Accidentally Dead, Again Part 8

"Like?"

"Like that you were angry about losing your mother and that led to all sorts of trouble when you were a teenager. Obviously, your mommy issues have taken you right into adulthood."

Nina was across the room in a shot, her hand around Phoebe's neck. In a split second, she had her pressed to the wall, her dark eyes on fire. The menace, the hot angry film that glazed them, might have made Phoebe s.h.i.+ver if not for the fact that she'd purposely gone for the jugular, and she'd done it to wipe that smug look off Nina's face. "Never, ever mention my mother, Phoebe. You don't know jack s.h.i.+t about her or me and my life."

Phoebe lifted her chin, her mouth a thin line, her hands clenching and unclenching. "Let. Me. Go."

"When I'm ready," Nina squawked, jamming her face into Phoebe's.

"Get ready," Phoebe squawked back.

Nina's eyes became narrowed slits in her head. "I can kill you. You get that s.h.i.+t, right?"

Oh, she got it, and she was tired of the threat. Phoebe opened her mouth wide and pretended to yawn in Nina's face. "You bore me. You get that s.h.i.+t, right?"

"Now, girls," Sam said, poking his head between the two women. His gorgeous eyes amused, the fresh scent of his aftershave tickling Phoebe's nostrils even while she was pinned to a wall. "Has it come to this in just the amount of time it takes for me to grab a shower?" He propped a disapproving raven eyebrow upward. Wrapping his fingers around Nina's, he tried to pry them loose from Phoebe's neck with little success. "Nina? Let go. Please. If you kill Phoebe, I'll be all alone at Vampire Academy. There'll be no one to study my awesome mind-reading skills with. Now let go."

But Nina didn't budge.

He nudged Nina's shoulder and gave her a cajoling smile. "C'mon, vampire sensei. Let her go. We have more important things to do than kill Phoebe. We have to find the bad guy who trashed my place. We can't do that if we're too busy cleaning up Phoebe's scattered remains, now can we?"

Phoebe lifted her chin, and though she didn't reach to attempt to pull Nina's hands from her neck, she certainly wasn't going to back down. "Let go of me."

"Or?" Nina taunted, smiling sweetly at Sam before snarling in Phoebe's face.

Or she'd knock Nina into next Sunday, taking Sam with her?

THE burst of explosive anger that had sent Nina flying across the room with Sam behind her had Phoebe in a state of panic. Not just because she had no control over the force with which she'd shoved Nina, but due to what had happened to Sam who'd been caught in Phoebe's cross fire as a result.

Just as Nina was about to rush her in bull-like fas.h.i.+on, her eyes caught Sam's body, making her skid to an astonished halt.

Sam was stuck in the wall between his living room and what Phoebe guessed was his bedroom.

He wasn't the kind of stuck that entailed crumbling Sheetrock and cracked paint. Sam was literally wedged inside the wall.

In. The. Wall.

Well, that was that. Her crazy account was officially overdrawn.

For a stunned moment, all she could do was stare at him. His long legs, encased in well-worn denim, were sprawled outward at an odd angle, hovering above the deep wood grain of the floor. The black cowboy boots he wore peeked out from beneath his pant legs, floating in front of him. Her eyes followed the long line of his enormous body to his waist, where he disappeared inside the Sheetrock.

"Sam!" Phoebe yelled, scurrying across the floor to poke her head around the corner of his bedroom. His upper torso floated and twisted Matrix-ish above the deep brown carpeting, his handsome face disbelieving.

Nina was behind her in a flash, her eyes wide in shock. She slapped her hand against the doorframe in disgust. "For the love of Jesus and all twelve ..."

"It's all fun and games until someone ends up inside a wall, eh, ladies?" Sam regarded them with a crooked smile. "So what to do, what to do?"

Phoebe was kneeling beside him in an instant, her eyes roving his body, her hands hesitantly suspended over him, afraid to touch him for fear she'd hurt him. "Does it hurt?"

Sam shook his head. "Nope. It's sort of like ... like floating. That's the best description I can give it. Like I'm weightless."

"Should we try to move him?" Phoebe asked Nina.

Nina ran her fingers through her long, wavy dark hair. "f.u.c.k if I know. Can you move on your own, dude?"

Sam wiggled his fingers and nodded. "Nothing hurts, I just can't seem to get any leverage to pull myself out."

Nina moved around Phoebe to stand behind Sam's head, bending at the waist. "Gimme your hands and I'll pull you."

Sam reached upward, the strong muscles of his forearms flexing when he latched on to Nina's hands, gripping them.

"Gimme a holla if it hurts, okay?"

"Fire when ready," Sam instructed.

Nina gave him a hard yank, but it wasn't necessary. Sam slithered through the wall like a knife through soft b.u.t.ter. Nina pulled him to his feet with ease and clapped him on the back with an awestruck expression. "What the f.u.c.k is next with you two? Invisibility? I don't get it. You can jam your a.s.s in a wall, dude. She can teleport and see her reflection. Swear to Christ, if you two can eat, even one bite, I'll stake you myself. I haven't been a vampire very long, but I ain't never seen s.h.i.+t like this. We need answers, man. I can't help you if we don't get some. Soon." Her cell rang just then, and she looked at the number with a frown, prowling off to a corner of Sam's bedroom to answer it.

Phoebe's eyes, filled with remorse, found Sam's. "And the crazy just keeps on coming, huh?"

He shrugged his wide shoulders and smiled, running his broad hand over the unmarred wall with a tentative finger to find it swallowed his hand whole. "It's a little cool, if you ask me. How many people do you know who can get stuck inside a wall without breaking a sweat?"

Clasping his arm, Phoebe winced. "I'm sorry you got in the middle of the two of us."

He cupped her chin, trailing a finger over her bottom lip. "If we're going to get through this, you two are going to have to work this out. We clearly need our wits about us, and the both of you at each other's throats is nothing but a distraction we can't afford. Wanna tell me what that was about?"

Phoebe fought the urge to nestle against his hand. "I brought up her mother, a very touchy subject. I get that she's feeling insecure and betrayed because there was this whole world that existed for her father that she had no clue about. I'd be angry if she knew about me, but I didn't know about her, too. I was prepared for that. I wasn't prepared to have her call me names and snarl at me every time I move. I also wasn't prepared to become a vampire. C'est la vie. But you're right. I let myself be goaded. It won't happen again."

"That was some shove you gave her."

Phoebe looked at her hands as though they belonged to a stranger. "No kidding. I'm no candy-a.s.s. I mean, I Zumba and I kickbox. I'm in good physical shape, but that surge of power was two things. Scary and d.a.m.n heady." She didn't have time to reflect on her incredible strength further because Nina was plowing between the two of them and holding up her phone with a pleased look.

"So good news, Supernatural Barbie and Ken. Help's on the way."

"You've located the wall whisperer?" Sam quipped.

"Always with the funny, huh, Sammy? No. But it's someone who knows everything there is to know about vampires. He's been around forever." The doorbell rang just then, and Nina left to go answer it.

Phoebe took a step backward into Sam's bedroom, feeling trapped. She clung to the doorframe, pressing her forehead to it. "I've decided I don't know if I'm up to another magical mystery tour tonight," she hedged. "I need to catch my breath."

"You don't breathe anymore," Sam reminded her, brus.h.i.+ng a strand of her hair from her cheek.

"Or eat. Or go to the beach. Or-" Her anxieties were catching up with her.

"Hey. We're in this together, remember? I can't do any of those things anymore, either." Sam took her hand, cool and dry, and caressed her thumb with his in soothing circles. "But we won't be in anything but ashes if we don't find out what's going on and why we're different than all the other vampires."

"Very Rudolph."

"If only a s.h.i.+ny red nose were the only problem," Sam replied, his gaze grim.

Her worst fear rose to the surface, bubbling from her lips like the head of a beer. "What if we find out that there is no hope for us, Sam? What if we end up like that woman?" She needed a time frame-something to go on so she could prepare Mark and ...

Sam's jaw tightened momentarily before his eyes warmed to deep chocolate pools, and his hand closed around hers. "Then we find out together."

A small measure of relief flooded her stomach, loosening the tight coil of fear in her belly.

However little hope those words gave them, suddenly, because Sam was holding her hand, everything seemed okay.

CHAPTER 6.

The word okay had officially been cruelly ripped from Phoebe's vocabulary and replaced by not one but two words. Never and again.

Who was anybody kidding here? Nothing was ever going to be okay again. Nothing. Never. Sitting on Sam's couch as the clock struck four A.M., they'd listened to Archibald, Wanda's husband Heath's manservant (who was once a vampire but was now a human again in some bizarre twist of fate involving sires and words Phoebe didn't even know existed anymore), and his friend Dmitri the Vampire explain their theories on what they thought had happened to Sam and Phoebe.

And there were but three utterly redonckculous thoughts Phoebe couldn't shake during the entire conversation-none of which had anything to do with her almost certainly deadly fate.

They were actually rather meaningless.

First meaningless thought? Who still had a manservant? No matter how endearing or adorably British?

Second meaningless thought? Wasn't every vampire since vampire romances had been invented named Dmitri? Or was it Declan? Wait. Maybe Hunter? Wasn't that just a little too vampire cliche?

Not that Dmitri was just any vampire. No. In fact, he was one of the oldest surviving vampires in the history of vampires, who'd found Archibald in, of all places, a botany club. They'd reunited after all these centuries over rare species of roses and lilies, and it felt so good.

Third, didn't all vampires named Dmitri look like they'd just stepped off the cover of some gothic horror novel, complete with swirling black cape, menacing eyebrows, and imposing stances? If some of those romance novelists could see this Dmitri, they'd have to reconsider the visual legend the name was supposed to bring to mind.

Because this Dmitri was anything but gothic or imposing. He was the kind of vampire who'd clearly decided the seventies was a decade that should be celebrated for eternity, if one were to judge him by his long, graying hair and rainbow headband. The only thing missing from his bell-bottom jean-clad body and his printed disco-s.h.i.+rt-wearing rail-thin chest was a big, big bong.

Hearing what they had to say made Phoebe wonder if tokin' on a big, big bong wouldn't be the solution to this mess. Who cared if you ended up a pile of ashes when you were stoned?

"So I want to be clear here," Sam's luscious voice invaded her rambling, out-of-focus thoughts. "You think we have some kind of vampire virus?"

Dmitri nodded, leaning his elbows on his k.n.o.bby knees and rolling an old toothpick between his lips. "Yeah, man. I've seen it once. Way back in the seventeen hundreds. Can't remember the exact date, but it was bad. Righteous bad. Haven't seen nothin' like it since."

Archibald gave a distinguished nod of agreement, his lined face riddled with unpleasant memories clearly best left buried. "Oh, indeed, sir. It was dreadful. Just horrid. Vampires running amok, biting not just the innocent, but one another, too. This led to an outbreak of epic proportions."

Sam s.h.i.+fted positions on the couch, his thigh grazing Phoebe's in the process. The strong line of his jaw was tight and sharp with tension. "Do you know exactly what created the outbreak?"

Archibald cleared his throat, brus.h.i.+ng the wrinkles from the arm of his checkered bathrobe to settle back in Sam's overstuffed armchair. "As was and still is the way, Master Samuel, fear of anyone or anything different was widespread, most certainly that was the case back then. It was neither hip nor tragically cool to be a vampire. If a vampire was somehow captured, he was served up the typical death, burned at dawn, or by wooden stake through the heart. However, not everyone's views on such matters were so black-and-white. One man in particular, a scientist of sorts, though mad, no doubt, thought a vampire was a thing to be studied, prodded, tested, and thus discarded when the researcher had no more use for what people called Lucifer's children."

Phoebe's eyes closed in horror. If her intestines really were out of order forever, you couldn't tell by the fear that clenched her gut at Archibald's words.

Dmitri shook his head in rapid agreement, his gnarled finger poking at the air. "d.a.m.n crazy was what that was! Fool scientist took a human waiting for the guillotine and did all sorts of things to him. Thought he could turn a human into a vampire with some kind of nonsense he'd hatched in his lab. Leastways I hear that was the goal."

"So in essence, he was developing something that would create a synthetic, albeit crudely bioengineered vampire," Sam muttered, dragging a hand over his chin.

Dmitri's eyes grew dark, the lines of age around them deepening. "Uh, yup. So anyways, he used this fella like some guinea pig, but instead of turning him into a vampire like you and me, he turned him into a monster. Somehow, this vampire escaped Dr. Nutball and went on a biting spree, turning a bunch of humans rabid and vicious. Vampires were turning to ashes everywhere-if they lasted long enough to escape us, anyway. It was an ugly, ugly time. No one bitten survived that."

"So you don't think this is the work of some crazy centuries-old vampire who's still running around loose, do you?" Nina asked.

"Bah!" Dmitri balked, toying with the peace-sign necklace he wore around his neck. "Even if the doc was stupid enough to test it on himself, he sure couldn't have survived it-and definitely not for this many centuries. No way, sister."

"Okay, so anyone infected lost their minds first before they turned to ashes, Arch?" Nina asked from her perch on the edge of Sam's desk, her tone carrying a distinct tremor.

"I'm afraid so, Miss Nina. Those who didn't were ..." He let his balding head fall to his stately suit-covered chest.

"Were what?" Phoebe prodded, certain the answer would be as terrifying as everything else they'd retold, but not knowing had to be a worse fate.

Archibald reached out a weathered hand for hers and gave it a squeeze. "Slain, miss. Expunged for fear there would be no end to the spread of the disease. If the infected night dwellers weren't killed by the humans, vampires themselves took on the dreadful task."

"Did they display the kinds of symptoms Phoebe and I are displaying?"

Archibald's bushy eyebrows rose. "No, Master Samuel. I don't recall them having the specific gifts that have been bestowed upon the both of you, but the description of the death that young woman suffered ..." He paused, composing himself. "That does fit the bill. However, vampires have evolved over the years. With a little help from technology, who knows what monkey business could occur in this great day and age? Who knows what some madman in a laboratory with today's advances could create? Who's to say teleportation and walking through walls aren't a viable option with a petri dish and the single desire for eternal life? I only know that vampires-even the oldest, most powerfully endowed, the most feared of the lot do not walk through walls, sir. Ever."

Phoebe's brow furrowed. She tucked her legs beneath her, letting her chin rest on her knees, fighting the continual rise of panic in order to sort through this rationally. "So you think this is a result of modern-day technology? That someone's literally creating vampires-testing whatever this is out on humans and clearly failing?"

"It d.a.m.n well smacks of it, darlin'," Dmitri said, his voice somber, his green eyes capturing hers with his sympathy. "Where they're gettin' the humans and what they're doing to 'em is anybody's guess."

"So our deaths are inevitable," Phoebe forced herself to say. "But not before we let loose on whomever we can get our fangs into because we've gone vampire AWOL." G.o.d. That she could spread this whatever it was to someone unsuspecting without even knowing made her want to chain herself to the top of the Andes mountains until she French fried at daybreak.

Archibald clucked his tongue, his eyes steely with determination. "Now, miss, this looks grim, I'll admit. However, we've been in many a pickle and found our way to the other side with minimal harm to our persons. Haven't we, Miss Nina?"

Nina's hoodie had fallen off in their scuffle, and Phoebe wondered if she didn't always keep it on her head as a way to mask her emotions. Because her face said it all-even if the next words she spoke were to the contrary.

"You bet'cha, Arch. This wouldn't be the first time our backs have been against a wall. No one's dying on my watch." She hopped off Sam's desk and cupped Archibald's chin with affection in her dark eyes, an emotion Phoebe didn't know she was capable of. It even stung a little. Somehow, as cantankerous as she was, Nina had managed to surround herself with all these people who clearly loved her.

She settled herself on the arm of the chair. Archibald patted her hand and smiled like he actually liked her. "So what next, Miss Nina?"

This time, the grim look on Nina's face was apparent. "I dunno, Arch, but my gut tells me this has to do with O-Tech-especially after Sam's place was trashed and his work comp was on. Maybe whatever was on that computer didn't seem important to Sam, but somebody thinks it is. Now, O-Tech would have the kind of resources to facilitate something like this, wouldn't they, Sammy? You know, labs and all those crazy Bunsen things you herd of nerds play with?"

Sam's lips thinned. "But where, Nina? I've been in every lab in the place at one time or another, and I can't say I recall seeing anyone walking through walls. I think I'd know if they were testing humans."

Nina brushed her hands together. "Then you know what I say, Sammy?"

"What don't you say?" Phoebe couldn't help but quip to the tune of Archibald's delighted laughter.

She ignored Phoebe but gave Sam a sly smile. "I say we poke around inside O-Tech."

Phoebe detected a hint of discomfort in Sam's s.h.i.+ft of position on the couch. It was subtle, but his vibe had clearly changed to one of uneasiness.

Huh.

"And we do that how? I thought we'd burn to a crisp if we go out during daylight hours."