Okay, this wasn’t going well.
“Andy, if you’ll move out of the way, me and the dog’ll just get back into my car, and we’ll drive away, and you won’t have to be mad at me anymore.” He was plenty mad, and he was determined to have it out with me, whatever that entailed. Andy wanted to get the world realigned, with facts he knew forming the tracks it should run on. I didn’t fit in that world. I wouldn’t run on those tracks. I could read his mind, and I didn’t like what I was hearing.
I realized, too late, that Andy’d had one drink too many during the conference at the bar. He’d had enough to remove his usual constraints.
“You shouldn’t be in our town, Sookie,” he said.
“I have as much right to be here as you, Andy Bellefleur.”
“You’re a genetic fluke or something. Your grandmother was a real nice woman, and people tell me your dad and mom were good people. What happened to you and Jason?”
“I don’t think there’s much wrong with me and Jason, Andy,” I said calmly, but his words stung like fire ants. “I think we’re regular people, no better and no worse than you and Portia.”
Andy actually snorted.
Suddenly the bloodhound’s side, pressed against my legs, began to vibrate. Dean was growling almost inaudibly. But he wasn’t looking at Andy. The hound’s heavy head was turned in another direction, toward the dark shadows of the other end of the alley. Another live mind: a human. Not a regular human, though.
“Andy,” I said. My whisper pierced his self-absorption. “You armed?”
I didn’t know whether I felt that much better when he drew his pistol.
“Drop it, Bellefleur,” said a no-nonsense voice, one that sounded familiar.
“Bullshit,” Andy sneered. “Why should I?”
“Because I got a bigger gun,” said the voice, cool and sarcastic. Sweetie Des Arts stepped from the shadows, carrying a rifle. It was pointed at Andy, and I had no doubt she was ready to fire. I felt like my insides had turned to Jell-O.
“Why don’t you just leave, Andy Bellefleur?” Sweetie asked. She was wearing a mechanic’s coverall and a jacket, and her hands were gloved. She didn’t look anything like a short-order cook. “I’ve got no quarrel with you. You’re just a person.”
Andy was shaking his head, trying to clear it. I noticed he hadn’t dropped his gun yet. “You’re the cook at the bar, right? Why are you doing this?”
“You should know, Bellefleur. I heard your little conversation with the shifter here. Maybe this dog is a human, someone you know.” She didn’t wait for Andy to answer. “And Heather Kinman was just as bad. She turned into a fox. And the guy that works at Norcross, Calvin Norris? He’s a damn panther.”
“And you shot them all? You shot me, too?” I wanted to be sure Andy was registering this. “There’s just one thing wrong with your little vendetta, Sweetie. I’m not a shifter.”
“You smell like one,” Sweetie said, clearly sure she was right.
“Some of my friends are shifters, and that day I’d hugged a few of ’em. But me myself—not a shifter of any kind.”
“Guilty by association,” Sweetie said. “I’ll bet you got a dab of shifter from somewhere.”
“What about you?” I asked. I didn’t want to get shot again. The evidence suggested that Sweetie was not a sharp-shooter: Sam, Calvin, and I had lived. I knew aiming at night had to be difficult, but still, you would’ve thought she could have done better. “Why are you on this vendetta?”
“I’m just a fraction of a shifter,” she said, snarling just as much as Dean. “I got bit when I had a car wreck. This half-man half-wolf . . . thing . . . ran out of the woods near where I lay bleeding, and the damn thing bit me . . . and then another car came around the curve and it ran away. But the first full moon after that, my hands changed! My parents threw up.”
“What about your boyfriend? You had one?” I kept speaking, trying to distract her. Andy was moving as far away from me as he could get, so she couldn’t shoot both of us quickly. She planned on shooting me first, I knew. I wanted the bloodhound to move away from me, but he stayed loyally pressed against my legs. She wasn’t sure the dog was a shifter. And, oddly, she hadn’t mentioned shooting Sam.
“I was a stripper then, living with a great guy,” she said, rage bubbling through her voice. “He saw my hands and the extra hair and he loathed me. He left when the moon was full. He’d take business trips. He’d go golfing with his buddies. He’d be stuck at a late meeting.”
“So how long have you been shooting shifters?”
“Three years,” she said proudly. “I’ve killed twenty-two and wounded forty-one.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
“I’m proud of it,” she said. “Cleaning the vermin off the face of the earth.”
“You always find work in bars?”
“Gives me a chance to see who’s one of the brethren,” she said, smiling. “I check out the churches and restaurants, too. The day care centers.”
“Oh, no.” I thought I was going to throw up.
My senses were hyperalert, as you can imagine, so I knew there was someone coming up the alley behind Sweetie. I could feel the anger roiling in a two-natured head. I didn’t look, trying to keep Sweetie’s attention for as long as I could. But there was a little noise, maybe the sound of a piece of paper trash rustling against the ground, and that was enough for Sweetie. She whirled around with the rifle up to her shoulder, and she fired. There was a shriek from the darkness at the south end of the alley, and then a high whining.
Andy took his moment and shot Sweetie Des Arts while her back was turned. I pressed myself against the uneven bricks of the old Feed and Seed, and as the rifle dropped from her hand, I saw the blood come out of her mouth, black in the starlight. Then she folded to the earth.
While Andy was standing over her, his gun dangling from his hand, I made my way past them to find out who had come to our aid. I switched on my flashlight to discover a werewolf, terribly wounded. Sweetie’s bullet had hit him in the middle of the chest, as best I could tell through the thick fur, and I yelled at Andy, “Use your cell phone! Call for help!” I was pressing down on the bubbling wound as hard as I could, hoping I was doing the right thing. The wound kept moving in a very disconcerting way, since the Were was in the process of changing back into a human. I glanced back to see that Andy was still lost in his own little vale of horror at what he’d done. “Bite him,” I told Dean, and Dean padded over to the policeman and nipped his hand.
Andy cried out, of course, and raised his gun as if he were going to shoot the bloodhound. “No!” I yelled, jumping up from the dying Were. “Use your phone, you idiot. Call an ambulance.”
Then the gun swung around to point at me.
For a long, tense moment I thought for sure the end of my life had come. We’d all like to kill what we don’t understand, what scares us, and I powerfully scared Andy Bellefleur.
But then the gun faltered and dropped back to Andy’s side. His broad face stared at me with dawning comprehension. He fumbled in his pocket, withdrew a cell phone. To my profound relief, he holstered the gun after he punched in a number.
I turned back to the Were, now wholly human and naked, while Andy said, “There’s been a multiple shooting in the alley behind the old Feed and Seed and Patsy’s Cleaners, across Magnolia Street from Sonic. Right. Two ambulances, two gunshot wounds. No, I’m fine.”
The wounded Were was Dawson. His eyes flickered open, and he tried to gasp. I couldn’t even imagine the pain he must be suffering. “Calvin,” he tried to say.
“Don’t worry now. Help’s on the way,” I told the big man. My flashlight was lying on the ground beside me, and by its oddly skewed light I could see his huge muscles and bare hairy chest. He looked cold, of course, and I wondered where his clothes were. I would have been glad to have his shirt to wad up over the wound, which was steadily leaking blood. My hands were covered in it.
“Told me to finish out
my last day by watching over you,” Dawson said. He was shuddering all over. He tried to smile. “I said, ‘Piece of cake.’” And then he didn’t say anything else, but lost consciousness.
Andy’s heavy black shoes came to stand in my field of vision. I thought Dawson was going to die. I didn’t even know his first name. I had no idea how we were going to explain a naked guy to the police. Wait . . . was that up to me? Surely Andy was the one who’d have the hard explaining to do?
As if he’d been reading my mind—for a change—Andy said, “You know this guy, right?”
“Slightly.”
“Well, you’re going to have to say you know him better than that, to explain his lack of clothes.”
I gulped. “Okay,” I said, after a brief, grim pause.
“You two were back here looking for his dog. You,” Andy said to Dean. “I don’t know who you are, but you stay a dog, you hear me?” Andy stepped away nervously. “And I came back here because I’d followed the woman—she was acting suspiciously.”
I nodded, listening to the air rattle in Dawson’s throat. If I could only give him blood to heal him, like a vampire. If I only knew a medical procedure . . . But I could already hear the police cars and the ambulances coming closer. Nothing in Bon Temps was very far from anything else, and on this side of town, the south side, the Grainger hospital would be closest.
“I heard her confess,” I said. “I heard her say she shot the others.”
“Tell me something, Sookie,” Andy said in a rush. “Before they get here. There’s nothing weird about Halleigh, right?”
I stared up at him, amazed he could think of such a thing at this moment. “Nothing aside from the stupid way she spells her name.” Then I reminded myself who’d shot the bitch lying on the ground five feet away. “No, not a thing,” I said. “Halleigh is just plain old normal.”
“Thank God,” he said. “Thank God.”
And then Alcee Beck dashed down the alley and stopped in his tracks, trying to make sense of the scene before him. Right behind him was Kevin Pryor, and Kevin’s partner Kenya crept along hugging the wall with her gun out. The ambulance teams were hanging back until they were sure the scene was secure. I was up against the wall getting searched before I knew what was happening. Kenya kept saying, “Sorry, Sookie” and “I have to do this,” until I told her, “Just get it done. Where’s my dog?”
“He run off,” she said. “I guess the lights spooked him. He’s a bloodhound, huh? He’ll come home.” When she’d done her usual thorough job, Kenya said, “Sookie? How come this guy is naked?”
This was just the beginning. My story was extremely thin. I read disbelief written large on almost every face. It wasn’t the temperature for outdoor loving, and I was completely dressed. But Andy backed me up every step of the way, and there was no one to say it hadn’t happened the way I told it.
About two hours later, they let me get back in my car to return to the duplex. The first thing I did when I got inside was phone the hospital to find out how Dawson was. Somehow, Calvin got ahold of the phone. “He’s alive,” he said tersely.
“God bless you for sending him after me,” I said. My voice was as limp as a curtain on a still summer day. “I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him.”
“I hear the cop shot her.”
“Yes, he did.”
“I hear a lot of other stuff.”
“It was complicated.”
“I’ll see you this week.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Go get some sleep.”
“Thanks again, Calvin.”
My debt to the werepanther was piling up at a rate that scared me. I knew I’d have to work it off later. I was tired and aching. I was filthy inside from Sweetie’s sad story, and filthy outside from being on my knees in the alley, helping the bloody Were. I dropped my clothes on the floor of the bedroom, went into the bathroom, and stood under the shower, trying hard to keep my bandage dry with a shower cap, the way one of the nurses had shown me.
When the doorbell rang the next morning, I cursed town living. But as it turned out, this was no neighbor who wanted to borrow a cup of flour. Alcide Herveaux was standing outside, holding an envelope.
I glared at him through eyes that felt crusty with sleep. Without saying a word, I plodded back to my bedroom and crawled into the bed. This wasn’t enough to deter Alcide, who strode in after me.
“You’re now doubly a friend of the pack,” he said, as if he was sure that was the concern uppermost in my mind. I turned my back to him and snuggled under the covers. “Dawson says you saved his life.”
“I’m glad Dawson’s well enough to speak,” I muttered, closing my eyes tightly and wishing Alcide would go away. “Since he got shot on my account, your pack doesn’t owe me a damn thing.”
From the movement of the air, I could tell that Alcide was kneeling at the side of the bed. “That’s not for you to decide, but us,” he said chidingly. “You’re summoned to the contest for the packleader.”
“What? What do I have to do?”
“You just watch the proceedings and congratulate the winner, no matter who it is.”
Of course, to Alcide, this struggle for succession was the most important thing going. It was hard for him to get that I didn’t have the same priorities. I was getting swamped by a wave of supernatural obligations.
The werewolf pack of Shreveport said they owed me. I owed Calvin. Andy Bellefleur owed me and Dawson and Sam for solving his case. I owed Andy for saving my life. Though I’d cleared Andy’s mind about Halleigh’s complete normality, so maybe that canceled my debt to him for shooting Sweetie.
Sweetie had owed payback to her assailant.
Eric and I were even, I figured.
I owed Bill slightly.
Sam and I were more or less caught up.
Alcide personally owed me, as far as I was concerned. I had showed up for this pack shit and tried to follow the rules to help him out.
In the world I lived in, the world of human people, there were ties and debts and consequences and good deeds. That was what bound people to society; maybe that was what constituted society. And I tried to live in my little niche in it the best way I could.
Joining in the secret clans of the two-natured and the undead made my life in human society much more difficult and complicated.
And interesting.
And sometimes . . . fun.
Alcide had been talking at least some of the time I’d been thinking, and I’d missed a lot of it. He was picking up on that. He said, “I’m sorry if I’m boring you, Sookie,” in a stiff voice.
I rolled over to face him. His green eyes were full of hurt. “Not bored. I just have a lot to think about. Leave the invitation, okay? I’ll get back with you on that.” I wondered what you wore to a fighting-for-packmaster event. I wondered if the senior Mr. Herveaux and the somewhat pudgy motorcycle dealership owner would actually roll on the ground and grapple.
Alcide’s green eyes were full of puzzlement. “You’re acting so strange, Sookie. I felt so comfortable with you before. Now I feel like I don’t know you.”
Valid had been one of my Words of the Day last week. “That’s a valid observation,” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “I felt just as comfortable with you when I first met you. Then I started to find out stuff. Like about Debbie, and shifter politics, and the servitude of some shifters to the vamps.”
“No society is perfect,” Alcide said defensively. “As for Debbie, I don’t ever want to hear her name again.”
“So be it,” I said. God knew I couldn’t get any sicker of hearing her name.
Leaving the cream envelope on the bedside table, Alcide took my hand, bent over it, and laid a kiss on the back of it. It was a ceremonial gesture, and I wished I knew its significance. But the moment I would have asked, Alcide was gone.
“Lock the door behind you,” I called. “Just turn the little button on the doorknob.” I guess he did, because I went right back to
sleep, and no one woke me up until it was almost time for me to go to work. Except there was a note on my front door that said, “Got Linda T. to stand in for you. Take the night off. Sam.” I went back inside and took off my waitress clothes and pulled on some jeans. I’d been ready to go to work, and now I felt oddly at a loss.
I was almost cheered to realize I had another obligation, and I went into the kitchen to start fulfilling it.
After an hour and a half of struggling to cook in an unfamiliar kitchen with about half the usual paraphernalia, I was on my way to Calvin’s house in Hotshot with a dish of chicken breasts baked with rice in a sour-cream sauce, and some biscuits. I didn’t call ahead. I planned to drop off the food and go. But when I reached the little community, I saw there were several cars parked on the road in front of Calvin’s trim little house. “Dang,” I said. I didn’t want to get involved any further with Hotshot than I already was. My brother’s new nature and Calvin’s courting had already dragged me in too far.
Heart sinking, I parked and ran my arm through the handle of the basket full of biscuits. I took the hot dish of chicken and rice in oven-mitted hands, gritted my teeth against the ache in my shoulder, and marched my butt up to Calvin’s front door. Stackhouses did the right thing.
Crystal answered the door. The surprise and pleasure on her face shamed me. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, doing her best to be offhand. “Please come in.” She stood back, and now I could see that the small living room was full of people, including my brother. Most of them were werepanthers, of course. The werewolves of Shreveport had sent a representative; to my astonishment, it was Patrick Furnan, contender for the throne and Harley-Davidson salesman.
Crystal introduced me to the woman who appeared to be acting as hostess, Maryelizabeth Norris. Maryelizabeth moved as if she hadn’t any bones. I was willing to bet Maryelizabeth didn’t often leave Hotshot. The shifter introduced me around the room very carefully, making sure I understood the relationship Calvin bore to each individual. They all began to blur after a bit. But I could see that (with a few exceptions) the natives of Hotshot ran to two types: the small, dark-haired, quick ones like Crystal, and the fairer, stockier ones with beautiful green or golden-brown eyes, like Calvin. The surnames were mostly Norris or Hart.
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