Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set

by Charlaine Harris

  “What did you do about the door?” It had had stout locks, I remembered.

  “We ripped it from its hinges.”

  “Oh.” Well, that would provide quick access, sure enough.

  “I thought you were still down there, of course. When I found the room with the dead man, who had his pants open . . .” He paused a long moment. “I was sure you had been there. I could smell you in the air still. There was a smear of blood on him, your blood, and I found other traces of it around. I was very worried.”

  I patted him. I felt too tired and weak to pat very vigorously, but it was the only consolation I had to offer at the moment.

  “Sookie,” he said very carefully, “is there anything more you want to tell me?”

  I was too sleepy to figure this one through. “No,” I said and yawned. “I think I pretty much covered my adventures earlier.”

  “I thought maybe since Eric was in the room earlier, you wouldn’t want to say everything?”

  I finally heard the other shoe drop. I kissed his chest, over his heart. “Godfrey really was in time.”

  There was a long silence. I looked up to see Bill’s face set so rigidly that he looked like a statue. His dark eyelashes stood out against his pallor with amazing clarity. His dark eyes seemed bottomless. “Tell me the rest,” I said.

  “Then we went farther into the bomb shelter and found the larger room, along with an extended area full of supplies—food and guns—where it was obvious another vampire had been staying.”

  I hadn’t seen that part of the bomb shelter, and I certainly had no plans to revisit it to view what I’d missed.

  “In the second cell we found Farrell and Hugo.”

  “Was Hugo alive?”

  “Just barely.” Bill kissed my forehead. “Luckily for Hugo, Farrell likes his sex with younger men.”

  “Maybe that was why Godfrey chose Farrell to abduct, when he decided to make an example of another sinner.”

  Bill nodded. “That is what Farrell said. But he had been without sex and blood for a long time, and he was hungry in every sense. Without the silver manacles, Hugo would have . . . had a bad time. Even with silver on his wrists and ankles, Farrell was able to feed from Hugo.”

  “Did you know that Hugo was the traitor?”

  “Farrell heard your conversation with him.”

  “How—oh, right, vampire hearing. Stupid me.”

  “Farrell would also like to know what you did to Gabe to make him scream.”

  “Clapped him over the ears.” I cupped one hand to show him.

  “Farrell was delighted. This Gabe was one of those men who enjoys power over others. He subjected Farrell to many indignities.”

  “Farrell’s just lucky he’s not a woman,” I said. “Where is Hugo now?”

  “He is somewhere safe.”

  “Safe for who?”

  “Safe for vampires. Away from the media. They would enjoy Hugo’s story all too much.”

  “What are they gonna do with him?”

  “That’s for Stan to decide.”

  “Remember the deal we had with Stan? If humans are found guilty by evidence of mine, they don’t get killed.”

  Bill obviously didn’t want to debate me on this now. His face shut down. “Sookie, you have to go to sleep now. We’ll talk about it when you get up.”

  “But by then he may be dead.”

  “Why should you care?”

  “Because that was the deal! I know Hugo is a shit, and I hate him, too, but I feel sorry for him; and I don’t think I can be implicated in his death and live with a clear conscience.”

  “Sookie, he will still be alive when you get up. We’ll talk about it then.”

  I felt sleep pulling me under like the undertow of the surf. It was hard to believe it was only two o’clock in the morning.

  “Thanks for coming after me.”

  Bill said, after a pause, “First you weren’t at the Fellowship, just traces of your blood and dead rapist. When I found you weren’t at the hospital, that you had been spirited out of there somehow . . .”

  “Mmmmh?”

  “I was very, very scared. No one had any idea where you were. In fact, while I stood there talking to the nurse who admitted you, your name went off the computer screen.”

  I was impressed. Those shapeshifters were organized to an amazing degree. “Maybe I should send Luna some flowers,” I said, hardly able to get the words out of my mouth.

  Bill kissed me, a very satisfying kiss, and that was the last thing I remembered.

  Chapter 7

  I TURNED OVER laboriously and peered at the illuminated clock on the bedside table. It was not yet dawn, but dawn would come soon. Bill was in his coffin already: the lid was closed. Why was I awake? I thought it over.

  There was something I had to do. Part of me stood back in amazement at my own stupidity as I pulled on some shorts and a T-shirt and slid my feet into sandals. I looked even worse in the mirror, to which I gave only a sideways glance. I stood with my back to it to brush my hair. To my astonishment and pleasure, my purse was sitting on the table in the sitting room. Someone had retrieved it from the Fellowship headquarters the night before. I stuck my plastic key in it and made my way painfully down the silent halls.

  Barry was not on duty anymore, and his replacement was too well trained to ask me what the hell I was doing going around looking like something a train had dragged in. He got me a cab and I told the driver where I needed to go. The driver looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Wouldn’t you rather go to a hospital?” he suggested uneasily.

  “No. I’ve already been.” That hardly seemed to reassure him.

  “Those vampires treat you so bad, why do you hang around them?”

  “People did this to me,” I said. “Not vampires.”

  We drove off. Traffic was light, it being nearly dawn on a Sunday morning. It only took fifteen minutes to get to the same place I’d been the night before, the Fellowship parking lot.

  “Can you wait for me?” I asked the driver. He was a man in his sixties, grizzled and missing a front tooth. He wore a plaid shirt with snaps instead of buttons.

  “I reckon I can do that,” he said. He pulled a Louis L’Amour western out from under his seat and switched on a dome light to read.

  Under the glare of the sodium lights, the parking lot showed no visible traces of the events of the night before. There were only a couple of vehicles remaining, and I figured they’d been abandoned the night before. One of these cars was probably Gabe’s. I wondered if Gabe had had a family; I hoped not. For one thing, he was such a sadist he must have made their lives miserable, and for another, for the rest of their lives they’d have to wonder how and why he’d died. What would Steve and Sarah Newlin do now? Would there be enough members left of their Fellowship to carry on? Presumably the guns and provisions were still in the church. Maybe they’d been stockpiling against the apocalypse.

  Out of the dark shadows next to the church a figure emerged. Godfrey. He was still bare-chested, and he still looked like a fresh-faced sixteen. Only the alien character of the tattoos and his eyes gave the lie to his body.

  “I came to watch,” I said, when he was close to me, though maybe “bear witness” would have been more accurate.

  “Why?”

  “I owe it to you.”

  “I am an evil creature.”

  “Yes, you are.” There just wasn’t any getting around that. “But you did a good thing, saving me from Gabe.”

  “By killing one more man? My conscience hardly knew the difference. There have been so many. At least I spared you some humiliation.”

  His voice grabbed at my heart. The growing light in the sky was still so faint that the parking lot security lights remained on, and by their glow I examined the young, young face.

  All of a sudden, absurdly, I began to cry.

  “That’s nice,” Godfrey said. His voice was already remote. “Someone to cry for me at the end. I had hardly expe
cted that.” He stepped back to a safe distance.

  And then the sun rose.

  WHEN I GOT back in the cab, the driver stowed away his book.

  “They have a fire going over there?” he asked. “I thought I saw some smoke. I almost came to see what was happening.”

  “It’s out now,” I said.

  I MOPPED AT my face for a mile or so, and then I stared out the window as the stretches of city emerged from the night.

  Back at the hotel, I let myself into our room again. I pulled off my shorts, lay down on the bed, and just as I was preparing myself for a long period of wakefulness, I fell deep asleep.

  Bill woke me up at sundown, in his favorite way. My T-shirt was pushed up, and his dark hair brushed my chest. It was like waking up halfway down the road, so to speak; his mouth was sucking so tenderly on half of what he told me was the most beautiful pair of breasts in the world. He was very careful of his fangs, which were fully down. That was only one of the evidences of his arousal. “Do you feel up to doing this, enjoying it, if I am very, very careful?” he whispered against my ear.

  “If you treat me like I was made of glass,” I murmured, knowing that he could.

  “But that doesn’t feel like glass,” he said, his hand moving gently. “That feels warm. And wet.”

  I gasped.

  “That much? Am I hurting you?” His hand moved more forcefully.

  “Bill” was all I could say. I put my lips on his, and his tongue began a familiar rhythm.

  “Lie on your side,” he whispered. “I will take care of everything.”

  And he did.

  “Why were you partly dressed?” he asked, later. He’d gotten up to get a bottle of blood from the refrigerator in the room, and he’d warmed it in the microwave. He hadn’t taken any of my blood, in consideration of my weakened state.

  “I went to see Godfrey die.”

  His eyes glowed down at me. “What?”

  “Godfrey met the dawn.” The phrase I had once considered embarrassingly melodramatic flowed quite naturally from my mouth.

  There was a long silence.

  “How did you know he would? How did you know where?”

  I shrugged as much as you can while you’re lying in a bed. “I just figured he’d stick with his original plan. He seemed pretty set on it. And he’d saved my life. It was the least I could do.”

  “Did he show courage?”

  I met Bill’s eyes. “He died very bravely. He was eager to go.”

  I had no idea what Bill was thinking. “We have to go see Stan,” he said. “We’ll tell him.”

  “Why do we have to go see Stan again?” If I hadn’t been such a mature woman, I would’ve pouted. As it was, Bill gave me one of those looks.

  “You have to tell him your part, so he can be convinced we’ve performed our service. Also, there’s the matter of Hugo.”

  That was enough to make me gloomy. I was so sore the idea of any more clothes than necessary touching my skin made me feel ill, so I pulled on a long sleeveless taupe dress made out of a soft knit and slid my feet carefully into sandals, and that was my outfit. Bill brushed my hair and put in my earrings for me, since raising my arms was uncomfortable, and he decided I needed a gold chain. I looked like I was going to a party at the outpatient ward for battered women. Bill called down for a rental car to be brought around. When the car had arrived in the underground garage, I had no idea. I didn’t even know who had arranged for it. Bill drove. I didn’t look out the window anymore. I was sick of Dallas.

  When we got to the house on Green Valley Road it looked as quiet as it had two nights ago. But after we’d been admitted, I found it was abuzz with vampires. We’d arrived in the midst of a welcome-home party for Farrell, who was standing in the living room with his arm around a handsome young man who might be all of eighteen. Farrell had a bottle of TrueBlood O negative in one hand, and his date had a Coke. The vampire looked almost as rosy as the boy.

  Farrell had never actually seen me, so he was delighted to make my acquaintance. He was clad from head to toe in western regalia, and as he bowed over my hand, I expected to hear spurs clink.

  “You are so lovely,” he said extravagantly, waving the bottle of synthetic blood, “that if I slept with women, you would receive my undivided attention for a week. I know you are self-conscious about your bruises, but they only set off your beauty.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. Not only was I walking like I was about eighty, my face was black-and-blue on the left side.

  “Bill Compton, you are one lucky vampire,” Farrell told Bill.

  “I am well aware of that,” Bill said, smiling, though somewhat coolly.

  “She is brave and beautiful!”

  “Thanks, Farrell. Where’s Stan?” I decided to break this stream of praise. Not only did it make Bill antsy, but Farrell’s young companion was getting entirely too curious. My intention was to relate this story once again, and only once.

  “He’s in the dining room,” the young vampire said, the one who’d brought poor Bethany into the dining room when we’d been here before. This must be Joseph Velasquez. He was maybe five foot eight, and his Hispanic ancestry gave him the toast-colored complexion and dark eyes of a don, while his vampire state gave him an unblinking stare and the instant willingness to do damage. He was scanning the room, waiting for trouble. I decided he was sort of the sergeant at arms of the nest. “He will be glad to see both of you.”

  I glanced around at all the vampires and the sprinkling of humans in the large rooms of the house. I didn’t see Eric. I wondered if he’d gone back to Shreveport. “Where’s Isabel?” I asked Bill, keeping my voice quiet.

  “Isabel is being punished,” he said, almost too softly to hear. He didn’t want to talk about this any louder, and when Bill thought that was a wise idea, I knew I better shut up. “She brought a traitor into the nest, and she has to pay a price for that.”

  “But—”

  “Shhh.”

  We came into the dining room to find it as crowded as the living room. Stan was in the same chair, wearing virtually the same outfit he had been wearing last time I saw him. He stood up when we entered, and from the way he did this, I understood this was supposed to mark our status as important.

  “Miss Stackhouse,” he said formally, shaking my hand with great care. “Bill.” Stan examined me with his eyes, their washed-out blue not missing a detail of my injuries. His glasses had been mended with Scotch tape. Stan was nothing if not thorough with his disguise. I thought I’d send him a pocket-protector for Christmas.

  “Please tell me what happened to you yesterday, omitting nothing,” Stan said.

  This reminded me irresistibly of Archie Goodwin reporting to Nero Wolfe. “I’ll bore Bill,” I said, hoping to get out of this recitation.

  “Bill will not mind being bored for a little.”

  There was no getting around this. I sighed, and began with Hugo picking me up from the Silent Shore Hotel. I tried to leave Barry’s name out of my narrative, since I didn’t know how he’d feel about being known by the vampires of Dallas. I just called him “a bellboy at the hotel.” Of course, they could learn who he was if they tried.

  When I got to the part where Gabe sent Hugo into Farrell’s cell and then tried to rape me, my lips yanked up in a tight grin. My face felt so taut that I thought it might crack.

  “Why does she do that?” Stan asked Bill, as though I weren’t there.

  “When she is tense . . .” Bill said.

  “Oh.” Stan looked at me even more thoughtfully. I reached up and began to pull my hair into a ponytail. Bill handed me an elastic band from his pocket, and with considerable discomfort, I held the hair in a tight hank so I could twist the band around it three times.

  When I told Stan about the help the shapeshifters had given me, he leaned forward. He wanted to know more than I told, but I would not give any names away. He was intensely thoughtful after I told him about being dropped off at the hotel. I didn’
t know whether to include Eric or not; I left him out, completely. He was supposed to be from California. I amended my narrative to say I’d gone up to our room to wait for Bill.

  And then I told him about Godfrey.

  To my amazement, Stan could not seem to absorb Godfrey’s death. He made me repeat the story. He swiveled in his chair to face the other way while I spoke. Behind his back, Bill gave me a reassuring caress. When Stan turned back to us, he was wiping his eyes with a red-stained handkerchief. So it was true that vampires could cry. And it was true that vampire tears were bloody.

  I cried right along with him. For his centuries of molesting and killing children, Godfrey had deserved to die. I wondered how many humans were in jail for crimes Godfrey had committed. But Godfrey had helped me, and Godfrey had carried with him the most tremendous load of guilt and grief I’d ever encountered.

  “What resolution and courage,” Stan said admiringly. He hadn’t been grieved at all, but lost in admiration. “It makes me weep.” He said this in such a way that I knew it was meant to be a great tribute. “After Bill identified Godfrey the other night, I made some inquiries and found he had belonged to a nest in San Francisco. His nest mates will be grieved to hear of this. And of his betrayal of Farrell. But his courage in keeping his word, in fulfilling his plan!” It seemed to overwhelm Stan.

  I just ached all over. I rummaged in my purse for a small bottle of Tylenol, and poured two out in my palm. At Stan’s gesture, the young vampire brought me a glass of water, and I said, “Thank you,” to his surprise.

  “Thank you for your efforts,” Stan said quite abruptly, as if he’d suddenly recalled his manners. “You have done the job we hired you to do, and more. Thanks to you we discovered and freed Farrell in time, and I’m sorry you sustained so much damage in the process.”

  That sounded mighty like dismissal.

  “Excuse me,” I said, sliding forward in the chair. Bill made a sudden movement behind me, but I disregarded him.