Undead and Unworthy (Undead #7)

"All right," he said to the huddled, smelly vampire. (Nick was right: she reeked.) "Suppose you tell us why you're here, Clara."

"That's not my name," she said. "My name is Stephanie Connor. Thank you for seeing me, dread king."

I heard a commotion and turned to see Nick trying to haul a very reluctant Jessica out of the room. She kept yanking her hand out of his and hissing at him to hush up, she wanted to hear.

"Detective Berry, perhaps you could escort Jessica somewhere safer?" Sinclair asked, soooo politely, so I knew he was really sticking the knife in. "Anywhere outside of Ramsey County would be preferable."

"Dread king, may I - ?"

"Nick, let me go."

"It's a little chaotic right now," I told Cl - uh, Stephanie. "Give us a minute." I turned to Jess. "You know I'll tell you all about it later. Why don't you am-scray for now?"

Giving me an "I'll deal with you later" glare, Jessica allowed herself to be herded out. Nick shot me a look, too, one I found startling: pure gratitude.

Tina was panting and patting her hair back into place. Thank goodness she'd worn a ponytail. I hated to think of the masses of blond hair flying all over the place. "Would you," she managed through gritted teeth, "like a refreshment?"

Cl - uh, Stephanie looked shocked, like it was a trap. The trap of the Coca-Cola products. Ah, I'd fallen into that sweet, sweet trap a time or two myself. "Uh, no. No thank you, ma'am."

"My name is Tina." Still forcing the words out through teeth ground so tightly, I could hear them rasping against each other. "I am the adjutant to their majesties."

Adj-u-what? Was that, like, a super secretary or something? I was pretty sure I'd never heard that word out loud before. Maybe I'd read it, but it was spelled completely differently. I made a mental note to ask about it later. Sinclair would know. He knew pretty much everything.

"Why don't you come out of the corner," I said, crossing the room and offering my hand, "and have a seat? Oh, and unless this is a trap, thanks for coming out to see us all peacefully and stuff."

Sinclair had stiffened when I'd moved toward Stephanie, but relaxed when all she did was meekly follow me and look down at one of the couches. "I'm... dirty. I'll stand, if that won't, um, offend." Another nervous glance at Tina, who was examining the rips in her sweater. I tried, and failed, not to raise my eyebrows: she'd been struggling so hard to get away from Sinclair she'd torn the seams out from under both arms. And wool was tough. Cripes.

"No, please, take a seat. A little dirt won't kill anyone." Oh, shit, I said kill. Reminding her of what the Fiends had tried to do to us. "Um, I mean hurt anyone." Oh, shit! "Um, just sit the hell down, okay?"

She sat on the far, far edge, looking like she wanted to leap away at any second. And I could see why she smelled - her clothes were filthy, and the mingled odor of dirt, dog poop, and blood came off her.

I wondered where they were sleeping during the day. They had no money or resources unless they killed or robbed or both.

In the past, when a vampire came back to him- or herself, they could go to the library in Minneapolis and find out who they were, if they owned property, if they still had a bank account... like that. And Marjorie, the dead betrayer, would give them a hand. It occurred to me that we needed a new system in place... like two months ago. Because right now, a vampire who wasn't an out of control newborn had few options. Just feed and hide, feed and hide.

While you live in luxury on Summit Avenue.

I shoved that thought away, hard.

"Now," Sinclair was saying, "what brings you to us, Ms. Connor?"

She picked at the knees of her torn, stained jeans. "I, uh, thought maybe we could talk." She had a mild southern accent - Virginia, maybe? Missouri? Not a drawl, but almost. Of course, anyone who sounded like they weren't from the set of Fargo or Drop Dead Gorgeous sounded southern or eastern to me. "About our, um, problem."

"Do you represent the interest of your companions, or only your own?"

She blinked at that one, then seemed to decode it in her mind. "Oh. Um, I'm here by myself. I mean, the others don't know I've come."

I listened hard for the sounds of ambush, but could only hear the usual household noise. Then I yowled as the furnace kicked on, which sounded at the moment like a jet plane taking off from inside my skull.

Startled, everyone twitched or looked in my direction. "Sorry," I said. "I just remembered that 30 Rock is a rerun this week."

Stephanie looked more confused than before, but that was all right. I noticed neither Sinclair nor Tina took a seat, so I did - straight across from our visitor. "You came by yourself," I said, "that seems pretty obvious now. Sorry about Tina jumping on you like that. She had a flashback to the Civil War." I ignored Sinclair's snort. "So what's on your mind?"

"And why should we think anything you say is the truth?"

I shot a look at Sinclair - that sounded a little too much like Nick to suit me.

"I don't - I can't prove I'm telling the truth," she said, a little desperately. "I guess the others could be parked a mile away, and this is step one in some elaborate, I dunno, plan? But it's not. We're - we're not well organized."

"You looked pretty organized when you hurt our friends," I said mildly. "They had to go to the hospital." A minor exaggeration - once Nick's nosebleed had cleared up, he'd been fine. It was a measure of his contempt for our lifestyle that he hadn't thought twice about strange vampires punching him in the face and then attacking us. It was only when I'd given him the gory Fiend details that he had realized exactly what had happened - and what it meant for Jessica. "We were pretty bummed about that."

"Well. The others are - they're mad at you."

"But not you," Sinclair said, soooo silkily.

"I am. I mean, I was. How could you - I dunno." She had an interesting way of speaking... not slowly, exactly, and maybe it was the accent. But it was almost like she was searching for each word and found it almost every time, in the unused corners of her mind. I reminded myself that last week she'd been batshit crazy. No idea who she was, where she was, what she was.

"Did you guys sort of 'wake up' all at once, then?"

Stephanie looked, if possible, even more uncomfortable. Clearly not a subject she wanted to discuss. Too bad.

"Well, each time Garrett came we felt - I dunno, better? We felt more. And then, a few days ago, it was like - like I'd been asleep for a long time, only now, right now I knew, I remembered I was Stephanie. I don't..." She shook her head. "I don't know who killed me. And I couldn't tell you where I grew up, or the name of my first boyfriend, or even where I went to middle school. I remember some things - my first job out of high school, and the name of the man I almost married, but - mostly I remember the blood. Drinking all of that... that dead blood. For years and years and years." She cleared her throat and worked her jaws like she wanted to spit, but didn't dare.

I glanced at Sinclair and Tina, then took the plunge. "The thing is, Stephanie, it was kind of our only option."

"Once we took killing you off the table," Sinclair said pleasantly.

"I didn't want to kill you guys, but I couldn't set you free, either."

"Why?"

"Oh, boy." I thought about the best way to explain this. "Stephanie, you have no idea how scary you guys were." Was scary the right word? I probably shouldn't have told her that. Fuck it. "The few times you got out, you ripped people just to pieces. There was no way we could let you have live blood. You would have killed the donor every time."

"Oh. Yes, I see that now." Except she sounded like she didn't, not exactly. "I should go now."

"You don't believe me," I said.

Her eyes betrayed her emotion: trapped. I had seen through her lie, and now all she could imagine was that she was in fantastic trouble.

"Stephanie, I'm not saying I've treated you and the others perfectly. I think I had the right idea when I began to feed Garrett, regardless of the danger. And I think Garrett had the right idea, when he began to feed all of you. I'm glad - "

"Glad?!"

"Yes, glad, Tina, that he did so. And I hope you and the others can forgive me, and see that I really did start the awakening for all of you. Just not fast enough, or well enough. I can do better, if you give me the chance."

I warned Sinclair, with a look, from saying a word. Stephanie was plainly trying to digest what I had told her. For all I knew, she was still trying to understand some of the words. Or maybe she had one of those 1970s game shows playing in a loop in her mind ("Things you kill. Things you maim. Things you wish you could drink instead of blood! YES, YOU'VE WON THE $64,000 PYRAMID!").

"Thank you, Your Majesty," she finally said. "I have to get back. The others will miss me. They'd kill me if they knew I was here."

"Then why are you here?" Tina asked.

"To find out more. To learn if what the others say is true."

"What do the others say?"

"That we are the queen's wolves, bred for her wars, and the foreshadow of what the world will become under her reign."

We all took that in for a moment. It was so horrible, so preposterous... I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Perhaps you could educate your colleagues," Sinclair suggested, "as to the true nature of this queen."

"Well, I would try to talk to them, but it wouldn't work." Stephanie shrugged. "And I couldn't try too hard, or they might kill me."

I was trying not to gape at her, and failing. In my efforts to apologize and see her point of view, I had missed how fearful she still was... and how undependable an ally she would be.

"You have overstayed your welcome," Sinclair said, which felt a bit harsh to me, but I had no idea how to correct him.

"All right, but..." She licked her lips. "I am afraid we will come back soon."

"Not if you obey your queen," Tina pointed out.

"I cannot stop them."

"If you cannot stop them," Sinclair pointed out, "then you cannot help us. And if you cannot help us, we cannot let you go back."

I stared at Sinclair, trying to see where this logic train was going to end. Nowhere happy, I told myself.

"We cannot let you stay here, any more easily than we can let you go back. The effort to watch over you securely, combined with the potential costs if we fail, lead to only one solution. Tina," he ended calmly, "kill her."