Authors: MaryJanice Davidson

Undead and Unstable (2 page)

BOOK: Undead and Unstable

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Betsy finally realizes something’s wrong (a badly garbled text secretly sent by a hysterical Marc), and they return to the mansion in time to be in the middle of a Vampires vs. Satanists Smackdown.

Betsy wins, but only because Laura pulled the killing blow at the last moment.

People went their separate ways, for a while. And nobody felt like talking.

Three months later, Betsy decided to take the Antichrist by the, uh, horns, and invited her to go shoe shopping at the Mall of America. It was at this time she learned the Antichrist was fluent in every language on earth, and had little or no working knowledge of big-screen devils. Thus, Betsy hauls her sis home for a devil-a-thon (starting with
The Omen
and including Al Pacino’s Satan, Elizabeth Hurley’s sexy devil, and the baby in
Rosemary’s Baby).
It’s at this time Laura confesses that she feels guilty whenever she’s interested in finding out more about herself, her capabilities, or her mom, Satan. (“It’s like I’m slapping my adopted mom and dad in the face by wondering about her.”) It’s also at this time that Betsy realizes she’s sick of having a never-fail resource in her own home, the Book of the Dead, which she doesn’t dare use because anyone who reads it for longer than twenty minutes or so goes insane.

So she and Satan strike a deal, which actually makes sense at the time: Betsy will help Laura embrace and use her supernatural powers, and in return the devil will fix it so Betsy can read the Book without the accompanying nut-jobbery.

In addition to Laura’s weapons (stabbing weapons and a crossbow, which normally stay in hell unless she calls them up), she learns she can teleport almost anywhere. Cool, right? Yeah, not so much. In fact, that turns out to be a huge problem, as any
where
encompasses any
when
. In rapid, annoying succession, Betsy and Laura find themselves in Salem, Massachusetts, during the witch hunts of the 1600s; Hastings, Minnesota, before the spiral bridge was replaced (so, anywhere between 1895 and 1951); and the future.

A thousand years in the future. Also, the future? Sucks. There was some sort of cataclysmic global thing-gummy, and Minnesota in the future has winters even worse than the ones it has now. Nobody wants to worry about heat exhaustion on the Fourth of July, but frostbite and hypothermia are just as bad… and since the average temperature in the year July 3015 is thirty below, nobody’s getting rich off selling sunscreen.

In fact, nobody—except Future Betsy—is getting rich, period. They’re mostly hanging out in belowground enclaves and focusing on not dying.

To make matters even yuckier, Future Marc is a vampire. And not just any vampire… after hundreds of years of being Betsy’s personal whipping vampire, he’s dangerously insane. So much so that Laura and Betsy can feel how
wrong
he is after a glance. In fact, neither of them can bear to look him in the eyes, or even be around him.

BabyJon is there, too, and he’s as charismatic and charming as Marc is creepy and nutso. He won’t tell Betsy how he can be walking around one thousand years in the future and not be a vampire, though she tries and tries to wheedle it out of him.

In the forty-five minutes or so they’re in the future, they discover Future Betsy has taken over (most of) the country, can raise and control zombies, and has a crippling lack of empathy for anyone. More troubling, Sinclair and Tina are
nowhere
to be found. Worse, no one will even talk about them… except Undead Marc, until Ancient Betsy shuts him up and sends him away. And BabyJon is wildly uncomfortable about the subject.

They return vowing to figure out a way to save the future. Or undo it. Laura teleports Betsy back to the mansion and goes on her merry, hell-bound way.

Betsy has returned to find out Tina and Sinclair remember meeting her in the past. They explain that they’ve always known Betsy would be headed on a time-travel romp, and the only way to help her was to stay out of the way.

To Betsy’s amazement, Jessica is heavily pregnant by Nick Berry. And Nick is happy to see her, thoughtful and warm; since Betsy prevented her younger self from feeding on him, he didn’t experience any vamp trauma this time around. Also, in this timeline, he insists he goes by Dick. Which Betsy just can’t wrap her mind around.

Now Betsy has to explain to her loved ones about the future, about the fact that they’re living in a tampered timeline, and figure out a way to, as Betsy would put it, “Get bad shit done.”

Unfortunately, Betsy’s plan to get bad shit done involves fighting with the Antichrist and waking up in a Chicago morgue, realizing the Marc Thing
followed her back
from the future and told Human Marc enough dreadful things about what was in store for him that Marc killed himself. After which, Betsy killed the Marc Thing. But not before going back to hell (again) and persuading the devil to let Antonia live again, on earth, in the mansion. The devil also tries to tell Betsy that the Book of the Dead is Sinclair, but Betsy flat-out doesn’t believe the Lady of Lies, to the devil’s great delight. Laura then steals the Book of the Dead so Betsy can’t read it and find out what happens to Sinclair.

Undermined
ends with Betsy seeing that for something wonderful to happen in her life, something dreadful must also happen. She’s determined that it
will not be like this
, and decides to find a way to bring Marc back to life while
not
becoming the icy monster from the future, Ancient Betsy.

Unstable
opens not even a week after she comes to this conclusion…

Pray… you never have to call us.

—
THE FROG BROTHERS,
THE LOST BOYS

Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.

—1
CORINTHIANS
15:51

You know what else the Bible asks for death as a punishment? For adultery, prostitution, homosexuality, trespass upon sacred grounds, profanity on a Sabbath and contempt to parents.

—
SISTER HELEN PREJEAN,
DEAD MAN WALKING

I’m gonna kill ’em. Anyone that was involved. Anyone who profited from it. Anybody who opens their eyes at me.

—
JOHN CREASY,
MAN ON FIRE

The world will not be this way within the reach of my arm.

—
THOMAS HARRIS,
HANNIBAL

[Christian] Louboutin helped bring stilettos back into fashion in the 1990s and 2000s, designing dozens of styles… the designer’s professed goal is to “make a woman look sexy, beautiful, to make her legs look as long as they can”… Louboutin is generally associated with his dressier evening-wear designs incorporating jeweled straps, bows, feathers, patent leather and other similar decorative touches.

—
WIKIPEDIA

A clear and innocent conscience fears nothing.

—
ELIZABETH TUDOR, HUMAN QUEEN

I don’t have one of those.

—
ELIZABETH TAYLOR, VAMPIRE QUEEN

Table of Contents

Dear Betsy,

I’m gone now, but not forever. Couldn’t leave without giving you the scoop, though, so listen up.

First, although you will, don’t blame yourself. Even as I’m writing this, I get that it’s a waste of time, but I’m jumping in and trying, anyway. Again: don’t blame yourself, dumbass.

I wanted to do this. Frankly, I have inclinations like this all the time. It even runs in my family (along with alcoholism and the ability to make hospital corners). Shit, remember the night we met? I was about to do a swan dive off the hospital roof and you wouldn’t let me. You saved me … for a while.

Now I’m saving you.

It’s only fair.

It’s also only fair to tell you that you shouldn’t blame the others, either. In hindsight, letting me spend time alone talking with the dead me seems careless and risky, right? Sure … in hindsight.

But it’s not their fault. I only told them the stuff they’d find most helpful, the bare minimum. The stuff that would make them feel okay about me going back into that room. And back. And back. They’re as invested in saving you as I am. And they don’t know a fifth of what I know.

Listening to yourself tell yourself about the awful things you’ll do someday is an experience, I won’t deny it. But before you break off a chair leg or something and march into the basement to kill the other me like John Wayne with fangs, please believe that the other Marc DID NOT MOJO ME INTO DOING THIS.

He just told me what would happen to me if I didn’t.

So I’ve saved myself. And I’ve saved you. And I was glad of the chance. Do you know why?

Because I love you, dumbass. From the moment we met. You’ve been like the little sister I never wanted. (That’s a joke. Not a very good one, I agree.) And right now you’re thinking dark thoughts about how you can’t protect your friends and being the vamp queen has ruined your life and no job in the world is worth this and how could you not see what I was going to do, blah-blah-blah.

But here’s the thing, and it’s the stone truth: knowing you has only ever made me feel one way. Not scared, not horny, not crazed, not pissed, not despairing, not thwarted. Lucky.

Knowing you has made me feel lucky. Even now, prepping this little cocktail, I feel lucky. I’m controlling how I leave this world, something that poor bastard down in the basement couldn’t do. And look at the price he paid!