Dead But Not Forgotten (8 page)

You're the smartest one,
Quinn thought.

“I really
am
sorry,” Frannie said quietly.

The guards all glanced over at her. The one across the aisle from Quinn seemed about to object, but then he settled down, perhaps deciding that he no longer cared, that conversation between brother and sister would not change the outcome.

“You didn't put me here,” Quinn said, his voice a low growl. “That bastard Teague did this.”

“Teague forced your hand,” Frannie agreed, “but you suggested this setup to protect Mama and me, and the baby.”

Quinn said nothing. He would never blame Frannie or his mother for the cruelty, greed, and savagery of other people. Faced with the threat of harm to his family, or the nightmare of his boy being enslaved to murderous combat like some ancient gladiatorial beast, he had made a different offer to Teague—Quinn would become the weapon they sought. They didn't have to wait twenty years for his son to be their tiger-warrior; he would serve them now, go anywhere and kill anyone as long as they abandoned any effort to take and use his son, and as long as they left his mother and sister alone.

They had kept him in a cell for more than another week, only lightly drugged and with the threat that if he attempted to escape, Frannie and his mother would die. As the days passed, he had realized that they were waiting for the full moon, thinking that he would be stronger then, and that he would be less able to control his own ferocity. On those counts, they had been correct.

Quinn glanced out the window of the plane. The sky had begun to darken as they hurtled toward the horizon, the clouds sifting away below them. Soon they would fly into nightfall and the moon would shine.

“I don't even know where you're taking me,” he said.

“A place where the people won't obey, and the tyrant who rules wants to set an example. The company is being paid very well for your services.”

Frannie had been brought along as a reminder of what would happen if he did not fulfill his promise. Teague's employers had not tried to recruit Quinn initially because they did not believe they could count on his cooperation even if he agreed, but that was before they had learned of the existence of his son. This assignment would be a test run. If he made one wrong move, disobeyed a single order, they would kill Frannie on the spot and begin anew the search for Tij and the baby. The guard in the row ahead of Frannie's had a massive tranquilizer gun—they would kill his sister but keep Quinn alive, drugged and enslaved.

“In the future,” Teague had said, “I don't think we'll need your sister to go along. But this first time, having her with us might help you focus.”

The future,
Quinn thought, jaw tight as he hung his head and clenched his fists.
I am their killer, forever.
He studied the curls of his sister's hair that stuck out beside her seat.

So be it,
he thought, sighing deeply.
Whatever it takes.

“John?” Frannie said quietly, turning again in her seat so she could see him.

The guards all glanced warily at her. The one across from Quinn kept watching, but the other two looked away.

“It's getting dark,” Frannie rasped. It sounded as if her voice were full of emotion. “Whatever they're going to have you do, it'll be soon.”

“I guess.”

“There's something I need to tell you.”

Quinn frowned. “I'm not going to die tonight, Fran. I'll be back. Tell me then.”

“It has to be now. There's a reason I haven't visited Mama in a while. A reason I haven't seen you in months. Something I've been dealing with.”

The guard across from Quinn glanced away, apparently sensing a moment of intimacy between brother and sister. It seemed he had decided to allow it.

“Go on,” he said.

“Her mind . . . You know how she gets,” Frannie said, an angry furrow on her brow. Her chest rose and fell and she gritted her teeth as she tried to keep that anger in. “I tried to visit her regularly, tried to lift her spirits, but sometimes she would barely know me. She'd be lost in some awful memory or just confused, and if I tried to touch her, she'd lash out.”

“I'm sorry,” Quinn said thoughtfully, studying her, wondering at the source of the anger he saw. “I know I should have visited more. It's been a complicated year.”

Her left hand gripped the side of her seat as she peered back at him. Her hair hung down, veiling part of her face, but her eyes glinted with dark light.

“You saw that she'd knocked out some of her teeth?” Frannie rasped, voice hitching, lowering her gaze.

Quinn frowned. They had told him that Mama had knocked out the rest of her teeth, but that she'd been missing many of them before that.

“Yes.”

“She started that because when she was lucid, when the madness and the growing dementia retreated, she would realize what she'd done.”

“What
had
she done?”

Frannie's upper lip curled back and she practically snarled the next sentence.

“Sometimes,” his sister said, “Mama would bite me.”

Quinn went cold. His breath caught in his chest. “How many times did this happen?”

Outside the plane, it had grown dark. The full moon shone brightly through the oval windows.

His sister glanced up at him with tiger's eyes.

“Enough,” she growled, as her teeth began to lengthen and sharpen and elegantly striped fur began to push slowly through her skin.

The thug in Quinn's row noticed first.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, raising his gun as his eyes went wide.

He aimed at Frannie, and that was his mistake—taking his focus off the man he was supposed to be guarding.

Quinn lunged across the aisle at superhuman speed, shattering his handcuffs as he slammed the gunman against the inner wall of the plane, gripped him with hands beginning to sprout their own fur, and broke his neck. In a death twitch, the man's finger pulled the trigger on his gun but the dart punched into the floor and lodged there.

By the time Quinn twisted around to go after the others, still only beginning to change, Frannie had killed the man with the cruel smile. She lifted her head—half human and half tiger, only able to achieve that partial transformation, like other bitten weres—and her muzzle was soaked with the gunman's blood.

The third man—the frightened one—threw his gun on the seat cushion and raised his hands in surrender, backing up the aisle toward the pilot's cabin.

“I'll do whatever you want,” he said, voice quavering. “Please, just don't—”

Brother and sister roared in unison and a jet of urine streamed down the man's leg, soaking his pants.

In the thrall of the full moon, Frannie had no control over her rage. She killed him there, in the aisle, blood soaking into the thin airplane carpeting.

Quinn halted his transformation and willed himself to revert to human. He felt the full moon's sway but had spent his life mastering it.

“Frannie,” he said.

She glanced up from the dead man, chunks of his flesh in her jaws, tiger eyes gleaming in the moonlight.

“Stay here,” Quinn said, moving past her, stepping over the dead man. “Do you hear me? Stay here while I go and talk to the pilot.”

He thought of Teague and Dr. Delisle and of the things they had done to his mother—the things they had threatened to do to his wife and son.

Just before he banged on the cockpit door, Quinn glanced back at Frannie. He had never wanted this for her, never wished this life upon her, and he knew that it had never been her desire. Yet he could not help feeling a deeper love for her now. They had always been brother and sister, but now they were a different kind of kin, connected not only by their own blood but by the moon, and the blood they had spilled.

“We're going back,” Quinn promised.

His sister, her lovely orange and black fur dappled with blood, purred contentedly and went back to her meal.

LEIGH PERRY

My friend Leigh Perry's favorite character is Diantha, the half-demon niece of the mostly demon lawyer Desmond Cataliades. In
After Dead
, I say that Mr. Cataliades drops in on Sookie just before Christmas every year. In this story, set while Sookie is pregnant with her third child, the lawyer's pre-Christmas visit reveals that things aren't merry in Sookie's household, and Mr. C tasks Diantha with finding out why.

—

“Maybehesanelf,” I said.

“More slowly, please.”

“Talkingordriving?”

“Both, I think.”

“Suresuresure. I mean, sure.”

My uncle, Desmond Cataliades, was in the backseat of his new black Lexus while I drove at a fraction of the speed I should have been going. I like working for Uncle Desmond, but he's got rules. One of them is for me to try to avoid getting more speeding tickets.

“Anyway, Santa Claus,” I said. “Maybe he's an elf. I read that story—‘The Night Before Christmas'—and it says he was a right jolly old elf.”

Uncle Desmond said, “Indeed?” which was what he said when he wasn't really listening. He's way polite. He says manners help him control his demon-ness, which is important because he's mostly demon. I'm only half demon, so I don't need to be that polite.

Even though he wasn't listening, I kept talking because driving that gorgeous hunk of car at the speed limit was putting me to sleep. “The thing is, I've seen an elf or two and they didn't look anything like Santa Claus. Their ears were funny looking, their hair looked like fur instead of hair, and they weren't fat. Plus they both had these pointy teeth that I thought were kinda hot, but they'd freak out any human kid who tried to sit in their laps.”

“Almost certainly.” He kept tapping away at his laptop, working even though it was Christmas Eve.

Not that demons really go in for celebrating the birth-of-Christ thing, but a lot of the people Uncle Desmond does business with do, so we non-human-American types take the time off and have our own parties. After all, who doesn't like getting presents?

I said, “I bet the guy who wrote that story never even saw an elf.”

“I suspect you're right, Diantha. Elves rarely leave survivors.”

“Besides, all the elves have gone back to Faery, and kids keep getting presents, so . . . he can't be an elf.”

“Well reasoned, my dear.”

“That lets out most of the rest of the fae, too—the really powerful ones are gone and the part-fae like Sookie don't have the juice to pull it off.”

“Indeed,” he said again.

“Maybe a vampire. He only comes out at night, and hanging a stocking or putting up a sign that says
Santa Stop Here
is kinda like an invitation into the house, and nothing hides bloodstains like a red suit. Those sugarplums dancing in the kids' heads? Vampire whammy power.”

“Mmmmm.”

“Of course, you almost never see a fat vampire, but hey, what would a vampire look like after gorging on sleeping kids all over the world? He'd get bloated, right? There's still the reindeer, but maybe they're were. Did you ever hear of a werereindeer?”

“I don't believe I have.”

“Shifter Sam could change into a reindeer.”

“I must remind you not to call Sookie's husband Shifter Sam. When one speaks rapidly, as you frequently do, that sounds uncomfortably like Shifty Sam, which Sookie would certainly take amiss.”

“Suresuresure.” I didn't do it on purpose. Sam didn't always like it when we came to visit, but he wasn't shifty. “Maybe Santa is a shifter like Sam—he could shift into something small like a cockroach to get into the houses and have other shifters around to turn into reindeer.” I liked the idea of a cockroach Santa but had to say, “Nah, a bug wouldn't be able to carry presents down the chimney, and the reindeer would need a talisman or something for flying. No, wait!” I snapped my fingers.

“Both hands on the wheel, my dear.”

“Suresuresure.” It wasn't like I didn't have fast reflexes, especially when we were going so slooooow. “What about a witch? A spell to teleport into the house, a magic hold-a-bunch-of-stuff bag for the toys, and either bespelled reindeer or an illusion. It would have to be a powerful witch, but it could happen.”

“It's within the realm of possibility.”

“But why would a witch have anything to do with Christmas? They've got their own holidays. And why give away all that stuff? Witches charge through the nose for every little spell.”

“When have you done business with a witch?”

Burningcrap, I'd finally gotten his full attention. “Not me, a friend of mine. A were I met. From Albany.”

“I see.”

I could feel him staring at the back of my neck, which is scary. I work for him, and we're family, and he likes me, but still. Mostly demon. Finally he started back tapping on his laptop and I relaxed.

I hadn't bought the hex anyway. It cost too much just to play a trick on Uncle Desmond's daughters even though Eudokia, Kallistrae, and Myrrine deserved it. They were such asshats.

I spent the rest of the drive to Bon Temps going through the supe roll call trying to figure out what Santa really is. A maenad would have parents doing a lot more than kissing under the mistletoe; ghosts wouldn't be able to make toys; goblins don't care about humans and don't have the right look anyway; Britlingens are all about fighting; and whatever Dr. Ludwig is, she's definitely not Santa Claus.

When we finally made it to Sookie's house, which is in the middle of nowhere, even for Bon Temps, I jumped out and ran around the car a couple of times to get the kinks out before opening the back door for Uncle Desmond. While he was still climbing out, I got the trunk open and grabbed a bunch of wrapped presents, making sure to only get the ones for Sookie and her family. The packages for my cousins and their kids had to be bigger and fancier because one time they'd noticed that Sookie's presents looked as good as theirs.

“Careful, Diantha,” Uncle Desmond warned. “Some of the gifts are fragile.”

“Suresuresure.” I keep telling Uncle Desmond that it would be faster to buy gift cards, but he says that lacks the personal touch. At least he doesn't make me do his shopping since that time I got into a hurry at Macy's and broke some things. I don't like waiting in line.

I do like going to Sookie's house because I like Sookie. She's human but treats me nicer than a trio of cousins I could name. I particularly like going at Christmastime because her house isn't so dull then. Sookie and Sam put up colored lights outside and decorate inside the house, too, with a big Christmas tree and garland all over. It's still not as colorful as my place, but it's a lot better than it usually is.

Only when I looked at the house, there were no lights. Of course, it was still daytime, so I wasn't expecting them to be flashing, but they should have been up. There was a wreath on the door, but it was solid green. Dull.

As soon as Uncle Desmond got most of the way to the front door, I went knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock. And waited. I was thinking Sookie wasn't there because it took forever for her to open up, but when I saw her I understood why she was going so slowly. She was as big as a whale!

“You're having another baby?” I said. Sookie and Sam the shifter had two kids already, which seemed like plenty.

“Well, hey, Diantha,” she said, sounding kind of exasperated. Probably because of being so big. “You guessed it—I'm pregnant.” She looked over my shoulder. “Hey there, Mr. Cataliades.”

“The warmest of seasons' greetings, Sookie,” he said, with a little half bow.

Uncle Desmond is Sookie's sponsor, which is like a godfather only with no god involved. Another reason I like Sookie is because my cousins hate their father being around her worse than they hate him working with me. At least I'm half demon. Sookie's mostly human. Uncle Desmond gave her telepathy when she was born, which would be cool to have, but I like having speed better. Besides, she can't read supe minds, and why would I want to waste time reading human minds?

Sookie said, “My, you're looking festive today, Diantha.”

“ThanksgoingtoapartyandIwantedtogetintheholidaymood.” I took a breath and said, “Thanks. I'm going to a party and I wanted to get in the holiday mood.” I wear short skirts and leggings because they don't get in my way while I run. These leggings were green and red striped and my skirt was red with white polka dots. I couldn't find a red or green shirt so I wore a purple tank top under a white faux-fur vest. My hair was more orange than the red I'd meant to dye it, but it didn't show much because I had on a Santa Claus hat with leopard-pattern trim and green and gold sequins. My sneakers were plain silver sparkly high-tops, which are blander than I like, but they go with everything.

“Well, you sure nailed it,” Sookie said. “Would y'all like to come in?”

Uncle Desmond bowed again while I went on inside.

“Sookie, you want me to put this stuff under the tree?” I looked around. “Where's the tree?” Not only was there no great big Christmas tree, but none of the other decorations I was used to were up, either. No tinsel in sight.

“Sam hasn't— We haven't had time to put it up yet.”

“Isn't Christmas Eve, like, now?”

Sookie's smile was looking kinda forced, but she said, “There's still time. You can just leave those on the table.”

“Sure thing.”

“You're looking radiant, my dear,” Uncle Desmond said, which was a lie. She had bags under her eyes, and her hair was hanging like something dead. “I was so pleased to hear about the new addition to the family. Diantha, you recall me telling you and the rest of the family the good news at Thanksgiving?”

“Suresuresure.” I was lying, too. He'd given a long drawn-out speech or toast or something, but I'd been busy eating.

A minute later, I heard what sounded like a crowd slamming down the stairs, so I jumped in front of Uncle Desmond. Not that I thought Sookie would have hellhounds in her house, but better safe than sorry. But it was just Sookie's kids, Neal and Jennings. Neal knew me well enough to give me a fist bump, but little Jennings would only look at me. I think he was trying to read my mind—Uncle Desmond had given him telepathy, too—but it wouldn't work on me and the kid was confused.

“Jennings,” Sookie said in the tone Uncle Desmond uses on me a lot, and he stopped trying. “You probably don't remember, but this is Mr. Cataliades and this is his niece, Diantha.”

“Pleasedtomeetya!” I said, and stuck out my fist. He thought about it a long time, but he gave me a quick bump in return.

“Would y'all like something to drink?” Sookie asked, and when Uncle Desmond said something polite, she said something polite back.

Uncle Desmond and I sat on the couch, Neal followed after his mother, and Jennings stood and stared at us. I stared back until I got bored. By then Sookie was back with apple cider and cookies. Sookie makes great Christmas cookies, but these were Oreos. Not even the winter ones with red stuff in the middle—just plain old Oreos. Of course Uncle Desmond ate them as if they were petit fours or something like that.

“How have you been, Sookie?” he asked.

“Oh, fine,” she said brightly, but even I could tell she was lying.

Uncle Desmond raised one eyebrow, which was his way of reminding her that he could read her mind, even if she couldn't read his.

She got kind of red in the face. “Boys, why don't y'all go upstairs and play while we grown-ups talk.”

They did, but Jennings kept staring at me as long as he could. I stuck out my tongue at him 'cause I was a grown-up and he wasn't.

Sookie said, “I should know better than to pretend with you, Mr. Cataliades. To tell the truth, it's been a rough month.”

“Vampires attacking?” I asked. “Weres? Fae coming out of that portal in your backyard?”

“What? No! Just normal things. Normal human things, anyway. Sam's had a bad cold since Thanksgiving that he can't seem to shake, and the doctor doesn't want me working this late in my pregnancy so we had to hire a new waitress, and business at Merlotte's has been slow. We usually do well around the holidays, but not this year. Sam has been working extra hours even though he ought to be resting, and so a few things have slid.” She kind of shook herself. “But here I am whining on Christmas Eve when I ought to be thinking about how lucky I am. The boys are doing great, and soon we'll have a new baby.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “It's a girl. I'm going to name her after Gran.”

“And the pregnancy is going well?” Uncle Desmond said.

“Just the usual swollen feet, and being tired a lot.”

Just then the front door opened and Sookie's husband, Sam, came in. “Sookie? Is somebody here?”

Sam looked even worse than Sookie did, but where she was big he looked like he'd lost weight. His hair is always reddish, but this time his nose was, too, and he sounded stuffed up. That explained why he hadn't known it was Uncle Desmond and me—normally he'd have scented us as soon as he got out of his pickup.