Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set

by Charlaine Harris

  Luna Garza nodded to him regally, said, “Many thanks,” and wheeled me out into the night. There was a big old car parked out there. It was dark red or dark brown. As I looked around a little more, I realized that we were in an alley. There were big trash bins lining the wall, and I saw a cat pouncing on something—I didn’t want to know what—between two of the bins. After the door whooshed pneumatically shut behind us, the alley was quiet. I began to feel afraid again.

  I was incredibly tired of being afraid.

  Luna went over to the car, opened the rear door, and said something to whoever was inside. Whatever answer she got, it made her angry. She expostulated in another language.

  There was further argument.

  Luna stomped back to me. “You have to be blindfolded,” she said, obviously certain I would take great offense.

  “No problem,” I said, with a sweep of one hand to indicate how trifling a matter this was.

  “You don’t mind?”

  “No. I understand, Luna. Everyone likes his privacy.”

  “Okay, then.” She hurried back to the car and returned with a scarf in her hands, of green and peacock blue silk. She folded it as if we were going to play pin-the-tail, and tied it securely behind my head. “Listen to me,” she said in my ear, “these two are tough. You watch it.” Good. I wanted to be more frightened.

  She rolled me over to the car and helped me in. I guess she wheeled the chair back to the door to await pickup; anyway, after a minute she got in the other side of the car.

  There were two presences in the front seat. I felt them mentally, very delicately, and discovered both were shapeshifters; at least, they had the shapeshifter feel to their brains, the semiopaque snarly tangle I got from Sam and Luna. My boss, Sam, usually changes into a collie. I wondered what Luna preferred. There was a difference about these two, a pulsing sort of heaviness. The outline of their heads seemed subtly different, not exactly human.

  There was only silence for a few minutes, while the car bumped out of the alley and drove through the night.

  “Silent Shore Hotel, right?” said the driver. She sounded kind of growly. Then I realized it was almost the full moon. Oh, hell. They had to change at the full moon. Maybe that was why Luna had kicked over the traces so readily at the Fellowship tonight, once it got dark. She had been made giddy by the emergence of the moon.

  “Yes, please,” I said politely.

  “Food that talks,” said the passenger. His voice was even closer to a growl.

  I sure didn’t like that, but had no idea how to respond. There was just as much for me to learn about shapeshifters as there was about vampires, apparently.

  “You two can it,” Luna said. “This is my guest.”

  “Luna hangs with puppy chow,” said the passenger. I was beginning to really not like this guy.

  “Smells more like hamburger to me,” said the driver. “She’s got a scrape or two, doesn’t she, Luna?”

  “Y’all are giving her a great impression of how civilized we are,” Luna snapped. “Show some control. She’s already had a bad night. She’s got a broken bone, too.”

  And the night wasn’t even halfway over yet. I shifted the ice pack I was holding to my face. You can only stand so much freezing cold on your sinus cavity.

  “Why’d Josephus have to send for freakin’ werewolves?” Luna muttered into my ear. But I knew they’d heard; Sam heard everything, and he was by no means as powerful as a true werewolf. Or at least, that was my evaluation. To tell you the truth, until this moment, I hadn’t been sure werewolves actually existed.

  “I guess,” I said tactfully and audibly, “he thought they could defend us best if we’re attacked again.”

  I could feel the creatures in the front seat prick up their ears. Maybe literally.

  “We were doing okay,” Luna said indignantly. She twitched and fidgeted on the seat beside me like she’d drunk sixteen cups of coffee.

  “Luna, we got rammed and your car got totaled. We were in the emergency room. ‘Okay’ in what sense?”

  Then I had to answer my own question. “Hey, I’m sorry, Luna. You got me out of there when they would’ve killed me. It’s not your fault they rammed us.”

  “You two have a little roughhouse tonight?” asked the passenger, more civilly. He was spoiling for a fight. I didn’t know if all werewolves were as feisty as this guy, or if it was just his nature.

  “Yeah, with the fucking Fellowship,” Luna said, more than a trace of pride in her voice. “They had this chick stuck in a cell. In a dungeon.”

  “No shit?” asked the driver. She had the same hyper pulsing to her—well, I just had to call it her aura, for lack of a better word.

  “No shit,” I said firmly. “I work for a shifter, at home,” I added, to make conversation.

  “No kidding? What’s the business?”

  “A bar. He owns a bar.”

  “So, are you far from home?”

  “Too far,” I said.

  “This little bat saved your life tonight, for real?”

  “Yes.” I was absolutely sincere about that. “Luna saved my life.” Could they mean that literally? Did Luna shapeshift into a . . . oh golly.

  “Way to go, Luna.” There was a fraction more respect in the deeper growly voice.

  Luna found the praise pleasant, as she ought to, and she patted my hand. In a more agreeable silence, we drove maybe five more minutes, and then the driver said, “The Silent Shore, coming up.”

  I breathed out a long sigh of relief.

  “There’s a vampire out front, waiting.”

  I almost ripped off the blindfold, before I realized that would be a really tacky thing to do. “What does he look like?”

  “Very tall, blond. Big head of hair. Friend or foe?”

  I had to think about that. “Friend,” I said, trying not to sound doubtful.

  “Yum, yum,” said the driver. “Does he cross-date?”

  “I don’t know. Want me to ask?”

  Luna and the passenger both made gagging sounds. “You can’t date a deader!” Luna protested. “Come on, Deb—uh, girl!”

  “Oh, okay,” said the driver. “Some of them aren’t so bad. I’m pulling into the curb, little Milkbone.”

  “That would be you,” Luna said in my ear.

  We came to a stop, and Luna leaned over me to open my door. As I stepped out, guided and shoved by her hands, I heard an exclamation from the sidewalk. Quick as a wink Luna slammed the door shut behind me. The car full of shapeshifters pulled away from the curb with a screech of tires. A howl trailed behind it in the thick night air.

  “Sookie?” said a familiar voice.

  “Eric?”

  I was fumbling with the blindfold, but Eric just grabbed the back of it and pulled. I had acquired a beautiful, if somewhat stained, scarf. The front of the hotel, with its heavy blank doors, was brilliantly lit in the dark night, and Eric looked remarkably pale. He was wearing an absolutely conventional navy blue pinstripe suit, of all things.

  I was actually glad to see him. He grabbed my arm to keep me from wobbling and looked down at me with an unreadable face. Vampires were good at that. “What has happened to you?” he said.

  “I got . . . well, it’s hard to explain in a second. Where is Bill?”

  “First he went to the Fellowship of the Sun to get you out. But we heard along the way, from one of us who is a policeman, that you had been involved in an accident and gone to a hospital. So then he went to the hospital. At the hospital, he found out you had left outside the proper channels. No one would tell him anything, and he couldn’t threaten them properly.” Eric looked extremely frustrated. The fact that he had to live within human laws was a constant irritant to Eric, though he greatly enjoyed the benefits. “And then there was no trace of you. The doorman had only heard the once from you, mentally.”

  “Poor Barry. Is he all right?”

  “The richer for several hundred dollars, and quite happy about it,” Eric said
in a dry voice. “Now we just need Bill. What a lot of trouble you are, Sookie.” He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and punched in a number. After what seemed a long time, it was answered.

  “Bill, she is here. Some shapeshifters brought her in.” He looked me over. “Battered, but walking.” He listened some more. “Sookie, do you have your key?” he asked. I felt in the pocket of my skirt where I’d stuffed the plastic rectangle about a million years ago.

  “Yes,” I said, and simply could not believe that something had gone right. “Oh, wait! Did they get Farrell?”

  Eric held up his hand to indicate he’d get to me in a minute. “Bill, I’ll take her up and start doctoring.” Eric’s back stiffened. “Bill,” he said and there was a world of threat in his voice. “All right then. Good-bye.” He turned back to me as if there’d been no interruption.

  “Yes, Farrell is safe. They raided the Fellowship.”

  “Did . . . did many people get hurt?”

  “Most of them were too frightened to approach. They scattered and went home. Farrell was in an underground cell with Hugo.”

  “Oh, yes, Hugo. What happened to Hugo?”

  My voice must have been very curious, because Eric looked at me sideways while we were progressing toward the elevator. He was matching my pace, and I was limping very badly.

  “May I carry you?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t think so. I’ve made it this far.” I would’ve taken Bill up on the offer instantly. Barry, at the bell captain’s desk, gave me a little wave. He would’ve run up to me if I hadn’t been with Eric. I gave him what I hoped was a significant look, to say I’d talk to him again later, and then the elevator door dinged open and we got on. Eric punched the floor button and leaned against the mirrored wall of the car opposite me. In looking at him, I got a look at my own reflection.

  “Oh, no,” I said, absolutely horrified. “Oh, no.” My hair had been flattened by the wig, and then combed out with my fingers, so it was a disaster. My hands went up to it, helplessly and painfully, and my mouth shook with suppressed tears. And my hair was the least of it. I had visible bruises ranging from mild to severe on most of my body, and that was just the part you could see. My face was swollen and discolored on one side. There was a cut in the middle of the bruise over my cheekbone. My blouse was missing half its buttons, and my skirt was ripped and filthy. My right arm was ridged with bloody lumps.

  I began crying. I looked so awful; it just broke what was left of my spirit.

  To his credit, Eric didn’t laugh, though he may have wanted to. “Sookie, a bath and clean clothes and you will be put to rights,” he said as if he were talking to a child. To tell you the truth, I didn’t feel much older at the moment.

  “The werewolf thought you were cute,” I said, and sobbed some more. We stepped out of the elevator.

  “The werewolf? Sookie, you have had adventures tonight.” He gathered me up like an armful of clothes and held me to him. I got his lovely suit jacket wet and snotty, and his pristine white shirt was spotless no more.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” I held back and looked at his ensemble. I swabbed it with the scarf.

  “Don’t cry again,” he said hastily. “Just don’t start crying again, and I won’t mind taking this to the cleaners. I won’t even mind getting a whole new suit.”

  I thought it was pretty amusing that Eric, the dread master vampire, was afraid of weeping women. I sniggered through the residual sobs.

  “Something funny?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  I slid my key in the door and we went in. “I’ll help you into the tub if you like, Sookie,” Eric offered.

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” A bath was what I wanted more than anything else in the world, that and to never put on these clothes again, but I sure wasn’t taking a bath with Eric anywhere around.

  “I’ll bet you are a treat, naked,” Eric said, just to boost my spirits.

  “You know it. I’m just as tasty as a big éclair,” I said, and carefully settled into a chair. “Though at the moment I feel more like boudain.” Boudain is Cajun sausage, made of all kinds of things, none of them elegant. Eric pushed over a straight chair and lifted my leg to elevate the knee. I resettled the ice pack on it and closed my eyes. Eric called down to the desk for some tweezers, a bowl, and some antiseptic ointment, plus a rolling chair. The items arrived within ten minutes. This staff was good.

  There was a small desk by one wall. Eric moved it over to the right side of my chair, lifted my arm, and laid it over the top of the desk. He switched on the lamp. After swabbing off my arm with a wet washcloth, Eric began removing the lumps. They were tiny pieces of glass from Luna’s Outback’s window. “If you were an ordinary girl, I could glamour you and you wouldn’t feel this,” he commented. “Be brave.” It hurt like a bitch, and tears streamed down my face the whole time he worked. I worked hard keeping silent.

  At last, I heard another key in the door, and I opened my eyes. Bill glanced at my face, winced, and then examined what Eric was doing. He nodded approvingly to Eric.

  “How did this happen?” he asked, laying the lightest of touches on my face. He pulled the remaining chair closer and sat in it. Eric continued with his work.

  I began to explain. I was so tired my voice faltered from time to time. When I got to the part about Gabe, I didn’t have enough wits to tone the episode down, and I could see Bill was holding on to his temper with iron control. He gently lifted my blouse to peer at the ripped bra and the bruises on my chest, even with Eric there. (He looked, of course.)

  “What happened to this Gabe?” Bill asked, very quietly.

  “Well, he’s dead,” I said. “Godfrey killed him.”

  “You saw Godfrey?” Eric leaned forward. He hadn’t said a thing up till this point. He’d finished doctoring my arm. He’d put antibiotic ointment all over it as if he were protecting a baby from diaper rash.

  “You were right, Bill. He was the one who kidnapped Farrell, though I didn’t get any details. And Godfrey stopped Gabe from raping me. Though I got to say, I had gotten in a few good licks myself.”

  “Don’t brag,” said Bill with a small smile. “So, the man is dead.” But he didn’t seem satisfied.

  “Godfrey was very good in stopping Gabe and helping me get out. Specially since he just wanted to think about meeting the dawn. Where is he?”

  “He ran into the night during our attack on the Fellowship,” Bill explained. “None of us could catch him.”

  “What happened at the Fellowship?”

  “I’ll tell you, Sookie. But let’s say good night to Eric, and I will tell you while I bathe you.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “Good night, Eric. Thanks for the first aid.”

  “I think those are the main points,” Bill said to Eric. “If there is more, I’ll come to your room later.”

  “Good.” Eric looked at me, his eyes half open. He’d had a lick or two at my bloody arm while he doctored it and the taste seemed to have intoxicated him. “Rest well, Sookie.”

  “Oh,” I said, my eyes opening all the way suddenly. “You know, we owe the shapeshifters.”

  Both the vampires stared at me. “Well, maybe not you guys, but I sure do.”

  “Oh, they’ll put in a claim,” Eric predicted. “Those shapeshifters never perform any service for free. Good night, Sookie. I am glad you weren’t raped and killed.” He gave his sudden flashing grin, and looked a lot more like himself.

  “Gee, thanks a lot,” I said, my eyes closing again. “Night.”

  When the door had closed behind Eric, Bill gathered me up out of the chair and took me in the bathroom. It was about as big as most hotel bathrooms, but the tub was adequate. Bill ran it full of hot water and very carefully took off my clothes.

  “Just toss ’em, Bill,” I said.

  “Maybe I will, at that.” He was eyeing the bruises again, his lips pressed together in a straight line.

  “Some of these are from the fall on the s
tairs, and some are from the car accident,” I explained.

  “If Gabe wasn’t dead I would find him and kill him,” Bill said, mostly to himself. “I would take my time.” He lifted me as easily as if I were a baby and put me in the bath, and began washing me with a cloth and a bar of soap.

  “My hair is so nasty.”

  “Yes, it is, but we may have to take care of your hair in the morning. You need sleep.”

  Beginning with my face, Bill gently scrubbed me all the way down. The water became discolored with dirt and old blood. He checked my arm thoroughly, to make sure Eric had gotten all the glass. Then he emptied the tub and refilled it, while I shivered. This time, I got clean. After I moaned about my hair a second time, he gave in. He wet my head and shampooed my hair, rinsing it laboriously. There is nothing more wonderful than feeling head-to-toe clean after you’ve been filthy, having a comfortable bed with clean sheets, being able to sleep in it in safety.

  “Tell me about what happened at the Fellowship,” I said as he carried me to the bed. “Keep me company.”

  Bill inserted me under the sheet and crawled in the other side. He slid his arm under my head and scooted close. I carefully touched my forehead to his chest and rubbed it.

  “By the time we got there, it was like a disrupted anthill,” he said. “The parking lot was full of cars and people, and more kept arriving for the—all-night sleep-over?”

  “Lock-in,” I murmured, carefully turning on my right side to burrow against him.

  “There was a certain amount of turmoil when we arrived. Almost all of them piled into their cars and left as fast as traffic would allow. Their leader, Newlin, tried to deny us entrance to the Fellowship hall—surely that was a church at one time?—and he told us we would burst into flames if we entered, because we were the damned.” Bill snorted. “Stan picked him up and set him aside. And into the church we went, Newlin and his woman trailing right behind us. Not a one of us burst into flames, which seemed to shake up the people a great deal.”

  “I’ll bet,” I mumbled into his chest.

  “Barry told us that when he communicated with you, he had the sense you were ‘down’—below ground level. He thought he picked up the word ‘stairs’ from you. There were six of us—Stan, Joseph Velasquez, Isabel, and others—and it took us perhaps six minutes to eliminate all the possibilities and find the stairs.”