Dead Until Dark (24 page)

"That's what Sid Matt says. I just don't trust that stuff."

My brother didn't trust the most reliable scientific evidence that could be presented in a court. "You think Andy's going to fake the results?"

"No, Andy's okay. He's just doing his job. I just don't know about that DNA stuff."

"Moron," I said, and turned away to get another pitcher of beer for four guys from Ruston, college students on a big night out in the boonies. I could only hope Sid Matt Lancas-ter was good at persuasion.

I spoke to Jason once more before he left Merlotte's. "Can you help me?" he asked, turning up to me a
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face I hardly recognized. I was standing by his table, and his date for the night had gone to the ladies'

room.

My brother had never asked me for help before.

"How?"

"Can't you just read the minds of the men who come in here and find out if one of them did it?"

"That's not as easy as it sounds, Jason," I said slowly, thinking as I went along. "For one thing, the man would have to be thinking of his crime while he sat here, at the exact moment I listened in. For another thing, I can't always read clear thoughts. Some people, it's just like listening to a radio, I can hear every little thing. Other people, I just get a mass of feelings, not spelled out; it's like hearing someone talk in their sleep, see? You can hear they're talking, you can tell if they're upset or happy, but you can't hear the exact words. And then other times, I can hear a thought, but I can't trace it to its source if the room is crowded."

Jason was staring at me. It was the first time we had talked openly about my disability.

"How do you stop from going crazy?" he asked, shaking his head in amazement. I was about to try to explain putting up my guard, but Liz Barrett returned to the table, newly lipsticked and fluffed. I watched Jason resume his woman-hunting persona like shrugging on a heavy coat, and I regretted not getting to talk to him more when he was by himself.

That night, as the staff got ready to leave, Arlene asked me if I could baby-sit for her the next evening. It would be an off-day for both of us, and she wanted to go to Shreveport with Rene to see a movie and go out to eat.

"Sure!" I said. "I haven't kept the kids in a while." Suddenly Arlene's face froze. She half-turned to me, opened her mouth, thought the better of speaking, then thought again. "Will... ah ... will Bill be there?"

"Yes, we'd planned on watching a movie. I was going to stop by the video rental place, tomorrow morning. But I'll get something for the kids to watch instead." Abruptly, I caught her meaning. "Whoa. You mean you don't want to leave the kids with me if Bill's gonna be there?" I could feel my eyes narrow to slits and my voice drop down to its angry register.

"Sookie," she began helplessly, "honey, I love you. But you can't understand, you're not a mother. I can't leave my kids with a vampire. I just can't."

"No matter that I'm there, and I love your kids, too? No matter that Bill would never in a million years harm a child." I slung my purse over my shoulder and stalked out the back door, leaving Arlene standing there looking torn. By golly, she ought to be upset!

I was a little calmer by the time I turned onto the road to go home, but I was still riled up. I was worried about Jason, miffed at Arlene, and almost permanently frosted at Sam, who was pretending these days that I was a mere acquain-tance. I debated whether to just go home rather than going to Bill's; decided that was a good idea.

It was a measure of how much he worried about me that Bill was at my house about fifteen minutes after I should have been at his.

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"You didn't come, you didn't call," he said quietly when I answered the door. "I'm in a temper," I said.

"A bad one." Wisely he kept his distance.

"I apologize for making you worry," I said after a moment. "I won't do that again." I strode away from him, toward the . kitchen. He followed behind, or at least I presumed he did. Bill was so quiet you never knew until you looked.

He leaned against the door frame as I stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, wondering why I'd come in the room, feeling a rising tide of anger. I was getting pissed off all over again. I really wanted to throw something, damage something. This was not the way I'd been brought up, to give way to destructive impulses like that. I contained it, screwing my eyes shut, clenching my fists.

"I'm gonna dig a hole," I said, and I marched out the back door. I opened the door to the tool shed, removed the shovel, and stomped to the back of the yard. There was a patch back there where nothing ever grew, I don't know why. I sunk the shovel in, pushed it with my foot, came up with a hunk of soil. I kept on going. The pile of dirt grew as the hole deep-ened.

"I have excellent arm and shoulder muscles," I said, rest-ing against the shovel and panting. Bill was sitting in a lawn chair watching. He didn't say anything.

I resumed digging.

Finally, I had a really nice hole.

"Were you going to bury anything?" Bill asked, when he could tell I was done.

"No." I looked down at the cavity in the ground. "I'm going to plant a tree."

"What kind?"

"A live oak," I said off the top of my head.

"Where can you get one?"

"At the Garden Center. I'll go sometime this week."

"They take a long time to grow."

"What difference would that make to you?" I snapped. I put the shovel up in the shed, then leaned against it, suddenly exhausted.

Bill made as if to pick me up.

"I am a
grown woman," I
snarled. "I can walk into the house on my own."

"Have I done something to you?" Bill asked. There was very little loving in his voice, and I was brought up short. I had indulged myself enough.

"I apologize," I said. "Again."

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"What has made you so angry?"

I just couldn't tell him about Arlene.

"What do you do when you get mad, Bill?"

"I tear up a tree," he said. "Sometimes I hurt someone." Digging a hole didn't seem so bad. It had been sort of

constructive. But I was still wired—it was just more of a subdued buzz than a high-frequency whine. I cast around restlessly for something to affect.

Bill seemed adept at reading the symptoms. "Make love," he suggested. "Make love with me."

"I'm not in the right mood for love."

"Let me try to persuade you."

It turned out he could.

At least it wore off the excess energy of anger, but I still had a residue of sadness that sex couldn't cure. Arlene had hurt my feelings. I stared into space while Bill braided my hair, a pastime that he apparently found soothing.

Every now and then I felt like I was Bill's doll.

"Jason was in the bar tonight," I said.

"What did he want?"

Bill was too clever by far, sometimes, at reading people.

"He appealed to my mind-reading powers. He wanted me to scan the minds of the men who came into the bar until I found out who the murderer was."

"Except for a few dozen flaws, that's not a bad idea."

"You think?"

"Both your brother and I will be regarded with less suspi-cion if the murderer is in jail. And you'll be safe."

"That's true, but I don't know how to go about it. It would be hard, and painful, and boring, to wade through all that stuff trying to find a little bit of information, a flash of thought."

"Not any more painful or hard than being suspected of murder. You're just accustomed to keeping your gift locked up."

"Do you think so?" I began to turn to look at his face, but he held me still so he could finish braiding. I'd
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never seen keeping out of people's minds as selfish, but in this case I supposed it was. I would have to invade a lot of privacy. "A detective," I murmured, trying to see myself in a better light than just nosey.

"Sookie," Bill said, and something in his voice made me take notice. "Eric has told me to bring you to Shreveport again."

It took me a second to remember who Eric was. "Oh, the big Viking vampire?"

"The very old vampire," Bill said precisely.

"You mean, he ordered you to bring me there?" I didn't like the sound of this at all. I'd been sitting on the side of the bed, Bill behind me, and now I turned to look in his face. This time he didn't stop me. I stared at Bill, seeing something in his face that I'd never seen before. "You
have
to do this," I said, appalled. I could not imagine someone giving Bill an order. "But honey, I don't want to go see Eric." I could see that made no difference.

"What is he, the Godfather of vampires?" I asked, angry and incredulous. "Did he give you an offer you couldn't re-fuse?"

"He is older than me. More to the point, he is stronger."

"Nobody's stronger than you," I said stoutly.

"I wish you were right."

"So is he the head of Vampire Region Ten, or something?"

"Yes. Something like that."

Bill was always closemouthed about how vampires con-trolled their own affairs. That had been fine with me, until now.

"What does he want? What will happen if I don't go?"

Bill just sidestepped the first question. "He'll send some-one—several someones—to get you."

"Other vampires."

"Yes." Bill's eyes were opaque, shining with his differ-ence, brown and rich. I tried to think this through. I wasn't used to being ordered around. I wasn't used to no choices at all. It took my thick skull several minutes to evaluate the situation.

"So, you'd feel obliged to fight them?"

"Of course. You are mine."

There was that "mine" again. It seemed he really meant it. I sure felt like whining, but I knew it wouldn't do any good.

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"I guess I have to go," I said, trying not to sound bitter. "This is just plain old blackmail."

"Sookie, vampires
aren't like humans.
Eric is using the best means to achieve his goal, which is getting you to Shreveport. He didn't have to spell all this out; I understood it."

"Well, I understand it now, but I hate it. I'm between a rock and hard place! What does he want me for, anyway?" An obvious answer popped right into my mind, and I looked at Bill, horrified. "Oh, no, I won't do that!"

"He won't have sex with you or bite you, not without killing me." Bill's glowing face lost all vestiges of familiarity and became utterly alien.

"And he knows that," I said tentatively, "so there must be another reason he wants me in Shreveport."

"Yes," Bill agreed, "but I don't know what it is." "Well, if it doesn't have to do with my physical charms, or the unusual quality of my blood, it must have to do with my ... little quirk." "Your gift."

"Right," I said, sarcasm dripping from my voice. "My pre-cious gift." All the anger I thought I'd eased off my shoulders came back to sit like a four-hundred-pound gorilla. And I was scared to death. I wondered how Bill felt. I was even scared to ask that. "When?" I asked instead. "Tomorrow night."

"I guess this is the downside of nontraditional dating." I stared over Bill's shoulder at the pattern of the wallpaper my grandmother had chosen ten years ago. I promised myself that if I got through this, I would repaper. "I love you." His voice was just a whisper. This wasn't Bill's fault. "I love you, too," I said. I had to stop myself from begging, Please don't let the bad vampire hurt me, please don't let the vampire rape me. If I was be-tween a rock and a hard place, Bill was doubly so. I couldn't even begin to estimate the self-control he was employing. Unless he really was calm? Could a vampire face pain and this form of helplessness without some inner turmoil?

I searched his face, the familiar clear lines and white matte complexion, the dark arches of his brows and proud line of his nose. I observed that Bill's fangs were only slightly ex-tended, and rage and lust ran them full out.

"Tonight," he said. "Sookie..." His hands began urging me to lie beside him.

"What?"

"Tonight, I think, you should drink from me."

I made a face. "Ick! Don't you need all your strength for tomorrow night? I'm not hurt."

"How have you felt since you drank from me? Since I put my blood inside you?" I mulled it over. "Good," I admitted.

"Have you been sick?"

"No, but then I almost never am."

"Have you had more energy?"

"When you weren't taking it back!" I said tartly, but I could feel my lips curve up in a little smile.
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"Have you been stronger?"

"I—yes, I guess I have." I realized for the first time how extraordinary it was that I'd carried in a new chair, by my-self, the week before.

"Has it been easier to control your power?"

"Yes, I did notice that." I'd written it off to increased relaxation.

"If you drink from me tonight, tomorrow night you will have more resources."

"But you'll be weaker."

"If you don't take much, I'll recoup during the day when I sleep. And I may have to find someone else to drink from tomorrow night before we go."

My face filled with hurt. Suspecting he was doing it and knowing were sure two different things.

"Sookie, this is for us. No sex with anyone else, I promise you."

"You really think all this is necessary."

"Maybe necessary. At least helpful. And we need all the help we can get."

"Oh, all right. How do we do this?" I had only the haziest recollection of the night of the beating, and I was glad of it.

He looked at me quizzically. I had the impression he was amused, "Aren't you excited, Sookie?"

"At drinking blood from you? Excuse me, that's not my turn-on." He shook his head, as if that was beyond his under-standing. "I forget," he said simply. "I forget how it is to be otherwise. Would you prefer neck, wrist, groin?"