Down by the Bayou
Chapter 1
I practically ran out of the bar, my high heels clicking on the cracked asphalt pavement that covered the employee parking lot. A couple of old street lamps cast glowing yellow ven diagrams on the ground, and I stood beneath them. An old cypress drooped across the lot, leaving aging cones to decompose. The heady smell of swamp and pine was at once intoxicating and vile, a reminder of the bayou I'd grown up around. I took a half second to breathe in deeply, to capture the smells of my youth, and then I returned to the strain of the moment. I faced away from the bar, toward the bank of decrepit vehicles driven by equally decrepit bartenders, waitresses, and staff. I forced my hand into the teensy tiny pocket in my mini skirt.
17 Winona Place: that was the address I needed to remember. I kept going over it in my mind, trying to keep my memory fresh. I could feel my skin warming up under the stress, probably only helped along by the fact that it was eighty-five degrees outside and wet as the bottom of a pool. Sweat dribbled down the back of my neck, between my shoulder blades. The fans and crappy air conditioning units in the bar had kept things moderately cool, but outside, in the sticky summer air, I was damp and gross. No amount of extra strength antiperspirant could help me now.
I wiggled my cell out of my pocket at last and flipped open the lid. I'd cracked the screen when I bent over to grab some broken glass on the floor of the bar last week, and that meant I couldn't actually look up numbers. I'd had to remember them all. That made things a little more difficult. I pushed the address (17 Winona Place) to one side of my brain and began punching in numbers. Okay, what was it? Crap, crap, crap. I fidgeted. My gut felt tight, and I was having issues breathing deeply. I started panting in the heat. I punched in numbers, erased them, started over. Finally, I got the number right. I held the phone to my head. It began to ring.
"I knew you wasn't who you said you was!" A cracked female voice yelled across the lot. I turned around suddenly, still holding the phone to my ear. It was on the third ring. Why wasn't he picking up?
"Jamie Lynn?" I yelled back at her. Her twisted mouth had fallen open and her slackened jaw revealed two missing teeth near the front of her mouth. Her belly bulged slightly with either a pregnancy or signs of bloating due to too much beer intake. I couldn't tell for sure.
"I knowed it the moment we met! You's a sick bitch, betrayin' yer own kind!" Jamie Lynn was really screaming now. She raised one arm out straight in front of her, and a sliver of yellow light bounced off the side of a revolver.
"Abby?" I heard Eric's voice in the receiver, but I couldn't answer him now. I stared at the gun, then back at the shooter. My knees knocked together.
"What is it? What did you get?" Eric's voice was anxious on the other end of the line. We'd been on this assignment for almost a month with no leads, and finally it had come together, only to end like this, at the barrel of a gun.
"Don't shoot, Jamie Lynn, please! It's me! It's Abby!" I called to her desperately, trying to convince her that I was my alias, that I was Abigail Pearson. I mean, I was married to a vampire, but she didn't know that. She didn't even know she was working for…well, not quite people.
"You ain't Abby Pearson! You's Sookie fuckin' Stackhouse. You's a damn vampire lover! You's a sick freak! They was right about you! VAMPIRE LOVER!"
"Sookie?! What the fuck is going on down there?" Eric was literally screaming into the phone now. I took a step backward, farther into the stream of street light. I kept holding the cell, but I couldn't think of anything to say. She'd blown my cover, out loud, in the street. Regardless of whether or not I got out of this alive, we'd never find Jenna now.
The sound of the gun was deafening. I didn't have time to run, and even if I had, my feet were glued to the spot. The bullet flew into my skin, and it burned. It hurt bad and I wanted to scream, but instead I grunted and dropped like a pile of bricks. I thudded onto the ground, and my hand flew up to the wound. I held my palm over it. The blood was hot and it trickled through my fingers. My spine shivered and I couldn't suppress the urge to groan.
"Eric," I whimpered into the receiver.
"Don't move, lover. I'll be right there." The phone clicked off. I dropped it and let my arm fall down. I could hear Jamie Lynn moving around somewhere in the distance. There were already sirens on the horizon. I listened to the back door slam against the wall as it opened.
"Abby!" Brewer yelled. His footsteps echoed on the pavement.
I pulled my good arm away from the bullet hole. Pain spasmed through my skin, but I was NOT going to take this shit lying down. I wasn't going to just lay here like a victim while Jamie Lynn got away with shooting me in the fucking shoulder. I shoved my hand against the asphalt and allowed myself a really good scream. Then I was on my feet. I wobbled forward as I caught my bearings. Jamie Lynn was being held, fiercely, by the arm. The Caterwaul Bar and Grill had cleared out into the parking lot. Brewer, my boss, was rushing toward me. I held up a hand covered in blood. He stopped in his tracks.
"James is on his way," I muttered. I stumbled forward, aiming myself in Jamie Lynn's direction. She was writhing, spitting, yelling, and carrying on. That stupid bitch had played all nice to me. Sure she was a swamp rat redneck, but she had always seemed like a nice girl. Even her pathetic thoughts had been nice. She was deceptive. Maybe she wasn't in her right mind. Hell, I didn't even care.
"Abby, you need to sit down, chere," Brewer said, his arm stretched out to grab me in case I fell back to Earth again. His thick Cajun accent was so un-Texas, so down home Louisiana, that for a second I forgot where I was. That just made me more upset. In Louisiana, I was Sookie Stackhouse, barmaid, telepath, a little crazy but well-liked. Nobody knew me in Houston, but in Louisiana, where Brewer was from, I was a good Southern girl. Good Southern girls don't get shot in the fucking shoulder.
"I'm fine," I seethed in Brewer's direction. I took more labored steps. I squeezed my hands into fists. Pain radiated through me like little rivers of fire.
"Please, Chere," Brewer begged. I walked past him. "If James sees you like this, walking around with a hole in your body, he'll kill me right out."
"He'll kill Jamie Lynn first," I growled. I'd finally reached the stupid bitch. She spat in my direction. I drew back my bloody fist and threw it into her toothless face. The man holding her, a Were-something but not a wolf, let her go. She reeled backward and smacked her head on the brick wall of the bar.
Strength oozed out of me and I dropped toward the ground. Eric was under me in a second. I felt his great big arms under my waist and I melted into them. I found my voice, and everything tasted like pennies.
"Stupid FOTS bitch," I growled in Jamie Lynn's general direction. I rolled my head back to look up into Eric's pretty blue eyes. "We have to hurry."
"We're taking you to the hospital." He narrowed his eyes.
"No, we have to get the vamp first. I know the address."
"She's not important. There's no comparison." Eric was already carrying me toward our car. He was opening the door.
"I got shot in the fucking shoulder trying to get this girl for Felipe. The least you can do is go and get her. I'll be fine for a little while. Let's just…" I felt dizzy, but I kept talking. "We'll pick her up. Then we'll go to the fucking hospital." Gran would've made me swallow an entire year's worth of soap for all the swearing I was doing. Then again, I had a hole in my body.
Eric shoveled me into the front seat and shut the door. He got in on the other side and looked at me with shining icy blue eyes. He was angry and bloodlusty, excited and pissed the fuck off. He gunned the engine and drove over the curb and into the street. We swerved down the road.
"Try not to bleed on the seats, lover. This is a rental."