“Got itchy feet?” I asked, curious and not too pleased about his sudden case of travel lust.
“I have traveled for years. Staying in Bon Temps these months has been wonderful,” he said as he reached over to pat my hand, “but naturally I like to visit with others of my own kind, and the vampires of Shreveport have too much power over me. I can’t relax when I’m with them.”
“Were vampires this organized before you went public?” I tried not to ask questions about vampire society, because I was never sure how Bill would react, but I was really curious.
“Not in the same way,” he said evasively. I knew that was the best answer I’d get from him, but I sighed a little anyway. Mr. Mystery. Vampires still kept limits clearly drawn. No doctor could examine them, no vampires could be required to join the armed forces. In returned for these legal concessions, Americans had demanded that vampires who were doctors and nurses—and there were more than a few—had to hang up their stethoscopes, because humans were too leery of a blood-drinking health care professional. Even though, as far as humans knew, vampirism was an extreme allergic reaction to a combination of various things, including garlic and sunlight.
Though I was a human—albeit a weird one—I knew better. I’d been a lot happier when I believed Bill had some classifiable illness. Now, I knew that creatures we’d shoved off into the realm of myth and legend had a nasty habit of proving themselves real. Take the maenad. Who’d have believed an ancient Greek legend would be strolling through the woods of northern Louisiana?
Maybe there really
were
fairies at the bottom of the garden, a phrase I remembered from a song my grandmother had sung when she hung out the clothes on the line.
“Sookie?” Bill’s voice was gently persistent.
“What?”
“You were thinking mighty hard about something.”
“Yes, just wondering about the future,” I said vaguely. “And the flight. You’ll have to fill me in on all the arrangements, and when I have to be at the airport. And what clothes should I take?”
Bill began to turn that over in his head as we pulled up in the driveway in front of my old house, and I knew he would take my request seriously. It was one of the many good things about him.
“Before you pack, though,” he said, his dark eyes solemn under the arch of his brows, “there is something else we have to discuss.”
“What?” I was standing in the middle of my bedroom floor, staring in the open closet door, when his words registered.
“Relaxation techniques.”
I swung around to face him, my hands on my hips. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“This.” He scooped me up in the classic Rhett Butler carrying stance, and though I was wearing slacks rather than a long red—negligee? gown?—Bill managed to make me feel like I was as beautiful, as unforgettable, as Scarlett O’Hara. He didn’t have to traipse up any stairs, either; the bed was very close. Most evenings, Bill took things very slow, so slow I thought I would start screaming before we came to the point, so to speak. But tonight, excited by the trip, by the imminent excursion, Bill’s speed had greatly accelerated. We reached the end of the tunnel together, and as we lay together during the little aftershocks following successful love, I wondered what the vampires of Dallas would make of our association.
I’d only been to Dallas once, on a senior trip to Six Flags, and it hadn’t been a wonderful time for me. I’d been clumsy at protecting my mind from the thoughts eternally broadcasting from other brains, I’d been unprepared for the unexpected pairing of my best friend, Marianne, and a classmate named Dennis Engelbright, and I’d never been away from home before.
This would be different, I told myself sternly. I was going at the request of the vampires of Dallas; was that glamorous, or what? I was needed because of my unique skills. I should focus on not calling my quirks a disability. I had learned how to control my telepathy, at least to have much more precision and predictability. I had my own man. No one would abandon me.
Still, I have to admit that before I went to sleep, I cried a few tears for the misery that had been my lot.
Chapter 4
I
T WAS AS hot as the six shades of hell in Dallas, especially on the pavement at the airport. Our brief few days of fall had relapsed back into summer. Torch-hot gusts of air bearing all the sounds and smells of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport—the workings of small vehicles and airplanes, their fuel and their cargo—seemed to accumulate around the foot of the ramp from the cargo bay of the plane I’d been waiting for. I’d flown a regular commercial flight, but Bill had had to be shipped specially.
I was flapping my suit jacket, trying to keep my underarms dry, when the Catholic priest approached me.
Initially, I was so respectful of his collar that I didn’t object to his approach, even though I didn’t really want to talk to anyone. I had just emerged from one totally new experience, and I had several more such hurdles ahead of me.
“Can I be of some service to you? I couldn’t help but notice your situation,” the small man said. He was soberly clothed in clerical black, and he sounded chock-full of sympathy. Furthermore, he had the confidence of someone used to approaching strangers and being received politely. He had what I thought was sort of an unusual haircut for a priest, though; his brown hair was longish, and tangled, and he had a mustache, too. But I only noticed this vaguely.
“My situation?” I asked, not really paying attention to his words. I’d just glimpsed the polished wood coffin at the edge of the cargo hold. Bill was such a traditionalist; metal would have been more practical for travel. The uniformed attendants were rolling it to the head of the ramp, so they must have put wheels under it somehow. They’d promised Bill it would get to its destination without a scratch. And the armed guards behind me were insurance that no fanatic would rush over and tear the lid off. That was one of the extras Anubis Air had plugged in its ad. Per Bill’s instructions, I’d also specified that he be first off the plane.
So far, so good.
I cast a look at the dusky sky. The lights around the field had come on minutes ago. The black jackal’s head on the airplane’s tail looked savage in the harsh light, which created deep shadows where none had been. I checked my watch again.
“Yes. I’m very sorry.”
I glanced sideways at my unwanted companion. Had he gotten on the plane in Baton Rouge? I couldn’t remember his face, but then, I’d been pretty nervous the whole flight. “Sorry,” I said. “For what? Is there some kind of problem?”
He looked elaborately astonished. “Well,” he said, nodding his head toward the coffin, which was now descending on the ramp on a roller system. “Your bereavement. Was this a loved one?” He edged a little closer to me.
“Well, sure,” I said, poised between puzzlement and aggravation. Why was he out here? Surely the airline didn’t pay a priest to meet every person traveling with a coffin? Especially one being unloaded from Anubis Air. “Why else would I be standing here?”
I began to worry.
Slowly, carefully, I slid down my mental shields and began to examine the man beside me. I know, I know: an invasion of his privacy. But I was responsible for not only my own safety, but Bill’s.
The priest, who happened to be a strong broadcaster, was thinking about approaching nightfall as intently as I was, and with a lot more fear. He was hoping his friends were where they were supposed to be.
Trying not to show my increasing anxiety, I looked upward again. Deep into dusk, there was only the faintest trace of light remaining in the Texas sky.
“Your husband, maybe?” He curved his fingers around my arm.
Was this guy creepy, or what? I glanced over at him. His eyes were fixed on the baggage handlers who were clearly visible in the hold of the plane. They were wearing black and silver jumpsuits with the Anubis logo on the left chest. Then his gaze flickered down to the airline employee on the ground, who was preparing to guide the coffin onto the padded, flat-bedded baggage cart. The priest wanted . . . what did he want? He was trying to catch the men all looking away, preoccupied. He didn’t want them to see. While he . . . what?
“Nah, it’s my boyfriend,” I said, just to keep our pretence up. My grandmother had raised me to be polite, but she hadn’t raised me to be stupid. Surreptitiously, I opened my shoulder bag with one hand and extracted the pepper spray Bill had given me for emergencies. I held the little cylinder down by my thigh. I was edging away from the false priest and his unclear intentions, and his hand was tightening on my arm, when the lid of the coffin swung open.
The two baggage handlers in the plane had swung down to the ground. Now they bowed deeply. The one who’d guided the coffin onto the cart said, “Shit!” before he bowed, too (new guy, I guess). This little piece of obsequious behavior was also an airline extra, but I considered it way over the top.
The priest said, “Help me, Jesus!” But instead of falling to his knees, he jumped to my right, seized me by the arm holding the spray, and began to yank at me.
At first, I thought he felt he was trying to remove me from the danger represented by the opening coffin, by pulling me to safety. And I guess that was what it looked like to the baggage handlers, who were wrapped up in their role-playing as Anubis Air attendants. The upshot was, they didn’t help me, even though I yelled, “Let go!” at the top of my well-developed lungs. The “priest” kept yanking at my arm and trying to run, and I kept digging in my two-inch heels and pulling back. I flailed at him with my free hand. I’m not letting anyone haul me off somewhere I don’t want to go, not without a good fight.
“Bill!” I was really frightened. The priest was not a big man, but he was taller and heavier than me, and almost as determined. Though I was making his struggle as hard as possible, inch by inch he was moving me toward a staff door into the terminal. A wind had sprung up from nowhere, a hot dry wind, and if I sprayed the chemicals they would blow right back in my face.
The man inside the coffin sat up slowly, his large dark eyes taking in the scene around him. I caught a glimpse of him running a hand over his smooth brown hair.
The staff door opened and I could tell there was someone right inside, reinforcements for the priest.
“Bill!”
There was a whoosh through the air around me, and all of a sudden the priest let go and zipped through the door like a rabbit at a greyhound track. I staggered and would have landed on my butt if Bill hadn’t slowed to catch me.
“Hey, baby,” I said, incredibly relieved. I yanked at the jacket of my new gray suit, and felt glad I’d put on some more lipstick when the plane landed. I looked in the direction the priest had taken. “
That
was pretty weird.” I tucked the pepper spray back in my purse.
“Sookie,” Bill said, “are you all right?” He leaned down to give me a kiss, ignoring the awed whispers of the baggage handlers at work on a charter plane next to the Anubis gate. Even though the world at large had learned two years ago that vampires were not only the stuff of legends and horror movies, but truly led a centuries-long existence among us, lots of people had never seen a vampire in the flesh.
Bill ignored them. Bill is good at ignoring things that he doesn’t feel are worth his attention.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I said, a little dazed. “I don’t know why he was trying to grab me.”
“He misunderstood our relationship?”
“I don’t think so. I think he knew I was waiting for you and he was trying to get me away before you woke up.”
“We’ll have to think about this,” said Bill, master of the understatement. “Other than this bizarre incident, how did the evening go?”
“The flight was all right,” I said, trying not to stick my bottom lip out.
“Did anything else untoward happen?” Bill sounded just a wee bit dry. He was quite aware that I considered myself put-upon.
“I don’t know what normal is for airplane trips, never having done it before,” I said tartly, “but up until the time the priest appeared, I’d say things pretty much ran smooth.” Bill raised one eyebrow in that superior way he has, so I’d elaborate. “I don’t think that man was really a priest at all. What did he meet the plane for? Why’d he come over to talk to me? He was just waiting till everyone working on the plane was looking in another direction.”
“We’ll talk about it in a more private place,” my vampire said, glancing at the men and women who’d begun to gather around the plane to check out the commotion. He stepped over to the uniformed Anubis employees, and in a quiet voice he chastised them for not coming to my help. At least, I assumed that was the burden of his conversation, from the way they turned white and began to babble. Bill slid an arm around my waist and we began to stroll to the terminal.
“Send the coffin to the address on the lid,” Bill called back over his shoulder. “The Silent Shore Hotel.” The Silent Shore was the only hotel in the Dallas area that had undergone the extensive renovation necessary to accommodate vampire patrons. It was one of the grand old downtown hotels, the brochure had said, not that I’d ever seen downtown Dallas or any of its grand old hotels before.
We stopped in the stairwell of a grubby little flight leading up to the main passenger concourse. “Now, tell me,” he demanded. I glanced up at him while I related the odd little incident from start to finish. He was very white. I knew he must be hungry. His eyebrows looked black against the pallor of his skin, and his eyes looked an even darker brown than they really were.
He help open a door and I passed through into the bustle and confusion of one of the biggest airports in the world.
“You didn’t listen to him?” I could tell Bill didn’t mean with my ears.
“I was still pretty heavily shielded from the plane,” I said. “And by the time I got concerned, began to try to read him, you came out of your coffin and he took off. I had the funniest feeling, before he ran . . .” I hesitated, knowing this was far-fetched.