Living Dead in Dallas (10 page)

“He was with a human, or at least had some conversation with him,” the red-haired vampire continued. She was wearing blue jeans and a green sweater that looked incredibly hot to me. But vamps don’t worry about the actual temperature. She looked at Stan, then Bill, who made a beckoning gesture to indicate he wanted whatever memories she had. “The human was dark-haired, and had a mustache, if I am recalling him correctly.” She made a gesture with her hands, an open-fingered sweep that seemed to say, “They’re all so much alike!”

After Rachel left, Bill asked if there was a computer in the house. Stan said there was, and looked at Bill with actual curiosity when Bill asked if he could use it for a moment, apologizing for not having his laptop. Stan nodded. Bill was about to leave the room when he hesitated and looked back at me. “Will you be all right, Sookie?” he asked.

“Sure.” I tried to sound confident.

Stan said, “She will be fine. There are more people for her to see.”

I nodded, and Bill left. I smiled at Stan, which is what I do when I’m strained. It’s not a happy smile, but it’s better than screaming.

“You and Bill have been together for how long?” Stan asked.

“For a few months.” The less Stan knew about us, the happier I’d be.

“You are content with him?”

“Yes.”

“You love him?” Stan sounded amused.

“None of your business,” I said, grinning. “Did you mention there were more people I needed to check?”

Following the same procedure I had with Bethany, I held a variety of hands and checked a boring bunch of brains. Bethany had definitely been the most observant person in the bar. These people—another barmaid, the human bartender, and a frequent patron (a fangbanger) who’d actually volunteered for this—had dull boring thoughts and limited powers of recollection. I did find out the bartender fenced stolen household goods on the side, and after the guy had left, I recommended to Stan that he get another employee behind the bar, or he’d be sucked into any police investigation. Stan seemed more impressed by this than I hoped he’d be. I didn’t want him to get too enamored of my services.

Bill returned as I finished up the last bar employee, and he looked just a little pleased, so I concluded he’d been successful. Bill had been spending most of his waking hours on the computer lately, which had not been too popular an idea with me.

“The tattooed vampire,” Bill said when Stan and I were the only two left in the room, “is named Godric, though for the past century he’s gone by Godfrey. He’s a renouncer.” I don’t know about Stan, but I was impressed. A few minutes on the computer, and Bill had done a neat piece of detective work.

Stan looked appalled, and I suppose I looked puzzled.

“He’s allied himself with radical humans. He plans to commit suicide,” Bill told me in a soft voice, since Stan
was wrapped in thought. “This Godfrey plans to meet the sun. His existence has turned sour on him.”

“So he’s gonna take someone with him?” Godfrey would expose Farrell along with himself?

“He has betrayed us to the Fellowship,” Stan said.

Betrayed
is a word that packs a lot of melodrama, but I didn’t dream of smirking when Stan said it. I’d heard of the Fellowship, though I’d never met anyone who claimed to actually belong to it. What the Klan was to African Americans, the Fellowship of the Sun was to vampires. It was the fastest-growing cult in America.

Once again, I was in deeper waters than I could swim in.

T
HERE WERE LOTS
of humans who hadn’t liked discovering they shared the planet with vampires. Despite the fact that they had always done so—without knowing it—once they believed that vampires were real, these people were bent on the vampires’ destruction. They weren’t any choosier about their methods of murder than a rogue vampire was about his.

Rogue vampires were the backward-looking undead; they hadn’t wanted to be made known to humans any more than the humans wanted to know about them. Rogues refused to drink the synthetic blood that was the mainstay of most vampires’ diets these days. Rogues believed the only future for vampires lay in a return to secrecy and invisibility. Rogue vampires would slaughter humans for the fun of it, now, because they actually welcomed a return of persecution of their own kind. Rogues saw it as a means of persuading mainstream vampires that secrecy was best for the future of their kind; and then, too, persecution was a form of population control.

Now I learned from Bill that there were vampires who
became afflicted with terrible remorse, or perhaps ennui, after a long life. These renouncers planned to “meet the sun,” the vampire term for committing suicide by staying out past daybreak.

Once again, my choice of boyfriend had led me down paths I never would have trod otherwise. I wouldn’t have needed to know any of this, would never have even dreamed of dating someone definitely deceased, if I hadn’t been born with the disability of telepathy. I was kind of a pariah to human guys. You can imagine how impossible it is to date someone whose mind you can read. When I met Bill, I began the happiest time of my life. But I’d undoubtedly encountered more trouble in the months I’d known him than I had in my entire twenty-five years previously. “So, you’re thinking Farrell is already dead?” I asked, forcing myself to focus on the current crisis. I hated to ask, but I needed to know.

“Maybe,” Stan said after a long pause.

“Possibly they’re keeping him somewhere,” said Bill. “You know how they invite the press to these . . . ceremonies.”

Stan stared into space for a long moment. Then he stood. “The same man was in the bar and at the airport,” he said, almost to himself. Stan, the geeky head vampire of Dallas, was pacing now, up and down the room. It was making me nuts, though saying so was out of the question. This was Stan’s house, and his “brother” was missing. But I’m not one for long, brooding silences. I was tired, and I wanted to go to bed.

“So,” I said, doing my best to sound brisk, “how’d they know I was going to be there?”

If there’s anything worse than having a vampire stare at you, it’s having two vampires stare at you.

“To know you were coming ahead of time . . . there is a traitor,” Stan said. The air in the room began to
tremble and crackle with the tension he was producing.

But I had a less dramatic idea. I picked up a notepad lying on the table and wrote, “MAYBE YOU’RE BUGGED.” They both glared at me as if I’d offered them a Big Mac. Vampires, who individually have incredible and various powers, are sometimes oblivious to the fact that humans have developed some powers of their own. The two men gave each other a look of speculation, but neither of them offered any practical suggestion.

Well, to heck with them. I’d only seen this done in movies, but I figured if someone had planted a bug in this room, they’d done it in a hurry and they’d been scared to death. So the bug would be close and not well hidden. I shrugged off the gray jacket and kicked off my shoes. Since I was a human and had no dignity to lose in Stan’s eyes, I dropped below the table and began crawling down its length, pushing the rolling chairs away as I went. For about the millionth time, I wished I’d worn slacks.

I’d gotten about two yards from Stan’s legs when I saw something odd. There was a dark bump adhering to the underside of the blond wood of the table. I looked at it as closely as I could without a flashlight. It was not old gum.

Having found the little mechanical device, I didn’t know what to do. I crawled out, somewhat dustier for the experience, and found myself right at Stan’s feet. He held out his hand and I took it reluctantly. Stan pulled gently, or it seemed gently, but suddenly I was on my feet facing him. He wasn’t very tall, and I looked more into his eyes than I really wanted. I held up my finger in front of my face to be sure he was paying attention. I pointed under the table.

Bill left the room in a flash. Stan’s face grew even whiter, and his eyes blazed. I looked anywhere but
directly at him. I didn’t want to be the sight filling his eyes while he digested the fact that someone had planted a bug in his audience chamber. He had indeed been betrayed, just not in the fashion he’d expected.

I cast around in my mind for something to do that would help. I beamed at Stan. Reaching up automatically to straighten my ponytail, I realized my hair was still in its roll on the back of my head, though considerably less neat. Fiddling with it gave me a good excuse to look down.

I was considerably relieved when Bill reappeared with Isabel and the dishwashing man, who was carrying a bowl of water. “I’m sorry, Stan,” Bill said. “I’m afraid Farrell is already dead, if you go by what we have discovered this evening. Sookie and I will return to Louisiana tomorrow, unless you need us further.” Isabel pointed to the table, and the man set the bowl down.

“You might as well,” Stan replied, in a voice as cold as ice. “Send me your bill. Your master, Eric, was quite adamant about that. I will have to meet him someday.” His tone indicated the meeting would not be pleasant for Eric.

Isabel said abruptly, “You stupid human! You’ve spilled my drink!” Bill reached past me to snatch the bug from under the table and drop it in the water, and Isabel, walking even more smoothly to keep the water from slopping over the sides of the bowl, left the room. Her companion remained behind.

That had been disposed of simply enough. And it was at least possible that whoever had been listening in had been fooled by that little bit of dialogue. We all relaxed, now that the bug was gone. Even Stan looked a little less frightening.

“Isabel says you have reason to think Farrell might have been abducted by the Fellowship,” the man said. “Maybe this young lady and I could go to the Fellowship
Center tomorrow, and try to find out if there’re plans for any kind of ceremony soon.”

Bill and Stan regarded him thoughtfully.

“That’s a good idea,” Stan said. “A couple would seem less noticeable.”

“Sookie?” Bill asked.

“Certainly none of you can go,” I said. “I think maybe we could at least get the layout of the place. If you think there’s really a chance Farrell’s being held there.” If I could find out more about the situation at the Fellowship Center, maybe I could keep the vampires from attacking. They sure weren’t going to go down to the police station to file a missing persons report to prod the police into searching the Center. No matter how much the Dallas vampires wanted to remain within the boundaries of human law so they could successfully reap the benefits of mainstreaming, I knew that if a Dallas vampire was being held captive in the Center, humans would die right, left, and sideways. I could maybe prevent that from happening, and locate the missing Farrell, too.

“If this tattooed vampire is a renouncer and plans to meet the sun, taking Farrell with him, and if this is being arranged through the Fellowship, then this pretend priest who tried to grab you at the airport must work for them. They know you now,” Bill pointed out. “You would have to wear your wig.” He smiled with gratification. The wig had been his idea.

A wig in this heat. Oh, hell. I tried not to look petulant. After all, it would be better to have an itchy head than to be identified as a woman who associated with vampires, while I was visiting a Fellowship of the Sun Center. “It would be better if there were another human with me,” I admitted, sorry as I was to involve anyone else in danger.

“This is Isabel’s current man,” Stan said. He was silent for a minute, and I guessed he was “beaming” at
her, or however he contacted his underlings.

Sure enough, Isabel glided in. It must be handy, being able to summon people like that. You wouldn’t need an intercom, or a telephone. I wondered how far away other vamps could be and still receive his message. I was kind of glad Bill couldn’t signal me without words, because I’d feel too much like his slave girl. Could Stan summon humans the way he called his vamps? Maybe I didn’t really want to know.

The man reacted to Isabel’s presence the way a bird dog does when he senses quail. Or maybe it was more like a hungry man who gets served a big steak, and then has to wait for grace. You could almost see his mouth water. I hoped I didn’t look like that when I was around Bill.

“Isabel, your man has volunteered to go with Sookie to the Fellowship of the Sun Center. Can he be convincing as a potential convert?”

“Yes, I think he can,” Isabel said, staring into the man’s eyes.

“Before you go—are there visitors this evening?”

“Yes, one, from California.”

“Where is he?”

“In the house.”

“Has he been in this room?” Naturally, Stan would love the bug-planter to be a vamp or human he didn’t know.

“Yes.”

“Bring him.”

A good five minutes later, Isabel returned with a tall blond vampire in tow. He must have been six foot four, or maybe even more. He was brawny, clean-shaven, and he had a mane of wheat-colored hair. I looked down at my feet immediately, just as I sensed Bill going immobile.

Isabel said, “This is Leif.”

“Leif,” Stan said smoothly, “welcome to my nest. This evening we have a problem here.”

I stared at my toes, wishing more than I’d ever wished anything that I could be completely alone with Bill for two minutes and find out what the hell was going on, because this vampire wasn’t any “Leif,” and he wasn’t from California.

It was Eric.

Bill’s hand came into my line of vision and closed around mine. He gave my fingers a very careful little squeeze, and I returned it. Bill slid his arm around me, and I leaned against him. I needed to relax, by golly.

“How may I help you?” Eric—no, Leif, for the moment—asked courteously.

“It seems that someone has entered this room and performed an act of spying.”

That seemed a nice way to put it. Stan wanted to keep the bugging a secret for right now, and in view of the fact that there surely was a traitor here, that was probably a great idea.

“I am a visitor to your nest, and I have no problem with you or any of yours.”

Leif’s calm and sincere denial was quite impressive, given that I knew for a fact that his whole presence was an imposture to further some unfathomable vampire purpose.

“Excuse me,” I said, sounding as frail and human as I possibly could.

Stan looked quite irritated at the interruption, but screw him.

“The, uh, item, would have had to be put in here earlier than today,” I said, trying to sound like I was sure Stan had already thought of this fact. “To get the details of our arrival in Dallas.”

Stan was staring at me with no expression whatsoever.

In for a penny, in for a pound. “And excuse me, but
I am really worn out. Could Bill take me back to the hotel now?”

“We will have Isabel take you back by yourself,” Stan said dismissively.

“No, sir.”

Behind the fake glasses, Stan’s pale eyebrows flew up. “No?” He sounded as though he’d never heard the word.

“By the terms of my contract, I don’t go anywhere without a vampire from my area. Bill is that vampire. I go nowhere without him, at night.”

Stan gave me another good long stare. I was glad I had found the bug and proved myself useful otherwise, or I wouldn’t last long in Stan’s bailiwick. “Go,” he said, and Bill and I didn’t waste any time. We couldn’t help Eric if Stan came to suspect him, and we might quite possibly give him away. I would be by far the more likely to do that by some word or gesture, with Stan watching me. Vampires have studied humans for centuries, in the way predators learn as much as they can about their prey.

Isabel came out with us, and we got back into her Lexus for the ride back to the Silent Shore Hotel. The streets of Dallas, though not empty, were at least much quieter than when we’d arrived at the nest hours earlier. I estimated it was less than two hours until dawn.

“Thank you,” I said politely when we pulled under the porte cochere of the hotel.

“My human will come to get you at three o’clock in the afternoon,” Isabel told me.

Repressing the urge to say, “Yes, ma’am!” and click my heels together, I just told her that would be fine. “What’s his name?” I asked.

“His name is Hugo Ayres,” she said.

“Okay.” I already knew that he was a quick man with an idea. I went into the lobby and waited for Bill. He
was only seconds behind me, and we went up in the elevator in silence.

“Do you have your key?” he asked me at the room door.

I had been half-asleep. “Where’s yours?” I asked, none too graciously.

“I’d just like to see you recover yours,” he said.

Suddenly I was in a better mood. “Maybe you’d like to find it,” I suggested.

A male vampire with a waist-length black mane strolled down the hall, his arm around a plump girl with a head of curly red hair. When they’d entered a room farther down the hall, Bill began searching for the key.

He found it pretty fast.

Once we’d gotten inside, Bill picked me up and kissed me at length. We needed to talk, since a lot had happened during this long night, but I wasn’t in the mood and he wasn’t, either.

The nice thing about skirts, I discovered, was that they just slide up, and if you were only wearing a thong underneath, it could vanish in a jiffy. The gray jacket was on the floor, the white shell was discarded, and my arms were locked around Bill’s neck before you could say, “Screw a vampire.”

Bill was leaning against the sitting room wall trying to open his slacks with me still wrapped around him when there was a knock at the door.

“Damn,” he whispered in my ear. “Go away,” he said, somewhat louder. I wriggled against him and his breath caught in his throat. He pulled the bobby pins and the Hairagami out of my hair to let it roll down my back.