“Don’t we know Hugo Ayres, Sarah?” Steve Newlin’s face had the perfect quizzical expression—brow slightly wrinkled, eyebrows raised inquiringly, head tilted to one side.
“Ayres?” said the gray-haired woman. “By the way, I’m Polly Blythe, the Fellowship ceremonies officer.”
“Oh, Polly, I’m sorry, I got sidetracked.” Sarah tilted her head right back. Her forehead wrinkled, too. Then it smoothed out and she beamed at her husband. “Wasn’t an Ayres the lawyer representing the vampires in University Park?”
“So he was,” Steve said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his long legs. He waved to someone passing by in the corridor and wrapped his laced fingers around his knee. “Well, it’s very interesting that you’re paying us a call, Hugo. Can we hope that you’ve seen the other side of the vampire question?” Satisfaction rolled off Steve Newlin like scent off a skunk.
“It’s appropriate that you should put it that way—” Hugo began, but Steve’s voice just kept rolling on:
“The bloodsucking side, the dark side of vampire existence? Have you found that they want to kill us all, dominate us with their foul ways and empty promises?”
I knew my eyes were as round as plates. Sarah was nodding thoughtfully, still looking as sweet and bland as a vanilla pudding. Polly looked as if she were having some really grim kind of orgasm. Steve said—and he was still smiling—“You know, eternal life on this earth may sound good, but you’ll lose your soul and eventually, when we catch up with you—maybe not me, of course, maybe my son, or eventually my granddaughter—we’ll stake you and burn you and then you’ll be in true hell. And it won’t be any the better for having been put off. God has a special corner for vampires who’ve used up humans like toilet tissue and then flushed . . .”
Well, ick. This was going downhill in a hurry. And what I was getting off of Steve was just this endless, gloating satisfaction, along with a heavy dash of cleverness. Nothing concrete or informative.
“Excuse me, Steve,” said a deep voice. I swiveled in my chair to see a handsome black-haired man with a crewcut and a bodybuilder’s muscles. He smiled at all of us in the room with the same goodwill they were all showing. It had impressed me earlier. Now, I thought it was just creepy. “Our guest is asking for you.”
“Really? I’ll be there in a minute.”
“I wish you would come now. I’m sure your guests wouldn’t mind waiting?” Black Crewcut glanced at us appealingly. Hugo was thinking of some deep place, a flash of thought which seemed very peculiar to me.
“Gabe, I’ll be there when I’ve finished with our visitors,” Steve said very firmly.
“Well, Steve . . .” Gabe wasn’t willing to give up that easily, but he got a flash from Steve’s eyes and Steve sat up and uncrossed his legs, and Gabe got the message. He shot Steve a look that was anything but worshipful, but he left.
That exchange was promising. I wondered if Farrell was behind some locked door, and I could picture myself returning to the Dallas nest, telling Stan exactly where his nest brother was trapped. And then . . .
Uh-oh. And then Stan would come and attack the Fellowship of the Sun and kill all the members and free Farrell, and then . . .
Oh dear.
“WE JUST WANTED to know if you have some upcoming events we can attend, something that’ll give us an idea of the scope of the programs here.” Hugo’s voice sounded mildly inquiring, nothing more. “Since Miss Blythe is here, maybe she can answer that.”
I noticed Polly Blythe glanced at Steve before she spoke, and I noticed that his face remained shuttered. Polly Blythe was very pleased to be asked to give information, and she was very pleased about Hugo and me being there at the Fellowship.
“We do have some upcoming events,” the gray-haired woman said. “Tonight, we’re having a special lock-in, and following that, we have a Sunday dawn ritual.”
“That sounds interesting,” I said. “Literally, at dawn?”
“Oh, yes, exactly. We call the weather service and everything,” Sarah said, laughing.
Steve said, “You’ll never forget one of our dawn services. It’s inspiring beyond belief.”
“What kind of—well, what happens?” Hugo asked.
“You’ll see the evidence of God’s power right before you,” Steve said, smiling.
That sounded really, really ominous. “Oh, Hugo,” I said. “Doesn’t that sound exciting?”
“It sure does. What time does the lock-in start?”
“At six-thirty. We want our members to get here before they rise.”
For a second I envisioned a tray of rolls set in some warm place. Then I realized Steve meant he wanted members to get here before the vampires rose for the night.
“But what about when your congregation goes home?” I could not refrain from asking.
“Oh, you must not have gone to a lock-in as a teenager!” Sarah said. “It’s loads of fun. Everyone comes and brings their sleeping bags, and we eat and have games and Bible readings and a sermon, and we all spend the night actually in the church.” I noticed that the Fellowship was a church, in Sarah’s eyes, and I was pretty sure that reflected the view of the rest of the management. If it looked like a church, and functioned like a church, then it was a church, no matter what its tax status was.
I’d been to a couple of lock-ins as a teenager, and I’d scarcely been able to endure the experience. A bunch of kids locked in a building all night, closely chaperoned, provided with an endless stream of movies and junk food, activities and sodas. I had suffered through the mental bombardment of teenage hormone-fueled ideas and impulses, the shrieking and the tantrums.
This would be different, I told myself. These would be adults, and purposeful adults, at that. There weren’t likely to be a million bags of chips around, and there might be decent sleeping arrangements. If Hugo and I came, maybe we’d get a chance to search around the building and rescue Farrell, because I was sure that he was the one who was going to get to meet the dawn on Sunday, whether or not he got to choose.
Polly said, “You’d be very welcome. We have plenty of food and cots.”
Hugo and I looked at each other uncertainly.
“Why don’t we just go tour the building now, and you can see all there is to see? Then you can make up your minds,” Sarah suggested. I took Hugo’s hand, got a wallop of ambivalence. I was filled with dismay at Hugo’s torn emotions. He thought, Let’s get out of here.
I jettisoned my previous plans. If Hugo was in such turmoil, we didn’t need to be here. Questions could wait until later. “We should go back to my place and pack our sleeping bags and pillows,” I said brightly. “Right, baby?”
“And I’ve got to feed the cat,” Hugo said. “But we’ll be back here at . . . six-thirty, you said?”
“Gosh, Steve, don’t we have some bedrolls left in the supply room? From when that other couple came to stay here for a while?”
“We’d love to have you stay until everyone gets here,” Steve urged us, his smile as radiant as ever. I knew we were being threatened, and I knew we needed to get out, but all I was receiving from the Newlins psychically was a wall of determination. Polly Blythe seemed to actually be almost—gloating. I hated to push and probe, now that I was aware they had some suspicion of us. If we could just get out of here right now, I promised myself I’d never come back. I’d give up this detecting for the vampires, I’d just tend bar and sleep with Bill.
“We really do need to go,” I said with firm courtesy. “We are so impressed with you all here, and we want to come to the lock-in tonight, but there is still enough time before then for us to get some of our errands done. You know how it is when you work all week. All those little things pile up.”
“Hey, they’ll still be there when the lock-in ends tomorrow!” Steve said. “You need to stay, both of you.”
There wasn’t any way to get out of here without dragging everything out into the open. And I wasn’t going to be the first one to do that, not while ther
e was any hope left we could get out. There were lots of people around. We turned left when we came out of Steve Newlin’s office, and with Steve ambling behind us, and Polly to our right, and Sarah ahead of us, we went down the hall. Every time we passed an open door, someone inside would call, “Steve, can I see you for a minute?” or “Steve, Ed says we have to change the wording on this!” But aside from a blink or a minor tremor in his smile, I could not see much reaction from Steve Newlin to these constant demands.
I wondered how long this movement would last if Steve were removed. Then I was ashamed of myself for thinking this, because what I meant was, if Steve were killed. I was beginning to think either Sarah or Polly would be able to step into his shoes, if they were allowed, because both seemed made of steel.
All the offices were perfectly open and innocent, if you considered the premise on which the organization was founded to be innocent. These all looked like average, rather cleaner-cut-than-normal, Americans, and there were even a few people who were non-Caucasian.
And one nonhuman.
We passed a tiny, thin Hispanic woman in the hall, and as her eyes flicked over to us, I caught a mental signature I’d only felt once before. Then, it came from Sam Merlotte. This woman, like Sam, was a shapeshifter, and her big eyes widened as she caught the waft of “difference” from me. I tried to catch her gaze, and for a minute we stared at each other, me trying to send her a message, and her trying not to receive it.
“Did I tell you the first church to occupy this site was built in the early sixties?” Sarah was saying, as the tiny woman went on down the hall at a fast clip. She glanced back over her shoulder, and I met her eyes again. Hers were frightened. Mine said, “Help.”
“No,” I said, startled at the sudden turn in the conversation.
“Just a little bit more,” Sarah coaxed. “We’ll have seen the whole church.” We’d come to the last door at the end of the corridor. The corresponding door on the other wing had led to the outside. The wings had seemed to be exactly balanced from the outside of the church. My observations had obviously been faulty, but still . . .
“It’s certainly a large place,” said Hugo agreeably. Whatever ambivalent emotions had been plaguing him seemed to have subsided. In fact, he no longer seemed at all concerned. Only someone with no psychic sense at all could fail to be worried about this situation.
That would be Hugo. No psychic sense at all. He looked only interested when Polly opened the last door, the door flat at the end of the corridor. It should have led outside.
Instead, it led down.
Chapter 6
“YOU KNOW, I have a touch of claustrophobia,” I said instantly. “I didn’t know many Dallas buildings had a basement, but I have to say, I just don’t believe I want to see it.” I clung to Hugo’s arm and tried to smile in a charming but self-deprecating way.
Hugo’s heart was beating like a drum because he was scared shitless—I’ll swear he was. Faced with those stairs, somehow his calm was eroding again. What was with Hugo? Despite his fear, he gamely patted my shoulder and smiled apologetically at our companions. “Maybe we should go,” he murmured.
“But I really think you should see what we’ve got underground. We actually have a bomb shelter,” Sarah said, almost laughing in her amusement. “And it’s fully equipped, isn’t it, Steve?”
“Got all kinds of things down there,” Steve agreed. He still looked relaxed, genial, and in charge, but I no longer saw those as benign characteristics. He stepped forward, and since he was behind us, I had to step forward or risk him touching me, which I found I very much did not want.
“Come on,” Sarah said enthusiastically. “I’ll bet Gabe’s down here, and Steve can go on and see what Gabe wanted while we look at the rest of the facility.” She trotted down the stairs as quickly as she’d moved down the hall, her round butt swaying in a way I probably would have considered cute if I hadn’t been just on the edge of terrified.
Polly waved us down ahead of her, and down we went. I was going along with this because Hugo seemed absolutely confident that no harm would come to him. I was picking that up very clearly. His earlier fear had completely abated. It was as though he’d resigned himself to some program, and his ambivalence had vanished. Vainly, I wished he were easier to read. I turned my focus on Steve Newlin, but what I got from him was a thick wall of self-satisfaction.
We moved farther down the stairs, despite the fact that my steps had slowed, and then become slower again. I could tell Hugo was convinced that he would get to walk back up these stairs: after all, he was a civilized person. These were all civilized people.
Hugo really couldn’t imagine that anything irreparable could happen to him, because he was a middle-class white American with a college education, as were all the people on the stairs with us.
I had no such conviction. I was not a wholly civilized person.
That was a new and interesting thought, but like many of my ideas that afternoon, it had to be stowed away, to be explored at leisure. If I ever had leisure again.
At the base of the stairs there was another door, and Sarah knocked on it in a pattern. Three fast, skip, two fast, my brain recorded. I heard locks shooting back.
Black Crewcut—Gabe—opened the door. “Hey, you brought me some visitors,” he said enthusiastically. “Good show!” His golf shirt was tucked neatly into his pleated Dockers, his Nikes were new and spotless, and he was shaved as clean as a razor could get. I was willing to bet he did fifty push-ups every morning. There was an undercurrent of excitement in his every move and gesture; Gabe was really pumped about something.
I tried to “read” the area for life, but I was too agitated to concentrate.
“I’m glad you’re here, Steve,” Gabe said. “While Sarah is showing our visitors the shelter, maybe you can give our guest room a look-see.” He nodded his head to the door in the right side of the narrow concrete hall. There was another door at the end of it, and a door to the left.
I hated it down here. I had pleaded claustrophobia to get out of this. Now that I had been coerced into coming down the stairs, I was finding that it was a true failing of mine. The musty smell, the glare of the artificial light, and the sense of enclosure . . . I hated it all. I didn’t want to stay here. My palms broke out in a sweat. My feet felt anchored to the ground. “Hugo,” I whispered. “I don’t want to do this.” There was very little act in the desperation in my voice. I didn’t like to hear it, but it was there.
“She really needs to get back upstairs,” Hugo said apologetically. “If you all don’t mind, we’ll just go back up and wait for you there.”
I turned around, hoping this would work, but I found myself looking up into Steve’s face. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “I think you two need to wait in the other room over there, until I’m through with my business. Then, we’ll talk.” His voice brooked no discussion, and Sarah opened the door to disclose a bare little room with two chairs and two cots.
“No,” I said, “I can’t do that,” and I shoved Steve as hard as I could. I am very strong, very strong indeed, since I’ve had vampire blood, and despite his size, he staggered. I nipped up the stairs as fast as I could move, but a hand closed around my ankle, and I fell most painfully. The edges of the stairs hit me everywhere, across my left cheekbone, my breasts, my hipbones, my left knee. It hurt so much I almost gagged.
“Here, little lady,” said Gabe, hauling me to my feet.
“What have you—how could you hurt her like that?” Hugo was sputtering, genuinely upset. “We come here thinking of joining your group, and this is the way you treat us?”
“Drop the act,” Gabe advised, and he twisted my arm behind my back before I had gotten my wits back from the fall. I gasped with the new pain, and he propelled me into the room, at the last minute grabbing my wig and yanking it off my head. Hugo stepped in behind me, though I gasped, “No!” and then they shut the door behind him.
And we heard it lock.
And that wa
s that.
“SOOKIE,” HUGO SAID, “there’s a dent across your cheekbone.”
“No shit,” I muttered weakly.
“Are you badly hurt?”
“What do you think?”
He took me literally. “I think you have bruises and maybe a concussion. You didn’t break any bones, did you?”
“Not but one or two,” I said.
“And you’re obviously not hurt badly enough to cut out the sarcasm,” Hugo said. If he could be angry with me, it would make him feel better, I could tell, and I wondered why. But I didn’t wonder too hard. I was pretty sure I knew.
I was lying on one of the cots, an arm across my face, trying to keep private and do some thinking. We hadn’t been able to hear much happening in the hall outside. Once I thought I’d heard a door opening, and we’d heard muted voices, but that was all. These walls were built to withstand a nuclear blast, so I guess the quiet was to be expected.
“Do you have a watch?” I asked Hugo.
“Yes. It’s five-thirty.”
A good two hours until the vampires rose.
I let the quiet go on. When I knew hard-to-read Hugo must have relapsed into his own thoughts, I opened my mind and I listened with complete concentration.
Not supposed to happen like this, don’t like this, surely everything’ll be okay, what about when we need to go to the bathroom, I can’t haul it out in front of her, maybe Isabel won’t ever know, I should have known after that girl last night, how can I get out of this still practicing law, if I begin to distance myself after tomorrow maybe I can kind of ease out of it . . .
I pressed my arm against my eyes hard enough to hurt, to stop myself from jumping up and grabbing a chair and beating Hugo Ayres senseless. At present, he didn’t fully understand my telepathy, and neither did the Fellowship, or they wouldn’t have left me in here with him.
Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set Page 40
