True Blood Book Four Chapters 10-12

Chapter 10
The pond behind Jason's house had already been searched by the time I got up the next morning. Alcee Beck pounded on my door about ten o'clock, and since it sounded exactly like a lawman knocking, I pulled on my jeans and a sweatshirt before I went to the door.
"He's not in the pond," Beck said, without preamble.
I sagged against the doorway. "Oh, thank God." I closed my eyes for a minute to do just that. "Please come in." Alcee Beck stepped over the threshold like a vampire, looking around him silently and with a certain wariness.
"Would you like some coffee?" I asked politely, when he was seated on the old couch.
"No, thank you," he said stiffly, as uncomfortable with me as I was with him. I spotted Eric's shirt hanging on the doorknob of my bedroom, not quite visible from where Detective Beck was sitting. Lots of women wear men's shirts, and I told myself not to be paranoid about its presence. Though I tried not to listen to the detective's mind, I could tell that he was uneasy being alone in the house of a white woman, and he was wishing that Andy Bellefleur would get there.
"Excuse me for a minute," I said, before I yielded to temptation and asked him why Andy was due to arrive. That would shake Alcee Beck to the core. I grabbed the shirt as I went into my room, folded it, and tucked it in a drawer before I brushed my teeth and washed my face. By the time I returned to the living room, Andy had made his appearance. Jason's boss, Catfish Hennessey, was with him. I could feel the blood leaving my head and I sat down very heavily on the ottoman sitting by the couch.
"What?" I said. I couldn't have uttered another word.
"The blood on the dock is probably feline blood, and there's a print in it, besides Jason's boot print," said Andy. "We've kept this quiet, because we didn't want those woods crawling with idiots." I could feel myself swaying in an invisible wind. I would have laughed, if I hadn't had the "gift" of telepathy. He wasn't thinking tabby or calico when he said feline; he was thinking panther.
Panthers were what we called mountain lions. Sure, there aren't mountains around here, but panthers—the oldest men hereabouts called them "painters"—live in low bottomland, too. To the best of my knowledge, the only place panthers could be found in the wild was in Florida, and their numbers were dwindling to the brink of extinction. No solid evidence
had been produced to prove that any live native panthers had been living in Louisiana in the past fifty years, give or take a decade.
But of course, there were stories. And our woods and streams could produce no end of alligators, nutria, possums, coons, and even the occasional black bear or wildcat. Coyotes, too. But there were no pictures, or scat, or print casts, to prove the presence of panthers . . . until now.
Andy Bellefleur's eyes were hot with longing, but not for me. Any red-blooded male who'd ever gone hunting, or even any P.C. guy who photographed nature, would give almost anything to see a real wild panther. Despite the fact that these large predators were deeply anxious to avoid humans, humans would not return the favor.
"What are you thinking?" I asked, though I knew damn good and well what they were thinking. But to keep them on an even keel, I had to pretend not to; they'd feel better, and they might let something slip. Catfish was just thinking that Jason was most likely dead. The two lawmen kept fixing me in their gaze, but Catfish, who knew me better than they did, was sitting forward on the edge of Gran's old recliner, his big red hands clasped to each other so hard the knuckles were white.
"Maybe Jason spotted the panther when he came home that night," Andy said carefully. "You know he'd run and get his rifle and try to track it."
"They're endangered," I said. "You think Jason doesn't know that panthers are endangered?" Of course, they thought Jason was so impulsive and brainless that he just wouldn't care.
"Are you sure that would be at the top of his list?" Alcee Beck asked, with an attempt at gentleness.
"So you think Jason shot the panther," I said, having a little difficulty getting the words out of my mouth.
"It's a possibility."
"And then what?" I crossed my arms over my chest.
All three men exchanged a glance. "Maybe Jason followed the panther into the woods," Andy said. "Maybe the panther wasn't so badly wounded after all, and it got him."
"You think my brother would trail a wounded and dangerous animal into the woods—at night, by himself." Sure they did. I could read it loud and clear. They thought that would be absolutely typical Jason Stackhouse behavior. What they didn't get was that (reckless
and wild as my brother was) Jason's favorite person in the entire universe was Jason Stackhouse, and he would not endanger that person in such an obvious way.
Andy Bellefleur had some misgivings about this theory, but Alcee Beck sure didn't. He thought I'd outlined Jason's procedure that night exactly. What the two lawmen didn't know, and what I couldn't tell them, was that if Jason had seen a panther at his house that night, the chances were good the panther was actually a shape-shifting human. Hadn't Claudine said that the witches had gathered some of the larger shifters into their fold? A panther would be a valuable animal to have at your side if you were contemplating a hostile takeover.
"Jay Stans, from Clarice, called me this morning," Andy said. His round face turned toward me and his brown eyes locked on me. "He was telling me about this gal you found by the side of the road last night."
I nodded, not seeing the connection, and too preoccupied with speculation about the panther to guess what was coming.
"This girl have any connection to Jason?"
"What?" I was stunned. "What are you talking about?"
"You find this girl, this Maria-Star Cooper, by the side of the road. They searched, but they didn't find any trace of an accident."
I shrugged. "I told them I wasn't sure I could pin the spot down, and they didn't ask me to go looking, after I offered. I'm not real surprised they couldn't find any evidence, not knowing the exact spot. I tried to pin it down, but it was at night, and I was pretty scared. Or she could have just been dumped where I found her." I don't watch the Discovery Channel for nothing.
"See, what we were thinking," Alcee Beck rumbled, "is that this girl was one of Jason's discards, and maybe he was keeping her somewhere secret? But you let her go when Jason disappeared."
"Huh?" It was like they were speaking Urdu or something. I couldn't make any sense out of it.
"With Jason getting arrested under suspicion of those murders last year and all, we wondered if there wasn't some fire under all that smoke."
"You know who did those killings. He's in jail, unless something's happened that I don't know about. And he confessed." Catfish met my eyes, and his were very uneasy. This line
of questioning had my brother's boss all twitchy. Granted, my brother was a little kinky in the sex department (though none of the women he'd kinked with seemed to mind), but the idea of him keeping a sex slave that I had to deal with when he vanished? Oh, come on!
"He did confess, and he's still in jail," Andy said. Since Andy had taken the confession, I should hope so. "But what if Jason was his accomplice?"
"Wait a damn minute now," I said. My pot was beginning to boil over. "You can't have it both ways. If my brother is dead out in the woods after chasing a mythical wounded panther, how could he have been holding, what's her name, Maria-Star Cooper, hostage somewhere? You're thinking I've been in on my brother's supposed bondage activities, too? You think I hit her with my car? And then I loaded her in and drove her to the emergency room?"
We all glared at each other for a long moment. The men were tossing out waves of tension and confusion like they were necklaces at Mardi Gras.
Then Catfish launched himself off the couch like a bottle rocket. "No," he bellowed. "You guys asked me to come along to break this bad news about the panther to Sookie. No one said anything about this stuff about some girl that got hit by a car! This here is a nice girl." Catfish pointed at me. "No one's going to call her different! Not only did Jason Stackhouse never have to do more than crook his little finger at a girl for her to come running, much less take one hostage and do weird stuff to her, but if you're saying Sookie let this Cooper girl free when Jason didn't come home, and then tried to run over her, well, all I got to say is, you can go straight to hell!"
God bless Catfish Hennessey is all I had to say.
Alcee and Andy left soon after, and Catfish and I had a disjointed talk consisting mostly of him cursing the lawmen. When he ran down, he glanced at his watch.
"Come on, Sookie. You and me got to get to Jason's."
"Why?" I was willing but bewildered.
"We got us a search party together, and I know you'll want to be there."
I stared at him with my mouth open, while Catfish fumed about Alcee and Andy's allegations. I tried real hard to think of some way to cancel a search party. I hated to think of those men and women putting on all their winter gear to plow through the underbrush,
now bare and brown, that made the woods so difficult to navigate. But there was no way to stop them, when they meant so well; and there was every reason to join them.
There was the remote chance that Jason was out there in the woods somewhere. Catfish told me he'd gotten together as many men as he could, and Kevin Pryor had agreed to be the coordinator, though off-duty. Maxine Fortenberry and her churchwomen were bringing out coffee and doughnuts from the Bon Temps Bakery. I began crying, because this was just overwhelming, and Catfish turned even redder. Weeping women were way high on Catfish's long list of things that made him uncomfortable.
I eased his situation by telling him I had to get ready. I threw the bed together, washed my face clean of tears, and yanked my hair back into a ponytail. I found a pair of ear-muffs that I used maybe once a year, and pulled on my old coat and stuck my yard work gloves in my pocket, along with a wad of Kleenex in case I got weepy again.
The search party was the popular activity for the day in Bon Temps. Not only do people like to help in our small town—but also rumors had inevitably begun circulating about the mysterious wild animal footprint. As far as I could tell, the word "panther" was not yet currency; if it had been, the crowd would have been even larger. Most of the men had come armed—well, actually, most of the men were always armed. Hunting is a way of life around here, the NRA provides most of the bumper stickers, and deer season is like a holy holiday. There are special times for hunting deer with a bow and arrow, with a muzzleloader, or with a rifle. (There may be a spear season, for all I know.) There must have been fifty people at Jason's house, quite a party on a workday for such a small community.
Sam was there, and I was so glad to see him I almost began crying again. Sam was the best boss I'd ever had, and a friend, and he always came when I was in trouble. His red-gold hair was covered with a bright orange knit cap, and he wore bright orange gloves, too. His heavy brown jacket looked somber in contrast, and like all of the men, he was wearing work boots. You didn't go out in the woods, even in winter, with ankles unprotected. Snakes were slow and sluggish, but they were there, and they'd retaliate if you stepped on them.
Somehow the presence of all these people made Jason's disappearance seem that much more terrifying. If all these people believed Jason might be out in the woods, dead or badly wounded, he might be. Despite every sensible thing I could tell myself, I grew more and more afraid. I had a few minutes of blanking out on the scene entirely while I imagined all the things that could have happened to Jason, for maybe the hundredth go-round.
Sam was standing beside me, when I could hear and see again. He'd pulled off a glove, and his hand found mine and clasped it. His felt warm and hard, and I was glad to be holding on to him. Sam, though a shifter, knew how to aim his thoughts at me, though he couldn't "hear" mine in return. Do you really believe he's out there? he asked me.
I shook my head. Our eyes met and held.
Do you think he's still alive?
That was a lot harder. Finally, I just shrugged. He kept hold of my hand, and I was glad of it.
Arlene and Tack scrambled out of Arlene's car and came toward us. Arlene's hair was as bright red as ever, but quite a bit more snarled than she usually wore it, and the short-order cook needed to shave. So he hadn't started keeping a razor at Arlene's yet, was the way I read it.
"Did you see Tara?" Arlene asked.
"No."
"Look." She pointed, as surreptitiously as you can, and I saw Tara in jeans and rubber boots that came up to her knees. She looked as unlike the meticulously groomed clothing-store proprietor as I could imagine, though she was wearing an adorable fake-fur hat of white and brown that made you want to go up and stroke her head. Her coat matched the hat. So did her gloves. But from the waist down, Tara was ready for the woods. Jason's friend Dago was staring at Tara with the stunned look of the newly smitten. Holly and Danielle had come, too, and since Danielle's boyfriend wasn't around, the search party was turning out to have an unexpected social side.
Maxine Fortenberry and two other women from her church had let down the tailgate of Maxine's husband's old pickup, and there were several thermoses containing coffee set up there, along with disposable cups, plastic spoons, and packages of sugar. Six dozen doughnuts steamed up the long boxes they'd been packed in. A large plastic trash can, already lined with a black bag, stood ready. Theses ladies knew how to throw a search party.
I couldn't believe all this had been organized in the space of a few hours. I had to take my hand from Sam's to fish out a tissue and mop my face with it. I would have expected Arlene to come, but the presence of Holly and Danielle was just about stunning, and Tara's attendance was even more surprising. She wasn't a search-the-woods kind of woman.
Kevin Pryor didn't have much use for Jason, but here he was, with a map and pad and pencil, organizing away.
I caught Holly's eye, and she gave me a sad sort of smile, the kind of little smile you gave someone at a funeral.
Just then Kevin banged the plastic trash can lid against the tailgate of the truck, and when everyone's attention was on him, he began to give directions for the search. I hadn't realized Kevin could be so authoritative; on most occasions, he was overshadowed by his clingy mother, Jeneen, or his oversized partner, Kenya. You wouldn't catch Kenya out in the woods looking for Jason, I reflected, and just then I spotted her and had to swallow my own thoughts. In sensible gear, she was leaning against the Fortenberrys' pickup, her brown face absolutely expressionless. Her stance suggested that she was Kevin's enforcer—that she'd move or speak only if he were challenged in some way. Kenya knew how to project silent menace; I'll give her that. She would throw a bucket of water on Jason if he were on fire, but her feelings for my brother were certainly not overwhelmingly positive. She'd come because Kevin was volunteering. As Kevin divided people up into teams, her dark eyes left him only to scan the faces of the searchers, including mine. She gave me a slight nod, and I gave her the same.
"Each group of five has to have a rifleman," Kevin called. "That can't be just anybody. It has to be someone who's spent time out in the woods hunting." The excitement level rose to the boiling point with this directive. But after that, I didn't listen to the rest of Kevin's instructions. I was still tired from the day before, for one thing; what an exceptionally full day it had been. And the whole time, in the background, my fear for my brother had been nagging and eating at me. I'd been woken early this morning after a long night, and here I was standing in the cold outside my childhood home, waiting to participate in a touching wild goose chase—or at least I hoped it was a wild goose chase. I was too dazed to judge any more. A chill wind began to gust through the clearing around the house, making the tears on my cheeks unbearably cold.
Sam put his arms around me, though in our coats it was quite awkward. It seemed to me I could feel the warmth of him even through all the material.
"You know we won't find him out there," he whispered to me.
"I'm pretty sure we won't," I said, sounding anything but certain.
Sam said, "I'll smell him if he's out there."
That was so practical.
I looked up at him. I didn't have to look far, because Sam's not a real tall man. Right now, his face was very serious. Sam has more fun with his shifter self than most of the two-natured, but I could tell he was intent on easing my fear. When he was in his second nature, he had the dog's keen sense of smell; when he was in his human form, that sense was still superior to that of a one-natured man. Sam would be able to smell a fairly recent corpse.
"You're going out in the woods," I said.
"Sure. I'll do my best. If he's there, I think I'll know."
Kevin had told me the sheriff had tried to hire the tracking dogs trained by a Shreveport police officer, but the officer had said they were booked for the day. I wondered if that were true, or if the man just hadn't wanted to risk his dogs in the woods with a panther. Truthfully, I couldn't blame him. And here was a better offer, right in front of me.
"Sam," I said, my eyes filling with tears. I tried to thank him, but the words wouldn't come. I was lucky to have a friend like Sam, and well I knew it.
"Hush, Sookie," he said. "Don't cry. We'll find out what happened to Jason, and we'll find a way to restore Eric to his mind." He rubbed the tears off my cheeks with his thumb.
No one was close enough to hear, but I couldn't help glancing around to make sure.
"Then," Sam said, a distinctly grim edge to his voice, "we can get him out of your house and back to Shreveport where he belongs."
I decided no reply was the best policy.
"What was your word for the day?" he asked, standing back.
I gave him a watery smile. Sam always asked about the daily offering of my Word a Day calendar. "I didn't check this morning. Yesterday was 'farrago,'" I said.
He raised his brows inquiringly.
"A confused mess," I said.
"Sookie, we'll find a way out of this."
When the searchers divided up into groups, I discovered that Sam was not the only two-natured creature out in Jason's yard that day. I was astonished to see a contingent from Hotshot. Calvin Norris, his niece Crystal, and a second man who seemed vaguely familiar were standing by themselves. After a moment of stirring the sludge of my memory, I
realized that the second man was the one I'd seen emerging from the shed behind the house down from Crystal's. His thick pale hair triggered the memory, and I was sure of it when I saw the graceful way he moved. Kevin assigned the Reverend Jimmy Fullenwilder to the trio as their armed man. The combination of the three Weres with the reverend would have made me laugh under other circumstances.
Since they lacked a fifth, I joined them.
The three Weres from Hotshot gave me sober nods, Calvin's golden green eyes fixed on me thoughtfully. "This here's Felton Norris," he said, by way of introduction.
I nodded back to Felton, and Jimmy Fullenwilder, a gray-haired man of about sixty, shook hands. "Of course I know Miss Sookie, but the rest of you I'm not sure of. I'm Jimmy Fullenwilder, pastor of Greater Love Baptist," he said, smiling all around. Calvin absorbed this information with a polite smile, Crystal sneered, and Felton Norris (had they run out of last names in Hotshot?) grew colder. Felton was an odd one, even for an inbred werewolf. His eyes were remarkably dark, set under straight thick brown brows, which contrasted sharply with his pale hair. His face was broad at the eyes, narrowing a little too abruptly to a thin-lipped mouth. Though he was a bulky man, he moved lightly and quietly, and as we began to move out into the woods, I realized that all the Hotshot residents had that in common. In comparison with the Norrises, Jimmy Fullenwilder and I were blundering elephants.
At least the minister carried his 30-30 like he knew how to use it.
Following our instructions, we stood in a row, stretching out our arms at shoulder height so we were fingertip to fingertip. Crystal was on my right, and Calvin was on my left. The other groups did the same. We began the search in the fanlike shape determined by the curve of the pond.
"Remember who's in your group," Kevin bellowed. "We don't want to leave people out here! Now, start."
We began scanning the ground ahead of us, moving at a steady pace. Jimmy Fullenwilder was a couple of steps ahead, since he was armed. It was apparent right away that there were woodcraft disparities between the Hotshot folks, the reverend, and me. Crystal seemed to flow through the undergrowth, without having to wade through it or push it aside, though I could hear her progress. Jimmy Fullenwilder, an avid hunter, was at home in the woods and an experienced outdoorsman, and I could tell he was getting much more information from his surroundings than I was, but he wasn't able to move like Calvin and Felton. They glided through the woods like ghosts, making about as much noise.
Once, when I ran into a particularly dense thicket of thorny vines, I felt two hands clamp on either side of my waist, and I was just lifted over it before I had a chance to react. Calvin Norris put me down very gently and went right back to his position. I don't think anyone else noticed. Jimmy Fullenwilder, the only one who would have been startled, had gotten a little ahead.
Our team found nothing: not a shred of cloth or flesh, not a boot print or panther print, not a smell or a trace or a drop of blood. One of the other teams yelled over that they'd found a chewed-up possum corpse, but there was no immediate way to tell what had caused its death.
The going got tougher. My brother had hunted in these woods, allowed some friends of his to hunt there, but otherwise had not interfered with nature in the twenty acres around the house. That meant he hadn't cleared away fallen branches or pulled up seedlings, which compounded the difficulty of our movement.
My team happened to be the one that found his deer stand, which he and Hoyt had built together about five years ago.
Though the stand faced a natural clearing running roughly north-south, the woods were so thick around it that we were temporarily out of sight of the other searchers, which I would not have thought possible in winter, with the branches bare. Every now and then a human voice, raised in a distant call, would make its way through the pines and the bushes and the branches of the oaks and gum trees, but the sense of isolation was overwhelming.
Felton Norris swarmed up the deer stand ladder in such an unhuman way that I had to distract Reverend Fullenwilder by asking him if he'd mind praying in church for my brother's return. Of course, he told me he already had, and furthermore, he notified me he'd be glad to see me in his church on Sunday to add my voice to those lifted in prayer. Though I missed a lot of churchgoing because of my job, and when I did go I attended the Methodist church (which Jimmy Fullenwilder well knew), I pretty much had to say yes. Just then Felton called down that the stand was empty. "Come down careful, this ladder's not too steady," Calvin called back, and I realized Calvin was warning Felton to look human when he descended. As the shifter descended slowly and clumsily, I met Calvin's eyes, and he looked amused.
Bored by the wait at the foot of the deer stand, Crystal had flitted ahead of our point man, the Reverend Fullenwilder, something Kevin had warned us not to do. Just as I was thinking, I can't see her, I heard her scream.
In the space of a couple of seconds, Calvin and Felton had bounded over the clearing toward the sound of Crystal's voice, and the Reverend Jimmy and I were left to run behind. I hoped the agitation of the moment would obscure his perception of the way Calvin and Felton were moving. Up ahead of us, we heard an indescribable noise, a loud chorus of squeals and frenetic movement coming from the undergrowth. Then a hoarse shout and another shrill scream came to us muffled by the cold thickness of the woods.
We heard yelling from all directions as the other searchers responded, hurrying toward the alarming sounds.
My heel caught in a snarl of vines and I went down, ass over teacup. Though I rolled to my feet and began running again, Jimmy Fullenwilder had gotten ahead of me, and as I plunged through a stand of low pines, each no bigger around than a mailing tube, I heard the boom of the rifle.
Oh, my God, I thought. Oh, my God,
The little clearing was filled with blood and tumult. A huge animal was thrashing in the dead leaves, spraying scarlet drops on everything in its vicinity. But it was no panther. For the second time in my life, I was seeing a razorback hog, that ferocious feral pig that grows to a huge size.
In the time it took me to realize what was in front of me, the sow collapsed and died. She reeked of pig and blood. A crashing and squealing in the undergrowth around us indicated she hadn't been alone when Crystal stumbled upon her.
But not all the blood was the sow's.
Crystal Norris was swearing a blue streak as she sat with her back against an old oak, her hands clamped over her gored thigh. Her jeans were wet with her own blood, and her uncle and her—well, I didn't know what relationship Felton bore to Crystal, but I was sure there was one—kinsman were bending over her. Jimmy Fullenwilder was standing with his rifle still pointed at the beast, and he had an expression on his face that I can only describe as shell-shocked.
"How is she?" I asked the two men, and only Calvin looked up. His eyes had gone very peculiar, and I realized they'd gotten more yellow, rounder. He cast an unmistakable look at the huge carcass, a look of sheer desire. There was blood around his mouth. There was a patch of fur on the back of his hand, kind of buff-colored. He must make a strange-looking wolf. I pointed silently at this evidence of his nature, and he shivered with longing as he nodded acknowledgment. I yanked a handkerchief out of my coat pocket, spat on it,
and wiped his face with it before Jimmy Fullenwilder could fall out of his fascination with his kill and observe his strange companions. When Calvin's mouth wasn't stained anymore, I knotted the handkerchief around his hand to conceal the fur.
Felton seemed to be normal, until I observed what was at the end of his arms. They weren't really hands anymore . . . but not really wolf paws, either. They were something very odd, something big and flat and clawed.
I couldn't read the men's thoughts, but I could feel their desires, and most of those desires had to do with raw red pig meat, and lots of it. Felton actually rocked back and forth once or twice with the force of his desire. Their silent struggle was painful to endure, even secondhand. I felt the change when the two men began to force their brains into human patterns. In a few seconds, Calvin managed to speak.
"She's losing blood fast, but if we get her to the hospital she'll be all right." His voice was thick, and he spoke with an effort. Felton, his eyes still downcast, began tearing clumsily at his flannel shirt. With his hands misshapen, he couldn't manage the job, and I took it over. When Crystal's wound was bound as tightly as the makeshift bandage could compress it, the two men lifted the now white and silent Crystal and began to carry her rapidly out of the woods. The position of Felton's hands hid them from sight, thank God.
This all occurred so quickly that the other searchers converging on the clearing were just beginning to absorb what had happened, and react.
"I shot a hog," Jimmy Fullenwilder was saying, shaking his head from side to side, as Kevin and Kenya burst into the clearing from the east. "I can't believe it. It just threw her over and the other sows and little ones scattered and then the two men were on it, and then they got out of the way and I shot it in the throat." He didn't know if he was a hero or if he was in big trouble with the Department of Wildlife. He'd had more to fear than he would ever realize. Felton and Calvin had almost gone into full Were mode at the threat to Crystal and the arousal of their own hunting instincts, and the fact that they'd thrown themselves away from the pig rather than change utterly proved they were very strong, indeed. But the fact that they'd begun to change, hadn't been able to stop it, seemed to argue the opposite. The line between the two natures of some of the denizens of Hotshot seemed be growing very blurred.
In fact, there were bite marks on the hog. I was so overwhelmed with anxiety that I couldn't keep up my guard, and all the excitement of all the searchers poured into my head—all the revulsion/fear/panic at the sight of the blood, the knowledge that a searcher had been seriously injured, the envy of other hunters at Jimmy Fullenwilder's coup. It was all too much, and I wanted to get away more than I've ever wanted anything.
"Let's go. This'll be the end of the search, at least for today," Sam said at my elbow. We walked out of the woods together, very slowly. I told Maxine what had happened, and after I'd thanked her for her wonderful contribution and accepted a box of doughnuts, I drove home. Sam followed me. I was a little more myself by the time we got there.
As I unlocked the back door, it felt quite strange knowing that there was actually someone else already in the house. Was Eric conscious on some level of my footsteps on the floor above his head—or was he as dead as an ordinary dead person? But the wondering ran through my head and out the other side, because I was just too overloaded to consider it.
Sam began to make coffee. He was somewhat at home in the kitchen, as he'd dropped in a time or two when my Gran was alive, and he'd visited on other occasions.
As I hung up our coats, I said, "That was a disaster."
Sam didn't disagree.
"Not only did we not find Jason, which I truly never expected we would, but the guys from Hotshot almost got outed, and Crystal got hurt. I don't know why they thought they should be there anyway, frankly." I know it wasn't nice of me to say that, but I was with Sam, who'd seen enough of my bad side to be under no illusions.
"I talked to them before you got there. Calvin wanted to show he was willing to court you, in a Hotshot kind of way," Sam said, his voice quiet and even. "Felton is their best tracker, so he made Felton come, and Crystal just wanted to find Jason."
Instantly I felt ashamed of myself. "I'm sorry," I said, holding my head in my hands and dropping into a chair. "I'm sorry."
Sam knelt in front of me and put his hands on my knees. "You're entitled to be cranky," he said.
I bent over him and kissed the top of his head. "I don't know what I'd do without you," I said, without any thought at all.
He looked up at me, and there was a long, odd moment, when the light in the room seemed to dance and shiver. "You'd call Arlene," he said with a smile. "She'd come over with the kids, and she'd try to spike your coffee, and she'd tell you about Tack's angled dick, and she'd get you to laughing, and you'd feel better."
I blessed him for letting the moment pass. "You know, that kind of makes me curious, that bit about Tack, but it probably falls into the category of 'too much information,'" I said.
"I thought so, too, but that didn't prevent me from hearing it when she was telling Charlsie Tooten."
I poured us each a cup of coffee and put the half-empty sugar bowl within Sam's reach, along with a spoon. I glanced over at the kitchen counter to see how full the clear sugar canister was, and I noticed that the message light on the answering machine was blinking. I only had to get up and take a step to press the button. The message had been recorded at 5:01 A.M. Oh. I'd turned the phone ringer off when I'd gone to bed exhausted. Almost invariably my messages were real mundane—Arlene asking me if I'd heard a piece of gossip, Tara passing the time of day during a slow hour at the store—but this one was a real doozy.
Pam's clear voice said, "Tonight we attack the witch and her coven. The Weres have persuaded the local Wiccans to join us. We need you to bring Eric. He can fight, even if he doesn't know who he is. He will be useless to us if we can't break the spell, anyway." That Pam, ever practical. She was willing to use Eric for cannon fodder, since we might not be able to restore him to full Eric leadership mode. After a little pause, she continued, "The Weres of Shreveport are allying with vampires in battle. You can watch history being made, my telepathic friend."
The sound of the phone being put back in the cradle. The click that heralded the next message, which came in two minutes after the first.
"Thinking of that," Pam said, as if she'd never hung up, "there is the idea that your unusual ability can help us in our fight, and we want to explore that. Isn't that the right buzzword now? Explore? So get here as close to first dark as possible." She hung up again.
Click. "'Here' is 714 Parchman Avenue," Pam said. Hung up.
"How can I do that, with Jason still missing?" I asked, when it became clear Pam hadn't called again.
"You're going to sleep now," Sam said. "Come on." He pulled me to my feet, led me to my room. "You're going to take off your boots and jeans, crawl back in the bed, and take a long nap. When you get up, you'll feel better. You leave Pam's number so I can reach you. Tell the cops to call the bar if they learn anything, and I'll phone you if I hear from Bud Dearborn."
"So you think I should do this?" I was bewildered.
"No, I'd give anything if you wouldn't. But I think you have to. It's not my fight; I wasn't invited." Sam gave me a kiss on the forehead and left to go back to Merlotte's.
His attitude was kind of interesting, after all the vampire insistence (both Bill's and Eric's) that I was a possession to be guarded. I felt pretty empowered and gung-ho for about thirty seconds, until I remembered my New Year's resolution: no getting beaten up. If I went to Shreveport with Eric, then I was sure to see things I didn't want to see, learn things I didn't want to know, and get my ass whipped, too.
On the other hand, my brother Jason had made a deal with the vampires, and I had to uphold it. Sometimes I felt that my whole life had been spent stuck between a rock and a hard place. But then, lots of people had complicated lives.
I thought of Eric, a powerful vampire whose mind had been stripped clean of his identity. I thought of the carnage I'd seen in the bridal shop, the white lace and brocade speckled with dried blood and matter. I thought of poor Maria-Star, in the hospital in Shreveport. These witches were bad, and bad should be stopped; bad should be overcome. That's the American model.
It seemed kind of strange to think that I was on the side of vampires and werewolves, and that was the good side. That made me laugh a little, all to myself. Oh, yes, we good guys would save the day.
Chapter 11
Amazingly, I did sleep. I woke with Eric on the bed beside me. He was smelling me.
"Sookie, what is this?" he asked in a very quiet voice. He knew, of course, when I woke. "You smell of the woods, and you smell of shifter. And something even wilder."
I supposed the shifter he smelled was Sam. "And Were," I prompted, not wanting him to miss out on anything.
"No, not Were," he said.
I was puzzled. Calvin had lifted me over the brambles, and his scent should still have been on me.
"More than one kind of shifter," Eric said in the near-dark of my room. "What have you been doing, my lover?"
He didn't exactly sound angry, but he didn't sound happy, either. Vampires. They wrote the book on possessive.
"I was in the search party for my brother, in the woods behind his home," I said.
Eric was still for a minute. Then he wrapped his arms around me and hauled me up against him. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know you are worried."
"Let me ask you something," I said, willing to test a theory of mine.
"Of course."
"Look inside yourself, Eric. Are you really, really sorry? Worried about Jason?" Because the real Eric, in his right mind, would not have cared one little bit.
"Of course," he protested. Then, after a long moment—I wished I could see his face—he said, "Not really." He sounded surprised. "I know I should be. I should be concerned about your brother, because I love having sex with you, and I should want you to think well of me so you'll want sex, too."
You just had to like the honesty. This was the closest to the real Eric I'd seen in days.
"But you'll listen, right? If I need to talk? For the same reason?"
"Of course, my lover."
"Because you want to have sex with me."
"That, of course. But also because I find I really do . . ." He paused, as if he were about to say something outrageous. "I find I have feelings for you."
"Oh," I said into his chest, sounding as astonished as Eric had. His chest was bare, as I suspected the rest of him was. I felt the light sprinkling of curly blond hair against my cheek.
"Eric," I said, after a long pause, "I almost hate to say this, but I have feelings for you, too." There was a lot I needed to tell Eric, and we should be in the car on our way to Shreveport already. But I was taking this moment to savor this little bit of happiness.
"Not love, exactly," he said. His fingers were busy trying to find out how best to get my clothes off.
"No, but something close." I helped him. "We don't have much time, Eric," I said, reaching down, touching him, making him gasp. "Let's make it good."
"Kiss me," he said, and he wasn't talking about his mouth. "Turn this way," he whispered. "I want to kiss you, too."
It didn't take long, after all, for us to be holding each other, sated and happy.
"What's happened?" he asked. "I can tell something is frightening you."
"We have to go to Shreveport now," I said. "We're already past the time Pam said on the phone. Tonight's the night we face off against Hallow and her witches."
"Then you must stay here," he said immediately.
"No," I said gently, putting my hand on his cheek. "No, baby, I have to go with you." I didn't tell him Pam thought using me in the battle would be a good idea. I didn't tell him he was going to be used as a fighting machine. I didn't tell him I was sure someone was going to die tonight; maybe quite a few someones, human and Were and vampire. It was probably the last time I would use an endearment when I addressed Eric. It was perhaps the last time Eric would wake up in my house. One of us might not survive this night, and if we did, there was no way to know how we'd be changed.
The drive to Shreveport was silent. We'd washed up and dressed without talking much, either. At least seven times, I thought of heading back to Bon Temps, with or without Eric.
But I didn't.
Eric's skills did not include map reading, so I had to pull over to check my Shreveport map to plot our course to 714 Parchman, something I hadn't foreseen before we got to the city. (I'd somehow expected Eric to remember the directions, but of course, he didn't.)
"Your word of the day was 'annihilate,'" he told me cheerfully.
"Oh. Thanks for checking." I probably didn't sound very thankful. "You're sounding pretty excited about all this."
"Sookie, there's nothing like a good fight," he said defensively.
"That depends on who wins, I would think."
That kept him quiet for a few minutes, which was fine. I was having trouble negotiating the strange streets in the darkness, with so much on my mind. But we finally got to the right street, and the right house on that street. I had always pictured Pam and Chow living in a mansion, but the vampires had a large ranch-style house in an upper-middle-class suburb. It was a trimmed-lawn, bike-riding, lawn-sprinkling street, from what I could tell.
The light by the driveway was on at 714, and the three-car garage around at the rear was full. I drove up the slope to the concrete apron that was placed for overflow parking. I recognized Alcide's truck and the compact car that had been parked in Colonel Flood's carport.
Before we got out of my old car, Eric leaned over to kiss me. We looked at each other, his eyes wide and blue, the whites so white you could hardly look away, his golden hair neatly brushed. He'd tied it back with one of my elastic bands, a bright blue one. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a new flannel shirt.
"We could go back," he said. In the dome light of the car, his face looked hard as stone. "We could go back to your house. I can stay with you always. We can know each other's bodies in every way, night after night. I could love you." His nostrils flared, and he looked suddenly proud. "I could work. You would not be poor. I would help you."
"Sounds like a marriage," I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. But my voice was too shaky.
"Yes," he said.
And he would never be himself again. He would be a false version of Eric, an Eric cheated out of his true life. Providing our relationship (such as it was) lasted, he would stay the same; but I wouldn't.
Enough with the negative thinking, Sookie, I told myself. I would be a total idiot to pass up living with this gorgeous creature for however long. We actually had a good time together, and I enjoyed Eric's sense of humor and his company, to say nothing of his lovemaking. Now that he'd lost his memory, he was lots of uncomplicated fun.
And that was the fly in the ointment. We would have a counterfeit relationship, because this was the counterfeit Eric. I'd come full loop.
I slid out of the car with a sigh. "I'm a total idiot," I said as he came around the back of the car to walk with me to the house.
Eric didn't say anything. I guess he agreed with me.
"Hello," I called, pushing open the door after my knock brought no response. The garage door led into the laundry room and from there into the kitchen.
As you would expect in a vampire home, the kitchen was absolutely clean, because it wasn't used. This kitchen was small for a house the size of this one. I guess the real estate agent had thought it was her lucky day—her lucky night—when she'd shown it to vampires, since a real family who cooked at home would have trouble dealing with a kitchen the size of a king bed. The house had an open floor plan, so you could see over the breakfast bar into the "family" room—in this case, the main room for a mighty odd family. There were three open doorways that probably led into the formal living room, the dining room, and the bedroom area.
Right at the moment, this family room was crammed with people. I got the impression, from the glimpses of feet and arms, that more people were standing in the open doorways into the other rooms.
The vampires were there: Pam, Chow, Gerald, and at least two more I recognized from Fangtasia. The two-natured were represented by Colonel Flood, red-haired Amanda (my big fan), the teenage boy with spiked brown hair (Sid), Alcide, Culpepper, and (to my disgust) Debbie Pelt. Debbie was dressed in the height of fashion—at least her version of fashion—which seemed a little out of place for a meeting of this kind. Maybe she wanted to remind me that she had a very good job working at an advertising agency.
Oh, good. Debbie's presence made the night just about perfect.
The group I didn't recognize had to be the local witches, by the process of elimination. I assumed that the dignified woman sitting on the couch was their leader. I didn't know what her correct title would be—coven master? Mistress? She was in her sixties, and she had iron gray hair. An African American with skin the color of coffee, she had brown eyes that looked infinitely wise and also skeptical. She'd brought a pale young man with glasses, who wore pressed khakis with a striped shirt and polished loafers. He might work in Office Depot or Super One Foods in some kind of managerial position, and his kids would think that he was out bowling or attending some church meeting on this cold January night. Instead, he and the young female witch beside him were about to embark on a fight to the death.
The remaining two empty chairs were clearly intended for Eric and me.
"We expected you earlier," Pam said crisply.
"Hi, good to see you, too, thanks for coming on such short notice," I muttered. For one long moment, everyone in the room looked at Eric, waiting for him to take charge of the action, as he had for years. And Eric looked back at them blankly. The long pause began to be awkward.
"Well, let's lay this out," Pam said. All the assembled Supes turned their faces to her. Pam seemed to have taken the leadership bit between her teeth, and she was ready to run with it.
"Thanks to the Were trackers, we know the location of the building Hallow is using for her headquarters," Pam told me. She seemed to be ignoring Eric, but I sensed it was because she didn't know what else to do. Sid grinned at me; I remembered he and Emilio had tracked the killers from the bridal shop to the house. Then I realized he was showing me he'd filed his teeth to points. Ick.
I could understand the presence of the vamps, the witches, and the Weres, but why was Debbie Pelt at this meeting? She was a shifter, not a Were. The Weres had always been so snobby about the shifters, and here was one; furthermore, one out of her own territory. I loathed and distrusted her. She must have insisted on being here, and that made me trust her even less, if that was possible.
If she was so determined to join in, put Debbie in the first line of fire, would be my advice. You wouldn't have to worry about what she was doing behind your back.
My grandmother would certainly have been ashamed of my vindictiveness; but then (like Alcide) she would have found it almost impossible to believe that Debbie had really tried to kill me.
"We'll infiltrate the neighborhood slowly," Pam said. I wondered if she'd been reading a commando manual. "The witches have already broadcast a lot of magic in the area, so there aren't too many people out on the streets. Some of the Weres are already in place. We won't be so obvious. Sookie will go in first."
The assembled Supes turned their eyes to me at the same moment. That was pretty disconcerting: like being in a ring of pickup trucks at night, when they all turn on their headlights to illuminate the center.
"Why?" Alcide asked. His big hands gripped his knees. Debbie, who'd slumped down to sit on the floor beside the couch, smiled at me, knowing Alcide couldn't see her.
"Because Sookie is human," Pam pointed out. "And she's more of a natural phenomenon than a true Supe. They won't detect her."
Eric had taken my hand. He was gripping it so hard that I thought I could hear my bones grinding together. Prior to his enchantment, he would have nipped Pam's plan in the bud, or maybe he would've enthusiastically endorsed it. Now he was too cowed to comment, which he clearly wanted to do.
"What am I supposed to do when I get there?" I was proud of myself for sounding so calm and practical. I'd rather be taking a complicated drink order from a table of drunken tree-trimmers than be first in the line of battle.
"Read the minds of the witches inside while we get into position. If they detect us approaching, we lose the surprise of it, and we stand a greater chance of sustaining serious injury." When she got excited, Pam had a slight accent, though I'd never been able to figure out what it was. I thought it might just be English as it had been spoken three hundred years ago. Or whatever. "Can you count them? Is that possible?"
I thought for a second. "Yes, I can do that."
"That would be a big help, too."
"What do we do when we get in the building?" asked Sid. Jittery with the thrill of it all, he was grinning, his pointed teeth showing.
Pam looked mildly astonished. "We kill them all," she said.
Sid's grin faded. I flinched. I wasn't the only one.
Pam seemed to realize she'd said something unpalatable. "What else would we do?" she asked, genuinely amazed.
That was a stumper.
"They'll do their best to kill us," Chow pointed out. "They only made one attempt at negotiation, and it cost Eric his memory and Clancy his life. They delivered Clancy's clothes to Fangtasia this morning." People glanced away from Eric, embarrassed. He looked stricken, and I patted his hand with my free one. His grip on my right hand relaxed a little. My circulation resumed in that hand, and it tingled. That was a relief.
"Someone needs to go with Sookie," Alcide said. He glowered at Pam. "She can't go close to that house by herself."
"I'll go with her," said a familiar voice from the corner of the room, and I leaned forward, searching the faces.
"Bubba!" I said, pleased to see the vampire. Eric stared in wonder at the famous face. The glistening black hair was combed back in a pompadour, and the pouty lower lip was stretched in the trademark smile. His current keeper must have dressed him for the evening, because instead of a jumpsuit decked with rhinestones, or jeans and a T-shirt, Bubba was wearing camo.
"Pleased to see ya, Miss Sookie," Bubba said. "I'm wearing my Army duds."
"I see that. Looking good, Bubba."
"Thank you, ma'am."
Pam considered. "That might be a good idea," she said. "His, ah—the mental broadcast, the signature, you all get what I'm telling you?—is so, ah, atypical that they won't discover a vampire is near." Pam was being very tactful.
Bubba made a terrible vampire. Though stealthy and obedient, he couldn't reason very clearly, and he liked cat blood better than human blood.
"Where's Bill, Miss Sookie?" he asked, as I could have predicted he would. Bubba had always been very fond of Bill.
"He's in Peru, Bubba. That's way down in South America."
"No, I'm not," said a cool voice, and my heart flip-flopped. "I'm back." Out of an open doorway stepped my former flame.
This was just an evening for surprises. I hoped some of them would be pleasant.
Seeing Bill so unexpectedly gave me a heavier jolt than I'd figured. I'd never had an ex-boyfriend before, my life having been pretty devoid of boyfriends altogether, so I didn't have much experience in handling my emotions about being in his presence, especially with Eric gripping my hand like I was Mary Poppins and he was my charge.
Bill looked good in his khakis. He was wearing a Calvin Klein dress shirt I'd picked out for him, a muted plaid in shades of brown and gold. Not that I noticed.
"Good, we need you tonight," Pam said. Ms. Businesslike. "You'll have to tell me how the ruins were, the ones everyone talks about. You know the rest of the people here?"
Bill glanced around. "Colonel Flood," he said, nodding. "Alcide." His nod to Alcide had less cordiality. "I haven't met these new allies," he said, indicating the witches. Bill waited until the introductions were complete to ask, "What is Debbie Pelt doing here?"
I tried not to gape at having my innermost thoughts spoken aloud. My question exactly! And how did Bill know Debbie? I tried to remember if their paths had crossed in Jackson, if they'd actually met face-to-face; and I couldn't recall such a meeting, though of course Bill knew what she'd done.
"She's Alcide's woman," Pam said, in a cautious, puzzled sort of way.
I raised my eyebrows, looking at Alcide, and he turned a dusky red.
"She's here for a visit, and she decided to come along with him," Pam went on. "You object to her presence?"
"She joined in while I was being tortured in the king of Mississippi's compound," Bill said. "She enjoyed my pain."
Alcide stood, looking as shocked as I'd ever seen him. "Debbie, is this true?"
Debbie Pelt tried not to flinch, now that every eye was on her, and every eye was unfriendly. "I just happened to be visiting a Were friend who lived there, one of the guards," she said. Her voice didn't sound calm enough to match the words. "Obviously, there was nothing I could do to free you. I would have been ripped to shreds. I can't believe you remember me being there very clearly. You were certainly out of it." There was a hint of contempt in her words.
"You joined in the torture," Bill said, his voice still impersonal and all the more convincing for it. "You liked the pincers best."
"You didn't tell anyone he was there?" Alcide asked Debbie. His voice was not impersonal at all. It held grief, and anger, and betrayal. "You knew someone from another kingdom was being tortured at Russell's, and you didn't do anything?"
"He's a vamp, for God's sake," Debbie said, sounding no more than irritated. "When I found out later that you'd been taking Sookie around to hunt for him so you could get your dad out of hock with the vamps, I felt terrible. But at the time, it was just vamp business. Why should I interfere?"
"But why would any decent person join in torture?" Alcide's voice was strained.
There was a long silence.
"And of course, she tried to kill Sookie," Bill said. He still managed to sound quite dispassionate.
"I didn't know you were in the trunk of the car when I pushed her in! I didn't know I was closing her in with a hungry vampire!" Debbie protested.
I don't know about anyone else, but I wasn't convinced for a second.
Alcide bent his rough black head to look down into his hands as if they held an oracle. He raised his face to look at Debbie. He was a man unable to dodge the bullet of truth any longer. I felt sorrier for him than I'd felt for anyone in a long, long time.
"I abjure you," Alcide said. Colonel Flood winced, and young Sid, Amanda, and Culpepper looked both astonished and impressed, as if this were a ceremony they'd never thought to witness. "I see you no longer. I hunt with you no longer. I share flesh with you no longer."
This was obviously a ritual of great significance among the two-natured. Debbie stared at Alcide, aghast at his pronouncement. The witches murmured to one another, but otherwise the room remained silent. Even Bubba was wide-eyed, and most things went right over his shiny head.
"No," Debbie said in a strangled voice, waving a hand in front of her, as if she could erase what had passed. "No, Alcide!"
But he stared right through her. He saw her no longer.
Even though I loathed Debbie, her face was painful to see. Like most of the others present, as soon as I could, I looked anywhere else but at the shifter. Facing Hallow's coven seemed like a snap compared to witnessing this episode.
Pam seemed to agree. "All right then," she said briskly. "Bubba will lead the way with Sookie. She will do her best to do whatever it is that she does—and she'll signal us." Pam pondered for a moment. "Sookie, a recap: We need to know the number of people in the house, whether or not they are all witches, and any other tidbit you can glean. Send Bubba back to us with whatever information you find and stand guard in case the situation changes while we move up. Once we're in position, you can retire to the cars, where you'll be safer."
I had no problem with that whatsoever. In a crowd of witches, vampires, and Weres, I was no kind of combatant.
"This sounds okay, if I have to be involved at all," I said. A tug on my hand drew my eyes to Eric's. He looked pleased at the prospect of fighting, but there was still uncertainty in his face and posture. "But what will happen to Eric?"
"What do you mean?"
"If you go in and kill everyone, who'll un-curse him?" I turned slightly to face the experts, the Wiccan contingent. "If Hallow's coven dies, do their spells die with them? Or will Eric still be without a memory?"
"The spell must be removed," said the oldest witch, the calm African-American woman. "If it is removed by the one who laid it in the first place, that's best. It can be lifted by someone else, but it will take more time, more effort, since we don't know what went into the making of the spell."
I was trying to avoid looking at Alcide, because he was still shaking with the violence of the emotions that had led him to cast out Debbie. Though I hadn't known such an action was possible, my first reaction was to feel a little bitter about his not casting her out right after I'd told him a month ago she'd tried to kill me. However, he could have told himself I'd been mistaken, that it hadn't been Debbie I'd sensed near me before she'd pushed me into the Cadillac's trunk.
As far as I knew, this was the first time Debbie had admitted she had done it. And she'd protested she hadn't known Bill was in the trunk, unconscious. But shoving a person into a car trunk and shutting the lid was no kind of amusing prank, right?
Maybe Debbie had been lying to herself some, too.
I needed to listen to what was happening now. I'd have lots of time to think about the human ego's capacity to deceive itself, if I survived the night.
Pam was saying, "So you're thinking we need to save Hallow? To take the spell off Eric?" She didn't sound happy at the prospect. I swallowed my painful feelings and made myself listen. This was no time to start brooding.
"No," the witch said instantly. "Her brother, Mark. There is too much danger in leaving Hallow alive. She must die as quickly as we can reach her."
"What will you be doing?" Pam asked. "How will you help us in this attack?"
"We will be outside, but within two blocks," the man said. "We'll be winding spells around the building to make the witches weak and indecisive. And we have a few tricks up our sleeves." He and the young woman, who had on a huge amount of black eye makeup, looked pretty pleased at a chance to use those tricks.
Pam nodded as if winding spells was sufficient aid. I thought waiting outside with a flamethrower would have been better.
All this time, Debbie Pelt had been standing as if she'd been paralyzed. Now she began to pick her way through to the back door. Bubba leaped up to grab her arm. She hissed at him, but he didn't falter, though I would have.
None of the Weres reacted to this occurrence. It really was as though she were invisible to them.
"Let me leave. I'm not wanted," she said to Bubba, fury and misery fighting for control of her face.
Bubba shrugged. He just held on to her, waiting for Pam's judgment.
"If we let you go, you might run to the witches and let them know we are coming," Pam said. "That would be of a piece with your character, apparently."
Debbie had the gall to look outraged. Alcide looked as if he were watching the Weather Channel.
"Bill, you take charge of her," Chow suggested. "If she turns on us, kill her."
"That sounds wonderful," Bill said, smiling in a fangy way.
After a few more arrangements about transportation, and some more quiet consultation among the witches, who were facing a completely different kind of fight, Pam said, "All
right, let's go." Pam, who looked more than ever like Alice in Wonderland in her pale pink sweater and darker pink slacks, stood up and checked her lipstick in the mirror on the wall close to where I'd been sitting. She gave her reflection an experimental smile, as I've seen women do a thousand times.
"Sookie, my friend," she said, turning to aim the smile at me. "Tonight is a great night."
"It is?"
"Yes." Pam put her arm around my shoulders. "We defend what is ours! We fight for the restoration of our leader!" She grinned past me at Eric. "Tomorrow, Sheriff, you will be back at your desk at Fangtasia. You'll be able to go to your own house, your own bedroom. We've kept it clean for you."
I checked Eric's reaction. I'd never heard Pam address Eric by his title before. Though the head vampire for each section was called a sheriff, and I should have been used to that by now, I couldn't help but picture Eric in a cowboy outfit with a star pinned to his chest, or (my favorite) in black tights as the villainous sheriff of Nottingham. I found it interesting, too, that he didn't live here with Pam and Chow.
Eric gave Pam such a serious look that the grin faded right off her face. "If I die tonight," he said, "pay this woman the money that was promised her." He gripped my shoulder. I was just draped in vampires.
"I swear," Pam said. "Chow and Gerald will know, too."
Eric said, "Do you know where her brother is?"
Startled, I stepped away from Pam.
Pam looked equally taken aback. "No, Sheriff."
"It occurred to me that you might have taken him hostage to ensure she didn't betray me."
The idea had never crossed my mind, but it should have. Obviously, I had a lot to learn about being devious.
"I wish I'd thought of that," Pam said admiringly, echoing my thoughts with her own twist. "I wouldn't have minded spending some time with Jason as my hostage." I couldn't understand it: Jason's allure just seemed universal. "But I didn't take him," Pam said. "If we get through this, Sookie, I'll look for him myself. Could it be Hallow's witches have him?"
"It's possible," I said. "Claudine said she didn't see any hostages, but she also said there were rooms she didn't look into. Though I don't know why they would have taken Jason, unless Hallow knows I have Eric? Then they might have used him to make me talk, just the way you would have used him to make me keep silent. But they haven't approached me. You can't use blackmail on someone who doesn't know anything about the hold you have on them."
"Nonetheless, I'll remind all those who are going to enter the building to watch out for him," Pam said.
"How is Belinda?" I asked. "Have you made arrangements to pay her hospital bills?"
She looked at me blankly.
"The waitress who was hurt defending Fangtasia," I reminded her, a little dryly. "You remember? The friend of Ginger, who died?"
"Of course," said Chow, from his place against the wall. "She is recovering. We sent her flowers and candy," he told Pam. Then he focused on me. "Plus, we have a group insurance policy." He was proud as a new father about that.
Pam looked pleased with Chow's report. "Good," she said. "You have to keep them happy. Are we ready to go?"
I shrugged. "I guess so. No point in waiting."
Bill stepped in front of me as Chow and Pam consulted about which vehicle to take. Gerald had gone out to make sure everyone was on the same page as far as the plan of battle.
"How was Peru?" I asked Bill. I was very conscious of Eric, a huge blond shadow at my elbow.
"I made a lot of notes for my book," Bill said. "South America hasn't been good to vampires as a whole, but Peru is not as hostile as the other countries, and I was able to talk to a few vampires I hadn't heard of before." For months, Bill had been compiling a vampire directory at the behest of the queen of Louisiana, who thought having such an item would be very handy. Her opinion was certainly not the universal opinion of the vampire community, some of whom had very strong objections to being outed, even among their own kind. I guess secrecy could be almost impossible to give up, if you'd clung to it for centuries.
There were vampires who still lived in graveyards, hunting every night, refusing to recognize the change in their status; it was like the stories about the Japanese soldiers who'd held out on Pacific islands long after World War II was over.
"Did you get to see those ruins you talked about?"
"Machu Picchu? Yes, I climbed up to them by myself. It was a great experience."
I tried to picture Bill going up a mountain at night, seeing the ruins of an ancient civilization in the moonlight. I couldn't even imagine what that must have been like. I'd never been out of the country. I hadn't often been out of the state, for that matter.
"This is Bill, your former mate?" Eric's voice sounded a little . . . strained.
"Ah, this is—well, yes, sort of," I said unhappily. The "former" was correct; the "mate" was a little off.
Eric placed both his hands on my shoulders and moved in close to me. I had no doubt he was staring over the top of my head at Bill, who was staring right back. Eric might as well have stuck a SHE'S MINE sign on top of my head. Arlene had told me that she loved moments like this, when her ex saw plainly that someone else valued her even if he didn't. All I can say is, my taste in satisfaction runs completely different. I hated it. I felt awkward and ridiculous.
"You really don't remember me," Bill said to Eric, as if he'd doubted it up until this moment. My suspicion was confirmed when he told me, as if Eric wasn't standing there, "Truly, I thought this was an elaborate scheme on Eric's part to stay in your house so he could talk his way into your bed."
Since the same thought had occurred to me, though I'd discarded it pretty quickly, I couldn't protest; but I could feel myself turning red.
"We need to get in the car," I told Eric, turning to catch a glimpse of his face. It was rock hard and expressionless, which usually signaled he was in a dangerous state of mind. But he came with me when I moved toward the door, and the whole house slowly emptied its inhabitants into the narrow suburban street. I wondered what the neighbors thought. Of course, they knew the house was inhabited by vampires—no one around during the day, all the yard work done by human hirelings, the people who came and went at night being so very pale. This sudden activity had to invite neighborhood attention.
I drove in silence, Eric beside me on the front seat. Every now and then he reached over to touch me. I don't know who Bill had caught a ride with, but I was glad it wasn't me. The testosterone level would have been too high in the car, and I might have smothered.
Bubba was sitting in the backseat, humming to himself. It sounded like "Love Me Tender."
"This is a crappy car," Eric said, out of the blue, as far as I was concerned.
"Yes," I agreed.
"Are you afraid?"
"I am."
"If this whole thing works, will you still see me?"
"Sure," I said, to make him happy. I was convinced that after this confrontation, nothing would be the same. But without the true Eric's conviction of his own prowess and intelligence and ruthlessness, this Eric was pretty shaky. He'd be up for the actual battle, but right now he needed a boost.
Pam had plotted out where everyone should park, to prevent Hallow's coven from becoming alarmed by the sudden appearance of a lot of cars. We had a map with our spot marked on it. That turned out to be an E-Z Mart on the corner of a couple of larger roads in a down-sliding area that was changing over from residential to commercial. We parked in the most out-of-the-way corner the E-Z Mart afforded. Without further discussion, we set out to our appointed locations.
About half the houses on the quiet street had real-estate signs in the front lawn, and the ones that remained in private hands were not well maintained. Cars were as battered as mine, and big bare patches indicated that the grass wasn't fertilized or watered in the summer. Every lighted window seemed to show the flickering of a television screen.
I was glad it was winter so the people who lived here were all inside. Two white vampires and a blond woman would excite comment, if not aggression, in this neighborhood. Plus, one of the vampires was pretty recognizable, despite the rigors of his changeover—which was why Bubba was almost always kept out of sight.
Soon we were at the corner where Eric was supposed to part from us so he could rendezvous with the other vampires. I would have continued on to my appointed post without a word; by now I was keyed up to such a pitch of tension I felt I could vibrate if you tapped me with a finger. But Eric wasn't content with a silent separation. He gripped my arms and kissed me for all he was worth, and believe me, that was plenty.
Bubba made a sound of disapproval. "You're not supposed to be kissing on anybody else, Miss Sookie," he said. "Bill said it was okay, but I don't like it."
After one more second, Eric released me. "I'm sorry if we offended you," he said coldly. He looked back down at me. "I'll see you later, my lover," he said very quietly.
I laid my hand against his cheek. "Later," I said, and I turned and walked away with Bubba at my heels.
"You ain't mad at me, are you, Miss Sookie?" he asked anxiously.
"No," I said. I made myself smile at him, since I knew he could see me far more clearly than I could see him. It was a cold night, and though I was wearing my coat, it didn't seem to be as warm as it used to be. My bare hands were quivering with cold, and my nose felt numb. I could just detect a whiff of wood smoke from a fireplace, and automobile exhaust, and gasoline, and oil, and all the other car odors that combine to make City Smell.
But there was another smell permeating the neighborhood, an aroma that indicated this neighborhood was contaminated by more than urban blight. I sniffed, and the odor curled through the air in almost visible flourishes. After a moment's thought, I realized this must be the smell of magic, thick and stomach-clenching. Magic smells like I imagine a bazaar in some exotic foreign country might. It reeks of the strange, the different. The scent of a lot of magic can be quite overwhelming. Why weren't the residents complaining to the police about it? Couldn't everyone pick up on that odor?
"Bubba, do you smell something unusual?" I asked in a very low voice. A dog or two barked as we walked past in the black night, but they quickly quieted when they caught the scent of vampire. (To them, I guess, Bubba was the something unusual.) Dogs are almost always frightened of vampires, though their reaction to Weres and shifters is more unpredictable.
I found myself convinced I wanted nothing more than to go back to the car and leave. It was a conscious effort to make my feet move in the correct direction.
"Yeah, I sure do," he whispered back. "Someone's been laying some spells. Stay-away magic." I didn't know if the Wiccans on our side, or the witches on Hallow's, had been responsible for this pervasive piece of craft, but it was effective.
The night seemed almost unnaturally silent. Maybe three cars passed us as we walked the maze of suburban streets. Bubba and I saw no other pedestrians, and the sense of
ominous isolation grew. The stay-away intensified as we came closer to what we were supposed to stay away from.
The darkness between the pools of light below the street-lamps seemed darker, and the light didn't seem to reach as far. When Bubba took my hand, I didn't pull away. My feet seemed to drag at each step.
I'd caught a whiff of this smell before, at Fangtasia. Maybe the Were tracker had had an easier job than I'd thought.
"We're there, Miss Sookie," Bubba said, his voice just a quiet thread in the night. We'd come around a corner. Since I knew there was a spell, and I knew I could keep walking, I did; but if I'd been a resident of the area, I would have found an alternative route, and I wouldn't have thought twice about it. The impulse to avoid this spot was so strong that I wondered if the people who lived on this block had been able to come home from their jobs. Maybe they were eating out, going to movies, drinking in bars—anything to avoid returning to their homes. Every house on the street looked suspiciously dark and untenanted.
Across the road, and at the opposite end of the block, was the center of the magic.
Hallow's coven had found a good place to hole up: a business up for lease, a large building that had held a combination florist shop-bakery. Minnie's Flowers and Cakes stood in a lonely position, the largest store in a strip of three that had, one by one, faded and gone out like flames on a candelabra. The building had apparently been empty for years. The big plate-glass windows were plastered with posters for events long past and political candidates long since defeated. Plywood nailed over the glass doors was proof that vandals had broken in more than once.
Even in the winter chill, weeds pushed up through cracks in the parking area. A big Dumpster stood to the right side of the parking lot. I viewed it from across the street, getting as much of a picture of the outside as I could before closing my eyes to concentrate on my other senses. I took a moment to be rueful.
If you'd asked me, I would've had a hard time tracing the steps that had led me to this dangerous place at this dangerous time. I was on the edges of a battle in which both sides were pretty dubious. If I'd fallen in with Hallow's witches first, I would probably have been convinced that the Weres and the vampires deserved to be eradicated.
At this time a year ago, no one in the world really understood what I was, or cared. I was just Crazy Sookie, the one with the wild brother, a woman others pitied and avoided, to
varying degrees. Now here I was, on a freezing street in Shreveport, gripping the hand of a vampire whose face was legendary and whose brain was mush. Was this betterment?
And I was here not for amusement, or improvement, but to reconnoiter for a bunch of supernatural creatures, gathering information on a group of homicidal, blood-drinking, shape-changing witches.
I sighed, I hoped inaudibly. Oh, well. At least no one had hit me.
My eyes closed, and I dropped my shields and reached out with my mind to the building across the street.
Brains, busy busy busy. I was startled at the bundle of impressions I was receiving. Maybe the absence of other humans in the vicinity, or the overwhelming pervasion of magic, was responsible; but some factor had sharpened my other sense to the point of pain. Almost stunned by the flow of information, I realized I had to sort through it and organize it. First, I counted brains. Not literally ("One temporal lobe, two temporal lobes . . ." ), but as a thought cluster. I came up with fifteen. Five were in the front room, which had been the showroom of the store, of course. One was in the smallest space, which was most likely the bathroom, and the rest were in the third and largest room, which lay to the rear. I figured it had been the work area.
Everyone in the building was awake. A sleeping brain still gives me a low mumble of a thought or two, in dreaming, but it's not the same as a waking brain. It's like the difference between a dog twitching in its sleep and an alert puppy.
To get as much information as possible, I had to get closer. I had never attempted to pick through a group to get details as specific as guilt or innocence, and I wasn't even sure that was possible. But if any of the people in the building were not evil witches, I didn't want them to be in the thick of what was to come.
"Closer," I breathed to Bubba. "But under cover."
"Yes'm," he whispered back. "You gonna keep your eyes closed?"
I nodded, and he led me very carefully across the street and into the shadow of the Dumpster that stood about five yards south of the building. I was glad it was cold, because that kept the garbage smell at an acceptable level. The ghosts of the scents of doughnuts and blossoms lay on top of the funk of spoiled things and old diapers that passersby had tossed into the handy receptacle. It didn't blend happily with the magic smell.
I adjusted, blocked out the assault on my nose, and began listening. Though I'd gotten better at this, it was still like trying to hear twelve phone conversations at once. Some of them were Weres, too, which complicated matters. I could only get bits and pieces.
. . . hope that's not a vaginal infection I feel coming on . . .
She won't listen to me, she doesn't think men can do the job.
If I turned her into a toad, who could tell the difference?
. . . wish we'd gotten some diet Coke . . .
I'll find that damn vamp and kill him . . .
Mother of the Earth, listen to my pleas.
I'm in too deep . . .
I better get a new nail file.
This was not decisive, but no one had been thinking, "Oh, these demonic witches have trapped me, won't somebody help?" or "I hear the vampires approaching!" or anything dramatic like that. This sounded like a band of people who knew each other, were at least relaxed in each other's company, and therefore held the same goals. Even the one who was praying was not in any state of urgency or need. I hoped Hallow wouldn't sense the crush of my mind, but everyone I'd touched had seemed preoccupied.
"Bubba," I said, just a little louder than a thought, "you go tell Pam there are fifteen people in there, and as far as I can tell, they're all witches."
"Yes'm."
"You remember how to get to Pam?"
"Yes'm."
"So you can let go my hand, okay?"
"Oh. Okay."
"Be silent and careful," I whispered.
And he was gone. I crouched in the shadow that was darker than the night, beside the smells and cold metal, listening to the witches. Three brains were male, the rest female. Hallow was in there, because one of the women was looking at her and thinking of her . . .
dreading her, which kind of made me uneasy. I wondered where they'd parked their cars—unless they flew around on broomsticks, ha ha. Then I wondered about something that should already have crossed my mind.
If they were so darn wary and dangerous, where were their sentries?
At that moment, I was seized from behind.
Chapter 12
"Who are you?" asked a thin voice.
Since she had one hand clapped over my mouth and the other was holding a knife to my neck, I couldn't answer. She seemed to grasp that after a second, because she told me, "We're going in," and began to push me toward the back of the building.
I couldn't have that. If she'd been one of the witches in the building, one of the blood-drinking witches, I couldn't have gotten away with this, but she was a plain old witch, and she hadn't watched Sam break up as many bar fights as I had. With both hands, I reached up and grabbed her knife wrist, and I twisted it as hard as I could while I hit her hard with my lower body. Over she went, onto the filthy cold pavement, and I landed right on top of her, pounding her hand against the ground until she released the knife. She was sobbing, the will seeping out of her.
"You're a lousy lookout," I said to Holly, keeping my voice low.
"Sookie?" Holly's big eyes peered out from under a knit watch cap. She'd dressed for utility tonight, but she still had on bright pink lipstick.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"They told me they'd get my boy if I didn't help them."
I felt sick. "How long have you been helping them? Before I came to your apartment, asking for help? How long?" I shook her as hard as I could.
"When she came to the bar with her brother, she knew there was another witch there. And she knew it wasn't you or Sam, after she'd talked to you. Hallow can do anything. She knows everything. Late that night, she and Mark came to my apartment. They'd been in a fight; they were all messed up, and they were mad. Mark held me down while Hallow punched me. She liked that. She saw my picture of my son; she took it and said she could curse him long distance, all the way from Shreveport—make him run out in the traffic or load his daddy's gun. . . ." Holly was crying by now. I didn't blame her. It made me sick to think of it, and he wasn't even my child. "I had to say I'd help her," Holly whimpered.
"Are there others like you in there?"
"Forced to do this? A few of them."
That made some thoughts I'd heard more understandable.
"And Jason? He in there?" Though I'd looked at all three of the male brains in the building, I still had to ask.
"Jason is a Wiccan? For real?" She pulled off the watch cap and ran her fingers through her hair.
"No, no, no. Is she holding him hostage?"
"I haven't seen him. Why on earth would Hallow have Jason?"
I'd been fooling myself all along. A hunter would find my brother's remains someday: it's always hunters, or people walking their dogs, isn't it? I felt a falling away beneath my feet, as if the ground had literally dropped out from under me, but I called myself back to the here and now, away from emotions I couldn't afford to feel until I was in a safer place.
"You have to get out of here," I said in the lowest voice I could manage. "You have to get out of this area now."
"She'll get my son!"
"I guarantee she won't."
Holly seemed to read something in the dim view she had of my face. "I hope you kill them all," she said as passionately as you can in a whisper. "The only ones worth saving are Parton and Chelsea and Jane. They got blackmailed into this just like I did. Normally, they're just Wiccans who like to live real quiet, like me. We don't want to do no one no harm."
"What do they look like?"
"Parton's a guy about twenty-five, brown hair, short, birthmark on his cheek. Chelsea is about seventeen, her hair's dyed that bright red. Jane, um, well—Jane's just an old woman, you know? White hair, pants, blouse with flowers on it. Glasses." My grandmother would have reamed Holly for lumping all old women together, but God bless her, she wasn't around anymore, and I didn't have the time.
"Why didn't Hallow put one of her toughest people out here on guard duty?" I asked, out of sheer curiosity.
"They got a big ritual spell thing set up for tonight. I can't believe the stay-away spell didn't work on you. You must be resistant." Then Holly whispered, with a little rill of laughter in her voice, "Plus, none of 'em wanted to get cold."
"Go on, get out of here," I said almost inaudibly, and helped her up. "It doesn't matter where you parked your car, go north out of here." In case she didn't know which direction was north, I pointed.
Holly took off, her Nikes making almost no sound on the cracked sidewalk. Her dull dyed black hair seemed to soak up the light from the streetlamp as she passed beneath it. The smell around the house, the smell of magic, seemed to intensify. I wondered what to do now. Somehow I had to make sure that the three local Wiccans within the dilapidated building, the ones who'd been forced to serve Hallow, wouldn't be harmed. I couldn't think of a way in hell to do that. Could I even save one of them?
I had a whole collection of half thoughts and abortive impulses in the next sixty seconds. They all led to a dead end.
If I ran inside and yelled, "Parton, Chelsea, Jane—out!" that would alert the coven to the impending attack. Some of my friends—or at least my allies—would die.
If I hung around and tried to tell the vampires that three of the people in the building were innocent, they would (most likely) ignore me. Or, if a bolt of mercy struck them, they'd have to save all the witches and then cull the innocent ones out, which would give the coven witches time to counterattack. Witches didn't need physical weapons.
Too late, I realized I should have kept a hold of Holly and used her as my entree into the building. But endangering a frightened mother was not a good option, either.
Something large and warm pressed against my side. Eyes and teeth gleamed in the city's night light. I almost screamed until I recognized the wolf as Alcide. He was very large. The silver fur around his eyes made the rest of his coat seem even darker.
I put an arm across his back. "There are three in there who mustn't die," I said. "I don't know what to do."
Since he was a wolf, Alcide didn't know what to do, either. He looked into my face. He whined, just a little. I was supposed to be back at the cars by now; but here I was, smack in the danger zone. I could feel movement in the dark all around me. Alcide slunk away to his appointed position at the rear door of the building.
"What are you doing here?" Bill said furiously, though it sounded strange corning out in a tiny thread of a whisper. "Pam told you to leave once you'd counted."
"Three in there are innocent," I whispered back. "They're locals. They were forced."
Bill said something under his breath, and it wasn't a happy something.
I passed along the sketchy descriptions Holly had given me.
I could feel the tension in Bill's body, and then Debbie joined us in our foxhole. What was she thinking, to pack herself in so closely with the vampire and the human who hated her most?
"I told you to stay back," Bill said, and his voice was frightening.
"Alcide abjured me," she told me, just as if I hadn't been there when it happened.
"What did you expect?" I was exasperated at her timing and her wounded attitude. Hadn't she ever heard of consequences?
"I have to do something to earn back his trust."
She'd come to the wrong shop, if she wanted to buy some self-respect.
"Then help me save the three in there who are innocent." I recounted my problem again. "Why haven't you changed into your animal?"
"Oh, I can't," she said bitterly. "I've been abjured. I can't change with Alcide's pack anymore. They have license to kill me, if I do."
"What did you shift into, anyway?"
"Lynx."
That was appropriate.
"Come on," I said. I began to wriggle toward the building. I loathed this woman, but if she could be of use to me, I had to ally with her.
"Wait, I'm supposed to go to the back door with the Were," Bill hissed. "Eric's already back there."
"So go!"
I sensed that someone else was at my back and risked a quick glance to see that it was Pam. She smiled at me, and her fangs were out, so that was a little unnerving.
Maybe if the witches inside hadn't been involved in a ritual, and hadn't been relying on their less-than-dedicated sentry and their magic, we wouldn't have made it to the door undetected. But fortune favored us for those few minutes. We got to the front door of the building, Pam and Debbie and I, and there met up with the young Were, Sid. I could recognize him even in his wolf body. Bubba was with him.
I was struck with a sudden inspiration. I moved a few feet away with Bubba.
"Can you run back to the Wiccans, the ones on our side? You know where they are?" I whispered.
Bubba nodded his head vigorously.
"You tell them there are three local Wiccans inside who're being forced into this. Ask if they can make up some spell to get the three innocent ones to stand out."
"I'll tell them, Miss Sookie. They're real sweet to me."
"Good fella. Be quick, be quiet."
He nodded, and was gone into the darkness.
The smell around the building was intensifying to such a degree that I was having trouble breathing. The air was so permeated with scent, I was reminded of passing a candle shop in a mall.
Pam said, "Where have you sent Bubba?"
"Back to our Wiccans. They need to make three innocent people stand out somehow so we won't kill "em."
"But he has to come back now. He has to break down the door for me!"
"But . . ." I was disconcerted at Pam's reaction. "He can't go in without an invitation, like you."
"Bubba is brain damaged, degraded. He's not altogether a true vampire. He can enter without an express invitation."
I gaped at Pam. "Why didn't you tell me?" She just raised her eyebrows. When I thought back, it was true that I could remember at least twice that Bubba had entered dwellings without an invitation. I'd never put two and two together.
"So I'll have to be the first through the door," I said, more matter-of-factly than I was really feeling. "Then I invite you all in?"
"Yes. Your invitation will be enough. The building doesn't belong to them."
"Should we do this now?"
Pam gave an almost inaudible snort. She was smiling in the glow of the streetlight, suddenly exhilarated. "You waiting for an engraved invite?"
Lord save me from sarcastic vampires. "You think Bubba's had enough time to get to the Wiccans?"
"Sure. Let's nail some witch butt," she said happily. I could tell the fate of the local Wiccans was very low on her list of priorities. Everyone seemed to be looking forward to this but me. Even the young Were was showing a lot of fang.
"I kick, you go in," Pam said. She gave me a quick peck on the cheek, utterly surprising me.
I thought, I so don't want to be here.
Then I got up from my crouch, stood behind Pam, and watched in awe while she cocked a leg and kicked with the force of four or five mules. The lock shattered, the door sprang inward while the old wood nailed over it splintered and cracked, and I leaped inside and screamed "Come in!" to the vampire behind me and the ones at the back door. For an odd moment, I was in the lair of the witches by myself, and they'd all turned to look at me in utter astonishment.
The room was full of candles and people sitting on cushions on the floor; during the time we'd waited outside, all the others in the building seemed to have come into this front room, and they were sitting cross-legged in a circle, each with a candle burning before her, and a bowl, and a knife.
Of the three I'd try to save, "old woman" was easiest to recognize. There was only one white-haired woman in the circle. She was wearing bright pink lipstick, a little skewed and smeared, and there was dried blood on her cheek. I grabbed her arm and pushed her into a corner, while all about me was chaos. There were only three human men in the room. Hallow's brother, Mark, now being attacked by a pack of wolves, was one of them. The second male was a middle-aged man with concave cheeks and suspicious black hair, and he not only was muttering some kind of spell but pulling a switchblade from the jacket lying on the floor to his right. He was too far away for me to do anything about it; I had to rely on the others to protect themselves. Then I spotted the third man, birthmark on cheek—must be Parton. He was cowering with his hands over his head. I knew how he felt.
I grabbed his arm and pulled up, and he came up punching, of course. But I wasn't having any of that, no one was going to hit me, so I aimed my fist through his ineffectually flailing arms and got him right on the nose. He shrieked, adding another layer of noise to the
already cacophonous room, and I yanked him over to the same corner where I'd stashed Jane. Then I saw that the older woman and the young man were both shining. Okay, the Wiccans had come through with a spell and it was working, though just a tad late. Now I had to find a shining young woman with dyed red hair, the third local.
But my luck ran out then; hers already had. She was shining, but she was dead. Her throat had been torn out by one of the wolves: one of ours, or one of theirs, it didn't really matter.
I scrambled though the melee back to the corner and seized both of the surviving Wiccans by the arm. Debbie Pelt came rushing up. "Get out of here," I said to them. "Find the other Wiccans out there, or go home now. Walk, get a cab, whatever."
"It's a bad neighborhood out there," quavered Jane.
I stared at her. "And this isn't?" The last I saw of the two, Debbie was pointing and giving them instructions. She had stepped out the doorway with them. I was about to take off after them, since I wasn't supposed to be here anyway, when one of the Were witches snapped at my leg. Its teeth missed flesh but snagged my pants leg, and that was enough to yank me back. I stumbled and nearly fell to the floor, but managed to grasp the doorjamb in time to regain my feet. At that moment, the second wave of Weres and vamps came through from the back room, and the wolf darted off to meet the new assault from the rear.
The room was full of flying bodies and spraying blood and screams.
The witches were fighting for all they were worth, and the ones who could shift had done so. Hallow had changed, and she was a snarling mass of snapping teeth. Her brother was trying to work some kind of magic, which required him to be in his human form, and he was trying to hold off the Weres and the vampires long enough to complete the spell.
He was chanting something, he and the concave-cheeked man, even as Mark Stonebrook drove a fist into Eric's stomach.
A heavy mist began to crawl through the room. The witches, who were fighting with knives or wolf teeth, got the idea, and those who could speak began to add to whatever Mark was saying. The cloud of mist in the room began to get thicker and thicker, until it was impossible to tell friend from foe.
I leaped for the door to escape from the suffocating cloud. This stuff made breathing a real effort. It was like trying to inhale and exhale cotton balls. I extended my hand, but the
bit of wall I touched didn't include a door. It had been right there! I felt a curl of panic in my stomach as I patted frantically, trying to trace the outline of the exit.
Not only did I fail to find the doorjamb, I lost touch with the wall altogether on my next sideways step. I stumbled over a wolf's body. I couldn't see a wound, so I got hold of its shoulders and dragged, trying to rescue it from the thick smoke.
The wolf began to writhe and change under my hands, which was pretty disconcerting. Even worse, it changed into a naked Hallow. I didn't know anyone could change that fast. Terrified, I let go of her immediately and backed away into the cloud. I'd been trying to be a good Samaritan with the wrong victim. A nameless woman, one of the witches, grabbed me from behind with superhuman strength. She tried to grip my neck with one hand while holding my arm with the other, but her hand kept slipping, and I bit her as hard as I could. She might be a witch, and she might be a Were, and she might have drunk a gallon of vamp blood, but she was no warrior. She screamed and released me.
By now I was completely disoriented. Which way was out? I was coughing and my eyes were streaming. The only sense I was sure of was gravity. Sight, hearing, touch: all were affected by the thick white billows, which were getting ever denser. The vampires had an advantage in this situation; they didn't need to breathe. All the rest of us did. Compared to the thickening atmosphere in the old bakery, the polluted city air outside had been pure and delicious.
Gasping and weeping, I flung my arms out in front of me and tried to find a wall or a doorway, any sort of landmark. A room that had not seemed so large now seemed cavernous. I felt I'd stumbled through yards of nothingness, but that wasn't possible unless the witches had changed the dimensions of the room, and my prosaic mind just couldn't accept the possibility. From around me I heard screams and sounds that were muffled in the cloud, but no less frightening. A spray of blood suddenly appeared down the front of my coat. I felt the spatter hit my face. I made a noise of distress that I couldn't form into words. I knew it wasn't my blood, and I knew I hadn't been hurt, but somehow that was hard for me to believe.
Then something fell past me, and as it was on its way to the floor I glimpsed a face. It was the face of Mark Stonebrook, and he was in the process of dying. The smoke closed in around him, and he might as well have been in another city.
Maybe I should crouch, too? The air might be better close to the floor. But Mark's body was down there, and other things. So much for Mark removing the spell on Eric, I thought wildly. Now we'll need Hallow. "The best-laid plans of mice and men . . ." Where'd my
grandmother gotten that quote? Gerald knocked me sideways as he pushed past in pursuit of something I couldn't see.
I told myself I was brave and resourceful, but the words rang hollow. I blundered ahead, trying not trip over the debris on the floor. The witches' paraphernalia, bowls and knives and bits of bone and vegetation that I couldn't identify, had been scattered in the scuffle. A clear spot opened up unexpectedly, and I could see an overturned bowl and one of the knives on the floor at my feet. I scooped up the knife just before the cloud rolled back over it. I was sure the knife was supposed to be used for some ritual—but I wasn't a witch, and I needed it to defend myself. I felt better when I had the knife, which was real pretty and felt very sharp.
I wondered what our Wiccans were doing. Could they be responsible for the cloud? I wished I'd gotten to vote.
Our witches, as it turned out, were getting a live feed from the scene of the fight from one of their coven sisters, who was a scryer. (Though she was physically with them, she could see what was happening on the surface of a bowl of water, I learned later.) She could make out more using that method than we could, though why she didn't see just a bunch of white smoke billowing on the surface of that water, I don't know.
Anyway, our witches made it rain . . . in the building. Somehow the rain slowly cut back on the cloud cover, and though I felt damp and extremely cold, I also discovered I was close to the inner door, the one leading into the second, large room. Gradually, I became aware that I could see; the room had started to glow with light, and I could discern shapes. One bounded toward me on legs that seemed not-quite-human, and Debbie Pelt's face snarled at me. What was she doing here? She'd stepped out the door to show the Wiccans which way to find safety, and now she was back in the room.
I don't know if she could help it or not, or if she'd just gotten swept up in the madness of battle, but Debbie had partially changed. Her face was sprouting fur, and her teeth had begun to lengthen and sharpen. She snapped at my throat, but a convulsion caused by the change made her teeth fall short. I tried to step back, but I stumbled over something on the floor and took a precious second or two to regain my footing. She began to lunge again, her intent unmistakable, and I recalled that I had a knife in my hand. I slashed at her, and she hesitated, snarling.
She was going to use the confusion to settle our score. I wasn't strong enough to fight a shape-shifter. I'd have to use the knife, though something inside me cringed at the thought.
Then from the tags and tatters of the mist came a big hand stained with blood, and that big hand grabbed Debbie Pelt's throat and squeezed. And squeezed. Before I could track the hand up the arm to the face of its owner, a wolf leaped from the floor to knock me down.
And sniff my face.
Okay, that was . . . then the wolf on top of me was knocked off and rolling on the floor, snarling and snapping at another wolf. I couldn't help, because the two were moving so quickly I couldn't be sure I'd help the right party.
The mist was dispersing at a good rate now, and I could see the room as a whole, though there were still patches of opaque fog. Though I'd been desperate for this moment, I was almost sorry now that it'd arrived. Bodies, both dead and wounded, littered the floor among the paraphernalia of the coven, and blood spattered the walls. Portugal, the handsome young Were from the air force base, lay sprawled in front of me. He was dead. Culpepper crouched beside him, keening. This was a small piece of war, and I hated it.
Hallow was still standing and completely in her human form, bare and smeared with blood. She picked up a wolf and slung it at the wall as I watched. She was magnificent and horrible. Pam was creeping up behind her, and Pam was disheveled and dirty. I'd never seen the vampire so much as ruffled, and I almost didn't recognize her. Pam launched herself, catching Hallow at the hips and knocking her to the floor. It was as good a tackle as I'd ever seen in years of Friday night football, and if Pam had caught Hallow a little higher up and could have gotten a grip on her, it would have been all over. But Hallow was slippery with the misty rain and with blood, and her arms were free. She twisted in Pam's grasp and seized Pam's long straight hair in both hands and pulled, and clumps of the hair came off, attached to a good bit of scalp.
Pam shrieked like a giant teakettle. I'd never heard a noise that loud come out of a throat—in this case not a human throat, but a throat nonetheless. Since Pam was definitely of the "get even" school, she pinned Hallow to the floor by gripping both her upper arms and pressing, pressing, until Hallow was flattened. Since the witch was so strong, it was a terrible struggle, and Pam was hampered by the blood streaming down her face. But Hallow was human, and Pam was not. Pam was winning until one of the witches, the hollow-cheeked man, crawled over to the two woman and bit into Pam's neck. Both her arms were occupied, and she couldn't stop him. He didn't just bite, he drank, and as he drank, his strength increased, as if his battery was getting charged. He was draining right from the source. No one seemed to be watching but me. I scrambled
across the limp, furry body of a wolf and one of the vampires to pummel on the hollow-cheeked man, who simply ignored me.
I would have to use the knife. I'd never done something like this; when I'd struck back at someone, it had always been a life-or-death situation, and the life and the death had been mine. This was different. I hesitated, but I had to do something quick. Pam was weakening before my eyes, and she would not be able to restrain Hallow much longer. I took the black-bladed knife with its black handle, and I held it to his throat; I jabbed him, a little.
"Let go of her," I said. He ignored me.
I jabbed harder, and a stream of scarlet ran down the skin of his neck. He let go of Pam then. His mouth was all covered in her blood. But before I could rejoice that he'd freed her, he spun over while he was still underneath me and came after me, his eyes absolutely insane and his mouth open to drink from me, too. I could feel the yearning in his brain, the want, want, want. I put the knife to his neck again, and just as I was steeling myself, he lunged forward and pushed the blade into his own neck.
His eyes went dull almost instantly.
He'd killed himself by way of me. I don't think he'd ever realized the knife was there.
This was a close killing, a right-in-my-face killing, and I'd been the instrument of death, however inadvertently.
When I could look up, Pam was sitting on Hallow's chest, her knees pinning Hallow's arms, and she was smiling. This was so bizarre that I looked around the room to find the reason, and I saw that the battle appeared to be over. I couldn't imagine how long it had lasted, that loud but invisible struggle in the thick mist, but now I could see the results all too clearly.
Vampires don't kill neat, they kill messy. Wolves, too, are not known for their table manners. Witches seemed to manage to splash a little less blood, but the end result was really horrible, like a very bad movie, the kind you were ashamed you'd paid to see.
We appeared to have won.
At the moment, I hardly cared. I was really tired, mentally and physically, and that meant all the thoughts of the humans, and some of the thoughts of the Weres, rolled around in my brain like clothes in a dryer. There was nothing I could do about it, so I let the tag ends drift around in my head while, using the last of my strength, I pushed off of the corpse. I lay on my back and stared up at the ceiling. Since I had no thoughts, I filled up with
everyone else's. Almost everyone was thinking the same kind of thing I was: how tired they were, how bloody the room was, how hard it was to believe they'd gone through a fight like this and survived. The spiky-haired boy had reverted to his human form, and he was thinking how much more he'd enjoyed it than he thought he should. In fact, his unclothed body was showing visible evidence of how much he'd enjoyed it, and he was trying to feel embarrassed about that. Mostly, he wanted to track down that cute young Wiccan and find a quiet corner. Hallow was hating Pam, she was hating me, she was hating Eric, she was hating everyone. She began to try to mumble a spell to make us all sick, but Pam gave her an elbow in the neck, and that shut her right up.
Debbie Pelt got up from the floor in the door and surveyed the scene. She looked amazingly pristine and energetic, as if she'd never had a furry face and wouldn't even begin to know how to kill someone. She picked her way through the bodies strewn on the floor, some living and some not, until she found Alcide, still in his wolf form. She squatted down to check him over for wounds, and he growled at her in clear warning. Maybe she didn't believe he would attack, or maybe she just fooled herself into believing it, but she laid her hand on his shoulder, and he bit her savagely enough to draw blood. She shrieked and scrambled back. For a few seconds, she crouched there, cradling her bleeding hand and crying. Her eyes met mine and almost glowed with hatred. She would never forgive me. She would blame me the rest of her life for Alcide's discovery of her dark nature. She'd toyed with him for two years, pulling him to her, pushing him back, concealing from him the elements of her nature he would never accept, but wanting him with her nonetheless. Now it was all over.
And this was my fault?
But I wasn't thinking in Debbie terms, I was thinking like a rational human being, and of course Debbie Pelt was not. I wished the hand that had caught her neck during the struggle in the cloud had choked her to death. I watched her back as she pushed open the door and strode into the night, and at that moment I knew Debbie Pelt would be out to get me for the rest of her life. Maybe Alcide's bite would get infected and she'd get blood poisoning?
In reflex action, I chastised myself: That was an evil thought; God didn't want us to wish ill on anyone. I just hoped He was listening in to Debbie, too, the way you hope the highway patrolman who stopped you for a ticket is also going to stop the guy behind you who was trying to pass you on the double yellow line.
The redheaded Were, Amanda, came over to me. She was bitten here and there, and she had a swollen lump on her forehead, but she was quietly beaming. "While I'm in a good
mood, I want to apologize for insulting you," she said directly. "You came through in this fight. Even if you can tolerate vamps, I won't hold that against you anymore. Maybe you'll see the light." I nodded, and she strolled away to check on her packmates.
Pam had tied up Hallow, and Pam, Eric, and Gerald had gone to kneel beside someone on the other side of the room. I wondered vaguely what was happening over there, but Alcide was shimmering back into human form, and when he'd oriented himself, he crawled over to me. I was too exhausted to care that he was naked, but I had a floating idea that I should try to remember the sight, since I'd want to recall it at my leisure later.
He had some grazes and bloody spots, and one deep laceration, but overall he looked pretty good.
"There's blood on your face," he said, with an effort.
"Not mine."
"Thank God," he said, and he lay on the floor beside me. "How bad are you hurt?"
"I'm not hurt, not really," I said. "I mean, I got shoved around a lot, and choked a little maybe, and snapped at, but no one hit me!" By golly, I was going to make my New Year's resolution come true, after all.
"I'm sorry we didn't find Jason here," he said.
"Eric asked Pam and Gerald if the vampires were holding him, and they said no," I remarked. "He'd thought of a real good reason for the vamps to have him. But they didn't."
"Chow is dead."
"How?" I asked, sounding as calm as if it hardly mattered. Truthfully, I had never been very partial to the bartender, but I would have shown a decent concern if I hadn't been so tired.
"One of Hallow's group had a wooden knife."
"I never saw one before," I said after a moment, and that was all I could think to say about the death of Chow.
"Me, neither."
After a long moment, I said, "I'm sorry about Debbie." What I meant was, I was sorry Debbie had hurt him so badly, had proved to be such a dreadful person that he'd had to take a drastic step to get her out of his life.
"Debbie who?" he asked, and rolled to his feet and padded away across the filthy floor strewn with blood, bodies, and supernatural debris.