Dead until Dark ss(v-1

by Шарлин Харрис

  To my amazement, Jason was there sitting in his pickup.

  This was not exactly a happy moment. I trudged over to his window.

  "I see it's true," he said. He handed me a Styrofoam cup of coffee from the Grabbit Quik. "Get in the truck with me." I climbed in, pleased by the coffee but cautious overall. I put my guard up immediately. It slipped back into place slowly and painfully, like wiggling back into a girdle that was too tight in the first place.

  "I can't say nothing," he told me. "Not after the way I lived my life these past few years. As near as I can tell, he's your first, isn't he?" I nodded.

  "He treat you good?" I nodded again. "I got something to tell you."

  "Okay."

  "Uncle Bartlett got killed last night." I stared at him, the steam from the coffee rising between us as I pried the lid off the cup. "He's dead," I said, trying to understand it. I'd worked hard never to think of him, and here I thought of him, and the next thing I heard, he was dead. "Yep."

  "Wow." I looked out the window at the rosy light on the horizon. I felt a surge of—freedom. The only one who re­membered besides me, the only one who'd enjoyed it, who insisted to the end that I had initiated and continued the sick activities he thought were so gratifying... he was dead. I took a deep breath. "I hope he's in hell," I said. "I hope every time he thinks of what he did to me, a demon pokes him in the butt with a pitchfork."

  "God, Sookie!"

  "He never messed with you."

  "Damn straight!"

  "Implying what?"

  "Nothing, Sookie! But he never bothered anyone but you that I know of!"

  "Bullshit. He molested Aunt Linda, too."

  Jason's face went blank with shock. I'd finally gotten through to my brother. "Gran told you that?"

  "Yes."

  "She never said anything to me."

  "Gran knew it was hard for you, not seeing him again when she could tell you loved him. But she couldn't let you be alone with him, because she couldn't be a hundred percent sure girls were all he wanted."

  "I've seen him the past couple of years."

  "You have?" This was news to me. It would have been news to Gran, too.

  "Sookie, he was an old man. He was so sick. He had prostate trouble, and he was feeble, and he had to use a walker."

  "That probably slowed him down chasing the five-year-olds."

  "Get over it!"

  "Right! Like I could!"

  We glared at each other over the width of the truck seat.

  "So what happened to him?" I asked finally, reluctantly.

  "A burglar broke into his house last night."

  "Yeah? And?"

  "And broke his neck. Threw him down the stairs."

  "Okay. So I know. Now I'm going home. I gotta shower and get ready for work."

  "That's all you're saying?"

  "What else is there to say?"

  "Don't want to know about the funeral?"

  "No."

  "Don't want to know about his will?"

  "No."

  He threw up his hands. "All right," he said, as if he'd been arguing a point very hard with me and realized that I was intractable.

  "What else? Anything?" I asked.

  "No. Just your great-uncle dying. I thought that was enough."

  "Actually, you're right," I said, opening the truck door and sliding out. "That was enough." I raised my cup to him. "Thanks for the coffee, brother."

  It wasn't till I got to work that it clicked.

  I was drying a glass and really not thinking about Uncle Bartlett, and suddenly my fingers lost all strength.

  "Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea," I said, looking down at the broken slivers of glass at my feet. "Bill had him killed."

  I don't KNOW why I was so sure I was right; but I was, the minute the idea crossed my mind. Maybe I had heard Bill dialing the phone when I was half-asleep. Maybe the expression on Bill's face when I'd finished telling him about Uncle Bartlett had rung a silent warning bell.

  I wondered if Bill would pay the other vampire in money, or if he'd repay him in kind.

  I got through work in a frozen state. I couldn't talk to anyone about what I was thinking, couldn't even say I was sick without someone asking me what was wrong. So I didn't speak at all, I just worked. I tuned out everything except the next order I had to fill. I drove home trying to feel just as frozen, but I had to face facts when I was alone. I freaked out.

  I had known, really I had, that Bill certainly had killed a human or two in his long, long, life. When he'd been a young vampire, when he'd needed lots of blood, before he'd gained control of his needs sufficiently to exist on a gulp here, a mouthful there, without actually killing anyone he drank from ... he'd told me himself there'd been a death or two along the way. And he'd killed the Rattrays. But they'd have done me in that night in back of Merlotte's, without a doubt, if Bill hadn't intervened. I was naturally inclined to excuse him those deaths.

  How was the murder of Uncle Bartlett different? He'd harmed me, too, dreadfully, made my already difficult child­hood a true nightmare. Hadn't I been relieved, even pleased, to hear he'd been found dead? Didn't my horror at Bill's intervention reek of hypocrisy of the worst sort?

  Yes. No?

  Tired and incredibly confused, I sat on my front steps and waited in the darkness, my arms wrapped around my knees. The crickets were singing in the tall grass when he came, arriving so quietly and quickly I didn't hear him. One minute I was alone with the night, and the next, Bill was sitting on the steps beside me.

  "What do you want to do tonight, Sookie?" His arm went around me.

  "Oh, Bill." My voice was heavy with despair.

  His arm dropped. I didn't look up at his face, couldn't have seen it through the darkness, anyway.

  "You should not have done it."

  He didn't bother with denying it at least.

  "I am glad he's dead, Bill. But I can't..."

  "Do you think I would ever hurt you, Sookie?" His voice was quiet and rustling, like feet through dry grass.

  "No. Oddly enough, I don't think you would hurt me, even if you were really mad at me."

  "Then...?"

  "It's like dating the Godfather, Bill. I'm scared to say any­thing around you now. I'm not used to my problems being solved that way."

  "I love you."

  He'd never said it before, and I might almost have imag­ined it now, his voice was so low and whispery.

  "Do you, Bill?" I didn't raise my face, kept my forehead pressed against my knees.

  "Yes, I do."

  "Then you have to let my life get lived, Bill, you can't alter it for me."

  "You wanted me to alter it when the Rattrays were beating you."

  "Point taken. But I can't have you trying to fine-tune my day-to-day life. I'm gonna get mad at people, people are gonna get mad at me. I can't worry about them being killed. I can't live like that, honey. You see what I'm saying?"

  "Honey?" he repeated.

  "I love you," I said. "I don't know why, but I do. I want to call you all those gooshy words you use when you love someone, no matter how stupid it sounds since you're a vam­pire. I want to tell you you're my baby, that I'll love you till we're old and gray—though that's not gonna happen. That I know you'll always be true to me—hey, that's not gonna happen either. I keep running up against a brick wall when I try to tell you I love you, Bill." I fell silent. I was all cried out.

  "This crisis came sooner than I thought it would," Bill said from the darkness. The crickets had resumed their chorus, and I listened to them for a long moment.

  "Yeah."

  "What now, Sookie?"

  "I have to have a little time."

  "Before ... ?"

  "Before I decide if the love is worth the misery."

  "Sookie, if you knew how different you taste, how much I want to protect you ..."

  I could tell from Bill's voice that these were very tender feelings he was sharing with me. "Oddly enough," I said, "t
hat's what I feel about you. But I have to live here, and I have to live with myself, and I have to think about some rales we gotta get clear between us."

  "So what do we do now?"

  "I think. You go do whatever you were doing before we met."

  "Trying to figure out if I could live mainstream. Trying to think of who I'd feed on, if I could stop drinking that damn synthetic blood."

  "I know you'll—feed on someone else besides me." I was trying very hard to keep my voice level. "Please, not anyone here, not anyone I have to see. I couldn't bear it. It's not fair of me to ask, but I'm asking."

  "If you won't date anyone else, won't bed anyone else."

  "I won't." That seemed an easy enough promise to make.

  "Will you mind if I come into the bar?"

  "No. I'm not telling anyone we're apart. I'm not talking about it."

  He leaned over, I could feel the pressure on my arm as his body pressed against it.

  "Kiss me," he said.

  I lifted my head and turned, and our lips met. It was blue fire, not orange-and-red flames, not that kind of heat: blue fire. After a second, his arms went around me. After another, my arms went around him. I began to feel boneless, limp. With a gasp, I pulled away.

  "Oh, we can't, Bill."

  I heard his breath draw in. "Of course not, if we're separat­ing," he said quietly, but he didn't sound like he thought I meant it. "We should definitely not be kissing. Still less should I want to throw you back on the porch and fuck you till you faint."

  My knees were actually shaking. His deliberately crude language, coming out in that cold sweet voice, made the longing inside me surge even higher. It took everything I had, every little scrap of self-control, to push myself up and go in the house.

  But I did it.

  IN THE FOLLOWING week, I began to craft a life without Gran and without Bill. I worked nights and worked hard. I was extra careful, for the first time in my life, about locks and security. There was a murderer out there, and I no longer had my powerful protector. I considered getting a dog, but couldn't decide what kind I wanted. My cat, Tina, was only protection in the sense that she always reacted when someone came very near the house.

  I got calls from Gran's lawyer from time to time, inform­ing me about the progress of winding up her estate. I got calls from Bartlett's lawyer. My great-uncle had left me twenty thousand dollars, a great sum for him. I almost turned down the legacy. But I thought again. I gave the money to the local mental health center, earmarking it for the treatmentof children who were victims of molestation and rape.

  They were glad to get it.

  I took vitamins, loads of them, because I was a little ane­mic. I drank lots of fluids and ate lots of protein.

  And I ate as much garlic as I wanted, something Bill hadn't been able to tolerate. He said it came out through my pores, even, when I had garlic bread with spaghetti and meat sauce one night.

  I slept and slept and slept. Staying up nights after a work shift had me rest-deprived.

  After three days I felt restored, physically. In fact, it seemed to me that I was a little stronger than I had been. I began to take in what was happening around me. The first thing I noticed was that local folks were really pissed off at the vampires who nested in Monroe. Diane, Liam, and Malcolm had been touring bars in the area, appar­ently trying to make it impossible for other vampires who wanted to mainstream. They'd been behaving outrageously, offensively. The three vampires made the escapades of the Louisiana Tech students look bland.

  They didn't seem to ever imagine they were endangering themselves. The freedom of being out of the coffin had gone to their heads. The right to legally exist had withdrawn all their constraints, all their prudence and caution. Malcolm nipped at a bartender in Bogaloosas. Diane danced naked in Farmerville. Liam dated an underage girl in Shongaloo, and her mother, too. He took blood from both. He didn't erase the memory of either.

  Rene was talking to Mike Spencer, the funeral director, in Merlotte's one Thursday night, and they hushed when I got near. Naturally, that caught my attention. So I read Mike's mind. A group of local men were thinking of burning out the Monroe vampires.

  I didn't know what to do. The three were, if not exactly friends of Bill, at least sort of coreligionists. But I loathed Malcolm, Diane, and Liam just as much as anyone else. On the other hand; and boy—there always was another hand, wasn't there?—it just went against my grain to know ahead of the fact about premeditated murders and just sit on my hands.

  Maybe this was all liquor talking. Just to check, I dipped into the minds of the people around me. To my dismay, many of them were thinking about torching the vampire's nest. But I couldn't track down the origin of the idea. It felt as though the poison had flowed from one mind and infected others.

  There wasn't any proof, any proof at all, that Maudette and Dawn and my grandmother had been killed by a vam­pire. In fact, rumor had it that the coroner's report might show evidence against that. But the three vampires were be­having in such a way that people wanted to blame them for something, wanted to get rid of them, and since Maudette and Dawn were both vampire-bitten and habitues of vampire bars, well, folks just cobbled that together to pound out a conviction.

  Bill came in the seventh night I'd been alone. He appeared at his table quite suddenly. He wasn't by himself. There was a boy with him, a boy who looked maybe fifteen. He was a vampire, too.

  "Sookie, this is Harlen Ives from Minneapolis," Bill said, as if this were an ordinary introduction.

  "Harlen," I said, and nodded. "Pleased to meet you."

  "Sookie." He bobbed his head at me, too.

  "Harlen is in transit from Minnesota to New Orleans," Bill said, sounding positively chatty.

  "I'm going on vacation," Harlen said. "I've been wanting to visit New Orleans for years. It's just a mecca for us, you know."

  "Oh ... right," I said, trying to sound matter of fact.

  "There's this number you can call," Harlen informed me. "You can stay with an actual resident, or you can rent a ..."

  "Coffin?" I asked brightly.

  "Well, yes."

  "How nice for you," I said, smiling for all I was worth. "What can I get you? I believe Sam has restocked the blood, Bill, if you'd like some? It's flavored A neg, or we've got the O positive."

  "Oh, A negative, I think," Bill said, after he and Harlen had a silent communication.

  "Coming right up!" I stomped back to the cooler behind the bar and pulled out two A neg's, popped the tops, and carted them back on a tray, I smiled the whole time, just like I used to.

  "Are you all right, Sookie?" Bill asked in a more natural voice after I'd plonked their drinks down in front of them.

  "Of course, Bill," I said cheerily. I wanted to break the bottle over Bill's head. Harlen, indeed. Overnight stay. Right.

  "Harlen would like to drive over to visit Malcolm, later," Bill said, when I came to take the empties and ask if they wanted a refill.

  "I'm sure Malcolm would love to meet Harlen," I said, trying not to sound as bitchy as I felt.

  "Oh, meeting Bill has just been super," Harlen said, smil­ing at me, showing fangs. Harlen knew how to do bitch, all right. "But Malcolm is absolutely a legend."

  "Watch out," I said to Bill. I wanted to tell him how much peril the three nesting vampires had put themselves into, but I didn't think it'd come to a head just yet. And I didn't want to spell it out because Harlen was sitting there, batting his baby blues at me and looking like a teen sex symbol. "No­body's too happy with those three, right now," I added, after a moment. It was not an effectual warning.

  Bill just looked at me, puzzled, and I spun on my heel and walked away.

  I came to regret that moment, regret it bitterly.

  AFTER BILL AND Harlen had left, the bar buzzed even harder with the kind of talk I'd heard from Rene and Mike Spencer. It seemed to me like someone had been lighting fire, keeping the anger level stoked up. But for the life of me I couldn't discover w
ho it was, though I did some random listening, both mental and physical. Jason came into the bar, and we said hello, but not much more. He hadn't forgiven me for my reaction to Uncle Bartlett's death.

  He'd get over it. At least he wasn't thinking about burning anything, except maybe creating some heat in Liz Barrett's bed. Liz, even younger than me, had curly short brown hair and big brown eyes and an unexpectedly no-nonsense air about her that made me think Jason might have met his match. After I'd said good-bye to them after their pitcher of beer was empty, I realized that the anger level in the bar had escalated, that the men were really serious about doing some­thing.

  I began to be more than anxious.

  As the evening wore on, the activity in the bar grew more and more frenetic. Less women, more men. More table-hopping. More drinking. Men were standing, instead of sit­ting. It was hard to pin down, since there wasn't any big meeting, really. It was by word-of-mouth, whispered from ear to ear. No one jumped on the bar and screamed, "Whatta ya say, boys? Are we gonna put up with those monsters in our midst? To the castle!" or anything like that. It was just that, after a time, they all began drifting out, standing in huddled groups out in the parking lot. I looked out one of the windows at them, shaking my head. This wasn't good.

  Sam was uneasy, too.

  "What do you think?" I asked him, and I realized this was the first time I'd spoken to him all evening, other than "Pass the pitcher," or "Give me another margarita."

  "I think we've got a mob," he said. "But they'll hardly go over to Monroe now. The vampires'll be up and about until dawn."

  "Where is their house, Sam?"

  "I understand it's on the outskirts of Monroe on the west side—in other words, closest to us," he told me. "I don't know for sure."

  I drove home after closing, half hoping I'd see Bill lurking in my driveway so I could tell him what was afoot.

  But I didn't see him, and I wouldn't go to his house. After a long hesitation, I dialed his number, but got only his an­swering machine. I left a message. I had no idea what the three nesting vampires' phone was listed under, if they had a phone at all.

  As I pulled off my shoes and removed my jewelry—all silver, take that, Bill!—I remember worrying, but I wasn't worrying enough. I went to bed and quickly to sleep in the bedroom that was now mine. The moonlight streamed in the open shades, making strange shadows on the floor. But I only stared at them for a few minutes. Bill didn't wake me that night, returning my call.