Undead and Undermined - By MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,2

teleport almost anywhere. Cool, right? Yeah, not so much. In fact, that turned out to be a huge problem, as anywhere encompasses anywhen. In rapid, annoying succession, Betsy and Laura found 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 thingummy 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 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 was there, too, and he’s as charismatic and charming as Marc is creepy and nutso. He wouldn’t tell Betsy how he could be walking around one thousand years in the future and not be a vampire, though she tried and tried to wheedle it out of him.

In the forty-five minutes or so they were in the future, they discovered Future Betsy had taken over (most of) the country, could raise and control zombies, and had a crippling lack of empathy for anyone. More troubling, Sinclair and Tina were nowhere to be found. Worse, no one would even talk about them . . . except Undead Marc, until Ancient Betsy shut him up and sent him away. And BabyJon was wildly uncomfortable about the subject.

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

Betsy returned to find out Tina and Sinclair remember meeting her in the past. They explained that they’d 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 (wedding ring?) by Nick Berry. And Nick is happy to see her . . . since Betsy prevented her younger self from feeding on him, he didn’t experience any vamp trauma this time around, so now they’re very close friends.

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.”

Dishonesty is a thief of time, of energy, of pride. We must remember—and teach our children (and perhaps our political figures)—one essential: the truth shall make you free.

—MARTHA STEWART

Undermine (un*der*mine): 1) to excavate the earth beneath; 2) to wash away supporting material from; 3) to subvert or weaken insidiously or secretly; 4) to weaken or ruin by degrees.

—MERRIAM-WEBSTER

Yeah, they’re undermining me. Not digging underneath me. The other thing. The weakening me behind my back thing. It just sucks.

—BETSY TAYLOR, QUEEN OF THE VAMPIRES

Paranoid? Well, that just confirms all my suspicions!

—JENNA MARONEY, 30 ROCK

Retroactive Continuity: Refers to the deliberate alteration of previously established facts in a work of serial fiction. Retcons may be carried out for a variety of reasons, such as to accommodate sequels or further derivative works in the same series, to reintroduce popular characters, to resolve chronological issues, to reboot a familiar series for modern audiences, or to simplify an excessively complex continuity structure.

—WIKIPEDIA, OCTOBER 4, 2011

PROLOGUE

When the awful racket started up, when the coroner got ready to open my skull with what I later found out was a Stryker autopsy saw, I was fine with it.

No, more than that . . . it seemed like a really, really good idea. Not just a good idea for me. It would be great for everyone involved. And if you took the long view, it would be good for humanity. Because I’d had enough. Case closed, everybody out of the pool, time to shut off the lights and lock up, hit the trail, shake a leg, beat feet, get gone, get out.

I