Undead and Unforgiven (15 page)

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

I stomped into the kitchen right on Sinclair's heels. Not literally. Which was too bad. I was also thinking about kicking his shins, but I'd have to get in front of him first, and he was a speedy sucker. “I can't believe you're pulling this Fred Flintstone shit
again
.”

“I cannot believe you insist on comparing real-life problems to cartoons created for elementary school children.”

“Again with the snobbery!”

“Refusing to see parallels between our lives and
The Flintstones
is not snobbery. It is the function of a rational mind.”

Well, he might have a point. Too bad! The best defense was a good whatever-the-saying-is. “It's 2015—that chauvinist thing doesn't play so well. Bad enough you're regressing decades, but you're pulling attitude after you
tricked me into marrying you? Yeah, that's right, I said it,
tricked
—”
13

“I deny nothing.”

“—bamboozled me into a crooked vampire marriage and then tried to pull that ‘no wife of mine will leave the kitchen' crapola, which was just as asinine then as it is now.” It took a few seconds for his response to sink in. “And—and you deny nothing!”

Scowling, Sinclair was tying on his apron (twill, knee length, red and white striped, gift from Tina), then turning to the cupboards and getting out the whole wheat flour, the peanut butter (Dick was happy with Jif; the puppies got the gourmet stuff from Trader Joe's), free-range eggs, Madagascar vanilla, organic bananas. Goddamned dogs ate better than most of the city.

“That apron looks stupid.”

“There is no need to malign the good people at Williams-Sonoma simply because you're angry with me.” He was hauling bowls out of the cupboard and slamming them on the counter, so thank God for stainless steel.

“I'll malign whoever I want! And you're denting the shit out of those bowls,” I added, and I definitely wasn't spiteful about it.

“They'll still work,” he snapped back, setting one on a dent so it was on its side, looking like a small stainless steel cave. “Again, when you are prepared to have an adult discussion— Quiet!”

The puppies, who had been enjoying one of their eighteen daily naps, had heard Sinclair and sent up a racket from the mudroom. If yelps and barks could be translated, we'd hear, “Let us out! We aren't licking your face!
You're just standing there, unlicked! This will not stand! Freeeeedom!”

Since Sinclair didn't raise his voice at them when they desecrated his Italian loafers and the backseats of two of his cars (in the same week!), it was a pretty good indicator of how angry he was. But before I could say anything, we heard the back door slam, and then the mudroom door popped open.

“All right, jeez, we'll go into the kitchen, settle already, what, you smell peanut butter? Or Sinclair? Oh.” Marc was looking at us as Fur and Burr made a beeline for Sinclair's knees. They were babies, but they knew what it meant when the apron, stainless steel bowls, and peanut butter came out.

“Complain as you will about how our marriage began—”

“Yeah, I was. Keep up.”

“—you did eventually come to embrace it, figuratively and literally, and must admit that all I did for you—”

“To me, Sinclair.
To
me.”

“—worked out for the best.”

“Oh, spoken like a true Martian!”

“I insist you stop reading that book.”
14

“I don't! Marc reads it to me and then explains the tricky parts!”

“Whoa.” Marc's hands were up and he was edging toward the swinging kitchen door, keeping his distance. “Leave me out of it.”

“And that's another thing, I didn't embrace anything! I was tricked. Into all of it. You tricked me into being the vampire queen—”

“That's not true!” Marc cried, stopping in midsidle.
“You were always going to be queen; it was your destiny! Sinclair just tricked you into making him king.”

“Thank you,” Sinclair replied. Then, pinching the bridge of his nose: “Please run along and stop defending me, and do those things in no particular order.”

“Yes! Exactly!” I was so stuffed with triumph I was almost giddy. Marc had a great point! Which I had kind of forgotten! But now could hammer into the dirt! “And you're all mystified: Jeepers, why doesn't Betsy want me in Hell? What in our shared history would make her so wary? Why, it's a puzzler! It's not like I've slimed my way into every other aspect of her life with or without her consent.”

I heard myself. But it was too late.
Never has a man in an apron looked so sexy or terrifying,
I thought.

“Never has a woman been granted so much power for so little reason! Before we met, you stumbled your way through your tedious superficial life complaining about a series of first-world problems you were lucky to have. Then you died because you didn't recall what any five-year-old is taught: to look both ways before crossing the street!”
15

Marc gasped an oh-no-you-didn't! gasp, which perfectly summed up my feelings.

“Then you stumbled through the city, maimed any number of the innocent and the guilty, and managed to whine your way into defeating one of the most powerful vampires ever to walk the earth! All the while complaining about your stepmother's shoes and the job the mortician did on your makeup as opposed to concentrating on your new role. I had to force you to ‘step up,' as you insist on recalling it, because
you
refused to ‘step up.' You would have been beheaded years ago if not for me.”

“Oh, sure, tricking me was all about helping me and not at all about helping yourself to the throne! So to speak, because we don't actually have thrones!”

“Ah yes, here comes the litany of how difficult your wonderful life is. You're powerful, wealthy, loved, even worshipped by some. Legions of the undead bend to your will.”

“When they're not trying to kill me! Besides, you're forgetting— What the hell?”

There had been a low rumbling getting louder and louder in pitch, a sound I'd never heard before. It took me a moment to place the source: Fur and Burr.

The small bundles of black fluff were bristling so much that they looked like irked hedgehogs. Their tiny puppy milk teeth were all showing, and wrathful growling bubbled out of them like . . . like . . . I dunno . . . evil soda pop?

And they were growling at Sinclair.

Never had I seen my husband so astonished—and this was a man who'd seen me pull off all sorts of impossible weirdness. Burr and Fur looked ready to make the alpha male their bitch. He'd kill them, of course, but they'd still go for it. They
wanted
to go for it.

Sinclair took a tentative step closer to me and both puppies lunged exactly as far as his step had taken him, then stopped.

“No . . . bad dogs,” I said faintly, glad for once not to be in heels, because not falling down in surprise in socks was difficult enough. “Don't. Don't do that. You love him and he loves you. It's not right that you're on my side—I don't even like you!” Well, I did. Just hadn't realized how much until now. “You—stop it!”

They stopped growling and hurried to me, crouching miserably against my ankles and glaring at Sinclair.

My husband finally found his voice. “As you find my company so unendurable—all three of you—I shall retire.”
He managed to pull that off with stiff dignity while untying his apron and hanging it next to his other two aprons.

“Oh no, you don't!
I'm
walking out on
you
! You can just stay here and think about what you've done.”
Think about what you've done? Did I just get the king of the vampires mixed up with a third grader sent to the corner?
“And it'll be a cold day in Hell before I let you back into Hell, mister! The minute I turn my back you'll be running the show—”

“Which, if your continual bitching is accurate, is what you desired from the beginning.”

“Quit pretending you're a power-hungry megalomaniac for my own good!”

“But I am a power-hungry megalomaniac for your own good,” he replied, having the complete balls to sound genuinely puzzled.

Which, of course, was the problem, and always had been.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FIVE

“So the new and improved Ten Commandments are up and out,” the Ant was saying, “and we're pairing newbies with, ahem, ‘buddies' to show them the ropes.”

Silence. It occurred to me that I should probably say something, what with it being my committee and all. “Okay, sounds good,” I managed while in my head I was kicking Sinclair's shins with the relentless fury of—of—something that kicked a lot. A rabid kangaroo, I dunno, something.

“And may I add what a pleasant surprise it is to see you show up early for a meeting,” Father Markus added, small eyes twinkling.

I shrugged and Marc hid a smirk. He knew I'd grabbed him and popped into Hell to get away from Sinclair, and had no clue there was a meeting scheduled. Luckily he'd never rat me out, he'd just needle me about it nonstop until I begged him to cut the shit already.

“This may fall under the heading of new business. There are other priests here,” Father Markus said, “and we're all holding mass. There are ministers and preachers and reverends, patriarchs and bishops and popes, lamas and imams and rabbis, too; and those who want to have been holding services for—”

“I thought Jews didn't believe in Hell,” Cathie interrupted.

“That doesn't mean anything,” Marc said. “Atheists don't believe in Hell, either, but there are plenty of them here.”

“Jews do believe in Hell,” Father Markus said, “but not as Christians understand it. It's more a spiritual holding cell than an eternal prison.”

“Geheinie,” I said, then pretended not to be weirded out when they all gaped at me again.

“Gehenna,” Father Markus said carefully. “Yes. That's what— How did you—”

“I research,” I said, and I definitely didn't sound defensive. (Maybe a little defensive.) “I read. I had to in order to redo the Ten Commandments. I didn't just pull that stuff out of my ass. Well, not all of it.” Actually, learning about Gehenna had given me my big “change the face of Hell” idea a month ago and I'd been polishing it ever since. And since I was in no rush to go home anytime soon

(fuck you very much, Sinclair)

perhaps the time had come to bring it to the table, literally and figuratively. It wouldn't be easy—and not just because the table in question was made of Lego pieces— which was why I'd been putting it off. I hadn't run it by Sinclair, either (and had no plans to run anything Hellish by the Fred Flintstone of vampires ever again). And not a single one of them would be on board; they'd have to be won over one at a time. Yes, my word was law, but if they didn't agree with me, I wasn't going to force them. This
was something we'd all have to be determined to make happen and, if that didn't happen, then I'd have to do it alone.

“Gehenna is where people go to sort of mull over their sins. You're not judged there, but you do become fully aware of how shitty you were in life. It's kind of like Purgatory that way. It's—it's like a waiting room for souls. And when you've been there long enough and are repentant enough, then your soul can move on to something better. In other words—”

“Gehenna is a holding cell,” Cathie said, “and Hell is the long-term maximum-security prison from which there is no parole.”

“Yup.”

Father Markus was having a terrible time wiping the astonished expression off his face. Cathie was nodding and paying me the compliment of not looking astonished. The Ant was busy taking notes, and also nodding.

“Well. Thank you, Betsy, that was very—uh—”

“Weird? Startling? Unexpected? Out of character?”

“I'll take ‘unexpected,' wiseass,” I told Marc.

“As I was saying, several of us are holding religious services here. Anyone can come and, I have to say, attendance has been excellent. A few people misunderstood and thought having to attend mass was their eternal punishment—”

I laughed; I couldn't help it.

“—and, curiously, remained when they found out it wasn't mandatory.”

“Speaking of mandatory, I have an idea.” It wasn't my best segue, but whatever. “Something I've been working on for a few weeks.”

They were all attentive, but Markus and the Ant looked tense. Their body language pretty much screamed,
Oh, God, what idiocy is she springing on us now?
Or I may have been projecting.

“I think Hell should be a maximum-security prison from which there is, eventually, parole.”

Nothing.

“So, after you've served your sentence, you can move on. To reincarnation or Heaven or whatever floats your boat.”

Silence.

“Is this thing on?” I made like I was tapping an imaginary microphone. “You guys are acting like I haven't brought this up before.”

“The general consensus was that you had thought it through and dropped it,” the Ant said with a shrug.

“Well, I didn't. Because we've all noticed people here who have been punished far longer or harder than their offense warranted. We've all seen children tortured because they thought accidentally drowning their puppy warranted an eternity in Hell. And—and I don't agree.” Damn, who knew silence had weight? I could actually feel it pressing down on me. “And since this is my house, so to speak, it's time to change that.” Maybe not my house. My horrible job, which, if I'm lucky, I'll only be doing for thousands of years.

Father Markus straightened and opened his mouth. Given how much he'd been nagging me to take more of the reins (not to mention attend all of the meetings), I was looking forward to his input. He wouldn't be totally on board, but he'd have to acknowledge I'd given this some real thought.

“You've lost your mind,” was the flat response. Tina's eyes went narrow at that—she probably thought the same thing, but respected my office(s) too much to cough it up like that. “Completely. What mind you had is gone. It has taken flight.”

“Oh, probably, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea.”

“Yes, that's exactly what it means,” the priest continued. I noticed his hands had snapped into fists. “You're messing
with a system that's been in place for millions of years.
Millions.
You don't have to change a thing if you don't want to. As you yourself pointed out a few weeks ago, the place runs itself, more or less.”

“So why am I here?”

“Exactly,” he snapped.

“Whoa!” Marc said, hands out like he was trying to stop traffic. “Uncalled for, dude.”

Tina was watching me and, observing that I hadn't burst into tears or made an “off with his head” motion, simply sat back and folded her arms across her perfect perky boobs (hidden behind another navy blue designer suit, Chanel this time). Sinclair could take a lesson from her. (In restraint, not suits. Nobody wore a suit better than the king of the vampires, who got that body from farming.) Meanwhile, Cathie was studying Markus like he was a bug she'd never seen before, and the Ant kept taking notes.

“We've had this discussion before,” I said pleasantly. “If you've got a problem with the new regime—”

“It's ‘ruh-jheem,' not ‘ree-gime.'”

“—then you know where the Lego door is.”

“But why?” In addition to being horrified, the priest seemed honestly mystified. “Why make so many changes in less than a month? You've only just started here and you're ripping up the foundation this dimension was built on: a place for the damned to be punished.”

“And it still is. Hell will always be Hell. But c'mon, Markus, back in the day people got the death penalty if they sang the wrong song.”

“In China,” was the instant comeback (damn, the man knew his history).

“Okay, well, in Tudor England it was treason to say the king would eventually die. It was punishable by death! Some of those people are still here, still being stuffed into a big wheel lined with spikes and rolled down a hill again
and again, and why? Because they told the truth: a mortal man would eventually die; and they convinced themselves it was a sin worthy of eternal punishment. Which it isn't! How is that okay?” (Thank you, Showtime and Jonathan Rhys Meyers!)

Father Markus was visibly trying to calm down. His hands kept spreading open like flowers, snapping back into fists, then opening again. But at least he was keeping his fists away from my face, which was crucial for meaningful debate. “You make some fair points. But I think you're too young to make changes of this magnitude. And I think you're rushing things.”

Wow, this guy was seriously hung up on punishment. “Your opinion is noted. But some of these people have been tortured far too long already. What, you want me to ask them, say to them, ‘Hey, sorry you've been burning alive for three hundred years because you were gay; the good news is, we're looking into springing you, but the bad is, it's going to take a couple of years while we do the research, no problem, right?'”

“You don't ask them anything! You're their lord, they're the damned, your word is law.”

“Yes,” I replied, pleased he'd fallen into my little trap. “It is. And my word is now changing the law. Look, I get that I'm probably not qualified for this—” I ignored the snort at “probably.” “But tough nuts, because I'm the only one doing it. The Antichrist couldn't be bothered, the devil is dead, and that leaves me.” And Sinclair, if I allowed it. But Markus's response to my new plan reminded me, again, why that would be a bad idea.

“I think it's brilliant.”

“Thanks, T—” Whoa. Tina hadn't said a thing. “Um. Thank you, Ant—Antonia.” God, had I ever used my stepmother's full name to her face before?

At least the pressure was off me, because now they were
staring at the Ant. “What?” she snapped, shifting in her seat. As always, her body moved but her tall hair stayed perfectly still. “It's an idea whose time has come. Hell needs to be modernized just like any other long-term system of levying punishment. We don't still do things the way they did them during the Salem witch trials. Why should we do the same thing in Hell for millions of years? People change and times change, too. Betsy's right. And she's right to not want to argue it to death, either, rather than make changes that will end agony for so many
now
.”

“I expected more from you, Antonia,” Father Markus said coldly.

“Why?” The Ant had a puzzled frown on her face. (She may have been a Botoxed mannequin lady in life, but in Hell she could make facial expressions.) “You don't know me. We've served on a committee together for a month.” She looked around the table. “I think Betsy's onto something. I've seen things here. We all have. Some of these people absolutely do not deserve what they're enduring.”

Markus had no reply to that. Instead he climbed to his feet and put his hands behind his back, I guessed to keep from throttling me. “May I have your leave to go?”

I thought about refusing him, but I'd made my point. Anything else was just me indulging in being a petty bitch. Which I'd normally be fine with, but not just now. “Sure.”

He tipped his head toward me in a small nod. Looked around the Lego table, nodded at everyone else. Let himself out without another word.

Marc blew out an unnecessary breath. “Wow! I thought he was going to hit you. Who would have thought a Catholic priest would be so resistant to change?”

“I had that same thought earlier.”

“He was a lot nicer when he was alive.”

The Ant snorted and Tina hid a smile. Cathie remained
quiet, but wore her “too much to think about right now, can't talk” look, so I left her alone.

“He'll come around. Change is hard.” My private thoughts weren't so charitable. My private thoughts, in fact, were more along the lines of: cry me a river, pal.

In the past half dozen years, I'd died, come back as a vampire, found myself the queen of the vampires, been tricked into marrying and making Sinclair king, lost a friend to cancer, cured her cancer, been snatched and rescued, rescued those who had been snatched, died, killed, lost Marc to suicide, rediscovered him as a zombie, watched my friend endure a supernatural pregnancy and then give birth to her weird babies just a few rooms away from where I regularly banged my husband, and tolerated those same weird babies when they were five and sixteen and two years and four weeks, and currently I wasn't speaking to my husband, who was sulking because I wasn't letting him trick me into letting him take over Hell.

Change is hard, Father Markus, but it's also inevitable: I suggest you suck it up.

I looked at my stepmother. “Thanks. For your support. I appreciate it.”

She shrugged. “A good idea is a good idea, no matter who— Uh, you're welcome.”

“It's weird, but your reflexive bitchiness really broke the tension,” Marc said, and the Ant surprised me for the second time in ten minutes by laughing out loud.

I was tempted to make it snow in Hell, just to add to the general surrealness. That was a word, right? Surrealness?