Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (196 page)

The queen shot out of her chair, so we all scrambled to our feet, hastily and clumsily. Amelia had just gotten her legs tucked underneath her, so she was especially awkward, which served her right. Jade Flower took a couple steps away from the rest of the vampires, but maybe she wanted more room in case she had to swing her sword. Andre was the only one who noticed that, besides me. He kept his gaze fixed on the king’s bodyguard.

I don’t know what would have happened next if Quinn hadn’t driven through the gate.

He got out of the big black car, ignored the tense tableau as if it didn’t even exist, and strode across the gravel to me. He casually draped an arm over my shoulders and bent to give me a light kiss. I don’t know how to compare one kiss to another. Men all kiss differently, don’t they? And it says something about their character. Quinn kissed me as if we were carrying on a conversation.

“Babe,” he said, when I’d had the last word. “Did I get here at a good time? What happened to your arm?”

The atmosphere relaxed a bit. I introduced him to the people standing in the courtyard. He knew all the vampires, but he hadn’t met the witches. He moved away from me to meet and greet. Patsy and Amelia had obviously heard of him and tried hard not to act too impressed at meeting him.

I had to get the rest of the evening’s news off my chest. “My arm got bitten, Quinn,” I began. Quinn waited, his eyes intent on my face. “I got bitten by a . . . I’m afraid we know what happened to your employee. His name was Jake Purifoy, wasn’t it?” I said.

“What?” In the bright lights of the courtyard, I saw that his expression was guarded. He knew something bad was coming; of course, seeing the assembled company, anyone would guess that.

“He was drained and left here in the courtyard. To save his life, Hadley turned him. He’s become a vampire.”

Quinn didn’t comprehend, for a few seconds. I watched as realization dawned as he grasped the enormity of what had happened to Jake Purifoy. Quinn’s face became stony. I found myself hoping he never looked at me like that.

“The change was without the Were’s consent,” the queen said. “Of course, a Were would never agree to become one of us.” If she sounded a little snarky, I wasn’t too surprised. Weres and vamps regarded each other with scarcely concealed disgust, and only the fact that they were united against the normal world kept that disgust from flaring into open warfare.

“I went by your house,” Quinn said to me, unexpectedly. “I wanted to see if you’d gotten back from New Orleans before I drove down here to look for Jake. Who burned a demon in your driveway?”

“Someone killed Gladiola, the queen’s messenger, when she came to deliver a message to me,” I said. There was a stir among the vampires around me. The queen had known about Gladiola’s death, of course; Mr. Cataliades would have been sure to tell her. But no one else had heard about it.

“Lots of people dying in your yard, babe,” Quinn said to me, though his tone was absent, and I didn’t blame him for that being on his back burner.

“Just two,” I said defensively, after a quick mental rundown. “I would hardly call that a lot.” Of course, if you threw in the people who’d died in the house . . . I quickly shut off that train of thought.

“You know what?” Amelia said in a high, artificially social voice. “I think we witches will just mosey on down the street to that pizza place on the corner of Chloe and Justine. So if you need us, there we’ll be. Right, guys?” Bob, Patsy, and Terry moved faster than I’d thought they were able to the gate opening, and when the vampires didn’t get any signal from their queen, they stood aside and let them by. Since Amelia didn’t bother retrieving her purse, I hoped she had money in one pocket and her keys in another. Oh well.

I almost wished I were trailing along behind them. Wait a minute! Why couldn’t I? I looked longingly at the gate, but Jade Flower stepped into the gap and stared at me, her eyes black holes in her round face. This was a woman who didn’t like me one little bit. Andre, Sigebert, and Wybert could definitely take me or leave me, and Rasul might think I wouldn’t be a bad companion for an hour on the town—but Jade Flower would enjoy whacking off my head with her sword, and that was a fact. I couldn’t read vampire minds (except for a tiny glimpse every now and then, which was a big secret) but I could read body language and I could read the expression in her eyes.

I didn’t know the reason for this animosity, and at this point in time I didn’t think it mattered a heck of a lot.

The queen had been thinking. She said, “Rasul, we shall go back to the house very shortly.” He bowed and walked out to the car.

“Miss Stackhouse,” she said, turning her eyes on me. They shone like dark lamps. She took my hand, and we went up the stairs to Hadley’s apartment, Andre trailing behind us like something tied to Sophie-Anne’s leg with string. I kept having the unwise impulse to yank my hand from the queen’s, which of course was cold and dry and strong, though she was careful not to squeeze. Being so close to the ancient vampire made me vibrate like a violin string. I didn’t see how Hadley had endured it.

She led me into Hadley’s apartment and shut the door behind us. I didn’t think even the excellent ears of the vampires below us could hear our conversation now. That had been her goal, because the first thing she said was, “You will not tell anyone what I am about to tell you.”

I shook my head, mute with apprehension.

“I began my life in what became northern France, about . . . one thousand, one hundred years ago.”

I gulped.

“I didn’t know where I was, of course, but I think it was Lotharingia. In the last century I tried to find the place I spent my first twelve years, but I couldn’t, even if my life depended on it.” She gave a barking laugh at the turn of phrase. “My mother was the wife of the wealthiest man in the town, which meant he had two more pigs than anyone else. My name then was Judith.”

I tried hard not to look shocked, to just look interested, but it was a struggle.

“When I was about ten or twelve, I think, a peddler came to us from down the road. We hadn’t seen a new face in six months. We were excited.” But she didn’t smile or look as if she remembered the feeling of that excitement, only the fact of it. Her shoulders rose and fell, once. “He carried an illness that had never come to us before. I think now that it was some form of influenza. Within two weeks of his stay in our town, everyone in it was dead, excepting me and a boy somewhat older.”

There was a moment of silence while we thought about that. At least I did, and I suppose the queen was remembering. Andre might have been thinking about the price of bananas in Guatemala.

“Clovis did not like me,” the queen said. “I’ve forgotten why. Our fathers . . . I don’t remember. Things might have gone differently if he had cared for me. As it was, he raped me and then he took me to the next town, where he began offering me about. For money, of course, or food. Though the influenza traveled across our region, we never got sick.”

I tried to look anywhere but at her.

“Why will you not meet my eyes?” she demanded. Her phrasing and her accent had changed as she spoke, as if she’d just learned English.

“I feel so bad for you,” I said.

She made a sound that involved putting her top teeth on her lower lip and making the extra effort to intake some air so she could blow it out. It sounded like
“fffft!”
“Don’t bother,” the queen said. “Because what happened next was, we were camped in the woods, and a vampire got him.” She looked pleased at the recollection. What a trip down memory lane. “The vampire was very hungry and started on Clovis first, because he was bigger, but when he was through with Clovis, he could take a minute to look at me and think it might be nice to have a companion. His name was Alain. For three years or more I traveled with Alain. Vampires were secret then, of course. Their existence was only in stories told by old women by the fire. And Alain was good at keeping it that way. Alain had been a priest, and he was very fond of surprising priests in their beds.” She smiled reminiscently.

I found my sympathy diminishing.

“Alain promised and promised to bring me over, because of course I wanted to be as he was. I wanted the strength.” Her eyes flicked over to me.

I nodded heartily. I could understand that.

“But when he needed money, for clothes and food for me, he would do the same thing with me that Clovis had, sell me for money. He knew the men would notice if I was cold, and he knew I would bite them if he brought me over. I grew tired of his failing in his promise.”

I nodded to show her I was paying attention. And I was, but in the back of my mind I was wondering where the hell this monologue was heading and why I was the recipient of such a fascinating and depressing story.

“Then one night we came into a village where the head-man knew Alain for what he was. Stupid Alain had forgotten he had passed through before and drained the headman’s wife! So the villagers bound him with a silver chain, which was amazing to find in a small village, I can tell you . . . and they threw him into a hut, planning to keep him until the village priest returned from a trip. Then they meant to put him in the sun with some church ceremony. It was a poor village, but on top of him they piled all the bits of silver and all the garlic the people possessed, in an effort to keep him subdued.” The queen chuckled.

“They knew I was a human, and they knew he had abused me,” she said. “So they didn’t tie me up. The headman’s family discussed taking me as a slave, since they had lost a woman to the vampire. I knew what that would be like.”

The expression on her face was both heartbreaking and absolutely chilling. I held very still.

“That night, I pulled out some weak planks from the rear of the hut and crawled in. I told Alain that when he’d brought me over, I’d free him. We bargained for quite a time, and then he agreed. I dug a hole in the floor, big enough for my body. We planned that Alain would drain me and bury me under the pallet he lay on, smoothing the dirt floor over as best he could. He could move enough for that. On the third night, I would rise. I would break his chain and toss away the garlic, though it would burn my hands. We would flee into the darkness.” She laughed out loud. “But the priest returned before three days were up. By the time I clawed my way out of the dirt, Alain was blackened ash in the wind. It was the priest’s hut they’d stored Alain in. The old priest was the one who told me what had happened.”

I had a feeling I knew the punch line to this story. “Okay,” I said quickly, “I guess the priest was your first meal.” I smiled brightly.

“Oh, no,” said Sophie-Anne, formerly Judith. “I told him I was the angel of death, and that I was passing him over since he had been so virtuous.”

Considering the state Jake Purifoy had been in when he’d risen for the first time, I could appreciate what a gut-wrenching effort that must have been for the new vampire.

“What did you do next?” I asked.

“After a few years, I found an orphan like me; roaming in the woods, like me,” she said, and turned to look at her bodyguard. “We’ve been together ever since.”

And I finally saw an expression in Andre’s unlined face: utter devotion.

“He was being forced, like I had been,” she said gently. “And I took care of that.”

I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. I couldn’t have picked something to say if you had paid me.

“The reason I’ve bored you with my ancient history,” the queen said, shaking herself and sitting up even straighter, “is to tell you why I took Hadley under my wing. She, too, had been molested, by her great-uncle. Did he molest you, too?”

I nodded. I’d had no idea he’d gotten to Hadley. He hadn’t progressed to actual penetration, only because my parents had died and I’d gone to live with my grandmother. My parents hadn’t believed me, but I’d convinced my grandmother I was telling the truth by the time he would have felt I was ripe, when I was about nine. Of course, Hadley had been older. We’d had much more in common than I’d ever thought. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” I said. “Thanks for telling me.”

“Hadley talked about you often,” the queen said.

Yeah, thanks, Hadley. Thanks for setting me up for the worst . . . no, wait, that was unfair. Finding out about Bill’s massive deception was
not
the worst thing that had ever happened to me. But it wasn’t too far down on my personal list, either.

“That’s what I’ve found out,” I said, my voice as cold and crisp as a celery stick.

“You are upset that I sent Bill to investigate you, to find out if you could be of use to me,” the queen said.

I took a deep breath, forced my teeth to unclench. “No, I’m not upset with you. You can’t help being the way you are. And you didn’t even know me.” Another deep breath. “I’m
upset
with Bill, who
did
know me and went ahead with your whole program in a very thorough and calculated way.” I had to drive away the pain. “Besides, why would you care?” My tone was bordering on insolent, which was not wise when you’re dealing with a powerful vampire. She’d touched me in a very sore spot.

“Because you were dear to Hadley,” Sophie-Anne said unexpectedly.

“You wouldn’t have known it from the way she treated me, after she became a teenager,” I said, having apparently decided that reckless honesty was the course to follow.

“She was sorry for that,” the queen said, “once she became a vampire, especially, and found out what it was like to be a minority. Even here in New Orleans, there is prejudice. We talked about her life often, when we were alone.”

I didn’t know which made me more uncomfortable, the idea of the queen and my cousin Hadley having sex, or having pillow talk about me afterward.

I don’t care if consenting adults have sex, no matter what that sex consists of, as long as both parties agree beforehand. But I don’t necessarily need to hear any details, either. Any prurient interest I might have had has been flooded over the years with images from the minds of the people in the bar.