They swarmed into the room like a pack of wolverines. I relaxed, smiled at the first face I saw, and felt some of the fire leave my blood.
“Don't you bitches touch – oh.” Antonia skidded to a halt, then nearly went sprawling, as Sinclair almost ran her down. “Oomph! Um, we're here to save you.”
“Go save Nick,” I suggested. “He's in the bushes on this side of the house.”
“You will pay for – oh,” Sinclair said, straightening as he took in the three prostrate forms around me. The others piled in behind him and did the same. “Hmm.”
“Yeah, so, thanks for showing up, but I took care of things. Pretty much. Of course, in the last week you guys whittled down their numbers for me. That was,” I decided, “a big help.”
Tina and Antonia each nodded. Garrett, hiding behind Antonia, swallowed with what looked like a mixture of relief and lingering fear. He tried a shy smile, and I smiled back.
“Stake 'em all!” Nick hollered, limping through the doorway and waving his arms like the Winter Carnival grand marshal. “Betsy, too!”
Jessica rushed to Nick, clearly relieved that he was unharmed (well, it was possible he had a sprained ankle, and that was a helluva scratch on his forehead... and he seemed to be favoring the ribs on his left side... ).
“Agreed,” Sinclair said, sighing at the three Fiends. “Well, not agreed about my wife. But the others must die now. In fact, it is long overdue.”
“As you wish.” Tina pulled out a thin mahogany stake from somewhere within her navy blue wool sweater and skirt set (truly frightening efficiency), and stepped forward.
“Forget it!” I said, holding up my hands. “We are going to be magnanimous in victory.”
“Magnanimous equals pussy,” Antonia commented.
“Again?” Tina whined. “We're going to let them live again?”
“Elizabeth, they are too dangerous to simply – ”
“I didn't say we were going to set them free. They'll have to earn their freedom.” I turned to the three Fiends – well, okay, the two that were conscious. “You had a grievance with me. You should have stuck with me. Had all seven of you done that, seven of you might be alive now. I'd like it if you three, at least, stayed alive. It's up to you.”
“What – ” Stephanie swallowed, then tried again. “What do we have to do?”
“You guys can be the queen's personal bodyguards and doers of annoying chores. Or I can leave the room, right now, and my husband and friends will chat with you. A lot. Until you have cavernous facial wounds.” I tilted my head toward the exit and not coincidentally to the people who would stay behind. “Your choice.”
“Pick the stake,” Nick suggested, wiping streaks of blood from his face. God, that made me even hungrier. And wouldn't he just shit? “You don't want to spend the next thousand years doing that twit's dirty work.” He turned to me. “You almost killed me, you numb fucking twat! Again!”
“I did not! I saved you.”
“You threw me out a fucking window!” Nick was actually going purple with rage.
I tried to hide my amazement. Unlike occurs in the movies, Nick clearly hadn't suddenly forgiven me and been warmed by my selfless act. We weren't going to ride off into the sunset together (so to speak) and get Blizzards from Dairy Queen.
Frankly, I didn't get it. In the movies, when the heroine did something heroic and cool, everybody loved her at the end. Okay, I didn't really expect life to be like the movies... uh. That was maybe a lie.
“You are a menace, and if I could make it stick, I'd throw your ass in jail for the next hundred years.”
“Nicholas J. Berry!” Jessica gasped. “What is the matter with you?”
“With me? You should have seen this psycho bitch in action.”
“That is enough,” she snarled, hands on scrawny hips. “When are you going to get it through your head that Betsy isn't the cause of all your problems?”
I was frantically trying to signal to Jessica, making a slashing motion across my throat, the universal gesture for “shush!” Although it made me sad, I felt Nick's rage was a perfectly appropriate reaction to the evening's festivities. I appreciated Jessica sticking up for me – she always stuck up for me – but she didn't have all the facts.
He had been attacked. Again. Violated by vampires... again. I was amazed he hadn't gone fetal in the hedges.
“How many times do I have to say it,” Jessica was saying. “How many times do you have to see it? She's a good guy!”
“No, Jess, it's okay, he – ”
“She drinks blood, because she's dead,” he said, spitting on the floor – spitting blood, I might add, and I was ashamed, because my fangs were out again. I didn't dare speak anymore; I didn't want him to know I wanted to drink and drink and drink. “She's a killer, and you know it.”
“I love her, she's the sister I never got, and you know that.”
“Ah, perhaps we could, ah, step into another room and discuss, ah, the new terms for surrender,” Tina said, because even the Fiends looked uncomfortable to be witnessing the lovers' quarrel.
“Or maybe you could talk about this later, when everybody's calmed down,” I tried.
“Don't make me choose,” Jessica warned, ignoring us. For her, the only person in the room was Nick.
“I'm not making you choose. I'm choosing. We're done.” He wiped his face again, and we all pretended not to notice how his hand shook and how he couldn't look at her.
“That's right,” Jessica replied coolly. “We are.”
And just like that – it was over. They were over. We could all practically hear the snap.
Chapter 44
Stephanie and Jane were sullen, but agreeable – apparently being the doers of the queen's scut work was more appealing than being staked.
I gave them permission to live on Nostro's property (by vampire law, when you killed a vampire all his stuff came to you, so technically, it was my property), and they agreed to be at my beck and call, as it were.
I'd probably put at least one of them to work in my nightclub, Scratch. Another vampire property that had come to me by law – long story. Actually, that wasn't true. I had killed another badass vampire, and her property went to me about the time her soul went shrieking into Hell.
Unlike their lives before, the Fiends wouldn't just frolic in the moonlight like undead puppies, but they'd live and read and watch TV like real people... which should be fun, since for all I knew Jane and Stephanie had no idea what a TV was.
They could feed on each other – if they were comfortable with that – or they could snack on bad guys. We would help them figure out who it was all right to bite and who was off-limits. Yep, they could make new lives for themselves, be almost like normal people.
Unless I needed them, of course. Then they'd come on the run, or I'd know the reason why. Shit, with all the bad guys popping out of the woodwork these days, I needed bodyguards.
Of course, we weren't going to just leave them to their own devices... Sinclair and I would have to think about who could keep an eye on them, maybe even live in the McMansion with them. For now, they were cowed enough by recent events that I felt safe leaving them there for the next few nights.
“That was pretty anticlimactic,” Antonia bitched on our way out.
“What can I say? It can't be bloody revenge and near-death experiences every day.”
“You're about to have a near-death experience,” Sinclair promised grimly as we climbed into his Lexus (I noticed Nick's truck was also there and deduced they'd grabbed it when they woke up at his house after I'd put the whammy on them). “Specifically, you will never, ever sucker punch me like that again and run off into mortal danger.”