“Handsome guy,” she agreed in her throaty voice. “He’s missing now, and we’re offering a reward for anyone who can give us information.”
“I see that from the poster,” I said, letting a tiny hint of irritation show in my voice. “Is there any particular reason you think he might be around here? I can’t imagine what a Shreveport vampire would be doing in Bon Temps.” I looked at her questioningly. Surely I wasn’t out of line in asking that?
“Good question, Sookie,” Sam said. “Not that I mind having the poster up, but how come you two are searching this area for the guy? Why would he be here? Nothing happens in Bon Temps.”
“This town has a vampire in residence, doesn’t it?” Mark Stonebrook said suddenly. His voice was almost a twin of his sister’s. He was so buff you expected to hear a bass, and even an alto as deep as Marnie’s sounded strange coming from his throat. Actually, from Mark Stonebrook’s appearance, you’d think he’d just grunt and growl to communicate.
“Yeah, Bill Compton lives here,” Sam said. “But he’s out of town.”
“Gone to Peru, I heard,” I said.
“Oh, yes, I’d heard of Bill Compton. Where does he live?” Hallow asked, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice.
“Well, he lives out across the cemetery from my place,” I said, because I had no choice. If the two asked someone else and got a different answer than the one I gave them, they’d know I had something (or in this case, someone) to conceal. “Out off Hummingbird Road.” I gave them directions, not very clear directions, and hoped they got lost out in somewhere like Hotshot.
“Well, we might drop by Compton’s house, just in case Eric went to visit him,” Hallow said. Her eyes cut to her brother Mark, and they nodded at us and left the bar. They didn’t care whether this made sense or not.
“They’re sending witches to visit all the vamps,” Sam said softly. Of course. The Stonebrooks were going to the residences of all vampires who owed allegiance to Eric—the vamps of Area Five. They suspected that one of these vamps might be hiding Eric. Since Eric hadn’t turned up, he was being hidden. Hallow had to be confident that her spell had worked, but she might not know exactly how it had worked.
I let the smile fade off my face, and I leaned against the bar on my elbows, trying to think real hard.
Sam said, “This is big trouble, right?” His face was serious.
“Yes, this is big trouble.”
“Do you need to leave? There’s not too much happening here. Holly can come out of the kitchen now that they’re gone, and I can always see to the tables myself, if you need to get home. . . .” Sam wasn’t sure where Eric was, but he suspected, and he’d noticed Holly’s abrupt bolt into the kitchen.
Sam had earned my loyalty and respect a hundred times over.
“I’ll give them five minutes to get out of the parking lot.”
“Do you think they might have something to do with Jason’s disappearance?”
“Sam, I just don’t know.” I automatically dialed the sheriff’s department and got the same answer I’d gotten all day—“No news, we’ll call you when we know something.” But after she said that, the dispatcher told me that the pond was going to be searched the next day; the police had managed to get hold of two search-and-rescue divers. I didn’t know how to feel about this information. Mostly, I was relieved that Jason’s disappearance was being taken seriously.
When I hung up the phone, I told Sam the news. After a second, I said, “It seems too much to believe that two men could disappear in the Bon Temps area at the same time. At least, the Stonebrooks seem to think Eric’s around here. I have to think that there’s a connection.”
“Those Stonebrooks are Weres,” Sam muttered.
“And witches. You be careful, Sam. She’s a killer. The Weres of Shreveport are out after her, and the vamps, too. Watch your step.”
“Why is she so scary? Why would the Shreveport pack have any trouble handling her?”
“She’s drinking vampire blood,” I said, as close to his ear as I could get without kissing him. I glanced around the room, to see that Kevin was watching our exchange with a lot of interest.
“What does she want with Eric?”
“His business. All his businesses. And him.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “So it’s business, and personal.”
“Yep.”
“Do you know where Eric is?” He’d avoided asking me directly until now.
I smiled at him. “Why would I know that? But I confess, I’m worried about those two being right down the road from my house. I have a feeling they’re going to break into Bill’s place. They might figure Eric’s hiding with Bill, or in Bill’s house. I’m sure he’s got a safe hole for Eric to sleep in and blood on hand.” That was pretty much all a vampire required, blood and a dark place.
“So you’re going over to guard Bill’s property? Not a good idea, Sookie. Let Bill’s homeowners insurance take care of whatever damage they do searching. I think he told me he went with State Farm. Bill wouldn’t want you hurt in defense of plants and bricks.”
“I don’t plan on doing anything that dangerous,” I said, and truly, I didn’t plan it. “But I do think I’ll run home. Just in case. When I see their car lights leaving Bill’s house, I’ll go over and check it out.”
“You need me to come with you?”
“Nah, I’m just going to do damage assessment, that’s all. Holly’ll be enough help here?” She’d popped out of the kitchen the minute the Stonebrooks had left.
“Sure.”
“Okay, I’m gone. Thanks so much.” My conscience didn’t twinge as much when I noticed that the place wasn’t nearly as busy as it’d been an hour ago. You got nights like that, when people just cleared out all of a sudden.
I had an itchy feeling between my shoulder blades, and maybe all our patrons had, too. It was that feeling that something was prowling that shouldn’t be: that Halloween feeling, I call it, when you kind of picture something bad is easing around the corner of your house, to peer into your windows.
By the time I grabbed my purse, unlocked my car, and drove back to my house, I was almost twitching from uneasiness. Everything was going to hell in a handbasket, seemed to me. Jason was missing, the witch was here instead of Shreveport, and now she was within a half mile of Eric.
As I turned from the parish road onto my long, meandering driveway and braked for the deer crossing it from the woods on the south side to the woods on the north—moving away from Bill’s house, I noticed—I had worked myself into a state. Pulling around to the back door, I leaped from the car and bounded up the back steps.
I was caught in midbound by a pair of arms like steel bands. Lifted and whirled, I was wrapped around Eric’s waist before I knew it.
“Eric,” I said, “you shouldn’t be out—”
My words were cut off by his mouth over mine.
For a minute, going along with this program seemed like a viable alternative. I’d just forget all the badness and screw his brains out on my back porch, cold as it was. But sanity seeped back in past my overloaded emotional state, and I pulled a little away. He was wearing the jeans and Louisiana Tech Bulldogs sweatshirt Jason had bought for him at Wal-Mart. Eric’s big hands supported my bottom, and my legs circled him as if they were used to it.
“Listen, Eric,” I said, when his mouth moved down to my neck.
“Ssshh,” he whispered.
“No, you have to let me speak. We have to hide.”
That got his attention. “From whom?” he said into my ear, and I shivered. The shiver was unrelated to the temperature.
“The bad witch, the one that’s after you,” I scrambled to explain. “She came into the bar with her brother and they put up that poster.”
“So?” His voice was careless.
“They asked what other vampires lived locally, and of course we had to say Bill did. So they asked for directions to Bill’s house, and I guess they’re over there looking for yo
u.”
“And?”
“That’s right across the cemetery from here! What if they come over here?”
“You advise me to hide? To get back in that black hole below your house?” He sounded uncertain, but it was clear to me his pride was piqued.
“Oh, yes. Just for a little while! You’re my responsibility; I have to keep you safe.” But I had a sinking feeling I’d expressed my fears in the wrong way. This tentative stranger, however uninterested he seemed in vampire concerns, however little he seemed to remember of his power and possessions, still had the vein of pride and curiosity Eric had always shown at the oddest moments. I’d tapped right into it. I wondered if maybe I could talk him into at least getting into my house, rather than standing out on the porch, exposed.
But it was too late. You just never could tell Eric anything.
8
“COME ON, LOVER, LET’S HAVE A LOOK,” ERIC SAID, giving me a quick kiss. He jumped off the back porch with me still attached to him—like a large barnacle—and he landed silently, which seemed amazing. I was the noisy one, with my breathing and little sounds of surprise. With a dexterity that argued long practice, Eric slung me around so that I was riding his back. I hadn’t done this since I was a child and my father had carried me piggyback, so I was considerably startled.
Oh, I was doing one great job of hiding Eric. Here we were, bounding through the cemetery, going toward the Wicked Witch of the West, instead of hiding in a dark hole where she couldn’t find us. This was so smart.
At the same time, I had to admit that I was kind of having fun, despite the difficulties of keeping a grip on Eric in this gently rolling country. The graveyard was somewhat downhill from my house. Bill’s house, the Compton house, was quite a bit more uphill from Sweet Home Cemetery. The journey downhill, mild as the slope was, was exhilarating, though I glimpsed two or three parked cars on the narrow blacktop that wound through the graves. That startled me. Teenagers sometimes chose the cemetery for privacy, but not in groups. But before I could think it through, we had passed them, swiftly and silently. Eric managed the uphill portion more slowly, but with no evidence of exhaustion.
We were next to a tree when Eric stopped. It was a huge oak, and when I touched it I became more or less oriented. There was an oak this size maybe twenty yards to the north of Bill’s house.
Eric loosened my hands so I’d slide down his back, and then he put me between him and the tree trunk. I didn’t know if he was trying to trap me or protect me. I gripped both his wrists in a fairly futile attempt to keep him beside me. I froze when I heard a voice drifting over from Bill’s house.
“This car hasn’t moved in a while,” a woman said. Hallow. She was in Bill’s carport, which was on this side of the house. She was close. I could feel Eric’s body stiffen. Did the sound of her voice evoke an echo in his memory?
“The house is locked up tight,” called Mark Stonebrook, from farther away.
“Well, we can take care of that.” From the sound of her voice, she was on the move to the front door. She sounded amused.
They were going to break into Bill’s house! Surely I should prevent that? I must have made some sudden move, because Eric’s body flattened mine against the trunk of the tree. My coat was worked up around my waist, and the bark bit into my butt through the thin material of my black pants.
I could hear Hallow. She was chanting, her voice low and somehow ominous. She was actually casting a spell. That should have been exciting and I should have been curious: a real magic spell, cast by a real witch. But I felt scared, anxious to get away. The darkness seemed to thicken.
“I smell someone,” Mark Stonebrook said.
Fee, fie, foe, fum.
“What? Here and now?” Hallow stopped her chant, sounding a little breathless.
I began to tremble.
“Yeah.” His voice came out deeper, almost a growl.
“Change,” she ordered, just like that. I heard a sound I knew I’d heard before, though I couldn’t trace the memory. It was a sort of gloppy sound. Sticky. Like stirring a stiff spoon through some thick liquid that had hard things in it, maybe peanuts or toffee bits. Or bone chips.
Then I heard a real howl. It wasn’t human at all. Mark had changed, and it wasn’t the full moon. This was real power. The night suddenly seemed full of life. Snuffling. Yipping. Tiny movements all around us.
I was some great guardian for Eric, huh? I’d let him sweep me over here. We were about to be discovered by a vampire-blood drinking Were witch, and who knows what all else, and I didn’t even have Jason’s shotgun. I put my arms around Eric and hugged him in apology.
“Sorry,” I whispered, as tiny as a bee would whisper. But then I felt something brush against us, something large and furry, while I was hearing Mark’s wolfy sounds from a few feet away on the other side of the tree. I bit my lip hard to keep from giving a yip myself.
Listening intently, I became sure there were more than two animals. I would have given almost anything for a floodlight. From maybe ten yards away came a short, sharp bark. Another wolf? A plain old dog, in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Suddenly, Eric left me. One minute, he was pressing me against the tree in the pitch-black dark, and the next minute, cold air hit me from top to bottom (so much for my holding on to his wrists). I flung my arms out, trying to discover where he was, and touched only air. Had he just stepped away so he could investigate what was happening? Had he decided to join in?
Though my hands didn’t encounter any vampires, something big and warm pressed against my legs. I used my fingers to better purpose by reaching down to explore the animal. I touched lots of fur: a pair of upright ears, a long muzzle, a warm tongue. I tried to move, to step away from the oak, but the dog (wolf?) wouldn’t let me. Though it was smaller than I and weighed less, it leaned against me with such pressure that there was no way I could move. When I listened to what was going on in the darkness—a lot of growling and snarling—I decided I was actually pretty glad about that. I sank to my knees and put one arm across the canine’s back. It licked my face.
I heard a chorus of howls, which rose eerily into the cold night. The hair on my neck stood up, and I buried my face in the neck fur of my companion and prayed. Suddenly, over all the lesser noises, there was a howl of pain and a series of yips.
I heard a car start up, and headlights cut cones into the night. My side of the tree was away from the light, but I could see that I was huddled by a dog, not a wolf. Then the lights moved and gravel sprayed from Bill’s driveway as the car reversed. There was a moment’s pause, I presumed while the driver shifted into drive, and then the car screeched and I heard it going at high speed down the hill to the turnoff onto Hummingbird Road. There was a terrible thud and a high shrieking sound that made my heart hammer even harder. It was the sound of a pain a dog makes when it’s been hit by a car.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said miserably, and clutched my furry friend. I thought of something I could do to help, now that it seemed the witches had left.
I got up and ran for the front door of Bill’s house before the dog could stop me. I pulled my keys out of my pocket as I ran. They’d been in my hand when Eric had seized me at my back door, and I’d stuffed them into my coat, where a handkerchief had kept them from jingling. I felt around for the lock, counted my keys until I arrived at Bill’s—the third on the ring—and opened his front door. I reached in and flipped the outside light switch, and abruptly the yard was illuminated.
It was full of wolves.
I didn’t know how scared I should be. Pretty scared, I guessed. I was just assuming both of the Were witches had been in the car. What if one of them was among the wolves present? And where was my vampire?
That question got answered almost immediately. There was a sort of whump as Eric landed in the yard.
“I followed them to the road, but they went too fast for me there,” he said, grinning at me as if we’d been playing a game.
A dog—a coll
ie—went up to Eric, looked up at his face, and growled.
“Shoo,” Eric said, making an imperious gesture with his hand.
My boss trotted over to me and sat against my legs again. Even in the darkness, I had suspected that my guardian was Sam. The first time I’d encountered him in this transformation, I’d thought he was a stray, and I’d named him Dean, after a man I knew with the same eye color. Now it was a habit to call him Dean when he went on four legs. I sat on Bill’s front steps and the collie cuddled against me. I said, “You are one great dog.” He wagged his tail. The wolves were sniffing Eric, who was standing stock-still.
A big wolf trotted over to me, the biggest wolf I’d ever seen. Weres turn into large wolves, I guess; I haven’t seen that many. Living in Louisiana, I’ve never seen a standard wolf at all. This Were was almost pure black, which I thought was unusual. The rest of the wolves were more silvery, except for one that was smaller and reddish.
The wolf gripped my coat sleeve with its long white teeth and tugged. I rose immediately and went over to the spot where most of the other wolves were milling. We were at the outer edge of the light, so I hadn’t noticed the cluster right away. There was blood on the ground, and in the middle of the spreading pool lay a young dark-haired woman. She was naked.
She was obviously and terribly injured.
Her legs were broken, and maybe one arm.
“Go get my car,” I told Eric, in the kind of voice that has to be obeyed.
I tossed him my keys, and he took to the air again. In one available corner of my brain, I hoped that he remembered how to drive. I’d noted that though he’d forgotten his personal history, his modern skills were apparently intact.
I was trying not to think about the poor injured girl right in front of me. The wolves circled and paced, whining. Then the big black one raised his head to the dark sky and howled again. This was a signal to all the others, who did the same thing. I glanced back to be sure that Dean was keeping away, since he was the outsider. I wasn’t sure how much human personality was left after these two-natured people transformed, and I didn’t want anything to happen to him. He was sitting on the small porch, out of the way, his eyes fixed on me.
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