“Then what’s your issue?”
And I had no answer.
“It’s because we were talking about involving Sam,” Bill told Eric. “That’s the stumbling block.”
Suddenly they were on the same side, and that side was not mine.
“You’re sweet on him?” Eric said. He couldn’t have been more surprised if I’d said I had a crush on Terry’s Catahoula.
“He’s my boss,” I said. “We’ve been friends for years. Of course I’m fond of him. And he’s nuts about that furry bitch, for whatever reason. So that’s my issue, as you put it.”
“Hmmm,” Eric said, his eyes examining my face with a sharp intensity. I didn’t like it when he sounded thoughtful. “Then I’ll have to call Alcide and make the request for Jannalynn’s scent official.”
Did I do as they requested, which would in some way be a betrayal of Sam? Or did I let Eric call Alcide, which would officially involve the Long Tooth pack? You couldn’t call a packmaster unofficially. But I couldn’t lie to Sam. My back stiffened.
“All right,” I said. “Call Alcide.” Eric pulled out his cell phone, giving me a very grim look as he did so. I could see a war starting, another war. More deaths. More loss. “Wait,” I said. “I’ll talk to Sam. I’ll go into town to talk to him. Right now.”
I didn’t even know if Sam was home, but I walked out of the house and neither vampire tried to stop me. I’d never left two vampires alone in the house before, and I could only hope it would be intact when I returned.
Chapter 10
When I began driving back into town, I realized how tired I was. I thought very seriously about turning back, but when I contemplated facing Bill and Eric again, I kept driving north.
That was how I came to see Bellenos and our Hooligans waitress bounding across the road after a deer. I braked desperately, and my car slid sideways. I knew I’d end up in the ditch. I shrieked as the car slewed and the woods rushed up to meet me. Then, abruptly, my car’s motion stopped—not by hitting anything, but by being nose down in the steep ditch. The headlights lit up the weeds, still whipping, bugs flying up from the impact. I turned off the engine and sat gasping.
My poor car was nose down at a steep angle. The rain had had twenty-four hours to soak into the previously parched soil, so the ditch was fairly dry, which was a real blessing. Bellenos and the blonde appeared, working their way around the car to get to my door. Bellenos was carrying a spear, and his companion appeared to have two curved bladed weapons of some kind. Not exactly swords; really long knives, as thin at the point as needles.
I tried to open the door, but my muscles wouldn’t obey my command. I realized I was crying. I had a sharp flash of memory: Claudine waking me when I fell asleep at the wheel on this same road. Bellenos’s lithe body moved across the headlights, and then he was by my door and wrenching it open.
“Sister!” he said, and turned to his companion. “Cut this strap, Gift.”
A knife passed right by my face in the next second, and the seat belt was severed. Oh, damn. Evidently, they didn’t understand buckles.
Gift bent down, and in the next instant I was out of the car and she was carrying me away.
“We didn’t mean to frighten you,” she murmured. “I’m sorry, my sister.”
She laid me down as easily as if I’d been an infant, and she and Bellenos squatted by me. I concluded, with no great certainty, that they weren’t going to kill and eat me. When I could speak, I said, “What were you out here doing?”
“Hunting,” Bellenos said, as if he suspected my head were addled. “You saw the deer?”
“Yes. Do you realize you’re not on my land anymore?” My voice was very unsteady, but there was nothing I could do about it.
“I see no fence, no boundaries. Freedom is good,” he said.
And the blonde nodded enthusiastically. “It’s so good to run,” she said. “It’s so good to be out of a human building.”
The thing was … they seemed so happy. Though I knew absolutely I should read them the riot act, I found myself feeling not only profoundly sorry for the two fae, but frightened of—and for—them. This was a very uncomfortable mix of emotions. “I’m real glad you’re having a good time,” I wheezed. They both beamed at me. “How did you come to be named Gift?” I just couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“It’s Aelfgifu,” she said, smiling. “Elf-gift. But Gift is easier for human mouths.” Speaking of mouths, Aelfgifu’s teeth were not as ferocious as Bellenos’s. In fact, they were quite small. But since she was leaning over me, I could see longer, sharper, thinner teeth folded against the roof of her mouth.
Fangs. Not vampire fangs, but snake fangs. Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea. Coupled with the pupil-less eyes, she was really scary.
“Is this the way you do in Faery?” I asked weakly. “Hunt in the woods?”
They both smiled. “Oh, yes, no fences or boundaries there,” Aelfgifu said longingly. “Though the woods are not as deep as they once were.”
“I don’t want to … to chide you,” I said, wondering if I could sit up. They both stared at me, their eyes unreadable, their heads canted at inhuman angles. “But regular people really shouldn’t see you without your human disguises. And even if you could make other people perceive you as human … regular human couples don’t chase deer in the middle of the night. With sharp weapons.” Even around Bon Temps, where hunting is practically a religion.
“You see us as we really are,” Bellenos said. I could tell he hadn’t known that before. Maybe I’d given away a powerful bit of knowledge by revealing that.
“Yeah.”
“You have powerful magic,” Gift said respectfully. “That makes you our sister. When you first came to Hooligans, we weren’t sure about you. Are you on our side?”
Bellenos’s hand shot across me, and he gripped Aelfgifu’s shoulder. Their eyes met. In the weird light and shadows cast by the headlights, her eyes looked just as black as his.
“I don’t know what side that is,” I said, to break the moment up. It seemed to work, because she laughed and slid an arm underneath me, and I sat up. “You’re not hurt,” she said. “Dermot will be pleased. He loves you.”
Bellenos put an arm around me, too, so our little trio was suddenly positioned in an uncomfortably intimate little scene there on the deserted road. Bellenos’s teeth were awfully close to my flesh. Sure, I was used to Eric biting, but he didn’t rip off flesh and eat it.
“You’re shaking, Sister,” Aelfgifu observed. “You can’t be cold on a hot night like tonight! Is it the shock of your little accident?”
“You can’t be frightened of us?” Bellenos sounded mocking.
“You turkey,” I said. “Of course I’m scared of you. If you’d spent a while with Lochlan and Neave, you’d be scared, too.”
“We’re not like them,” Aelfgifu said in a much more subdued voice. “And we’re sorry, Sister. There are quite a few of us who endured their attentions. Not all lived to tell others about it. You’re very fortunate.”
“Did you have the magic then?” Bellenos asked.
This was the second time the elf had referred to my having magic. I was very curious to know why he said that, but at the same time, I hated to expose my total ignorance.
“Could I drive you two back to Monroe?” I asked, staving off Bellenos’s question.
“I couldn’t bear to be shut up in an iron box,” Gift said. “We’ll run. May we come to hunt on your land tomorrow night?”
“How many of you?” I thought I should err on the side of caution, here.
They helped me to my feet, consulting with each other silently as they did so.
“Four of us,” Bellenos said, trying not to sound as if he were asking me.
“That would be okay,” I said. “Long as you let me explain where the boundaries are.”
I got simultaneous kisses on both sides of my face. Then the two fae leaped down in the ditch, bent over to get a grip below the ho
od of my car, and pushed. The car was back up on the road in seconds. Aside from the severed seat belt, it didn’t seem to be much the worse for the experience: dirty, of course, and the front fender was a little dented. Gift waved at me cheerfully as I took my place behind the wheel, and then the two were off, heading east toward Monroe … at least while I could see them. My car started up, thank God, and I turned around at the next driveway and headed home. My excursion was over. I was completely jangled.
As I pulled up, I could tell the vampires were still there. When I glanced at my car clock, I saw that only twenty minutes had passed since I’d left. Suddenly, I began shivering all over when I thought of the incident—the panicked deer, the swift and deadly pursuit, the faes’ overly loving solicitousness. I turned off the car and got out slowly. I was going to be stiff all over the next morning, I just knew it. Of course Bill and Eric had heard me return, but neither of them came rushing out to see how I was. I reminded myself they didn’t have any idea something had happened to me.
I stepped out of the car and thought I’d go flat on my face. I was having some kind of reaction to the whole bizarre incident, and I couldn’t stop replaying the running figures in my mind. They had looked so alien, so very, very … not-human.
And now I knew that someone suspected I had some powerful fae magic. If the fae suspected it was contained in an item, I didn’t like my chances of keeping it, or of keeping my life, for that matter. Any supe would want such a thing, especially the hodgepodge of fae trapped at Hooligans. They were yearning for the homeland of Faery, no matter how they’d come to be trapped in our world. Any power they could acquire would be more than they had now. And if they had the cluviel dor … they could wish the doors of Faery open to them again.
“Sookie?” Eric said. “Lover, what’s happened to you? Are you hurt?”
“Sookie?” Bill’s voice, equally urgent.
I could only stand staring straight ahead, thinking hard about what would happen if the rogue fae opened the portals to Faery. What if humans could walk into that other country? What if all fae could come and go as they pleased? Would they accept that state of affairs, or would there be another war?
“I had a wreck,” I said, belatedly realizing that Eric had picked me up and was carrying me inside. “I never got to Sam’s. I had a wreck.”
“That’s all right, Sookie,” Eric said. “Don’t worry about going to Sam’s. That can wait. We can make some other arrangement. At least I’m not smelling any blood,” he said to Bill.
“Did you hit your head?” Bill asked. I could feel fingers working through my hair. Then those fingers stilled. “You reek of fairy.”
I could see the hunger rising in his face. I glanced at Eric, whose mouth was compressed tight as a mousetrap. I was willing to bet his fangs had popped out. The entrancing Eau de Fae—it acted on vampires like catnip on cats.
“You guys need to leave,” I said. “Out you go, before you both use me as a chewy toy.”
“But, Sookie,” Eric protested. “I want to stay with you and make love to you at length.”
You couldn’t get any more frank than that.
“I appreciate the enthusiasm, but with me smelling like a fairy, I’m afraid you might get a little carried away.”
“Oh, no, my lover,” he protested.
“Please, Eric, some self-control. You and Bill need to git.”
It was my mention of self-control that did it. Neither of them would admit to a failure of the trait vampires prized so highly.
Eric went to stand at the edge of the woods. He said, “While you were gone, Thalia called me. I’d sent her to talk to the human, Colton, at his job. When she got there, they reported he hadn’t come in for work. Thalia went to his trailer. A fight had taken place inside. There was a small amount of blood. Colton was gone. I think Felipe has found him.” While Eric was still maintaining deniability over the death of Victor, Colton had actually been in Fangtasia the night Victor had died. He knew the truth, and he was human and, therefore, could be made to talk.
Bill took a step toward me. “It’ll be okay,” he said reassuringly, and even though he was a vampire, I could tell that he simply wanted to be closer.
“Okay, we’ll talk about that tomorrow,” I said hastily. At this point, I was sure that all I could do for Colton was pray for him. There was certainly no way to find him tonight.
Very reluctantly, and with many good-byes and hopeful requests that they be called if I felt unwell during what remained of the night, Eric and Bill went their separate ways.
After I’d locked the doors, I took a hot shower. I could already feel myself beginning to stiffen up. I had to work the next day, and I couldn’t afford to hobble.
At least one small mystery was solved. I assumed that the absence of Bellenos and his friend Aelfgifu was the crisis that had called my great-uncle back to Hooligans in such a tear. While I was sorry for his tough night, I wasn’t so sorry that I planned to wait up for him. I crawled into bed. I was briefly conscious of the profound gratitude I felt that this sucky day was finally, finally over … and then I was out.
I staggered out of my bedroom at nine the next day.
I wasn’t as sore as I’d feared, which was a pleasant discovery.
No one stirred in my house. I carefully checked with my other sense, the telepathy that could locate any creature thinking in the house. No one was sleeping here, either.
What did I need to do today? I made a little list after I’d had my coffee and a Pop-Tart.
I needed to go to the grocery store because I’d promised Jason I’d make him a sweet potato casserole to serve to Michele and her mom tonight. It wasn’t exactly sweet potato season, but he’d texted me to ask me specially, and Jason didn’t ask me for much these days. As long as I had to go to the store to get the ingredients, I reminded myself to check with Tara. I could pick up anything she wanted from the grocery store at the same time.
Then I needed to think of a way to see Jannalynn, so Bill and Heidi could sniff her. Since Eric’s vampire Palomino was visiting Hair of the Dog, if worse came to worst maybe I could get Palomino to lift something of Jannalynn’s.
Asking Jannalynn if she’d stand still for a minute and let the vamp trackers check her out was never a serious option. I could imagine all too clearly how she’d react to such a proposal.
And Bill was considering visiting Harp Powell to talk about the dead girl. I didn’t know if we would be able to find time tonight. I thought of Kym’s parents and shuddered. As unpleasant as her life sounded, meeting Oscar and Georgene just once made her bad choices more understandable.
While I was thinking about the evening’s possibilities, I recalled that the fae wanted hunting permission again for tonight. I tried not to imagine the consequences if they all fanned out into the Louisiana countryside to find entertainment. I remembered the unease I’d felt last night when Aelfgifu and Bellenos had referred to my magic; without knowing I was going to do it, I found myself in my bedroom looking into my dressing table drawer to check that the cluviel dor was safe and still camouflaged as a powder compact.
Of course, it was. I let out a deep breath of relief. When I looked into the mirror, I looked scared. So I thought of something else to worry about. Warren was missing, Immanuel was in California and presumably safe, but where was Colton, the other human who’d been in Fangtasia that bloody night? We had to assume that Felipe had him stashed somewhere. Colton wasn’t a Were, he had no fae blood, and he didn’t owe allegiance to any vampire. He was just an employee at a vampire-owned enterprise. No one would be looking for him, unless I called the police. Would that do any good? Would Colton thank me for drawing his abduction to the attention of the police? I couldn’t decide.
Time to give myself a good shake and get into my Merlotte’s outfit. In this weather I didn’t mind wearing the shorts. I shaved my legs just to be sure they were smooth, admired their brownness, and moisturized lavishly. By the time I applied my makeup, collected my grocer
y list, and grabbed my cell phone off the charger, it was time to go. On my way to town I called Tara, who said she didn’t need anything; JB’s mom had gone to the store for them that morning. She sounded tired, and I could hear one of the babies crying in the background. I was able to draw a line through one item.
Since my own grocery list was so short, I stopped at the old Piggly Wiggly. I could get in and out of it faster than Wal-Mart. Though I saw Maxine Fortenberry and had to pass the time of day with her, I still emerged from the store with only one bag and plenty of time to spare.
Feeling very efficient, I was tying on my apron fifteen minutes early.
Sam was behind the bar talking to Hoyt Fortenberry, who was taking an early lunch hour. I stopped to visit for a second, told Hoyt I’d seen his mom, asked him how the wedding plans were going (he rolled his eyes), and gave Sam a pat on the back by way of apology for my emotional excesses over the telephone the day before. He smiled back at me and continued poking at Hoyt about the potholes on the street in front of the bar.
I stowed my purse in my shiny new locker. I wore the key to it on a chain around my neck. The other waitresses were delighted to have real lockers, and from the stuffed bags they carried in, I was sure the lockers were already full. Everyone wanted to keep a change of clothes, an extra umbrella, some makeup, a hairbrush … even D’Eriq and Antoine seemed pleased with the new system. As I passed Sam’s office, I saw the coatrack inside, and on it was a jacket, a bright red jacket … Jannalynn’s. Before I could think about what I was doing, I stepped into Sam’s office, stole the jacket, and retreated to stuff it inside my locker.
I’d found a quick and easy solution to the problem of getting Jannalynn’s scent to the noses of Bill and Heidi. I even persuaded myself that Sam wouldn’t mind, if I were to tell him; but I didn’t test that idea by asking permission to take the jacket.
I’m not used to feeling underhanded, and I have to confess that for an hour or two I kept away from Sam. That was unexpectedly easy, since the bar was really busy. The association of local insurance agents came in for their monthly lunch together, and since it was so hot, they were almighty thirsty. The EMT team on duty parked the ambulance outside and ordered their food. Jason and his road crew came in, and so did a bunch of nurses from the blood bank truck, parked on the town square today.
Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel Page 20