Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set

by Charlaine Harris

  Stan raised his light eyebrows at my temerity. “Yes? Your check will be mailed to your representative in Shreveport, as per our agreement. Please stay with us this evening as we celebrate Farrell’s return.”

  “Our agreement was that if what I discovered resulted in a human being found at fault, that human would not be punished by the vampires but would be turned over to the police. For the court system to deal with. Where is Hugo?”

  Stan’s eyes slid from my face to focus on Bill’s behind me. He seemed to be silently asking Bill why he couldn’t control his human better.

  “Hugo and Isabel are together,” said Stan cryptically.

  I so didn’t want to know what that meant. But I was honor-bound to see this through. “So you are not going to honor your agreement?” I said, knowing that was a real challenge to Stan.

  There should be an adage, proud as a vampire. They all are, and I’d pinked Stan in his pride. The implication that he was dishonorable enraged the vampire. I almost backed down, his face grew so scary. He really had nothing human left about him after a few seconds. His lips drew away from his teeth, his fangs extended, and his body hunched and seemed to elongate.

  After a moment he stood, and with a curt little jerk of his hand, indicated I should follow him. Bill helped me up, and we trailed after Stan as he walked deeper into the house. There must have been six bedrooms in the place, and all the doors to them were closed. From behind one door came the unmistakable sounds of sex. To my relief, we passed that door by. We went up the stairs, which was quite uncomfortable for me. Stan never looked back and never slowed down. He went up the stairs at exactly the same pace at which he walked. He stopped at a door that looked like all the others. He unlocked it. He stood aside and gestured to me to go in.

  That was something I didn’t want to do—oh, so much. But I had to. I stepped forward and looked in.

  Except for the dark blue wall-to-wall, the room was bare. Isabel was chained to the wall on one side of the room—with silver, of course. Hugo was on the other. He was chained, too. They were both awake, and they both looked at the doorway, naturally.

  Isabel nodded as if we’d met in the mall, though she was naked. I saw that her wrists and ankles were padded to prevent the silver from burning her, though the chains would still keep her weak.

  Hugo was naked, too. He could not take his eyes off Isabel. He barely glanced at me to see who I was before his gaze returned to her. I tried not to be embarrassed, because that seemed such a petty consideration; but I think it was the first time I’d seen another naked adult in my life, besides Bill.

  Stan said, “She cannot feed off him, though she is hungry. He cannot have sex with her, though he is addicted. This is their punishment, for months. What would happen to Hugo in human courts?”

  I considered. What had Hugo actually done that was indictable?

  He’d deceived the vampires in that he’d been in the Dallas nest under false pretenses. That is, he actually loved Isabel, but he’d betrayed her compadres. Hmmm. No law about that.

  “He bugged the dining room,” I said. That was illegal. At least, I thought it was.

  “How long in jail would he get for that?” Stan asked.

  Good question. Not much, was my guess. A human jury might feel bugging a vampire hangout was even justified. I sighed, sufficient answer for Stan.

  “What other time would Hugo serve?” he asked.

  “He got me to the Fellowship under false pretenses . . . not illegal. He . . . well, he . . .”

  “Exactly.”

  Hugo’s infatuated gaze never shifted from Isabel.

  Hugo had caused and abetted evil, just as surely as Godfrey had committed evil.

  “How long will you keep them there?” I asked.

  Stan shrugged. “Three or four months. We will feed Hugo, of course. Not Isabel.”

  “And then?”

  “We’ll unchain him first. He will get a day’s head start.”

  Bill’s hand clamped down on my wrist. He didn’t want me to ask any more questions.

  Isabel looked at me and nodded. This seemed fair to her, she was saying. “All right,” I said, holding my palms forward in the “Stop” position. “All right.” And I turned and made my way slowly and carefully down the stairs.

  I had lost some integrity, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what I could do differently. The more I tried to think about it, the more confused I got. I am not used to thinking through moral issues. Things are bad to do, or they aren’t.

  Well, there was a gray area. That’s where a few things fell, like sleeping with Bill though we weren’t married or telling Arlene her dress looked good, when in fact it made her look like hell. Actually, I couldn’t marry Bill. It wasn’t legal. But then, he hadn’t asked me.

  My thoughts wandered in a dithery circle around the miserable couple in the upstairs bedroom. To my amazement, I felt much sorrier for Isabel than for Hugo. Hugo, after all, was guilty of active evil. Isabel was only guilty of negligence.

  I had a lot of time to maunder on and on through similar dead-end thought patterns, since Bill was having a rip-roaring good time at the party. I’d only been to a mixed vampire and human party once or twice before, and it was a mixture that was still uneasy after two years of legally recognized vampirism. Open drinking—that is, bloodsucking—from humans was absolutely illegal, and I am here to tell you that in Dallas’s vampire headquarters, that law was strictly observed. From time to time, I saw a couple vanish for a while upstairs, but all the humans seemed to come back in good health. I know, because I counted and watched.

  Bill had mainstreamed for so many months that apparently it was a real treat for him to get together with other vampires. So he was deep in conversation with this vamp or that, reminiscing about Chicago in the twenties or investment opportunities in various vampire holdings around the world. I was so shaky physically that I was content to sit on a soft couch and watch, sipping from time to time at my Screwdriver. The bartender was a pleasant young man, and we talked bars for a little while. I should have been enjoying my break from waiting tables at Merlotte’s, but I would gladly have dressed in my uniform and taken orders. I wasn’t used to big changes in my routine.

  Then a woman maybe a little younger than me plopped down on the couch beside me. Turned out she was dating the vampire who acted as sergeant at arms, Joseph Velasquez, who’d gone to the Fellowship Center with Bill the night before. Her name was Trudi Pfeiffer. Trudi had hair done in deep red spikes, a pierced nose and tongue, and macabre makeup, including black lipstick. She told me proudly its color was called Grave Rot. Her jeans were so low I wondered how she got up and down in them. Maybe she wore them so low-cut to show off her navel ring. Her knit top was cropped very short. The outfit I’d worn the night the maenad had gotten me paled in comparison. So, there was lots of Trudi to see.

  When you talked to her, she wasn’t as bizarre as her appearance led you to believe. Trudi was a college student. I discovered, through absolutely legitimate listening, that she believed herself to be waving the red flag at the bull, by dating Joseph. The bull was her parents, I gathered.

  “They would even rather I dated someone black,” she told me proudly.

  I tried to look appropriately impressed. “They really hate the dead scene, huh?”

  “Oh, do they ever.” She nodded several times and waved her black fingernails extravagantly. She was drinking Dos Equis. “My mom always says, ‘Can’t you date someone alive?’ ” We both laughed.

  “So, how are you and Bill?” She waggled her eyebrows up and down to indicate how significant the question was.

  “You mean . . . ?”

  “How’s he in bed? Joseph is un-fucking-believable.”

  I can’t say I was surprised, but I was dismayed. I cast around in my mind for a minute. “I’m glad for you,” I finally said. If she’d been my good friend Arlene, I might have winked and smiled, but I wasn’t about to discuss my sex life with a total stran
ger, and I really didn’t want to know about her and Joseph.

  Trudi lurched up to get another beer, and remained in conversation with the bartender. I shut my eyes in relief and weariness, and felt the couch depress beside me. I cut my gaze to the right to see what new companion I had. Eric. Oh, great.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “Better than I look.” That wasn’t true.

  “You’ve seen Hugo and Isabel?”

  “Yes.” I looked at my hands folded in my lap.

  “Appropriate, don’t you think?”

  I thought that Eric was trying to provoke me.

  “In a way, yes,” I said. “Assuming Stan sticks to his word.”

  “You didn’t say that to him, I hope.” But Eric looked only amused.

  “No, I didn’t. Not in so many words. You’re all so damn proud.”

  He looked surprised. “Yes, I guess that’s true.”

  “Did you just come to check up on me?”

  “To Dallas?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes.” He shrugged. He was wearing a knit shirt in a pretty tan-and-blue pattern, and the shrug made his shoulders look massive. “We are loaning you out for the first time. I wanted to see that things went smoothly without being here in my official capacity.”

  “Do you think Stan knows who you are?”

  He looked interested in the idea. “It’s not far-fetched,” he said at last. “He would probably have done the same thing in my place.”

  “Do you think from now on, you could just let me stay at home, and leave me and Bill alone?” I asked.

  “No. You are too useful,” he said. “Besides, I’m hoping that the more you see me, the more I’ll grow on you.”

  “Like a fungus?”

  He laughed, but his eyes were fixed on me in a way that meant business. Oh, hell.

  “You look especially luscious in that knit dress with nothing underneath,” Eric said. “If you left Bill and came to me of your own free will, he would accept that.”

  “But I’m not going to do any such thing,” I said, and then something caught at the edges of my consciousness.

  Eric started to say something else to me, but I put my hand across his mouth. I moved my head from side to side, trying to get the best reception; that’s the best way I can explain it.

  “Help me up,” I said.

  Without a word, Eric stood and gently pulled me to my feet. I could feel my eyebrows draw together.

  They were all around us. They circled the house.

  Their brains were wound up to fever pitch. If Trudi hadn’t been babbling earlier, I might have heard them as they crept up to circle the house.

  “Eric,” I said, trying to catch as many thoughts as I could, hearing a countdown, oh, God!

  “Hit the floor!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

  Every vampire obeyed.

  So when the Fellowship opened fire, it was the humans that died.

  Chapter 8

  A YARD AWAY, Trudi was cut down by a shotgun blast.

  The dyed dark red of her hair turned another shade of red and her open eyes stared at me forever. Chuck, the bartender, was only wounded, since the structure of the bar itself offered him some protection.

  Eric was lying on top of me. Given my sore condition, that was very painful, and I started to shove at him. Then I realized that if he were hit with bullets, he would most likely survive. But I wouldn’t. So I accepted his shelter gratefully for the horrible minutes of the first wave of the attack, when rifles and shotguns and handguns were fired into the suburban mansion over and over.

  Instinctively, I shut my eyes while the blasting lasted. Glass shattered, vampires roared, humans screamed. The noise battered at me, just as the tidal wave of scores of brains at high gear washed over me. When it began to taper off, I looked up into Eric’s eyes. Incredibly, he was excited. He smiled at me. “I knew I’d get on top of you somehow,” he said.

  “Are you trying to make me mad so I’ll forget how scared I am?”

  “No, I’m just opportunistic.”

  I wiggled, trying to get out from under him, and he said, “Oh, do that again. It felt great.”

  “Eric, that girl I was just talking to is about three feet away from us with part of her head missing.”

  “Sookie,” he said, suddenly serious, “I’ve been dead for a few hundred years. I am used to it. But she is not quite gone. There is a spark. Do you want me to bring her over?”

  I was shocked speechless. How could I make that decision?

  And while I thought about it, he said, “She is gone.” While I stared up at him, the silence became complete. The only noise in the house was the sobbing of Farrell’s wounded date, who was pressing both hands to his reddened thigh. From outside came the remote sounds of vehicles pulling out in a hurry up and down the quiet suburban street. The attack was over. I seemed to be having trouble breathing, and figuring out what I should do next. Surely there was something, some action, I should be taking?

  This was as close to war as I would ever come.

  The room was full of the survivors’ screams and the vampires’ howls of rage. Bits of stuffing from the couch and chairs floated in the air like snow. There was broken glass on everything and the heat of the night poured into the room. Several of the vampires were already up and giving chase, Joseph Velasquez among them, I noticed.

  “No excuse to linger,” Eric said with a mock sigh, and lifted off of me. He looked down at himself. “My shirts always get ruined when I am around you.”

  “Oh shit, Eric.” I got to my knees with clumsy haste. “You’re bleeding. You got hit. Bill! Bill!” My hair was slithering around my shoulders as I turned from side to side searching the room. The last time I’d noticed him he’d been talking to a black-haired vampire with a pronounced widow’s peak. She’d looked something like Snow White, to me. Now I half-stood to search the floor and I saw her sprawled close to a window. Something was protruding from her chest. The window had been hit by a shotgun blast, and some splinters had flown into the room. One of them had pierced her chest and killed her. Bill was not in sight, among the living or the dead.

  Eric pulled off his sodden shirt and looked down at his shoulder. “The bullet is right inside the wound, Sookie,” Eric said, through clenched teeth. “Suck it out.”

  “What?” I gaped at him.

  “If you don’t suck it out, it will heal inside my flesh. If you are so squeamish, go get a knife and cut.”

  “But I can’t do that.” My tiny party purse had a pocketknife inside, but I had no idea where I’d put it down, and I couldn’t gather my thoughts to search.

  He bared his teeth at me. “I took this bullet for you. You can get it out for me. You are no coward.”

  I forced myself to steady. I used his discarded shirt as a swab. The bleeding was slowing, and by peering into the torn flesh, I could just see the bullet. If I’d had long fingernails like Trudi, I’d have been able to get it out, but my fingers are short and blunt, and my nails are clipped close. I sighed in resignation.

  The phrase “biting the bullet” took on a whole new meaning as I bent to Eric’s shoulder.

  Eric gave a long moan as I sucked, and I felt the bullet pop into my mouth. He’d been right. The rug could hardly be stained any worse than it already was, so though it made me feel like a real heathen, I spat the bullet onto the floor along with most of the blood in my mouth. But some of it, inevitably, I swallowed. His shoulder was already healing. “This room reeks of blood,” he whispered.

  “Well, there,” I said, and looked up. “That was the grossest—”

  “Your lips are bloody.” He seized my face in both hands and kissed me.

  It’s hard not to respond when a master of the art of kissing is laying one on you. And I might have let myself enjoy it—well, enjoy it more—if I hadn’t been so worried about Bill; because let’s face it, brushes with death have that effect. You want to reaffirm the fact that you’re alive. Though vam
pires actually aren’t, it seems they are no more immune to that syndrome than humans, and Eric’s libido was up because of the blood in the room.

  But I was worried about Bill, and I was shocked by the violence, so after a long hot moment of forgetting the horror around me, I pulled away. Eric’s lips were bloody now. He licked them slowly. “Go look for Bill,” he said in a thick voice.

  I glanced at his shoulder again, to see the hole had begun to close. I picked up the bullet off the carpet, tacky as it was with blood, and wrapped it in a scrap from Eric’s shirt. It seemed like a good memento, at the time. I really don’t know what I was thinking. There were still the injured and dead on the floor in the room, but most of those who were still alive had help from other humans or from two vampires who hadn’t joined in the chase.

  Sirens were sounding in the distance.

  The beautiful front door was splintered and pitted. I stood to one side to open it, just in case there was a lone vigilante in the yard, but nothing happened. I peered around the doorframe.

  “Bill?” I called. “Are you okay?”

  Just then he sauntered back in the yard looking positively rosy.

  “Bill,” I said, feeling old and grim and gray. A dull horror, that really was just a deep disappointment, filled the pit of my stomach.

  He stopped in his tracks.

  “They fired at us and killed some of us,” he said. His fangs gleamed, and he was shiny with excitement.

  “You just killed somebody.”

  “To defend us.”

  “To get vengeance.”

  There was a clear difference between the two, in my mind, at that moment. He seemed nonplussed.

  “You didn’t even wait to see if I was okay,” I said. Once a vampire, always a vampire. Tigers can’t change their stripes. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I heard every warning anyone had ever fed me, in the warm drawl of home.

  I turned and went back into the house, walking obliviously through the bloodstains and chaos and mess as if I saw such things every day. Some of the things I saw I didn’t even register I’d seen, until the next week when my brain would suddenly throw out a picture for my viewing: maybe a closeup of a shattered skull, or a spouting artery. What was important to me at the moment was that I find my purse. I found that purse in the second place I looked. While Bill fussed with the wounded so he wouldn’t have to talk to me, I walked out of that house and got in that rental car and, despite my anxiety, I drove. Being at this house was worse than the fear of big city traffic. I pulled away from the house right before the police got there.