A/N Thank you all for the positive reinforcement and for your patience, since I know it's taken me forever to come back to this story. As always, no copyright infringement is intended.

Chapter Four

Grousing outside the holding cells, Carly pulled the sticky cloth away from her chest. She was aware of the smells that hung about her—the smells of turpentine, blood, and vomit coalescing into a noxious soup that she couldn't dispel with an audience of police officers. Instead, she sat patiently waiting for an opportunity to get rid of the remains of the werewolf that clung to her homicidal hands. Even though Mike was dying from internal bleeding when he attacked her, his death was still on her hands (literally), and the energy clung to her tightly, insistently demanding that she release it into another universe where it could feed lives of the shape-shifting creatures she encountered when pledging herself to the mystery.

"Can I call anybody, Carly?" Andrews asked tentatively. He seemed embarrassed that she had pushed him away and seemed to have neutralized the wolf's threat, even though he had no idea of the extent of threat posed to the officers in his precinct.

She shook her head. "I can take care of myself, Miles." Carly laughed. "I seem to be on a roll, don't I?" She nodded toward the dead werewolf. "What is this, the fifth body since I got to Shreveport?"

"Carly," Andrews shook his head, "you need to get cleaned up." The detective waved to the young officer Carly noticed earlier—she focused on him and saw how afraid he was and knew he still hadn't even been on patrol in a squad car—and asked, "Garcia, can you get one of those FOP outfits from the locker room?"

"Yes, sir."

A few moments later, Garcia returned with a khaki-colored sweat suit with the Fraternal Order of Police insignia embroidered over the left breast.

Finally standing, Carly pointed toward the kitchenette installed against the far wall. "Could I get some paper towels for my hands? I don't want to get the suit dirty before I put it on."

Garcia volunteered, "I can just carry it for you and let you into the women's shower. Then you can wash up."

Nodding appreciatively, Carly followed the officer as he led her to the bathroom. As they walked, Carly tuned into his thoughts, mainly to distract herself from the horrid sensation the vomit-saturated clothing created on her chest. Man was growling like an animal…wonder if my grandma's right? She says the vampires have to be the tip of the iceberg. What's that play she's always going on about? There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio?

Carly giggled, amused by the Hamlet quotation that passed across Garcia's memory.

"Miss, you okay?"

"I'm fine." Carly smiled at him, her sweet features arranging themselves in their most generous way. "It's a pretty strange world we live in now, isn't it?"

When they got to the shower-room door, Garcia opened it for her and answered, "Yea, I was just thinking about that. My grandma was an English teacher, and she'd always go on about what Hamlet teaches us about the world."

"More things in heaven and earth," Carly repeated, "isn't that what Hamlet says?"

"Yep, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Garcia reciprocated the smile, relaxing in their moment of shared cultural capital. Before leaving her, he asked, "Do you think there are more things than vampires out there?"

"Why wouldn't there be?"

Garcia traced the top of his belt with his palms, settling his hand over his hip, reaching toward an absent holster. "That scares the hell out of me."

"I guess we all just have to take it as it comes. The vampires haven't turned out to be so bad." Carly laughed again. "Although I do have a bias, since I love one of them."

Within the shower-room, Carly located a stack of scouring-pad-textured towels and jumped into the shower before it heated fully, fighting off the flimsy dormitory-style curtain as she struggled to free herself from the werewolf stench.

Water poured down her in rivulets, and Carly wanted nothing more than to wash the in-between spaces, the places only ever exposed when she traveled as vapor, to cleanse her whole being from the greasy remainder of the dead biker. Within seconds, she began coming apart in the shower, disintegrating into a dense fog that filled the stall and vibrated to the pulse of the water. The fog hovered above two glinting layers of light—one white and one greenish-gray. She circulated rapidly between the two layers of light and felt them transforming, felt them moving from the heaviness of death to the buoyancy of life. The dense, green-gray layer persisted, like a float on a fishing line. As Carly contemplated the light, she felt a desire—wracking her like an unsatisfiable hunger—to return to the crystalline scaffold where she committed herself to the mystery.

The crystal stairway appeared before her understanding, and Carly knew she held a key—a gray-green key, the energy that could unlock the pathway to the realm of the shape-shifters. And with that understanding, the energy was gone, and she felt a pulse—like the excitement of love that flushes the cheeks of a new mother—and she was back in the shower, mingled with the steam that filled the whole room.

Without the coherence of consciousness, Carly comprehended everything in a refracted way, as through a prism. Russell's demise reflected off the silver spikes embedded in the lupine joints hanging in Fantasia's basement, and then bounced back to her in her shower stall. Russell's death carried back information it hadn't had when it left her. Disembodied and hovering between the water molecules, Carly caught a brief vision of two voluptuous, dark-haired women—one seemed familiar, but her face was covered by a cloth veil and arms that curved and spun like vines—rotating around Russell as he lay blood-bathed upon an oriental couch.

She couldn't place the setting, or isolate it in an era, until she caught a faint smell—burning molasses. Sugar…Barbados…

"Ms. Michael," Garcia called out as he knocked on the door. "Detective Andrews wants to know if you're okay."

Carly returned to solidity and gathered her voice back to herself before she turned off the water. "Yeah, sorry, I'm fine."

After dressing in the sweat suit so that she looked like a recruit from an old episode of Charlie's Angels, Carly returned to the squad room to confer with Andrews before heading home. Work was off the table after all her excitement.

"Okay," Carly sat at the chair that looked toward the detective's desk. "What do you know."

Andrews snorted. "That you've used up all the hot water in Shreveport."

"What?"

"You always shower for two hours? If I'd been able to find a screwdriver, I would have taken the damned door off the hinges. I started to think you'd melted and gone down the drain."

"You're wiser than you know, Miles."

"Funny." Andrews turned his computer screen so it faced Carly. "We got three more reports through the State Police."

"So how many people like Mike have been spotted?"

"About twenty, total."

Carly did a tally and reckoned that fifteen to twenty wolves were still loose in the landscape. If the Louisiana police and Eric were lucky, some of the wolves had gone east, and would wind up the responsibility of the King of the Caribbean, who had no patience for people after V. Carly suspected he would have even less for werewolves eager to chew on his vampire subjects.

"So what was he?" Andrews's voice flattened out, all the southern twang deflated by fear.

"What do you mean?"

"Carly," Andrews sighed, reached into his pocket and drew out a piece of nicotine gum. "It's been years since I've needed this stuff, but that's what all this is doing to me."

Silence persisted between them for a few minutes.

"Come on, Carly, I'm not a stupid man."

Carly sat up straight, felt the muscles between her shoulder-blades tense and relax, like a rock was rolling back and forth between them. "Look, I don't know what you want me to tell you."

"I want you," Andrews raised his voice, "to tell me what the hell that guy was, 'cause he sure as shit wasn't human."

"What do you think he was?" Perhaps if Carly could get Andrews to voice his own suspicions, she thought, she could get away without coming out and saying anything definitive.

Andrews rubbed his temple. "All I know is what I saw, and I saw his eyes change, Carly." Shaking his head and squeezing his eyes shut, Andrews repeated. "I saw his eyes change—his pupils expanded and the rest of his eyes turned yellow. They were like dog's eyes all of a sudden."

"So you think he was changing into a dog?"

With a loud expulsion of air, Andrews said, "I'll tell you what I think. I think the guy was a damned werewolf, is what I think."

Carly left the word hanging between them, taking form and shifting, its consonants lengthening and growing claws, its vowels changing color, growing dark fur that consumed the whole body. With all her concentration, Carly made her face as blank as possible.

"Well, vamp-girl, what do you say?"

"Excuse me?" Carly stood and crossed her arms. "Vamp-girl?"

"That's what he kept saying, isn't it? Why would he think you're a vampire, especially in the middle of the morning?"

Carly shrugged. "Don't know. He didn't seem like he should be building rockets, Andrews."

He stood up and leaned his hands on his desk. "I know you're different. You hear what people are thinking. So if there are vampires and telepaths in this world, I see no reason there aren't werewolves."

"You can believe what you want, Andrews," Carly saw an opening, "if it will help you understand why these guys are so dangerous."

"So I'm right?"

"Can you talk to Eric about this, Andrews?" Carly reached for the doorknob. "I'm tired and dressed like someone who just got tossed out of the police academy, so I want to get home, rest, and change."

"So it's neither confirm nor deny." Andrews collapsed back into his seat and popped out another square of nicotine gum. "Have him call me when he's up."

Once Carly was back to the Corvette, she began thinking about the night before and wondering what happened when Godric returned to New Orleans, whether Sookie and her grandmother transferred back to Bon Temps. As she drove through Shreveport toward her own home, she recalled Sookie's insecurities. Would the young woman understand how Godric felt about her? About what he offered her?

Of course, Carly didn't even know if she would understand it herself, if she were human. Sookie had fairy ancestry, but Carly didn't have any idea whether that ancestry would translate into immortality or power or if Sookie would only be able to spend her life with Godric as vampire. She didn't even know if fairies could become vampires.

Carly opened up her small house and was immediately confronted by the stale air that filled the structure. She plugged in her phone and started to do an inventory. She couldn't remember how long it had been since she'd been in the house, so the first thing she did was clean out the refrigerator. As she watched the garbage can fill with uneaten, wilted lettuce and the bottle of curdled milk, Carly recalled that she really didn't need to eat any longer—it had become optional, an entertainment. The only thing she needed to consume was death, the only thing she needed to excrete energy.

Carly emptied out her refrigerator, leaving only the foods she couldn't imagine living without—cheese, olives, pickles.

After emptying the trash and opening all her windows to air out the house, Carly decided to change clothes. Paging through the clothes in her wardrobe, which had grown exponentially since she'd become part of Eric's retinue, Carly finally settled on a silk dress that Pam bought for her a few weeks before. The lightness of the cloth, the smoothness of the texture, made her feel naked, free to move through the world without encumbrance.

And that realization weighed on her mind. All the cycles that once governed her life—wakefulness and sleep, eating and digesting, work and rest—were all disrupted, irrelevant. She no longer needed to sleep, but she'd learned that she'd never really dreamed while sleeping anyway. Her visions of someone else's existence that guided her reconstructions had been something else, a dislocation in time and space, not a dream.

"Ugh," Carly groaned loudly and fell back onto the sofa. "What the hell do I do with myself?"

She hadn't really expected an answer, but found herself disappointed nonetheless when one didn't appear.

Carly rose and chose a book from the shelf at random and decided to read.

Anthropologists, who must cultivate the multivalent position of observer-participant, often find themselves questioning their own positionality and discover that their ethics have been upended by contact with new cultures.

"Yeah, tell me something I don't know, Herr Anthropologist," Carly groaned. She slammed the book in disgust. My ethics...shit...ethics, from ethos, disposition, nature. So what is my nature now? Valkyrie...chooser of the dead.

As soon as the word passed through her mind, Carly filled with desire, with hunger. Looking at the clock, she saw it was only two o'clock; she had hours before reuniting with Eric, but she wanted answers, nonetheless. With all those who had answers unavailable to her—Eric, Godric, Jean-Jacques—Carly decided to check in on Sookie.

"There have to be some perks of being this way." With another clothes change into something more generally presentable, and a double-check of her purse and wallet, Carly thought back to the stand of trees outside Merlotte's, where she and Eric made love just a few nights before.

Without any delay, she was there, standing in the afternoon sunlight in the balmy weather of autumnal Louisiana. Carly smacked her lips, "Mmm, hungrier... damn."

The bar was quiet with only a few cars in the parking lot. As Carly walked in, Sam looked over the bar at her, his eyes widening with recognition.

"Speak of the devil," he said.

"Really?" Carly smiled as flirtatiously as she could.

"No," Sam smiled in return, "but it always makes people feel wanted." He chuckled. "What can I get you?"

Carly looked around the bar, scanning for the energy that might sustain her. At the end of the counter, a fifty-ish woman sat, stirring a cocktail with her finger. The faint glow of death lingered around her waist. As Carly inspected it, she noticed that the energy formed links, like a chain, that wrapped around the bottom of the bar stool and anchored the dumpy woman to the spot.

Smiling, Carly responded, taking up a seat next to the death-moored bar-fly. "It's early in the day, but how about a beer and some gumbo, if your Lafayette's around."

With a shrug, Sam responded, "It will just have to be the beer today, Carly. Lafayette's off with his mama."

"How is she doing?" Carly recalled the clairvoyant she'd met not long before, a woman driven mad with the weight of death she attracted.

"Well, surprisingly. Her sister and niece not so much, though. She and Lafayette are out with them"

Sam met her eyes intently, and Carly dipped into his mind and saw the spectacle that had unfolded the night before in the bar.

You goddamned drunk-ass bitch, a beautiful young black woman screamed across the bar. Sam done told you, you ain't welcome here.

Sam's voice boomed. Now, Tara, that's not fair. That's not what I said. I just told her I wouldn't serve her if she came in my bar drunk. And you have, cher, you know that. His eyes turned to the dissipated visage of a woman old beyond her years. Once, she'd been as beautiful as her daughter, but now, her face was ashen with the effects of liver failure.

I ain't drunk, Sam, just a little tipsy. You didn't need to go and call Tara.

Well how the hell else you gonna get home, Mama? Tara grasped her mother's arm to draw her off the barstool and toward the door.

At her daughter's touch, the woman wheeled around and sucker-punched her right in the chin, sending Tara reeling.

Carly didn't want to see any more, so she pulled away from the memory. "Well, let Lafayette and his mom know I'm happy to help if I can be of any use."

"I will." Sam smiled and forced his thoughts toward her, But I don't know if your magic can help a drunk.

With a tip of her head toward the woman next to her, Carly said, "Everything depends on why people are drinking."

"I'm drinking," Carly's neighbor at the bar answered the question she wasn't asked, "because I can't do without Sam's company."

"Well, that makes two of us." Carly introduced herself. "I'm Carly."

"Jane Bodehouse. I'm pleased to meet you, Carly. You're not from around here, are you?"

"No, ma'am. I'm from New York."

"Don't ma'am me, honey. I'm not old enough to be your mother."

"Okay," Carly smiled, "I'll just call you Jane."

Taking a sip of the beer Sam presented before her, Carly reached over and laid her hand over Jane's wrist. "It's nice to make another friend."

Energy surged through their bond, and Carly startled slightly at it. If most of the energy she absorbed was light, or like static electricity, Jane's chains were like eels, sharp-toothed and angry, unwilling to leave their prey.

"You okay, sugar?" Jane asked sweetly, before taking another sip. "You're holding on a little tight there."

"I'm fine." Carly recoiled from Jane, but still held tight to the psychic bond she'd made, desperate to consume the chains that held the woman tightly to despair. Finally, Carly grasped hold and pulled, consuming the energy in one final gulp. Instead of the revelation of an explanatory vision, like those she usually experienced, Carly sunk into blackness, although she remained rigid and still to external appearances.

"Carly," Sam's voice shook. "You're not looking so good. Let me take you back to my office."

Sam hopped over the bar and grabbed hold of Carly around the waist, rushing back to his office.

Still silent, plunged into a dark pit, Carly was unresponsive to Sam's efforts to pull her from the fugue. Strangely, she found herself unwilling to leave the cold darkness, even as she gained a sense of her presence there. It was damp, uncannily comforting, like a home she'd once known, but slowly details began to come into focus. Carly saw a seat belt across her waist, and the firm supports of plastic hand rests. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized she was in a car—a car submerged in water.

With a sharp intake of breath, Carly came back to full consciousness. "How long has it been?"

"Since what, Carly? Since you've been out?"

"No," Carly shook her head and pushed Sam away. "Since Jane's little boy drowned?"

Carly got up and went to the window, opened it, and discharged the transformed energy back into the world.

When she met Sam's eyes, they were wider than she ever believed they could be. "How did you know about that?"

"His death's what's got her stuck here drinking."

"I didn't live here then," Sam ran his fingers through his hair, "but I think it was about twenty years ago. She lost two babies before that too."

"No wonder she didn't want to let go."

"Damn, Carly, what the hell are you?" Sam's voice creaked slightly.

"Something different than Sookie." As Carly advanced toward the door, she said, "We better get back out to Jane. I have no idea what kind of shape she'll be in."

When they got back out to the bar, Jane was gone, but a $20 bill remained.

"That's a first. She'd only been here an hour." Sam chuckled and said, "You're bad for business, Carly Michael, even if you are good for Jane Bodehouse."

"We'll see. Somehow I don't think I got all of it."

Carly returned to her own beer, which she felt run through her, almost without barrier. After a few sips, she pushed it aside. "I don't think I've got Jane's fortitude."

"Can I get you anything else?"

"No. Really," Carly admitted, "I came by just out of curiosity. I wanted to see if you'd heard from Sookie."

"Not today. She called to let me know she was okay a couple days back, but nothing since then." Sam stopped wiping the glass he'd taken up when they'd returned from his office. "Should I be worried?"

"I'm sure she's fine. I was just wondering if she was back from New Orleans."

"Is everything..." Sam trailed off before adding. "Done?"

"For now, I think it's safe to say things have quieted."

"Quiet's not exactly good."

"They'll be fine." Carly could see Sam wanted more information. "Jason's staying on in New Orleans, working for Godric."

Sam guffawed. "You serious? What's he gonna be doing, filling potholes?"

Suddenly protective, Carly answered, "Godric sees potential in Jason. I don't see why no one else does."

"Jason Stackhouse is a sweet kid, Carly," Sam counseled, "but he's about as useless as a square wheel. The only thing he cares about is chasing skirts."

"Godric thinks otherwise."

"Well, then, the old man's a fool."

Carly shook her head. "I don't think it's wise to underestimate Godric."

"As long as Sookie doesn't get hurt." Sam slammed the glass into the bar and turned toward the register. "She seem happy?"

"It's hard to tell, Sam." Carly stretched her spine straight and looked around the bar again, waiting for the shape-shifter to respond.

When Sam made eye contact, but continued his silence, Carly brought out her wallet. "I think I should pay for the beer and go out and check the house."

"You could call."

"No, I think it will be a nice walk."

The surprise registered on Sam's face and his eyes widened again. "What?"

Carly smiled, "Oh, Sam, we all have our secrets."

After their unproductive exchange, Carly left the bar and looked around to get her bearings. Although she didn't know the territory well, she could feel the pull toward the fairy portal in the woods behind Sookie's house. She began walking, carefully threading her way through the live oaks and pines.

When she encountered her first obstacle, a steep-banked creek, Carly decided to test her strength. Perhaps with a touch of flight-envy, Carly calculated the distance over the creek, checked it against the length of her stride, and then estimated the velocity she'd need to traverse the distance. She backed up twenty feet and took a running jump and landed squarely in the water, her ankle twisted, and her jeans soaked.

"Fucking hell!" Carly growled to herself and scrambled up the bank to the forest floor. She muttered to herself, "I can fucking teleport but I can't jump over a damned creek."

Her illusions of omnipotence shattered, Carly limped through the woods until her ankle relaxed and presumably healed. After an hour, during which she'd encountered the carcasses of a dead possum and deer, both in advanced states of decomposition, she emerged on Sookie's driveway.

Carly noticed a sense of unease that grew stronger the further she proceeded along the graveled path toward the house. She couldn't identify the source of her discomfort, whether the air seemed charged, just as the ozone collects during a lightening storm, or whether it was anxiety that things had gone badly for Sookie, or if something else was poisoning the air.

By the time she reached the house, the feeling of discomfort pervaded her whole body, and she felt terribly nauseated.

Carly knocked on the door, which creaked open with the impact. She backed away toward the fairy portal, where she knew she could find shelter, and called 911.

"What is your emergency?" a cheerful dispatcher asked.

"I'm out at the Stackhouses' place…" Carly began.

"Who is this?"

"Carly Michael," answered, quickly adding, "I'm a..." Sookie's lie came back to her, "a distant relative."

"Well, what's the problem? Adele okay?"

"I just came by to visit them, but their door's not locked, and they're not here. I'm afraid someone's broken into the house."

A chuckle came over the line. "Is that all? Why, half the time, I don't even know where my house key is."

Carly's patience with Suzie-cheerleader-dispatcher came to an end. "Look, unless your officers are otherwise occupied by a bank robbery, or something else dramatic, can you please send someone, preferably Kenya?" The night that they caught Bill Compton, Kenya had shown remarkable poise and seemed like an overall no-nonsense woman."

"I don't know if she's out that way, but I'll send her." The cheerful dispatcher hung up without any further notice.

"Wow, this is not New York." Carly kept backing toward the portal with her eyes focused on the house. Her gaze scanned the windows—curtains still drawn, lights all off. Then Carly heard a loud "bang" as the clothes washer began to rock. Someone had broken into Adele Stackhouse's home and was using the washing machine on the back porch.

"Damn nice house, inn't," a cracking voice said from behind Carly, who whipped around and put her hands in front her of her chest, squaring herself up for a fight.

"Who the hell are you?" Carly reversed direction back toward the house as a skeletal, naked woman moved toward her slowly.

The skeleton scowled and lifted her chin in defiance. "Who cares?"

"This house belongs to my friends." Carly lengthened her strides. "You shouldn't be here."

"They're not using it. And I wanted a wash."

"Why are you here?" Carly didn't expect any more articulate answers, so she peered inside and felt the hunger the woman felt—for blood, for food, for drugs. She was an addict who neglected her health nearly beyond repair, so her hygiene surprised Carly all the more. "You should have eaten something. I'm sure there was food in the pantry."

"Nothin' I want." The woman looked over toward the cemetery toward Compton's dilapidated manor.

Finally at the porch, Carly turned and darted inside, not even bothering to shut the door behind her. When she got to the kitchen, she thought of the portal and transported herself directly to it. "You still willing to help me," Carly whispered. "I know you're angry with Eric, but I could really use some assistance right now."

The familiar crystalline igloo grew around her, and she heard Niall Brigant's lilting voice. "You are assuredly correct, Carly. I believe I shall be angry with your lover for at least a thousand years, perhaps two, but I am still bound to both of you as I am bound to the mystery. Now, how may I be of help?"

"I think you probably already have." Carly caught a glimpse, distorted by the crystal structure, of the naked woman running past them, unaware of their presence.

"Ah, I see," Brigant acknowledged the wolf-woman with a slight gesture of his hand. "She is unexpected?"

"Unexpected here!" Carly nearly yelled. "I was just checking on Sookie, to see if she's back from New Orleans, and I found this woman, naked as the day she was born, running around the property, hungry for vampire blood."

"Why is she seeking my grand-daughter?" Brigant's concern was clear. "Sookie has nothing that they would want."

"I don't think she is." Carly thought back to what Mike had said while he was still in his cell. The werewolves were returning to the site of their last assignment, which was to help secure fairies for Russell's planned breeding kennel. "I think that she's just going where others were sent, probably looking for another wolf."

"Shall I confront her with you?"

"Listen, Niall, I've already killed one werewolf today, I don't really have it in me to kill another one, and I don't think that reasoning with this woman's going to work."

"Well," Niall paused for a long time, "I fear that you have to make a choice, dearest Carly. Do you want to kill another of the loathsome creatures, or do you want her to eat the peace officer who has come to investigate?"