Undead 10, Undead and Undermined - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,2

said, and then what she did, that was the weirdest of all, and I don’t say that lightly.”

“Far as I know, you’ve never said anything lightly.”

“Including right now. She was completely dead one minute. And completely alive the next. What if—what if she had woken up when I cracked her sternum?” He could actually feel his mind trying to shy away from the image, distracting him by focusing on the woman’s extraordinary good looks and charisma.

“She didn’t, though.” Benson coughed and shuffled his feet. He wasn’t used to Graham wanting reassurance. And Graham wasn’t used to needing it. “Everything’s fine.”

“This is my blood,” he said quietly, touching the dark fabric. Path scrubs were dark brown, a superb choice for obvious reasons. His chief had made a natural assumption: the blood on his shirt was from the autopsy.

It was also an incorrect assumption.

“She bit me.” He stared at the table. His irritation and panic and fright were subsiding into pissed off and horny. “She said she was sorry, after.”

“She did what?”

“This is going to take much longer if you keep with all the dumb questions. Or did you need to look into getting a hearing aid? Can you hear me? Do you need a sign-language interpreter? Helloooooo?”

“You never mind my possible need for a hearing aid or sign language.” Carter visibly relaxed. The irascible, touchy Graham was a known quantity. Not like the Graham of the last five minutes. “Tell the rest!”

So he did.

Don’t answer him! And don’t think.

Yeah, right. I could stop myself from telepathically answering the vampire king (who was the only person in existence with a telepathic ticket into my head, poor guy), but stop thinking about him? Suuure. Just like I could stop thinking about Manolo’s new line or my near-continual thirst for blood.

Or the fact that, one day, I’ll be a vicious, brittle tyrant more interested in raising zombies than saving my marriage . . . and my friends.

I didn’t know how I’d gotten here. I didn’t know what had happened to me. I had vague memories of some kind of argument . . . or was it an actual fight? Something about the devil . . . and my sister? Could that be right?

It probably wasn’t right, dammit, and it didn’t matter, either. I didn’t know what had happened, and I was sticking with that story. And guess what? I didn’t give a tin shit, either. My death was an excellent preventative for destroying the world.

(O my own Elizabeth where are you do not be hurt do not be hurt oh please please DO NOT BE HURT.)

I fought to keep my expression deadlike. I was an ordinary corpse in a room that was freezing. No shivering vampires here. Nobody sort of sentient on this table. (It had to be a table, something big and tall and made of steel . . . and freezing cold!)

If I let this happen to me, the world was safe. Better: Marc and Sinclair were safe.

Well. Safe from me, anyway. The king wouldn’t be safe from all the vamps trying to fill the power vacuum once I was chopped up like a Cobb salad. But I couldn’t think about that. I had to keep my focus; if I lived, the world was doomed. If I lived . . .

(WHERE ARE YOU? PLEASE PLEASE ANSWER, WHERE HAVE YOU GONE? WHO HAS TAKEN YOU? ELIZABETH, FIGHT THEM, FIGHT THEM FIGHT THEM UNTIL I CAN FIGHT THEM FOR YOU!)

That was good advice, actually. Fight them until he could fight them for me. (He was so gloriously, stupidly chauvinistic at times.) Good advice . . . too bad I couldn’t apply it to my situation. How could I fight myself? Especially when I was so evil and had such terrible taste in clothes, and was ancient and yucky?

Well. Let’s think about that for a second. How could I? Maybe that was the wrong question; maybe I should be asking, how couldn’t I? Who better to save him from me . . . than me? Would hiding and dying really be the best course of action? Or would it make things easier for the Big Bads meddling in our lives?

Or would it merely make things easier for me? God knew I tended to take the low road when it came to confrontation. The Antichrist and I had that in common. Was that it? Was I really that . . . that dimly lazy? Was this going to come about because I didn’t want to do