AN: This story assumes the basic knowledge about SVM and TB. Just saying, because I don't want to waste a lot of space and energy on unnecessary exposition that everyone already knows. In short (so I don't have to go into great detail), vampires came out of the coffin a couple years ago, Eric Northman (Viking vampire, who is very tall and maker of Pam), is sheriff of area 5 of Louisiana, owns Fangtasia, the premiere vampire club in Shreveport. Sookie and Jason Stackhouse are brother and sister who live in Bon Temps a few miles away. Oh, and also, I don't own anything…
Chapter One – Missives and Missions
Bill Compton stood in front of me smirking. I'd seen him walk into my bar a few moments ago, and I knew – I just knew – I was not going to like what he would be dishing out. I'd seen him often enough in Sophie Ann's 'court', if you could legitimately call it that. I thought her 'court' was rather more like a circus, a very pathetically sexual circus. But she was my monarch, and I'd sworn fealty. I was her sheriff and unfortunately duty bound to her. I looked up at the asshole as he arrived at my booth, and as congenially as I could I asked, "Bill Compton, what brings you to Area Five?"
"I am on a mission for our queen, Northman" he replied. A mission, how intriguing… He was the queen's procurer, so I knew that something, or, more likely, someone had caught our insipid queen's attention. In a purely silly moment of inner musing, the theme music to Mission Impossible began a loop in my head. My amusement at this ridiculous emissary from the queen leaked into the bond I shared with my child, and I looked over at Pamela as she tried to hide a smile by looking down at her hands clasped on top of the table of our booth.
Yes, I was the queen's subject, but only because I chose to be. It's so difficult when you reach a certain age as a vampire. If you are by far older than all those around you, you have but two choices: rule, or be ruled on your own terms. I had chosen the latter, because, really, who needs all that paperwork? I would say life's too short for all that bullshit, but in my case that's not a realistic argument. At one thousand plus years old, I would be hard-pressed to prove life is short. So, I'd chosen to be a sheriff for a queen who was significantly younger than I. She pretty much left me alone to run my little corner of Louisiana, and I had far less paperwork than she had. She also frequently acknowledged, as she should, that I was the greatest asset of her queendom. No one would challenge Sophie Ann as queen as long as she had my allegiance. Oh sure, she would call me to New Orleans for sheriff's meetings and queendom business on a regular basis – and she would also try to flex her monarch's muscles now and again – but mostly she left me to my own devices, as long as she got my area's financial tributes on a regular basis. And my area was the most profitable in the state, including New Orleans, which had a substantially higher population of vampires.
"So… Bill, why are you here, telling me you have a mission?" I said as I leaned back against the booth, extended my arms around the top, and stretched my long legs out, totally filling the inner geography of the booth. "What exactly is your purpose here?" I asked.
And with that he widened his smirk and pulled a scroll from inside his jacket and slapped it down on the table in front of me. A scroll… with one red ribbon around the center and at least two wax seals I could see without even touching it. I couldn't help but chuckle. "A scroll?" I asked. "Are we in the fifteenth century? Why are you handing me this?"
"It is a missive from our queen," he declared proudly. Seriously? A missive?
"A missive?" I couldn't help but ask out loud, if only to fuck with this civil war reject.
"That means a letter, communication, etc." he sneered in reply. I simply tilted my head to the side and stared back at him.
"Seriously, Bill? I was speaking English centuries before you were born. I know what a fucking missive is. From the medieval Latin littera missiva, you dimwit" (thank you, perfect recall). Hell, I was speaking English even before Modern English, as it is called today, came into common usage. "I was just wondering why you and apparently Sophie Ann have gone all medieval with this scroll slash missive."
Pam finally let a chuckle out. "Han är verkligen en clueless knopp, inte han?" (He really is a clueless knob, isn't he?) I smiled at her astute observation. Although she'd never met the knob before now, stories of his dealings and general behavior were well known throughout Louisiana. He had made quite the reputation for himself, just not the one he thinks he made. He was known everywhere as Sophie Ann's lapdog, toady, lickspittle, and all around sycophant. He was also well-known for dropping her name in every situation – as if it made him more important by association in all of his endeavors.
Bill fidgeted a little after I called him a dimwit, and after Pam's comment, although I'm pretty sure he had no idea of the actual meaning of her words. He probably assumed, correctly as it turns out, that she said something belittling about him, especially since there's no old Norse or Swedish word for "clueless". "Er... you should read it," he stammered.
I picked up the "missive" and twirled it through my fingers, then tapped it against the table a few times coinciding with the rhythm of the music playing over the sound system in my club. The longer I drummed with my make-shift drumstick, the more agitated Bill became. Not much of a vampire-poker face on this guy. Five, four, three, two, one...
"Well are you going to read it or not?" he practically shouted. All of the other vampires in the club turned and looked in our direction.
"You may want to watch your tone, Mr. Compton. I am the sheriff here, and I will be respected... even by a toady from the queen's court." Almost everybody who knew me knew that they should be most worried for their undead life when I spoke softly and politely, and I could see from Mr. Bill's response that he had an 'Oh Nooooo...' moment. I smiled at him and looked at the scroll in my hands. "Yes, I will read her majesty's ...epistle... when I'm good and ready, and certainly not just so that you can stand there and watch me. Now, shuffle off, like a good little errand boy..."
"But, I..."
"GO NOW!" I cut him off, decisively. He turned and ran at vamp-speed out of Fangtasia, followed by a chorus of chuckles from the other vampires in attendance. I smirked as I placed the ridiculous scroll onto my index finger like a basket-woven Chinese torture toy as I arose from my booth. "I'll be in my office," I whispered, but I knew Pam would hear me. When I got to my office I plopped down into my desk chair and propped up my feet on the corner of the desk. After a deep and totally unnecessary sigh, I opened the scroll to read my missive. It was written in large caligraphy strokes:
Sheriff Northman,
I have sent my procurer to your area to acquire a pair of assets I desire in Bon Temps. You will not impede his efforts in any way. Compton will be staying at his ancestral home there under the guise of mainstreaming until he can procure those assets(a brother and sister) and bring them to me. They are relatives of my beloved pet Hadley, and she longs to have her family around her. I find I cannot deny her desire.
Yours,
HRH Sophie Ann LeClerq
Interesting… the use of the word 'desire'… In the first sentence Sophie Ann desires the assets. In the final sentence it is beloved pet Hadley who desires her family members. A small but telling contradiction.
'You will not impede his efforts in any way'. Well that sentence is wide open for interpretation. You would think that at nearly half a millennium that Sophie would have learned to be more precise in her language. There was a definite 'work-around' in that sentence. First, I knew I had to find these assets. If they were worthy of a royal missive, I might want them for myself. I would just have to be very careful how I went about it.
I pulled an untraceable, throw-away cell phone from the locked bottom desk drawer and called my investigator Raphael, told him what I knew about beloved pet Hadley, and asked him to find out everything he could about her family in Bon Temps ASAP. I knew I wouldn't have much time to get to them before Bill, so as to avoid 'impeding his efforts in any way.' I also wanted to know the whereabouts and business of Bill Compton at all times, including bugging, with both audio and video surveillance, his house, car, phone, computer, and anything else the investigator could think of.
When I hung up the phone from Raphael, I felt a rare thrill course through my body. The game was definitely afoot. I realized with a small degree of sadness how boring my life must have become if something like this could give me such a thrill. Ah well, nothing to do about that now… I walked back into the bar and took my throne on the stage. Time to enthrall the vermin; it's why they were paying for my over-priced drinks.
I may have looked like I had gone into down-time, but I was actually contemplating beloved pet Hadley. I had met her on a few of my visits to Sophie Ann's court, but unlike most of the rest of Louisiana's vampires, I hadn't sampled her wares. Truth be told, she was quite pretty and smelled divine, however she seemed to have the IQ of a doorknob. I supposed she must be a sexual savant because it couldn't have been her sparkling wit that endeared her to the queen. Of course, Sophie Ann wasn't exactly a brain-trust herself. She undoubtedly had a certain political savvy, but it was widely known that her child Andre was the actual brains behind the throne. If something happened to Andre, the queen would probably have less than a year left on her throne. That would not bode well for me, so I had an uneasy truce with Andre. Neither of us liked each other, but we didn't really get in the way of each other either. We shared a common interest in keeping Sophie Ann on the throne. My corner of Louisiana marked the first time I had set down any kind of roots for a very, very long time… if ever. Even though I had developed a potentially fatal case of complacency in living here – what can I say? It was home now. Besides, now I had a little intrigue to drive those old complacency blues away.
The good thing about down-time contemplations is that you lose track of actual time. Before I knew it Long Shadow was shouting out "last call". I looked around at the patrons of Fangtasia to see if there was anyone worth my last call effort. A quick glance revealed that sadly, no, none were worthy. I had a reputation for being quite the ladies vampire, and I nurtured that reputation. Truth is, though, I wasn't nearly as sexually active as everyone thought. That was by choice. Oh, I would have an occasional fuck and feed, but after a thousand years, it took someone really special to inspire true desire. And 'really special' was in shockingly short supply at Fangtasia. I walked at human speed to my office to close out the night. I picked up my throw-away cell to see that it was flashing with a message. My investigator is the best, but this was fast even for him. The message told me to check my email. I looked at the email:
Northman,
I have only made a cursory look into the relatives of Hadley Delahoussay in Bon Temps, and here is what I found:
Relatives of Hadley Delahoussay in Bon Temps:
Grandmother – Adele Hale Stackhouse, homemaker. Adele's family includes:
Husband Mitchell Stackhouse, farmer/construction worker, deceased.
Son Corbett Stackhouse, refinery maintenance mechanic, deceased and his wife Michelle Turner Stackhouse, housewife, deceased.
Daughter Lynda Stackhouse Delahoussay (mother of Hadley), bookkeeper, deceased.
Son-in-law Stanley Delahoussay (father of Hadley), occupation and whereabouts unknown.
Brother Bartlett Hale, retired shoe store manager, currently disabled/wheelchair bound and living in Monroe.
There is quite a bit of information available on Hadley's cousins:
Jason and Sookie Stackhouse (children of Corbett and Michelle, raised by Adele after their parents' deaths – Sookie was aged 7 and Jason was aged 10).
Sookie (now aged 24) still lives with Grandmother at 234 Hummingbird Lane, Bon Temps; Jason (aged 27) lives in their deceased parents' house a couple miles away at 1503 Lariat Loop.
Jason and Sookie own a business together that is located on the 25 acre family homestead on Hummingbird Lane – The Enchanted Forest – a greenhouse, plant nursery, and landscaping company. The Enchanted Forest is an almost three-year old successfully run business with net profits of almost $200K last year. Lucrative landscaping contract clients include City of Shreveport building complex, The Shreveport Hyatt Regency, Centenary College, Bonne Chance Casino and Hotel in Bossier City, Renard Parish County Courthouse, Red River Mall and Office complex, to name a few. They are also the preferred landscapers of residents of Pine Hollow and Delta Oaks subdivisions – two of the more affluent Shreveport neighborhoods, among others.
Education – Sookie Stackhouse, BS in botany and business from Centenary College in Shreveport; Jason Stackhouse – AS in horticulture and landscaping from LSU-Alexandria. Both are also graduates of Bon Temps High School.
Angie's List has a huge and extensive list of satisfied customers of The Enchanted Forest. Here's a link to their website .com.
I will have more information after a more detailed investigation.
Raphael
I sat back in my chair trying to absorb this information. These Stackhouse cousins must be the target of Compton's mission. What is Sophie Ann thinking? These cousins are well-established – hell, I'm one of their clients, or at least my casino is, not that I would've known – and in the world of their business, they are apparently well known. And what the hell kind of name is Sookie?
I brought up their website. The home page had different pictures related to the various natures of their business. There were amazing pictures of the plants in their nursery over a wide stretch of acres of land. Inside the greenhouse were the more delicate plants, some of them quite rare, but all of them healthy, green, and beautiful. There was a tab that showed various sites and pictures of their completed landscaping projects, and it was very impressive. They had not only an eye for the beauty of plants, but also an eye for the artistic ways they could be arranged and displayed. This represented work way beyond what a mere three years in business should yield. There were other tabs on the website that included price and plant lists, seasonal specials, testimonials, links to other websites, and ways to contact the company.
Finallly, there was a tab that said simply 'About Us'. I clicked on that, and a picture of the two beautiful, blonde siblings popped up. Their picture was taken in a wild-flowered meadow – an unusual choice considering their business. They were both sitting on the ground in the sunshine surrounded by high grass, and the photographer caught them in the midst of laughing expansively, as if they had just heard the funniest joke of their lives, with her leaning slightly into him and his arm around her shoulder, their jubilant faces pointing in different directions. Their hair sparkled golden in the sun; they had tan skin with that glow of youthful health. Their teeth were straight and white, and their eyes were sky-blue. In short, they were glorious. I may have even gasped when their picture first came up, but I would deny it.
Under their picture was some biographical information similar to what Raphael had provided me, with a few more tidbits (apparently Jason was an all-state quarterback of their high school football team, and Sookie went to college on a full academic scholarship, as well as representing Renard Parish in the Miss Louisiana Pageant) along with the usual mission, vision, and values statements that all business majors are taught to create. They were very impressive on many fronts. At the bottom of the screen was an invitation to like The Enchanted Forest Facebook page. I was sorely tempted to do so.
I sat back in my chair and thought about the beautiful siblings. Why would Sophie Ann want them so badly? Sure, they were attractive, and if they smelled half as good as their cousin, they would be pleasant to have around. But there are a lot of attractive people… so… why these two? I didn't believe for a second that she was really all that interested in just making beloved pet Hadley happy. I looked back at the picture. They really were quite beautiful, and the more I looked at them, it seemed as if there was more to their beauty. I wondered if that were really true, or if I was just looking for it to be true. Tilting my head to the side as I looked at them I realized that this particular photograph had captured a… what was it?... aura… glow about them? I shook my head; I couldn't be right about that.
Pam came in from her closing duties. I looked up from my computer, and she asked, "So what did the missive say? Do we care? Or… Are we going to involve ourselves in something interesting, adventurous? And what's with those sideburns? Not to mention the Dockers khakis. And the Henley shirt? Is his greatest ambition to become a lumber jack?"
I loved that Pam could make me grin, usually because she was such a style snob. "Look at this Pamela," I said as I pointed to the computer screen. She bent over the computer and looked. "I believe these are the 'assets' Bill was sent to procure."
She actually did gasp, and then she was silent for a moment as she took in the picture of the siblings. She straightened up and tossed her long hair over her shoulder. "Well, they certainly are pretty… Surely Sophie Ann isn't just trying to kidnap various attractive people from around the state… So, what gives?"
"I'm not entirely sure. The 'missive' from Sophie Ann stated that the assets Compton was to procure were brother-sister relatives of her 'beloved pet Hadley' from Bon Temps," I stated with the requisite, silly air quotes. "I had Raphael look into it, and here they are. But these two are well-established. Their sudden absence would be noticed, big time. Just look at their resume of work and the Angie's List recommendations. I don't know what she's thinking. My best guess is that she hasn't done any research on them at all other than what beloved pet Hadley has told her. She completely doesn't understand the social media world we live in now." I thought about it for a moment, and I growled. Keeping up with the world around us is, and always has been, essential to vampire survival. That was true in times past, and it is especially true in the digital age. Hell, it's one of the reasons vampires decided it was time to reveal ourselves. Fucking Sophie Ann. She thinks she can do whatever she wants, but if two high-profile, social-media connected people disappear from my area, I'm the one who's going to have to clean up the mess.
As I exited Fangtasia I took to the sky flying toward Bonne Chance Casino. I wanted to give an in depth look at the landscaping. I'd seen it before, but only in the periphery of my consciousness as I walked through the property. I'd never really focused on it. My manager had hired the landscaping company; it was something I had never even given a thought to. I landed at the back of the parking lot behind the complex and walked at human speed toward the rear entrance. Even as I walked through the parking lot I noticed little 'islands' of greenery separating rows of parking. Each little island could have been great with just well-maintained grass with neat trimming, but there were flowers and plant sculpting all along the way. These parking berms basically should have been throw-away areas, but that someone decided they should look beautiful. I finally reached the back door and entered the hotel. I cast an eye around and noticed for the first time the indoor gardens. I had been very proud of this property in the past since, after all, we had been listed as one of the most elegant 'getaways' in Louisiana in Conde Naste, but now I know that one of the reasons for my pride was the elegance I'd never noticed before – especially the indoor landscaping. The large planter boxes situated around the lobby, casino, and other indoor spaces were amazing, and I realized that good landscaping doesn't draw attention to itself; it is beautiful and adds to the overall ambience without saying 'hey, look at me!' As I continued walking the entire property I made a note to myself to give a bonus to my manager for his acumen at hiring an undoubtedly superior company to lift the beauty and elegance of this business.
Fucking Sophie Ann. I thought I wanted to get the assets before her just because I thought they might be interesting, useful, and fun to play with; plus I love to screw with Sophie Ann and get away with it. Now it looks as if I'm going to have to stop her before she destroys the entire public Louisiana vampire infrastructure. If the Authority has to step in to clean up a public relations nightmare, many, many vampire heads will roll. And since this is my area… well, I didn't want to contemplate the possible negative consequences. It occurred to me that this just became a mission to save me and mine, as well as the Stackhouse siblings.