Dead in the Family ss-10

by Charlaine Harris

  “Hmmm,” I said. I made a mental note that Appius Livius was worried about Alexei being alone with humans, and I knew that should scare me quite a bit. The night was growing older, and I had things to find out. “I hate to change the subject, but there are a few things I need to know.”

  “What, Sookie?” Eric asked, looking directly at me for the first time since Old Master had popped up. He was pouring caution down the bond between us.

  “I just have a couple of questions,” I said, smiling as sweetly as I could. “Have you been in this area for any length of time?”

  I met the ancient dark eyes again. It was hard to take Appius all in, somehow; I found I couldn’t look at him as a cohesive individual. He scared the shit out of me.

  “No,” he said mildly. “We have not. We’ve come here from the south-west, from Oklahoma, and we have only just arrived in Louisiana.”

  “So you wouldn’t know anything about the new body buried at the back of my land?”

  “No, nothing. Would you like us to go dig it up? Unpleasant, but doable. You are wanting to see who it is?”

  That was an unexpected offer. Eric was looking at me very oddly. “I’m sorry, honey,” I told him. “I was trying to tell you when our unexpected guests showed up.”

  “Not Debbie,” he said.

  “No, Heidi says there’s a new burial. But we do need to know who it is, and we need to find out who put it there.”

  “The Weres,” Eric said instantly. “This is the thanks you get for letting them use your land. I’ll call Alcide, and we’ll have a meeting.” Eric looked positively delighted to get the chance to do something bosslike. He whipped out his cell phone and dialed Alcide before I could say anything.

  “Eric,” he said into the phone by way of identification. “Alcide, we have to talk.” I could hear the buzz on the other end of the line.

  A moment later Eric said, “That’s not good, Alcide, and I am sorry to hear you have troubles. But I have other concerns. What did you do on Sookie’s land?”

  Oh, crapanola.

  “You should come here and see, then. I think some of your people have been bad. Very well, then. I’ll see you in ten minutes. I am at her house.”

  He hung up, looking triumphant. “Alcide was in Bon Temps?” I asked.

  “No, but he was on the interstate and nearly at our exit,” Eric explained. “He’s returning from some meeting in Monroe. The Louisiana packs are trying to present a united front to the government. Since they’ve never organized before, this is not going to work.” Eric snorted, clearly scornful. “The Weres are always—what did you say the other day about FEMA, Sookie? ‘A day late and a dollar short,’ right? At least he’s close, and when he gets here we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  I sighed, trying to make it discreet and silent. I hadn’t realized things would go so far so fast. I asked Eric, Appius Livius, and Alexei if they wanted more TrueBlood, but they turned it down. Jason was looking bored. I glanced at the clock.

  “I’m afraid I have only one spot that’s suitable for a vampire. Where are you-all planning to sleep, come the dawn? I just want to know in case I need to call around and find a place.”

  “Sookie,” said Eric gently, “I will take Ocella and his son back to my house. They can have the guest coffins there.”

  Eric ordinarily slept in his bed, because his bedroom was windowless. There were a couple of other coffins in the guest bedroom, sleek fiberglass things that looked sort of like kayaks, which he kept stowed under the beds. The most wrong thing about Alexei and Appius Livius staying with Eric was that if they were there, I was definitely staying here.

  “I think your darling would love to come in during the day and sink a stake into our chests,” Appius Livius said, as if that were a big joke. “If you think you can do it, young woman, you are welcome to try.”

  “Oh, not at all,” I said, absolutely insincerely. “I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing to Eric’s dad.” Not a bad idea, though.

  Beside me, Eric twitched all over; it was a funny movement, like a dog running in its sleep. “Be polite,” he told me, and there was no element of fun in his voice at all. He was giving me an order.

  I took a deep breath. It was on the tip of my tongue to rescind Eric’s invitation to my house. He’d have to leave, and presumably Appius Livius and Alexei would, too. It was that “presumably” that stopped me. The idea of being alone with Appius Livius even for a second trumped the pleasurable vision of the three vampires walking out backward.

  It was probably lucky for all of us that the doorbell rang then. I was out of my seat as if a rocket had fired me. It would be good to have more breathers around.

  Alcide was wearing a suit. He was flanked by Annabelle, who was wearing a dark green sheath and heeled pumps, and Jannalynn, Sam’s new interest. Jannalynn had a sense of style, though it was a style that left me stunned. She had on a shiny silver dress that barely covered her assets and silver high-heeled sandals that laced up the front. The silver eye shadow over her heavily outlined eyes completed the look. In a scary kind of way, she looked great. Sam certainly dated women who were extraordinary in some way, and he wasn’t afraid of strong characters, which was a thought I’d have to save for later. Maybe it was a two-natured thing? Alcide was the same way.

  I gave the packleader a hug, and I said hello to Annabelle and to Jannalynn, who gave me a curt nod.

  “What is this problem Eric called me about?” Alcide was saying as I stood aside to let them enter. When the Weres realized they were in a room with three vampires, all of them tensed. They’d expected only Eric. When I glanced back at the vampires, I saw they were all standing, too, and even Alexei was on the alert.

  Jason said, “Alcide, good to see you. Ladies, looking mighty fine tonight.”

  I went into high gear. “Hi, you-all!” I said brightly. “It was so nice of you to come at such short notice. Eric, you know Alcide. Alcide, this is Eric’s longtime friend Appius Livius Ocella, who’s in town visiting with his, ah, protégé, Alexei. Eric, I don’t know if you’ve met Alcide’s friend Annabelle, a new pack member, and Jannalynn, who’s been in the Long Tooth pack for ages. Jannalynn, we’ve never had a chance to talk much, but of course Sam talks about you all the time. And I think you all know my brother, Jason.”

  Whew. I felt like I’d run an introduction marathon. Since vamps don’t shake hands, that concluded the opening ceremonies. Then I had to get them all to sit down while I offered them drinks, which no one accepted.

  Eric fired the opening volley. “Alcide, one of my trackers went over Sookie’s land after Basim al Saud warned her about the strangers he smelled in her woods. Our tracker has found a new body buried there.”

  Alcide looked at Eric as though he had begun speaking in tongues.

  “We didn’t kill anyone that night,” Alcide said. “Basim said he told Sookie we smelled an old body, and a fairy or two, and a vampire. But he didn’t mention a fresh body.”

  “Yet there’s a new burial there now.”

  “Which we had nothing to do with.” Alcide shrugged. “We were there three nights before your tracker smelled the scent of a fresh body.”

  “It seems quite a huge coincidence, doesn’t it? A body on Sookie’s land, right after your pack is there?” Eric was looking aggravatingly reasonable.

  “Maybe it’s more of a coincidence that there was already a body on Sookie’s land.”

  Oh, boy, I really didn’t want to go there.

  Jannalynn was actually snarling at Eric. It was an interesting look, with the eye makeup and all. Annabelle was standing with her arms slightly away from her body, waiting to see which way she needed to jump.

  Alexei was staring off into space, which seemed to be his fallback stance, and Appius Livius simply seemed bored.

  “I say we should go see who it is,” Jason said unexpectedly.

  I looked at him with approval.

  So out we went into the woods to dig up a corpse.

&
nbsp; Chapter 9

  Alcide changed to some boots he had in the truck, and he shed his tie and coat. Jannalynn wisely took off her spike-heeled sandals and Annabelle her own more modest heels. I gave them both some sneakers of mine, and I offered Jannalynn an old T-shirt to cover her shiny silver dress so it wouldn’t snag in the woods. She pulled it over her head. She even said, “Thanks,” though she didn’t sound actually grateful. I retrieved two shovels from the toolshed. Alcide took one shovel, Eric the other. Jason carried one of those great big flashlights called a lantern that he’d fished out of the toolbox on his truck. The lantern was for my benefit. The vampires could see perfectly well in the dark, and the Weres could see very well, too. Since Jason was a werepanther, he had excellent night vision. I was the blind one in the group.

  “Do we know where we’re going?” Annabelle said.

  “Heidi said it was due east, close to the stream, in a clearing,” I said, and we slogged eastward. I kept running into stuff, and after a while Eric handed off his shovel to Jason and crouched so I could cling to his back. I kept my head tucked behind his so branches wouldn’t hit me in the face. Our progress was smoother after that.

  “I smell it,” Jannalynn said suddenly. She was out ahead of us all, as if her job in the pack were to make the way clear for the packleader. She was a different woman out in the woods. Though I couldn’t see very well, I could see that. She was quick, sure-footed, and decisive. She darted ahead, and after a moment she called back, “Here it is!”

  We got there to find her standing over a patch of dirt in a little clearing. It had been disturbed recently, though an attempt had been made to camouflage that disturbance.

  Eric eased me down onto the ground, and Jason shone the lantern at the earth. “It’s not.?” I whispered, knowing everyone there could hear me.

  “No,” Eric said firmly. “Too recent.” Not Debbie Pelt. She was elsewhere, in an older grave.

  “Only one way to find out who it is,” Alcide said. Jason and Alcide began to dig, and since they were both very strong, it went quickly. Alexei came over to stand by me, and it occurred to me that a grave in the woods had to be a bad flashback for him. I put an arm around him as if he were still human, though I noticed that Appius gave me a sardonic look. Alexei’s eyes were on the gravediggers, especially Jason. I knew this child could dig the grave with his bare hands as fast as they were digging with shovels, but Alexei looked so frail it was hard to think of him being as strong as other vampires. I wondered how many people had made that mistake in the past few decades, and how many of those had died at Alexei’s small hands.

  Jason and Alcide could make the dirt fly. While they worked, Annabelle and Jannalynn prowled around the little clearing, probably trying to pick up what scents they could. Despite the rain of two nights ago, there might be something in the areas protected by the trees. Heidi hadn’t been looking for a murderer; she’d been trying to make a list of who’d crossed the land. I was thinking that the only creatures who hadn’t been tromping through my woods had been regular old humans. If the Weres were lying, a Were could be the killer. Or it could be one of the fae, who were a violent race, as I had observed. Or the killer could be Bill, since Heidi thought the vampire she’d scented was my neighbor.

  I hadn’t smelled the body while it was under the dirt as the others had, since my sense of smell was only a fraction of theirs. But as the dirt piles grew and the hole got deeper, I could tell it was there. Oh gosh, could I.

  I put my hand across my nose, which didn’t help at all. I couldn’t imagine how the others were enduring it, since it would be so much sharper to their senses. Maybe they were also more practical, or simply more accustomed.

  Then both the diggers stopped. “He’s wrapped up,” Jason said. Alcide bent over and fumbled with something at the bottom of the hole.

  “I think I got it pulled apart,” Alcide said after a moment.

  “Pass me the lantern, Sookie,” Jason said, and I tossed it to him. He shone it down. “I don’t know this man,” he said.

  “I do,” said Alcide in a strange voice. Annabelle and Jannalynn were at the edge of the grave instantly. I had to brace myself to step forward to look down into the pit.

  I recognized him instantly. The three Weres threw back their heads and howled.

  “It’s the Long Tooth enforcer,” I told the vampires. I gagged and had to wait a minute before I could go on. “It’s Basim al Saud.” The passage of days had made a great difference, but I knew him instantly. Those corkscrew curls I’d envied, the muscled body.

  “Shit,” screamed Jannalynn, when the howling was done.

  And that about summed it up.

  When the Weres had calmed down, there was a lot to talk about.

  “I only met him the once,” I said. “Of course, he was fine when he got in the truck with Alcide and Annabelle.”

  “He told me what he’d smelled on the property, and I told him to tell Sookie,” Alcide told Eric. “She had a right to know. We didn’t talk about anything in particular on the way back to Shreveport, did we, Annabelle?”

  “No,” she said, and I could tell she was crying.

  “I dropped him off at his apartment. When I called him the next day to go with me to a meeting with our representative, he said he had to pass because he had to work. He was a website designer, and he had a meeting with an important client. I wasn’t too happy he couldn’t go, but of course, the guy had to make a living.” Alcide shrugged.

  Annabelle said, “He didn’t have to work that day.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “I was at his apartment when you called,” she said, and I could tell the effort she was expending to keep her voice calm and level. “I had been there a few hours.”

  Wow. Unexpected revelation. Jason had hopped out of the grave, and he and I gave each other big eyes. This was like one of Gran’s “stories,” the soap operas she’d watched religiously.

  Alcide growled. The ritual howling for the dead had brought out the wolf in him.

  “I know,” Annabelle said. “And we’ll talk about it later. I’ll take my punishment, which I deserve. But Basim’s death is more important than my bad judgment. This is my duty, to tell you what happened. Basim got a phone call before yours, and he didn’t want me to hear it. But I heard enough to understand his conversation was with someone who was paying him.”

  Alcide’s growl intensified. Jannalynn was standing close to her pack sister, and the only way I can put it was that she was aimed at Annabelle. She was crouching slightly, her hands curved as if they were about to sprout claws.

  Alexei had edged close to Jason, and when the tension kept ratcheting up, Jason’s arm slung around the boy’s shoulders. Jason was having the same problem separating illusion and reality that I was.

  Annabelle flinched at the sound coming from Alcide, but she kept on going. “So Basim made up an excuse to get me out of the apartment, and he took off. I tried to follow him, but I lost him.”

  “You were suspicious,” Jannalynn said. “But you didn’t call the packmaster. You didn’t call me. You didn’t call anyone. We took you in and made you a member of our pack, and you betrayed us.” Suddenly, she hit Annabelle in the head with her fist, actually leaping into the air to land the blow. Just like that, Annabelle was on the ground. I gasped, and I wasn’t the only one.

  But I was the only one who noticed that Jason was straining to hold Alexei back. Something about the violence in the air had sent the boy over the edge. If he’d been a little bigger, Jason would’ve been on the ground. I punched Eric in the arm, jerked my head in the direction of the struggle. Eric leaped over to help Jason restrain the boy, who fought and snarled in their arms.

  For a moment there was silence in the dark clearing as everyone watched Alexei struggle with his madness. Appius Livius looked profoundly sad. He worked his way into the knot of limbs and wrapped his own arms around his child. “Sshhhhhh,” he said. “My son, be still.” And gradually Alexei gr
ew quiet.

  Alcide’s voice was very close to a rumble when he said, “Jannalynn, you are my new second. Annabelle, get up. This is pack business now, and we’ll settle it at a pack meeting.” He turned his back on us and began moving.

  The Weres were simply going to walk out of the woods and drive away. “Excuse me,” I said sharply. “There’s the little matter of the body being buried on my land. I think there’s something pretty damn significant about that.”

  The Weres stopped walking.

  Eric said, “Yes.” The one word carried a lot of weight. “Alcide, I believe Sookie and I need to sit in on your pack meeting.”

  “Only pack members,” Jannalynn snapped. “No oneys, no deaders.” She was still as small as ever, but with her field promotion to second, she seemed harder and stronger in spirit. She was a ruthless little thing, no doubt about it. I thought Sam was mighty brave, or mighty foolish.

  “Alcide?” Eric said quietly.

  “Sookie can bring Jason, since he’s two-natured,” Alcide growled. “She’s a oney, but she’s a friend of the pack. No vamps.”

  Eric glanced at my brother. “Jason, will you accompany your sister?”

  “Sure,” Jason said.

  So it was settled. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Annabelle stagger to her feet and reorient herself. Jannalynn packed a wallop.

  “What are you going to do with the body?” I called after Alcide, who was definitely moving out. “Do you want us to cover him back up or what?”

  Annabelle took a hesitant step after Jannalynn and Alcide. That was going to be a happy ride back to Shreveport. “Someone will come get him tonight,” Jannalynn called over her shoulder. “So there’ll be activity in your woods. Don’t be alarmed.” When Annabelle glanced back, I noticed she was bleeding from one corner of her mouth. I felt the vampires come to attention. In fact, Alexei stepped away from Jason and would have followed her if Appius Livius hadn’t kept his grip on the boy.