The assembled Supes turned their eyes to me at the same moment. That was pretty disconcerting: like being in a ring of pickup trucks at night, when they all turn on their headlights to illuminate the center.
"Why?" Alcide asked. His big hands gripped his knees. Debbie, who'd slumped down to sit on the floor beside the couch, smiled at me, knowing Alcide couldn't see her.
"Because Sookie is human," Pam pointed out. "And she's more of a natural phenomenon than a true Supe. They won't detect her."
Eric had taken my hand. He was gripping it so hard that I thought I could hear my bones grinding together. Prior to his enchantment, he would have nipped Pam's plan in the bud, or maybe he would've enthusiastically endorsed it. Now he was too cowed to comment, which he clearly wanted to do.
"What am I supposed to do when I get there?" I was proud of myself for sounding so calm and practical. I'd rather be taking a complicated drink order from a table of drunken tree-trimmers than be first in the line of battle.
"Read the minds of the witches inside while we get into position. If they detect us approaching, we lose the surprise of it, and we stand a greater chance of sustaining serious injury." When she got excited, Pam had a slight accent, though I'd never been able to figure out what it was. I thought it might just be English as it had been spoken three hundred years ago. Or whatever. "Can you count them? Is that possible?"
I thought for a second. "Yes, I can do that."
"That would be a big help, too."
"What do we do when we get in the building?" asked Sid. Jittery with the thrill of it all, he was grinning, his pointed teeth showing.
Pam looked mildly astonished. "We kill them all," she said.
Sid's grin faded. I flinched. I wasn't the only one.
Pam seemed to realize she'd said something unpalatable. "What else would we do?" she asked, genuinely amazed.
That was a stumper.
"They'll do their best to kill us," Chow pointed out. "They only made one attempt at negotiation, and it cost Eric his memory and Clancy his life. They delivered Clancy's clothes to Fangtasia this morning." People glanced away from Eric, embarrassed. He looked stricken, and I patted his hand with my free one. His grip on my right hand relaxed a little. My circulation resumed in that hand, and it tingled. That was a relief.
"Someone needs to go with Sookie," Alcide said. He glowered at Pam. "She can't go close to that house by herself."
"I'll go with her," said a familiar voice from the corner of the room, and I leaned forward, searching the faces.
"Bubba!" I said, pleased to see the vampire. Eric stared in wonder at the famous face. The glistening black hair was combed back in a pompadour, and the pouty lower lip was stretched in the trademark smile. His current keeper must have dressed him for the evening, because instead of a jumpsuit decked with rhinestones, or jeans and a T-shirt, Bubba was wearing camo.
"Pleased to see ya, Miss Sookie," Bubba said. "I'm wearing my Army duds."
"I see that. Looking good, Bubba."
"Thank you, ma'am."
Pam considered. "That might be a good idea," she said. "His, ah—the mental broadcast, the signature, you all get what I'm telling you?—is so, ah, atypical that they won't discover a vampire is near." Pam was being very tactful.
Bubba made a terrible vampire. Though stealthy and obedient, he couldn't reason very clearly, and he liked cat blood better than human blood.
"Where's Bill, Miss Sookie?" he asked, as I could have predicted he would. Bubba had always been very fond of Bill.
"He's in Peru, Bubba. That's way down in South America."
"No, I'm not," said a cool voice, and my heart flip-flopped. "I'm back." Out of an open doorway stepped my former flame.
This was just an evening for surprises. I hoped some of them would be pleasant.
Seeing Bill so unexpectedly gave me a heavier jolt than I'd figured. I'd never had an ex-boyfriend before, my life having been pretty devoid of boyfriends altogether, so I didn't have much experience in handling my emotions about being in his presence, especially with Eric gripping my hand like I was Mary Poppins and he was my charge.
Bill looked good in his khakis. He was wearing a Calvin Klein dress shirt I'd picked out for him, a muted plaid in shades of brown and gold. Not that I noticed.
"Good, we need you tonight," Pam said. Ms. Businesslike. "You'll have to tell me how the ruins were, the ones everyone talks about. You know the rest of the people here?"
Bill glanced around. "Colonel Flood," he said, nodding. "Alcide." His nod to Alcide had less cordiality. "I haven't met these new allies," he said, indicating the witches. Bill waited until the introductions were complete to ask, "What is Debbie Pelt doing here?"
I tried not to gape at having my innermost thoughts spoken aloud. My question exactly! And how did Bill know Debbie? I tried to remember if their paths had crossed in Jackson, if they'd actually met face-to-face; and I couldn't recall such a meeting, though of course Bill knew what she'd done.
"She's Alcide's woman," Pam said, in a cautious, puzzled sort of way.
I raised my eyebrows, looking at Alcide, and he turned a dusky red.
"She's here for a visit, and she decided to come along with him," Pam went on. "You object to her presence?"
"She joined in while I was being tortured in the king of Mississippi's compound," Bill said. "She enjoyed my pain."
Alcide stood, looking as shocked as I'd ever seen him. "Debbie, is this true?"
Debbie Pelt tried not to flinch, now that every eye was on her, and every eye was unfriendly. "I just happened to be visiting a Were friend who lived there, one of the guards," she said. Her voice didn't sound calm enough to match the words. "Obviously, there was nothing I could do to free you. I would have been ripped to shreds. I can't believe you remember me being there very clearly. You were certainly out of it." There was a hint of contempt in her words.
"You joined in the torture," Bill said, his voice still impersonal and all the more convincing for it. "You liked the pincers best."
"You didn't tell anyone he was there?" Alcide asked Debbie. His voice was not impersonal at all. It held grief, and anger, and betrayal. "You knew someone from another kingdom was being tortured at Russell's, and you didn't do anything?"
"He's a vamp, for God's sake," Debbie said, sounding no more than irritated. "When I found out later that you'd been taking Sookie around to hunt for him so you could get your dad out of hock with the vamps, I felt terrible. But at the time, it was just vamp business. Why should I interfere?"
"But why would any decent person join in torture?" Alcide's voice was strained.
There was a long silence.
"And of course, she tried to kill Sookie," Bill said. He still managed to sound quite dispassionate.
"I didn't know you were in the trunk of the car when I pushed her in! I didn't know I was closing her in with a hungry vampire!" Debbie protested.
I don't know about anyone else, but I wasn't convinced for a second.
Alcide bent his rough black head to look down into his hands as if they held an oracle. He raised his face to look at Debbie. He was a man unable to dodge the bullet of truth any longer. I felt sorrier for him than I'd felt for anyone in a long, long time.
"I abjure you," Alcide said. Colonel Flood winced, and young Sid, Amanda, and Culpepper looked both astonished and impressed, as if this were a ceremony they'd never thought to witness. "I see you no longer. I hunt with you no longer. I share flesh with you no longer."
This was obviously a ritual of great significance among the two-natured. Debbie stared at Alcide, aghast at his pronouncement. The witches murmured to one another, but otherwise the room remained silent. Even Bubba was wide-eyed, and most things went right over his shiny head.
"No," Debbie said in a strangled voice, waving a hand in front of her, as if she could erase what had passed. "No, Alcide!"
But he stared right through her. He saw her no longer.
Even though I loathed Debbi
e, her face was painful to see. Like most of the others present, as soon as I could, I looked anywhere else but at the shifter. Facing Hallow's coven seemed like a snap compared to witnessing this episode.
Pam seemed to agree. "All right then," she said briskly. "Bubba will lead the way with Sookie. She will do her best to do whatever it is that she does—and she'll signal us." Pam pondered for a moment. "Sookie, a recap: We need to know the number of people in the house, whether or not they are all witches, and any other tidbit you can glean. Send Bubba back to us with whatever information you find and stand guard in case the situation changes while we move up. Once we're in position, you can retire to the cars, where you'll be safer."
I had no problem with that whatsoever. In a crowd of witches, vampires, and Weres, I was no kind of combatant.
"This sounds okay, if I have to be involved at all," I said. A tug on my hand drew my eyes to Eric's. He looked pleased at the prospect of fighting, but there was still uncertainty in his face and posture. "But what will happen to Eric?"
"What do you mean?"
"If you go in and kill everyone, who'll un-curse him?" I turned slightly to face the experts, the Wiccan contingent. "If Hallow's coven dies, do their spells die with them? Or will Eric still be without a memory?"
"The spell must be removed," said the oldest witch, the calm African-American woman. "If it is removed by the one who laid it in the first place, that's best. It can be lifted by someone else, but it will take more time, more effort, since we don't know what went into the making of the spell."
I was trying to avoid looking at Alcide, because he was still shaking with the violence of the emotions that had led him to cast out Debbie. Though I hadn't known such an action was possible, my first reaction was to feel a little bitter about his not casting her out right after I'd told him a month ago she'd tried to kill me. However, he could have told himself I'd been mistaken, that it hadn't been Debbie I'd sensed near me before she'd pushed me into the Cadillac's trunk.
As far as I knew, this was the first time Debbie had admitted she had done it. And she'd protested she hadn't known Bill was in the trunk, unconscious. But shoving a person into a car trunk and shutting the lid was no kind of amusing prank, right?
Maybe Debbie had been lying to herself some, too.
I needed to listen to what was happening now. I'd have lots of time to think about the human ego's capacity to deceive itself, if I survived the night.
Pam was saying, "So you're thinking we need to save Hallow? To take the spell off Eric?" She didn't sound happy at the prospect. I swallowed my painful feelings and made myself listen. This was no time to start brooding.
"No," the witch said instantly. "Her brother, Mark. There is too much danger in leaving Hallow alive. She must die as quickly as we can reach her."
"What will you be doing?" Pam asked. "How will you help us in this attack?"
"We will be outside, but within two blocks," the man said. "We'll be winding spells around the building to make the witches weak and indecisive. And we have a few tricks up our sleeves." He and the young woman, who had on a huge amount of black eye makeup, looked pretty pleased at a chance to use those tricks.
Pam nodded as if winding spells was sufficient aid. I thought waiting outside with a flamethrower would have been better.
All this time, Debbie Pelt had been standing as if she'd been paralyzed. Now she began to pick her way through to the back door. Bubba leaped up to grab her arm. She hissed at him, but he didn't falter, though I would have.
None of the Weres reacted to this occurrence. It really was as though she were invisible to them.
"Let me leave. I'm not wanted," she said to Bubba, fury and misery fighting for control of her face.
Bubba shrugged. He just held on to her, waiting for Pam's judgment.
"If we let you go, you might run to the witches and let them know we are coming," Pam said. "That would be of a piece with your character, apparently."
Debbie had the gall to look outraged. Alcide looked as if he were watching the Weather Channel.
"Bill, you take charge of her," Chow suggested. "If she turns on us, kill her."
"That sounds wonderful," Bill said, smiling in a fangy way.
After a few more arrangements about transportation, and some more quiet consultation among the witches, who were facing a completely different kind of fight, Pam said, "All right, let's go." Pam, who looked more than ever like Alice in Wonderland in her pale pink sweater and darker pink slacks, stood up and checked her lipstick in the mirror on the wall close to where I'd been sitting. She gave her reflection an experimental smile, as I've seen women do a thousand times.
"Sookie, my friend," she said, turning to aim the smile at me. "Tonight is a great night."
"It is?"
"Yes." Pam put her arm around my shoulders. "We defend what is ours! We fight for the restoration of our leader!" She grinned past me at Eric. "Tomorrow, Sheriff, you will be back at your desk at Fangtasia. You'll be able to go to your own house, your own bedroom. We've kept it clean for you."
I checked Eric's reaction. I'd never heard Pam address Eric by his title before. Though the head vampire for each section was called a sheriff, and I should have been used to that by now, I couldn't help but picture Eric in a cowboy outfit with a star pinned to his chest, or (my favorite) in black tights as the villainous sheriff of Nottingham. I found it interesting, too, that he didn't live here with Pam and Chow.
Eric gave Pam such a serious look that the grin faded right off her face. "If I die tonight," he said, "pay this woman the money that was promised her." He gripped my shoulder. I was just draped in vampires.
"I swear," Pam said. "Chow and Gerald will know, too."
Eric said, "Do you know where her brother is?"
Startled, I stepped away from Pam.
Pam looked equally taken aback. "No, Sheriff."
"It occurred to me that you might have taken him hostage to ensure she didn't betray me."
The idea had never crossed my mind, but it should have. Obviously, I had a lot to learn about being devious.
"I wish I'd thought of that," Pam said admiringly, echoing my thoughts with her own twist. "I wouldn't have minded spending some time with Jason as my hostage." I couldn't understand it: Jason's allure just seemed universal. "But I didn't take him," Pam said. "If we get through this, Sookie, I'll look for him myself. Could it be Hallow's witches have him?"
"It's possible," I said. "Claudine said she didn't see any hostages, but she also said there were rooms she didn't look into. Though I don't know why they would have taken Jason, unless Hallow knows I have Eric? Then they might have used him to make me talk, just the way you would have used him to make me keep silent. But they haven't approached me. You can't use blackmail on someone who doesn't know anything about the hold you have on them."
"Nonetheless, I'll remind all those who are going to enter the building to watch out for him," Pam said.
"How is Belinda?" I asked. "Have you made arrangements to pay her hospital bills?"
She looked at me blankly.
"The waitress who was hurt defending Fangtasia," I reminded her, a little dryly. "You remember? The friend of Ginger, who died?"
"Of course," said Chow, from his place against the wall. "She is recovering. We sent her flowers and candy," he told Pam. Then he focused on me. "Plus, we have a group insurance policy." He was proud as a new father about that.
Pam looked pleased with Chow's report. "Good," she said. "You have to keep them happy. Are we ready to go?"
I shrugged. "I guess so. No point in waiting."
Bill stepped in front of me as Chow and Pam consulted about which vehicle to take. Gerald had gone out to make sure everyone was on the same page as far as the plan of battle.
"How was Peru?" I asked Bill. I was very conscious of Eric, a huge blond shadow at my elbow.
"I made a lot of notes for my book," Bill said. "South America hasn't been good to vampires as a whole, but Pe
ru is not as hostile as the other countries, and I was able to talk to a few vampires I hadn't heard of before." For months, Bill had been compiling a vampire directory at the behest of the queen of Louisiana, who thought having such an item would be very handy. Her opinion was certainly not the universal opinion of the vampire community, some of whom had very strong objections to being outed, even among their own kind. I guess secrecy could be almost impossible to give up, if you'd clung to it for centuries.
There were vampires who still lived in graveyards, hunting every night, refusing to recognize the change in their status; it was like the stories about the Japanese soldiers who'd held out on Pacific islands long after World War II was over.
"Did you get to see those ruins you talked about?"
"Machu Picchu? Yes, I climbed up to them by myself. It was a great experience."
I tried to picture Bill going up a mountain at night, seeing the ruins of an ancient civilization in the moonlight. I couldn't even imagine what that must have been like. I'd never been out of the country. I hadn't often been out of the state, for that matter.
"This is Bill, your former mate?" Eric's voice sounded a little . . . strained.
"Ah, this is—well, yes, sort of," I said unhappily. The "former" was correct; the "mate" was a little off.
Eric placed both his hands on my shoulders and moved in close to me. I had no doubt he was staring over the top of my head at Bill, who was staring right back. Eric might as well have stuck a SHE'S MINE sign on top of my head. Arlene had told me that she loved moments like this, when her ex saw plainly that someone else valued her even if he didn't. All I can say is, my taste in satisfaction runs completely different. I hated it. I felt awkward and ridiculous.
"You really don't remember me," Bill said to Eric, as if he'd doubted it up until this moment. My suspicion was confirmed when he told me, as if Eric wasn't standing there, "Truly, I thought this was an elaborate scheme on Eric's part to stay in your house so he could talk his way into your bed."
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