Page 67 of The Undead

Adam, leaning against the wall, smiled faintly at my expression. We carried her into the living room.

As a penance for fainting, Maggie came awake fighting, flailing wildly at my hands. She didn’t hurt me—couldn’t—but I grabbed her wrists and held her until she subsided into a trembling stillness. Her wide eyes searched my face, noting now the differences—whatever differences there were.

“No,” she murmured. She had to try twice to get the one word out; successful, she gasped in a deep breath and kept going. “What kind of sick joke—”

“Not a joke,” I assured her. I’d laid her comfortably on Sylvia’s Southwest-patterned couch and covered her with the nubby afghan; an aura of Sylvia’s perfume filtered from it, warring with Maggie’s own body scent. “Relax, baby, everything’s okay. You’ve got Adam wrong.”

“Wrong? Jesus, he told me you were dead—he never said—” Maggie, for a wonder, ran out of words before I interrupted her. She just stared at me with those deep, wounded eyes. I wanted badly to kiss her; but the memory of Colleen lying half-dead in my arms stopped me. It would be a long time before I trusted myself that much. I contented myself with running a fingertip along the smooth warm line of her cheek.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” she asked, in a for different tone. I blinked, as if I could erase what she saw with a simple movement of eyelids. I didn’t answer. “Your skin—” Across from us, Adam shifted his weight in the overstuffed armchair and drew her eyes. Maggie stiffened.

“I’m going to erase her memory. We’ll send her back home,” he said. I turned to look at him. “It’s the only way, unless you want to kill her. We can’t take any more chances. We’re hanging out to dry now, Michael.”

I knew what he meant, knew exactly. Foster. William. Now Maggie. Things were desperately out of his control.

“You’re not touching my wife,” I said, a simple statement of fact. Adam’s eyebrows rose, then drew together in a line that didn’t have enough emotion to be a frown. “I mean it, man, you know I do.”

“Sure I do. But it doesn’t matter. She’s dangerous, and we’ve got to get her out of our way. You can’t erase her memory, you don’t know how. It’s got to be me.”

There were a lot of things in my head just then—images of Maggie’s suffering on the back porch of my house, the night I’d gone to see her—Nick Gianoulos, oily and smooth, sliding his hands over her—Sylvia’s liquid green eyes smiling at me—Adam, laughing, face alight with temporary happiness. I opened my mouth to put them into words. Nothing came out. I tried again.

“I want her to know,” I simply said. Adam stared at me, waiting for me to make some sense. Okay. I’d put all my pain and hope and need into it. “Touch her and I’ll rip your throat out.”

Adam actually smiled. It was a bitter, twisted, anguished smile, but it was there, wrinkling the pale flesh at the corners of his mouth and eyes.

“That’s what I said tomymaker,” he said softly. “You’re fortunate.Imight listento you.”

It was the first time Adam had spoken, even indirectly, about his maker. I suppose I’d thought that he’d sprung up, some Cabbage Patch vampire, without anybody laying a hand on him.

“Nobody’s doing nothing to me,” Maggie interjected in a stronger voice, and fought to sit up. I let her. “What the hell is going on here? Look, I know Michael was dead. I saw the body, and he’d been dead for hours. You didn’t just revive him in the morgue …”

“That’s exactly what I did,” Adam answered calmly. I woke him up. You’re right. He was quite, completely dead. As I am.”

When she started laughing, I took her hand and put it over my heart. When the importance of that silence in my chest finally sunk in, Maggie dowdy reclaimed her hand and folded it in her lap. She didn’t say anything.

“Michael has become a vampire,” Adam continued. “He drinks blood. He can be destroyed by sunlight and fire. He’s also very strong and savage, very dangerous.”

“This is bullshit,” Maggie shot back, not very steadily. “His eyes …”

“A lot more has changed than his eyes.” Adam made an impatient sound and shook his head; his frown was directed at me. “Michael, she can’t handle this. We can’t trust her. Do you want to have to kill her—or let her kill you? She’s got to be wiped.”

“No,” I grated. Adam’s face went still.

“I can’t take the chance that she might turn against us,” Adam said then. And I knew what he meant. Adam had his nemesis William to worry about … Sylvia … Rebecca Foster … me … Maggie. Foster and Maggie were his expendable problems.

I stood up, facing him, protecting Maggie.

“She’s my wife,” I reminded him. His eyes didn’t even flicker.

“Was,” he corrected me. “Till death did you part, I believe. Don’t get in my way, Mike, I’d hate to hurt you—but Iwill.”

“I don’t care what’s happened to him,” Maggie cut in, and took my hand. She must have noticed how cold it was, but she didn’t say anything. “Michael was and is my husband, and I’m not letting anybody separate us again. Including you, Radburn. I’ll shoot you dead, I swear to God I will, if you come anywhere near me.”

Adam stood up, fury igniting his eyes to a red shine, and lunged for her. I tried to intercept him, but he shoved me away like a child. Maggie went for her gun; Adam grabbed her wrist and squeezed. She didn’t drop it, though her face whitened with pain and shock. Their faces were so close together that she must have seen the hunger in him, the naked menace. But Maggie—Maggie didn’t blink.

I took Adam by the shoulders and pulled him away from her, slamming him back against the wall as he had earlier slammed me. This time the pictures didn’t rattle—they fell, with an alarming crash of glass and wood. Adam’s lips parted slightly, showing teeth.

“You’re—not—touching—her,” I managed. It was hard to talk around the fear in my throat. Adam had that same riveting grace as William, that same ability to intimidate with the slightest of movements. “Goddamn you, you’renot.”

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