Living Dead in Dallas

  He didn’t speak out loud, but another vampire came in, a girl who’d been about Bethany’s age when she went over. Stan had made a good choice. The girl leaned over Bethany, took her hand, smiled with fangs fully retracted, and said, “We’ll take you home now, okay?”

  “Oh, great!” Bethany’s relief was written in neon on her forehead. “Oh, great,” she said again, less certainly. “Ah, you really are going to my house? You . . .”

  But the vampire had looked directly into Bethany’s eyes and now she said, “You won’t remember anything about today or this evening except the party.”

  “Party?” Bethany’s voice sounded sluggish. Only mildly curious.

  “You went to a party,” the vampire said as she led Bethany from the room. “You went to a great party, and you met a cute guy there. You’ve been with him.” She was still murmuring to Bethany as they went out. I hoped she was giving her a good memory.

  “What?” Stan asked, when the door shut behind the two.

  “Bethany thought the club bouncer would know more. She watched him go into the men’s room right on the heels of your friend Farrell and the vampire you didn’t know.” WhatI didn’t know, and hardly liked to ask Stan, was whether vampires ever had sex with each other. Sex and food were so tied together in the vampire life system that I couldn’t imagine a vampire having sex with someone nonhuman, that is, someone he couldn’t get blood from. Did vampires ever take blood from each other in noncrisis situations? I knew if a vampire’s life was at stake (har de har) another vampire would donate blood to revive the damaged one, but I had never heard of another situation involving blood exchange. I hardly liked to ask Stan. Maybe I’d broach the subject with Bill, when we got out of this house.

  “What you uncovered in her mind was that Farrell was at the bar, and that he went into the toilet room with another vampire, a young male with long blond hair and many tattoos,” Stan summarized. “The bouncer went into the toilet while the two were in there.”

  “Correct.”

  There was a sizeable pause while Stan made up his mind about what to do next. I waited, delighted not to hear one word of his inner debate. No flashes, no glimpses.

  At least such momentary glimpses into a vampire mind were extremely rare. And I’d never had one from Bill; I hadn’t known it was possible for some time after I’d been introduced to the vampiric world. So his company remained pure pleasure to me. It was possible, for the first time in my life, to have a normal relationship with a male. Of course, he wasn’t alive male, but you couldn’t have everything.

  As if he knew I’d been thinking of him, I felt Bill’s hand on my shoulder. I put my own over it, wishing I could get up and give him a full-length hug. Not a good idea in front of Stan. Might make him hungry.

  “We don’t know the vampire who went in with Farrell,” Stan said, which seemed a little bit of an answer after all that thinking. Maybe he’d imagined giving me a longer explanation, but decided I wasn’t smart enough to understand the answer. I would rather be underestimated than overrated any day. Besides, what real difference did it make? But I filed my question away under facts I needed to know.

  “So, who’s the bouncer at the Bat’s Wing?”

  “A man called Re-Bar,” Stan said. There was a trace of distaste in the way he said it. “He is a fangbanger.”

  So Re-Bar had his dream job. Working with vampires, working for vampires, and being around them every night. For someone who had gotten fascinated by the undead, Re-Bar had hit a lucky streak. “What could he do if a vampire got rowdy?” I asked, out of sheer curiosity.

  “He was only there for the human drunks. We found that a vampire bouncer tended to overuse his strength.”

  I didn’t want to think about that too much. “Is Re-Bar here?”

  “It will take a short time,” Stan said, without consulting anyone in his entourage. He almost certainly had some kind of mind contact with them. I’d never seen that before, and I was sure Eric couldn’t approach Bill mentally. It must be Stan’s special gift.

  While we waited, Bill sat down in the chair next to me. He reached over and took my hand. I found it very comforting, and loved Bill for it. I kept my mind relaxed, trying to maintain energy for the questioning ahead. But I was beginning to frame some worries, very serious worries, about the situation of the vampires of Dallas. And I was concerned about the glimpse I’d had of the bar patrons, especially the man I’d thought I recognized.

  “Oh, no,” I said sharply, suddenly recalling where I’d seen him.

  The vampires shot to full alert. “What, Sookie?” Bill asked.

  Stan looked like he’d been carved from ice. His eyes actually glowed green, I wasn’t just imagining it.

  I stumbled all over my words in my haste to explain what I was thinking. “The priest,” I told Bill. “The man that ran away at the airport, the one who tried to grab me. He was at the bar.” The different clothes and setting had fooled me when I was deep into Bethany’s memory, but now I was sure.

  “I see,” Bill said slowly. Bill seems to have almost total recall, and I could rely on him to have the man’s face imprinted in his memory.

  “I didn’t think he was really a priest then, and now I know he was at the bar the night Farrell vanished,” I said. “Dressed in regular clothes. Not, ah, the white collar and black shirt.”

  There was a pregnant pause.

  Stan said, delicately, “But this man, this pretend priest, at the bar, even with two human companions, he could not have taken Farrell if Farrell didn’t want to go.”

  I looked directly down at my hands and didn’t say one word. I didn’t want to be the one to say this out loud. Bill, wisely, didn’t speak either. At last, Stan Davis, head vampire of Dallas, said, “Someone went in the bathroom with Farrell, Bethany recalled. A vampire I didn’t know.”

  I nodded, keeping my gaze directed elsewhere.

  “Then this vampire must have helped to abduct Farrell.”

  “Is Farrell gay?” I asked, trying to sound as if my question had just oozed out of the walls.

  “He prefers men, yes. You think—”

  “I don’t think a thing.” I shook my head emphatically, to let him know how much I wasn’t thinking. Bill squeezed my fingers. Ouch.

  The silence was tense until the teenage-looking vamp returned with a burly human, one I’d seen in Bethany’s memories. He didn’t look like Bethany saw him, though; through her eyes, he was more robust, less fat; more glamorous, less unkempt. But he was recognizable as Re-Bar.

  It was apparent to me immediately that something was wrong with the man. He followed after the girl vamp readily enough, and he smiled at everyone in the room; but that was off, wasn’t it? Any human who sensed vampire trouble would be worried, no matter how clear his conscience. I got up and went over to him. He watched me approach with cheerful anticipation.

  “Hi, buddy,” I said gently, and shook his hand. I dropped it as soon as I decently could. I took a couple of steps back. I wanted to take some Advil and lie down.

  “Well,” I said to Stan, “he sure enough has a hole in his head.”

  Stan examined Re-Bar’s skull with a skeptical eye. “Explain,” he said.

  “How ya doin’, Mr. Stan?” Re-Bar asked. I was willing to bet no one had ever spoken to Stan Davis that way, at least not in the past five hundred years or so.

  “I’m fine, Re-Bar. How are you?” I gave Stan credit for keeping it calm and level.

  “You know, I just feel great,” Re-Bar said, shaking his head in wonderment. “I’m the luckiest sumbitch on earth—’scuse me, lady.”

  “You’re excused.” I had to force the words out.

  Bill said, “What has been done to him, Sookie?”

  “He’s had a hole burned in his head,” I said. “I don’t know how else to explain it, exactly. I can’t tell how it was done, because I’ve never seen it before, but when I look in his thoughts, his memories, there’s just a big old ragged hole. It’s like Re-Bar n
eeded a tiny tumor removed, but the surgeon took his spleen and maybe his appendix, too, just to be sure. You know when y’all take away someone’s memory, you replace it with another one?” I waved a hand to show I meant all vampires. “Well, someone took a chunk out of Re-Bar’s mind, and didn’t replace it with anything. Like a lobotomy,” I added, inspired. I read a lot. School was tough for me with my little problem, but reading by myself gave me a means of escape from my situation. I guess I’m self-educated.

  “So whatever Re-Bar knew about Farrell’s disappearance is lost,” Stan said.

  “Yep, along with a few components of Re-Bar’s personality and a lot of other memories.”

  “Is he still functional?”

  “Why, yeah, I guess so.” I’d never encountered anything like this, never even realized it was possible. “But I don’t know how effective a bouncer he’ll be,” I said, trying to be honest.

  “He was hurt while he was working for us. We’ll take care of him. Maybe he can clean the club after it closes,” Stan said. I could tell from Stan’s voice that he wanted to be sure I was marking this down mentally; that vampires could be compassionate, or at least fair.

  “Gosh, that would be great!” Re-Bar beamed at his boss. “Thanks, Mr. Stan.”

  “Take him back home,” Mr. Stan told his minion. She departed directly, with the lobotomized man in tow.

  “Who could’ve done such a crude job on him?” Stan wondered. Bill did not reply, since he wasn’t there to stick his neck out, but to guard me and do his own detecting when it was required. A tall red-haired female vampire came in, the one who’d been at the bar the night Farrell was taken.

  “What did you notice the evening Farrell vanished?” I asked her, without thinking about protocol. She snarled at me, her white teeth standing out against her dark tongue and brilliant lipstick.

  Stan said, “Cooperate.” At once her face smoothed out, all expression vanishing like wrinkles in a bedspread when you run your hand over it.

  “I don’t remember,” she said finally. So Bill’s ability to recall what he’d seen in minute detail was a personal gift. “I don’t remember seeing Farrell more than a minute or two.”

  “Can you do the same thing to Rachel that you did to the barmaid?” Stan asked.

  “No,” I said immediately, my voice maybe a little too emphatic. “I can’t read vampire minds at all. Closed books.”

  Bill said, “Can you remember a blond—one of us—who looks about sixteen years old? One with ancient blue tattooing on his arms and torso?”

  “Oh, yes,” red-haired Rachel said instantly. “The tattoos were from the time of the Romans, I think. They were crude but interesting. I wondered about him, because I hadn’t seen him coming here to the house to ask Stan for hunting privileges.”

  So vamps passing through someone else’s territory were required to sign in at the visitors’ center, so to speak. I filed that away for future reference.

  “He was with a human, or at least had some conversation with him,” the red-haired vampire continued. She was wearing blue jeans and a green sweater that looked incredibly hot to me. But vamps don’t worry about the actual temperature. She looked at Stan, then Bill, who made a beckoning gesture to indicate he wanted whatever memories she had. “The human was dark-haired, and had a mustache, if I am recalling him correctly.” She made a gesture with her hands, an open-fingered sweep that seemed to say, “They’re all so much alike!”

  After Rachel left, Bill asked if there was a computer in the house. Stan said there was, and looked at Bill with actual curiosity when Bill asked if he could use it for a moment, apologizing for not having his laptop. Stan nodded. Bill was about to leave the room when he hesitated and looked back at me. “Will you be all right, Sookie?” he asked.

  “Sure.” I tried to sound confident.

  Stan said, “She will be fine. There are more people for her to see.”

  I nodded, and Bill left. I smiled at Stan, which is what I do when I’m strained. It’s not a happy smile, but it’s better than screaming.

  “You and Bill have been together for how long?” Stan asked.

  “For a few months.” The less Stan knew about us, the happier I’d be.

  “You are content with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You love him?” Stan sounded amused.

  “None of your business,” I said, grinning. “Did you mention there were more people I needed to check?”

  Following the same procedure I had with Bethany, I held a variety of hands and checked a boring bunch of brains. Bethany had definitely been the most observant person in the bar. These people—another barmaid, the human bartender, and a frequent patron (a fangbanger) who’d actually volunteered for this—had dull boring thoughts and limited powers of recollection. I did find out the bartender fenced stolen household goods on the side, and after the guy had left, I recommended to Stan that he get another employee behind the bar, or he’d be sucked into any police investigation. Stan seemed more impressed by this than I hoped he’d be. I didn’t want him to get too enamored of my services.

  Bill returned as I finished up the last bar employee, and he looked just a little pleased, so I concluded he’d been successful. Bill had been spending most of his waking hours on the computer lately, which had not been too popular an idea with me.

  “The tattooed vampire,” Bill said when Stan and I were the only two left in the room, “is named Godric, though for the past century he’s gone by Godfrey. He’s a renouncer.” I don’t know about Stan, but I was impressed. A few minutes on the computer, and Bill had done a neat piece of detective work.

  Stan looked appalled, and I suppose I looked puzzled.

  “He’s allied himself with radical humans. He plans to commit suicide,” Bill told me in a soft voice, since Stan was wrapped in thought. “This Godfrey plans to meet the sun. His existence has turned sour on him.”

  “So he’s gonna take someone with him?” Godfrey would expose Farrell along with himself?

  “He has betrayed us to the Fellowship,” Stan said.

  Betrayedis a word that packs a lot of melodrama, but I didn’t dream of smirking when Stan said it. I’d heard of the Fellowship, though I’d never met anyone who claimed to actually belong to it. What the Klan was to African Americans, the Fellowship of the Sun was to vampires. It was the fastest-growing cult in America.

  Once again, I was in deeper waters than I could swim in.

  Chapter 5

  THERE WERE LOTSof humans who hadn’t liked discovering they shared the planet with vampires. Despite the fact that they had always done so—without knowing it—once they believed that vampires were real, these people were bent on the vampires’ destruction. They weren’t any choosier about their methods of murder than a rogue vampire was about his.

  Rogue vampires were the backward-looking undead; they hadn’t wanted to be made known to humans any more than the humans wanted to know about them. Rogues refused to drink the synthetic blood that was the mainstay of most vampires’ diets these days. Rogues believed the only future for vampires lay in a return to secrecy and invisibility. Rogue vampires would slaughter humans for the fun of it, now, because they actually welcomed a return of persecution of their own kind. Rogues saw it as a means of persuading mainstream vampires that secrecy was best for the future of their kind; and then, too, persecution was a form of population control.

  Now I learned from Bill that there were vampires who became afflicted with terrible remorse, or perhaps ennui, after a long life. These renouncers planned to “meet the sun,” the vampire term for committing suicide by staying out past daybreak.

  Once again, my choice of boyfriend had led me down paths I never would have trod otherwise. I wouldn’t have needed to know any of this, would never have even dreamed of dating someone definitely deceased, if I hadn’t been born with the disability of telepathy. I was kind of a pariah to human guys. You can imagine how impossible it is to date someone whose mind you can read. W
hen I met Bill, I began the happiest time of my life. But I’d undoubtedly encountered more trouble in the months I’d known him than I had in my entire twenty-five years previously. “So, you’re thinking Farrell is already dead?” I asked, forcing myself to focus on the current crisis. I hated to ask, but I needed to know.

  “Maybe,” Stan said after a long pause.

  “Possibly they’re keeping him somewhere,” said Bill. “You know how they invite the press to these . . . ceremonies.”

  Stan stared into space for a long moment. Then he stood. “The same man was in the bar and at the airport,” he said, almost to himself. Stan, the geeky head vampire of Dallas, was pacing now, up and down the room. It was making me nuts, though saying so was out of the question. This was Stan’s house, and his “brother” was missing. But I’m not one for long, brooding silences. I was tired, and I wanted to go to bed.

  “So,” I said, doing my best to sound brisk, “how’d they know I was going to be there?”

  If there’s anything worse than having a vampire stare at you, it’s having two vampires stare at you.

  “To know you were coming ahead of time . . . there is a traitor,” Stan said. The air in the room began to tremble and crackle with the tension he was producing.

  But I had a less dramatic idea. I picked up a notepad lying on the table and wrote, “MAYBE YOU’RE BUGGED.” They both glared at me as if I’d offered them a Big Mac. Vampires, who individually have incredible and various powers, are sometimes oblivious to the fact that humans have developed some powers of their own. The two men gave each other a look of speculation, but neither of them offered any practical suggestion.

  Well, to heck with them. I’d only seen this done in movies, but I figured if someone had planted a bug in this room, they’d done it in a hurry and they’d been scared to death. So the bug would be close and not well hidden. I shrugged off the gray jacket and kicked off my shoes. Since I was a human and had no dignity to lose in Stan’s eyes, I dropped below the table and began crawling down its length, pushing the rolling chairs away as I went. For about the millionth time, I wished I’d worn slacks.