Sookie 04 Dead to the World (8 page)

When Holly answered her door, I realized all of a sudden how much she’d changed over the past few weeks. For years, her hair had been dyed a dandelion yellow. Now it was matte black and spiked. Her ears had four piercings apiece. And I noticed her hipbones pushing at the thin denim of her aged jeans.

“Hey, Sookie,” she said, pleasantly enough. “Tara asked me if I would talk to you, but I wasn’t sure if you’d show up. Sorry about Jason. Come on in.”

The apartment was small, of course, and though it had been repainted recently, it showed evidence of years of heavy use. There was a living room-dining room-kitchen combo, with a breakfast bar separating the galley kitchen from the rest of the area. There were a few toys in a basket in the corner of the room, and there was a can of Pledge and a rag on the scarred coffee table. Holly had been cleaning.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” I said.

“That’s okay. Coke? Juice?”

“No, thanks. Where’s Cody?”

“He went to stay with his dad,” she said, looking down at her hands. “I drove him over the day after Christmas.”

“Where’s his dad living?”

“David’s living in Springhill. He just married this girl, Allie. She already had two kids. The little girl is Cody’s age, and he just loves to play with her. It’s always, ‘Shelley this,’ and ‘Shelley that.’” Holly looked kind of bleak.

David Cleary was one of a large clan. His cousin Pharr had been in my grade all through school. For Cody’s genes’ sake, I hoped that David was more intelligent than Pharr, which would be real easy.

“I need to talk to you about something pretty personal, Holly.”

Holly looked surprised all over again. “Well, we haven’t exactly been on those terms, have we?” she said. “You ask, and I’ll decide whether to answer.”

I tried to frame what I was going to say-to keep secret what I needed to keep secret and ask of her what I needed without offending.

“You’re a witch?” I said, embarrassed at using such a dramatic word.

“I’m more of a Wiccan.”

“Would you mind explaining the difference?” I met her eyes briefly, and then decided to focus on the dried flowers in the basket on top of the television. Holly thought I could read her mind only if I was looking into her eyes. (Like physical touching, eye contact does make the reading easier, but it certainly isn’t necessary.)

“I guess not.” Her voice was slow, as if she were thinking as she spoke. “You’re not one to spread gossip.”

“Whatever you tell me, I won’t share with anyone.” I met her eyes again, briefly.

“Okay,” she said. “Well, if you’re a witch, of course, you practice magic rituals.”

She was using “you” in the general sense, I thought, because saying “I” would mean too bold a confession.

“You draw from a power that most people never tap into. Being a witch isn’t being wicked, or at least it isn’t supposed to be. If you’re a Wiccan, you follow a religion, a pagan religion. We follow the ways of the Mother, and we have our own calendar of holy days. You can be both a Wiccan and a witch; or more one, or more the other. It’s very individualized. I practice a little witchcraft, but I’m more interested in the Wiccan life. We believe that your actions are okay if you don’t hurt anyone else.”

Oddly, my first feeling was one of embarrassment, when I heard Holly tell me that she was a non-Christian. I’d never met anyone who didn’t at least pretend to be a Christian or who didn’t give lip service to the basic Christian precepts. I was pretty sure there was a synagogue in Shreveport, but I’d never even met a Jew, to the best of my knowledge. I was certainly on a learning curve.

“I understand. Do you know lots of witches?”

“I know a few.” Holly nodded repeatedly, still avoiding my eyes.

I spotted an old computer on the rickety table in the corner. “Do you have, like, a chat room online, or a bulletin board, or something?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Have you heard of a group of witches that’s come into Shreveport lately?”

Holly’s face became very serious. Her straight dark brows drew together in a frown. “Tell me you’re not involved with them,” she said.

“Not directly. But I know someone they’ve hurt, and I’m afraid they might’ve taken Jason.”

“Then he’s in bad trouble,” she said bluntly. “The woman who leads this group is out-and-out ruthless. Her brother is just as bad. That group, they’re not like the rest of us. They’re not trying to find a better way to live, or a path to get in touch with the natural world, or spells to increase their inner peace. They’re Wiccans. They’re evil.”

“Can you give me any clues about where I might track them down?” I was doing my best to keep my face in line. I could hear with my other sense that Holly was thinking that if the newly arrived coven had Jason, he’d be hurt badly, if not killed.

Holly, apparently in deep thought, looked out the front window of her apartment. She was afraid that they’d trace any information she gave me back to her, punish her-maybe through Cody. These weren’t witches who believed in doing harm to no one else. These were witches whose lives were planned around the gathering of power of all kinds.

“They’re all women?” I asked, because I could tell she was on the verge of resolving to tell me nothing.

“If you’re thinking Jason would be able to charm them with his ways because he’s such a looker, you can think again,” Holly told me, her face grim and somehow stripped down to basics. She wasn’t trying for any effect; she wanted me to understand how dangerous these people were. “There are some men, too. They’re . . . these aren’t normal witches. I mean, they weren’t even normalpeople.”

I was willing to believe that. I’d had to believe stranger things since the night Bill Compton had walked into Merlotte’s Bar.

Holly spoke like she knew far more about this group of witches than I’d ever suspected . . . more than the general background I’d hoped to glean from her. I prodded her a little. “What makes them different?”

“They’ve had vampire blood.” Holly glanced to the side, as if she felt someone listening to her. The motion creeped me out. “Witches-witches with a lot of power they’re willing to use for evil-they’re bad enough. Witches that strong who’ve also had vampire blood are . . . Sookie, you have no idea how dangerous they are. Some of them are Weres. Please, stay away from them.”

Werewolves? They were not only witches, but Weres? And they drank vampire blood? I was seriously scared. I didn’t know how could you get any worse. “Where are they?”

“Are you listening to me?”

“I am, but I have to know where they are!”

“They’re in an old business not awful far from Pierre Bossier Mall,” she said, and I could see the picture of it in her head. She’d been there. She’d seen them. She had this all in her head, and I was getting a lot of it.

“Why were you there?” I asked, and she flinched.

“I was worried about talking to you,” Holly said, her voice angry. “I shouldn’t have even let you in. But I’d dated Jason. . . . You’re gonna get me killed, Sookie Stackhouse. Me and my boy.”

“No, I won’t.”

“I was there because their leader sent out a call for all the witches in the area to have, like, a summit. It turned out that what she wanted to do was impose her will on all of us. Some of us were pretty impressed with her commitment and her power, but most of us smaller-town Wiccans, we didn’t like her drug use-that’s what drinking vampire blood amounts to-or her taste for the darker side of witchcraft. Now, that’s all I want to say about it.”

“Thanks, Holly.” I tried to think of something I could tell her that would relieve her fear. But she wanted me to leave more than anything in the world, and I’d caused her enough upset. Holly’s just letting me in the door had been a big concession, since she actually believed in my mind-reading ability. No matter what rumors they heard, people really wanted to believe that the contents of their heads were private, no matter what proof they had to the contrary.

I did myself.

I patted Holly on the shoulder as I left, but she didn’t get up from the old couch. She stared at me with hopeless brown eyes, as if any moment someone was going to come in the door and cut off her head.

That look frightened me more than her words, more than her ideas, and I left the Kingfisher Arms as quickly as I could, trying to note the few people who saw me turn out of the parking lot. I didn’t recognize any of them.

I wondered why the witches in Shreveport would want Jason, how they could have made a connection between the missing Eric and my brother. How could I approach them to find out? Would Pam and Chow help, or had they taken their own steps?

And whose blood had the witches been drinking?

Since vampires had made their presence known among us, nearly three years ago now, they’d become preyed upon in a new way. Instead of fearing getting staked through the heart by wanna-be Van Helsings, vampires dreaded modern entrepreneurs called Drainers. Drainers traveled in teams, singling out vampires by a variety of methods and binding them with silver chains (usually in a carefully planned ambush), then draining their blood into vials. Depending on the age of the vampire, a vial of blood could fetch from $200 to $400 on the black market. The effect of drinking this blood? Quite unpredictable, once the blood had left the vampire. I guess that was part of the attraction. Most commonly, for a few weeks, the drinker gained strength, visual acuity, a feeling of robust health, and enhanced attractiveness. It depended on the age of the drained vampire and the freshness of the blood.

Of course, those effects faded, unless you drank more blood.

A certain percentage of people who experienced drinking vampire blood could hardly wait to scratch up money for more. These blood junkies were extremely dangerous, of course. City police forces were glad to hire vampires to deal with them, since regular cops would simply get pulped.

Every now and then, a blood drinker simply went mad-sometimes in a quiet, gibbering kind of way, but sometimes spectacularly and murderously. There was no way to predict who would be stricken this way, and it could happen on the first drinking.

So there were men with glittering mad eyes in padded cells and there were electrifying movie stars who equally owed their condition to the Drainers. Draining was a hazardous job, of course. Sometimes the vampire got loose, with a very predictable result. A court in Florida had ruled this vampire retaliation justifiable homicide, in one celebrated case, because Drainers notoriously discarded their victims. They left a vampire, all but empty of blood, too weak to move, wherever the vamp happened to fall. The weakened vampire died when the sun came up, unless he had the good fortune to be discovered and helped to safety during the hours of darkness. It took years to recover from a draining, and that was years of help from other vamps. Bill had told me there were shelters for drained vamps, and that their location was kept very secret.

Witches with nearly the physical power of vampires-that seemed a very dangerous combination. I kept thinking of women when I thought of the coven that had moved into Shreveport, and I kept correcting myself. Men, Holly had said, were in the group.

I looked at the clock at the drive-through bank, and I saw it was just after noon. It would be full dark by a few minutes before six; Eric had gotten up a little earlier than that, at times. I could certainly go to Shreveport and come back by then. I couldn’t think of another plan, and I just couldn’t go home and sit and wait. Even wasting gas was better than going back to my house, though worry for Jason crawled up and down my spine. I could take the time to drop off the shotgun, but as long as it was unloaded and the shells were in a separate location, it should be legal enough to drive around with it.

For the first time in my life, I checked my rearview mirror to see if I was being followed. I am not up on spy techniques, but if someone was following me, I couldn’t spot him. I stopped and got gas and an ICEE, just to see if anyone pulled into the gas station behind me, but no one did. That was real good, I decided, hoping that Holly was safe.

As I drove, I had time to review my conversation with Holly. I realized it was the first one I’d ever had with Holly in which Danielle’s name had not come up once. Holly and Danielle had been joined at the hip since grade school. They probably had their periods at the same time. Danielle’s parents, cradle members of the Free Will Church of God’s Anointed, would have a fit if they knew, so it wasn’t any wonder that Holly had been so discreet.

Our little town of Bon Temps had stretched its gates open wide enough to tolerate vampires, and gay people didn’t have a very hard time of it anymore (kind of depending on how they expressed their sexual preference). However, I thought the gates might snap shut for Wiccans.

The peculiar and beautiful Claudine had told me that she was attracted to Bon Temps for its very strangeness. I wondered what else was out there, waiting to reveal itself.

Carla Rodriguez, my most promising lead, came first. I’d looked up the old address I had for Dovie, with whom I’d exchanged the odd Christmas card. I found the house with a little difficulty. It was well away from the shopping areas that were my only normal stops in Shreveport. The houses were small and close together where Dovie lived, and some of them were in bad repair.

I felt a distinct thrill of triumph when Carla herself answered the door. She had a black eye, and she was hungover, both signs that she’d had a big night the night before.

“Hey, Sookie,” she said, identifying me after a moment. “What’re you doing here? I was at Merlotte’s last night, but I didn’t see you there. You still working there?”

“I am. It was my night off.” Now that I was actually looking at Carla, I wasn’t sure how to explain to her what I needed. I decided to be blunt. “Listen, Jason’s not at work this morning, and I kind of wondered if he might be here with you.”

“Honey, I got nothing against you, but Jason’s the last man on earth I’d sleep with,” Carla said flatly. I stared at her, hearing that she was telling me truth. “I ain’t gonna stick my hand in the fire twice, having gotten burnt the first time. I did look around the bar a little, thinking I might see him, but if I had, I’d have turned the other way.”

I nodded. That seemed all there was to say on the subject. We exchanged a few more polite sentences, and I chatted with Dovie, who had a toddler balanced on her hip, but then it was time for me to leave. My most promising lead had just evaporated in the length of two sentences.

Trying to suppress my desperation, I drove to a busy corner filling station and parked, to check my Shreveport map. It didn’t take me long to figure out how to get from Dovie’s suburb to the vampire bar.

Fangtasia was in a shopping center close to Toys “R” Us. It opened at six P.M. year-round, but of course the vampires didn’t show up until full dark, which depended on the season. The front of Fangtasia was painted flat gray, and the neon writing was all in red. “Shreveport’s Premier Vampire Bar,” read the newly added, smaller writing under the exotic script of the bar’s name. I winced and looked away.

Two summers before, a small group of vamps from Oklahoma had tried to set up a rival bar in adjacent Bossier City. After one particularly hot, short August night, they’d never been seen again, and the building they’d been renovating had burned to the ground.

Tourists thought stories like this were actually amusing and colorful. It added to the thrill of ordering overpriced drinks (from human waitresses dressed in trailing black “vampire” outfits) while staring at real, honest-to-God, undead bloodsuckers. Eric made the Area Five vampires show up for this unappealing duty by giving them a set number of hours each week to present themselves at Fangtasia. Most of his underlings weren’t enthusiastic about exhibiting themselves, but it did give them a chance to hook up with fang-bangers who actually yearned for the chance to be bitten. Such encounters didn’t take place on the premises: Eric had rules about that. And so did the police department. The only legal biting that could take place between humans and vampires was between consenting adults, in private.

Automatically, I pulled around to the rear of the shopping center. Bill and I had almost always used the employee entrance. Back here, the door was just a gray door in a gray wall, with the name of the bar put on in stick-on letters from WalMart. Right below that, a large, black, stenciled notice proclaimed STAFF ONLY. I lifted my hand to knock, and then I realized I could see that the inner dead bolt hadnotbeen employed.

The door was unlocked.

This was really, really bad.

Though it was broad daylight, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Abruptly, I wished I had Bill at my back. I wasn’t missing his tender love, either. It’s probably a bad indicator of your lifestyle when you miss your ex-boyfriend because he’s absolutely lethal.

Though the public face of the shopping center was fairly busy, the service side was deserted. The silence was crawling with possibilities, and none of them was pleasant. I leaned my forehead against the cold gray door. I decided to get back in my old car and get the hell out of there, which would have been amazingly smart.

And I would have gone, if I hadn’t heard the moaning.

Even then, if I’d been able to spot a pay phone, I would’ve just called 911 and stayed outside until someone official showed up. But there wasn’t one in sight, and I couldn’t stand the possibility that someone needed my help real bad, and I’d withheld it because I was chicken.

There was a heavy garbage can right by the back door, and after I’d yanked the door open-standing aside for a second to avoid anything that might dart out-I maneuvered the can to hold the door ajar. I had goose bumps all over my arms as I stepped inside.

Windowless Fangtasia requires electric light, twenty-four/seven. Since none of these lights were on, the interior was just a dark pit. Winter daylight extended weakly down the hall that led to the bar proper. On the right were the doors to Eric’s office and the bookkeeper’s room. On the left was the door to the large storeroom, which also contained the employee bathroom. This hall ended in a heavy door to discourage any fun lovers from penetrating to the back of the club. This door, too, was open, for the first time in my memory. Beyond it lay the black silent cavern of the bar. I wondered if anything was sitting at those tables or huddled in those booths.

I was holding my breath so I could detect the least little noise. After a few seconds, I heard a scraping movement and another sound of pain, coming from the storeroom. Its door was slightly ajar. I took four silent steps to that door. My heart was pounding all the way up in my throat as I reached into the darkness to flip the light switch.

The glare made me blink.

Belinda, the only half-intelligent fang-banger I’d ever met, was lying on the storeroom floor in a curiously contorted position. Her legs were bent double, her heels pressed against her hips. There was no blood-in fact, no visible mark-on her. Apparently, she was having a giant and perpetual leg cramp.

I knelt beside Belinda, my eyes darting glances in all directions. I saw no other movement in the room, though its corners were obscured with stacks of liquor cartons and a coffin that was used as a prop in a show the vampires sometimes put on for special parties. The employee bathroom door was shut.

“Belinda,” I whispered. “Belinda, look at me.”

Belinda’s eyes were red and swollen behind their glasses, and her cheeks were wet with tears. She blinked and focused on my face.

“Are they still here?” I asked, knowing she’d understand that I meant “the people who did this to you.”

“Sookie,” she said hoarsely. Her voice was weak, and I wondered how long she’d lain there waiting for help. “Oh, thank God. Tell Master Eric we tried to hold them off.” Still role-playing, you notice, even in her agony: “Tell our chieftain we fought to the death”-you know the kind of thing.

“Who’d you try to hold off?” I asked sharply.

“The witches. They came in last night after we’d closed, after Pam and Chow had gone. Just Ginger and me . . .”

“What did they want?” I had time to notice that Belinda was still wearing her filmy black waitress outfit with the slit up the long skirt, and there were still puncture marks painted on her neck.

“They wanted to know where we’d put Master Eric. They seemed to think they’d done . . . something to him, and that we’d hidden him.” During her long pause, her face contorted, and I could tell she was in terrible pain, but I couldn’t tell what was wrong with her. “My legs,” she moaned. “Oh

“But you didn’t know, so you couldn’t tell them.”

“I would never betray our master.”

And Belinda was the one with sense.

“Was anyone here besides Ginger, Belinda?” But she was so deep into a spasm of suffering that she couldn’t answer. Her whole body was rigid with pain, that low moan tearing out of her throat again.

I called 911 from Eric’s office, since I knew the location of the phone there. The room had been tossed, and some frisky witch had spray painted a big red pentagram on one of the walls. Eric was going to love that.

I returned to Belinda to tell her the ambulance was coming. “What’s wrong with your legs?” I asked, scared of the answer.

“They made the muscle in the back of my legs pull up, like it was half as long. . . .” And she began moaning again. “It’s like one of those giant cramps you get when you’re pregnant.”

It was news to me that Belinda had ever been pregnant.

“Where’s Ginger?” I asked, when her pain seemed to have ebbed a little.

“She was in the bathroom.”

Ginger, a pretty strawberry blonde, as dumb as a rock, was still there. I don’t think they’d meant to kill her. But they’d put a spell on her legs like they’d done to Belinda’s, it looked like; her legs were drawn up double in the same peculiar and painful way, even in death. Ginger had been standing in front of the sink when she’d crumpled, and her head had hit the lip of the sink on her way down. Her eyes were sightless and her hair was matted with some clotted blood that had oozed from the depression in her temple.

There was nothing to be done. I didn’t even touch Ginger; she was so obviously dead. I didn’t say anything about her to Belinda, who was in too much agony to understand, anyway. She had a couple more moments of lucidity before I took off. I asked her where to find Pam and Chow so I could warn them, and Belinda said they just showed up at the bar when it became dark.

She also said the woman who’d worked the spell was a witch named Hallow, and she was almost six feet tall, with short brown hair and a black design painted on her face.

That should make her easy to identify.

“She told me she was as strong as a vampire, too,” Belinda gasped. “You see . . .” Belinda pointed beyond me. I whirled, expecting an attack. Nothing that alarming happened, but what I saw was almost as disturbing as what I’d imagined. It was the handle of the dolly the staff used to wheel cases of drinks around. The long metal handle had been twisted into a U.

“I know Master Eric will kill her when he returns,” Belinda said falteringly after a minute, the words coming out in jagged bursts because of the pain.

“Sure he will,” I said stoutly. I hesitated, feeling crummy beyond words. “Belinda, I have to go because I don’t want the police to keep me here for questioning. Please don’t mention my name. Just say a passerby heard you, okay?”

“Where’s Master Eric? Is he really missing?”

“I have no idea,” I said, forced to lie. “I have to get out of here.”

“Go,” Belinda said, her voice ragged. “We’re lucky you came in at all.”

I had to get out of there. I knew nothing about what had happened at the bar, and being questioned for hours would cost me time I couldn’t afford, with my brother missing.

Back in my car and on my way out of the shopping center, I passed the police cars and the ambulance as they headed in. I’d wiped the doorknob clean of my fingerprints. Other than that, I couldn’t think of what I’d touched and what I hadn’t, no matter how carefully I reviewed my actions. There’d be a million prints there, anyway; gosh, it was a bar.

After a minute, I realized I was just driving with no direction. I was overwhelmingly rattled. I pulled over into yet another filling station parking lot and looked at the pay phone longingly. I could call Alcide, ask him if he knew where Pam and Chow spent their daytime hours. Then I could go there and leave a message or something, warn them about what had happened.

I made myself take some deep breaths and think hard about what I was doing. It was extremely unlikely that the vamps would give a Were the address of their daytime resting place. This was not information that vampires passed out to anyone who asked. Alcide had no love for the vamps of Shreveport, who’d held his dad’s gambling debt over Alcide’s head until he complied with their wishes. I knew that if I called, he’d come, because he was just a nice guy. But his involvement could have serious consequences for his family and his business. However, if this Hallow reallywasa triple threat-a Were witch who drank vampire blood-she was very dangerous, and the Weres of Shreveport should know about her. Relieved I’d finally made up my mind, I found a pay phone that worked, and I got Alcide’s card out of its slot in my billfold.

Alcide was in his office, which was a miracle. I described my location, and he gave me directions on how to reach his office. He offered to come get me, but I didn’t want him to think I was an utter idiot.

I used a calling card to phone Bud Dearborn’s office, to hear there was no news about Jason.

Following Alcide’s directions very carefully, I arrived at Herveaux and Son in about twenty minutes. It was not too far off I-30, on the eastern edge of Shreveport, actually on my way back to Bon Temps.

The Herveauxes owned the building, and their surveying company was its sole occupant. I parked in front of the low brick building. At the rear, I spotted Alcide’s Dodge Ram pickup in the large parking lot for employees. The one in front, for visitors, was much smaller. It was clear to see that the Herveauxes mostly went to their clients, rather than the clients coming to them.

Feeling shy and more than a little nervous, I pushed open the front door and glanced around. There was a desk just inside the door, with a waiting area opposite. Beyond a half wall, I could see five or six workstations, three of them occupied. The woman behind the desk was in charge of routing phone calls, too. She had short dark brown hair that was carefully cut and styled, she was wearing a beautiful sweater, and she had wonderful makeup. She was probably in her forties, but it hadn’t lessened her impressiveness.

“I’m here to see Alcide,” I said, feeling embarrassed and self-conscious.

“Your name?” She was smiling at me, but she looked a little crisp around the edges, as if she didn’t quite approve of a young and obviously unfashionable woman showing up at Alcide’s workplace. I was wearing a bright blue-and-yellow knit top with long sleeves under my old thigh-length blue cloth coat, and aged blue jeans, and Reeboks. I’d been worried about finding my brother when I dressed, not about standing inspection by the Fashion Police.