Not that Eric had given Victor and his cohorts any opportunity to surrender. The only one who’d been offered the chance to escape death was Victor’s new bodyguard, Akiro, and he’d turned the offer down. The fight in Fangtasia had been a no-debate full-frontal assault, involving gallons of blood and a lot of dismemberment and death. I tried not to remember it too vividly. I smiled and waited for Felipe’s response.
“Why did you do this? Are you not sworn to me?” For the first time, Felipe appeared less than casual. In fact, he looked downright stern. “I appointed Victor my regent here in Louisiana. I appointed him … and I am your king.” At the escalation in tone, I noticed Horst was tensed for action. So was Pam.
There was a long silence. It was what I imagine is the definition of the word “fraught.”
“Your Majesty, if I did this thing, it might have been for several reasons,” Eric said, and I began to breathe again. “I am sworn to you, and I’m loyal to you, but I can’t stand still while someone is trying to kill my people for no good reason—and without previous discussion with me. Victor sent two of his best vampires to kill Pam and my wife.” Eric rested a cold hand on my shoulder, and I did my best to look shaken. (That wasn’t too hard.)
“Only because Pam is a great fighter, and my wife can hold her own, did they escape,” Eric said solemnly.
He gave us all a moment to contemplate that. Horst was looking skeptical, but Felipe had only raised his dark eyebrows. Felipe nodded, bidding Eric to continue.
“Though I don’t admit to being guilty of his death, Victor was also attacking me—and therefore you, my king—economically. Victor put new clubs in my territory—but he kept the management, jobs, and revenue from these clubs exclusively for himself, which is against all precedent. I doubted he was passing along your share of the profits. I also believed he was trying to undercut me, to turn me from one of your best earners into an unnecessary hanger-on. I heard many rumors from the sheriffs in other areas—including some you brought in from Nevada—that Victor was neglecting all other business in Louisiana in this strange vendetta against me and mine.”
I couldn’t read anything in Felipe’s face. “Why didn’t you bring your complaints to me?” the king said.
“I did,” Eric said calmly. “I called your offices twice and talked to Horst, asking him to bring these issues to your attention.”
Horst sat up a little straighter. “This is true, Felipe. As I—”
“And why didn’t you pass along Eric’s concerns?” Felipe interrupted, turning his eyes on Horst.
I anticipated watching Horst wriggle. Instead, Horst looked stunned.
Maybe I’m just getting cynical from hanging around with vampires for so long, but I felt a near certainty that Horst had passed along Eric’s complaints, but that Felipe had decided Eric would have to solve his issues with Victor in his own way. Now Felipe was throwing Horst under the bus without a qualm so he could maintain deniability.
“Your Majesty,” I said, “we’re awful sorry about Victor’s disappearance, but maybe you haven’t considered that Victor was a huge liability for you, too.” I gazed at him. Sadly. Regretfully.
There was a moment of silence. All four vampires looked at me as if I’d offered them a bucket of pig guts. I did my best to look simple and sincere.
“He was not my favorite vampire,” Felipe said, after what seemed like about five hours. “But he was very useful.”
“I’m sure you’ve noticed,” I said, “that in Victor’s case, ‘useful’ was a synonym for ‘money pit.’ Cause I’ve heard from people who serve at Vic’s Redneck Roadhouse, for example, that they were underpaid and overworked, so there’s a big staff turnover. That’s never good for business. And some of the vendors haven’t been paid. And Vic’s is behind with the distributor.” (Duff had shared that with me two deliveries ago.) “So, though Vic’s started out great and pulled business from every bar around, they’re not getting the repeat customers they need to sustain such a big place, and I know that revenue’s fallen off.” I was only guessing, but I was accurate, I could tell by Horst’s face. “Same thing for his vampire bar. Why pull customers away from the established vampire tourist spot, Fangtasia? Dividing doesn’t mean multiplying.”
“You’re giving me a lesson in economics?” Felipe leaned forward, picked up one of the opened TrueBlood bottles, and drank from it, his eyes never leaving my face.
“No, sir, I would never do such a thing. But I know what’s happening on the local level, because people talk to me, or I hear it in their heads. Of course, observing all this about Victor doesn’t mean I know what happened to him.” I smiled at him gently. You lying sack of shit.
“Eric, did you enjoy the young woman? When she came through this room, she said she’d been called to service you,” Felipe said, not taking his eyes off me. “I was surprised, since I was under the impression you were married to Miss Stackhouse. But the young woman seemed like a nice change of pace for you. She had such an interesting odor. If she hadn’t been earmarked for you, I might have taken her for myself.”
“You would have been welcome to her,” Eric said in a completely empty voice.
“She told you she’d been called?” I was puzzled.
“That’s what she said,” Felipe said. His eyes were fixed on my face as though he were a hawk and I were a mouse he was considering for supper.
On one level of my brain, I puzzled over this. I’d been delayed, the young woman had said she’d been called specifically for Eric … but on another level, I was busy regretting I’d saved Felipe’s life when one of Sophie-Anne’s bodyguards had been well on the way to killing him. I regretted this intensely. Of course, I’d been saving Eric, too, and Felipe had been a by-product, but still … back to level one, and I realized that none of this was adding up. I smiled at Felipe more brightly.
“Are you simple?” Horst asked incredulously.
I’m simply sick of you, I thought, not trusting myself to speak.
Felipe said, “Horst, don’t mistake Miss Stackhouse’s cheerful looks for any mental deficiency.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Horst tried to look chastened, but he didn’t quite make it.
Felipe looked at him sharply. “I must remind you—unless I’m much mistaken—Miss Stackhouse took out either Bruno or Corinna. Even Pam couldn’t have handled both of them at the same time.”
I kept on smiling.
“Which one was it, Miss Stackhouse?”
There was another fraught silence. I wished we had background music. Anything would be better than this dead air.
Pam stirred, looked at me almost apologetically. “Bruno,” Pam said. “Sookie killed Bruno, while I took care of Corinna.”
“How did you do that, Miss Stackhouse?” Felipe said. Even Horst looked interested and impressed, which was not a good thing.
“It was kind of an accident.”
“You are too modest,” the king murmured skeptically.
“Really, it was.” I remembered the driving rain and the cold, the cars parked on the shoulders of the interstate on a terrible dark night. “It was sure pouring buckets that night,” I said quietly. Tumbling over and over down into the ditch running with chilly water, a desperate pawing to find the silver knife, sliding it into Bruno.
“Was this the same kind of accident you had when you killed Lorena? Or Sigebert? Or the Were woman?”
Wow, how’d he know about Debbie? Or maybe he meant Sandra? And his list was by no means complete. “Yeah. That kind of accident.”
“Though I can hardly complain about Sigebert, since he would have killed me very shortly,” Felipe observed, with an air of being absolutely fair.
Finally! “I wondered if you remembered that part,” I muttered. I may have sounded a wee tad sardonic.
“You did do me a great service,” he said. “I’m just trying to decide how much of a thorn you are in my side now.”
“Oh, come on!” I was really put out. “I haven’t done anything to
you that you couldn’t have taken care of before it even happened.”
Pam and Horst blinked, but I saw that Felipe understood me. “You maintain that if I had been more … proactive, you would have been in no danger from Bruno and Corinna? That Victor would have stayed down in New Orleans, where the regent should be, and that, therefore, Eric could have run Area Five the way he has always run it?”
He had it in a nutshell, as my grandmother would have said. But (at least this time) I kept my mouth shut.
Eric, by my side, was rigid as a statue.
I’m not sure what would have happened next, but Bill appeared suddenly from the kitchen. He looked as excited as Bill ever looked.
“There’s a dead girl on the front lawn,” he said, “and the police are here.”
A variety of reactions passed on Felipe’s face in a few seconds.
“Then Eric, as the homeowner, must go out and talk to the good officers,” he said. “We’ll set things to rights in here. Eric, be sure to invite them in.”
Eric was already on his feet. He called to Mustapha, who didn’t appear. He and Pam exchanged a worried glance. Without looking at me, Eric reached back, and I stood to slide my hand into his. Time to close the ranks.
“Who is the dead woman?” he asked Bill.
“A skinny brunette,” he said. “A human.”
“Fang marks in her neck? Bright dress, mostly green and pink?” I asked, my heart sinking.
“I didn’t get that close,” Bill said.
“How did the police find out there was a body?” Pam said. “Who called them?” We moved toward the front door. Now I could hear the noise outside. With the drapes shut, we hadn’t been able to see the flashing lights. Through the gap in the heavy fabric, I could see them.
“I never heard a scream or any other alarm,” Bill said. “So I don’t know why a neighbor would have called … but someone did.”
“You wouldn’t have summoned the police yourself, for any reason?” Eric said, and there was the smell of danger in the room.
Bill looked surprised—which is to say, his eyebrows twitched and he frowned. “I can’t think of a reason I would do such a thing. On the contrary—since I was outside patrolling, I’ll obviously be a suspect.”
“Where is Mustapha?” Eric said.
Bill stared at Eric. “I have no idea,” he answered. “He was patrolling the perimeter, as he put it, earlier in the evening. I haven’t seen him since Sookie came in here.”
“I saw him in the kitchen,” I said. “We talked.” A presence caught my attention. “Brain at the front door,” I said.
Eric strode to the little-used front door, and since I was in tow, I trotted along. Eric threw the door open, and the woman standing on the porch was left standing foolishly poised to knock.
She looked up at Eric, and I could read her thoughts. To this woman, he was beautiful, disgusting, repellent, and oddly fascinating. She didn’t like the “beautiful” and “fascinating” parts. She also didn’t like being caught on the wrong foot.
“Mr. Northman?” she said, her hand dropping to her side like a stone. “I’m Detective Cara Ambroselli.”
“Detective Ambroselli, you seem to know who I am already. This is my dearest one, Sookie Stackhouse.”
“Is there really a dead person on the lawn?” I asked. “Who is she?” I didn’t have to make up the curiosity and anxiety in my voice. I really, really wanted to know.
“We were hoping you could help us with that,” the detective said. “We’re pretty sure the dead woman was leaving your house, Mr. Northman.”
“Why do you think so? You’re sure it was this house?” Eric said.
“Vampire bites on her neck, party clothes, your front yard. Yeah, we’re pretty sure,” Ambroselli said drily. “If you could just step over here, keeping your feet on the stepping-stones …”
The stones, set at regular intervals in the grass, curved around to the driveway. The dark green and deep pink of the crepe myrtles coordinated with the pink and green of the dress worn by the dead woman. She was lying at their base, a little inclined to her left side, in a position disturbingly similar to the way she’d lain across Eric’s lap when I’d first seen her. Her dark hair had fallen across her neck.
“That’s the woman no one knew,” I said. “At least, I think so. I only saw her for a minute. She didn’t tell me her name.”
“What was she doing when you saw her?”
“She was donating some blood to my boyfriend, here,” I said.
“Donating blood?”
“Yeah, she told us she’d done it before and she was happy to give,” I said, my voice calm and matter-of-fact. “She definitely volunteered.”
There was a moment of silence.
“You’re kidding me,” Cara Ambroselli said, but not as if she were at all amused. “You just stood there and let your boyfriend suck the neck of another woman? While you did … what?”
“It’s about food, not about sex,” I said, more or less lying. It was about food, but quite often it was also definitely about sex. “Pam and I talked about girl stuff.” I smiled at Pam. I was aiming for “winsome.”
Pam gave me a very level look in reply. I could imagine her looking at dead kittens that way. She said, “I love the color of Sookie’s toenails. We talked about pedicures.”
“So you two talked about your toenails while Mr. Northman fed off this woman, in the same room. Cozy! And then, what, Mr. Northman? After you had your little snack, you just gave her some money and sent her on her way? Did you get Mr. Compton to escort her to her car?”
“Money?” Eric asked. “Detective, are you calling this poor woman a whore? Of course I didn’t give her any money. She arrived, she volunteered, she said she had to go, and she left.”
“So what did she get out of your little transaction?”
“Excuse me, Detective, I can answer that,” I said. “When you’re giving blood, it’s really very pleasurable. Usually.” Of course, that was at the will of the vamp doing the biting. I shot a quick glance at Eric. He’d bitten me before without bothering to make it fun, and it had hurt like hell.
“Then why weren’t you the donor, Ms. Stackhouse? Why did you let the dead girl have all the fun of feeding him?”
Geez! Persistent. “I can’t give blood as often as Eric needs it,” I said. I stopped there. I was in danger of overexplaining.
Ambroselli’s neck whipped around as she sprung the next question on Eric.
“But you could survive just fine on a synthetic blood drink, Mr. Northman. Why’d you bite the girl?”
“It tastes better,” Eric said, and one of the uniforms spit on the ground.
“Did you decide you’d like a taste, Mr. Compton? Seeing as how she’d already been tapped?”
Bill looked mildly disgusted. “No, ma’am. That wouldn’t have been safe for the young lady.”
“As it turns out, she wasn’t safe, anyway. And none of you knows her name, or how she got here? Why she came to this house? You didn’t call some kind of I need a drink hotline … like a vampire escort service?”
We all shook our heads simultaneously, saying no to all these questions at once. “I thought she came with my other guests, the ones from out of town,” Eric said. “They brought some new friends they met at a bar.”
“These guests are inside?”
“Yes,” Eric said, and I thought, Oh, gosh, I hope Felipe got them out of the bedroom. But of course, the police would have to talk to them.
“Then let’s take this inside and meet these guests,” Detective Ambroselli said. “Do you have any objection to us coming inside, Mr. Northman?”
“Not the least in the world,” Eric said courteously.
So I traipsed back into the house with Bill, Eric, and Pam. The detective led the way as if the house were hers. Eric permitted it. By now the Las Vegas contingent would have cleaned up, I hoped, since they’d certainly heard what Ambroselli had said when Eric went to the door.
&nbs
p; To my relief, the living room looked much more orderly. There were a few bottles of synthetic blood, but they were all positioned adjacent to a seated vampire. The big windows in the back were open and the air quality was much better. Even the ashtray was out of sight, and someone had positioned a large bowl over the worst gouge marks on the coffee table.
All the vamps and the humans, fully clothed, had assembled in the living room. They wore serious expressions.
Mustapha was not among them.
Where was he? Had he simply decided he didn’t want to talk to the police, so he’d departed? Or had someone entered through the French windows in the kitchen doors and done something terrible to the Blade wannabe?
Maybe Mustapha had heard something suspicious outside and had gone to investigate. Maybe the killer or killers had jumped him once he got outside, and that was why no one had heard anything. But Mustapha was so tough that I simply couldn’t imagine anyone ambushing him and getting away with it.
Though “Mustapha” might not fear anything, in actuality he was the former KeShawn Johnson, and he was an ex-con. I didn’t know why he’d been incarcerated, but I knew it was for something he’d been ashamed of. That was why he’d adopted a new name and a new profession after he’d served his term. The police wouldn’t know him as Mustapha Khan … but they’d know he was KeShawn Johnson as soon as they took his fingerprints, and he was scared of prison.
Oh, how I wished I could communicate all this to Eric.
I didn’t believe Mustapha had killed the woman on the lawn. On the other hand, I’d never been completely inside his head, since he was a Were. But I’d never heard senseless aggression or random violence, either. Rather, Mustapha’s top priority had always registered as control.
I believe most of us are capable of moments of rage, moments when our button’s been pressed to the point where we lash out to stop the pressure. But I was sure that Mustapha was used to much worse treatment than anything that girl could have handed out.
While I was worrying about Mustapha, Eric was introducing the remaining newcomers to Detective Ambroselli. “Felipe de Castro,” he said, and Felipe nodded regally. “His assistant, Horst Friedman.” To my surprise, Horst rose and shook her hand. Not a vampire thing, handshaking. Eric continued, “This is Felipe’s consort, Angie Weather-spoon.” She was the third Nevada vampire, the redhead.
Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel Page 9