Undead and Unsure (10 page)

“Plus, I’ve got the definition from the Wiki Man. So yeah, I know what consequences are.”

“No. You don’t.” Laura’s contact be-lensed eyes narrowed. “But you will.”

“That sounds bad,” I said, about half a second before she yanked me out of the world, fury her only fuel.

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

“One day,” I said without opening my eyes. “One day I’m
actually gonna see this sort of thing coming. I’m going to learn from past fuckups and be proactive and actually
see this shit coming
. Dammit!”

“Yes, well. Not today.”

Laura’s voice. Double dammit. I was in no hurry to open my eyes, as I knew where we were, but lying on the ground with my eyes closed was, at most, a temporary reprieve. And I guess a vampire queen shouldn’t be found in a fetal position while whimpering in fear and telling herself it wasn’t cool to suck her thumb.

I opened my eyes. “Most people—when they throw tantrums?—maybe break a vase. You, though. You drag people to Hell.”

“It’s not a tantrum,” Tantrumey McTantrum snapped. “I just got really furious with you and acted without thinking regardless of the
consequences.
”

“Okay, I’ll give you that one. Here it comes, all official: zing!” I blinked and sat up. I knew my focus should be on an irked Antichrist but I was distracted by Hell being weird(er).

When I’d been here before, Hell was a waiting room (with all the horror that entails) and a beehive (ditto). The devil had explained, in as bitchy and condescending a manner as possible, that my puny brain couldn’t grasp the complexities of another dimension. Because that was what Hell was: something entirely apart from the world, a place that was shaped by Satan’s will and determination. Normal rules didn’t apply.

My puny brain had wrestled with the sanity-eroding idea of another dimension by coughing up a waiting room, which was perfect. Terrifying, yet relatable, a place shaped by the whims of a power-tripping dermatologist and his only-work-hard-enough-to-not-get-fired staff. Hell had the receptionist desk, thin cheap carpeting, flickering fluorescents, and the out-of-date cooking magazines with all the really good recipes torn out by hostile patients. And several doors that led only to a fire escape and a broken vending machine (dermatologist) or any place in Hell the devil wanted you to see (Hell, obviously).

My puny brain showed me one of the doors led straight into the heart of Hell, an area where you could see everything happening all the time. There were chambers everywhere, thousands of them, so many that even if you couldn’t make them out you knew something awful was taking place in each one . . . which made it a thousand times scarier. It hurt my brain to attempt even a rough count. And even though my puny brain was being shown something relatable, it was still disorienting and scary.

Good try, puny brain. I know you did your best.

That was then. This is now (apologies to S. E. Hinton). No waiting room, no stacks upon stacks of cells. Instead we were in the middle of what felt like a great gray mist, something that enveloped us and only hinted at things we couldn’t . . . quite . . . see.

Hell wasn’t just different. It was gone.

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

“This is bad,” I observed. I was pacing in a small circle
around Laura while the mist whirled and swirled around us in a sinister and off-putting manner. I was trying not to think about
The Mist
,
The Fog
, or any horror movie where the villain was the weather. “Really very bad.”

“Oh, you get it now.”

“Of course I get it,” I snapped back. “I’m not
that
dim.” I was almost positive. “The devil told me this is a dimension that she, being an angel—”

“I know.”

“—could come to anytime, could use as a doorway from here to the real world anytime, something ordinary people just can’t—”

“I know all this.”

“—and not only could she come and go from here, like an interdimensional South Station, her will actually shaped the reality around here, again, something regular people can’t do—”

“Betsy, I get it!”

“—but you can because you’re half angel.”

“Why are you expositioning stuff I already know? This isn’t a comic book.
I know all this.
”

“It helps me to think about it again and hear it out loud and, jeez, are you ever going to quit complaining?”

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

I let that pass because I was determined to be the bigger person, and also, she had a point. “When the devil died, so did her version of Hell. So this”—I gestured to the fog—“is a limbo-type thing. I wonder where everybody is?” The second I asked, I saw the answer. “Probably keeping out of the way while the managerial hierarchy shakes itself out. It’s like when you’re working at a Hollywood studio and a new boss replaces the old one, all the little fish keep under the radar until they figure out the deal with the new boss.” Hmm, Hell and Hollywood in the same analogy. No one’s ever done
that
before.

“This is what you’ve stuck me with.” I couldn’t tell from her tone if Laura was accusatory or pissed or scared or a combo. “All this. Hell’s literally smoke and mirrors right now and I’ve got no idea what to do.”

“Well, hell, neither do I. Plus, I’m dealing with all this in sock feet.” We both looked at my feet. When we’d come in from the yard with the puppies, I’d kicked off my shoes and stolen a pair of Tina’s purple fuzzy socks, warm out of the dryer. Ah, the sensual thrill of warm clean fuzzy socks that weren’t your own . . .

I’d been annoyed at the puppies and Sinclair, and—

Sinclair!

No, wait. Like this:
Sinclair!

Nothing. Not an answering peep.

Sinclair! Where are you? Why aren’t you bugging me from the inside of my brain?

I couldn’t hear him. He wasn’t there. Oh, Christ, did that mean he couldn’t hear me? Was I just a bald patch in his brain, too?

“This is what I had to show you.” Laura was whining as if I gave a
tin shit
about her problems right now. And yeah, that attitude was probably why I was in Hell in stolen socks. I wasn’t unaware. Just unimpressed. “I figured the only way you’d get it is if you saw it. So here it is.”

Since Laura had never liked my husband, this probably wasn’t the time for
ahh, God, without my man inside my brain I cannot function in society!
Plus, as a card-carrying fembot I probably couldn’t say it without cracking up. But I had to say something. And as much as I didn’t want to show throat, the Antichrist had a point.

“I’m sorry. I’ve got no idea what to tell you. If you wanted me to feel bad, I do, but I’m still not going to apologize for not letting your mother murder me. And as long as we’re talking about your mom
again
, where are your wings?” Laura had inherited her mom’s wings. (Yeah. Angels really do have wings. Listen up, Mormons: you’re wrong about
that
, too.) Apparently they were always there, but in the other dimension that was Hell, you could see them. The way Satan 1.0 had explained it, her wings were always there and so were her hellfire weapons. But they could only be seen at just the right times. Laura could
make
them visible if she was upset enough, but that didn’t mean she was making them appear. She was just making use of them.

Hers were like big sparrow feathers, an unromantic mixture of dappled browns. When you could see them, anyway. Her mom’s had been those of a huge evil crow (like there were any other kind).

“I don’t want them,” she replied sharply. “I haven’t decided if that’s who I am yet.”

I did an internal eye roll at the absurdity, but managed to keep it off my face. My eyes, actually. “And you never answered my question.”

Laura had wandered a few feet away and I could barely see her in the gloom. It was a little like being inside the Gopher Hole in a dense fog. You knew there were eighty thousand seats in the stands and you knew people were in some of those seats, but you didn’t know how many or exactly where they were. And whether it was a hundred or it was fifty thousand, you also knew they were waiting.

“Laura?” I prompted. “My question? Don’t you want to know what your mom’s last words were?” Laura had been there, but things had been chaotic and terrible and very, very fast. I doubted she’d heard much of anyone’s dialogue.

“No.” She was lying. Her shoulders had gone stiff at “last words,” she was edging closer, and she wouldn’t look at me. The Antichrist was a terrible liar and had no po-face. She knew I knew it.

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

Yes! We were in Hell!

(This was what my life was. I was glad to fall through a hole in the world and plop into Hell, where my sister was temping for the devil. Oh, and the devil was trying to goad me into killing her. Unless I’d guessed wrong, in which case the devil was gonna squash me like a grape.)

“Tricky tricky,” she panted, easily dodging my fist. And then my kick. But my other kick landed—ha! A perfect day to wear my pointiest leather boots. Take that, Satan! And that! And—

“Ow!” She was pretty fast for someone at least five billion years old. What had I been thinking?

I remembered my theory. I remembered my utterly insane idea that this wouldn’t be a fair fight . . . and why that was actually good for me. Why it could be the saving of me . . . and him. And maybe even the future.

Because time is a wheel.

“You think . . . He loves you?”

“Really? We’re gonna chat about God while we’re trying to kill each other?” My ears weren’t ringing so much as booming. And it was suddenly almost impossible to see out of my left eye. Was that my blood or hers making everything look pinkish red? Probably mine.

“It’s the last . . . conversation . . . I plan to have . . . with you. So answer.”

“Yeah, then. He does. Sure He does.”

“And me?”

“Of course . . . He still loves you . . . moron! That was never the issue . . . moron! You big stupid moron!” Normally I didn’t have to think of what to call people I was pissed at. Asshat, dumbshit, shitstain, fuckface, jizzbucket, fucktard, dickweed, cockknocker, jizzhole . . . it all usually came tripping off my tongue in a glorious rain of obscenity.

Had to work for the insults now, though. It was hard to think, what with all the red stuff in my eyes and the booming in my ears, which I was pretty sure were also bleeding.

I felt her hot little hands close around my neck and start to squeeze. I punched. Punched. Punched—nothing. Should have found the time to take a martial arts course. Yoga couldn’t help me now.

It was tough work, bitching at the devil while being throttled, but I was up for the challenge. “How come . . . older you get . . . dumber y’get?”

“Yes, He does,” Satan replied, a thoughtful look on her bloody face. “I suppose He does. He must, you know. It’s one of His rules. I think I . . .”

“Gggsssshat!”

“I think I want . . . I’d like . . . to go home.”

“Stop it!” It was Laura, yelling from a galaxy far, far away. “Stop it—don’t—you’re killing her—stop killing her!”

No idea. No idea who she was talking to. Her mom? Her sister? A player to be named later? Wow, look at all the blood coming out of me! Almost as much as a live person! Weird!

“Don’t! Don’t! What are you doing? Let go!”

It was good that Laura was here. Was almost here. What was keeping her, anyway? I needed her here. My plan wouldn’t work without her here. Oh, Laura, I’m so sorry you’re here.

Satan grinned at me through bloody teeth. Her hair had been yanked from its neat coiffure and she looked kind of Medusa-esque. With luck she’d need a deep-conditioning treatment after she’d beaten me to death. “Uh-oh.”

“My thought . . . xxxactly,” I gurgled.

“You’ll have to do it in front of her.”

“. . . kkk . . .”

“You’ll have to steal her future while she watches.”

“. . . nnn . . .”

“Him or her, Betsy? Now’s when we see.”

“. . . favor . . .”

“What?” I had actually landed a good one—splat!—in the middle of her narrow Lena Olin face. Finally, I’d surprised her. Really surprised her. Not the fake stuff she usually showed me. Had been showing me all along. “What, stupid girl?”

“. . . want one . . . favor . . . a wish . . . want it . . .”

It was probably all the skull fractures, but her eyes, usually brown, and recently dead black like a night sky without stars, seemed to burn. Eyes on fire, that was what they looked like—and it wasn’t quite right. She wasn’t human, this was an angel, I was killing an angel and she was killing me and she was a creature I did not understand, could never have understood, asking for an explanation had been a waste of time and had only increased her contempt and her eyes were like nothing I’d ever seen, her eyes her eyes oh God oh please help me now God her terrible terrible eyes . . .

“Yes! One! For what you’ll do. Now do it! Your worst, vampire queen, show me your worst and choose!”

I almost didn’t. Almost couldn’t. I had never been so frightened, never. In the end it was my essential stubborn nature

(fuck you Lena Olin you’re scary but you’re gonna die or I’m gonna and I’m fine with dying again because time is a wheel)

that allowed me to reach for nothing

“Stop! Stop! Stop!”

and grasp the Antichrist’s hellfire sword

“Don’t! Betsy! Motherrrrr! Don’t!”

which only Laura or one of her blood could wield

“Let go of me! What are you—let go!”

and shoved it in the devil’s heart. Or where the devil’s heart would have been, had she ever had one.

Laura’s last shriek cut off like someone had thrown a switch. Maybe someone had.

Shocked, Satan looked down at the piece of light sticking out of her chest. I have to admit, I was surprised, too, though I was pretty sure this had been what she wanted, what she had been planning from the minute Laura was born, the minute I’d come back from the dead.

But knowing wasn’t the same as doing. Astonished together, we looked at the chunk of Laura’s soul, the pieces of her self she made into weapons that could kill angels and vampires, and then at each other. Neither of us knew what to do.

So I shoved the sword in harder. I dunno . . . it just seemed like the thing to do. So I went with it.

“Finally,” said Satan, and she died.

I wasn’t falling for it, though. I mean, probably she was dead.

But because Dr. Taylor didn’t raise no fools, I took off her head with the backswing. “I chose,” I told her head as it bounced past me. “Happy now?”