SIXTEEN

What sounded and smelled like a hundred black Lab puppies swarmed over me, barking shrill puppy barks and licking everything they could reach and suffocating me with their foul puppy breath.

My cardigan! My Etienne Aigners! If one of those mangy little monsters so much as thought about taking a chomp on my shoes ... oooh, just picturing it made me feel like I was going insane.

And Sinclair had made this happen. The betrayal! He really screwed me after he didn't screw me, the treacherous bastard.

"Get them off. Get them off! Argh, it feels like they're crawling all over me! Is this what withdrawal is like? Oh, those poor drug addicts! Why are you just standing there, you rat bastard? Help!"

While I writhed in a sea of puppies, the king of the vampires fell to his knees. His sinister plan had worked beautifully, and he was so delighted he gave in completely. For a guy who prided himself on keeping things under control, he was letting loose an awful lot this week.

"Stop it! You bum! Ack, get away..."

He'd collapsed to his knees and was holding his stomach while bellowing laughter. Every time he tried to get up and help me, he fell back down again. This only increased my puppy-induced fury.

A velvety black ear slipped into my mouth, probably because I was screeching threats at my husband, the puppies, the stars, the Antichrist for picking such a dreadful meeting place, and any bugs or telemarketers in the vicinity. I puffed it back out with a breath and struggled to sit up. Did I ... was that? It was! My left shin was warm and wet. "Oh, Goddammit! That's it. Gloves off. I'm gonna pull a Cruella de Vil and skin each of you. Starting with you!" I told Sinclair, and he finally stopped laughing.

"Now, darling," he said reprovingly. "There is no need-"

"Don't 'darling' me, butt monkey. You knew what would happen. You figured out what this place was, and you deliberately-get away!" I yelled at the puppies, and several of them scampered back toward the garage. Of course, several more ignored me and collapsed on their fat puppy butts, looking up at me with their puppy tongues hanging out of their puppy mouths. "Dogs and zombies. That's what this Thanksgiving has for us, Sink Lair. Dogs and zombies."

"Perhaps you might consider seeing if they bend to your will," he suggested.

"Shut up."

"Now, Elizabeth. You yourself said this sort of, uh, event..." The corner of his mouth twitched, but he managed to keep the grin off his face. If he'd still been human, his eyes would have watered with the effort. "This sort of thing did not happen to you in life. Perhaps you can control them in death."

"I can't even control my split ends, never mind the hounds of heck."

He blinked. "I have no idea what that means. But as I said-"

"I wasn't listening."

"Perhaps you could dominate them."

"I'm still not listening."

"Oh, you're here," the Antichrist said. No doubt roused by my bitter screams of hatred, she'd come out of the house and was standing on the porch. She was pretty focused, too: she was looking straight at me, like Sinclair wasn't there and, weirder, like thirty-some puppies weren't, either. "Good. We've got to talk."

"Boy, do we," I said. "Also, do you know a good divorce attorney?"

Sinclair ignored me and was (ugh!) holding two of the black Lab puppies, which seemed delighted to be in his arms, judging from all the wriggling and licking. "They shall be mine," he said, delighted, "and I shall name them Fur and Burr."

"And the horror continues. Fur and Burr? Be serious. Uh ... Laura ... you wanna help us wrangle some of these dogs?" They were annoying, but that didn't mean I wanted them to get lost or wander onto a highway and get squashed.

"Okay." Laura came down the steps, crossed the driveway, and absently scooped up two more puppies. I'd rarely seen her look so solemn. And given that the Antichrist loved puppies, shelters, orphans, lemonade, babies, marshmallows, and the homeless, it was weird that she wasn't going deep into cuddle mode. "But then we've got to talk."

"That's not all we've gotta do," I muttered, aiming a kick at the vampire king, who easily dodged, and walked toward the house talking in a low voice to Fur and Burr.

SEVENTEEN

The Antichrist, in addition to her many other odious qualities, was stunning.

Yeah. Completely thoroughly gorgeous. My half sister (we had the same dad) looked better on her worst day in torn jeans and with dirty hair than I looked in my wedding gown. I was pretty sure she'd never had a pimple. She had skin that would put an Irish milkmaid to shame, was leggy and statuesque (over six feet!), with long blond hair the color of corn silk and with nary a single split end. Eyes the color of a cloudless spring sky ... except when she was having a bad day. Then her eyes went poison green, and her hair deepened to red. So, gorgeous while being evil, just a different kind of gorgeous. And in hell, she had long gorgeous brown wings with which she could fly and in general just be the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen, ever.

But such are the challenges I, as vampire queen, must face. So when my husband and I (and Burr and Fur) went into the little farmhouse, it was to find the Antichrist in black leggings, a St. Olaf sweatshirt (weird, since I was pretty sure she was a U of M student), muddy tennis shoes (we were on a puppy farm, so I let that pass), and one of her adopted dad's old winter jackets. Her hair was yanked back in a messy ponytail, and her face was pale. Even for a blond Minnesotan. And gorgeous, of course. Proof! Proof she had sinister supernatural powers; no woman should look gorgeous with messy hair and a sweatshirt!

"Do you know who lives here?"

Fine, thanks, and you? But I played along; Sinclair had exhausted my bitch reserves for the time being. "Someone who really, really likes black Labs?"

"Jon Delk."

I waited for the name to mean something. My sister was getting good at interpreting my blank expressions, because she patiently prompted, "Of the Blade Warriors?"

I snorted. That Jon Delk. He and a few other weirdos had started their very own vampire-killing club a couple of years ago, complete with the de rigueur priest-as-team-leader and mysterious financial backer who turned out to be a villain. (Yawn.) Sinclair and I had encouraged their little club of vamp haters to disband and behave, or at least behave, and they had all gone back to their lives after the villain was trounced.

Jon had sort of fallen for me ... yes, I know, it's all about me, but it really was, and he did fall for me-I can't help it if men sometimes find me irresistible. Which was why he couldn't stand Sinclair (tonight, though, I could see the logic behind the dislike).

Even worse, I'd given Jon-boy my life story, which he wrote down and then sold to a publisher. But not before Sinclair mind-raped him into forgetting it was my story. So in a short time Jon went from loving me and hating my husband to hating me. And hating my husband (the latter I totally get now). And I couldn't blame him. The whole mess was avoidable, and entirely on me.

In the old timeline, though, Jon lived on his grandparents' farm. Which was an actual farm. And not outside Mendota Heights ... it was in North Dakota, a fourteen-hour drive from the mansion. He did not live on a puppy farm just outside the Twin Cities.

"See anything unusual about the place?" the Antichrist asked.

"He really likes vampires now?" I guessed, eyeing the Dracula posters, the stacks and stacks of vampire books, the Sweet Valley High Vampires posters, several action figures with fangs ... it was like being trapped in eBay's forbidden basement.

"No, everybody really likes vampires. In this timeline, he wrote your life story and it went on to be a big hit, prompting all sorts of other books about modern flaky selfish-"

"Hey!"

"-sorry-hip vampires to hit the shelves. Which spawned movies. Which spawned TV shows. Vampires are huge now, Betsy. Huuuuuge. And Jon Delk started it all. That's what he thinks. Except you did. You started it all. Your stupid story started it all."

"Okay." I took another look around the living room. No signs that Jon lived with his folks. This was the lair of a single (geeky) man. "So where is he?"

"Book tour. And then he's off to L.A. to oversee the TV series they're making based on his books. Because vampires are huge now."

"Okay." I traded glances with Sinclair. Burr was snoring; Fur looked like she was going to start any second, if her glazed puppy eyes were any indication. Sinclair, I was relieved to see, looked as puzzled as I felt. "And we should be terrified because..."

Laura folded her arms across her smudged sweatshirt. She could pull off imposing, even dressed like she was on a prom committee, and she was pulling it off now. I was starting to get nervous, with no idea why, which made me irritable and nervous. "Vampires were not huge before we screwed up the timeline."

"Yes, I remember." Specifically, I remembered thinking, I'm the queen of the vampires? Vampires? How thoroughly lame.

"But they are now."

"Uh-huh."

"Because of us."

I glanced at Sinclair again. Um ... help?

My own, I do not see the danger here...

Our telepathic link had been many things to me: cool, weird, big-time hot. This time it was comforting ... as dim as I knew I could be, at least I wasn't the only one in the room without a clue. There was comfort in our mutual ignorance.

It's nice not to be the only stupid one in the room.

I do not know that I would have phrased it quite like that...

"Betsy!" Laura made a grabbing motion, and I knew in her mind she'd seized my shoulders and was shaking me like a maraca. "Think! You've accidentally made vampires into the new big trendy thing! They are huge now, and it's only gonna get worse!"

"Worse how?" Merchandising to go with, I dunno, movie rights? Vampire iPod apps? Vampire beach towels? Vampire tote bags? Half of Barnes and Noble dedicated to all things vampire: cookbooks, teen-angst stories, bookmarks? "What, exactly, is the danger here?"

If anything, vampires being cool and trendy might actually make our lives easier...

Do not think like that, my own! Sinclair, I realized, was finally getting it. That made two of us, and neither of them was me.

"I think this is the beginning..." Laura raked her fingers through her ponytail, mussing it even more. Why? Why did she treat her hair like this and never get split ends? "I think this might lead to your eventual takeover."

"Not mine ... you mean..." It was too awful to think about, never mind say out loud, but I did, anyway. "Ancient Betsy? You think vampires being trendy somehow leads to Ancient Me taking over the country after that future nuclear winter thing?"

"Yes. That's what I think."

I looked at the Antichrist. She looked back at me. We both looked at the vampire king, who was cradling Fur and Burr and looking at us.

"Well, shit," I said, because really, what else was there to say?