Dead Reckoning

by Harris, Charlaine

  A bright line of light suddenly appeared in the thin, thin outline of the hatch or trapdoor or whatever Bill called it. The light had been switched on in the pantry. I held as still as a mouse, tried to breathe shallowly and silently. I thought how bad Bill would feel if they killed me right next to him. Irrelevant!

  He would, though.

  I heard a creak and realized one of the men was standing right above me. If I could have switched my mind off, I would have. I was so conscious of the life in other people’s minds that I had a hard time believing that anyone could ignore a conscious brain, especially one as jittery as mine.

  “Just blood in here,” Hod said, so close that I jerked in surprise. “The bottled kind. Hey, Kelvin, this house must belong to a vampire!”

  “Don’t make no difference as long as he’s not awake. Or she. Hey, you ever had a female vampire?”

  “No, and don’t want to. I don’t like to hump dead people. Course, some nights, Marge ain’t much better.”

  Kelvin laughed. “You better not let her hear you say that, bro.”

  Hod laughed, too. “No danger of that.”

  And he stepped out of the pantry. Didn’t switch off the light, wasteful asshole! Evidently the fact that Bill would know someone had been here was not a concern of Hod’s. So he was really stupid.

  And then Bill woke up. This time he was a little more alert, and the second I felt him move, I crouched on top of him and put my hand over his mouth. His muscles tensed, and I had time to think Oh, no! before he smelled me, knew me. “Sookie?” he said, but not at full volume.

  “Did you hear something?” said Hod above me.

  A long moment of a lively, listening silence. “Shh,” I breathed, right into Bill’s ear.

  A cold hand rose and ran down my leg. I could almost feel Bill’s surprise—again—as he realized I was naked . . . again. And I knew the second the fact that he’d heard a voice overhead penetrated his awareness.

  Bill was putting it all together. I didn’t know what he was coming up with, but he knew that we were in trouble. He also knew there was a bare-naked woman on top of him, and something else twitched. Simultaneously exasperated and amused, I had to clamp my lips shut on a giggle. Irrelevant!

  And then Bill went to sleep again.

  Would the damn sun never set? His drifting in and out was making me nuts. It was like dating someone with short-term memory loss.

  And I’d clean forgotten to listen and be terrified.

  “Nah, I don’t hear nothing,” Kelvin said.

  Lying on top of my involuntary host was like lying on top of a cold, hard cushion with hair.

  And an erection. For what seemed like the tenth time, Bill had wakened.

  I blew out a silent breath. This time Bill was completely awake. He put his arms around me, but he was gentlemanly enough not to move or explore, at least for now. We were both listening; he’d heard Kelvin speak.

  Finally, two sets of footsteps crossed the wooden floors, and we heard the front door open and close. I sagged in relief. Bill’s arms tightened and he rolled me over so he was on top.

  “Is it Christmas?” he asked, pressed against me. “Are you an early present?”

  I laughed, but I still kept it quiet. “I’m sorry to intrude, Bill,” I said, very low. “But they were after me.” I explained very briefly, being careful to tell him where my clothes were and why they were there. I could feel his chest heave a little, and I knew he was laughing silently. “I’m really worried about Dermot,” I said. I’d been talking almost in a whisper, which made the darkness curiously intimate, to say nothing of the large area of skin we were sharing.

  “You’ve been down here a while,” he said, his voice at normal level.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going out to make sure they’re gone, since you’re not going to let me ‘open’ early,” Bill said, and it took me a minute to understand. I caught myself smiling in the darkness. Bill gently eased away from me, and I saw his whiteness moving silently through the gloom. After a second’s listening, he opened the hatch. Harsh electric light flooded down. It was such a contrast that I had to close my eyes to let them adjust. By the time they did, Bill had slithered out into the house.

  I didn’t hear anything no matter how hard I listened. I got tired of waiting—I felt like I’d crouched on the bare ground forever—and I hauled myself out of the hatch with a lot less grace and a lot more noise than Bill. I turned off the lights Hod and Kelvin had left on, at least in part because the light made me feel about twice as naked. I peered cautiously out of a window in the dining room. In the dark it was hard to be sure, but I thought the trees weren’t tossing in the wind anymore. The rain continued unabated. I saw lightning off to the north. I didn’t see kidnappers or bodies or anything that didn’t belong in the soaked landscape.

  Bill didn’t seem to be in any hurry to return to tell me what was happening. The old dining table was covered with a sort of shawl with fringe, and I pulled it off the table and wrapped myself in it. I hoped it wasn’t some kind of Compton heirloom. It had holes in it and a large flowery pattern, so I wasn’t too terribly concerned.

  “Sookie,” Bill said at my back, and I shrieked and jumped.

  “Would you please not do that?” I said. “I’ve had enough bad surprises today.”

  “Sorry,” he said. He had a kitchen towel in his hand and he was rubbing his hair. “I came in through the back door.” He was still naked, but I felt ridiculous making any kind of thing out of it. I’d seen Bill naked many times before. He was looking me up and down, a sort of puzzled expression on his face. “Sookie, are you wearing my Aunt Edwina’s Spanish shawl?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said. “Really, Bill. It was there, and I was cold and damp and feeling like I wanted to be covered. I do apologize.” I thought of unwrapping it and handing it over, but I reconsidered in the same moment.

  “Looks better on you than it does on the table,” he said. “Besides, it has holes. Are you ready to go over to your house to find out what’s happened to your great-uncle? And where are your clothes? Surely . . . Did those men take them off? Have they . . . Are you harmed?”

  “No, no,” I said hastily. “I told you I had to dump my clothes so they wouldn’t see the drips. They’re out front behind the bushes. I couldn’t leave them in sight, of course.”

  “Right,” Bill said. He looked very thoughtful. “If I didn’t know you better, I would think—and pardon me if I offend—that you’d concocted this whole scenario to excuse yourself for wanting to bed me again.”

  “Oh. You mean, you might almost imagine that I made up this story so I could appear naked and in need of help, the damsel in distress, needing big strong equally naked Vampire Bill to rescue me from the evil kidnappers?”

  He nodded, looking a little embarrassed.

  “I wish I had enough free time to sit around and think of things like that.” I admired the mind that could conceive of such a circuitous way to get what it wanted. “I think just knocking on your door and looking lonesome would probably get me where I wanted to be, if that was my goal. Or I could just say, ‘How ’bout it, big boy?’ I don’t think I need to be naked and in danger to get you lusty. Right?”

  “You’re absolutely right,” he said, and he was smiling a little. “And any time you’d like to try one of those other ploys, I’d be glad to play my part. Shall I apologize again?”

  I smiled back. “No need. I don’t suppose you have rain slickers?”

  Of course he didn’t, but he did have an umbrella. In short order he’d fetched my clothes from behind the bushes. While I wrung them out and put them in his dryer, he ran up the stairs to his bedroom, which he’d never slept in, to pull on jeans and a tank top—serious slumming, for Bill.

  My clothes were going to take too long to dry, so clad in Aunt Edwina’s Spanish shawl and sheltered by Bill’s blue umbrella, I climbed into his car. He drove out to Hummingbird Road and over to my house. Putting the c
ar in park, Bill hopped out to remove the tree trunk from the driveway as easily as if it had been a toothpick. We resumed our way to the house, pausing by my poor car, the driver’s door still open to the rain. The interior was soaked, but my would-be abductors hadn’t done anything to it. The key was still in the ignition, my purse still on the front seat along with the remaining groceries.

  Bill eyed the broken plastic of the milk jug, and I wondered which one I’d hit, Hod or Kelvin.

  We both pulled up to the back door, but while I was still gathering my grocery bag and my purse, Bill was out and into the house. I had a second’s worth of worry about how I was going to dry out my car before I made myself focus on the crisis at hand. I thought about what had happened to the fairy woman Cait, and concern about car upholstery left my head with gratifying speed.

  I stepped into my house clumsily. I was having trouble managing my wrapping, the umbrella, my purse, the bag containing the bottled blood, and my bare feet. I could hear Bill moving through the house, and I knew when he found something because he called, “Sookie!” in an urgent voice.

  Dermot was unconscious on the attic floor by the sander he’d rented, which was on its side and switched off. He had fallen forward, so I figured he’d had his back to the door with the sander running when they’d come in the house. When he’d realized he wasn’t alone and switched off the sander, it had been too late. His hair was clotted with blood, and the wound looked horrible. They’d been carrying at least one weapon, then.

  Bill was hunched stiffly over the still figure. Without turning to me he said, “I can’t give him my blood,” as if I’d demanded it.

  “I know,” I said, surprised. “He’s fae.” I circled around to kneel on Dermot’s other side. I was in a position to see Bill’s face.

  “Back away,” I said. “Back away. Go downstairs now.” The odor of fairy blood, intoxicating to a vampire, must seem as though it were filling the attic to Bill.

  “I could just lick it clean,” Bill said, his dark eyes fixed on the wound with yearning.

  “No, you wouldn’t stop. Back off, Bill! Leave!” But his face dipped lower, closer to Dermot’s head. I hauled off and slapped Bill as hard as I could.

  “You have to go,” I said, though I wanted to apologize so badly it made me shake. The look on Bill’s face was awful. Anger, craving, the struggle for self-control . . .

  “I’m so hungry,” he whispered, his eyes swallowing me. “Feed me, Sookie.”

  For a second, I was sure Bad Choice time was upon me. The worst choice would have been letting Bill bite Dermot. The next worst would have been letting Bill bite me, because with the intoxicating scent of fairy in the air I wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop in time. As all this flashed through my mind, Bill was struggling to master himself. He managed . . . but only by the thinnest of threads.

  “I’m going to check to see if they’ve left,” he said, lurching toward the stairs. Even his body was at war with itself. Clearly, his every instinct was telling him to drink blood somehow, some way, from the two tasty, tempting donors at hand, while his mind was telling him to get the hell away before something awful happened. If I’d had a spare person around, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have thrown him to Bill, I felt so sad for him.

  But he made it down the stairs, and I heard the door slam behind him. In case he lost his control, I hurried down the stairs to lock both back doors so at least I’d have a little warning if he returned. I glanced through the living room to make sure the front door was locked, as I’d left it. Yes. Before I returned upstairs to Dermot, I went to fetch my shotgun from my front closet.

  It was still there, and I let myself savor a moment of relief. I was lucky the men hadn’t stolen it. Their search must have been cursory. I’m sure they would have spied something as valuable as the shotgun if they hadn’t been looking for something much larger—me.

  With the Benelli in my hand I felt much better, and I grabbed the first aid kit to take up with me. I hobbled up the stairs to kneel again by my great-uncle. I was getting pretty damn sick of coping with the huge shawl, which unwound at the most inconvenient moments. I wondered briefly how Indian women coped, but I just couldn’t take the time to dress until I’d helped Dermot.

  With a wad of sterile wipes, I cleaned away the blood on his head so I could inspect the damage. It looked bad, but I had expected that; head wounds always do. At least this wasn’t bleeding much at all anymore. While I was working on Dermot’s head, I was having a fierce inner debate about calling an ambulance. I wasn’t sure the ambulance crew would be able to get in without Hod and Kelvin’s interference—no, that couldn’t be a concern. Bill and I had gotten over here without being stopped.

  More important, I wasn’t sure how compatible fairy physiology was with human medical techniques—enough that humans and fairies could cross-breed, I knew, which argued that human first aid would be all right, but still . . . Dermot groaned and rolled over to his back. I put a towel under his head just in time. He winced.

  “Sookie,” he said. “Why are you wearing a tablecloth?”

  Chapter 12

  “You have both your ears,” I assured him, feeling a wave of relief so strong I almost fell over. I touched the points lightly so he could be certain.

  “Why would I not?” Dermot was confused, and considering the amount of bleeding he’d had, I was sure that was understandable. “Who attacked me?”

  I looked down at him and couldn’t decide what to do. I had to bite the bullet. I called Claude.

  “Claude’s phone,” said a deep voice I pegged as belonging to Bellenos, the elf.

  “Bellenos, it’s Sookie. I don’t know if you remember me, but I was there the other day with my friend Sam?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Here’s the deal. Someone attacked Dermot, and he’s hurt, and I need to know if there’s anything I should or shouldn’t do to an injured fairy. Anything besides what you do for a human.”

  “Who has hurt him?” Bellenos’s voice was sharper.

  “Two human guys who broke into the house coming for me. I wasn’t here, but Dermot was, and there was machinery running, and he couldn’t hear too well, and they seem to have hit him on the head. I don’t know what with.”

  “Has the bleeding stopped?” he asked, and I could hear Claude’s voice in the background.

  “Yes, it’s clotted.”

  There was a buzz of voices while Bellenos consulted with various people, or at least that was what it sounded like.

  “I’m coming,” Bellenos said at last. “Claude tells me he’s not welcome in your home right now, so I’m coming in his stead. It’ll be nice to get out of this building. No other humans around besides you? I can’t pass.”

  “No one else besides me, at least now.”

  “I’ll be there soon.”

  I relayed this information to Dermot, who was simply looking puzzled. He told me a couple of times he didn’t understand why he was on the floor, and I began to get worried about him. At least he seemed content to stay there.

  “Sookie!” Before it had started raining, Dermot had opened the windows because of the sanding. I could hear Bill clearly.

  I trailed over to the window with my fringe swaying.

  “How is he?” Bill asked, staying well away. “How can I help?”

  “You’ve been wonderful,” I said, meaning it. “One of the fae from Monroe is coming over, Bill, so you better go back to your house. When my clothes get dry, could you just leave them on my back steps sometime when it’s not raining? Or if you just put them on your front porch, I can pick ’em up any time.”

  “I feel I’ve failed you,” he said.

  “How come? You gave me a place to hide; you cleared my driveway; you checked out the house so no one could ambush me again.”

  “I didn’t kill them,” he said. “I’d like to.”

  I didn’t feel hardly creepy at all at his admission. I was getting used to drastic pronouncements. “Hey, don’t w
orry about it,” I assured him. “Someone will, if they keep doing stuff like this.”

  “Did you form any idea of who had hired them?”

  “I’m afraid not.” I really regretted that. “They were going to tie me on some vehicle and take me somewhere.” I hadn’t seen the vehicle in their thoughts, so that part was fuzzy.

  “Where was their car parked?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw one.” I hadn’t exactly had time to think about it.

  Bill stared up at me longingly. “I feel useless, Sookie. I know you need help getting him down the stairs. But I don’t dare try to approach him again.”

  Bill’s head turned with a suddenness that made me blink. Then he was gone.

  “I’m here,” called a voice from the back door. “I am Bellenos the elf, vampire. Tell Sookie I’m here to see my friend Dermot.”

  “An elf. I haven’t seen one of you in over a hundred years,” I heard Bill’s voice, much fainter.

  “And you won’t again for another hundred,” Bellenos’s deep voice responded. “There aren’t many of us left.”

  I went down the stairs again, as fast as I could without breaking my neck. I unlocked the back door and stepped across the porch to unlock the porch door. I could see both the elf and the vampire through the glass.

  “Since you’re here, I’ll be on my way,” Bill said. “I can’t be of any help.” He was out in the yard. The harsh security light mounted on the pole made him look whiter than white, truly alien. The rain was only dripping now, but the air smelled pregnant with moisture. I didn’t think it would hold off for long.

  “Fairy intoxication?” Bellenos said. He was pale, too, but no one could be more washed out than a vamp. Bellenos’s light brown freckles looked like little shadows on his face, and his smooth hair seemed an even darker auburn. “Elves smell different from fairies.”

  “Yes, you do,” Bill said, and I could hear the distaste in his voice. Bellenos’s smell seemed to repel at least one vampire. Maybe I could scrape some skin cells from Bellenos to scatter over my great-uncle so I could have vampires over. Oh, gosh, what was I going to do about the meeting with Eric and Pam?