Mainstreaming, going public with the fact of their existence, had many benefits—but it also had its price. In this instance, the price was my service.
"What does Farrell look like?"
"Like a cowboy." Stan said this without a trace of humor. "He wears one of those string ties, jeans, and shirts with fake pearl snaps."
The Dallas vampires didn't seem to be into haute couture. Maybe I could have worn my barmaid outfit after all. "What color hair and eyes?"
"Brown hair going gray. Brown eyes. A big jaw. About … five feet, eleven inches." Stan was translating from some other method of measurement. "He would look about thirty-eight, to you," Stan said. "He's clean-shaven, and thin."
"Would you like me to take Bethany somewhere else? You got a smaller room, less crowded?" I tried to look agreeable, because it seemed like such a good idea.
Stan made a movement with his hand, almost too fast for me to detect, and in a second—literally—every vampire, except Stan himself and Bill, had left the kitchen. Without looking, I knew that Bill was standing against the wall, ready for anything. I took a deep breath. Time to start this venture.
"Bethany, how are you?" I said, making my voice gentle.
"How'd you know my name?" she asked, slumping down in her seat. It was a breakfast nook chair on wheels, and I rolled it out from the table and turned it to face the one I now settled in. Stan was still sitting at the head of the table, behind me, slightly to my left.
"I can tell lots of things about you," I said, trying to look warm and omniscient. I began picking thoughts out of the air, like apples from a laden tree. "You had a dog named Woof when you were little, and your mother makes the best coconut cake in the world. Your dad lost too much money at a card game one time, and you had to hock your VCR to help him pay up, so your mom wouldn't find out."
Her mouth was hanging open. As much as it was possible, she had forgotten the fact that she was in terrible danger. "That's amazing, you're as good as the psychic on TV, the one in the ads!"
"Well, Bethany, I'm not a psychic," I said, a little too sharply. "I'm a telepath, and what I do is read your thoughts, even some you maybe didn't know you had. I'm going to relax you, first, and then we're going to remember the evening you worked at the bar—not tonight, but five nights ago." I glanced back at Stan, who nodded.
"But I wasn't thinking about my mother's cake!" Bethany said, stuck on what had struck her.
I tried to suppress my sigh.
"You weren't aware of it, but you did. It slid across your mind when you looked at the palest vampire—Isabel—because her face was as white as the icing for the cake. And you thought of how much you missed your dog when you were thinking of how your parents would miss you."
I knew that was a mistake as soon as the words went out of my mouth, and sure enough, she began crying again, recalled to her present circumstances.
"So what are you here for?" she asked between sobs.
"I'm here to help you remember."
"But you said you're not psychic."
"And I'm not." Or was I? Sometimes I thought I had a streak mixed in with my other "gift," which was what the vampires thought it was. I had always thought of it as more of a curse, myself, until I'd met Bill. "Psychics can touch objects and get information about the wearers. Some psychics see visions of past or future events. Some psychics can communicate with the dead. I'm a telepath. I can read some peoples' thoughts. Supposedly, I can send thoughts, too, but I've never tried that." Now that I'd met another telepath, the attempt was an exciting possibility, but I stowed that idea away to explore at my leisure. I had to concentrate on the business at hand.
As I sat knee to knee with Bethany, I was making a series of decisions. I was new to the idea of using my "listening in" to some purpose. Most of my life had been spent struggling not to hear. Now, hearing was my job, and Bethany's life probably depended on it. Mine almost certainly did.
"Listen, Bethany, here's what we're going to do. You're going to remember that evening, and I'm going to go through it with you. In your mind."
"Will it hurt?"
"No, not a bit."
"And after that?"
"Why, you'll go."
"Go home?"
"Sure." With an amended memory that wouldn't include me, or this evening, courtesy of a vampire.
"They won't kill me?"
"No way."
"You promise?"
"I do." I managed to smile at her.
"Okay," she said, hesitantly. I moved her a little, so she couldn't see Stan over my shoulder. I had no idea what he was doing. But she didn't need to see that white face while I was trying to get her to relax.
"You're pretty," she said suddenly.
"Thanks, and back at you." At least, she might be pretty under better circumstances. Bethany had a mouth that was too small for her face, but that was a feature some men found attractive, since it looked like she was always puckered up. She had a great quantity of brown hair, thick and bushy, and a thin body with small breasts. Now that another woman was looking at her, Bethany was worried about her wrinkled clothes and stale makeup.
"You look fine," I said quietly, taking her hands into mine. "Now, we're just gonna hold hands here for a minute—I swear I'm not making a pass." She giggled, and her fingers relaxed a little more. Then I began my spiel.
This was a new wrinkle for me. Instead of trying to avoid using my telepathy, I'd been trying to develop it, with Bill's encouragement. The human staff at Fangtasia had acted as guinea pigs. I'd found out, almost by accident, that I could hypnotize people in a jiffy. It didn't put them under my spell or anything, but it let me into their minds with a frightening ease. When you can tell what really relaxes someone, by reading his or her mind, it's relatively easy to relax that person right into a trancelike state.
"What do you enjoy the most, Bethany?" I asked. "Do you get a massage every now and then? Or maybe you like getting your nails done?" I looked in Bethany's mind delicately. I selected the best channel for my purpose.
"You're getting your hair fixed," I said, keeping my voice soft and even, "by your favorite hairdresser … Jerry. He's combed it and combed it, there's not a tangle left. He's sectioned it off, so carefully, because your hair is so thick. It's gonna take him a long time to cut it, but he's looking forward to it, because your hair is healthy and shiny. Jerry's lifting a lock, and trimming it … the scissors give a little snick. A little bit of hair falls on the plastic cape and slides off to the floor. You feel his fingers in your hair again. Over and over, his fingers move in your hair, lift a lock, snip it. Sometimes he combs it again, to see if he got it even. It feels so good, just sitting and having someone work on your hair. There's no one else …" No, wait. I'd raised a hint of unease. "There's only a few people in the shop, and they're just as busy as Jerry. Someone's got a blow dryer going. You can barely hear voices murmuring in the next booth. His fingers run through, lift, snip, comb, over and over …"
I didn't know what a trained hypnotist would say about my technique, but it worked for me this time, at least. Bethany's brain was in a restful, fallow state, just waiting to be given a task. In the same even voice I said, "While he's working on your hair, we're going to walk through that night at work. He won't stop cutting, okay? Start with getting ready to go to the bar. Don't mind me, I'm just a puff of air right behind your shoulder. You might hear my voice, but it's coming from another booth in that beauty salon. You won't even be able to hear what I'm saying unless I use your name." I was informing Stan as well as reassuring Bethany. Then I submerged deeper into the girl's memory.
Bethany was looking at her apartment. It was very small, fairly neat, and she shared it with another Bat's Wing employee, who went by the name Desiree Dumas. Desiree Dumas, as seen by Bethany, looked exactly like her made-up name: a self-designated siren, a little too plump, a little too blond, and convinced of her own eroticism.
Taking the waitress through this experience was like watching a film, a real
ly dull one. Bethany's memory was almost too good. Skipping over the boring parts, like Bethany and Desiree's argument over the relative merits of two brands of mascara, what Bethany remembered was this: she had prepared for work as she always did, and she and Desiree had ridden together to their job. Desiree worked in the gift shop section of the Bat's Wing. Dressed in a red bustier and black boots, she hawked vampire souvenirs for big bucks. Wearing artificial fangs, she posed for pictures with tourists for a good tip. Bony and shy Bethany was a humble waitress; for a year she'd been waiting for an opening in the more congenial gift shop, where she wouldn't make the big tips but her base salary would be higher, and she could sit down when she wasn't busy. Bethany hadn't gotten there yet. Big grudge against Desiree, there, on Bethany's part; irrelevant, but I heard myself telling Stan about it as if it were crucial information.
I had never been this deep into someone else's mind. I was trying to weed as I went, but it wasn't working. Finally, I just let it all come. Bethany was completely relaxed, still getting that haircut. She had excellent visual recall, and she was as deeply engaged as I was in the evening she'd spent at work.
In her mind, Bethany served synthetic blood to only four vampires: a red-haired female; a short, stocky Hispanic female with eyes as black as pitch; a blond teenager with ancient tattoos; and a brown-haired man with a jutting jaw and a bolo tie. There! Farrell was embedded in Bethany's memory. I had to suppress my surprise and recognition, and try to steer Bethany with more authority.
"That's the one, Bethany," I whispered. "What do you remember about him?"
"Oh, him," Bethany said out loud, startling me so much I almost jumped out of my chair. In her mind, she turned to look at Farrell, thinking of him. He'd had two synthetic bloods, O positive, and he'd left her a tip.
There was a crease between Bethany's eyebrows as she became focused on my request. She was trying hard now, searching her memory. Bits of the evening began to compact, so she could reach the parts containing the memory of the brown-haired vampire. "He went back to the bathroom with the blond," she said, and I saw in her mind the image of the blond tattooed vampire, the very young-looking one. If I'd been an artist, I could have drawn him.
"Young vampire, maybe sixteen. Blond, tattoo," I murmured to Stan, and he looked surprised. I barely caught that, having so much to concentrate on—this was like trying to juggle—but I did think surprise was the flash of feeling on Stan's face. That was puzzling.
"Sure he was a vampire?" I asked Bethany.
"He drank the blood," she said flatly. "He had that pale skin. He gave me the creeps. Yes, I'm sure."
And he'd gone into the bathroom with Farrell. I was disturbed. The only reason a vampire would enter a bathroom was if there were a human inside he wanted to have sex with, or drink from, or (any vamp's favorite) do both simultaneously. Submerging myself again in Bethany's recollections, I watched her serve a few more customers, no one I recognized, though I got as good a look as I could at the other patrons. Most of them seemed like harmless tourist types. One of them, a dark-complexioned man with a bushy mustache, seemed familiar, so I tried to note his companions: a tall, thin man with shoulder-length blond hair and a squatty woman with one of the worst haircuts I'd ever seen.
I had some questions to ask Stan, but I wanted to finish up with Bethany first. "Did the cowboy-looking vampire come out again, Bethany?"
"No," she said after a perceptible pause. "I didn't see him again." I checked her carefully for blank spots in her mind; I could never replace what had been erased, but I might know if her memory had been tampered with. I found nothing. And she was trying to remember, I could tell. I could sense her straining to recall another glimpse of Farrell. I realized, from the sense of her straining, that I was losing control of Bethany's thoughts and memories.
"What about the young blond one? The one with the tattoos?"
Bethany pondered that. She was about half out of her trance now. "I didn't see him neither," she said. A name slid through her head.
"What's that?" I asked, keeping my voice very quiet and calm.
"Nothing! Nothing!" Bethany's eyes were wide open now. Her haircut was over: I'd lost her. My control was far from perfect.
She wanted to protect someone; she wanted him not to go through the same thing she was going through. But she couldn't stop herself from thinking the name, and I caught it. I couldn't quite understand why she thought this man would know something else, but she did. I knew no purpose would be served by letting her know I'd picked up on her secret, so I smiled at her and told Stan, without turning to look at him, "She can go. I've gotten everything."
I absorbed the look of relief on Bethany's face before I turned to look at Stan. I was sure he realized I had something up my sleeve, and I didn't want him to say anything. Who can tell what a vampire is thinking when the vamp is being guarded? But I had the distinct feeling Stan understood me.
He didn't speak out loud, but another vampire came in, a girl who'd been about Bethany's age when she went over. Stan had made a good choice. The girl leaned over Bethany, took her hand, smiled with fangs fully retracted, and said, "We'll take you home now, okay?"
"Oh, great!" Bethany's relief was written in neon on her forehead. "Oh, great," she said again, less certainly. "Ah, you really are going to my house? You …"
But the vampire had looked directly into Bethany's eyes and now she said, "You won't remember anything about today or this evening except the party."
"Party?" Bethany's voice sounded sluggish. Only mildly curious.
"You went to a party," the vampire said as she led Bethany from the room. "You went to a great party, and you met a cute guy there. You've been with him." She was still murmuring to Bethany as they went out. I hoped she was giving her a good memory.
"What?" Stan asked, when the door shut behind the two.
"Bethany thought the club bouncer would know more. She watched him go into the men's room right on the heels of your friend Farrell and the vampire you didn't know." What I didn't know, and hardly liked to ask Stan, was whether vampires ever had sex with each other. Sex and food were so tied together in the vampire life system that I couldn't imagine a vampire having sex with someone nonhuman, that is, someone he couldn't get blood from. Did vampires ever take blood from each other in noncrisis situations? I knew if a vampire's life was at stake (har de har) another vampire would donate blood to revive the damaged one, but I had never heard of another situation involving blood exchange. I hardly liked to ask Stan. Maybe I'd broach the subject with Bill, when we got out of this house.
"What you uncovered in her mind, was that Farrell was at the bar, and that he went into the toilet room with another vampire, a young male with long blond hair and many tattoos," Stan summarized. "The bouncer went into the toilet while the two were in there."
"Correct."
There was a sizeable pause while Stan made up his mind about what to do next. I waited, delighted not to hear one word of his inner debate. No flashes, no glimpses.
At least such momentary glimpses into a vampire mind were extremely rare. And I'd never had one from Bill; I hadn't known it was possible for some time after I'd been introduced to the vampiric world. So his company remained pure pleasure to me. It was possible, for the first time in my life, to have a normal relationship with a male. Of course, he wasn't a live male, but you couldn't have everything.
As if he knew I'd been thinking of him, I felt Bill's hand on my shoulder. I put my own over it, wishing I could get up and give him a full-length hug. Not a good idea in front of Stan. Might make him hungry.
"We don't know the vampire who went in with Farrell," Stan said, which seemed a little bit of an answer after all that thinking. Maybe he'd imagined giving me a longer explanation, but decided I wasn't smart enough to understand the answer. I would rather be underestimated than overrated any day. Besides, what real difference did it make? But I filed my question away under facts I needed to know.
"So, who's the bouncer at
the Bat's Wing?"
"A man called Re-Bar," Stan said. There was a trace of distaste in the way he said it. "He is a fang-banger."
So Re-Bar had his dream job. Working with vampires, working for vampires, and being around them every night. For someone who had gotten fascinated by the undead, Re-Bar had hit a lucky streak. "What could he do if a vampire got rowdy?" I asked, out of sheer curiosity.
"He was only there for the human drunks. We found that a vampire bouncer tended to overuse his strength."
I didn't want to think about that too much. "Is Re-Bar here?"
"It will take a short time," Stan said, without consulting anyone in his entourage. He almost certainly had some kind of mind contact with them. I'd never seen that before, and I was sure Eric couldn't approach Bill mentally. It must be Stan's special gift.
While we waited, Bill sat down in the chair next to me. He reached over and took my hand. I found it very comforting, and loved Bill for it. I kept my mind relaxed, trying to maintain energy for the questioning ahead. But I was beginning to frame some worries, very serious worries, about the situation of the vampires of Dallas. And I was concerned about the glimpse I'd had of the bar patrons, especially the man I'd thought I recognized.
"Oh, no," I said sharply, suddenly recalling where I'd seen him.
The vampires shot to full alert. "What, Sookie?" Bill asked.
Stan looked like he'd been carved from ice. His eyes actually glowed green, I wasn't just imagining it.
I stumbled all over my words in my haste to explain what I was thinking. "The priest," I told Bill. "The man that ran away at the airport, the one who tried to grab me. He was at the bar." The different clothes and setting had fooled me when I was deep into Bethany's memory, but now I was sure.
"I see," Bill said slowly. Bill seems to have almost total recall, and I could rely on him to have the man's face imprinted in his memory.
"I didn't think he was really a priest then, and now I know he was at the bar the night Farrell vanished," I said. "Dressed in regular clothes. Not, ah, the white collar and black shirt."
Living Dead in Dallas ss(v-2 Page 8
