Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set
Page 57
“Bill was summoned to Mississippi,” Eric told me, “by a vampire—a female—he’d known many years ago. I don’t know if you’ve realized that vampires almost never mate with other vampires, for any longer than a rare one-night affair. We don’t do this because it gives us power over each other forever, the mating and sharing of blood. This vampire . . .”
“Her name,” I said.
“Lorena,” he said reluctantly. Or maybe he wanted to tell me all along, and the reluctance was just for show. Who the heck knows, with a vampire.
He waited to see if I would speak, but I did not.
“She was in Mississippi. I am not sure if she regularly lives there, or if she went there to ensnare Bill. She had been living in Seattle for years, I know, because she and Bill lived there together for many years.”
I had wondered why he’d picked Seattle as his fictitious destination. He hadn’t just plucked it out of the air.
“But whatever her intention in asking him to meet her there . . . what excuse she gave him for not coming here . . . maybe he was just being careful of you . . .”
I wanted to die at that moment. I took a deep breath and looked down at our joined hands. I was too humiliated to look in Eric’s eyes.
“He was—he became—instantly enthralled with her, all over again. After a few nights, he called Pam to say that he was coming home early without telling you, so he could arrange your future care before he saw you again.”
“Future care?” I sounded like a crow.
“Bill wanted to make a financial arrangement for you.”
The shock of it made me blanch. “Pension me off,” I said numbly. No matter how well he had meant, Bill could not have offered me any greater offense. When he’d been in my life, it had never occurred to him to ask me how my finances were faring—though he could hardly wait to help his newly discovered descendants, the Bellefleurs.
But when he was going to be out of my life, and felt guilty for leaving pitiful, pitiable me—then he started worrying.
“He wanted . . .” Eric began, then stopped and looked closely at my face. “Well, leave that for now. I would not have told you any of this, if Pam hadn’t interfered. I would have sent you off in ignorance, because then it wouldn’t have been words from my mouth that hurt you so badly. And I would not have had to plead with you, as I’m going to plead.”
I made myself listen. I gripped Eric’s hand as if it were a lifeline.
“What I’m going to do—and you have to understand, Sookie, my hide depends on this, too . . .”
I looked him straight in the face, and he saw the rush of my surprise.
“Yes, my job, and maybe my life, too, Sookie—not just yours, and Bill’s. I’m sending you a contact tomorrow. He lives in Shreveport, but he has a second apartment in Jackson. He has friends among the supernatural community there, the vampires, shifters, and Weres. Through him you can meet some of them, and their human employees.”
I was not completely in my head right now, but I felt like I’d understand all this when I played it back. So I nodded. His fingers stroked mine, over and over.
“This man is a Were,” Eric said carelessly, “so he is scum. But he is more reliable than some others, and he owes me a big personal favor.”
I absorbed that, nodded again. Eric’s long fingers seemed almost warm.
“He’ll take you out and about in the vampire community in Jackson, and you can pick brains there among human employees. I know it’s a long shot, but if there’s something to discover, if Russell Edgington did abduct Bill, you may pick up a hint. The man who tried to abduct you was from Jackson, going by the bills in his car, and he was a Were, as the wolf’s head on his vest indicates. I don’t know why they came after you. But I suspect it means Bill is alive, and they wanted to grab you to use as leverage over him.”
“Then I guess they should have abducted Lorena,” I said.
Eric’s eyes widened in appreciation.
“Maybe they already have her,” he said. “But maybe Bill has realized it is Lorena who betrayed him. He wouldn’t have been taken if she hadn’t revealed the secret he had told her.”
I mulled that over, nodded yet again.
“Another puzzle is why she happened to be there at all,” Eric said. “I think I would have known if she’d been a regular member of the Mississippi group. But I’ll be thinking about that in my spare time.” From his grim face, Eric had already put in considerable brain time on that question. “If this plan doesn’t work within about three days, Sookie, we may have to kidnap one of the Mississippi vampires in return. This would almost certainly lead to a war, and a war—even with Mississippi—would be costly in lives and money. And in the end, they would kill Bill anyway.”
Okay, the weight of the world was resting on my shoulders. Thanks, Eric. I needed more responsibility and pressure.
“But know this: If they have Bill—if he is still alive—we will get him back. And you will be together again, if that’s what you want.”
Big if.
“To answer your question: I am your friend, and that will last as long as I can be your friend without jeopardizing my own life. Or the future of my area.”
Well, that laid it on the line. I appreciated his honesty. “As long as it’s convenient for you, you mean,” I said calmly, which was both unfair and inaccurate. However, I thought it was odd that my characterization of his attitude actually seemed to bother him. “Let me ask you something, Eric.”
He raised his eyebrows to tell me he was waiting. His hands traveled up and down my arms, absently, as if he wasn’t thinking of what he was doing. The movement reminded me of a man warming his hands at a fire.
“If I’m understanding you, Bill was working on a project for the . . .” I felt a wild bubble of laughter rising, and I ruthlessly suppressed it. “For the queen of Louisiana,” I finished. “But you didn’t know about it. Is this right?”
Eric stared at me for a long moment, while he thought about what to tell me. “She told me she had work for Bill to do,” he said. “But not what it was, or why he had to be the one to do it, or when it would be complete.”
That would miff almost any leader, having his underling co-opted like that. Especially if the leader was kept in ignorance. “So, why isn’t this queen looking for Bill?” I asked, keeping my voice carefully neutral.
“She doesn’t know he’s gone.”
“Why is that?”
“We haven’t told her.”
Sooner or later he’d quit answering. “Why not?”
“She would punish us.”
“Why?” I was beginning to sound like a two-year-old.
“For letting something happen to Bill, when he was doing a special project for her.”
“What would that punishment be?”
“Oh, with her it’s difficult to tell.” He gave a choked laugh. “Something very unpleasant.”
Eric was even closer to me, his face almost touching my hair. He was inhaling, very delicately. Vampires rely on smell, and hearing, much more than sight, though their eyesight is extremely accurate. Eric had had my blood, so he could tell more about my emotions than a vampire who hadn’t. All bloodsuckers are students of the human emotional system, since the most successful predators know the habits of their prey.
Eric actually rubbed his cheek against mine. He was like a cat in his enjoyment of contact.
“Eric.” He’d given me more information than he knew.
“Mmm?”
“Really, what will the queen do to you if you can’t produce Bill on the date her project is due?”
My question got the desired result. Eric pulled away from me and looked down at me with eyes bluer than mine and harder than mine and colder than the Arctic waste.
“Sookie, you really don’t want to know,” he said. “Producing his work would be good enough. Bill’s actual presence would be a bonus.”
I returned his look with eyes almost as cold as his. “And what will I get in
return for doing this for you?” I asked.
Eric managed to look both surprised and pleased. “If Pam hadn’t hinted to you about Bill, his safe return would have been enough and you would have jumped at the chance to help,” Eric reminded me.
“But now I know about Lorena.”
“And knowing, do you agree to do this for us?”
“Yes, on one condition.”
Eric looked wary. “What would that be?” he asked.
“If something happens to me, I want you to take her out.”
He gaped at me for at least a whole second before he roared with laughter. “I would have to pay a huge fine,” he said when he’d quit chortling. “And I’d have to accomplish it first. That’s easier said than done. She’s three hundred years old.”
“You’ve told me that what will happen to you if all this comes unraveled would be pretty horrible,” I reminded him.
“True.”
“You’ve told me you desperately need me to do this for you.”
“True.”
“That’s what I ask in return.”
“You might make a decent vampire, Sookie,” Eric said finally. “All right. Done. If anything happens to you, she’ll never fuck Bill again.”
“Oh, it’s not just that.”
“No?” Eric looked very skeptical, as well he might.
“It’s because she betrayed him.”
Eric’s hard blue eyes met mine. “Tell me this, Sookie: Would you ask this of me if she were a human?” His wide, thin-lipped mouth, most often amused, was in a serious straight line.
“If she were a human, I’d take care of it myself,” I said, and stood to show him to the door.
After Eric had driven away, I leaned against the door and laid my cheek against the wood. Did I mean what I’d told him? I’d long wondered if I were really a civilized person, though I kept striving to be one. I knew that at the moment I’d said I would take care of Lorena myself, I had meant it. There was something pretty savage inside me, and I’d always controlled it. My grandmother had not raised me to be a murderess.
As I plodded down the hall to my bedroom, I realized that my temper had been showing more and more lately. Ever since I’d gotten to know the vampires.
I couldn’t figure out why that should be. They exerted tremendous control over themselves. Why should mine be slipping?
But that was enough introspection for one night.
I had to think about tomorrow.
Chapter Four
SINCE IT SEEMED I was going out of town, there was laundry to be done, and stuff in the refrigerator that needed throwing away. I wasn’t particularly sleepy after spending so long in bed the preceding day and night, so I got out my suitcase, opened it, and tossed some clothes into the washer out on the freezing back porch. I didn’t want to think about my own character any longer. I had plenty of other items to mull over.
Eric had certainly adopted a shotgun approach to bending me to his will. He’d bombarded me with many reasons to do what he wanted: intimidation, threat, seduction, an appeal for Bill’s return, an appeal for his (and Pam’s, and Chow’s) life and/or well-being—to say nothing of my own health. “I might have to torture you, but I want to have sex with you; I need Bill, but I’m furious with him because he deceived me; I have to keep peace with Russell Edgington, but I have to get Bill back from him; Bill is my serf, but he’s secretly working more for my boss.”
Darn vampires. You can see why I’m glad their glamour doesn’t affect me. It’s one of the few positives my mind-reading ability has yielded me. Unfortunately, humans with psychic glitches are very attractive to the undead.
I certainly could not have foreseen any of this when I’d become attached to Bill. Bill had become almost as necessary to me as water; and not entirely because of my deep feelings for him, or my physical pleasure in his lovemaking. Bill was the only insurance I had against being annexed by another vampire, against my will.
After I’d run a couple of loads through the washer and dryer and folded the clothes, I felt much more relaxed. I was almost packed, and I’d put in a couple of romances and a mystery in case I got a little time to read. I am self-educated from genre books.
I stretched and yawned. There was a certain peace of mind to be found in having a plan, and my uneasy sleep of the past day and night had not refreshed me as much as I thought. I might be able to fall asleep easily.
Even without help from the vampires, I could maybe find Bill, I thought, as I brushed my teeth and climbed into bed. But breaking him out of whatever prison he was in and making a successful escape, that was another question. And then I’d have to decide what to do about our relationship.
I woke up at about four in the morning with an odd feeling there was an idea just waiting to be acknowledged. I’d had a thought at some point during the night; it was the kind of idea that you just know has been bubbling in your brain, waiting to boil over.
Sure enough, after a minute the idea resurfaced. What if Bill had not been abducted, but had defected? What if he’d become so enamored or addicted to Lorena that he’d decided to leave the Louisiana vampires and join with the Mississippi group? Immediately, I had doubts that that had been Bill’s plan; it would be a very elaborate one, with the leakage of informants to Eric concerning Bill’s abduction, the confirmed presence of Lorena in Mississippi. Surely there’d be a less dramatic, and simpler, way to arrange his disappearance.
I wondered if Eric, Chow, and Pam were even now searching Bill’s house, which lay across the cemetery from mine. They weren’t going to find what they were looking for. Maybe they’d come back here. They wouldn’t have to get Bill back at all, if they could find the computer files the queen wanted so badly. I fell to sleep out of sheer exhaustion, thinking I heard Chow laugh outside.
Even the knowledge of Bill’s betrayal did not stop me from searching for him in my dreams. I must have rolled over three times, reaching out to see if he’d slid into bed with me, as he often did. And every time, the other side of the bed was empty and cold.
However, that was better than finding Eric there instead.
I was up and showering at first light, and I’d made a pot of coffee before the knock at the front door came.
“Who is it?” I stood to one side of the door as I asked.
“Eric sent me,” a gruff voice said.
I opened the door and looked up. And looked up some more.
He was huge. His eyes were green. His tousled hair was curly and thick and black as pitch. His brain buzzed and pulsed with energy; kind of a red effect. Werewolf.
“Come on in. You want some coffee?”
Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t what he was seeing. “You bet, chere. You got some eggs? Some sausage?”
“Sure.” I led him to the kitchen. “I’m Sookie Stackhouse,” I said, over my shoulder. I bent over to get the eggs out of the refrigerator. “You?”
“Alcide,” he said, pronouncing it Al-see, with the d barely sounded. “Alcide Herveaux.”
He watched me steadily while I lifted out the skillet—my grandmother’s old, blackened iron skillet. She’d gotten it when she got married, and fired it, like any woman worth her salt would do. Now it was perfectly seasoned. I turned the gas eye on at the stove. I cooked the sausage first (for the grease), plopped it on a paper towel on a plate and stuck it in the oven to keep warm. After asking Alcide how he wanted the eggs, I scrambled them and cooked them quickly, sliding them onto the warm plate. He opened the right drawer for the silverware on the first try, and poured himself some juice and coffee after I silently pointed out which cabinet contained the cups. He refilled my mug while he was at it.
He ate neatly. And he ate everything.
I plunged my hands into the hot, soapy water to clean the few dishes. I washed the skillet last, dried it, and rubbed some Crisco into the blackness, taking occasional glances at my guest. The kitchen smelled comfortably of breakfast and soapy water. It was a peculiarly peaceful moment.
This was the way life was supposed to be, for normal people. It was morning, time to get up and work, time for a woman to cook breakfast for a man, if he had to go out and earn. This big rough man was eating real food. He almost certainly had a pickup truck sitting out in front of my house.
Of course, he was a werewolf. But a Were could live a more close-to-human life than a vampire.
On the other hand, what I didn’t know about Weres could fill a book.
He finished, put his plate in the water in the sink, and washed and dried it himself while I wiped the table. It was as smooth as if we’d choreographed it. He disappeared into the bathroom for a minute while I ran over my mental list of things that had to be done before I left. I needed to talk to Sam, that was the main thing. I’d called my brother the night before to tell him I’d be gone for a few days. Liz had been at Jason’s, so he hadn’t really thought a lot about my departure. He’d agreed to pick up my mail and my papers for me.
Alcide came to sit opposite me at the table. I was trying to think about how we should talk about our joint task; I was trying to anticipate any sore paws I might tread on. Maybe he was worrying about the same things. I can’t read the minds of shape-shifters or werewolves with any consistency; they’re supernatural creatures. I can reliably interpret moods, and pick up on the occasional clear idea. So the humans-with-a-difference are much less opaque to me than the vampires. Though I understand there’s a contingent of shape-shifters and Weres who wants to change things, the fact of their existence still remains a secret. Until they see how publicity works out for the vampires, the supernaturals of the two-natured variety are ferocious about their privacy.
Werewolves are the tough guys of the shape-shifting world. They’re shape-shifters by definition, but they’re the only ones who have their own separate society, and they will not allow anyone else to be called “Were” in their hearing. Alcide Herveaux looked plenty tough. He was big as a boulder, with biceps that I could do pull-ups on. He would have to shave a second time if he planned on going out in the evening. He would fit right in on a construction site or a wharf.