Free Undead and Unappreciated by MaryJanice Davidson

concentrate.
    You haven’t had a headache since you became a vampire.
    The light in here was bad, too. In fact, the light was fucking terrible.
    A Vampyre.
    Queen this and Vampyre that and secret sisters; it was all such a payn in the ass.
    The Queen of the Vampyres.
    Well, back to it. This nice warm book—at least my hands weren’t cold for a change—wasn’t going to memorize itself.
    â€œâ€¦and the Morning Star shalt appear before her own chylde, shalt help with the taking of the World, and shalt appear before the Queen in all the raiments of the dark.”
    But it is nothing to worry about. In fact, you need not worry about a thing. Not one thing. The devil won’t be as bad as you think; mostly that whole Lord of Lies thing is all hype.
    And your sister might be a problem, but nothing you can’t handle. What you should really handle is Eric Sinclair, because while he’s a pain in the ass, he’s also going to come in pretty handy, so you should stay on his good side.
    Also, why are you wasting your time with all the sheep? For crying out loud. This is your damn house, and the sooner the lice crawling around on top of it figure it out, the better.
    Hmm. For an evil book written by an insane vampire who could see the future…
    How did I know that?
    â€¦written in blood and bound in human skin, this thing was making a lot of sense.
    So just do your job…be the boss, run things your way, and rip the throat out of anyone who forgets who’s in charge.
    You know, I had been letting things slide a little.
    I couldn’t believe I’d been worried about reading the Book of Good Sense! Finally, I was seeing things clearly. It was all so obvious. The first thing I had to do was go down to Scratch and tell Slight Overbite that he’d been 100 percent right about the best way to run a vampire watering hole. Then I’d—
    â€œBetsy! Are you in there? What are you doing?” Wham Wham Wham! “There’s something wrong with the door!”
    â€”clean up my house. That was so fucking typical. Nothing going on in this room was any of Jessica’s damned business, but she was nosing around banging on doors and demanding answers. I’d been putting up with it for too long, and I was done now.
    I got up from the small couch, slapped the book closed, laid it tenderly on the stand, and walked over to the door.
    â€œBets! What’s going on? Are you okay? You’re not doing anything weird and vampirey in there, are you?”
    I grabbed the chair blocking the door and tossed it so hard it crashed into the far side of the room. I noticed I’d yanked it so roughly it had bent the knob. Oh well. Plenty more where those came from.
    I jerked the door open.
    â€œIs everything—” Her eyes widened. “Are you okay?”
    â€œFine,” I said, then slapped her so hard her head banged against the doorframe and bounced off. She staggered and almost lost her feet, grabbed for my shoulder to steady herself, thought better of it, and leaned against the door. One hand flew to her cheek, and the other flew to the side of her head. I smelled the blood before I saw it start to trickle through her fingers.
    â€œBetsy, wh—why—wh—”
    â€œDon’t bother me when I’m working again, or you’ll get another one.”
    â€œBut—b—b—”
    â€œAnd I wouldn’t advithe interrupting me, either,” I told her sweetly. Her eyes were so big, her fear was so big. It was awesome. And ohhhhh, the blood. Just going to waste running through those annoying veins. I smacked her again, and it was kind of funny to see she couldn’t dodge it in time, didn’t even know my hand had moved until her other cheek started to throb. “I have to thay, I thould have done thith yearth ago.”
    â€œBetsy, what’s wrong ?” she cried, and I decided not to kill her. She was irritating, and I’d