Dead Reckoning

by Harris, Charlaine

  “Go hard,” I said urgently. “Go go go . . .”

  “Is . . . this . . . hard . . . enough?”

  And I shrieked out loud, my head falling back.

  “Come on, Eric,” I said, when my aftershocks were still rippling through me. “Come on!” And I moved faster than I’d imagined I was able.

  “Sookie!” he gasped, and gave me one last huge thrust followed by a sound that I might have thought was primal pain if I hadn’t known much better.

  It was magnificent, it was exhausting, and it was completely excellent.

  We stayed on the swing for at least thirty minutes, recovering, cooling off, and holding each other. I was so happy and relaxed I didn’t want to move, but of course I needed to go inside to clean myself up and to put on some clothes that didn’t have the seams ripped out. Eric had only popped the button off his jeans, and he could hold them closed with his belt, which he’d managed to unbuckle before we’d gotten to the tearing stage. His zipper was still workable.

  While I arranged myself, he heated up some blood and fixed an ice pack and a glass of iced tea for me. He applied the ice pack himself while I lay on the couch. I thought, I was right to break the bond. And it was a relief not to know how Eric was feeling, though simultaneously I was afraid there was something wrong about my relief.

  For a few minutes, we talked about little things. He brushed my hair, which was in a terrible tangle, and I brushed his. (Monkeys searched each other for salt crystals, I believed. We groomed each other.) When I’d made his hair all smooth and shiny he draped my legs over his lap. His hand ran up and down them, from the hem of my shorts to my toes, over and over.

  “Has Victor said anything to you?” I wasn’t looking forward to reopening the conversation about what I’d done, though we’d opened our meeting with a bang.

  “Not about the bond, so he doesn’t know yet. He would have been on the phone instantly.” Eric leaned his head against the back of the couch, his blue eyes at half mast. Postcoital relaxation.

  That was a relief. “How’s Miriam? Did she recover?”

  “She recovered from the drugs Victor gave her, but she’s sicker in body. Pam is as close to despair as I’ve ever seen her.”

  “Did their relationship come on kind of slowly? Because I didn’t have a clue until Immanuel told me about it.”

  “Pam doesn’t often care for anyone as much she cares about Miriam,” he said. His head turned slowly, and his eyes met mine. “I only found out when she asked for some time off from the club to visit Miriam in the hospital. And she gave the girl blood, too, which is the only reason Miriam’s lasted this long.”

  “Vampire blood can’t cure her?”

  “Our blood is good for healing open wounds,” Eric said. “For illnesses, it can offer relief, but seldom a cure.”

  “I wonder why?”

  Eric shrugged. “I’m sure one of your scientists would have a theory, but I don’t. And since some people go crazy when they take our blood, the risk is considerable. I was happier when the properties of our blood were secret, but I suppose that couldn’t be kept quiet for long. Victor certainly isn’t concerned about Miriam’s survival or the fact that Pam has never asked to create a child before. After all these years of service, Pam deserves to be granted the right.”

  “Victor’s not letting Pam have Miriam out of sheer cussedness?”

  Eric nodded. “He has a bullshit excuse about there being enough vampires in my sheriffdom, when actually my numbers are low. The truth is that Victor will block us any way he can for as long as he can, in the hope that I’ll do something injudicious enough to warrant being removed as sheriff, or killed.”

  “Surely Felipe wouldn’t let that happen.”

  Eric hoisted me onto his lap and held me to his cool chest. His shirt was still open. “Felipe would judge in Pam’s favor if he were on the spot, but I’m sure he wants to stay out of the situation if he can. It’s what I’d do. He’s setting up Red Rita in Arkansas and she’s never ruled, he knows Victor is sulking about being appointed regent rather than king in Louisiana, and he is busy himself in Las Vegas, which he’s running on a skeleton crew since he’s sent people out to both his new states. Consolidating this big an empire hasn’t been done in hundreds of years—and the last time it was done, the population was only a fraction of what it is today.”

  “So Felipe’s still in complete control of Nevada?”

  “Yes. For now.”

  “That sounds kind of ominous.”

  “When leaders are spread thin, the sharks gather round to see if they can take a bite.”

  Unpleasant mental image.

  “What sharks? Anyone we know?”

  Eric looked away. “Two other monarchs in Zeus. The Queen of Oklahoma, for one. And the King of Arizona.” The vampires had split America into four territories, all named after ancient religions. Pretentious, huh? I lived in Amun Territory in the kingdom of Louisiana.

  “I wish you were just an average vampire,” I said, completely out of the blue. “I wish you weren’t a sheriff, or anything.”

  “You mean you wish I were like Bill.”

  Ouch. “No, because he’s not average, either,” I snapped. “He’s got the whole database thing going, and he’s taught himself all about computers. He’s sort of reinvented himself. I guess I mean I wish you were more like . . . Maxwell.”

  Maxwell was a businessman. He wore suits. He turned up for his duty at the club without enthusiasm, and he flashed his fangs without the drama the tourists had come to see. He was boring, and he had a stick up his ass, though from time to time I’d had a hint that his personal life was exotic. However, not interested in learning more about that.

  Eric rolled his eyes at me. “Of course, I’m so much like Maxwell. Let me start carrying a pocket calculator with me, and putting people to sleep with things like ‘variable annuities,’ or whatever the hell it is he talks about.”

  “I get your point, Mr. Subtle,” I said. The ice pack had done all the good it was going to, and I removed it from my yahoo palace and put it on the table.

  This was the most relaxed conversation we’d had in forever.

  “See, isn’t this fun?” I said, trying to get Eric to admit I’d done the right thing, though I’d gone about it wrong.

  “Yes, so much fun. Until Victor snatches you up and drains you dry and then says, ‘But, Eric, she was no longer bonded to you, so I did not think you still wanted her!’ And then he’ll turn you against your will, and I’ll have to watch you suffer being bound to him for the rest of your life. And mine.”

  “You really know how to make a girl feel special,” I said.

  “I love you,” he said, as if he were reminding himself of a painful fact. “And this situation with Pam has to end. If this girl Miriam dies, Pam may decide to leave, and I won’t be able to stop her. In fact, I shouldn’t. Though she’s very useful.”

  “You’re fond of her,” I said. “Come on, Eric. You love her. She’s your kid.”

  “Yes, I am very fond of Pam,” he said. “I made a great choice. You were my other great choice.”

  “That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me,” I told him, choking up just a little.

  “Don’t cry!” He waved his hands in front of him as if to ward off my tears.

  I swallowed hard. “So, do you have a plan about Victor?” I used Eric’s shirttail to dab at my eyes.

  Eric looked grim. Well, grimmer. “Every time I make one, I run up against an obstacle so large I have to discard the plan. Victor is very good at self-protection. I may have to openly attack him. If I kill him, if I win, then I’ll have to stand trial.”

  I shivered. “Eric, if you fought with Victor alone, bare-handed, in an empty room, what do you think the outcome would be?”

  “He’s very good,” Eric said. And that was all he said.

  “He might win?” I said, testing the idea out loud.

  “Yes,” Eric said. He met my eyes. “And w
hat would happen to you and Pam afterward . . .”

  “I’m not trying to bypass the fact that you would be dead, which would be the most important thing to me in that scenario,” I said. “But I’m wondering why he would be so sure to hurt Pam and me afterward. What would be the point?”

  “The point would be the lesson he’d be making to other vampires who might be thinking of trying to overthrow him.” Eric’s eyes focused on the mantelpiece, crowded with Stackhouse family pictures. He didn’t want to look into my face when he said what he was going to tell me next. “Heidi told me that two years ago, when Victor was still a sheriff in Nevada, in Reno . . . a new vampire named Chico talked back to him. Chico’s father was dead, but his mother was still living, and in fact had married again and had other children. Victor had her abducted. To correct Chico’s manners, he cut out the mother’s tongue while Chico watched. He made Chico eat it.”

  There was so much disturbing about that, that I had a hard time thinking it through. “Vampires can’t eat,” I said. “What . . . ?”

  “Chico was violently ill, and in fact threw up blood,” Eric said. He still didn’t meet my eyes. “He became too weak to move. While he lay on the floor, his mother bled to death. He couldn’t crawl to her to give her blood to save her.”

  “Heidi volunteered this story?”

  “Yes. I had asked her why she was so pleased she’d been sent to Area Five.”

  Heidi, a vamp who specialized in tracking, had become part of Eric’s crew courtesy of Victor. Of course she was supposed to spy on Eric, and because that was not a secret, no one seemed to mind. I didn’t know Heidi well, but I knew she had a living child, a drug addict in Reno, so I wasn’t at all surprised that she’d taken Victor’s lesson to heart. Learning this would indeed cause any vampire with living relatives, or any human loved ones, to fear Victor. But they’d also loathe him and want him dead—and this was the aspect Victor hadn’t thought of, I guessed, when he’d taught that lesson.

  “Victor’s either shortsighted or super cocky,” I concluded out loud, and Eric nodded.

  “Maybe both,” he said.

  “How’d you feel when you heard that story?” I asked.

  “I . . . didn’t want that to happen to you,” he said. He gave me a puzzled face. “What are you looking for, Sookie? What answer shall I give?”

  Though I knew it was futile—knew I was barking up the wrong tree—I was looking for moral repugnance. I was looking for “I would never be so cruel to a woman and her son.”

  At the same time I was wanting a thousand-year-old vampire to be upset about the death of a human woman he hadn’t known—a death he couldn’t have prevented—I knew it was crazy, wrong, and bad that I myself was plotting to kill Victor. His complete absence was what I longed for. I had no doubt that if Pam called to say a safe had fallen on top of Victor, I would dance around with glee.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Never mind.”

  Eric gave me a dark look. He couldn’t see the depth of my unhappiness—not now, not since the bond was severed. But he certainly knew me well enough to see that I wasn’t content. I forced myself to address the problem at hand. “You know who you should talk to,” I said. “Remember the night we went to Vampire’s Kiss, that server who tipped me off about the fairy blood by just a look and a thought.”

  Eric nodded.

  “I hate to pull him in any further. But I don’t see we have another choice. We have to do this with everything we’ve got, or we’re going down.”

  “Sometimes,” Eric said, “you astonish me.”

  Sometimes—and not always in a good way—I astonished myself.

  Eric and I drove to Vampire’s Kiss again. The parking lot was crowded, maybe not as much as it had been on our previous visit. We parked out back behind the club. If Victor was actually in the club that night, there’d be no reason for him to check out the employee parking lot, and there’d be no reason for him to remember which car was mine. While we waited, I got a text from Amelia telling me that they were back at the house, and how was I doing?

  “Am ok,” I texted back. “We’re good. C & D there?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Sniffing porch, don’t know why. Fairies! Got ur keys?”

  I told her I did, but that I wasn’t sure I’d be home that night. We were a little closer to Shreveport than Bon Temps, and I’d need to take Eric home unless he flew. But his car would be . . . Oh, well, that was why he always had a daytime guy.

  “Did you replace Bobby yet?” I asked. I hated to bring up a sore subject, but I wanted to know.

  “Yes,” Eric said. “I hired a man two days ago. He came highly recommended.”

  “By whom?”

  There was a silence. I looked over at my honeybun, instantly curious. For the life of me, I couldn’t see why that was a critical question.

  “By Bubba,” Eric said.

  I could feel the smile all over my face. “He’s back! Where’s he staying?”

  “Right now, he’s staying with me,” Eric said. “When he asked after Bobby, I had to tell him what had happened. The next night Bubba brought me this person. He’s teachable, I suppose.”

  “You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”

  “He’s a Were,” Eric said, and I instantly understood Eric’s attitude. The Weres and the vampires really don’t get along. You’d think that as the two largest supernatural groups they could form an alliance, but that doesn’t happen. They’re capable of cooperating on some mutually beneficial project for a short period of time, but after that they revert to distrust and dislike.

  “Tell me about him,” I said. “Your assistant, that is.” We didn’t have anything else to do, and lately we hadn’t had much time for general conversation.

  “He’s a black man,” Eric said, as if he were saying the new assistant had brown eyes. Eric could remember, vividly, the first black man he ever saw . . . centuries before. “He’s a lone wolf, unaffiliated. Alcide has already made overtures to him about joining the Long Tooth pack, but I don’t think he’s interested, and of course now that he’s taken the job with me, they won’t be so anxious to have him.”

  “And this is the guy you hired? A Were, whom you don’t trust and have to train? A guy who’ll automatically piss off Alcide and the Long Tooth pack?”

  “He has an outstanding attribute,” Eric said.

  “Good! What is it?”

  “He can keep his mouth shut. And he hates Victor,” Eric said.

  That made it a whole different shooting match. “Why?” I asked. “I’m assuming he has a good reason.”

  “I don’t know what it is yet.”

  “But you’re convinced he’s not pulling some elaborate double whammy? That Victor didn’t cleverly realize you’d hire someone who hated him, so he primed this guy and shot him over to you?”

  “I’m convinced,” Eric said. “But I want you to sit with him a while tomorrow.”

  “If I can get some sleep,” I said, yawning wide enough for my jaws to be in danger of cracking. It was after two in the morning, and we’d seen signs the bar was closing, but many of the employee cars were still waiting for their owners. “Oh, Eric, there he is!” I hardly recognized the server named Colton because he was wearing long khaki cargo shorts, flip-flops, and a green T-shirt with a pattern I couldn’t discern. I kind of missed the loincloth. I started my car after Colton did, and when he pulled out of the parking lot, I waited a discreet moment and followed him. He turned right onto the access road and drove west toward Shreveport. However, he didn’t go that far. He exited the interstate at Haughton.

  “We’re looking pretty damn conspicuous,” I said.

  “We need to talk to him.”

  “So, we’re giving up on stealth, huh?”

  Eric said, “Yes.” He didn’t sound happy about it, but we didn’t have that many choices.

  Colton’s car, a Dodge Charger that had seen better days, turned into a narrow drive off a narrow road. He stopped in front of a g
oodsized trailer. He got out and stood by the car. His hand was down by his side, and I was pretty sure in that hand was a gun.

  “Let me get out first,” I said, as I pulled up beside the man.

  Before Eric could argue, I opened my car door and called, “Colton! It’s Sookie Stackhouse. You know who I am! I’m standing up now, and I’m not armed.”

  “Go slow.” His voice was wary, and I couldn’t blame him.

  “Just so you know, Eric Northman is with me, but he’s still in the car.”

  “Good.”

  My hands reaching for the sky, I stepped away from the car so he could have a good look at me. The front porch light of the trailer was all he had to see by, but he gave me a thorough scan. While he was trying to pat me down with his eyes, the trailer door opened and a young woman stepped out on the added-on porch.

  “Colton, what’s going on?” she asked in a nasal voice with a very “country” accent.

  “We got some company. Don’t worry about it,” he said automatically.

  “Who’s she?”

  “The Stackhouse woman.”

  “Sookie?” The voice sounded startled.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Do I know you? I can’t see you that well.”

  “It’s Audrina Loomis,” she said. “You remember? I went out with your brother for a while in high school.”

  So did half the girls in Bon Temps, so that didn’t really narrow my memory down. “It’s been a while,” I said carefully.

  “He still single?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Oh, by the way, can my boyfriend get out now?” Since we were all being just folks here.

  “Who’s he?”

  “His name’s Eric; he’s a vampire.”

  “Cool. Sure, let’s have a look.” Audrina seemed to be a little more reckless than Colton. On the other hand, Colton had warned me about the fairy blood.

  Eric got out of my car, and there was a moment of impressed silence while Audrina absorbed Eric’s magnificence.