When I turned on the light, Debbie Pelt was smiling at me.
She had been sitting in the dark at my kitchen table, and she had a gun in her hand.
Without saying a word, she fired at me.
But she’d reckoned without Eric, who was so fast, faster than any human. He took the bullet meant for me, and he took it right in the chest. He went down in front of me.
She hadn’t had time to search the house, which was lucky. From behind the water heater, I yanked the shotgun I’d taken from Jason’s house. I pumped it—one of the scariest sounds in the world—and I shot Debbie Pelt while she was still staring, shocked, at Eric, who was on his knees and coughing up blood. I racked another shell, but I didn’t need to shoot her again. Her fingers relaxed and her gun fell to the floor.
I sat on the floor myself, because I couldn’t stay upright anymore.
Eric was now full length on the floor, gasping and twitching in a pool of blood.
There wasn’t much left of Debbie’s upper chest and neck.
My kitchen looked like I’d been dismembering pigs, pigs that’d put up a good fight.
I started to reach up to scrabble for the telephone at the end of the counter. My hand dropped back to the floor when I wondered whom I was going to call.
The law? Ha.
Sam? And mire him down further in my troubles? I didn’t think so.
Pam? Let her see how close I’d come to letting my charge get killed? Uh-uh.
Alcide? Sure, he’d love seeing what I’d done with his fiancée, abjure or no abjure.
Arlene? She had her living to make, and two little kids. She didn’t need to be around something illegal.
Tara? Too queasy.
This is when I would have called my brother, if I’d known where he was. When you have to clean the blood out of the kitchen, it’s family you want.
I’d have to do this by myself.
Eric came first. I scrambled over to him, reclined by him with one elbow to prop me up.
“Eric,” I said loudly. His blue eyes opened. They were bright with pain.
The hole in his chest bubbled blood. I hated to think what the exit wound looked like. Maybe it had been a twenty-two? Maybe the bullet was still inside? I looked at the wall behind where he’d been standing, and I couldn’t see a spray of blood or a bullet hole. Actually, I realized, if the bullet had gone through him, it would have struck me. I looked down at myself, fumbled the coat off. No, no fresh blood.
As I watched Eric, he began to look a little better. “Drink,” he said, and I almost put my wrist to his lips, when I reconsidered. I managed to get some TrueBlood out of the refrigerator and heat it up, though the front of the microwave was less than pristine.
I knelt to give it to him. “Why not you?” he asked painfully.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I know you earned it, sweetie. But I have to have all my energy. I’ve got more work ahead.”
Eric downed the drink in a few big gulps. I’d unbuttoned his coat and his flannel shirt, and as I looked at his chest to mark the progression of his bleeding, I saw an amazing thing. The bullet that had hit him popped out of the wound. In another three minutes, or perhaps less, the hole had closed. The blood was still drying on his chest hair, and the bullet wound was gone.
“Another drink?” Eric asked.
“Sure. How do you feel?” I was numb myself.
His smile was crooked. “Weak.”
I got him more blood and he drank this bottle more slowly. Wincing, he pulled himself to a full sitting position. He looked at the mess on the other side of the table.
Then he looked at me.
“I know, I know, I did terrible!” I said. “I’m so sorry!” I could feel tears—again—trailing down my cheeks. I could hardly feel more miserable. I’d done a dreadful thing. I’d failed in my job. I had a massive cleanup ahead of me. And I looked awful.
Eric looked mildly surprised at my outburst. “You might have died of the bullet, and I knew I wouldn’t,” he pointed out. “I kept the bullet from you in the most expedient way, and then you defended me effectively.”
That was certainly a skewed way to look at it, but oddly enough, I did feel less horrible.
“I killed another human,” I said. That made two in one night; but in my opinion, the hollow-cheeked witch had killed himself by pushing down on the knife.
I’d definitely fired the shotgun all by myself.
I shuddered and turned away from the ragged shell of bone and flesh that had once held Debbie Pelt.
“You didn’t,” he said sharply. “You killed a shifter who was a treacherous, murderous bitch, a shifter who had tried to kill you twice already.” So it had been Eric’s hand that had squeezed her throat and made her let go of me. “I should have finished the job when I had her earlier,” he said, by way of confirmation. “It would have saved us both some heartache; in my case, literally.”
I had a feeling this was not what the Reverend Fullenwilder would be saying. I muttered something to that effect.
“I was never a Christian,” Eric said. Now, that didn’t surprise me. “But I can’t imagine a belief system that would tell you to sit still and get slaughtered.”
I blinked, wondering if that wasn’t exactly what Christianity taught. But I am no theologian or Bible scholar, and I would have to leave the judgment on my action to God, who was also no theologian.
Somehow I felt better, and I was in fact grateful to be alive.
“Thank you, Eric,” I said. I kissed him on the cheek. “Now you go clean up in the bathroom while I start in here.”
But he was not having any of that. God bless him, he helped me with great zeal. Since he could handle the most disgusting things with no apparent qualms, I was delighted to let him.
You don’t want to know how awful it was, or all the details. But we got Debbie together and bagged up, and Eric took her way out into the woods and buried her and concealed the grave, he swore, while I cleaned. I had to take down the curtains over the sink and soak them in the washing machine in cold water, and I stuck my coat in with them, though without much hope of its being wearable again. I pulled on rubber gloves and used bleach-soaked wipes to go over and over the chair and table and floor, and I sprayed the front of the cabinets with wood soap and wiped and wiped.
You just wouldn’t believe where specks of blood had landed.
I realized that attention to these tiny details was helping me keep my mind off of the main event, and that the longer I avoided looking at it squarely—the longer I let Eric’s practical words sink into my awareness—the better off I’d be. There was nothing I could undo. There was no way I could mend what I had done. I’d had a limited number of choices, and I had to live with the choice I’d made. My Gran had always told me that a woman—any woman worth her salt—could do whatever she had to. If you’d called Gran a liberated woman, she would have denied it vigorously, but she’d been the strongest woman I’d ever known, and if she believed I could complete this grisly task just because I had to, I would do it.
When I was through, the kitchen reeked of cleaning products, and to the naked eye it was literally spotless. I was sure a crime scene expert would be able to find trace evidence (a tip of the hat to the Learning Channel), but I didn’t intend that a crime scene expert would ever have reason to come into my kitchen.
She’d broken in the front door. It had never occurred to me to check it before I came in the back. So much for my career as a bodyguard. I wedged a chair under the doorknob to keep it blocked for the remainder of the night.
Eric, returned from his burial detail, seemed to be high on excitement, so I asked him to go scouting for Debbie’s car. She had a Mazda Miata, and she’d hidden it on a four-wheeler trail right across the parish road from the turnoff to my place. Eric had had the foresight to retain her keys, and he volunteered to drive her car somewhere else. I should have followed him, to bring him back to my house, but he insisted he could do the job by himself, and I wa
s too exhausted to boss him around. I stood under a stream of water and scrubbed myself clean while he was gone. I was glad to be alone, and I washed myself over and over. When I was as clean as I could get on the outside, I pulled on a pink nylon nightgown and crawled in the bed. It was close to dawn, and I hoped Eric would be back soon. I had opened the closet and the hole for him, and put an extra pillow in it.
I heard him come in just as I was falling asleep, and he kissed me on the cheek. “All done,” he said, and I mumbled, “Thanks, baby.”
“Anything for you,” he said, his voice gentle. “Good night, my lover.”
It occurred to me that I was lethal for exes. I’d dusted Bill’s big love (and his mom); now I’d killed Alcide’s off-and-on-again sweetie. I knew hundreds of men. I’d never gone homicidal on their exes. But creatures I cared about, well, that seemed to be different. I wondered if Eric had any old girlfriends around. Probably about a hundred or so. Well, they’d better beware of me.
After that, whether I willed it or not, I was sucked down into a black hole of exhaustion.
14
I GUESS PAM WORKED ON HALLOW RIGHT UP UNTIL dawn was peeking over the horizon. I myself was so heavily asleep, so in need of both physical and mental healing, I didn’t wake until four in the afternoon. It was a gloomy winter day, the kind that makes you switch on the radio to see if an ice storm is coming. I checked to make sure I had three or four days’ worth of firewood moved up onto the back porch.
Eric would be up early today.
I dressed and ate at the speed of a snail, trying to get a handle on my state of being.
Physically, I was fine. A bruise here or there, a little muscle soreness—that was nothing. It was the second week of January and I was sticking to my New Year’s resolution just great.
On the other hand—and there’s always another hand—mentally, or maybe emotionally, I was less than rock-steady. No matter how practical you are, no matter how strongstomached you are, you can’t do something like I’d done without suffering some consequences.
That’s the way it should be.
When I thought of Eric getting up, I thought of maybe doing some snuggling before I had to go to work. And I thought of the pleasure of being with someone who thought I was so important.
I hadn’t anticipated that the spell would have been broken.
Eric got up at five-thirty. When I heard movement in the guest bedroom, I tapped on the door and opened it. He whirled, his fangs running out and his hands clawing in front of him.
I’d almost said, “Hi, honey,” but caution kept me mute.
“Sookie,” he said slowly. “Am I in your house?”
I was glad I’d gotten dressed. “Yes,” I said, regrouping like crazy. “You’ve been here for safekeeping. Do you know what happened?”
“I went to a meeting with some new people,” he said, doubt in his voice. “Didn’t I?” He looked down at his Wal-Mart clothes with some surprise. “When did I buy these?”
“I had to get those for you,” I said.
“Did you dress me, too?” he asked, running his hands down his chest and lower. He gave me a very Eric smile.
He didn’t remember. Anything.
“No,” I said. I flashed on Eric in the shower with me. The kitchen table. The bed.
“Where is Pam?” he asked.
“You should call her,” I said. “Do you recall anything about yesterday?”
“Yesterday I had the meeting with the witches,” he said, as if that was indisputable.
I shook my head. “That was days ago,” I told him, unable to add the number of them up in my head. My heart sank even lower.
“You don’t remember last night, after we came back from Shreveport,” I pressed him, suddenly seeing a gleam of light in all this.
“Did we make love?” he asked hopefully. “Did you finally yield to me, Sookie? It’s only a matter of time, of course.” He grinned at me.
No, last night we cleaned up a body, I thought.
I was the only one who knew. And even I didn’t know where Debbie’s remains were buried, or what had happened to her car.
I sat down on the edge of my old narrow bed. Eric looked at me closely. “Something’s wrong, Sookie? What happened while I was—Why don’t I remember what happened?”
Least said, soonest mended.
All’s well that ends well.
Out of sight, out of mind. (Oh, I wished that were true.)
“I bet Pam will be here any minute,” I said. “I think I’ll let her tell you all about it.”
“And Chow?”
“No, he won’t be here. He died last night. Fangtasia seems to have a bad effect on bartenders.”
“Who killed him? I’ll have vengeance.”
“You’ve already had.”
“Something more is wrong with you,” Eric said. He’d always been astute.
“Yes, lots of stuff is wrong with me.” I would’ve enjoyed hugging him right then, but it would just complicate everything. “And I think it’s going to snow.”
“Snow, here?” Eric was as delighted as a child. “I love snow!”
Why was I not surprised?
“Maybe we will get snowed in together,” he said suggestively, waggling his blond eyebrows.
I laughed. I just couldn’t help it. And it was a hell of a lot better than crying, which I’d done quite enough of lately. “As if you’d ever let the weather stop you from doing what you wanted to do,” I said, and stood. “Come on, I’ll heat you up some blood.”
Even a few nights of intimacy had softened me enough that I had to watch my actions. Once I almost stroked his hair as I passed him; and once I bent to give him a kiss, and had to pretend I’d dropped something on the floor.
When Pam knocked on my front door thirty minutes later, I was ready for work, and Eric was antsy as hell.
Pam was no sooner seated opposite him than he began bombarding her with questions. I told them quietly that I was leaving, and I don’t think they even noticed when I went out the kitchen door.
Merlotte’s wasn’t too busy that night, after we dealt with a rather large supper crowd. A few flakes of snow had convinced most of the regulars that going home sober might be a very good idea. There were enough customers left to keep Arlene and me moderately busy. Sam caught me as I was loading my tray with seven mugs of beer and wanted to be filled in on the night before.
“I’ll tell you later,” I promised, thinking I’d have to edit my narrative pretty carefully.
“Any trace of Jason?” he asked.
“No,” I said, and felt sadder than ever. The dispatcher at the law enforcement complex had sounded almost snappish when I’d called to ask if there was any news.
Kevin and Kenya came in that night after they’d gotten off duty. When I took their drinks to the table (a bourbon and Coke and a gin and tonic), Kenya said, “We’ve been looking for your brother, Sookie. I’m sorry.”
“I know you all have been trying,” I said. “I appreciate you all organizing the search party so much! I just wish . . .” And then I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Thanks to my disability, I knew something about each of them that the other didn’t know. They loved each other. But Kevin knew his mother would stick her head in the oven before she’d see him married to a black woman, and Kenya knew her brothers would rather ram Kevin through a wall than see him walk down the aisle with her.
And I knew this, despite the fact that neither of them did; and I hated having this personal knowledge, this intimate knowledge, that I just couldn’t help knowing.
Worse than knowing, even, was the temptation to interfere. I told myself very sternly that I had enough problems of my own without causing problems for other people. Luckily, I was busy enough the rest of the night to erase the temptation from my mind. Though I couldn’t reveal those kinds of secrets, I reminded myself that I owed the two officers, big-time. If I heard of something I could let them know, I would.
When the bar closed,
I helped Sam put the chairs up on the tables so Terry Bellefleur could come in and mop and clean the toilets early in the morning. Arlene and Tack had left, singing “Let It Snow” while they went out the back door. Sure enough, the flakes were drifting down outside, though I didn’t think they’d stick past morning. I thought of the creatures out in the woods tonight, trying to keep warm and dry. I knew that in some spot in the forest, Debbie Pelt lay in a hole, cold forever.
I wondered how long I’d think of her like that, and I hoped very much I could remember just as clearly what an awful person she’d been, how vindictive and murderous.
In fact, I’d stood staring out the window for a couple of minutes when Sam came up behind me.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked. He gripped my elbow, and I could feel the strength in his fingers.
I sighed, not for the first time. “Just wondering about Jason,” I said. That was close enough to the truth.
He patted me in a consoling way. “Tell me about last night,” he said, and for one second I thought he was asking me about Debbie. Then, of course, I knew he referred to the battle with the witches, and I was able to give him an account.
“So Pam showed up tonight at your place.” Sam sounded pleased about that. “She must have cracked Hallow, made her undo the spell. Eric was himself again?”
“As far as I could tell.”
“What did he have to say about the experience?”
“He didn’t remember anything about it,” I said slowly. “He didn’t seem to have a clue.”
Sam looked away from me when he said, “How are you, with that?”
“I think it’s for the best,” I told him. “Definitely.” But I would be going home to an empty house again. The knowledge skittered at the edges of my awareness, but I wouldn’t look at it directly.
“Too bad you weren’t working the afternoon shift,” he said, somehow following a similar train of thought. “Calvin Norris was in here.”
“And?”
“I think he came in hopes of seeing you.”
I looked at Sam skeptically. “Right.”
“I think he’s serious, Sookie.”
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