Being Undead

Chapter 16*

The first thing Laura saw as she came to was the ceiling. Confused, she made to take a look at her surrounding but the pain that greeted her as she tried warned against that action.

Crap! Laura groaned. Everything was turmoil in her head and she wondered if her brain had malfunctioned; or perhaps was still malfunctioning. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, and the word dagger popped up in her mind.

Laura put her hand and it came back bloody. It was then a conversation she had Frederick came to her.

He had been playing with a dagger in the study when she came to him. "Why do all undeads seem to like daggers but hate stakes?" she asked. "I mean, aren't both pointy and dangerous?"

"Well, stakes kill us, daggers don't," he replied, shrugging simply like he always did whenever he gave a response he didn't want to think too much about. "But don't go playing around with daggers, Laura," he quickly added. "One to the heart and you might be stuck paralysed forever."

"Stakes kill undead, daggers paralyse them," she repeated out loud.

"About time, honey," Laura suddenly heard Daniel say beside her and she turned. Apparently, he had been sitting and watching her all along.

"You're a first class son of a bitch, Daniel, you know that, right?" she said, putting a lot of hatred into it.

"Well, that's not a very nice thing to say to someone who just undaggered you, you know that, right?" he returned, feigning a pout.

"Not if you're the one who daggered me in the first place!"

Laura made to lunge at Daniel but she got dizzy all of a sudden and would have fallen face-first to the ground from the table she realised then she was lying on if he hadn't caught her.

"You're not back in fighting shape yet," Daniel explained, smiling at the pun and she rolled her eyes at him.

Looking around, Laura realised that they were actually in the study. Second time tonight I "broke the no coming to study alone" rule, she mused to herself; rogues didn't count as persons in her book, especially not the one with her at that moment.

Above her, just a few stretches away, she saw the dagger Daniel had used paralyse her on the table; he hadn't even bothered to wipe the blood off it. God, can someone be anymore of an asshole than this guy? She sneered at the weapon.

"Here." Daniel passed her a cup filled with blood. "To regain your strength."

"And how do I know you haven't poisoned it?" Laura quirked an eyebrow at him.

"Seriously?" he said, surprisingly looking offended. "That's absurd."

Anyway, he drank half of the blood and then refilled the cup before handing it to her. "Happy now?" he asked and she made a face at him in return.

Truth be told, Laura did have to admit that agree it was absurd for her to think that he undaggered her just so he could poison her. Plus there was the fact that poisons didn't even work on undeads to begin with.

Anyway, she drained the cup and handed it back to him which he refilled and returned to her again.

"Oh! When did this caring guy arrive exactly?" she asked, smiling impishly.

"What? Is it bad for a man to be gentlemanly nowadays?" he returned, but he was smiling also.

Laura had to admit she loved it better whenever Daniel was smiling; and with his charming attitude, she realised she didn't mind him as much as before. At least, that way he isn't looking like Evil Undead the fourth, she thought and smiled.

Out of nowhere, it suddenly sprung back in her mind: Daniel, rogue, very dangerous. The blood really must have gotten my faculties running again, Laura thought and was very thankful for it.

She drank the blood in the cup halfway, watching the undead in front of her very carefully before suddenly shouting "Hey!" tossing the remaining in his face.

Daniel was very surprised to see the blood coming at his face. One minute, Laura was drinking and laughing, the next, she was shouting and tossing blood at him. The change was so swift and unexpected that he was completely stunned and the blood landed right in his eyes, blinding him temporarily.

Using Daniel's blindness to her advantage, Laura pushed him out of the way and grabbed the bloody dagger on the table. She turned to use it on him but he had recovered surprisingly quickly and tackled her to the ground. They wrestled for a while before Daniel finally gave the upper hand and grabbed the dagger; throwing it away.

But Laura wasn't done yet as she threw a punch, but he blocked it. She rolled away, standing up with a backward spin kick. But he cut her leg and swung her right into the bookshelf. The shelf came crashing down and Laura felt the full weight of every one of the book on her body.

"Stand down, honey," she heard Daniel say to her as she regained herself. "You can't win this."

"And you're still as annoying as hell," she returned and grabbed a piece of wood from the broken shelf to hit him.

Daniel's fist went right through the wood and hit Laura on the face. Damn! This guy can punch, she thought as she staggered back from the impact.

Seeing her off-balance, Daniel kicked Laura into the wall, pushing the study table against her to crush her there by the lungs.

Fortunately for her, undeads didn't really need air to live and she wasn't disturbed by pressure. Putting enough of her strength behind it, Laura hit the table; effectively breaking it to two and the sudden change in balance pushed Daniel to fall forward and she kicked him in the face.

She was about to kick him again when he caught her leg and swung her out of the study; right through the wall.

Laura flew out of the study, right over the banister, and down to the ground floor. She landed and heard the snap of something that painfully felt like her ribs breaking. God, not again, she groaned and hugged her side on the floor.

The fight had gone out of Laura by then; the wall had really undid her, not to mention the pain of another fracture. She turned and saw Daniel walking down towards her from the stairs, taking his time like he had all of it in the world.

Reaching her, he kicked her in the side just to make sure she was down and she whimpered. "I'm really going to enjoy this, honey," he said and placed his hand over her chest; no doubt ready to rip out her heart.

"Daniel, enough!" the voice came out of nowhere and he stilled.

Frederick, Laura realised to her relief as she looked up behind Daniel; he had returned just in the nick of time with Damian and the other undeads.

Daniel stood up to face them and they clearly outnumbered him one to uncountable. Nevertheless, he smiled. "Frederick," he said. "It's been fifty years, old friend."

"Friend?!" Laura gasped in disbelief. "Frederick, please don't tell me you were friends with this spawn of a devil."

"Oh dear, I was more than a friend, honey," Daniel returned, his smile now a full blown grin. "Darling, I'm Daddy's firstborn."