Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (65 page)

“No,” I said, in the most definite voice I could summon. “No.”

“I will protect you from Bill.”

“You’re the one that’s gonna need protection!” When I reflected on that sentence, I was not proud of it.

“You think Bill is stronger than me?”

“I am not having this conversation.” Then I proceeded to have it. “Eric, I appreciate your offering to help me, and I appreciate your willingness to come to an awful place like this.”

“Believe me, Sookie, this little gathering of trash is nothing, nothing, compared to some of the places I have been.”

And I believed him utterly. “Okay, but it’s awful to me. Now, I realize that I should’ve known this would, ah, rouse your expectations, but you know I did not come out here tonight to have sex with anyone. Bill is my boyfriend.” Though the words
boyfriend
and
Bill
sounded ludicrous in the same sentence, “boyfriend” was Bill’s function in my world, anyway.

“I am glad to hear it,” said a cool, familiar voice. “This scene would make me wonder, otherwise.”

Oh, great.

Eric rose up off of me, and I scrambled off the hood of the car and stumbled in the direction of Bill’s voice.

“Sookie,” he said, when I drew near, “it’s getting to where I just can’t let you go anywhere alone.”

As far as I could tell in the poor lighting, he didn’t look very glad to see me. But I couldn’t blame him for that. “I sure made a big mistake,” I said, from the bottom of my heart. I hugged him.

“You smell like Eric,” he said into my hair. Well, hell, I was forever smelling like other men to Bill. I felt a flood of misery and shame, and I realized things were about to happen.

But what happened was not what I expected.

Andy Bellefleur stepped out of the bushes with a gun in his hand. His clothes looked torn and stained, and the gun looked huge.

“Sookie, step away from the vampire,” he said.

“No.” I wrapped myself around Bill. I didn’t know if I was protecting him or he was protecting me. But if Andy wanted us separated, I wanted us joined.

There was a sudden surge of voices on the porch of the cabin. Someone clearly had been looking out of the window—I had kind of wondered if Eric had made that up—because, though no voices had been raised, the showdown in the clearing had attracted the attention of the revelers inside. While Eric and I had been in the yard, the orgy had progressed. Tom Hardaway was naked, and Jan, too. Eggs Tallie looked drunker.

“You smell like Eric,” Bill repeated, in a hissing voice.

I reared back from him, completely forgetting about Andy and his gun. And I lost my temper.

This is a rare thing, but not as rare as it used to be. It was kind of exhilarating. “Yeah, uh-huh, and I can’t even tell what you smell like! For all I know you’ve been with six women! Hardly fair, is it?”

Bill gaped at me, stunned. Behind me, Eric started laughing. The crowd on the sundeck was silently enthralled. Andy didn’t think we should all be ignoring the man with the gun.

“Stand together in a group,” he bellowed. Andy had had a lot to drink.

Eric shrugged. “Have you ever dealt with vampires, Bellefleur?” he asked.

“No,” Andy said. “But I can shoot you dead. I have silver bullets.”

“That’s—” I started to say, but Bill’s hand covered my mouth. Silver bullets were only definitely fatal to werewolves, but vampires also had a terrible reaction to silver, and a vampire hit in a vital place would certainly suffer.

Eric raised an eyebrow and sauntered over to the orgiasts on the deck. Bill took my hand, and we joined them. For once, I would have loved to know what Bill was thinking.

“Which one of you was it, or was it all of you?” Andy bellowed.

We all kept silent. I was standing by Tara, who was shivering in her red underwear. Tara was scared, no big surprise. I wondered if knowing Andy’s thoughts would help any, and I began to focus on him. Drunks don’t make for good reading, I can tell you, because they only think about stupid stuff, and their ideas are quite unreliable. Their memories are shaky, too. Andy didn’t have too many thoughts at the moment. He didn’t like anyone in the clearing, not even himself, and he was determined to get the truth out of someone.

“Sookie, come here,” he yelled.

“No,” Bill said very definitely.

“I have to have her right here beside me in thirty seconds, or I shoot—her!” Andy said, pointing his gun right at me.

“You will not live thirty seconds after, if you do,” Bill said.

I believed him. Evidently Andy did, too.

“I don’t care,” Andy said. “She’s not much loss to the world.”

Well, that made me mad all over again. My temper had begun to die down, but that made it flare up in a big way.

I yanked free from Bill’s hand and stomped down the steps to the yard. I wasn’t so blind with anger that I ignored the gun, though I was sorely tempted to grab Andy by his balls and squeeze. He’d still shoot me, but he’d hurt, too. However, that was as self-defeating as drinking was. Would the moment of satisfaction be worth it?

“Now, Sookie, you read the minds of those people and you tell me which one did it,” Andy ordered. He gripped the back of my neck with his big hands, like I was an untrained puppy, and swiveled me around to face the deck.

“What the hell do you think I was doing here, you stupid shit? Do you think this is the way I like to spend my time, with assholes like these?”

Andy shook me by my neck. I am very strong, and there was a good chance that I could break free from him and grab the gun, but it was not close enough to a sure thing to make me comfortable. I decided to wait for a minute. Bill was trying to tell me something with his face, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Eric was trying to cop a feel from Tara. Or Eggs. It was hard to tell.

A dog whined at the edge of the woods. I rolled my eyes in that direction, unable to turn my head. Well, great. Just great.

“That’s my collie,” I told Andy. “Dean, remember?” I could have used some human-shaped help, but since Sam had arrived on the scene in his collie persona, he’d have to stay that way or risk exposure.

“Yeah. What’s your dog doing out here?”

“I don’t know. Don’t shoot him, okay?”

“I’d never shoot a dog,” he said, sounding genuinely shocked.

“Oh, but me, it’s okay,” I said bitterly.

The collie padded over to where we were standing. I wondered what was on Sam’s mind. I wondered if he retained much human thinking while he was in his favorite form. I rolled my eyes toward the gun, and Sam/ Dean’s eyes followed mine, but how much comprehension was in there, I just couldn’t estimate.

The collie began to growl. His teeth were bared and he was glaring at the gun.

“Back up, dog,” Andy said, annoyed.

If I could just hold Andy still for a minute, the vampires could get him. I tried to work out all the moves in my mind. I’d have to grab his gun hand with both of my hands and force it up. But with Andy holding me out from him like this, that wasn’t going to be easy.

“No, sweetheart,” Bill said.

My eyes flashed over to him. I was considerably startled. Bill’s eyes moved from my face to behind Andy. I could take a hint.

“Oh, who is being held like a little cub?” inquired a voice behind Andy.

Oh, this was just
peachy.

“It is my messenger!” The maenad sauntered around Andy in a wide circle and came to stand to his right, a few feet before him. She was not between Andy and the group on the deck. She was clean tonight, and wearing nothing at all. I guessed she and Sam had been out in the woods making whoopee, before they heard the crowd. Her black hair fell in a tangled mass all the way to her hips. She didn’t seem cold. The rest of us (except the vampires) were definitely feeling the nip in the air. We’d come dressed for an orgy, not an outdoors party.

“Hello, messenger,” the maenad said to me. “I forgot to introduce myself last time, my canine friend reminds me. I am Callisto.”

“Miss Callisto,” I said, since I had no idea what to call her. I would have nodded, but Andy had hold of my neck. It was sure beginning to hurt.

“Who is this stalwart brave gripping you?” Callisto moved a little closer.

I had no idea what Andy looked like, but everyone on the deck was enthralled and terrified, Eric and Bill excepted. They were easing back, away from the humans. This wasn’t good.

“This is Andy Bellefleur,” I croaked. “He has a problem.”

I could tell from the way my skin crawled that the maenad had eased forward a little.

“You have never seen anything like me, have you?” she said to Andy.

“No,” Andy admitted. He sounded dazed.

“Am I beautiful?”

“Yes,” he said, without hesitation.

“Do I deserve tribute?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I love drunkenness, and you are very drunk,” Callisto said happily. “I love pleasures of the flesh, and these people are full of lust. This is my kind of place.”

“Oh, good,” Andy said uncertainly. “But one of these people is a murderer, and I need to know which.”

“Not just one,” I muttered. Reminded I was on the end of his arm, Andy shook me again. I was getting really tired of this.

The maenad had gotten close enough now to touch me. She gently stroked my face, and I smelled earth and wine on her fingers.

“You are not drunk,” she observed.

“No, ma’am.”

“And you have not had the pleasures of the flesh this evening.”

“Oh, just give me time,” I said.

She laughed. It was a high, whooping laugh. It went on and on.

Andy’s grip loosened, as he grew more and more disconcerted by the maenad’s nearness. I don’t know what the people on the deck thought they saw. But Andy knew he was seeing a creature of the night. He let go of me, quite suddenly.

“Come on up here, new girl,” called Mike Spencer. “Let’s have a look at you.”

I was on a heap on the ground by Dean, who was licking my face enthusiastically. From that point of view, I could see the maenad’s arm snake around Andy’s waist. Andy transferred his gun to his left hand so he could return the compliment.

“Now, what did you want to know?” she asked Andy. Her voice was calm and reasonable. She idly waved the long wand with the tuft on the end. It was called a thyrsis; I’d looked
maenad
up in the encyclopedia. Now I could die educated.

“One of those people killed a man named Lafayette, and I want to know which one,” Andy said with the belligerence of the drunk.

“Of course you do, my darling,” the maenad crooned. “Shall I find out for you?”

“Please,” he begged.

“All right.” She scanned the people, and crooked her finger at Eggs. Tara held on to his arm to try to keep him with her, but he lurched down the steps and over to the maenad, grinning foolishly all the while.

“Are you a girl?” Eggs asked.

“Not by any stretch of the imagination,” Callisto said. “You have had a lot of wine.” She touched him with the thyrsis.

“Oh, yeah,” he agreed. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked into Callisto’s eyes, and he shivered and shook. Her eyes were glowing. I looked at Bill, and saw he had his own eyes focused on the ground. Eric was looking at the hood of his car. Ignored by everyone, I began to crawl toward Bill.

This was a fine kettle of fish.

The dog paced beside me, nosing me anxiously. I felt he wanted me to move faster. I reached Bill’s legs and gripped them. I felt his hand on my hair. I was scared to make the large movement of rising to my feet.

Callisto wrapped her thin arms around Eggs and began to whisper to him. He nodded and whispered back. She kissed him, and he went rigid. When she left him to glide over to the deck, he stood absolutely still, staring into the woods.

She stopped by Eric, who was closer to the deck than we were. She looked him up and down, and smiled that terrifying smile again. Eric looked at her chest fixedly, careful not to meet her eyes. “Lovely,” she said, “just lovely. But not for me, you beautiful piece of dead meat.”

Then she was up amongst the people on the deck. She took a deep breath, inhaling the scents of drinking and sex. She sniffed as if she were following a trail, and then she swung to face Mike Spencer. His middle-aged body did not fare well in the chilly air, but Callisto seemed delighted with him.

“Oh,” she said as happily as though she’d just gotten a present, “you’re so proud! Are you a king? Are you a great soldier?”

“No,” Mike said. “I own a funeral home.” He didn’t sound too sure. “What are you, lady?”

“Have you ever seen anything like me before?”

“No,” he said, and all the others shook their heads.

“You don’t remember my first visit?”

“No, ma’am.”

“But you’ve made me an offering before.”

“I have? An offering?”

“Oh, yes, when you killed the little black man. The pretty one. He was a lesser child of mine, and a fitting tribute for me. I thank you for leaving him outside the drinking place; bars are my particular delight. Could you not find me in the woods?”

“Lady, we didn’t make no offering,” Tom Hardaway said, his dark skin all over goose pimples and his penis gone south.

“I saw you,” she said.

Everything fell silent then. The woods around the lake, always full of little noises and tiny movements, became still. I very carefully rose to my feet beside Bill.

“I love the violence of sex, I love the reek of drink,” she said dreamily. “I can run from miles away to be there for the end.”

The fear pouring out of their heads began to fill mine up, and run out. I covered my face with my hands. I threw up the strongest shields I could fashion, but I could still barely contain the terror. My back arched, and I bit my tongue to keep from making a sound. I could feel the movement as Bill turned to me, and then Eric was by his side and they were both mashing me between them. There is not a thing erotic about being pressed between two vampires under those circumstances. Their own urgent desire for my silence fed the fear, because what would frighten vampires? The dog pressed against our legs as if he offered us protection.