rebuke her laziness.
Whoever you are, I’m so sorry. If it’s any consolation, I won’t allow it to happen to anyone else. This I so swear.
Yeah, sure. If it’d been
her
ghost being appealed to, she wouldn’t have been impressed or appeased, either.
Time to see the queen. Right now. Bluff sex would wait. Edward would wait. The lemon icebox pie she knew Call Me Jim was baking upstairs would wait.
She dressed in a blur of motion and ran out to her car in her bare feet. She was so keyed up she never would have noticed, but the vampire queen sure did.
Twenty-eight
 
She was in enough of a hurry to drive, and parked her car on a slant in the driveway. She hurried up the driveway and, to her relief, didn’t even have to ring the doorbell or knock on the door. The dead man had opened it for her.
She slowed. She stared.
The man was not a vampire, and he sure as shit wasn’t Pack. He was dead. Newly dead. Newly dead and walking around. But not a vampire. She . . . she didn’t understand it.
“I don’t understand this.”
“Ah, you’re back. Tina told me you’d be coming by. I’ve got Antonia’s things right in here, if you’ll—”
“Someone is murdering humans to make your friends fight with my family, I think.”
The zombie blinked. He was quite handsome for a corpse, with black hair and eyes the color of wet leaves. He was wearing surgical scrubs, which added just the right surreal note to their odd meeting.
“Oh. Well. In that case”—holding the door wide for her—“you’d better come in and talk to Betsy and Sinclair.”
And in she went.
Twenty-nine
 
Horror-struck, Edward was frozen to the spot. He felt like he was in a nightmare. He prayed he was in a nightmare. It wasn’t real, right? None of this was real. He hadn’t seen . . . any of it. He hadn’t seen it. It didn’t happen.
It
was
happening. Right now.
Rachael had driven right up to the mansion, exactly like she knew where it was.
She’d parked the car in the driveway at a hurried slant, not caring if someone was blocked . . . she’d been there before and wasn’t worried about pissing someone off with a crappy parking job.
She’d gone right into the mansion.
Right
in. Someone had been watching for her and held the door for her.
Held the fucking door for her!
It was that last that seemed to shriek the implication at him.
He plunged his hands in his hair and clutched hard enough to make his eyes water. “What . . . the . . . fuck?”
Thirty
 
The polite and helpful zombie led her straight back to what Rachael saw was the kitchen, one the size of a small football stadium. The queen, her assistant/friend/minion Tina, and the starving pregnant angry Jessica were all seated on stools around a butcher-block table.
The air reeked of fruit, and there were many, many glasses on the table, all with varying amounts and types of smoothies in them. There were three, count ’em, three empty blenders plugged in and clearly ready for more business.
“You again,” the queen greeted her. “Just in time for happy hour.”
Nothing. Nothing.
“Whoa! No shoes, no service, missy! What’s with the bare feet? Are you from Arkansas?”
“No.” She realized in her rush to leave she’d neglected footwear. What an odd thing for the queen of the vampires to notice. “Forgive me, but . . .” Why was this only now occurring to her? Was she in
that
deep a fog of lust? “. . . why are you awake when it’s daytime?”
The leggy blonde yawned. She was either unphased by Rachael’s reappearance or possessed a superhuman ability to appear so. “Queen of the vamp perks.”
“But she”—pointing to Tina—“isn’t the queen.” Unless she was . . . what? A co-ruler?
“No, but she’s decrepit,” Jessica answered, unmindful of her smoothie moustache.
Hunger. Amusement.
“Ancient, even. I guess the older you are, the more godless hideous abilities you get.”
“What an apt description, Jessica, thank you so much.”
Nothing. Nothing.
So. The vamp who looked like a walking ad for jailbait (who wore pleated plaid skirts with crisp white blouses anymore, unless they were on their way to a costume party or a fetish convention?) was an ancient vampire.
Good to know. She hoped they would make more slips. If they were slips. Could they be that confident? That unworried?
“I guess that makes sense,” she admitted, feeling a comment was required. They were awfully free with their information. Assuming any of it was the truth. She couldn’t
tell
, that was the maddening part. Only with the pregnant woman, and who knew what havoc pregnant hormones were wreaking on her senses? “I apologize for coming by, again, without calling first, again, but I need to tell you—”
“Why have you and your friend been sneaking around the neighborhood?” Tina asked.
Rachael thought about that one for a few seconds. The queen apparently saw this as a lull in the conversation, which she jumped to fill: “See? Toldya that’d knock her for a loop. Oooh, gimmee more of that sweet blackberry goodness. Nom, nom, nom!”
“Ugh, how can you stand all the seeds?” The zombie was peering at the queen’s glass with poorly concealed distaste.
“
All
fruit has seeds,” the queen protested. “You’re sitting there with a glass of strawberry
seeds
, moron!”
“There’s seeds and there’s seeds,” Jessica piped up. “You’d never grind up apple seeds in a blender for a smoothie.”
“You can’t,” the zombie said. “They’re poisonous.”
“They are not. That’s an urban legend.”
“They absolutely are. Trust me, I’m a doctor. A dead doctor.”
“What friend?”
Rachael asked, much more sharply than she intended.
“Oh, like you don’t know. Puh-leeze, think we were born yesterday? It’s just not true.” The queen nodded toward the jailbait poster child. “Tina, in fact, was born about a thousand yesterdays ago.”
“How amusing, my queen.”
The zombie cleared his throat. “Betsy, I think you need to listen to her. She says she thinks people are being killed to get your attention.”
“No shit? Well, that’s just great.” The queen shook her head, suddenly dispirited. “Just when I was thinking my only problem was figuring out how to bring you back to life.”
“Don’t you dare bring me back to life,” the zombie replied sharply. “Then that damned prophecy will come true and I’ll eventually become the Marc Thing. Don’t make my suicide seem like a mistake.”
“Your suicide
was
a mistake,” the queen informed him.
“Dammit, Betsy!”
“Dammit, Marc! Like I’m gonna let you shamble around as a fucking
zombie
for the next thousand years? Have you met me
ever
? Not gonna happen! Get it through your thick, zombie head!”
“Excuse me. What friend?”
“Oh, don’t worry. My husband’s taking care of him right now.”
Rachael turned to run, her mind empty of everything but the urgent need to get to Edward
now
, which is when someone turned all the lights out in her skull.
Definitely should have seen this coming,
she thought, watching with detachment as the floor rushed up to smack her in the face.
Thirty-one
 
Edward had no idea how it had happened, but one moment he was skulking just outside the alley, freaking out—
What the hell is Rachael doing there?
—and the moment after that he was dangling in the air from the fists of a shockingly strong man.
“I have not yet decided how dangerous you are. Shall we discuss it, you and I?”
Finally! Someone who dressed and spoke appropriately for a paranormal moment. From what he could see (though things were already going fuzzy around the edges) the guy was huge, tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed in black.
“Outstanding! We gonna talk about it while I die from—gggkkkk!—oxygen deprivation? Or no, wait! Kkkkkk! You can throw me off the roof. Could you say
you shall rue the day you crossed my path
in your deep scary voice while you throw me off a roof?”
“But for my love,” Dark Dude muttered, “I would tolerate none of this.” He dropped him, and Edward flopped to the ground, coughing and gazing up at Dark Dude.
“You got it right,” he said happily. “You got it all right. I’m . . . I’m just so happy. I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone like you.”
“Alas, I am happily, deliriously, eternally married,” he said dryly. “And I must say, don’t think I’ve ever seen that reaction before. Why are you here?”
“I’m spying for my best friend, a vampire slayer,” he replied promptly. He never hesitated to tell a vampire the truth, with Boo and Greg’s fervid encouragement. It had saved his life more than once. The vamp would often get so rattled he or she forgot all about Edward in their haste to get the hell out of Dodge. “And you guys are gonna get it! Zombies and evil baby farms. Be ashamed!”
“I have not the vaguest idea what you are talking about. And I suspect I do not want to.”
“She put you up to this, right?” It was starting to make sense. Horrible, horrible sense.
Well, you knew all along Rachael was too good to be true. And now you know why.
“I should have seen it. I really should have.”
“You sound a bit like Cape Cod.”
“I don’t have a Cape accent,” he retorted.
“You do, actually, a slight one. That means you’re from the coast . . . and that means you are acquainted with Ghost.”
Duh. Of course this guy knew who Boo was. Her fearsome reputation had obviously spread to the Midwest. Well, it saved time. He wouldn’t have to tell Dark Dude who she was and why he should be deeply terrified.
“Yeah, that’s right, pal. And when she gets here, and sees that you’ve mangled me even a little bit, she’ll take it out on your undead ass.”
“Excellent.”
“What?”
“You must call her straightaway.”
“What?”
Dark Dude made an impatient gesture. “I have been aware of her for some time. And I believe she is aware of the recent regime change.”
“Totally aware,” he lied, having no idea what Dark Dude was talking about.
“Yes. So. Please call her at once and ask her to visit.”
“Dude. If I call Ghost for a visit, the death count will hit two figures, guaranteed.”
“Do it. As soon as you can. And make sure she has our address.”
“
Our
address?”
“It’s in the newsletter,” he said impatiently.
“Yeah, about the newsletter . . . don’t you think it’s big-time dumb to—”
“I don’t like this. Not any of it. Run along and call for help, little man. I must see to the queen’s safety.”
“Oh . . . her? She doesn’t need protecting. She’s in a class by herself.” The lying faithless bitch.

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