Book Ten 12-14

Chapter 12
Judith began her story by asking me a question. “Have you ever metLorena?”
“Yes,” I said, and left it at that. Evidently, Judith didn’t know exactly how I’d met Lorena, which had been a few seconds before I
drove a stake through her heart and ended her long, nasty life.
“Then you know she’s ruthless.”
I nodded.
“You need to know why I’ve stayed away from Bill all these years, when I’m very fond of him,” Judith said. “Lorena has had a
hard life. I wouldn’t necessarily believe everything she’s told me, but I’ve heard confirmation of a few parts of it from others.” Judith
wasn’t seeing me anymore; she was looking past me, down the years, I guess.
“How old was she?” I said, just to keep the story rolling.
“By the time Lorena met Bill she had been a vampire for many decades. She had been turned in 1788 by a man named Solomon
Brunswick. He met her in a brothel in New Orleans.”
“He met her in the obvious way?”
“Not exactly. He was there to take blood from another whore, one who specialized in the odder desires of men. Compared to
some of her other customers, a little bite wasn’t anything too remarkable.”
“Had Solomon been a vampire a long time?” I was curious despite myself. Vampires as living history . . . Well, since they’d come
out of the coffin, they’d added a lot to college courses. Bring a vampire to class to tell his or her story, and you got great
attendance.
“Solomon had been a vampire for twenty years by then. He became a vampire by accident. He was a sort of tinker. He sold pots
and pans, and he mended broken ones. He had other goods that were hard to find in New England then: needles, thread, odds and
ends like that. He took his horse and cart from town to town and farm to farm, all by himself. Solomon encountered one of us while
he camped in the woods one night. He told me that he survived the first encounter, but the vampire followed him during the night to
his next camp and attacked him again. This second attack was a critical one. Solomon was one of the unfortunates who get turned
accidentally. Since the vampire who drank from him left him for dead, unaware of the change—or at least, I like to think so—
Solomon was untrained and had to learn all by himself.”
“Sounds really awful,” I said, and I meant that.
She nodded. “It must have been. He worked his way down to New Orleans to avoid people who wondered why he hadn’t aged.
Where he came upon Lorena. After he’d had his meal, he was leaving out the back when he spotted her in the dark courtyard. She
was with a man. The customer tried to leave without paying, and in the blink of an eye Lorena seized him and cut his throat.”
That sounded like the Lorena I’d known.
“Solomon was impressed with her savagery and excited by the fresh blood. He grabbed the dying man and drained him, and when
he threw the body into the yard of the next house, Lorena was impressed and fascinated. She wanted to be like he was.”
“That sounds about right.”
Judith smiled faintly. “She was illiterate but tenacious and a tremendous survivor. He was far more intelligent, but he had poor killing
skills. By then, he had figured some things out, and so he was able to bring her over. They took blood from each other sometimes,
and that gave them the courage to find others like us, to learn what they needed to learn to live well instead of merely surviving. The
two of them practiced how to be successful vampires, tested the limits of their new natures, and made an excellent team.”
“So Solomon was your grandfather, since he begat Lorena,” I said biblically. “What happened after that?”
“Eventually, the bloom went off the rose,” Judith said. “Makers and their children stay together longer than a merely sexual couple
but not forever. Lorena betrayed Solomon. She was caught with the half-drained body of a dead child, but she was able to play a
human woman pretty convincingly. She told the men who grabbed her that Solomon was the one who’d killed the child, that he’d
made her carry the body, so the blood was all over her. Solomon barely got out of the town alive—they were in Natchez,
Mississippi. He never saw Lorena again. He’s never met Bill, either. Lorena found him after the War between the States.
“As Bill later told me, one night Lorena was wandering through this area. It was much harder then to stay concealed, especially in
rural areas. There weren’t as many people to hunt you down, true, and there was little or no communication. But strangers were
conspicuous and with the thinner population, the choices of prey were less. An individual death was noticed more. A body had to
be hidden very carefully, or the death meticulously staged. At least there wasn’t much organized law enforcement.”
I reminded myself not to look disgusted. This knowledge was nothing new. That was how vampires had lived until a few years ago.
“Lorena saw Bill and his family through the windows of their house.” Judith looked away. “She fell in love. For several nights, she
listened to the family. During the day she would dig a hole in the woods and bury herself. At night, she’d watch.
“Finally, she decided to act. She realized—even Lorena realized—Bill would never forgive her if she killed his children, so she
waited until he came out in the middle of the night to find out why the dog wouldn’t stop barking. When Bill came out with his rifle,
she crept up behind him and took him.”
I thought of Lorena, so close to my own family, right through the woods. . . . She could have come to my great-great-grandparents’
place just as easily, and my whole family history would have been different.
“She turned him that night, buried him, and helped him resurrect three nights later.”
I couldn’t imagine how shattered Bill must have been. Everything gone in the blink of an eye: his whole life taken and altered and
given back to him in a terrible form.
“I guess she took him away from here,” I said.
“Yes, that was essential. She had arranged a death for him. She’d smeared a clearing with his blood and left his gun there and rags
from his clothing. He told me it looked as though a panther had gotten him. So they traveled together, and while he was bound to
her, he hated her, too. He was miserable with her, but she remained obsessed with him. After thirty years, she tried to make him
happier by killing a woman who looked very much like his wife.”
“Oh, gosh,” I said, trying not to feel sick. “You, huh?” That was why her face had been vaguely familiar. I’d seen Bill’s old family
pictures.
Judith nodded. “Evidently, Bill saw me entering a neighbor’s house, going to a party with my family. He followed me home and
watched me, because the resemblance caught his fancy. When Lorena discovered this new interest, she thought Bill would stay with
her if she provided him with a companion.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really, really sorry.”
Judith shrugged. “It wasn’t Bill’s fault, but you’ll understand why I had to think about it before I came in answer to your message.
Solomon is in Europe now, or I would have asked him to come with me. I dread seeing Lorena again, and I was afraid . . . afraid
she would be here, afraid you would have asked her to help Bill, too. Or she might have made up this story to bring me here, for all
I knew. Is she . . . Is she around?”
“She’s dead. Didn’t you know?”
Judith’s round blue eyes went wide. She couldn’t be any more pale, but her eyes closed for a long moment. “I felt a strong wrench
around eighteen months ago. . . . That was Lorena’s death?”
I nodded.
“That’s why she hasn’t summoned me. Oh, this is wonderful, wonderful!”
Judith looked like a different woman.
“I guess I’m a little surprised that Bill didn’t get in touch with you to tell you.”
“Maybe he thought I would know it. Children and makers are bound. But I wasn’t sure. It seemed too good to be true.” Judith
smiled, and she looked suddenly pretty, even with the fangs. “Where is Bill?”
“He’s through the woods.” I pointed in the right direction. “In his old home.”
“I’ll be able to track him once I’m outside,” she said happily. “Oh, to be with him without Lorena near!”
Ah. What?
Before, it had been okay for Judith to sit and talk my ear off, but now all of a sudden, she was ready to take off like a scalded cat. I
was sitting there with my eyes narrowed, wondering what I’d done.
“I’ll heal him, and I’m sure he’ll thank you after,” she said, and I felt like I’d been dismissed. “Was Bill there when Lorena died?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Did he suffer much punishment for killing her?”
“He didn’t kill her,” I said. “I did.”
She froze, staring at me as if I’d suddenly announced I was King Kong. She said, “I owe you my freedom. Bill must think very
highly of you.”
“I believe he does,” I said. To my embarrassment, she bent to kiss my hand. Her lips were cold.
“Bill and I can be together now,” she said. “Finally! I’ll see you another night to tell you how grateful I am, but now I have to go to
him.” And she was out of the house and zipping through the woods to the south before I could say Jack Robinson.
I kind of felt like a very large fist had hit me upside the head.
I would be a total sleaze to feel anything but happy for Bill. Now he could hang around with Judith for centuries, if he wanted to.
With the never-aging duplicate of his wife. I made myself smile with gladness.
When looking happy didn’t make me happy, I did twenty jumping jacks, then twenty push-ups.Okay, that’s better, I thought, as I
lay on my stomach on the living room floor. Now I was ashamed that my arm muscles were trembling. I remembered the workouts
the Lady Falcons softball coach had put us through, and I knew Coach Peterson would kick my butt if she could see me now. On
the other hand, I wasn’t seventeen anymore.
As I rolled over to lie on my back, I considered that fact soberly. It wasn’t the first occasion I’d felt the passage of time, but it was
the first occasion that I’d noticed my body had changed into something a little less efficient. I had to contrast that with the lot of the
vampires I knew. At least 99 percent of them had become vamps at the peak of their lives. There were a few who had been
younger, like Alexei, and a few who had been older, like the Ancient Pythoness, but most of them had ranged in age from sixteen to
thirty-five at the time of their first death. They’d never have to apply for Social Security or Medicare. They’d never need to worry
about hip replacements or lung cancer or arthritis.
By the time I reached middle age (if I was so lucky, since my life was what you would call “high risk”), I would be slowing down in
perceptible ways. After that, the wrinkles would only grow and deepen, my skin would look looser on my bones and sport a spot
or two, and my hair would thin out. My chin would sag a little, and my boobs would, too. My joints would ache when I sat too long
in one position. I’d have to get reading glasses.
I might develop high blood pressure. I might have a blocked artery. My heart might beat irregularly. When I got the flu, I would
bevery sick. I’d fear Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, a stroke, pneumonia . . . the boogie-bears that hid under the beds of the aging.
What if I told Eric I wanted to be with him forever? Assuming he didn’t scream and run as fast as he could in the other direction,
assuming he actually changed me, I tried to imagine what being a vampire would be like. I would watch all my friends grow old and
die. I would sleep in the hidey-hole in the closet floor myself. If Jason married Michele, she might not like me holding their babies. I
would feel the urge to attack people, to bite them; they’d all be walking McBloodburgers to me. I’d think of people as food. I
stared up at the ceiling fan and tried to imagine wanting to bite Andy Bellefleur or Holly. Ick.
On the other hand, I’d never be sick again unless someone shot me or bit me with silver, or staked me, or put me out in the sun. I
could protect frail humans from danger. I could be with Eric forever . . . except for that bit where vampire couples usually didn’t
stay together all that long.
Okay, I could still be with Eric for a few years.
How would I make my living? I could only take the later shift at Merlotte’s, and that after dark had fallen, if Sam let me keep my
job. And Sam, too, would grow old and die. A new owner might not like having a permanent barmaid who could only work one
shift. I could go back to college and take night classes and computer classes until I got some kind of degree. In what?
I’d reached the limit of my imagination. I rolled to my knees and rose from the floor, wondering if I was imagining a slight stiffness in
my joints.
Sleep was long in coming that night, despite my very long and very scary day. The silence of the house pressed in around me.
Claude came home in the wee hours, whistling.
When I got up the next morning, not bright but way too early, I felt sluggish and dispirited. I found two envelopes shoved under my
front door on my way to the porch with my coffee. The first note was from Mr. Cataliades, and it had been hand-delivered by his
niece Diantha at three a.m., she’d noted on the envelope. I was sorry to miss a chance to talk to Diantha, though I was grateful she
hadn’t woken me. I opened that envelope first out of sheer curiosity. “Dear Miss Stackhouse,” Mr. Cataliades wrote. “Here is a
check for the amount in Claudine Crane’s account when she passed away. She wanted you to have it.”
Short and to the point, which was more than most people I’d talked to recently. I flipped the check over and found that it was for a
hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
“Oh my God,” I said out loud. “Oh my God.” I dropped it because my fingers suddenly lost their power, and the check drifted
down to the porch. I scrambled to retrieve it and read it again to make sure I hadn’t been mistaken.
“Oh,” I said. I was sticking with the classics, because saying anything else seemed to be beyond me. I couldn’t even imagine what I
would do with so much money. That was beyond me, too. I had to give myself a little space until I could think about this
unexpected legacy with any rational plan.
I carried the amazing check into the house and put it in a drawer, terrified something would happen to it before I got it to the bank.
Only when I was sure it was safe did I even think of opening my other note, which was from Bill.
I carried it back out to the porch chair and took a gulp of my cooling coffee. I tore open the envelope.
“Dearest Sookie—I didn’t want to frighten you by knocking on your door at two in the morning, so I’m leaving this for you to read
in the daylight. I wondered why you had been in my house last week. I knew you’d come in, and I knew that sooner or later your
motive would become apparent. Your generous heart has given me the cure I needed.
“I never thought I would see Judith after the last time we parted. There were reasons I didn’t call her over the years. I understand
she told you why Lorena picked her to turn vampire. Lorena didn’t ask me before she attacked Judith. Please believe this. I would
never condemn someone to our life unless she wanted it and told me so.”
Okay, Bill was giving me credit for some complicated thinking. I’d never dreamed of suspecting that Bill had asked Lorena to find
him a mate resembling his late wife.
“I would never have been brave enough to contact Judith myself for fear she hated me. I am so glad to see her again. And her
blood, freely given, has already worked a great healing in me.”
All right! That had been the whole point.
“Judith has agreed to stay for a week so we can ‘catch up’ with each other. Maybe you will join us some evening? Judith was most
impressed with your kindness. Love, Bill.”
I forced myself to smile down at the folded piece of paper. I’d just write him right back and tell him how pleased I was that he was
better and that he’d renewed his old relationship with Judith. Of course, I hadn’t been happy when he was dating Selah Pumphrey,
a human real estate dealer, because we had only recently broken up, and I knew he didn’t really care about her. Now I was
determined to be happy for Bill. I was not going to be one of those awful people who gets all bent out of shape when the ex
acquires a replacement. That was hypocritical and selfish to the extreme, and I hoped I was a better person than that. At least I was
determined to provide a good imitation of such a person.
“Okay,” I said to my coffee mug. “That turned out great.”
“Would you rather talk to me than to your coffee?” Claude asked.
I’d heard feet on the creaky stairs through the open window, and I’d registered that another brain was up and working, but I hadn’t
foreseen that he’d join me on the porch.
“You got in late,” I said. “You want me to get you a cup of coffee? I made plenty.”
“No, thank you. I’ll have some pineapple juice in a minute. It’s a beautiful day.” Claude was shirtless. At least he was wearing
drawstring pants with the Dallas Cowboys all over them. Ha! He wished!
“Yeah,” I said, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Claude raised one perfectly shaped black eyebrow.
“Who’s down in the dumps?” he asked.
“No, I’m very happy.”
“Yes, I can see the joy written all over your face. What’s the matter, Cousin?”
“I did get the check from Claudine’s estate. God bless her. That was so generous.” I looked up at Claude, putting all my sincerity
into my face. “Claude, I hope you’re not mad at me. That’s just . . . so much money. I haven’t got a clue what I want to do with it.”
Claude shrugged. “That was what Claudine wished. Now, tell me what’s wrong.”
“Claude, you’ll have to excuse me being surprised that you care. I would’ve said you didn’t give a flying eff how I felt. Now you’re
being all sweet with Hunter, and you’re offering to help me clean out the attic.”
“Maybe I’m developing a cousinly concern for you.” He raised one eyebrow.
“Maybe pigs will fly.”
He laughed. “I’m trying to be more human,” he confessed. “Since I’ll live out my long existence among humans, apparently, I’m
trying to be more . . .”
“Likable?” I supplied.
“Ouch,” he said, but he wasn’t really hurt. Being hurt would presuppose that he cared about my opinion. And that was something
you couldn’t be taught, right?
“Where’s the boyfriend been?” he asked. “I do so love the smell of vampire around the house.”
“Last night was the first time I’ve seen him in a week. And we didn’t have any alone time.”
“You two have a fight?” Claude settled one hip on the porch railing, and I could tell he was determined to show me he could be
interested in someone else’s life.
I felt a certain amount of exasperation. “Claude, I’m drinking my very first cup of coffee, I didn’t get a lot of sleep, and I’ve had a
bad few days. Could you just scoot away and take a shower or something?”
He sighed as if I’d broken his heart. “All right, I can take a hint,” he said.
“That really wasn’t so much a hint as an outright statement.”
“Oh, I’ll go.”
But as he straightened up and took a step toward the door, I realized I did have something else to say. “I take that back. Thereis
something we have to talk about,” I said. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you that Dermot was here.”
Claude stood up straight, almost as if he were prepared to bolt. “What did he say? What did he want?”
“I’m not sure what he wanted. I think, like you, he wanted to be close to someone else with a bit of fairy blood. And he wanted to
tell me that he was under a spell.”
Claude paled. “From whose magic? Has Grandfather come back through the gate?”
“No,” I said. “But could a fairy have cast a spell on him before the gate closed? And I think you must know there’s another fullblooded
fairy on this side of the portal, or gate, whatever you call it.” As I understood fairy morals, it was not possible to answer
me with a direct lie.
“Dermot is crazy,” Claude said. “I have no idea what he’ll do next. If he approached you directly, he must be under extreme
pressure. You know how ambivalent he is about humans.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“No,” Claude said. “I didn’t. And there’s a reason for that.” He turned his back to me and looked out over the yard. “I like my
head on my shoulders.”
“So thereis someone else around, and you know who it is. Or you know more about putting spells on than you’re admitting?”
“I’m not going to talk about it.” And Claude went inside. Within minutes, I heard him going out the back of the house, and his car
passed by on its way down the drive to Hummingbird Road.
So I had gained a valuable piece of knowledge that was completely useless. I couldn’t summon up the fairy, ask the fairy why he or
she was still on this side, what his or her intentions were. But if I had to guess, I would have to say I was pretty sure that Claude
wouldn’t be this frightened of a sweet fairy who wanted to spread goodness and light. And a really nice fairy wouldn’t have put
some spell on poor Dermot that made him so discombobulated.
I said a prayer or two, hoping that would restore my normal good mood, but it didn’t work today. Possibly I wasn’t approaching
prayer in the right spirit. Communicating with God isn’t the same as taking a happy pill—far from it.
I pulled on a dress and sandals and went to Gran’s grave. Having a conversation with her usually reminded me of how levelheaded
and wise she’d been. Today all I thought about was her wildly out-of-character indiscretion with a half fairy that had resulted in my
dad and his sister, Linda. My grandmother had (maybe) had sex with a half fairy because my grandfather couldn’t make babies. So
she’d gotten to carry and birth her children, two of them, and she’d raised them with love.
And she’d buried both of them.
As I crouched by the headstone looking down at the grass that was getting thicker on her grave, I wondered if I should draw some
meaning from that. You could make a case that Gran had done something she shouldn’t have . . . to get something she wasn’t
supposed to get . . . and after she’d gotten it, she’d lost it in the most painful way imaginable. What could be worse than losing a
child? Losing two children.
Or you could decide that everything that had happened was completely at random, that Gran had done the best she could at the
moment she’d had to make a decision, and that her decision simply hadn’t worked out for reasons equally beyond her control.
Constant blame, or constant blamelessness.
There had to be better choices.
I did the best possible thing for me to do. I put in some earrings and went to church. Easter was over, but the flowers on the
Methodist altar were still beautiful. The windows were open because the temperature was pleasant. A few clouds were gathering in
the west, but nothing to worry about for the next few hours. I listened to every word of the sermon and I sang along with the hymns,
though I kept that down to a whisper because I have a terrible voice. It was good for me; it reminded me of Gran and my childhood
and faith and clean dresses and Sunday lunch, usually a roast surrounded by potatoes and carrots that Gran put it in the oven before
we left the house. She would have made a pie or a cake, too.
Church isn’t always easy when you can read the minds around you, and I worked very hard on blocking them out and thinking my
own thoughts in an attempt to connect to the part of my upbringing, the part of myself, that was good and kind and intent on trying
to become better.
When the service was over, I talked to Maxine Fortenberry, who was in seventh heaven over Hoyt and Holly’s wedding plans, and
I saw Charlsie Tooten toting her grandbaby, and I talked to my insurance agent, Greg Aubert, who had his whole family with him.
His daughter turned red when I looked at her, because I knew a few things about her that made her conscience twinge. But I
wasn’t judging the girl. We all misbehave from time to time. Some of us get caught, and some of us don’t.
Sam was in church, too, to my surprise. I’d never seen him there before. As far as I knew, he’d never been to any church in Bon
Temps.
“I’m glad to see you,” I said, trying not to sound too startled. “You been going somewhere else, or is this a new venture?”
“I just felt it was time,” he said. “For one thing, I like church. For another thing, a bad time is coming for us two-natured folks, and I
want to make sure everyone in Bon Temps knows I’m an okay guy.”
“They’d have to be fools not to know that already,” I said quietly. “Good to see you, Sam.” I moved off because a couple of
people were waiting to talk to my boss, and I understood that he was trying to anchor his position in the community.
I tried not to worry about Eric or anything else the rest of the day. I’d had a text message inviting me to have lunch with Tara and
JB, and I was glad to have their company. Tara had gotten Dr. Dinwiddie to check very carefully, and sure enough, he’d found
another heartbeat. She and JB were stunned, in a happy way. Tara had fi xed creamed chicken to spoon over biscuits, and she’d
made a spinach casserole and a fruit salad. I had a great time at their little house, and JB checked my wrists and said they were
almost back to normal. Tara was all excited about the baby shower JB’s aunt was planning on giving them in Clarice, and she
assured me I’d get an invitation. We picked a date for her shower in Bon Temps, and she promised she’d register online.
By the time I got home, I figured I’d better put a load of wash in, and I washed my bath mat, too, and hung it out on the line to dry.
While I was outside, I made sure I had my little plastic squirt gun, full of lemon juice, tucked in my pocket. I didn’t want to get
caught by surprise again. I just couldn’t figure out what I’d done to deserve having an apparently (judging by Claude’s reaction)
hostile fairy tromping around my property.
My cell phone rang as I trailed gloomily back to the house. “Hey, Sis,” Jason said. He was cooking on the grill. I could hear the
sizzle. “Michele and me are cooking out. You want to come? I got plenty of steak.”
“Thanks, but I ate at JB and Tara’s. Give me a rain check on that.”
“Sure thing. I got your message. Tomorrow at eight, right?”
“Yeah. Let’s ride over to Shreveport together.”
“Sure. I’ll pick you up at seven at your place.”
“See you then.”
“Gotta go!”
Jason did not like long phone conversations. He’d broken up with girls who wanted to chat while they shaved their legs and painted
their nails.
It was not a great commentary on my life that the prospect of meeting with a bunch of unhappy Weres seemed like a good time—or
at least an interesting time.
Kennedy was bartending when I got to work the next day. She toldme that Sam had a final, take-the-checkbook appointment with
his accountant, who’d gotten an extension since Sam had been so late turning all the paperwork over.
Kennedy looked as pretty as she always did. She refused to wear the shorts most of the rest of us wore in warm weather, instead
opting for tailored khakis and a fancy belt with her Merlotte’s T-shirt. Kennedy’s makeup and hair were pageant quality. I glanced
automatically at Danny Prideaux’s usual barstool. Empty.
“Where’s Danny?” I asked when I went to the bar to get a beer for Catfish Hennessy. He was Jason’s boss, and I half expected to
see Jason come in to join him, but Hoyt and a couple of the other roadwork guys sat at Catfish’s table.
“He had to work at his other job today,” Kennedy said, trying to sound offhand. “I appreciate Sam making sure I’ve got protection
while I’m working, Sookie, but I really don’t think there’s going to be any trouble.”
The bar door slammed. “I’m here to protest!” yelled a woman who looked like anyone’s grandmother. She had a sign, and she
hoisted it up. NO COHABITATION WITH ANIMALS, it read, and you could see that she’d written “cohabitation” while she
looked at a dictionary; each letter was written with such care.
“Call the police first,” I told Kennedy. “And then Sam. Tell him to get back here no matterwhat he’s talking about.” Kennedy
nodded and turned to the wall phone.
Our protester was wearing a blue and white blouse and red pants she’d probably gotten at Bealls or Stage. She had short permed
hair dyed a reasonable brown and wore wire-rimmed glasses and a modest wedding ring on her arthritic fingers. Despite this
completely average exterior, I could feel her thoughts burning with the fire of a zealot.
“Ma’am, you need to take yourself outside. This building is privately owned,” I said, having no idea if this was a good line to take or
not. We’d never had anyone protesting before.
“But it’s a public business. Anyone can come inside,” she said, as if she were the authority.
Not any more than I was. “No, not if Sam doesn’t want them in here, and as his representative, I’m telling you to leave.”
“You’re not Sam Merlotte, or his wife. You’re that girl who dates a vampire,” she said venomously.
“I am Sam’s right-hand person at this bar,” I lied, “and I’m telling you to get out, or I’ll put you out.”
“You lay one finger on me, and I’ll call the law on you,” she said, jerking her head.
Rage flared up in me. I really, really don’t like threats.
“Kennedy,” I said, and in a second she was standing by me. “I’d say between us we’re strong enough to pick up this lady and take
her out of the bar. What do you say?”
“I’m all for it.” Kennedy stared down at the woman as if she were only waiting for the starting gun to go off. “And you’re that girl
who shot her boyfriend,” the woman said, beginning to look properly frightened.
“I am. I was really mad at him, and at the moment I’m pretty pissed off at you,” Kennedy said. “You get your butt out of here and
take your little sign with you, and you do it right now.”
The older woman’s courage broke, and she scuttled out, remembering at the last moment to keep her head up and her back straight
since she was one of God’s soldiers. I got that direct from her head.
Catfish clapped for Kennedy, and a few others joined in, but mostly the bar patrons sat in stunned silence. Then we heard the
chanting from the parking lot, and we all surged to the windows.
“Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea,” I breathed. There were at least thirty protesters in the parking lot. Most of them were middleaged,
but I spotted a few teenagers who should have been in school, and I recognized a couple of guys who I knew to be in their
early twenties. I sort of recognized most of the crowd. They attended a “charismatic” church in Clarice, a church that was growing
by leaps and bounds (if construction was any indicator). The last time I’d driven by when I was going to have physical therapy with
JB, a new activities building had been going up.
I wished they were being activethere , where they belonged, rather than here. Just as I was about to do something idiotic (like going
out in the parking lot), two Bon Temps police cars pulled up, lights flashing. Kevin and Kenya got out. Kevin was skinny and white,
and Kenya was round and black. They were both good police officers, and they loved each other dearly . . . but unofficially.
Kevin approached the chanting group with apparent confidence. I couldn’t hear what he said, but they all turned to face him and
began talking all at once. He held up his hands to pat the air in a “back off and get quiet” gesture, and Kenya circled around to
come up behind the group.
“Maybe we should go out there?” Kennedy said.
Kennedy, I noted, was not in the habit of sitting back and letting things take their course. Nothing wrong with being proactive, but
this was not the time to escalate the confrontation in the parking lot, and that was what our presence would do. “No, I think we
need to stay right here,” I said. “There’s no point in throwing fuel on the fire.” I looked around. None of the patrons were eating or
drinking. They were all looking out the windows. I thought of requesting that they sit down at their tables, but there was no point in
asking them to do something they clearly weren’t going to do, with so much drama going on outside.
Antoine came out of the kitchen and stood by me. He looked at the scene for a long moment. “I didn’t have nothing to do with it,”
he said.
“I never thought you did,” I said, surprised. Antoine relaxed, even inside his head. “This is some crazy church action,” I said.
“They’re picketing Merlotte’s because Sam is two-natured. But the woman who came in here, she was pretty aware of me and she
knew Kennedy’s history, too. I hope this is a one-shot. I’d hate to have to deal with protesters all the time.”
“Sam’ll go broke if this keeps up,” Kennedy said in a low voice. “Maybe I should just quit. It’s not going to help Sam that I work
here.”
“Kennedy, don’t set yourself up to be a martyr,” I said. “They don’t like me, either. Everyone who doesn’t think I’m crazy thinks
there’s something supernatural about me. We’d all have to quit, from Sam on down.”
She looked at me sharply to make sure I was sincere. She gave me a quick nod. Then she looked out the window again and said,
“Uh-oh.” Danny Prideaux had pulled up in his 1991 Chrysler LeBaron, a machine he found only slightly less fascinating than he
found Kennedy Keyes.
Danny had parked right at the edge of the crowd, and he hopped out and began to hurry toward the bar. I just knew he was
coming to check on Kennedy. Either they’d had a police band radio on at the home builders’ supply place or Danny had heard the
news from a customer. The jungle drums beat fast and furious in Bon Temps. Danny was wearing a gray tank top and jeans and
boots, and his broad olive shoulders were gleaming with sweat.
As he strode toward the door, I said, “I think my mouth is watering.” Kennedy put her hand over her mouth to stifle a yip of
laughter.
“Yeah, he looks pretty good,” she said, trying to sound offhand. We both laughed.
But then disaster struck. One of the protesters, angry at being shooed away from Merlotte’s, brought his sign down on the hood of
the LeBaron. At the sound Danny turned around. He froze for a second, and then he was heading at top speed toward the sinner
who’d marred the paint job on his car.
“Oh, no,” Kennedy said and hurtled out of the bar as if she’d been fired from a slingshot. “Danny!” she yelled. “Danny! You stop!”
Danny hesitated, turning his head just a fraction to see who was calling him. With a leap that would have done a kangaroo proud,
Kennedy was beside him and wrapping her arms around him. He made an impatient movement, as if to shake her off, and then it
seemed to dawn on him that Kennedy, whom he’d spent hours admiring, was embracing him. He stood stiffly, his arms at his side,
apparently afraid to move.
I couldn’t tell what Kennedy was saying to him, but Danny looked down at her face, completely focused on her. One of the
demonstrators had forgotten herself enough to get an “Awww” expression on her face, but she snapped out of her lapse into
humanity and brandished her sign again.
“Animals go! People stay! We want Congress to show the way!” one of the older demonstrators, a man with a lot of white hair,
shouted as I opened the door and stepped out.
“Kevin, get them out of here!” I called. Kevin, whose thin, pale face was creased into unhappy lines, was trying to shepherd the
little crowd out of the parking lot.
“Mr. Barlowe,” Kevin said to the white-haired man, “what you’re doing is illegal, and I could put you in jail. I really don’t want to
have to do that.”
“We’re willing to be arrested for our beliefs,” the man said. “Isn’t that so, you-all?”
Some of the church members didn’t look entirely certain of that.
“Maybe you are,” Kenya said, “but we got Jane Bodehouse in one of the cells now. She’s coming off a bender, and she’s throwing
up about every five minutes. Believe me, people, you donot want to be in there with Jane.”
The woman who’d originally come into Merlotte’s turned a little green.
“This is private property,” Kevin said. “You cannot demonstrate here. If you don’t clear this parking lot in three minutes, all of you
are under arrest.”
It was more like five minutes, but the parking lot was clear of demonstrators when Sam joined us in the parking lot to thank Kevin
and Kenya. Since I hadn’t seen his truck drive up, his appearance was quite a surprise.
“When did you get back?” I asked.
“Less than ten minutes ago,” he said. “I knew if I showed myself, they’d just get pumped up again, so I parked on School Street
and walked through the back way.”
“Smart,” I said. The lunch crowd was leaving Merlotte’s, and the incident was already on the track to becoming a local legend.
Only one or two of the patrons seemed upset; the rest regarded the demonstration as good entertainment. Catfish Hennessy
clapped Sam on the shoulder as he went by, and he wasn’t the only one who made an extra effort to show support. I wondered
how long the tolerant attitude would last. If the picketers kept it up, a lot of people might decide that coming here simply wasn’t
worth the trouble.
I didn’t need to say any of this out loud. It was written on Sam’s face. “Hey,” I said, slinging an arm around his shoulders. “They’ll
go away. You know what you should do? You should call the pastor of that church. They’re all from Holy Word Tabernacle in
Clarice. You should tell him that you want to come talk to the church. Show them you’re a person just like everyone else. I bet that
would work.”
Then I realized how stiff his shoulders were. Sam was rigid with anger. “I should not have to tell anyone anything,” he said. “I’m a
citizen of this country. My father was in the army. I was in the army. I pay my share of taxes. And I’mnot a person like everyone
else. I’m a shifter. And they need to just put that on their plates and eat it.” He whirled to go back into his bar.
I flinched, though I knew his anger wasn’t directed at me. As I watched Sam stalk away, I reminded myself that none of this was
about me. But I couldn’t help but feel I had a stake in the outcome of this new development. Not only did I work at Merlotte’s, but
the woman who’d come in initially had named me as part of the problem.
Furthermore, I still thought approaching the church in person was a good idea. It was reasonable and civil.
Sam wasn’t in a reasonable and civil mood, and I could understand that. I just didn’t know where he was going to put his anger.
A newspaper reporter came in an hour later and interviewed all of us about “the incident,” as he called it. Errol Clayton was a guy in
his forties who wrote about half the stories in the little Bon Temps paper. He didn’t own it, but he managed it on a shoestring
budget. I had no issue with the paper, but of course lots of folks made fun of it. TheBon Temps Bugle was frequently called theBon
Temps Bungle .
While Errol was waiting for Sam to finish a phone call, I said, “You want a drink, Mr. Clayton?”
“I’d sure appreciate some iced tea, Sookie,” he said. “How’s that brother of yours?”
“He’s doing well.”
“Getting over the death of his wife?”
“I think he’s come to terms with it,” I said, which covered all sorts of ground. “That was a terrible thing.”
“Yes, very bad. And it was right here in this parking lot,” Errol Clayton said, as if I might have forgotten. “And right here, in this
parking lot, was where the body of Lafayette Reynold was found.”
“That’s true, too. But of course, none of that was Sam’s fault, or had anything to do with him.”
“Never arrested anyone for Crystal’s death that I recall.”
I reared back to give Errol Clayton a hard stare. “Mr. Clayton, if you’ve come here to make trouble, you can just leave now. We
need things to be better, not worse. Sam is a good man. He goes to the Rotary, he puts an ad in the high school yearbook, he
sponsors a baseball team at the Boys and Girls Club every spring, and he helps with the Fourth of July fireworks. Plus, he’s a great
boss, a veteran, and a tax-paying citizen.”
“Merlotte, you got you a fan club,” Errol Clayton said to Sam, who’d come to stand right behind me.
“I’ve got a friend,” Sam said quietly. “I’m lucky enough to have a lot of friends and a good business. I sure would hate to see that
ruined.” I heard an apology in his voice, and I felt his hand pat my shoulder. Feeling much better, I slipped away to do my job,
leaving Sam to talk to the newspaperman.
I didn’t get a chance to talk to my boss again before I left to go home. I had to stop at the store because I needed a couple of
things—Claude had made inroads into my potato chip stash and my cereal, too—and I wasn’t just imagining that the store was full
of people who were busy talking about what had happened at lunchtime at Merlotte’s. There was silence every time I came around
a corner, but of course that didn’t make any difference to me. I could tell what people were thinking.
Most of them didn’t share the beliefs of the demonstrators. But the mere fact of the incident had set some of the previously
indifferent townspeople to thinking about the issue of the two-natured, and about the legislation that proposed to take away some of
their rights.
And some of them were all for it.
Chapter 13
Jason was on time, and I climbed up into his truck. I’d changed intoblue jeans and a pale blue thin T-shirt I’d bought at Old Navy.
It said PEACE in golden Gothic letters. I hoped I didn’t look like I was hinting. Jason, in an ever-appropriate New Orleans Saints
T-shirt, looked ready for anything.
“Hey, Sook!” He was buzzing with happy anticipation. He’d never been to a Were meeting, of course, and he wasn’t aware of how
dangerous they could be. Or maybe he was, and that was why he was so excited.
“Jason, I got to tell you a few things about Were gatherings,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, a bit more soberly.
Aware that I sounded more like his know-it-all older sister instead of his younger sister, I gave him a little lecture. I told Jason that
the Weres were touchy, proud, and protocol minded; explained how the Weres could abjure a pack member; emphasized the fact
that Basim was a newer pack member who’d been trusted with a position of great responsibility. That he’d betrayed that trust
would make the pack even touchier, and they might question Alcide’s judgment in picking Basim as enforcer. He might even be
challenged. The pack judgment on Annabelle was impossible to predict. “Something pretty awful may happen to her,” I warned
Jason. “We got to suck it up and accept it.”
“You’re saying they might physically punish a woman because she cheated on the packleader with another pack officer?” Jason
said. “Sookie, you’re talking to me like I’m not two-natured, too. You think I don’t know all that?”
He was right. That was exactly how I’d been treating him.
I took a deep breath. “I apologize, Jason. I still think about you as my human brother. I don’t always remember that you’re a lot
more. In all honesty, I’m scared. I’ve seen them kill people before, like I’ve seen your panthers kill and maim people when they
thought that was justice. What scares me is not that you do it, which is bad enough, but that I’ve come to accept it as just . . . the
way you do things if you’re two-natured. When those demonstrators were at the bar today, I was so mad at them for hating Weres
and shifters without really knowing anything about them. But now I’m wondering how they’d feel if they actually knew more about
how packs work; how Gran would feel if she knew I was willing to watch a woman, or anyone, be beaten and maybe killed for an
infraction of some rules I don’t live by.”
Jason was silent for what seemed like a long time. “I think the fact that a few days have passed is a good thing. It’s given Alcide
time to cool off. I hope the other pack members have had time to think, too,” he said finally. And I knew that was all we could say
about this, and maybe more than I should have said. We fell silent for a short time.
“Can’t you listen in to what they’re thinking?” Jason asked.
“Full Weres are pretty hard to read. Some are harder than others. Of course, I’ll see what I can get. I can block a lot when I make
myself, but if I let my guard down . . .” I shrugged. “This is a case where I want to know everything I can as soon as I can.”
“Who do you think killed that dude in the grave?”
“I’ve given it some thought,” I said gently. “I see three main possibilities. But the key to me suspecting all three is that he was buried
on my land, and I have to assume that wasn’t by chance.”
Jason nodded.
“Okay, here goes. Maybe Victor, the new vamp leader of Louisiana, killed Basim. Victor wants to knock Eric out of his position,
since Eric’s a sheriff. That’s a pretty important position.”
Jason looked at me like I was an idiot. “I may not know all their fancy titles and all their little secret handshakes,” he said, “but I
know someone in charge when I see him. If you say this Victor outranks Eric and wants him gone, I believe you.”
I had to stop underestimating my brother’s shrewdness. “Maybe Victor thought that if I got arrested for murder—since someone
tipped off the law that there was a body on my land—Eric would go down with me. Maybe Victor thought that would be enough
for their mutual boss to take Eric out of his position.”
“Wouldn’t it have been better to put the body in Eric’s house and call the police?”
“That’s a good point. But finding a body in Eric’s house would mean bad press for all vampires. Another idea I had, maybe the
killer was Annabelle, who was screwing both Basim and Alcide. Maybe she got jealous, or maybe Basim said he was going to tell.
So she killed him, and since they’d just been on my land, she thought of it as a good place to bury a body.”
“That’s a long way to drive with a body in the trunk,” Jason said. He was clearly going to play devil’s advocate.
“Sure, it’s easy to punch holes in all my ideas,” I said, sounding exactly like his little sister. “Once I go to all the work of coming up
with them! But you’re right. That’d be a risk I wouldn’t want to take,” I added, on a more mature level.
“Alcide could’ve done it,” Jason said.
“Yeah. He could’ve. But you were there. Did it seem to you—remotely—like he knew it was going to be Basim?”
“No,” he said. “I thought he got a huge shock. But I wasn’t looking at Annabelle.”
“I wasn’t, either. So I don’t know how she reacted.”
“So you got any other ideas?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And this is my least favorite. You know I told you that Heidi the vampire scented fairies in the woods?”
“I did, too,” Jason said.
“Maybe I should get you to check out the woods on a regular basis,” I said. “Anyway, Claude said it wasn’t him, and Heidi
confirmed that. But what if Basim saw Claude meeting with another fairy? In the area around the house, where Claude’s scent
would be natural?”
“When would this have happened?”
“The night the pack was on the property. Claude hadn’t moved in then, but he’d come around to see me.”
I could see Jason trying to figure out the sequence. “So Basim warned you about the fairies he tracked, but he didn’t tell you he’d
seen some? I don’t think that holds together, Sook.”
“You’re right,” I admitted. “And we still don’t know who the other fairy would be. If there are two, and one of them isn’t Claude,
and the other one is Dermot . . .”
“That leaves one fairy we don’t know about.”
“Dermot’s seriously messed up, Jason.”
Jason said, “I’m worried aboutall of ’em.”
“Even Claude?”
“Look, how come he showed up now? When you have other fairies in the woods? And does that sound crazy when you say it out
loud, or what?”
I laughed. Just a little. “Yeah, it sounds nuts. And I get your point. I don’t entirely trust Claude, even if he is a little bit family. I wish
I hadn’t said yes to him moving in. On the other hand, I don’t believe he means to hurt me or you. And he’s notquite as much of an
asshole as I thought he was.”
We tried to put together a few more theories about Basim’s death, but we could punch too many holes in all of our theories. It
passed the time until we arrived.
The house Alcide had moved into when his dad died was a large two-story brick home on large grounds, enhanced with impressive
landscaping. The—estate? manor house?—was in a very nice area of Shreveport, of course. In fact, it wasn’t too far from Eric’s
neighborhood. That gnawed at me, thinking of Eric so close to me but in so much trouble.
The confusion of what I was feeling through our blood bond was making me more jittery with every passing night. There were so
many people sharing in that bond now, so much feeling going back and forth. It wore me out emotionally. Alexei was the worst. He
was a very dead little boy, that was the only way I could put it: a child locked in a permanent grayness, a child who experienced
only occasional flashes of pleasure and color in his new “life.” After days of experiencing what amounted to an echo of him living in
my head, I’d decided the boy was like a tick sucking on the life of Appius Livius, Eric, and now me. He siphoned off a little every
day.
Apparently, Appius Livius was so used to Alexei’s draining him that he accepted it as part of his existence. Maybe—possibly—the
Roman felt responsible for the trouble Alexei caused, since he’d brought him over. If that was Appius Livius’s conviction, I thought
he was absolutely correct. I was sure that bringing Alexei to Eric, thinking the presence of another “child” would soothe Alexei’s
psychosis, was a last-ditch effort to cure the boy. And Eric, my lover, was caught in the middle of all this along with all the problems
he was staving off involving Victor.
I felt less and less like a good person every day. As we walked from the driveway to Alcide’s front door, I admitted to myself that
since my visit to Fangtasia, I found myself wishing that all of them would die—Appius Livius, Alexei, Victor.
I had to shove all that into a mental corner, because I had to be on my game to enter a house full of Weres. Jason put his arm
around my shoulders and gave me a half hug. “Sometime you’ll have to explain to me how come we’re doing this,” he said.
“Because I think I kind of forgot.”
I laughed, which was what he’d wanted. I put up a hand to ring the bell, but the door swung open before my fingertip made contact.
Jannalynn was standing there in a sports bra and running shorts. (She always came up with wardrobe choices that startled me.) The
running shorts showed concave dips by her hipbones, and I sighed. “Concave” was not a word I’d ever used in relation to my
body.
“Getting into the new job?” Jason asked her, stepping forward. Jannalynn had to either back up or block his way, and she chose to
back up.
“I was born for this job,” the young Were said.
I had to agree. Jannalynn seemed to love doling out violence. At the same time, I wondered what job she could hold in the real
world. She’d been bartending at a Were-owned bar in Shreveport when I’d first seen her, and I knew the owner of that bar had
died in the struggle between the packs. “Where are you working now, Jannalynn?” I asked, since there shouldn’t be any need to
keep that secret that I could see.
“I manage the Hair of the Dog. The ownership passed to Alcide, and he felt I could handle the job. I have some help,” she said,
which was a confession that surprised me.
Ham, his arm around a pretty brunette in a sundress, was waiting across the foyer by the opened doors to the living room. He
patted my shoulder and introduced his companion as Patricia Crimmins. I recognized her as one of the women who’d joined the
Long Tooth pack in surrender after the Were war, and I tried to focus on her. But my attention kept straying. Patricia laughed and
said, “It’s quite a place, isn’t it?”
I nodded in silent agreement. I’d never been in the house before, and my eyes were drawn to the French doors on the other side of
the big room. There were lights out in the large backyard, which not only was enclosed by a fence that had to be seven feet tall, but
was also lined outside with those quick-growing cypresses that shoot up like spears. In the middle of the patio was a fountain,
which would make getting a drink easy if you’d turned into a wolf. There was a lot of wrought iron furniture set around on the
flagstones, too. Wow. I’d known the Herveauxes were well-to-do, but this was impressive.
The living room itself was very “men’s club,” all glossy dark leather and paneling, and the fireplace was as big as fireplaces got in
this day and age. There were animal heads mounted on the walls, which I thought was kind of amusing. Everyone seemed to have a
drink in hand, and I located the bar at the center of the thickest cluster of Weres. I didn’t spot Alcide, who because of his height
and his presence was usually a standout in any crowd.
I spotted Annabelle. She was in the center of the room on her knees, though she was not constrained in any way. There was an
empty space all around her.
“Don’t approach,” Ham said quietly as I took a step forward. I stopped in my tracks.
“You can talk to her later, probably,” Patricia whispered. It was the “probably” that bothered me. But this was pack business, and I
was on pack land.
“I’m getting me a beer,” Jason said after he’d had a good look at Annabelle’s situation. “What do you want, Sook?”
“You need to go upstairs,” Jannalynn said very quietly. “Don’t drink anything else. Alcide’s got a drink for you.” She jerked her
head toward the stairs to my left. I puckered my brows together, and Jason looked as though he were going to protest, but she
jerked her head again.
I found Alcide in a study at the head of the stairs. He was looking out the window. There was a glass of cloudy yellow liquid sitting
on the desk blotter.
“What?” I said. I was getting an even worse feeling about this evening than I’d already had.
He turned to face me. His black hair was still in a tumble, and he could have used a shave, but grooming had nothing to do with the
charisma that surrounded him like a cocoon. I didn’t know if the role had enhanced the man, or if the man had grown into the role,
but Alcide had come far from the charming, friendly guy I’d met two winters ago.
“We don’t have a shaman anymore,” he said with no preamble. “We haven’t had one for four years. It’s hard to find a Were who’s
willing to take the position, and you have to have the talent for it to even consider it anyway.”
“Okay,” I said, waiting to see where he was going.
“You’re the closest we’ve got.”
If there’d been drums in the background, they would’ve started an ominous roll. “I’m not a shaman,” I said. “In fact, I don’t know
what a shaman is. And you don’t have me.”
“That’s a term we use for a medicine man or woman,” Alcide said. “One with a gift for interpreting and applying magic. It sounded
better to us than ‘witch.’ And this way, we know who we’re talking about. If we had a pack shaman, that shaman would drink the
stuff in this glass and be able to help us determine the truth of what happened to Basim, and the degree of guilt of everyone
involved. Then the pack would decide on proportionate justice.”
“What is it?” I asked, pointing at the liquid.
“It’s what was left over in the last shaman’s stash.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a drug,” he said. “But before you walk out, let me tell you that the last shaman took it several times without any lasting ill
effect.”
“Lasting.”
“Well, he had stomach cramps the next day. But he was able to go back to work the day after that.”
“Of course, he was a Were, and he’d be able to eat things I can’t eat anyway. What does it do to you? Or rather, what would it do
to me?”
“It gives you a different perception of reality. That’s what the guy told me. And since I clearly wasn’t shaman material, that’sall he
told me.”
“Why would I take an unknown drug?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Because otherwise we’ll never get to the bottom of this,” Alcide said. “Right now, the only guilty person I can see is Annabelle.
She may only be guilty of being unfaithful to me. I hate that, but she doesn’t deserve to die for it. But if I can’t find out who killed
Basim and planted him in your ground, I think the pack will condemn her, since she’s the only one who was involved with him. I
guess I’d be a good suspect for killing Basim out of jealousy. But I could have done it legally, and I wouldn’t have blamed you.”
I knew that was true.
“They’ll put her to death,” he said, harping on the point that would have the most effect on me.
I was almost tough enough to shrug. Almost.
“Can’t I try to do this my way?” I said. “Laying my hands on them?”
“You’ve told me yourself it’s hard to get a clear thought from Weres.” Alcide said it almost sadly. “Sookie, I’d hoped we’d be a
couple one day. Now that I’m packmaster and you’re in love with that cold ass Eric, I guess that’ll never happen. I thought we
might have a chance because you couldn’t read my thoughts that clearly. Since I know that, I don’t think I can rely on you laying on
your hands and getting an accurate reading.”
He was right.
“A year ago,” I said, “you wouldn’t have asked this of me.”
“A year ago,” he answered, “you wouldn’t have hesitated to drink.”
I crossed to the desk and tossed it down.
Chapter 14
I went down the stairs on Alcide’s arm. I was already feeling a littleswimmy in the head, having taken an illegal drug for the first time
in my life.
I was an idiot.
However, I was an increasingly warm and comfortable idiot. A delightful side effect of the shaman’s drink was that I couldn’t feel
Eric and Alexei and Appius Livius with nearly as much immediacy, and the relief was incredible.
A less pleasant side effect was that my legs didn’t feel quite real underneath me. Maybe that was why Alcide was keeping such a
tight grip on my arm. I remembered what he’d said about his former hope that we’d be a couple one day, and I thought it might be
nice to kiss him and remind myself what it felt like. Then I realized I’d better channel those warm and fuzzy feelings into finding out
the answers to the puzzles facing Alcide. I directed my feelings, which was an excellent decision. I was so proud of my excellence I
could have rolled in it.
The shaman had probably known a few tricks for keeping all this dreaminess focused on the matter at hand. I made a huge effort to
sharpen up. In my absence, the group in the living room had swollen in numbers; the whole pack was here. I could feel the totality
of it, the completeness.
Eyes turned to look at us as we descended the stairs. Jason looked alarmed, but I gave him a reassuring smile. Something must
have been off about it, because his face didn’t smooth out.
Alcide’s second went to stand by the kneeling Annabelle. Jannalynn threw back her head and gave a series of yips. Now I was
standing by my brother, and he was holding on to me. Somehow, Alcide had passed me over to Jason’s keeping.
“Geez,” Jason muttered. “What’s wrong with waving your hand in the air or ringing a triangle?” I could assume yipping was not a
summons in the panther pride. That was okay. I smiled at Jason. I felt a lot like Alice in Wonderland after she took a bite of the
mushroom.
I was on one side of the empty space around Annabelle, Alcide on the other. He looked around to collect the pack’s attention.
“We’re here tonight with two visitors to decide what to do about Annabelle,” he said without a preamble. “We’re here to judge
whether she had anything to do with the death of Basim, or if that death can be laid at the door of anyone else.”
“Why are there visitors?” asked a woman’s voice. I tried to find her face, but she was standing so far in the back I couldn’t see her.
I estimated there were perhaps as many as forty people in the room, ranging in age from sixteen (the change began after puberty) to
seventy. Ham and Patricia were to my left, about a quarter of the circle away. Jannalynn had stayed by Annabelle. The few other
pack members I knew by name were scattered through the crowd.
“Listen hard,” Alcide said, looking directly at me.Okay, Alcide, message received. I closed my eyes, and I listened. Well, this was
absofucking-lutely amazing. I found I knew when his gaze swept the assembled pack members by the ripple of fear that followed. I
couldsee the fear. It was dark yellow. “Basim’s body was found on Sookie’s land,” Alcide said. “It was planted there in an attempt
to blame her for his death. The police came to search for it right after we removed it.”
There was a general surge of surprise . . . from almost everyone.
“You moved the body?” Patricia said. My eyes flew open. Why had Alcide elected to keep that a secret? Because it had been a
total shock to Patricia, and to a few others, that Basim’s body wasnot still in the clearing. Jason moved up behind me and put his
beer down. He knew he needed his hands free. My brother might not be a mental giant, but he had good instincts.
I was amazed at Alcide’s cleverness in setting up the scene. I might not get Were thoughts that clearly, but Were emotions . . . That
was what he was after. Now that I was concentrating, focusing on the creatures in the room, almost out of my body with the
intensity of it, I saw Alcide as a ball of red energy, pulsing and attractive, and all the other Weres were circling around him. I
understood for the first time that the packleader was the planet around which all others orbited in the Were universe. The pack
members were various shades of red and violet and pink, the colors of their devotion to him. Jannalynn was a blazing streak of
intense crimson, her adoration making her almost as bright as Alcide himself. Even Annabelle was a watery cerise, despite her
infidelity.
But there were a few spots of green. I held my hand out in front of me as if I were telling the rest of the world to stop while I
considered this new interpretation of perception.
“Tonight Sookie is our shaman,” Alcide’s voice boomed from a distance. I could safely ignore that. I could follow the colors,
because they betrayed the person.
Green, look for the green. Though my head remained still and my eyes closed, I turned them somehow to look at the green people.
Ham was green. Patricia was green. I looked the other way. There was one more green one, but he fluctuated between pale yellow
and faint green. Ha!Ambivalent, I told myself wisely.Not a traitor yet, but doubtful about Alcide’s leadership. The wavering image
belonged to a young male, and I dismissed him as insignificant. I looked at Annabelle again. Cerise still, but flickering with amber as
her intense fear broke through her loyalty.
I opened my eyes. What was I supposed to say—“They’re green, get them!”? I found myself moving, drifting through the pack like
a balloon through the trees. Finally, I was right in front of Ham and Patricia. This was where the hands would come in handy. Ha!
That was funny! I laughed a little.
“Sookie?” Ham said. Patricia shrank back, letting go of him.
“Don’t go anywhere, Patricia,” I said, smiling at her. She flinched, ready to run, but a dozen hands grabbed her and held her firmly.
I looked up at Ham and put my fingers on his cheeks. If I’d had some finger paint, he’d have looked like a movie Indian on the
warpath. “So jealous,” I said. “Ham, you told Alcide there were people camping on the stream and that was why the pack needed
to run in my woods. You invited those men, didn’t you?”
“They—no.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, touching the tip of his nose. “I see.” I could hear his thoughts as clearly as if I were inside his head now. “So
theywere from the government. They were trying to gather information on the Were packs in Louisiana and anything bad the packs
might have done. They asked you to bribe an enforcer, a second. To describe all the bad stuff he’d done. So they could push
through that bill, the one that’ll require you-all to register like aliens. Hamilton Bond—shame on you! You told them to force Basim
to tell them stuff, the stuff that had gotten him kicked out of the Houston pack.”
“None of this is true, Alcide,” Ham said. He was trying to sound all Big Serious Man, but to me he sounded like a squeaky little
mouse. “Alcide, I’ve known you my whole life.”
“And you thought that Alcide would make you his second,” I said. “Instead, he picked Basim, who already had a track record as
an enforcer.”
“He got thrown out of Houston,” Ham said. “That’s how bad he was.” The anger broke through, pulsing in gold and black.
“I’d ask him, and I’d know the truth, but I can’t now, right? Because you killed him and put him in the cold, cold ground.” Actually,
it hadn’t been all that cold, but I felt I was due a little artistic license. My mind soared and swooped, way above everything. I could
see so much! I felt like God. This was fun.
“I didn’t kill Basim! Well, maybe I did, but it was because he was screwing our packleader’s girlfriend! I couldn’t stomach such
disloyalty!”
“Beep! Try again!” I fanned my fingers over his cheeks. We needed to know something else, didn’t we? Some other question had
to be answered.
“He met with a creature in your woods on our moon night,” Ham blurted. “He, I don’t know what he talked about.”
“What kind of creature?”
“I don’t know. Some guy. Some . . . I’ve never seen anything like him. He was really handsome. Like a movie star or something.
He had long hair, really pale long hair, and he was there one minute and gone the next. He talked to Basim while Basim was in his
wolf form. Basim was by himself. After we ate the deer, I’d fallen asleep on the other side of some laurel bushes. When I woke up,
I heard them talking. The other guy was trying to frame you for something because you’d done something to him. I don’t know
what. Basim was going to kill someone and bury him on your land, and then call the cops. That would take care of you, and then
the fair . . .” Ham’s voice died away.
“You knew it was a fairy,” I said, smiling at Ham. “You knew. So you decided to do the job first.”
“It wasn’t something Alcide would have wanted Basim to do, right, Alcide?”
Alcide didn’t answer, but he was pulsating like a skyrocket on the periphery of my vision.
“And you told Patricia. And she helped,” I said, stroking his face. He wanted to make me stop, but he didn’t dare.
“Her sister died in the war! She couldn’t accept her new pack. I was the only one who was nice to her, she said.”
“Aw, you’re so generous to be nice to the pretty Were woman,” I said mockingly. “Good Ham! Instead of Basim killing someone
and burying them, you killed Basim and buried him. Instead of Basim getting a reward from the fairy, you thought you would get a
reward from the fairy. Because fairies are rich, right?” I let my nails dig into his cheek. “Basim wanted the money to get out from
under the government guys. You wanted the money just because you wanted the money.”
“Basim owed a blood debt in Houston,” Ham said. “Basim wouldn’t have talked to the anti-Were people for any reason. I can’t go
to my death with that lie on my soul. Basim wanted to pay off the debt he owed for killing a human who was a friend of the pack. It
was an accident, while Basim was in wolf form. The human poked him with a hoe, and Basim killed him.”
“I knew about that,” Alcide said. He hadn’t spoken until now. “I told Basim I would loan him the money.”
“I guess he wanted to earn it himself,” Ham said miserably. (Misery, I learned, was deep purple.) “He thought he’d meet with the
fairy again, find out exactly what the fairy wanted him to do, get a body from a mortuary or a drunk’s body from some alley, and
plant it on Sookie’s land. That would fulfill the letter of what the fairy wanted. No harm would have been done. But instead, I
decided . . .” He began sobbing, and his color turned all washed-out gray, the color of faded faith.
“Where were you going to meet him?” I asked. “To get your money? Which you had earned, I’m not saying you didn’t.” I was
proud of how fair I was being. Fairness was blue, of course.
“I was going to meet him at the same spot in your woods,” he said. “On the south side by the cemetery. Later tonight.”
“Very good,” I murmured. “Don’t you feel better now?”
“Yes,” he said, without a trace of irony in his voice. “I do feel better, and I’m ready to accept the judgment of the pack.”
“I’m not,” Patricia cried. “I escaped death in the pack war by surrendering. Let me surrender again!” She fell to her knees, like
Annabelle. “I beg forgiveness. I’m only guilty of loving the wrong man.” Like Annabelle. Patricia bowed her head, and her dark
braid fell over one shoulder. She put her clasped hands to her face. Pretty as a picture.
“You didn’t love me,” Ham said, genuinely shocked. “Wescrewed . You were upset with Alcide because he didn’t pick you to
bed. I was upset with Alcide because he didn’t pick me as his second. That was the sum total of what we had in common!”
“Their colors are certainly getting brighternow ,” I observed. The passion of their mutual accusation was perking up their auras to
something combustible. I tried to summarize to myself what I’d learned, but it all came out a jumble. Maybe Jason could help me
sort it out later. This shaman stuff was kind of taxing. I felt that soon I would be depleted, as if the end of a race were in sight. “Time
to decide,” I said, looking at Alcide, whose brilliant red glow was still steady.
“I think Annabelle should be disciplined but not cast out of the pack,” Alcide said, and there was a chorus of protest.
“Kill her!” said Jannalynn, her fierce little face determined. She was so ready to do the killing. I wondered if Sam really understood
what he’d bitten off in going out with such a ferocious thing. He seemed so far away now.
“This is my reasoning,” Alcide said calmly. The room quieted as the pack listened. “According to them,” and he pointed at Ham and
Patricia, “Annabelle’s only guilt is a moral one, in sleeping with two men at the same time while telling one of them she was faithful.
We don’t know what she told Basim.”
Alcide spoke the truth . . . at least, the truth as he saw it. I looked at Annabelle and saw her all: the disciplined woman who was in
the Air Force, the practical woman who balanced her pack life with the rest of her life, the woman who lost all her practicality and
restraint when it came to sex. Annabelle was a rainbow of colors right now, none of them happy except the vibrating white line of
relief that Alcide did not plan to kill her.
“As for Ham and Patricia. Ham is the murderer of a pack member. Instead of an open challenge, he took the path of stealth. That
would call for severe punishment, maybe death. We should consider that Basim was a traitor—not only a pack member, but a
second, who was willing to deal with someone outside the pack, to plot against the pack interests and against the good name of a
friend of the pack,” Alcide continued.
“Oh,” I murmured to Jason. “That’s me.”
“And Patricia, who promised to be loyal to this pack, broke her vow,” Alcide said. “So she should be cast out forever.”
“Packmaster, you’re too merciful,” Jannalynn said vehemently. “Ham clearly deserves death for his disloyalty. Ham, at least.”
There was a long silence, broken by a growing buzz of discussion. I looked around the room, seeing the color of thoughtfulness
(brown, of course) turning into all kinds of shades as passions rose. Jason put his arms around me from behind. “You need to back
out of this,” he whispered, and I could see his words turn pink and curly. He loved me. I put a hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t
laugh out loud. We stepped backward; one step, two, three, four, five. Then we were standing in the foyer.
“We need to leave,” Jason said. “If they’re going to kill two good-looking gals like Annabelle and Patricia, I don’t want to be
around to see it. If we don’t see anything, we won’t have to testify in court, if it comes to that.”
“They won’t debate long. I think Annabelle will see tomorrow. Alcide will let Jannalynn persuade him to kill Ham and Patricia,” I
said. “His colors tell me so.”
Jason gaped at me. “I don’t know what you took or smoked or inhaled upstairs,” he said, “but you need to get out of here now.”
“Okay,” I said, and suddenly I realized I felt pretty damn bad. I made it outside to Alcide’s shrubbery before I threw up. I waited
for the second wave to roll over me before I risked getting into Jason’s truck.
“What would Gran say about me leaving before I saw the results of what I’d done?” I asked him sadly. “I left after the Were war
when Alcide was celebrating his victory. I don’t know how you panthers celebrate, but believe me, I didn’t want to be around
when he fucked one of the Weres. It was bad enough seeing Jannalynn execute the wounded. On the other hand . . .” I lost my train
of thought in another wave of sickness, though this one wasn’t as violent.
“Gran would say you’re not obliged to watch people kill each other, and you didn’t cause it, they did,” Jason said briskly. I could
tell that my brother, though sympathetic, wasn’t thrilled about driving me all the way home with my stomach so jittery.
“Listen, can I just drop you by Eric’s?” he said. “I know he’s gotta have a bathroom or two, and that way my truck can stay clean.”
Under any other circumstances I would have refused, since Eric was in such a charged situation. But I felt shaky, and I was still
seeing colors. I chewed two antacids from the glove compartment and rinsed my mouth out repeatedly with some Sprite Jason had
in the truck. I had to agree that it would be better if I could spend the night in Shreveport.
“I can come back and get you in the morning,” Jason offered. “Or maybe his day guy can give you a ride to Bon Temps.”
Bobby Burnham would rather transport a flock of turkeys.
While I hesitated, I discovered that now that I wasn’t surrounded by Weres, I felt the misery rolling through the blood bond. It was
the strongest, most active emotion I’d felt from Eric in days. The misery began to swell as unhappiness and physical pain
overwhelmed him.
Jason opened his mouth to ask questions about what I’d taken before the pack meeting. “Get me to Eric’s,” I said. “Quick, Jason.
Something’s wrong.”
“There, too?” he said plaintively, but we roared out of Alcide’s driveway.
I was practically shaking with anxiety when we stopped at the gate so Dan the security guard could give me a look. He hadn’t
recognized Jason’s truck.
“I’m here to see Eric, and this is my brother,” I said, trying to act normal.
“Go on through,” Dan said, smiling. “It’s been a while.”
When we pulled into Eric’s driveway, I saw that his garage door was open, though the garage light was off. In fact, the house was
in total darkness. Maybe everyone was over at Fangtasia. Nope. I knew Eric was there. I simply knew it.
“I don’t like this,” I said, and sat up a little straighter. I struggled against the effects of the drug. Though I was a little closer to
normal since I’d been sick, I still felt as though I were experiencing the world through gauze.
“He don’t leave it open?” Jason peered out over his steering wheel.
“No, henever leaves it open. And look! The kitchen door is open, too.” I got out of the truck, and I heard Jason get out on his side.
His truck lights stayed on automatically for a few seconds, so I got to the kitchen door easily enough. I always knocked at Eric’s
door if he didn’t expect me, because I never knew who would be there or what they’d be talking about, but this time I simply
pushed the door even wider. I could see a short distance into the kitchen because of the truck lights. The wrongness rolled out in a
cloud, that feeling a mixture of the sense I’d been born with and the extra layer of senses the drug had imparted. I was glad Jason
was right behind me. I could hear his breathing, way too fast and noisy.
“Eric,” I said, very quietly.
No one answered. There was no sound of any kind.
I stepped into the kitchen just as Jason’s truck lights went off. There were streetlights out on the street, and they supplied a dim
glow. “Eric?” I called. “Where are you?” Tension made my voice crack. Something was awfully wrong.
“In here,” he said from farther in the house, and my heart clenched.
“Thank you, God,” I said, and my hand went out to the wall switch. I flicked it down, flooding the room with light. I looked around.
The kitchen was pristine, as always.
So the awful things hadn’t happened here.
I crept from the kitchen into Eric’s big living room. I knew immediately that someone had died here. There were bloodstains
everywhere. Some of them were still wet. Some of them dripped. I heard Jason’s breath catch in his throat.
Eric was sitting on the couch, his head in his hands. There was no one else alive in the room.
Though the smell of blood was almost choking me, I was by him in a second. “Honey?” I said. “Look at me.”
When he raised his head, I could see a terrible gash across his forehead. He’d bled copiously from the head wound. There was
dried blood all over his face. When he straightened, I could see the blood on his white shirt. The head wound was healing, but the
other one . . . “What’s under the shirt?” I said.
“My ribs are broken and they’ve come through,” he said. “They’ll heal, but it’ll take time. You’ll have to push them back into
place.”
“Tell me what’s happened,” I said, trying very hard to sound calm. Of course, he knew I wasn’t.
“Dead guy over here,” Jason called. “Human.”
“Who is it, Eric?” I eased his bare feet up onto the sofa so he could lie down.
“It’s Bobby,” he said. “I tried to get him out of here in time, but he was so sure there was something he could do to help me.” Eric
sounded incredibly tired.
“Who killed him?” I hadn’t even scanned for other beings in this house, and I almost gasped at my own carelessness.
“Alexei snapped,” Eric said. “Tonight he left his room when Ocella came in here to talk to me. I knew Bobby was still in the house,
but I simply didn’t think about his being in danger. Felicia was here, too, and Pam.”
“Why was Felicia here?” I asked, because Eric didn’t ask his staff to his house, as a rule. Felicia, the Fangtasia bartender, had been
lowest on the vampire totem pole.
“She was dating Bobby. He had some papers I needed to sign, and she’d just come over with him.”
“So Felicia . . . ?”
“Part of a vampire left over here,” Jason called. “Looks like the rest has flaked away.”
“She’s gone to her final death,” Eric told me.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” I put my arms around him, and after a second, his shoulders relaxed. I had never seen Eric so defeated. Even
the awful night we’d been surrounded by the vampires of Las Vegas and forced to surrender to Victor, the night he’d thought we
might all die, he’d had that spark of determination and vigor. But at the moment he was literally overwhelmed with depression and
anger and helplessness. Thanks to his damnmaker , whose ego had required he bring back a traumatized boy from the dead.
“Where’s Alexei now?” I asked, making my voice as brisk as I could manage. “Where’s Appius? Is he still alive?” To hell with the
two-name requirement. I thought it would be great if Alexei had been helpful enough to kill the old vampire, save me the trouble.
“I don’t know.” Eric sounded completely defeated.
“Why not?” I was genuinely shocked. “He’s your maker, buddy! You’d know if he died. If I’ve been feeling you three for a week,
I know you’ve been feeling him even stronger.” Judith had said she’d felt a tug the day of Lorena’s death, though she hadn’t
understood what it meant. Eric had been alive for so long, maybe it would actually cause him physical harm if Appius died. In a
snap, I completely reversed my thinking. Appius should live until Eric recovered from his wounds. “You need to get out of here and
go find him!”
“He asked me not to follow when he went after Alexei. He doesn’t want us all to die.”
“So you’re just going to sit home because he said so? When you don’t know where they are or what they’re doing, or who they’re
doing it to?” I didn’t know what I wanted Eric to actually do. The drug was still coasting through my system, though it was slightly
weaker—I was only seeing colors where they shouldn’t be every now and then. But I had very little control over my thoughts and
my speech. I was simply trying to get Eric to act like Eric. And I wanted him to stop bleeding. And I wanted Jason to come push
Eric’s bones back in because I could see them sticking out.
“Ocella asked this of me,” Eric said, and he glared at me.
“So, heasked ? That doesn’t sound like a direct order to me. It sounds like a request. Correct me if I’m wrong,” I said, as snarkily
as I could.
“No,” Eric said through clenched teeth. I could feel his anger rising. “It wasnot a direct order.”
“Jason!” I yelled. My brother appeared, looking very grim. “Please push Eric’s ribs back in,” I said, which is another sentence I
never thought I’d hear myself saying. Without a word, but with a hard-set mouth, Jason put his hands on each side of the gaping
wound. He looked at Eric’s nose, and said, “Ready?” Without waiting for an answer, he pushed in.
Eric made an awful noise, but I noticed the bleeding stopped and the healing began. Jason looked down at his reddened hands and
went to find a bathroom.
“Well, then?” I said, handing Eric an open bottle of TrueBlood that had been left on the coffee table. He made a face, but gulped it
down. “What are you gonna do?”
“Later on we’ll have words about this,” he said. He gave me a look.
“Fine with me!” I glared right back and went off on an irrational tangent. “And while you’re listing the things you should be doing,
where’s the cleaning crew?”
“Bobby . . .” he began, and then stopped short.
Bobby would have called the cleaning crew for Eric.
“Okay, how’s about I do that part,” I said, and wondered where to find a phone book.
“He kept a list of important numbers in the right-hand desk drawer in my office,” Eric said, very quietly.
I found the name of the vampire cleaning service based midway between Shreveport and Baton Rouge, Fangster Cleanup. Since it
was vampire run, they’d be open. A male answered the phone immediately, and I described the problem. “We’ll be there in three
hours, if the homeowner can guarantee us a safe sleeping place in case the job runs over,” he said.
“No problem.” There was no telling where the other two resident vampires were or if they’d survive to return before the dawn. If
they did, they could all sleep in Eric’s big bed or in the other light-tight bedroom, if the coffins were required. I thought there were a
couple of the fiberglass pods stashed in the laundry room, too.
Now the carpets and the furniture would be cleaned. We just had to make sure no one else died tonight. After I hung up I felt super
efficient but strangely empty, which I attributed to having lost everything that had been in my stomach. Since I was so light, I floated
when I walked. Okay, maybe I still had more drug in me than I’d thought.
Then it suddenly hit me—Eric had said that Pam was in the house, too. Where was she? “Jason,” I yelled, “please, please—find
Pam.”
I returned to the foul-smelling living room, marched over to the windows, and opened them. I swung around to face my boyfriend,
who before this night had been many things: Arrogant, quick thinking, strong willed, secretive, and tricky were only the short list.
But he’d never been indecisive, and he’d never been hopeless.
“What’s the plan?” I asked him.
He was looking a little better now that Jason had done his thing. I couldn’t see any bones anymore. “There isn’t one,” Eric said, but
at least he looked guilty about it.
“What’s theplan ?” I asked again.
“I told you. I haven’t made a plan. I don’t know what to do. Ocella may be dead by now, if Alexei was clever enough to waylay
him.” Eric’s bloody tears ran down his cheeks.
“Bzzzzzt!”I made the noise of a buzzer going off. “You’d know if Appius Livius was dead. He’s your maker.What’s the plan? ”
Eric shot to his feet, with only a slight wince. Good. I’d goaded him upright. “I haven’t got one!” he roared. “No matter what I do,
someone will die!”
“Withno plan, someone’s going to die. And you know it. Someone’s probably dying right this second! Alexei is crazy! Let’shave a
plan .” I threw my hands up in the air.
“Why do you smell strange?” He’d finally taken in the PEACE T-shirt. “You smell of Were and of drugs. And you’ve been sick.”
“I’ve already been through hell tonight,” I said, maybe overstating a little bit. “And now I get to go through it twice,
becausesomeone’s got to get your Viking butt on the road.”
“What am I supposed to do?” he said, in a strangely reasonable voice.
“So you’re okay with Alexei killing Appius? I mean, I sure am, but I would’ve thought you would’ve objected. Guess I was
wrong.”
Jason staggered in. “I found Pam,” he said. He sat down very suddenly on an armchair. “She needed blood.”
“But she’s moving?”
“Only barely. She’s cut, her ribs are kicked in, and her left arm and her right leg are broken.”
“Oh God,” I said, and dashed back to find her. I definitely hadn’t been thinking straight because of the drugs, or she would’ve been
my first priority once I found Eric alive. She’d begun crawling to the living room from the bathroom, where Alexei had evidently
trapped her. The knife slashes were the most obvious injury, but Jason had been right about the broken bones. And this was after
she’d had Jason’s blood.
“Don’t say anything,” she grunted. “He caught me unawares. I am . . . so . . . stupid. How is Eric?”
“He’s going to be okay. Can I help you up?”
“No,” she said bitterly. “I prefer to drag myself along the hardwood floor.”
“Bitch,” I said, squatting to help her up. It was hard work, but since Jason had donated so much blood to Pam, I hated to ask him
for help. We staggered into the living room.
“Who would have thought Alexei could do so much damage? He’s so puny, and you’re a great fighter.”
“Flattery,” she said, her voice ragged, “is not effective at this point. It was my fault. The little shit was following Bobby around, and I
saw he’d gotten a knife from the kitchen. I tried to corner him while Bobby got out of the house. To give Ocella a chance to cool
the boy down. But he went for me. He’s fast as a snake.”
I was beginning to doubt I could get Pam to the couch.
Eric rose unsteadily and put his arm around her. Between us, we maneuvered her over to the couch he’d vacated.
“Do you need my blood?” he asked her. “I thank you for doing your best to stop him.”
“He’s my kin, too,” Pam said, settling back on a pillow with relief.
“Through you, I’m related to that little murderer.” Eric made a gesture with his wrist. “No, you need all your blood if you’re going
after him. I’m healing.”
“Since you got a few pints of mine,” Jason said weakly, with a ghost of his usual swagger.
“It was good. Thank you, panther,” she said, and I thought my brother smirked a little; but just then, his cell phone rang. I knew the
ring tone; it was from a song he loved, Queen’s “We Are the Champions.” Jason extricated the phone from his pocket and opened
it. “Hey,” he said, and then he listened.
“You okay?” he asked.
He listened some more.
“Okay. Thanks, honey. You stay inside, lock the doors, and don’t answer them until you hear my voice. Wait, wait! Until you hear
my cell phone! Okay?”
Jason flipped the phone shut. “That was Michele,” he said. “Alexei was just at my house looking for me. She went to the door, but
when she saw he was a deader, she didn’t ask him in. He told her he wants to warm himself in my life, whatever that means. He’d
tracked me there from your house by my smell.” Jason looked self-conscious, as if he were afraid he’d forgotten to put on
deodorant.
“Did the older one come after him?” I asked. I leaned against a handy wall. I was beginning to feel really ragged.
“Yeah, within a minute.”
“What did Michele tell them?”
“She told ’em to go back to your house. She figured if they were vamps, they were some problem of yours.” That was Michele, all
right.
My cell was out in Jason’s truck. I used his to call my house. Claudeanswered. “What are you doing there?” I said.
“We’re closed on Monday,” he said. “Why’d you call if you didn’t want me to answer?”
“Claude, there is a very bad vamp headed to the house. And he can come in, he’s been there before,” I said. “You gotta get
out.Get in your car and get out. ”
Alexei’s psychotic break plus Claude’s fairy allure to vampires: This was a deadly combination. The night, apparently, was still not
over. I wondered if it ever would be. For an awful moment, I looked into an endless nightmare of wandering from crisis to crisis,
always one step behind.
“Give me your keys, Jason,” I said. “You’re in no shape to drive after your blood donation, and Eric’s still healing. I don’t want to
drive his car.” My brother fished his keys from his pocket and tossed them to me, and I was grateful for someone who didn’t argue.
“I’m coming,” Eric said, and pushed to his feet once more. Pam had shut her eyes, but they flew open as she realized we were
leaving.
“All right,” I said, since I would take any help I could get. Even a weak Eric was stronger than almost anything. I told Jason about
the cleanup crew that was coming, and then we were out the door and into the truck with Pam still protesting that if we loaded her
in she would heal along the way.
I drove, and I drove fast. There was no point in asking if Eric could fly so he could get there faster, because I knew he couldn’t.
Eric and I didn’t talk along the way. We had either too much to say, or not enough. When we were about four minutes away from
the house, Eric doubled over with pain. It wasn’t his. I got a backwash of it from him. Something big had happened. We were
rocketing down the driveway to my house less than forty-five minutes after we’d left Shreveport, which was pretty damn good.
The security light in my front yard illuminated a strange scene. A pale-haired fairy I’d never seen before was standing back-to-back
with Claude. The one I didn’t know had a long, thin sword. Claude had two of my longest kitchen knives, one in each hand. Alexei,
who appeared to be unarmed, was circling them like a small white killing machine. He was naked and covered in splotches, which
were all shades of red. Ocella was lying sprawled on the gravel. His head was covered in dark blood. That seemed to be the theme
of the night.
We skidded to a stop and scrambled out of Jason’s truck. Alexei smiled, so he knew we were there, but he didn’t stop his circling.
“You didn’t bring Jason,” he called. “I wanted to see him.”
“He had to give Pam a lot of blood to keep her from dying,” I said. “He was too weak.”
“He should have let her pass away,” Alexei called, and darted under the sword to give the unknown fairy a hard fist to the stomach.
Though Alexei had a knife, he seemed to be feeling playful. The fairy swung the sword faster than I could follow with my eyes, and
it nicked Alexei, adding another rivulet to the blood already coursing down his chest.
“Can you please stop?” I asked. I staggered, because I seemed to have run out of steam. Eric put his arm around me.
“No,” Alexei said in his high boy’s voice. “Eric’s love for you is pouring through our bond, Sookie, but I can’t stop. This is the best
I’ve felt in decades.” He did feel wonderful; I could feel that coming through the bond. Though the drugs had temporarily deadened
it, now I was feeling nuances, and there was such a contradictory bundle of them that it was like standing in a wind that kept
changing directions.
Eric was trying to ease us over to where his maker lay. “Ocella,” he said, “do you live?”
Ocella opened one black eye behind a mask of blood. He said, “For the first time in centuries, I think I wish I didn’t.”
I think I wish you didn’t, too,I thought, and I felt him glance at me. “She’ll kill me with no compunction, that one,” the Roman said,
almost sounding amused. In the same voice he said, “Alexei has severed my spinal column, and until it heals, I will not be able to
move.”
“Alexei, please don’t kill the fairies,” I said. “That’s my cousin Claude, and I don’t have much family left.”
“Who’s the other one?” the boy asked, making an incredible leap to pull at Claude’s hair and vault the other fairy, whose sword
was not quick enough this time.
“I have no idea,” I said. I started to add that he was no friend of mine and was probably an enemy, since I figured he was the one
who’d been colluding with Basim, but I didn’t want to see anyone else die . . . except possibly Appius Livius.
“I am Colman,” the fairy bellowed. “I am of the sky fae, and my child is dead because of you, woman!”
Oh.
This was the father of Claudine’s baby.
When Eric’s arms left me, I had to struggle to stay on my feet. Alexei did one of his darting runs into the circle of blades, punching
Colman’s leg so hard that the fairy almost went down. I wondered if Colman’s leg had broken. But while Alexei was close, Claude
managed to stab backward and wound Alexei in the spot right below his shoulder. It would have killed the boy if he’d been human.
As it was, Alexei nearly slipped on the gravel but managed to scrabble to his feet and keep on going. Vampire or not, the boy was
tiring. I didn’t dare look away to see what Eric was doing, where he was.
I had an idea. Under its impetus, I ran into the house, though I couldn’t run in a straight line and I had to stop and breathe on my
way up the porch steps.
In a drawer in my night table was the silver chain I’d gotten so long ago when the drainers had kidnapped Bill for his blood. I
grabbed the chain, staggered back out of the house with it concealed in my hand behind my back, and edged near to the three
combatants—but closest of all to the dancing, whirling Alexei. Even in that short time I’d been gone, he seemed to have gotten a
little slower—but Colman was down on one knee.
I hated my plan, but this had to stop.
The next time the boy came by I was ready, with plenty of slack in the chain I was gripping with both hands. I swung my arms up,
then down, the slack of the chain landing around Alexei’s neck. I crossed my hands and pulled. Then Alexei was on the ground and
screaming, and a shaved moment after that, Eric was there with a tree branch he’d broken off. He raised both arms and brought
them down. The second after that, Alexei, tsarevitch of Russia, had gone to his final death.
I panted, because I was too exhausted to cry, and I sank to the ground. The two fairies gradually dropped their battle stances.
Claude helped Colman stand, and they put their hands on each others’ shoulders.
Eric stood between the fairies and me, keeping a watchful eye on them. Colman was my enemy, no doubt about that, and Eric was
being cautious. I took advantage of the fact that he wasn’t looking at me to pull the stake from Alexei and crawl over to the helpless
Appius. He watched me coming with a smile.
“I want to kill you right now,” I said, very quietly. “I want you dead so bad.”
“Since you’ve stopped to speak to me, I know you’re not going to do it.” He said that with the utmost confidence. “You won’t
keep Eric, either.”
I wanted to prove him wrong on both counts. But there’d been so much death and blood already that night. I hesitated. Then I
raised the broken bit of branch. For the first time, Appius looked a little worried—or maybe he was simply resigned.
“Don’t,” Eric said.
I might still have done it if there hadn’t been pleading in his voice.
“You know what you could do that would actually be some help, Appius Livius?” I said. There was a shout from Eric. Appius
Livius’s eyes flickered past me, and Ifelt him tell me to move. I thrust myself off to the side with every ounce of strength left in my
body. The sword intended for me went right into Appius Livius, and it was a fairy blade. The Roman went into convulsions instantly,
as the area around the wound blackened with shocking rapidity. Colman, who had been looking down at his accidental murder
victim with shocked eyes, stiffened, and his shoulders went back. He began to topple, and I saw that there was a dagger between
them. Eric shoved the quivering Colman away.
“Ocella!” Eric screamed, terror in his voice. Suddenly, Appius Livius went still.
“Well, all right,” I said wearily, and turned my heavy head to see who had thrown the knife. Claude was looking down at the two
blades still in his hands as if he expected to see one of them vanish.
Color us puzzled.
Eric seized the wounded Colman and latched on to his neck. Fairies are incredibly attractive to vampires—their blood, that is—and
Eric had a great reason to kill this fairy. He wasn’t holding back at all, and it was pretty gross. The gulping, the blood running down
Colman’s neck, his glazed eyes . . . Both of them had glazed eyes, I realized. Eric’s were full of bloodlust, and Colman’s were
becoming full of death. Colman had been too weakened by his many wounds to fight Eric off. Eric was looking rosier by the
second.
Claude limped over to sit on the grass beside me. He put my knives carefully on the ground by me, as if I’d been badgering him for
their return. “I was trying to persuade him to go home,” my cousin said. “I saw him only once or twice. He had an elaborate scheme
to put you in a human jail. He planned to kill you until he saw you with the child Hunter in the park. He thought of taking the child,
but even in a rage he couldn’t do it.”
“You moved in to protect me,” I said. That was amazing, from someone as selfish as Claude.
“My sister loved you,” Claude said. “Colman was fond of Claudine, and very proud she chose him to father her child.”
“I guess he was one of Niall’s followers.” He’d said he was one of the sky fairies.
“Yes, ‘Colman’ means ‘dove.’ ”
It didn’t make any difference now. I was sorry for him. “He had to know nothing I said would have stopped Claudine from doing
what she thought was right,” I said.
“He knew,” Claude admitted. “That was why he couldn’t bring himself to kill you, even before he saw the child. That’s why he
talked to the werewolf, concocted such an indirect scheme.” He sighed. “If Colman had really been convinced you caused
Claudine’s death, nothing would have stopped him.”
“I would have stopped him,” said a new voice, and Jason stepped out of the woods. No, it was Dermot.
“Okay,you threw the knife,” I said. “Thanks, Dermot. Are you okay?”
“I hope. . . .” Dermot looked at us pleadingly.
“Colman had a spell on him,” Claude observed. “At least, I think so.”
“He said you didn’t have a lot of magic,” I said to Claude. “He told me about the spell, as close as he could say it. I thought it must
be the other fairy, Colman, who put it on him. But since Colman is dead, I would have thought that would break the spell.”
Claude frowned. “Dermot, so it wasn’t Colman who laid the spell?”
Dermot sank to the ground in front of us. “So much longer,” he said elliptically. I puzzled over that for a moment.
“He was spelled much longer ago,” I said, finally feeling a little throb of excitement. “Are you saying that you were spelled months
ago?”
Dermot seized my hand in his left and took Claude’s hand in his right.
Claude said, “I think he means that he’s been spelled for much longer. For years.” Tears rolled down Dermot’s cheeks.
“I bet you money that Niall did it,” I said. “He probably had it all worked out in his head. Dermot deserved it for, I don’t know,
having qualms about his fairy legacy or something.”
“My grandfather is very loving but not very . . . tolerant,” Claude said.
“You know how they undo spells in fairy tales?” I said.
“Yes, I have heard that humans tell fairy tales,” Claude said. “So, tell me how they say to break spells.”
“In the fairy tales, a kiss does it.”
“Easily done,” Claude said, and as if we had practiced synchronized kissing, we leaned forward and kissed Dermot.
And it worked. He shuddered all over, then looked at us both, intelligence flooding his eyes. He began to weep in earnest, and after
a moment Claude got to his knees and helped Dermot up. “I’ll see you in a while,” he said. Then he guided Dermot into the house.
Eric and I were alone. Eric had sunk onto his haunches a little distance from the three bodies in my front yard.
“This is positively Shakespearean,” I said, looking around at the remains and the blood soaking into the ground. Alexei’s corpse
was already flaking away, but much more slowly than that of his ancient maker. Now that Alexei had met his final death, the
pathetic bones in his grave in Russia would vanish, too. Eric had cast the body of the fairy onto the gravel, where it began to turn to
dust, in the way fairies did. It was quite different from vampire disintegration, but just as handy. I realized I wouldn’t have three
corpses to hide. I was so tired from the sum total of a truly horrific day that I found it the happy moment of the past few hours. Eric
looked and smelled like something out of a horror movie. Our eyes met. He looked away first.
“Ocella taught me everything about being a vampire,” Eric said very quietly. “He taught me how to feed, how to hide, when it was
safe to mingle with humans. He taught me how to make love with men, and later he freed me to make love with women. He
protected me and loved me. He caused me pain for decades. He gave me life. My maker is dead.” He spoke as if he could
scarcely believe it, didn’t know how to feel. His eyes lingered on the crumbling mass of flakes that had been Appius Livius Ocella.
“Yes,” I said, trying not to sound happy. “He is. And I didn’t do it.”
“But you would have,” Eric said.
“I was thinking about it,” I said. There was no point in denying it.
“What were you going to ask him?”
“Before Colman stabbed him?” Though “stabbed” was hardly the right word. “Transfi xed” was more accurate. Yes, “transfixed.”
My brain was moving like a turtle.
“Well,” I said. “I was going to tell him I’d be glad to let him live if he’d kill Victor Madden for you.”
I’d startled Eric, as much as anyone as wiped out as he was could be startled. “That would have been good,” he said slowly. “That
was a good idea, Sookie.”
“Yeah, well. Not gonna happen.”
“You were right,” Eric said, still in that very slow voice. “This is just like the end of one of Shakespeare’s plays.”
“We’re the people left standing. Yay for us.”
“I’m free,” Eric said. He closed his eyes. Thanks to the last traces of the drug, I could practically watch the fairy blood zinging
through his system. I could see his energy level picking up. Everything physically wrong with him had healed, and now with the rush
of Colman’s blood he was forgetting his grief for his maker and his brother, and feeling only the relief of being free of them. “I feel
so good.” He actually drew a breath of the night air, still tainted with the odors of blood and death. He seemed to savor the smell.
“You are my dearest,” he said, his eyes manic blue.
“I’m glad to hear that,” I said, utterly unable to smile.
“I have to return to Shreveport to see about Pam, to arrange for the things I must do now that Ocella is dead,” Eric said. “But as
soon as I can, we’ll be together again, and we’ll make up for our lost time.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. We were alone in our bond once more, though it wasn’t as strong as it had been because we hadn’t
renewed it. But I wasn’t about to suggest that to Eric, not tonight. He looked up, inhaled again, and launched himself into the night
sky.
When all the bodies had completely disintegrated, I got to my feet and went into the house, the very flesh on my bones feeling as if it
could fall off from weariness. I told myself that I should feel a certain measure of triumph. I wasn’t dead; my enemies were. But in
the void left by the drug, I felt only a certain grim satisfaction. I could hear my great-uncle and my cousin talking in the hall
bathroom, and the water running, before I shut my own bathroom door. After I’d showered and was ready for bed, I opened the
door to my room to find them waiting for me.
“We want to climb in with you,” Dermot said. “We’ll all sleep better.”
That seemed incredibly weird and creepy to me—or maybe I only thought it should have. I was simply too tired to argue. I climbed
in the bed. Claude got in on one side of me, Dermot on the other. Just when I was thinking I would never be able to sleep, that this
situation was too odd and too wrong, I felt a kind of blissful relaxation roll through my body, a kind of unfamiliar comfort. I was
with family. I was with blood.
And I slept.