Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (229 page)

Clovache’s voice said, “How large is the device?” Her accent was sort of like Russian, at least to my untravelled ears. (“Hau larch . . . ?”)

“The size of one of those cans of sweetened syrup,” Batanya answered.

“Ah, the burping drinks,” Clovache said.
Good memory, Clovache,
I thought.

“Yes. The Stackhouse girl noticed it, not me,” Batanya said grimly. “And now she is standing with it in her hand.”

“Tell her to put it down,” advised the invisible Clovache with the simplicity of one who was stating an obvious fact.

Behind Batanya, the King of Kentucky was beginning to look very nervous. Batanya glanced over her shoulder at him. “Get a bomb team up here from the local policing unit,” Batanya said to Clovache. “I’m bringing the king back down.”

“The tiger is here, too,” Clovache said. “She is his woman.”

Before I could say, “For God’s sake, don’t send him up,” Batanya pressed the rectangle again, and it went dark.

“I have to protect the king,” Batanya said with an apology in her voice. She stepped back into the elevator, punched a button, and gave me a nod.

Nothing had scared me as much as that nod. It was a good-bye look. And the door swooshed shut.

There I stood, alone on the silent hotel floor, holding an instrument of death. Maybe.

Neither of the elevators gave any signs of life. No one came out of the doors on the fourth floor, and no one went into them. The stair door didn’t budge. There was a long, dead time in which I did nothing but stand and hold a fake Dr Pepper can. I did a little breathing, too, but nothing too violent.

With an explosion of sound that startled me so much I nearly dropped the can, Quinn burst onto the floor. He’d taken the stairs in a huge hurry if his breathing was any indication. I couldn’t spare the brainpower to find out what was going on in his head, but his face was showing nothing but the same kind of calm mask that Batanya wore. Todd Donati, the security guy, was right on Quinn’s heels. They stopped dead about four feet away from me.

“The bomb squad is coming,” Donati said, leading off with the good news.

“Put it down where it was, babe,” Quinn said.

“Oh, yeah, I
want
to put it back where it was,” I said. “I’m just scared to.” I hadn’t moved a muscle in what felt like a million years, and I was becoming tired already. But still I stood looking down at the can I was holding in both hands. I promised myself I would never drink another Dr Pepper as long as I lived, and I’d been real fond of them before tonight.

“Okay,” Quinn said, holding out his hand. “Give it to me.”

I’d never wanted to do anything more in my life.

“Not till we know what it is,” I said. “Maybe it’s a camera. Maybe some tabloid is trying to get insider shots of the big vampire summit.” I tried to smile. “Maybe it’s a little computer, counting vampires and humans as they go by. Maybe it’s a bomb Jennifer Cater planted before she got offed. Maybe she wanted to blow up the queen.” I’d had a couple of minutes to think about this.

“And maybe it’ll take your hand off,” he said. “Let me take it, babe.”

“You sure you want to do that, after tonight?” I asked dismally.

“We can talk about that later. Don’t worry about it. Just give me the damn can.”

I noticed Todd Donati wasn’t offering, and he already had a fatal disease. Didn’t he want to go out as a hero? What was wrong with him? Then I was ashamed of myself for even thinking that. He had a family, and he’d want every minute with them.

Donati was sweating visibly, and he was white as a vampire. He was talking into the little headset he wore, relaying what he was seeing to . . . someone.

“No, Quinn. Someone with one of those special suits on needs to take it,” I said. “I’m not moving. The can’s not moving. We’re okay. Till one of those special guys gets here. Or special gal,” I added in the interest of fairness. I was feeling a little light-headed. The multiple shocks of the night were taking their toll on me, and I was beginning to tremble. Plus, I thought I was nuts for doing this; and yet here I was, doing it. “Anyone got X-ray vision?” I asked, trying to smile. “Where’s Superman when you need him?”

“Are you trying to be a martyr for these damn things?” Quinn asked, and I figured the “damn things” were the vampires.

“Ha,” I said. “Oh, ha-ha. Yeah, ’cause they
love
me. You see how many vampires are up here? Zero, right?”

“One,” said Eric, stepping out of the stairwell. “We’re bound a bit too tightly to suit me, Sookie.” He was visibly tense; I couldn’t remember ever seeing Eric so notably anxious. “I’m here to die right along with you, it seems.”

“Good. To make my day absolutely effing complete, here’s Eric again,” I said, and if I sounded a little sarcastic, well, I was due. “Are you all completely nuts? Get the hell out of here!”

In a brisk voice, Todd Donati said, “Well,
I
will. You won’t let anyone take the can, you won’t put it down, and you haven’t blown up yet. So I think I’ll go downstairs to wait for the bomb squad.”

I couldn’t fault his logic. “Thanks for calling in the troops,” I said, and Donati took the stairs, because the elevator was too close to me. I could read his head easily, and he felt deep shame that he hadn’t actually offered to help me in any more concrete way. He planned to go down a floor to where no one could see him and then take the elevator to save his strength. The stairwell door shut behind him, and then we three stood by ourselves in a triangular tableau: Quinn, Eric, and me. Was this symbolic, or what?

My head was feeling light.

Eric began to move very slowly and carefully—I think so I wouldn’t be startled. In a moment, he was at my elbow. Quinn’s brain was throbbing and pulsating like a disco ball farther to my right. He didn’t know how to help me, and of course, he was a bit afraid of what might happen.

Who knew, with Eric? Aside from being able to locate him and determine how he was oriented to me, I couldn’t see more.

“You’ll give it to me and leave,” Eric said. He was pushing his vampire influence at my head with all his might.

“Won’t work, never did,” I muttered.

“You are a stubborn woman,” he said.

“I’m
not
,” I said, on the verge of tears at being first accused of nobility, then stubbornness. “I just don’t want to move it! That’s safest!”

“Some might think you suicidal.”

“Well, ‘some’ can stick it up their ass.”

“Babe, put it down on the urn. Just lay it down re-a-a-llll easy,” Quinn said, his voice very gentle. “Then I’ll get you a big drink with lots of alcohol. You’re a real strong gal, you know that? I’m proud of you, Sookie. But if you don’t put that down now and get out of here, I’m gonna be real mad, hear me? I don’t want anything to happen to you. That would be nuts, right?”

I was saved from further debate by the arrival of another entity on the scene. The police sent up a robot in the elevator.

When the door swooshed open we all jumped, because we’d been too wrapped up in the drama to notice the noise of the elevator. I actually giggled when the stubby robot rolled off the elevator. I started to hold the bomb out to it, but I figured the robot wasn’t supposed to take it. It seemed to be operating on remote control, and it turned slightly right to face me. It remained motionless for a couple of minutes to have a good look at me and what was in my hand. After a minute or two of examination, the robot retreated onto the elevator, and its arm jerkily reached up to punch the correct button. The doors swished shut, and it left.

“I hate modern technology,” Eric said quietly.

“Not true,” I said. “You love what computers can do for you. I know that for a fact. Remember how happy you got when you saw the Fangtasia employee roster, with all the work hours filled in?”

“I don’t like the impersonality of it. I like the knowledge it can hold.”

This was just too weird a conversation for me to continue under the circumstances.

“Someone’s coming up the stairs,” Quinn said, and opened the stair door.

Into our little group strode the bomb disposal guy. The homicide squad might not have boasted any vampire cops, but the bomb squad did. The vampire wore one of those space suit-looking outfits. (Even if you can survive it, I guess getting blown up is not a good experience.) Someone had written “BOOM” on his chest where a name tag would normally be. Oh, that was
so funny
.

“You two civilians need to leave the floor to the lady and me,” Boom said, moving slowly across the floor to me. “Take a hike, guys,” he said when neither man moved.

“No,” said Eric.

“Hell, no,” said Quinn.

It isn’t easy to shrug in one of those suits, but Boom managed. He was holding a square container. Frankly, I was in no mood to have a look at it, and all I cared about was that he opened the lid and held it out, carefully placing it under my hands.

Very, very carefully I lowered the can into the padded interior of the container. I let it go and brought my hands out of the container with a relief that I can’t even describe, and Boom closed the container, still grinning merrily through his clear face guard. I shuddered all over, my hands trembling violently from the release of the position.

Boom turned, slowed by the suit, and gestured to Quinn to open the stairwell door again. Quinn did, and down the stairs the vampire went: slowly, carefully, evenly. Maybe he smiled all the way. But he didn’t blow up, because I didn’t hear a noise, and I’ve got to say we all stood frozen in our places for a good long while.

“Oh,” I said, “Oh.” This was not brilliant, but I was in about a thousand emotional pieces. My knees gave way.

Quinn pounced on me and wrapped his arms around me. “You idiot,” he said. “You idiot.” It was like he was saying, “Thank you, God.” I was smothered in weretiger, and I rubbed my face against his E(E)E shirt to wipe up the tears that had leaked from my eyes.

When I peered under his arm, there was no one else in the area. Eric had vanished. So I had a moment to enjoy being held, to know that Quinn still liked me, that the thing with Andre and Eric hadn’t killed all feeling he had begun to have for me. I had a moment to feel the absolute relief of escaping death.

Then the elevator and the stair door opened simultaneously, and all manner of people wanted to talk to me.

“
I
T WAS A BOMB,” TODD DONATI SAID. “A QUICK, crude bomb. The police will be telling me more, I hope, after they’ve finished their examination.” The security chief was sitting in the queen’s suite. I had finally gotten to stow the blue suitcase by one of her couches, and, boy, was I glad to be rid of it. Sophie-Anne hadn’t bothered to thank me for its return, but I hadn’t really expected her to, I guess. When you had underlings, you sent them on errands and you didn’t have to thank them. That’s why they were underlings. For that matter, I wasn’t sure the stupid thing was even hers.

“I expect I’ll get fired over it, especially after the murders,” the security chief said. His voice was calm, but his thoughts were bitter. He needed the health insurance.

Andre gave the security chief one of his long, blue gazes. “And how did the can come to be on the queen’s floor, in that area?” Andre couldn’t have cared less about Todd Donati’s job situation. Donati glared back, but it was a weary kind of glare.

“Why on earth would you be fired, just because someone was able to bring a bomb in and plant it? Maybe because you are in charge of the safety of everyone in the hotel?” Gervaise asked, definitely on the cruel side. I didn’t know Gervaise very well, and I was beginning to feel that was just fine with me. Cleo slapped him on the arm hard enough to make Gervaise wince.

Donati said, “That’s it in a nutshell. Obviously someone brought that bomb up and put it on the potted plant by the elevator door. It might have been meant for the queen, since it was closest to her door. Almost equally, it might have been meant for anyone else on the floor, or it might have been planted at random. So I think the bomb and the murder of the Arkansas vampires are two different cases. In our questioning, we’re finding Jennifer Cater didn’t have a lot of friends. Your queen isn’t the only one with a grudge against her, though your queen’s is the most serious. Possibly Jennifer planted the bomb, or arranged to have someone else do it, before she was murdered.” I saw Henrik Feith sitting in a corner of the suite, his beard quivering with the shaking of his head. I tried to picture the one remaining member of the Arkansas contingent creeping around with a bomb, and I just couldn’t feature it. The small vampire seemed convinced that he was in a nest of vipers. I was sure he was regretting his acceptance of the queen’s protection, because right now that was looking like it wasn’t a very reliable prospect.

“There is much to do here and now,” Andre said. He sounded just a shade concerned, and he was riding his own conversational train. “It was rash of Christian Baruch to threaten to fire you now, when he needs your loyalty the most.”

“The guy’s got a temper on him,” Todd Donati said, and I knew without a doubt that he wasn’t a native of Rhodes. The more stressed he got, the more he sounded like home; not Louisiana, maybe, but northern Tennessee. “The ax hasn’t fallen yet. And if we can get to the bottom of what’s happening, maybe I’ll get reinstated. Not too many people would cotton to this job. Lots of security people don’t like—”

Working with the damn vampires,
Donati completed his sentence silently to everyone but me and him. He reminded himself harshly to stick to the immediate present. “Don’t like the hours it takes to run security in a big place like this,” he finished out loud, for the vampires’ benefit. “But I enjoy the work.”
My kids will need the benefits when I die. Just two more months and coverage will stay with them after I pass.

He’d come to the queen’s suite to talk to me about the Dr Pepper incident (as had the police, and the ever-present Christian Baruch), but he was staying to chat. Though the vampires didn’t seem to notice, Donati was so chatty because he had taken some heavy pain medication. I felt sorry for him, and at the same time I realized that someone with so many distractions wasn’t likely to be doing a good job. What had gotten by Donati in the past couple of months, since his illness had begun affecting his daily life?