Eric gave Pam such a serious look that the grin faded right off her face. “If I die tonight,” he said, “pay this woman the money that was promised her.” He gripped my shoulder. I was just draped in vampires.
“I swear,” Pam said. “Chow and Gerald will know, too.”
Eric said, “Do you know where her brother is?”
Startled, I stepped away from Pam.
Pam looked equally taken aback. “No, Sheriff.”
“It occurred to me that you might have taken him hostage to ensure she didn’t betray me.”
The idea had never crossed my mind, but it should have. Obviously, I had a lot to learn about being devious.
“I wish I’d thought of that,” Pam said admiringly, echoing my thoughts with her own twist. “I wouldn’t have minded spending some time with Jason as my hostage.” I couldn’t understand it: Jason’s allure just seemed universal. “But I didn’t take him,” Pam said. “If we get through this, Sookie, I’ll look for him myself. Could it be Hallow’s witches have him?”
“It’s possible,” I said. “Claudine said she didn’t see any hostages, but she also said there were rooms she didn’t look into. Though I don’t know why they would have taken Jason, unless Hallow knows I have Eric? Then they might have used him to make me talk, just the way you would have used him to make me keep silent. But they haven’t approached me. You can’t use blackmail on someone who doesn’t know anything about the hold you have on them.”
“Nonetheless, I’ll remind all those who are going to enter the building to watch out for him,” Pam said.
“How is Belinda?” I asked. “Have you made arrangements to pay her hospital bills?”
She looked at me blankly.
“The waitress who was hurt defending Fangtasia,” I reminded her, a little dryly. “You remember? The friend of Ginger, who died?”
“Of course,” said Chow, from his place against the wall. “She is recovering. We sent her flowers and candy,” he told Pam. Then he focused on me. “Plus, we have a group insurance policy.” He was proud as a new father about that.
Pam looked pleased with Chow’s report. “Good,” she said. “You have to keep them happy. Are we ready to go?”
I shrugged. “I guess so. No point in waiting.”
Bill stepped in front of me as Chow and Pam consulted about which vehicle to take. Gerald had gone out to make sure everyone was on the same page as far as the plan of battle.
“How was Peru?” I asked Bill. I was very conscious of Eric, a huge blond shadow at my elbow.
“I made a lot of notes for my book,” Bill said. “South America hasn’t been good to vampires as a whole, but Peru is not as hostile as the other countries, and I was able to talk to a few vampires I hadn’t heard of before.” For months, Bill had been compiling a vampire directory at the behest of the queen of Louisiana, who thought having such an item would be very handy. Her opinion was certainly not the universal opinion of the vampire community, some of whom had very strong objections to being outed, even among their own kind. I guess secrecy could be almost impossible to give up, if you’d clung to it for centuries.
There were vampires who still lived in graveyards, hunting every night, refusing to recognize the change in their status; it was like the stories about the Japanese soldiers who’d held out on Pacific islands long after World War II was over.
“Did you get to see those ruins you talked about?”
“Machu Picchu? Yes, I climbed up to them by myself. It was a great experience.”
I tried to picture Bill going up a mountain at night, seeing the ruins of an ancient civilization in the moonlight. I couldn’t even imagine what that must have been like. I’d never been out of the country. I hadn’t often been out of the state, for that matter.
“This is Bill, your former mate?” Eric’s voice sounded a little . . . strained.
“Ah, this is—well, yes, sort of,” I said unhappily. The “former” was correct; the “mate” was a little off.
Eric placed both his hands on my shoulders and moved in close to me. I had no doubt he was staring over the top of my head at Bill, who was staring right back. Eric might as well have stuck a SHE’S MINE sign on top of my head. Arlene had told me that she loved moments like this, when her ex saw plainly that someone else valued her even if he didn’t. All I can say is, my taste in satisfaction runs completely different. I hated it. I felt awkward and ridiculous.
“You really don’t remember me,” Bill said to Eric, as if he’d doubted it up until this moment. My suspicion was confirmed when he told me, as if Eric wasn’t standing there, “Truly, I thought this was an elaborate scheme on Eric’s part to stay in your house so he could talk his way into your bed.”
Since the same thought had occurred to me, though I’d discarded it pretty quickly, I couldn’t protest; but I could feel myself turning red.
“We need to get in the car,” I told Eric, turning to catch a glimpse of his face. It was rock hard and expressionless, which usually signaled he was in a dangerous state of mind. But he came with me when I moved toward the door, and the whole house slowly emptied its inhabitants into the narrow suburban street. I wondered what the neighbors thought. Of course, they knew the house was inhabited by vampires—no one around during the day, all the yard work done by human hirelings, the people who came and went at night being so very pale. This sudden activity had to invite neighborhood attention.
I drove in silence, Eric beside me on the front seat. Every now and then he reached over to touch me. I don’t know who Bill had caught a ride with, but I was glad it wasn’t me. The testosterone level would have been too high in the car, and I might have smothered.
Bubba was sitting in the backseat, humming to himself. It sounded like “Love Me Tender.”
“This is a crappy car,” Eric said, out of the blue, as far as I was concerned.
“Yes,” I agreed.
“Are you afraid?”
“I am.”
“If this whole thing works, will you still see me?”
“Sure,” I said, to make him happy. I was convinced that after this confrontation, nothing would be the same. But without the true Eric’s conviction of his own prowess and intelligence and ruthlessness, this Eric was pretty shaky. He’d be up for the actual battle, but right now he needed a boost.
Pam had plotted out where everyone should park, to prevent Hallow’s coven from becoming alarmed by the sudden appearance of a lot of cars. We had a map with our spot marked on it. That turned out to be an E-Z Mart on the corner of a couple of larger roads in a down-sliding area that was changing over from residential to commercial. We parked in the most out-of-the-way corner the E-Z Mart afforded. Without further discussion, we set out to our appointed locations.
About half the houses on the quiet street had real-estate signs in the front lawn, and the ones that remained in private hands were not well maintained. Cars were as battered as mine, and big bare patches indicated that the grass wasn’t fertilized or watered in the summer. Every lighted window seemed to show the flickering of a television screen.
I was glad it was winter so the people who lived here were all inside. Two white vampires and a blond woman would excite comment, if not aggression, in this neighborhood. Plus, one of the vampires was pretty recognizable, despite the rigors of his changeover—which was why Bubba was almost always kept out of sight.
Soon we were at the corner where Eric was supposed to part from us so he could rendezvous with the other vampires. I would have continued on to my appointed post without a word; by now I was keyed up to such a pitch of tension I felt I could vibrate if you tapped me with a finger. But Eric wasn’t content with a silent separation. He gripped my arms and kissed me for all he was worth, and believe me, that was plenty.
Bubba made a sound of disapproval. “You’re not supposed to be kissing on anybody else, Miss Sookie,” he said. “Bill said it was okay, but I don’t like it.”
After one more second, Eric released m
e. “I’m sorry if we offended you,” he said coldly. He looked back down at me. “I’ll see you later, my lover,” he said very quietly.
I laid my hand against his cheek. “Later,” I said, and I turned and walked away with Bubba at my heels.
“You ain’t mad at me, are you, Miss Sookie?” he asked anxiously.
“No,” I said. I made myself smile at him, since I knew he could see me far more clearly than I could see him. It was a cold night, and though I was wearing my coat, it didn’t seem to be as warm as it used to be. My bare hands were quivering with cold, and my nose felt numb. I could just detect a whiff of wood smoke from a fireplace, and automobile exhaust, and gasoline, and oil, and all the other car odors that combine to make City Smell.
But there was another smell permeating the neighborhood, an aroma that indicated this neighborhood was contaminated by more than urban blight. I sniffed, and the odor curled through the air in almost visible flourishes. After a moment’s thought, I realized this must be the smell of magic, thick and stomach-clenching. Magic smells like I imagine a bazaar in some exotic foreign country might. It reeks of the strange, the different. The scent of a lot of magic can be quite overwhelming. Why weren’t the residents complaining to the police about it? Couldn’t everyone pick up on that odor?
“Bubba, do you smell something unusual?” I asked in a very low voice. A dog or two barked as we walked past in the black night, but they quickly quieted when they caught the scent of vampire. (To them, I guess, Bubba was the something unusual.) Dogs are almost always frightened of vampires, though their reaction to Weres and shifters is more unpredictable.
I found myself convinced I wanted nothing more than to go back to the car and leave. It was a conscious effort to make my feet move in the correct direction.
“Yeah, I sure do,” he whispered back. “Someone’s been laying some spells. Stay-away magic.” I didn’t know if the Wiccans on our side, or the witches on Hallow’s, had been responsible for this pervasive piece of craft, but it was effective.
The night seemed almost unnaturally silent. Maybe three cars passed us as we walked the maze of suburban streets. Bubba and I saw no other pedestrians, and the sense of ominous isolation grew. The stay-away intensified as we came closer to what we were supposed to stay away from.
The darkness between the pools of light below the street-lamps seemed darker, and the light didn’t seem to reach as far. When Bubba took my hand, I didn’t pull away. My feet seemed to drag at each step.
I’d caught a whiff of this smell before, at Fangtasia. Maybe the Were tracker had had an easier job than I’d thought.
“We’re there, Miss Sookie,” Bubba said, his voice just a quiet thread in the night. We’d come around a corner. Since I knew there was a spell, and I knew I could keep walking, I did; but if I’d been a resident of the area, I would have found an alternative route, and I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. The impulse to avoid this spot was so strong that I wondered if the people who lived on this block had been able to come home from their jobs. Maybe they were eating out, going to movies, drinking in bars—anything to avoid returning to their homes. Every house on the street looked suspiciously dark and untenanted.
Across the road, and at the opposite end of the block, was the center of the magic.
Hallow’s coven had found a good place to hole up: a business up for lease, a large building that had held a combination florist shop-bakery. Minnie’s Flowers and Cakes stood in a lonely position, the largest store in a strip of three that had, one by one, faded and gone out like flames on a candelabra. The building had apparently been empty for years. The big plate-glass windows were plastered with posters for events long past and political candidates long since defeated. Plywood nailed over the glass doors was proof that vandals had broken in more than once.
Even in the winter chill, weeds pushed up through cracks in the parking area. A big Dumpster stood to the right side of the parking lot. I viewed it from across the street, getting as much of a picture of the outside as I could before closing my eyes to concentrate on my other senses. I took a moment to be rueful.
If you’d asked me, I would’ve had a hard time tracing the steps that had led me to this dangerous place at this dangerous time. I was on the edges of a battle in which both sides were pretty dubious. If I’d fallen in with Hallow’s witches first, I would probably have been convinced that the Weres and the vampires deserved to be eradicated.
At this time a year ago, no one in the world really understood what I was, or cared. I was just Crazy Sookie, the one with the wild brother, a woman others pitied and avoided, to varying degrees. Now here I was, on a freezing street in Shreveport, gripping the hand of a vampire whose face was legendary and whose brain was mush. Was this betterment?
And I was here not for amusement, or improvement, but to reconnoiter for a bunch of supernatural creatures, gathering information on a group of homicidal, blood-drinking, shape-changing witches.
I sighed, I hoped inaudibly. Oh, well. At least no one had hit me.
My eyes closed, and I dropped my shields and reached out with my mind to the building across the street.
Brains, busy busy busy. I was startled at the bundle of impressions I was receiving. Maybe the absence of other humans in the vicinity, or the overwhelming pervasion of magic, was responsible; but some factor had sharpened my other sense to the point of pain. Almost stunned by the flow of information, I realized I had to sort through it and organize it. First, I counted brains. Not literally (“One temporal lobe, two temporal lobes . . .”), but as a thought cluster. I came up with fifteen. Five were in the front room, which had been the showroom of the store, of course. One was in the smallest space, which was most likely the bathroom, and the rest were in the third and largest room, which lay to the rear. I figured it had been the work area.
Everyone in the building was awake. A sleeping brain still gives me a low mumble of a thought or two, in dreaming, but it’s not the same as a waking brain. It’s like the difference between a dog twitching in its sleep and an alert puppy.
To get as much information as possible, I had to get closer. I had never attempted to pick through a group to get details as specific as guilt or innocence, and I wasn’t even sure that was possible. But if any of the people in the building were not evil witches, I didn’t want them to be in the thick of what was to come.
“Closer,” I breathed to Bubba. “But under cover.”
“Yes’m,” he whispered back. “You gonna keep your eyes closed?”
I nodded, and he led me very carefully across the street and into the shadow of the Dumpster that stood about five yards south of the building. I was glad it was cold, because that kept the garbage smell at an acceptable level. The ghosts of the scents of doughnuts and blossoms lay on top of the funk of spoiled things and old diapers that passersby had tossed into the handy receptacle. It didn’t blend happily with the magic smell.
I adjusted, blocked out the assault on my nose, and began listening. Though I’d gotten better at this, it was still like trying to hear twelve phone conversations at once. Some of them were Weres, too, which complicated matters. I could only get bits and pieces.
... hope that’s not a vaginal infection I feel coming on . . .
She won’t listen to me, she doesn’t think men can do the job.
If I turned her into a toad, who could tell the difference?
. . . wish we’d gotten some diet Coke . . .
I’ll find that damn vamp and kill him . . .
Mother of the Earth, listen to my pleas.
I’m in too deep . . .
I better get a new nail file.
This was not decisive, but no one had been thinking, “Oh, these demonic witches have trapped me, won’t somebody help?” or “I hear the vampires approaching!” or anything dramatic like that. This sounded like a band of people who knew each other, were at least relaxed in each other’s company, and therefore held the same goals. Even the one who was praying wa
s not in any state of urgency or need. I hoped Hallow wouldn’t sense the crush of my mind, but everyone I’d touched had seemed preoccupied.
“Bubba,” I said, just a little louder than a thought, “you go tell Pam there are fifteen people in there, and as far as I can tell, they’re all witches.”
“Yes’m.”
“You remember how to get to Pam?”
“Yes’m.”
“So you can let go my hand, okay?”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Be silent and careful,” I whispered.
And he was gone. I crouched in the shadow that was darker than the night, beside the smells and cold metal, listening to the witches. Three brains were male, the rest female. Hallow was in there, because one of the women was looking at her and thinking of her . . . dreading her, which kind of made me uneasy. I wondered where they’d parked their cars—unless they flew around on broomsticks, ha ha. Then I wondered about something that should already have crossed my mind.
If they were so darn wary and dangerous, where were their sentries?
At that moment, I was seized from behind.
12
“WHO ARE YOU?” ASKED A THIN VOICE.
Since she had one hand clapped over my mouth and the other was holding a knife to my neck, I couldn’t answer. She seemed to grasp that after a second, because she told me, “We’re going in,” and began to push me toward the back of the building.
I couldn’t have that. If she’d been one of the witches in the building, one of the blood-drinking witches, I couldn’t have gotten away with this, but she was a plain old witch, and she hadn’t watched Sam break up as many bar fights as I had. With both hands, I reached up and grabbed her knife wrist, and I twisted it as hard as I could while I hit her hard with my lower body. Over she went, onto the filthy cold pavement, and I landed right on top of her, pounding her hand against the ground until she released the knife. She was sobbing, the will seeping out of her.
“You’re a lousy lookout,” I said to Holly, keeping my voice low.
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