Chapter 70

l looked up as Infantile Me booted her way through my mahogany doors. Mahogany! The idiot child had no comprehension what such things cost these days.

"Ah, yes, you're off. No, I'm not going to tell you where Jessica and Tina are. And as I'm sure Marc told you, Sinclair isn't available to you at this time."

"Marc didn't tell me shit. He was too busy channeling Ted Bundy, George W. Bush, and the guys from Queer Eye. He's pretty stylin' for a sociopath."

Ah, that was unfortunate. Marc was a tool these days and nothing more. But the chisel can turn in the sculptor's hand. He'd gone off the reservation, mentally, before he could impart the information I needed Juvenile Me to have.

"He's having an off century," I said, feigning disinterest. "Thank you for stopping in. So sorry you can't stay, goodbye-grrkk!"

I'd said grrkk because Insane Me had darted across my carpet, lunged across my desk (my desk!), and hauled me to my feet by the throat. I didn't mind that nearly as much as I worried for my boucle dress. Such things were difficult to come by these days, and it didn't matter what year it was: once wool was stretched, it never went back. "Stop that!" I gurgled, kicking. I felt one of my flailing feet smash over a filing cabinet and reminded myself those files were more priceless than firewood.

"What did you do?" Toddler Me shouted. "Or what didn't you do! Tell me!"

"This-is not-correct!" How could she be doing this? I didn't remember doing this! "You're not-sticking-to the script"

"Sucks to be you, then, I guess," Preschool Me said with a noted lack of sympathy.

The most maddening thing? I didn't dare fight back. I couldn't risk causing a fatal injury. I had so much experience, centuries worth of knowledge, not to mention being the most powerful vampire in the history of the undead. It would be too easy to kill her. And as I had learned over the years, it was difficult to raise the undead.

Raising the dead.

Yes. I knew how to handle this. And it would give the stupid child something to ponder when she was back in the twenty-first century, struggling with a sudoku puzzle.

I took my hands from her wrists, wrenched us sideways, and managed to stab the button on the left side of my electronic blotter. The rear door to my office slid open, and as always, the zombie was preceded by her smell.

Betsy dropped me and backed off at once, as I'd anticipated. "Oh my God!" she shrieked, hands clapped over her mouth. "What the hell is that?"

"One of the shambling undead, naturally." I straightened the neckline of my dress. "You're fortunate you didn't smudge me. And still, it hasn't occurred to you to take a shower? Be shamed, slob."

"I'm shamed? I'm shamed? Why do you have a zombie lurking in a secret compartment behind your office that opens when you push a button on your big, ugly desk?"

I handed the zombie a subdrive (the size of a dime, the knowledge of worlds) and said, "Take this to Ops."

One of her fingers fell off, and, when she clutched the subdrive, we could hear her remaining fingers squirting and squashing. I smiled to hear Betsy's horrified groan. My zombie-the wife of one of our heating engineers, and how silly was it that in all this time, there was still no cure for cancer?-shuffled past Betsy and out the main double doors.

"What, I should just leave the dead in the ground? When they can't freeze to death? When they take orders so beautifully, don't feel pain, and don't call in sick? You want me to waste a human on chores like this?"

"Waste a human? Do you hear yourse-wait. Where do they come from?"

"Sorry," I said, which was a pure lie. "Privileges of rank. You'll figure it out eventually. The Queene shall noe the dead, all the dead, and neither shall they hide from her nor keep secrets from her."

The smile fell off my face when she snapped, "Yeah, and noe the dead and keep the dead. That's how you interpreted that awful book? You figured out how to raise zombies? Stop me if you haven't heard this in the last few hundred years, but what is wrong with you?"

"Run along," I said coldly. "I could never make you understand."

"Yeah? Well, I understand that I can kick the shit out of you pretty much at will, and you don't dare hurt me back."

"I will dare. Dare and more," I muttered. "There are ways to keep you off me that won't kill you."

"Then bring it, cow."

I tried to recall the last time someone had dared insult me to my face. Or even behind my back (among other functions, fresher zombies could repeat overheard conversations verbatim ... they were my all-seeing eyes, the rotten darlings).

To my annoyance, she had called my bluff. I sat behind my desk, my hand resting close to the zombie button. That, at least, wasn't a bluff. I had raised another dozen or so only last week. They wouldn't be too decayed to move for at least another three days.

"Run along, little girl."

"What'd you do to my husband, you fucking sick zombie groupie?"

"My husband's whereabouts are none of your concern." Had she really called me a groupie?

"Where are Tina and Jessica? And elderly Laura? And why are you letting Marc walk around like that? You might be dead inside, you might have crummy color-coordinating skills in your decrepit old age, but you have to see he's dangerous, he's unpredictable, and he'll probably be the end of you."

Good points, all. It was refreshing, seeing the occasional flash of logic Infantile Me was capable of. Certainly only a very old vampire would ever have any hope of killing me. Fortunately, Marc was too far gone to rally any troops. And one-on-one, as he had found out nine hundred years ago, he had no chance.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have kept him sealed in a coffin draped with rosaries for so long. I'd wanted him broken, but I hadn't anticipated he would go insane. It had only been for fifty years, for God's sake. I still remember the disappointment I felt when I realized I had overestimated his resolve, grit, and discipline. I'd expected more from a physician . . .

"What do you want, Betsy?"

"What do you think I want, you psycho shithead?" she cried. I didn't like to admit it, but being insulted like this was almost refreshing. "I want you to not be a psycho shithead! I want you to go back in time and undo whatever the hell happened to Marc! He was your friend, you nasty cow! He was devoted to you!"

I stared at myself, my stupid, infantile, foolish self. I was red faced (a good trick for someone who's blood moves sluggishly at best). I was out of control. If I'd been able to cry, I would have been bawling.

"I don't know if you did it or Tina or Sinclair, but you should have saved him! And if you couldn't, you should have taken the head of anyone who dared touch a friend of the vampire queen."

"You have noticed Tina's absence," I said quietly, arranging the antique pens on my desk.

That shut her up. Alas, not for long. "I don't believe you. Or maybe I do. I can't do anything about it now. But you should be ashamed, not me. You let all this happen, and for what? So you could stay safe?"

"Not at all." I paused. Was I going to do this crazy thing? I had no memory of this conversation. My memories of this chaotic time were of realizing we were all living in a tampered time line. My memories were of seeing the future with horror and running back to my own time as quickly as possible. I didn't confront myself. This nasty little scene never happened. Laura and I had slunk home when we thought no one was looking. "So my son could stay safe."

She paused, then shook her head. "Don't pretend you did all those things because you were trying for Mom of the Year."

"I never pretend," I said evenly. "I lost my taste for it once the death toll reached ten million."

What was I doing? If I was going to match her recklessness, why not just tell her everything? Tina's betrayal, Sinclair's weakness. What I had allowed to happen to so many people.

Satan's last, great gift to me. A page from the Book of the Dead flashed in my mind's eye.

"The Morningstar shalt appear before her own chylde, shalt help with the taking of the Worlde, and shalt appear before the Queene in all the raiments of the dark."

She had. She certainly had. And then some.

"The Queene's sister shalt be Belov'd of the Morningstar, and shalt take the Worlde."

And let us not forget my favorite truism: "The Queene shalt see oceans of blood, and despair."

l had. And I had.

So what was I doing now? Why was I tolerating her interference ? Thinking there was an alternative . . . it was more of that residual weakness. The last part of me that was still squirming and alive. The last part to be smashed like a snake.

The last environmental specialist had broadcast his findings to a shocked world. And when he'd finished, he had said something I'd never forgotten: "This is no world for cold-blooded animals."

Fool.

Chapter 71

There was a firm knock on the door, and Decrepit Me looked almost relieved. "That will be Laura, come to entice you away. Then you'll slink off like thieves."

"Come in, fellow thief!" I hollered. Laura did, looking shaken. "Watch out for the zombie bits on the carpet"

"So I haven't gone insane from the horror. It passed me in the hall. (We seem fated to never get out of the hallway.) I came to make sure you were all right. Because of your thing."

"A nice thought, but it originated from here, the poor gross thing. Among my other wonderful hobbies like allowing friends to be brutalized, in the future I take up zombie raising."

"Infant," Psycho Me muttered.

"And you!" I jabbed a finger at Asshat Me. "You don't fool me a bit, you crone. When I came in here and made you my bitch-"

"You did not-"

"Quiet, you ancient bitch. Younger, Cooler, Awesomer You has the floor. You were surprised when I did that. You were freaked out. Things might not be as cut and dried as you tried to pretend."

There was a long silence, broken by Shriveled, Elderly Me calmly saying, "Perhaps. Why not remain awhile, and discuss it? There are things-"

"You know what? I don't give a shit. We're out of here."

Laura glanced at me, troubled. "Betsy, maybe Dinosaur You has a point. We could-"

"Still not giving a shit. Take us back to hell. Right now."

"But we-"

"Laura, this is not a good time to make me repeat myself. Sword! Mystical doorway! Hell's waiting room! Now!"

Her sword was in her hand while I was still spitting out mystical. That was more like it.

"Ta-ta," Prehistoric Me said.

"Fuck off."

"Fuck off twice," the Antichrist added.

Laura sliced. We stepped.

Good-bye, future. Hope to see you never.