Hi all. Thanks for the reviews. Here is this week's chapter, which, like my week, is busy, busy, busy! Enjoy.
Unholy Alliance
I came to lying on a firm surface, my hip and shoulder aching. Boy, was I pissed. Furious in fact and all before I even opened my eyes. I was seeing red twice I realised: once from anger and once from the rosy glow bleeding through my eyelids. That was all the warning I needed not to open them. It might alert Chico and his nasty friends. Oh, I was furious, but not furious enough to do that.
A chair scraped. I willed my heart beat steady, my breathing even.
"One of 'em waking up?" A deep voice I hadn't heard before. Harp?
"Can't be. Too soon." Grouch. The chair scraped again, and the sensation of being watched left me.
I lay still, ignoring the aches that demanded I move, and raged coldly at the mess I found myself in. A-fucking-gain. Excuse my language, but there are only so many times a girl can be kidnapped and retain some equanimity.
But, just as all those Word of The Day calendars from Arlene had enriched my vocabulary, my far too frequent experiences with kidnap had taught me not to waste a second or an advantage. And I had a whopper of one: the Weres didn't know I was a telepath.
Guess leaving my ID back at the hotel in case I had to play Pete's girl again had been one of my better ideas.
Focusing, I stretched my mind outwards. It was harder than usual, the sedative still messing with my concentration. The good news: Pete, whose mind showed no signs of stirring, was besides me. The others were further away and in the same state.
The bad news: Our new friends, Harp and Grouch, were only ten or so feet distant. I didn't dare risk a peek because I was facing them. Their stray thoughts and the quiet slapping sounds told me they were playing cards. I reached further and found Chico, far enough away that he had to be outside the room I was in.
Mentally moving that last bit of information to the good news column, I focused on the other two Weres. I didn't want to risk probing Grouch and tipping him off that I was awake, so I started with Harp. He wasn't paying much attention to the surroundings, so this was somewhere familiar to him. I pulled out of his head for a moment to see what I could learn the old-fashioned way.
Keeping my eyes closed, I used my other senses. The place had echo to it, but I wasn't a damn bat and I couldn't tell diddly-squat from that. The air was cooler than the floor, which seemed to be padded and plastic-covered from a cautious exploration with my hands, still cuffed behind my back and out of sight. Some sort of thin matting, then. I smelt oil and hot metal. A workshop of some kind? That wasn't much use to me right then, but there might be tools around to use as weapons if I got free.
Back to our two saner captors. Probably saner, I corrected myself. After what I'd heard before I was thrown in the van I had to wonder about that.
That was another wellspring feeding my anger: Grouch and his men were waging a deliberate campaign of violence designed to screw up any chance twoeys had of living peacefully with ordinary Americans. What for, I didn't know yet. I was mighty curious as to why three werewolves were selling out their own kind like that.
Well, these two anyway. Chico was nuts and I figured he'd go along with anything that kept him supplied with victims.
The more I found out about the other two, the more buttons I could push when they finally took the damn duct tape off my mouth.
So l played possum and listened with ears and mind.
Harp grunted.
Grouch laughed. "Pay up, you big lug."
I heard coins slide across a hard surface. I saw it was midnight, through Harp's eyes as he glanced at his watch.
The witching hour. Huh, fancy that. These guys had their own witch in Grouch. He must have 'salted' that house in Jackson so Daisy couldn't work her mojo there.
The pieces were fitting together.
We'd been taken around ten, I thought. Midnight meant the van ride had only taken an hour or two, tops. I tried to figure out when Eric would get to the truck stop and realise something was wrong, if he'd be able to follow the van here…
If wishes were white horses, he'd be arriving on one about now.
I'd better act as if the cavalry weren't coming. Even if the message I'd left for Eric had given him a pretty big clue to follow, there was no guarantee he'd be in time. I wasn't resting on my laurels waiting on him and Thalia. Chiding myself for getting distracted, I went back to listening.
When Harp looked at his watch again five minutes later, Grouch said, "Be here when they get here."
Harp muttered something and I saw Lance in his head accompanied by a pulse of respect.
So they were working for vamps. Figured. Probably under duress. Typical vamp tactics were intimidation and threats, and not all vamps saw the need to tone that down any since the Revelation.
Although I bet Chico had some skeletons hidden. Literally. (I was careful not to shudder at that and give myself away.) So it could be common or garden blackmail.
Blackmail. Quinn, and Bardulf.
I spared a moment to wish my honey well before returning to the task at hand.
As the sedative wore off completely, I picked up more about our location through Harp's eyes. We were in a steel garage, with a concrete floor and a curved roof. An old place, by the rust spots. Thin foam padding had been laid down on the floor where we were.
Inside two wire cages. Great.
Pete was in with me, Daisy and Digger were together.
There was a gun rack over behind the table the Weres were play cards at, and some shelves stacked with stuff Harp paid no mind to, but from what I saw looked to be handcuffs, ammunition and the like. An open first aid kit sat on the work bench, next to a small TV, which was off. The place was pretty empty otherwise.
There was one entrance as fas as I could see, a garage door, one of those with a smaller door inside it. I steeled myself and reached outside to Chico. Through his eyes, I saw a driveway and the van. We were among some low hills, another building — a house, I thought from the dark shape— off to one side, but no other lights in sight.
No minds either, as far as I could reach. No-one to hear us scream.
Cautiously I began to read Grouch, getting bolder when he didn't react. I figured he'd taken a painkiller or two when he dressed those burns of his, which were neatly bandaged, and that was keeping him foggy.
Either that or he just didn't have the ability to sense me touching his mind. I hadn't exactly taken a survey of Were-witches to see if they could all detect telepathy. Maybe Hallow had been unusually gifted.
And Daisy too, but she was something else entirely.
I debated making a move before Lance arrived, but I didn't exactly have a plan. The ache in my hip was getting unbearable. I risked shifting my weight, eyes still closed. Grouch cursed and I froze.
Harp laughed, deep and joyful. "Pay up, loser."
I relaxed. Grouch was cursing the shitty hand he'd been dealt. More coins slid across the table. A pause, cards shuffling, and then the clear sound of a phone.
"ETA half an hour," Grouch announced after a minute. Good. Should be worn off before that. No need to give 'em the wake up juice.
Harp grunted an acknowledgement, and I settled on playing possum a while longer.
Waiting until the others were awake to back me up made a whole lot of sense. Why I was awake already, I didn't know, but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth and count its back teeth.
Unfortunately, without a way to direct our captor's thoughts I was relying on them to hit on what I needed to hear. The only concrete piece of information I got was that they'd known Daisy and Pete by name before they'd tracked us down at the truck stop.
From the tenor of Harp's thoughts, he was a simple man content to follow orders and let someone else make the difficult decisions. Not much potential for me to exploit there. Grouch, on the other hand, was complex. He glanced over at us a time or two, and regretted that he'd most likely be killing two women tonight. But that regret wasn't deep enough to give him pause, he felt … resigned. Like he'd done a deal with the devil, set his course and was grimly sticking to it.
A feeling I had reason to be familiar with, ever since I came into contact with vampires.
Lance had to be the devil riding Grouch's ass, pulling his strings. Lance, and the vampire faction behind him.
What I'd said about making things worse for twoeys popped into Grouch's head the next time he looked at me. He shook his doubts off, thinking: No, she's wrong. Too naïve to know how the world works. Have to do this. Twoeys like me, at the edge, lining on the margins. We'll never fit in. Only strategy I can see salvaging anything for us.
His justifications came with a twinge of guilt and a dollop of frustration, and I had no idea what he meant.
How would any of this benefit Grouch? Everything I'd heard over the last week convinced me it the killings would souring things for all twoeys. Brandy, railroaded out of her home; teachers looking down their noses at twoey moms; children told not to play with twoey kids; twoeys with records being arrested for something they didn't do.
Hell, the way things were going law enforcement might throw away the tranquillisers and switch to shooting silver bullets first, asking questions later.
I saw nothing but disaster for twoeys if they kept on down this road.
Time trickled past. I was sore, frustrated, and still missing a link or three in what was going on when Digger began to stir.
He was groggy and as mad as a bear, or rather a wolf, with a sore head. Someone had smacked him good, and he had the mother of all headaches. He was cussing the tape over his mouth, the drugs and the silver cuffs, furious that he couldn't shift.
That was a blow. Our captors had been prepared for twoeys.
Pete and Daisy stirred about ten minutes later. With considerable relief, I stretched and wriggled my way to sitting up, which is not easy when half your muscles are as stiff as rocks. Our hosts were armed and alert, Grouch at our cage and Harp at the other.
Looking down the barrel of a gun sure got old real quick, let me tell you.
Grouch wasn't aiming at me though. He had a bead on Pete. Don't know if that stuff works the same on them
Of course, Pete wasn't your run-of-the-mill twoey.
Pete was also a genius, because he was already two steps ahead of me without the benefit of telepathy. Glaring at the gun, he gave a muffled snarl from behind the tape over his mouth and nudge my foot with his.
His voice whispered in my head: Sookie, I think I can still shift. What about Digger?
I shook my head a little, rubbing my forehead on my shoulder to disguised the movement and make it seem like I was still dazed, as Grouch was watching us closely. Pete, growling deep in his chest, threw himself backwards in a fair imitation of anger and landed by the wire mesh dividing the cages.
Daisy locked eyes with him, and a whole conversation must've taken place in that quick glance, because after it Pete sent me another, louder thought: Daisy might be able to do something 'bout Digger, help him shift. Need to time it right, do it together. Break free of the cuffs. Gives us a chance.
I nodded and wiped my mouth on my shoulder a couple times. Pete got the message and rolled over onto his knees, his back to me and his fingernails scrabbling at the edge of the tape. I pressed against the sharpness, ignoring the pain.
Grouch banged on the cage. "Hey! None of that."
Pete pulled away, ripping the tape free and I yelped. Grouch and Harp swore, but I ignored them and whipped round to face Daisy.
The words burst out of me in one breath: "Hector's dead. They killed him."
All hell broke loose as Daisy kicked at the cage fit to bring it down and Digger and Pete slammed themselves at the cage doors and growled in their chests, deep and muffled.
Harp brought his gun up and gave a louder, deeper, truly menacing growl that shut everyone up. He said into the silence, "You worried for nothing, Grouch. If the bear don't shift when he's that mad, the bear can't shift."
Grouch was staring at me, going over everything that had been said since they snatched us. "Yeah, probably. Just one question. How the fuck did she know?"
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Daisy move cautiously into a cross-legged position. Whatever she was up to, best I kept their attention on me.
"Hector was taking revenge," I said, shuffling awkwardly from my butt onto my knees. Damn cuffs. "Killing the men who killed his friends. A family, kids. He was angry. That I can understand. But you? You're killing to start a war. What the hell is your excuse?"
"She a witch too?" Harp was afraid. He grabbed at his neck, pulling a pendant out of his shirt.
"Can't sense any magic. Like nothing I've ever seen." Grouch shook his head, eyes fixed on me and his gun moving slowly to point at my heart. He didn't much like the disgust in my eyes and he was seriously considering pulling that trigger and shutting me up permanently.
I licked my lips. I knew Grouch had some decency somewhere; he'd protected me from Chico, in his own way. I just had to find it. "You know what this is going to do to twoeys. To your people. Families. Women, children. They'll get caught up in it. You think it's going to help somehow, don't you?"
"In the long run. It will," he said, shifting his weight and frowning at me. His thoughts were pinging all over the place, and I still didn't understand him. "Folk don't like different. Never have, never will. This is the only way for us to have a place." Men like me. Harp's family will be protected. His mom, his sister. Can't save everybody.
On the edge of my awareness, Chico went alert. Someone was coming.
Shit. I spoke faster. "It's the vamps, isn't it? They're making you do this. We can fix it, whatever they've got on you. Let us out before they get here."
He laughed. "Oh, little lady, whatever it is you're doing, you ain't got the faintest idea what it would take to get us out of this."
A human mind came into range in the distance, and I relaxed a little. The visitor wasn't Lance, the vampire assassin. A second later the twoeys around me reacted to the noise of a car engine. All eyes turned to the door as Chico banged on it, the hollow thud echoing loudly from the bare steel walls.
…
The visitor was the third man.
All eyes were on him as he came inside, except for Daisy's. She was still cross-legged, rocking slightly as if she'd taken news of Hector's death hard. I hoped that was cover for working some mojo.
The man was dressed in a rumpled black suit, white shirt, black tie and a long black overcoat. He was tall and grey-haired, and his face was heavily lined. Digger recognised his scent and I knew him from somewhere, I knew I did.
Harp stood straighter and Grouch greeted the new guy with a nod and a sarcastic thought: Our civilian overlord.
What? They were acting like this man was in charge. But I thought Lance…
I kept quiet as Grouch reported in a clipped voice: "Acquired the targets Daisy Riverstone and her brother Pete Winchester, along with two Weres, and a human woman. Clean sweep. One fatality, already disposed of." In a shallow grave, near the others.
I was glad Daisy couldn't hear that. I focused on the newcomer, who had the most easy to read mind in the room being human.
"Any problems?" Overcoat said, satisfied a threat to the operation had been removed.
"Just one." Grouch pointed at me. "The blonde knows things she shouldn't."
"Like?"
"What happened to Menendez."
That was Hector.
"Any idea how she knew?" Overcoat said. He wondered several things in quick succession: if I'd told anyone before they captured me, if they had a leak somewhere, if Grouch had lied to him about the spells he cast to cover their tracks from other witches.
Overcoat was damn knowledgeable about the supe world for a human, and he certainly believed he was in charge.
"Hell if I know," Grouch said. "I'd swear she didn't know Menendez was dead before she got here."
"Let's find out, shall we."
Overcoat picked up one of the folding chairs by the table and set it down in front of the cage I was in. He reached inside his coat, felt around in his breast pocket and pulled out a cigarette. Sitting down, he took out a lighter and lit up, inhaled and blew out a cloud of smoke.
The way he held the cigarette, in the middle, with his thumb and first two fingers, hand below it… I'd seen that before.
The smoke reached me, and the smell of it curled into my mind and unlocked a memory. I was so taken aback that I blurted out: "You're FBI."
The memory wasn't mine. It was Lattesta's, from over a year ago. This was his boss, head of the Dallas task force. Tabner, I picked out of his head. John Tabner, that was his name.
He leaned forward, dark eyes calm and watchful, and the way they explored every inch of me and the cold, flat curiosity behind them gave me the creeps. He said slowly, "Now, how did you know that?" What is she? Another witch? Something new?
"Lucky guess," I said weakly and clamped my mouth shut, determined not to give anything else away. I'd had enough trouble with Lattesta once he found out what I could do, and my instincts said this man was much more dangerous.
Tabner was still scrutinising me intently. There was something about me, just out of his reach, on the edge of his mind. Then it was gone.
This man had worked with Lattesta. Did he know about me? I wished I knew more about the enchantment or whatever it was Niall had used to get the FBI off my back. It sure hadn't been enough for Lattesta to forget me.
"Who is she?" he asked.
Grouch cleared his throat. "We don't know. No ID. Must be the blonde who was seen at Carter's house."
"Obviously." He took a drag of his cigarette. "Do we know why surveillance went down at that location?"
"No." Grouch nodded at Daisy, who seemed lost in her own world. "The witch, I reckon."
How fortunate I had the foresight to set up another source, Tabner thought drily. I saw him visiting with an older woman, sitting in her neat lounge and sipping her insipid coffee as he convinced her keeping an eye on the house opposite was a matter of national security and her patriotic duty.
The neighbour at the mailbox. She'd been spying on Liz.
Tabner noticed my eyes narrowing, the flicker of emotion I let show. What is she reacting to? It's almost as if —
Then a shift, a ripple ran through his thoughts and scattered them. Like the ripple I'd sensed when Liz started to trust me.
Fairy magic. Was that Niall's protection? Lord, I hoped so.
What the hell was going on? The FBI watching Liz made sense when her husband had been exacting vengeance outside the law. But the brutal murders in Jackson and Shreveport couldn't be legitimate FBI business. Lance, or some other vamp, must have glamoured Tabner if he was involved in that.
"You checked the databases for her?" Tabner asked Grouch.
"Nothing."
Good. Niall had wiped my records by the sound of it, and I wasn't complaining. The less the FBI knew about me the better.
"Not even a driving licence?"
"No. She's a damn ghost." Facial recognition, fingerprints. One of them should've turned up something.
Fingerprints. Son of a bitch! Grouch had fingerprinted and photographed me while I was out.
Tabner leaned forward. "Now that's interesting," he said, smoke wreathing his head as he brought the cigarette to his mouth again.
"What?" Grouch was irritated. He didn't like Tabner, didn't trust him. Maybe I could work with that.
"She reacted to what you said, but not until a few seconds later. Why would that be?"
Damn, he was good at reading people. He was close to hitting on the truth too, but again that ripple shifted his thoughts.
It seemed weaker. Maybe there was a limit to it, maybe it could be overcome if the truth was staring him in the face. I'd better distract him.
"I'm handcuffed and in a cage," I said sarcastically. "I'm not gonna be reacting normally, am I?"
"Hm. But you're far from hysterical. In fact, you're remarkably in control of yourself. Almost as if you've been trained." An agent from another agency? No, I don't think so. Just someone used to this type of scenario.
He was sharp as a whip. Suddenly being on my knees for this duel of wits didn't sit well with me. I staggered inelegantly to my feet, pressing up to the cage as I went on the offensive, trying to turn the interrogation round on him. "You're trying to start a war. Why? What's the goal here, apart from a whole lot of bloodshed?"
Why is it so hard to realise the game has changed? Someone has to do the unpalatable, or we lose what security we have. "Spare me the bleeding heart," he said. "We must adapt to the new order, and social change is never a pain-free process."
"We? Who's we? Because I sure don't feel part of the club here," I said, shrugging awkwardly at the cage between us.
"Are you not an American, Miss…?"
I ignored the implicit question. "Yes, I'm American. A citizen in a country that believes all men are created equal. That ring a bell, or is that not a truth you hold self-evident?"
"You see?" he said, turning to Grouch. "They buy whatever lies we tell to soothe them."
Grouch, I noted, found him as disturbing as I did.
Tabner took another slow drag of his cigarette. "But we're not talking about men, are we? Or being that were created , they are beings who present a clear and present danger." A threat that must be eliminated, contained. Leashed.
He didn't mean just Weres, although the word leashed was accompanied by thoughts of Grouch and his men. He was also remembering the shock of vamps coming out of the coffin, endless panicked strategy meetings, arguments with other grey men in suits.
Fighting to set upthe agency. His agency, the covert one that had been investigating supes ever since the Revelation.
Tucking that titbit away, I reminded myself to react to his words. I couldn't afford to slip up again. Some divide and conquer wouldn't go a miss.
"You believe that bullshit the Fellowship puts out, that God didn't have a hand in their creation?" I pointed at Grouch and Harp with my chin.
"I'm not qualified to say," Tabner said with a dry chuckle. "God is outside my area of expertise." Although religion can be a convenient tool.
He had a man inside the Fellowship. A man to whom he'd delivered Gary, Liz's brother, knowing those idiots would frame him, kill him, leave Brandy an orphan. I used all my skills to keep my anger off my face, and spoke directly to Grouch.
"Why are y'all helping him? Sounds to me like he thinks y'all are scum. What's he got over you?" Or what has Lance got, if the vamps were really running this show.
Grouch shook his head grimly. "Try again, lady. That ain't gonna work." He don't hold my leash. We're not his men.
Whose men were they? Lance's?
"Her accent," Tabner said unhurriedly. "It's not Texan."
"No. Louisiana, I reckon," Grouch said.
"Louisiana. Hm." Lattesta was there. That case, something fishy about it. Ruined his partner, Weiss. Waste of a good agent.
Oh shit.
Pete, who'd been following the conversation and edging closer, nudged me with his knee and thought: Hector. Ask about Hector.
Like a drowning fool, I clutched at the first straw I saw without checking it would hold my weight and I asked, "How did you find Hector?"
Tabner sat back, eyes flicking between Pete and me. There. It's almost as if … as if …
The ripple came and faded, came and faded, and left the clear, shining thought intact: as if he told her what to ask.
ESP. Psychic? No. Telepathic. Kill her! Too many secrets, can't let her have them! Wait. Hold. She could be useful. Another string to my bow.
All that passed through his mind in less than a moment, and in that moment my blood turned to ice. I could see his plans unfolding, see the facility, its cold concrete walls, the room he'd hold me in, see the way control of my life would be stripped from me.
No. No, I couldn't let that happen. Anything but that. It was my Room 101, my kryptonite.
How could I stop him? Tell him I had the protection of a fairy prince? I bit back a hysterical giggle and my breathing became fast and harsh. Pete nudged me again, and I blocked out his concern and the puzzled look Grouch was giving me by closing my eyes.
Get it together, Stackhouse.
No. No phoning a fairy. Not only would it not work because the FBI were ignorant of the nature of the threat, but this was the man, one of a group of men, who catalogued and profiled and cross-referenced everything about supernaturals. Who were actively searching for new kinds of supes.
To use, like tools in a tool box. That was how he thought of Grouch and Harp.
Niall. Meredith. Dermot too, if he ever came back to visit. I squeezed my eyes shut imagining them in that cold concrete room. No, I couldn't risk revealing the fairies. This man was the last person who should be given that knowledge.
"You might as well tell me your name. I will find it out," he said as he crushed his cigarette butt on the concrete and reached inside his coat for another. "You know mine, don't you?"
Grouch reacted to that with shock. He didn't even know it. I kept my eyes fixed on Tabner with an effort, and the son of a bitch smiled slowly.
He began thinking at me: Want to know how I found Hector? Read my mind.
What he was doing was wrong. I wanted to know his secrets because if — no, when — I got out of here I was going to tell people about that facility of his. Eric, Desmond Cataliades. Niall. They'd know what to do, how to shut it down.
And he was beginning to doubt his conclusion: maybe I wasn't a telepath.
If I was careful…
Taking the risk, I blanked my face and followed thoughts as cold and twisted as any I'd heard from a vampire. Putting flashes of his memory together, I got the gist of what had happen in Houston.
He'd been working with vamps for at least a year. He'd been furious with Joseph for murdering Scott and driving the vigilantes into hiding. He'd given Gary to the Fellowship hoping to flush Tooth 'n Claw out.
When that tactic failed, he arrested some of the Chosen to pacify his bosses in the FBI. Not his real bosses, he answered to somebody else, some shadowy group behind the scenes, the agency he helped set up and…
And who? He was deliberately not thinking about the others. Damn it.
He let some of the Chosen go free as bait, watched them. That was how he cottoned on to Hector killing them. Which was all good by Tabner, because he wanted twoeys to look dangerous, out of control.
But no-one knew about it. Not satisfied a few low-key murders would be enough to set the country aflame, Tabner brought in Grouch's team to eliminate Hector and carry out a killing spree more suited to his plans.
He remembered his first meeting with Grouch.
And slammed me with a series of images so fast I couldn't avoid them: Chico's psychological profile, photos of his previous victims, descriptions of what he'd done to them.
I could let him play with you. Just long enough to break you.
I hauled my shields shut. Too late. My neck was damp, my heart was racing, and I was sure some revulsion had shown on my face.
Grouch started forward, staring at me. "What the hell did you do to her?" he asked Tabner, confused.
"Oh, just a little test."
"You bastard," I whispered, kicking myself for falling for that trick.
It wasn't as if it was anything new. Lattesta had tried something similar. Maybe it was standard FBI procedure: find a telepath, think of the most disgusting, upsetting things you can. Hell, even Andy Bellefleur had been bright enough to come up with that one.
Tabner took a lazy drag of his cigarette and smiled a reptilian smile. "I would apologise, but you'd know it was a lie, wouldn't you?" And testing you was necessary. Iron must be tempered to create a worthy tool.
"Everyone's a tool to you, aren't they?" I spat. There was no point hiding it any more, he knew.
I looked at Grouch, pleading with him silently.
He shook his head slightly. This was one of the devils riding him. Tabner, with the weight of the powerful men behind him. He wouldn't cross him. He had his orders, and a skewed concept of loyalty that bound him to obey them.
He was just another tool in the arsenal too.
A bang reverberated from the door. Chico, announcing an approaching void.
…
The vampire that came in had a round face, sandy hair and brown eyes.
Lance. Wearing boots, jeans and a black polo neck. Digger and Pete gave muffled growls, and Pete cursed in his head at the worsening of our odds if it came to a fight. Daisy was still doing her thing. Tabner gave the vampire an unimpressed glance, but Harp and Grouch went on alert, their guns and their eyes following him.
I didn't trust Lance as far as I could spit either, but the sight of the vampire actually lifted my spirits. Ironic, huh? I'd been planning to escape before he arrived, but at this point I reckoned he was preferable to Tabner.
I just knew Tabner would screw his own grandmother over without even blinking.
Fancy that, I found a human who was more repugnant than a vampire assassin. Sadly it wasn't the first time. Lenier. Glassport.
Okay, I'd met vamps who were just as ruthless, but it was my life Tabner intended to wreck and I was less inclined to be sanguine about that. Now Lance was here, I at least had a chance to play the fairy prince card.
Especially if, as I suspected, Lance had glamoured Tabner into being his flunky.
A girl could hope.
"You dealt with the witnesses?" Tabner asked. Such a useful skill, glamour.
"Yes, the ones I could find." Lance had a quiet, deep voice that didn't match his boyish face. "Shouldn't be a problem."
Well, hell. Tabner thought Lance worked for him. But he could be wrong about that.
"If you think the vamp is working for you you're a fool, Tabner," I said. No reason not to reveal his name. I had nothing to lose, and lashing out at the guy sure made me feel better.
Grouch stiffened, wishing he hadn't heard that name. Tabner carefully knocked ash from his cigarette onto the floor, which wasn't enough of a reaction to be satisfying.
The vamp in question had gone very still once he actually looked at me.
Intending to stir up a little dissent, I carried on. "Oh, he's probably glamoured you to think so, but vamps always have their own agenda, believe me. He's using you."
Tabner replied as if he was indulging a small child. "Of course. Just as I'm using him. That is how you handle someone more powerful. Recognise their power, know what they want, come to a mutually beneficial arrangement." And take precautions. Even Stoker wrote about glamour. Did she think I wouldn't prepare for it? Uneducated, I bet. She's going to need a lot of training.
Grouch had given him some sort of protection against glamour. Damn. Well, that explained why I hadn't seen any holes in his mind.
Lance, who was still staring at me, shifted his weight slightly.
Harp lifted his gun and rumbled warningly, "Don't."
Lance ignored him. "Do you know who this is, Tabner?"
Tabner was irritated that Lance knew his name now, but he swallowed his annoyance. "No. She's a telepath. I take it you know her."
"Of her, yes. This is Sookie Stackhouse," Lance said softly. "And you learnt what she can do in less than an hour. You truly are brilliant, for a human. It will be a pity to dissolve our association."
Tabner's mind rang with shock, but he turned slowly to face the vampire without showing it. "Why would we do that?"
"Because the telepath is correct, in a sense. My agenda just diverged from yours. I'm afraid her presence is a complication that overrides our arrangement."
Tabner was pissed. He had really believed Lance shared enough of his goals to guarantee his loyalty for the duration of this operation, and the money he'd been paid was supposed to seal the deal. "You have another objective beyond leashing the Two-Natured?"
This time I got an insight into what leashing meant: a flash of Capitol Hill, and a senator. Tabner wanted to push some law through that would affect twoeys. Something that needed anti-twoey hysteria to pass, hence the killing spree.
Politics was bloodier than I'd known.
"Yes," Lance said. "Was the telepath carrying anything that could be used to track her?"
"A phone," Grouch said, "but we disabled it."
"Where is it?"
Grouch indicated the canvas bag, over by the TV. "She belong to someone?"
Confused and irritated about it, Tabner asked, "Which agency does she belong to?"
"I didn't mean an agency," Lance said coolly, riffling through the bag.
Harp chuckled and Grouch grinned at him, thinking: Shoe's on the other foot now. Do Tabner good to be the one in the dark for once. Never sat easy with me, him knowing so much about us.
I agreed. I was kinda relieved Tabner didn't know everything about the supe world, to be honest. I was less relieved when Lance pulled my phone out, sniffed it and cursed.
"Were-witch, this has magic in it. Didn't you notice?"
My heart leapt. Eric. What Daisy had said about his laptop and that witch of his, Poppy. She'd done something to the phone. He was on his way.
"Fuck, no," Grouch admitted, casting me a dark look. "That damn necklace in there is off the scales. Blots everything else out. Who's tracking her? A vamp? Davis?"
"Northman," Lance said, examining the phone thoughtfully. "My current employer wants him finally dead. Enough to offer a fat bounty that makes it worth the risk."
As I wondered who Lance was working for, Grouch exchanged a look with Harp and both their minds began to churn with adrenaline.
"What are you waiting for?" Grouch snapped. "Disable that fucking thing before Northman finds us."
It seemed they'd heard of Eric.
"I am debating whether I should," Lance said coolly. When he looked up, his fangs were down. The bloodthirsty expression at odds with his boyish face made him look eerily like André for a second. "Northman is virtually alone. He will come quickly. It is the perfect time to ambush him. Assist or leave. Don't interfere."
"These men are under my control," Tabner said. "They will do as I say."
Everyone ignored him, and I shouldn't have enjoyed that as much as I did.
Grouch swore, loped across the room and broke open the gun locker. He tossed a bizarre looking handgun to Harp — it was too chunky and looked to be plastic — ,and bounded out the door with another. I could hear him warning Chico not to take any chances as Tabner, pale and face pinched with anger, also helped himself to a gun out of the locker.
Harp swore softly as he checked over the strange gun, tensing at the thought of battle. I empathised. Lance must be pretty old if he reckoned he could take down Eric. I crossed my fingers that Thalia was coming too.
"No," Lance murmured, still considering the phone. "Better to frustrate him, throw him off his game."
Whipping a knife from his boot, he slipped the blade into the phone and levered it open. He hissed as it gave out a bright flash of light and a pop like the sound of an air rifle. A puff of black smoke wafted out of the phone. Lance sniffed at it cautiously, grimacing.
While he was doing that, I'd narrowed down his employer to Felipe or Bardulf. Murders in Shreveport, Amarillo, and Jackson: that meant a vamp targeting Eric, Stan and Russell. They were the best candidates.
Then I remembered Lance had been in California.
"Felipe de Castro," I guessed as Grouch came back inside. "You're working for him."
I got confirmation. Not from Lance, or Tabner, who recognised the name but was surprised to hear it. From Grouch, who wasn't surprised at all.
"You knew?" I asked him.
He threw Harp a clip of silver bullets and growled, "Of course."
"You did?" Tabner was furious that Grouch hadn't shared that with him.
"Not much the old man doesn't know." Never sends us in blind. Met with Felipe himself, made a deal. Or we'd have killed the vamp. Still might.
The old man. A US General. One prepared to loan one of his black ops teams, the ones that handled the dirtiest jobs, to Tabner. One prepared to do that because he believed America needed twoeys to give its army an edge. He wanted a draft, a twoey draft so he could cherry-pick the best.
The FBI, the US army and Felipe. That was one hell of an unholy alliance.
And they'd all back-stab each other as soon as spit. Jesus Christ Sheppard of Judea. "Y'all deserve each other," I said in disgust.
Tabner cleared his throat. "Lance, what happens to the Stackhouse girl?"
"I need her as bait. After that…" He bared his fangs. "Death."
He broke a leg off one of the chairs with a loud crack and began to whittle a make-shift stake with his knife. I hoped he slipped and cut off a finger.
"I have protection," I said, glaring at him. "People will come after you if you kill me." Fairies. With silver teeth.
"They won't find me. That protection put you beyond Felipe's reach. He has wanted you for a long time, and if he can't have you, he's decided no-one can."
"So what you're saying is she needs to disappear," Tabner said thoughtfully.
Lance looked up from his woodwork. "What are you proposing?"
"She might be more valuable to you alive than dead."
"It would have to be worth my while to double-cross Felipe." His voice practically dripped with greed. Lance, it seemed, was out for himself first and foremost, and quite happy to play Felipe and Tabner off each other.
He was still a hair more likeable. At least Lance didn't pretend he was doing it for the greater good.
"Double your fee," Tabner offered. That was a cool half a million.
"Tempting. You will have to fake her death."
Oh, just wonderful. They were haggling my life away.
"I can arrange that," Tabner said smoothly. "A fire, perhaps. This place is compromised anyway. And I will take her now, before Northman arrives."
"I will need to spill some of her blood. To convince Felipe she was killed here."
"Triple your fee. Take it or leave it."
"Done. She's all yours. The usual account. Now, before we part ways."
Tabner pulled out a phone to make a call.
I shouldered the cage in frustration and Grouch pointed his gun at me again. Son of a bitch. I made a last desperate appeal to him. "Tabner is using you. He'll turn y'all in if it suits him, frame you for the murders. You know he will."
"I got my orders."
"You'd sell your own kind down the river, and for what? Power? Money?"
Grouch snorted. "No. For security. Lady, you don't know what folks are capable of when they're afraid. And it'll happen. Someone will slip up, one full moon. Or a video of something humans don't understand will go viral. It won't take much for humans to turn on us. This way, we have a use, a way to serve our country. Folks will be grateful."
He meant the draft his General wanted.
"What you mean is you're a killer and you don't want to give up the chance to keep killing! Don't let him take me."
He flinched, but his remorse didn't amount to a hill of beans. "You know too much. I can't let you go free. It's that, or short walk to a shallow grave, same as your friends there. Speaking of which." He turned to Harp. "We need to kill them before Northman arrives."
Pete tenses behind me and thought: Be ready.
Harp opened our cage real fast, and shoved Pete when he charged at him. Pete went sprawling. I was grabbed and pulled out, kicking and cursing. Harp shoved me across the room to the vampire.
"Y'all are no better than cold-blooded killers," I yelled.
Lance tore my coat off me and grabbed my arms, squeezing hard until I stopped struggling.
"History will judge us," Tabner said. "The many require the sacrifice of the few. You people never take that to its logical conclusion. The sacrifice doesn't have to be willing."
Lance slashed my arm with his knife, so fast the first sensation I felt was warmth on my skin from the rush of blood. It was a deep cut. He let the blood drip on the floor as Grouch and Harp ushered the others out of the cages, keeping their guns trained on them.
There was an odd energy to Daisy's mind, and I could feel Pete and Digger readying themselves, but I was light-headed and woozy from the blood loss. Lance held me up as Tabner tied a makeshift tourniquet around my arm. Tabner half-carried me outside, my legs rubbery. The others came out after us, Pete fighting all the way, making things as difficult as possible so no-one noticed Daisy sticking close to Digger.
Chico was a few feet away, scanning the hills. He hissed urgently for us to shut up, worried that the night critters had gone silent.
Pete began that flickering change, and all hell broke loose.
...
A/N: There may have been a small tribute to the X files in there...
