Thanks for all the reviews, and Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate. Enjoy!
Shallow Graves, Deep Secrets
The patter of debris died away.
A solitary piece of shrapnel had burnt through my jeans, scorching the back of my thigh and making me hiss, but my jacket had caught the worst of it. A shrug of my shoulders dislodged the remaining fragments from my back, and I lifted my head.
The barn was wrecked. Only part of the back wall was still standing. Cooling, twisted metal fragments littered the dirt, sizzling quietly where they rested on things with a high water content. Bodies, most likely. Or blood. The air reeked of it. Blood, burnt leather, hot metal — the scents wove into a tapestry of violence and death that evoked every battlefield I'd ever been on.
No-one else was stirring.
"What the hell happened?" Sookie whispered.
Caged beneath me, she twisted her head, impatient to see. I doubted she would enjoy the view, or the kiss I very much wanted to give her. My bloodlust had ebbed, but the ordinary kind was rising in its place.
Especially when she wriggled impatiently against me.
I wiggled my eyebrows at her and said in a deep voice, "Do that again."
"I'm getting the weirdest sense of deja vu," she said and began to giggle. Her stomach shook against mine, and as her laughter got louder it gained a hysterical edge. She choked it off. "Sorry. Blood loss is makin' me woozy."
"Ah."
She pushed at my chest and said quietly, "Let me up, Eric."
Retracting my fangs with some effort, I got to my feet. I had a need for blood that could wait, as if I had flown a great distance, and I surmised that was due to the energy I'd expended tearing a whole barn apart. I was quietly impressed with my new ability. My jacket was ruined, ragged holes seared in the back. Miraculously the burner phone, tucked safely in an inside pocket and protected by the leather, had survived the taser. I slipped it into my jeans and discarded the jacket. Sookie, sitting up now, was staring at the destruction, eyes wide. Her arm was oozing blood, a red stain flowering on the rough bandage tied around it, but she was otherwise intact.
I nodded at the wound. "Do you wish my blood?"
She shook her head, all traces of humour gone. "I'll be fine. There's a first aid kit in that lot somewhere."
A noise from the other side of the area scattered with debris made me tense into a crouch. It was Thalia, sitting up and cursing as she tore taser barbs out of her shoulder. She staggered to her feet, her thigh dark with blood and a stake in her hand. A body lay at her feet and she kicked it, hard.
Lance, the vampire she had been fighting. Looked like he was no longer a threat. Good.
We had been furthest from the barn, and spared the worst. Digger, the bear and the two enemy Weres had been closest, in an area now buried under an avalanche of steel. I spotted Daisy in the middle of the debris, curled up on her side. When I called her name softly, she stirred and raised an elbow. She looked to have escaped relatively intact and I could hear her even breathing. Nearby, the bloodbag with the taser had not been so lucky; he was down, breathing heavily and clutching at a deep laceration in his side.
I would eliminate that threat first.
He scrabbled in the dirt for his gun when he saw me coming, but I easily beat him to it with a burst of vampire speed. Flashing him my fangs, I checked the clip and handed the gun to Sookie. "Silver bullets. Keep it aimed at him."
"I will," she said grimly, glowering at the bleeding human. "I'll shoot his knee out if he so much as thinks out of turn."
I loved it when she was hard-headed. Grinning at her, I patted him down and relieved him of his wallet and phone. Then I cast around for the signet ring, and found it in the dirt. My finger was already healing, and I slipped it back on. That fucking taser was on the ground too, a few feet away.
"A word of advice, breather," I said, picking it up. "If you take down one of us, make it permanent."
I took great pleasure in crushing it before his panicked eyes. As weapons went, it was effective while it lasted, but short on staying power. Except for the burns on my chest from contact with the silver, I appeared to have recovered completely.
Grabbing the bloodbag by the collar, I dragged him over to Thalia and Sookie followed. Thalia had a gaping hole in her thigh, a shallow slash across her temple, and a ragged bite on her shoulder. Lance had come off far worse: bleeding from multiple deep bites and gouges, he was pinned to the ground by a sheet of steel that had almost severed his leg at the knee. From the angle of it, it wasn't my explosive rage that had put it there.
"Lanzo, you worthless bastard," Thalia said. She kicked his flank again, flourished the stake at him and bared her teeth, her mouth and fangs dark with his blood. "You missed."
He snarled at her and struggled to rise, but he was too weak to free himself. He resorted to a stream of insults in a mixture of German and Dutch.
"You know him?" I asked her, dropping the bloodbag and motioning for Sookie to keep the gun on him.
"Yes. He ended a child of mine."
Ah. I almost felt sorry for him. "We question him first. Then he is all yours."
She nodded. She was bone-white, and her eyes went to Sookie. I bared my fangs and indicated the Were whose neck I'd broken about twenty yards away. The fight had been short and he was still fresh. Thalia didn't need to be told twice; she was fang-deep in his neck a moment later. Sookie flinched at the tearing and gulping noises, but she didn't protest.
"He is past feeling it," I said coldly. She knew what we were.
"Shame," she muttered. I raised an eyebrow, and she shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself. "Don't ask. Maybe his momma loved him, but I doubt anyone else did."
The look in her eyes made me regret snapping his neck so quickly. I was about to ask what he'd done to deserve her contempt when a harsh grating sound interrupted me. I whipped round to face the remains of the barn. The bear was pushing his way out of a pile of debris, naked and swearing. He had a couple of bite wounds, and a few burns, but otherwise he didn't look too worse for wear.
"Shit," Sookie gasped. "Digger's under there."
"What about their Weres?" I said.
She focused on the wreckage. "Harp, the big one, is still down. Grouch is coming round. He's pissed," she warned, "but he's trapped. Find Digger first. Please. He's fading real fast."
Thalia came with me, wiping her mouth. We followed the scent of blood, tossing broken steel sheeting aside until we uncovered the wolf, face down. Thalia rolled him over, and tore the tape off his mouth. He opened his eyes and coughed blood. Sucking chest wound. Catastrophic blood loss. He had minutes to live, and not many of them.
Thalia leaned over him. "Wolf. Do you wish to turn?"
He blinked slowly, and turned his head away. Blood bubbled from his mouth as his chest heaved.
"A quick death then," she offered.
He closed his eyes and breathed a barely audible yes.
"Someone give me a hand with these two fuckers," the bear called.
I left the dying wolf to Thalia and went to his aid. The large fucker — the one Sookie called Harp — was naked, and had taken the brunt of the exploding barn on his back. Badly cut and burnt, he was too weak to put up much resistance. The one with the moustache — Grouch — was still clothed, and armed with a handgun. He fought when we uncovered him, but gave it up after I disarmed him and broke his arm. We secured them with some cabling I found in the wreckage. While the bear hunted for some clothing, I hauled them both over to Sookie, along with a first aid kit I'd found reasonably intact.
"Digger passed?" Sookie asked quietly and I nodded.
Keeping the gun pointed at the prisoners, she wiped at her cheeks with her free hand. Ignoring the smell of her tears, I added the bound Weres to the other two bodies on the ground. Lanzo had been freed from the steel pinning his leg and cocooned in a silver chain. Thalia, who had gloves on now, was cable-tying the bloodbag. It seemed she'd come prepared.
A yell made us all look round. The bear, wearing a tattered pair of jeans and an unbuttoned plaid shirt, was crouched over Daisy.
"Oh no," Sookie said, paling. "She's hurt, Eric. Real bad. I'm sorry I didn't —"
"You did not sense it?"
"No," she moaned, looking miserable. "I can't read her a lick."
"Thalia," I said, gesturing for her to watch the prisoners before I sped over to the siblings. The bear arched his body protectively over his sister and snarled at me, his face feral. I growled at him until he backed down. "What happened?"
Reluctantly, he moved aside. A piece of steel about four inches wide had buried itself in Daisy's left side, below her ribs. Her hands were pressed around it, slick with her blood. Now I was close, I could smell that above everything else. Her breathing was even, but it was too shallow. She was sweating, her lips pale and her heartbeat slow.
"It's deep," the bear said, his voice thick. "Probably hit her spleen."
Fuck.
I exploded the barn. I chose to protect Sookie who was further from the explosion. Not that I would do any different, but still. This was a result of my actions, however unintentional. I knelt in front of her as her brother cradled her head with one hand and stroked her hair with the other. Her eyes were clear.
"Take my blood," I offered. "I will pull it out."
"No," she said softly, careful not to breath too deep and jostle the steel.
"It's too risky," the bear agreed. "She could bleed out if we touch it. No way she can take your blood. She can't turn."
"I am fast, my blood is strong. There is a chance she will survive as human." The odds were maybe one in five, better than no chance at all.
"No death magic," she whispered, her voice firm. "The line … must not break."
Her line, the line linking her to ancestors. I sat back on my haunches and spoke to the bear. "She will die if we do nothing. Will the line continue then?"
A tear trickled down Daisy's face as the bear shook his head sadly. "No. No-one ready to take her place. Only my daughter. She's six. Too young, and she hasn't been prepared."
Fuck. Daisy, her grandmother, all the generations before them. All ended. A link with the past broken, and something rare gone from the world forever. My blood rebelled at the thought I might have inadvertently caused that.
I didn't have many options. Moving her was potentially fatal. It would be equally foolish to summon human rescuers here, where there was at least one death to cover up, maybe more after Thalia and I finished with our captives. I looked at the wound, estimated her blood loss and how long she would last like this.
"Hold still," I said. "There may be a way."
Stepping away to give them the illusion of privacy, I made a call.
…
Rory would come, but not at once. There were limits to fairy teleportation and we were too far away from Shreveport for that, apparently. She put Daisy's odds at fifty-fifty, even with her skill.
When I returned to the others, the bear was searching for some morphine in the first aid kit Sookie had brought over, along with some blankets scavenged from somewhere. Two of them were tucked carefully around Daisy and one was wrapped around Sookie's shoulders.
It smelt strongly of Were, and I let something of my distaste show in the curl of my lip.
"Thalia," Sookie said, with a crooked grin. "Said the sound of my teeth chattering was irritating her. Did this too." She stuck her arm out of the blanket. Her sleeve had been torn away and her wound was neatly bandaged. She pulled a face. "Course, she insisted on licking it first."
Thalia did not restrain her appetites unless she had to, but at least Sookie wasn't leaking more blood she could ill afford to lose. "And you allowed that?" I asked.
"Allowed might be generous. She didn't give me much choice, and I didn't want to … upset her, the mood she's in." She cast a dark look over to where Thalia was standing over the prisoners, and then nodded at Daisy. "How is she?"
"Not good." I knelt in front of the wounded woman. "A healer is coming. You must take my blood."
"No," she said, her face set.
"Enough to keep you alive. No more." I switched to her tongue. "You will not turn. I give you my word, Whiteflower."
Her eyes widened, telling me the name I'd guessed was her true one.
I shrugged. It wasn't a hard guess from Daisy, and her grandmother had been fond of the flowers that were her namesake.
Some fire came into her eyes. "You may regret it."
"Take my blood. I will not offer again."
"Do it, sis," the bear encouraged gruffly.
She closed her eyes and nodded once, wearily.
I bit into my wrist, and held it over her face as the blood began to well from the punctures. She turned her head just enough to catch the slow, thick drips with her mouth. After her third swallow, I judged she'd had enough to keep her stable and pulled away. Her eyes were brighter when they opened again.
Things stirred in my blood.
Many things, pulling on me. Too many. I hissed and clutched at my head as bucking, heaving, violent swings of emotion churned my blood, confusing my senses. It was like being tied to a ship's mast in a storm.
Daisy wheezed a soft laugh. "Clearspring gave you our blood I see, all those years ago. We are tied now."
"I am old," I snapped, damping the fledgling connection with brute force. The world settled again. "I can control it. And I will sever it as soon as I can."
"You should." She closed her eyes for a moment. "Sookie?"
Sookie came to kneel beside me. "Hey, Daisy. I'm here."
Daisy opened her eyes and said, "Where is Hector?"
Sookie straightened and looked uncertainly between Daisy's wound, just showing between the blankets, and the bear.
"Tell her," the bear said, his voice rumbling.
"I don't think that's such a great idea," Sookie said, her eyes pleading with him.
"She needs to know."
"I guess you know her best." She sighed wearily, and leaned down. "They, um, buried him nearby I think. I can read them again, find out where."
Ah. Hector was dead and Sookie did not want to be the bearer of bad news. I had no such qualms. "Thalia found graves. Higher up the valley."
"Brother," Daisy said, a command in her voice.
He shook his head. "No. I'm stayin' right here."
"Go," she insisted. "Find out if he is there."
Scowling, he did as he was told. Sookie took his place, slipping a fold of blanket under Daisy's head as a pillow and stroking her hair, as the bear had done.
Daisy gave me a significant look and said, "Dead man. Why save me?"
Ah. Daisy had sent her brother away so we could talk freely. Sookie was listening, but she couldn't understand what we were saying. I said, "Clearspring once saved me. I owe her. You know this."
"I am not her." She regarded me for a long moment. "I felt it. Your power. Before the explosion."
Ah. That. The knowledge of what I could now do gave Daisy something over me, if she chose to use it that way. I judged, on balance, that she would not.
I nodded slightly in confirmation.
"Tell them I did it," she said gravely. "In payment for my life, and the lives I carry."
I considered her offer. It would be good to have an explanation that didn't give away my gift to more people than was wise. Thalia had already given me a few looks, but she hadn't asked. Yet. Sookie had, and would do so again, knowing her. The fewer who knew, the better.
"What about your brother? Will he believe you did this?"
"He will believe what I tell him."
"Then I accept."
We lapsed into silence. Sookie looked between us, a puzzled expression on her face. After a minute she asked, "Eric, do you know what caused the explosion?"
There it was, that uncanny intuition of hers, almost as if she knew what we'd been talking about. I was relieved when Daisy answered her; I wasn't certain how Sookie would react to hearing I'd caused the carnage, even if my actions had won us the battle.
"Magic," Daisy said in English and pointed towards the barn with her chin. "The necklace."
"Oh. You heated the stones?" Daisy nodded, but Sookie frowned as if the explanation didn't quite make sense. She said slowly, "I guess it must have caught something alight. Maybe a fuel canister or something."
She turned to stare at the ruined barn just as the bear came into sight. He loped across the dirt and joined us.
"Hector is there, sis," he said quietly. "Jack too. Three more I don't recognise."
"Hector must be re-buried," Daisy said. "According to custom. See it done."
The bear shook his head in denial. "You'll do that. When you recover."
"If I live. If not, you must."
Scowling, he agreed.
"Make your peace with each other," I said, getting up. "Sookie, we should talk."
…
Thalia was toying with our vampire prisoner; I could hear his hisses and curses as we crossed the debris.
"What do you know about our captives?" I asked Sookie. The dirt was pitted and furrowed, and I caught her by the shoulder as she stumbled on the uneven ground.
"Thanks." She let me guide her, my hand on her elbow, and she waited until we were further from Daisy and her brother before she spoke again. "It's much worse than we thought, Eric."
"The taser."
"That too." She shivered, pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and sighed. "I don't know where to start."
I let go of her as we reached our destination. Thalia had used the first aid supplies to patch the Weres and the bloodbag up enough that they wouldn't expire before we'd finished with them. She'd found and lit a storm lantern too, probably so they could see what she was doing to the vampire. Fear would make them more pliable.
Sookie pursed her lips at the scene and I asked her quietly, "Are you up to this?"
Not quietly enough.
"How sweet," Lance said contemptuously. "Concern for a bloodbag."
He was the only prisoner not gagged, but Thalia remedied that at once with a hard punch to his face and a strip of filthy cloth.
"Did anything productive come out of his mouth?" I asked her.
"Not yet," she said, baring her fangs.
"It is a pity the telepath cannot read you," I said lightly, squatting beside him. "I would enjoy tearing out your tongue." Taking my time for the watching Weres and bloodbag, I pressed a finger into one of his chest wounds until he hissed. Then I wiped my hand on his shirt and patted his shoulder. "Get used to pain."
Thalia chuckled darkly. "Yes. He will know little else before I end him."
Sookie was not amused by our performance from the way she clenched her jaw, but she reserved her scowl for the two Weres lying on the ground. "Pete was right about those military rations back in Jackson. These boys are army. They killed Hector last summer and took over the murderin'."
"That fits," I said. When she looked askance, I explained. "Hector covered his tracks until then. Suddenly seeking publicity didn't make sense."
"So you reckoned someone else interfered." She clicked her tongue disapprovingly. "And you figured it was a vampire, didn't you?"
"It was." I gestured at Lance. Lanzo, or whoever the fuck he was. "We knew that."
"We? I only knew there was a vampire leaking photos to the press, not that he was directly involved," she said tartly. "And you know what else I didn't know? That Lance here—"
"Lanzo," Thalia interrupted, her eyes bright. "Lanzo van Specht."
"Oh, excuse me. Lanzo. Thank you, Thalia." Sookie gave her a polite smile, but the one she turned on me was not at all polite or one I enjoyed receiving. "As I was sayin', Lanzo here is working for de Castro."
"I see." I didn't like the hard glint in her eyes much either.
"Why, Eric. You aren't a bit surprised," she said mockingly. "But then, you already knew Lanzo here was Felipe's errand boy, didn't you?"
Ah. That was what had pissed her off. Thalia was watching us with amusement, but I ignored her.
"Yes," I said evenly.
"Hm-mm. Of course you did." Sookie counted on her fingers. "Shreveport, Jackson, Amarillo. You, Russell, and Stan. Silly me, not noticing that pattern. And you know what the cherry on the shit-tastic cake my night has turned into was?"
"No," I said cautiously. Her hands had gone to hips, never a good sign.
"See, Lanzo here was real pleased to see me. On account of his bonus, the one he was gonna get for ending you. And me too I guess, because Felipe has decided if he can't have me, no-one can. I would have appreciated some warning of that."
I said hotly, "I did not know Felipe—"
"Oh, don't worry," she said, waving a hand. "I'm used to y'all keeping things from the dumb human. Vampires first an' all. Par for the course, water under the bridge, yada, yada. But I must be as dumb as fence-post, Eric, because I just don't get it."
Her bitter tone flayed me to the bone, and I asked tersely, "Get what?"
"Why the hell you're here. You thought Lanzo here, a known assassin, was working for Felipe. Felipe, who just made a damn good attempt at staking your ass in Louisville. Did you want to give him another shot? A sporting chance? Is that it?"
"No." I gave Lanzo a nasty smile. "But it had proved an excellent way to track him down, hasn't it?"
"Oh please. Like you planned on runnin' into him tonight. It's damn lucky you brought Thalia, and he sure gave her a run for her money. If you'd been on your own—"
"Yes, yes," I interrupted dismissively. Later I might enjoy that some of her anger was over the risk to my safety. Later, when I was less irked by the dressing down I was getting. "Be that as it may, we need to get to the bottom of this."
She rolled her eyes and muttered, "Whatever."
Infuriating woman! No-one, but no-one, got under my skin like she did. I counted to ten and said through gritted teeth, "I take it Felipe hired the ex-military wolves as well as this Lanzo."
"Not ex. Current. Some kinda specialist team. And no, it wasn't Felipe at all. These boys are on loan to this guy." She nudged the bloodbag's leg with her sneaker. "Meet Lattesta's old boss, John Tabner."
It took me a second to place Lattesta. "He's FBI?" Fuck.
"Yep. On paper anyway," she said grimly. "In reality, he's working for some hush-hush agency that wants to control y'all."
Double fuck.
My mind racing, I began to pace as pieces slotted into place.
And slot they did. The strange behaviour of the FBI in Dallas: on one hand, hushing up Tooth 'n Claw's early murders to calm the situation; on the other, arresting the Chosen without the fanfare of publicity that would have soothed the situation far more effectively. The way no-one could explain to Stan why they'd gone back on the deal they'd made with Joseph.
We had assumed Joseph's treachery and FBI short-sightedness was to blame, but a black hat with another agenda working from within the bureau made just as much sense.
Shit. The FBI had been in Amarillo, giving Stan trouble. And at Shreveport PD, investigating the pastor's death. An FBI agent would have no difficulty getting his hands on those crime scene photos, that must be how Lanzo got hold of them.
And the military were involved too. If this went high enough…
The subtle media campaign aimed at fostering anti-shifter sentiment. Bartlett and I had assumed it was vampire-led, but why not a human source? And if that was this covert agency's doing, it meant their agenda was forcing a change in the laws.
Fuck. We could all be in trouble.
"Why didn't we see it?" I muttered, running a hand through my hair.
"I knew I was missing something," Sookie said apologetically. "Liz even told me the FBI interfered with the cops investigating Gary's death."
"Gary?"
"Brandy's dad. He, uh—"
I connected the dots as she hesitated: the widow's brother, Carter's brother-in-law. "Ah. The wolf caught on camera."
"Yeah. He was dosed to the eyeballs with painkillers, in no condition to attack anyone. He was set up. As it happens, by this piece of shit." She prodded the FBI agent harder with her foot. "He had a mole in the Fellowship, handed Gary over to them on a silver plate."
"He has spies in the Fellowship too?" This was bad.
"Yep. And he had his agents make sure the cops didn't look into it too hard. I should have realised something fishy was going on when Liz told me that. She even said it was the same agents who covered up the house fire in the first place, blamed it on faulty wiring."
"Really." I gave her a long look. "You did not tell me any of this. We are meant to be working together. You have been holding out on me, Sookie."
"I know, I know. I got caught up in—" She blinked, narrowed her eyes and poked a finger at my chest. "Wait a goddamn minute, buster. What did you mean, we should have seen it? I didn't tell you what Liz said. How could you have known?"
Oops. "The FBI agents in Dallas have been acting erratically."
"And you didn't think to mention that?"
"I did not know it was relevant, woman! Besides, it was Stan's business."
Her face darkened and I kicked myself as I realised I'd just implied I put vampires above her. Again.
"Yeah? Well, what I knew was Liz's private business. And I'm not the only one who's been holding out here, am I? I just knew you weren't keeping us in the loop." She had her hands on her hips again. "Spill, buster. How were the Feds 'acting erratically'?"
I rubbed my forehead. "Fine. Joseph made a deal with the FBI, but—"
"Joseph? Holy shit." She turned back to the captives and waved at the bloodbag. "This is our third man, the one who met with Joseph and Lance. I mean Lanzo."
Fuck me. "This is him?"
Thalia cackled darkly and we both turned on her and snapped, "What?"
Still cackling, she pointed between us. "She's right," Sookie said quietly. "We had all the pieces. If you'd just shared everything you knew—"
"Me? Woman, you held just as much back!"
"Hold it right there, buddy!" She poked her finger into my chest. "Where the hell do you get off—"
She broke off as Thalia's cackling got louder. The diminutive Greek bent over, shaking with laughter and slapped her injured thigh. When she flinched and swore, I laughed. Her head whipped up and the look she gave me would have frightened a lesser vampire.
The bear chose that moment to call my name.
Sookie glared at me too. "Daisy's hurtin'. Go check on her."
"Why? Afraid I'm winning the argument?" I said and smirked at her, just because I knew it would exasperate her.
"No," she snapped. "But if you stay here another second, Eric Northman, I'm gonna find a place for that stake of Thalia's that you won't like one bit!"
Thalia gave me a smile no vampire wanted to see, and when she held the stake out to Sookie, I began to regret laughing at her. "Here, telepath," she said. "Pam told me he gave you permission to nail his ass any time."
"Et tu, Thalia?" I murmured and turned on my heel to beat a dignified retreat. It was never wise to stick around when two angry women banded together.
…
The bear didn't look too concerned about his sister. The fire he'd lit was keeping Daisy warm, and when I knelt beside her and disturbed the blankets to check her side, I found she hadn't lost much more blood. He'd packed the wound with gauze, and it was holding.
"How is it?" I asked roughly, still pissed. I could hear Sookie telling Thalia what a high-handed jerk I was.
"Painful," Daisy said wryly. She was smiling.
"Especially when she laughs," the bear said, grinning too. "Thought your ass was grass there, Northman. You two are as bad as me and my ex-wife."
They were both amused at my expense. Wonderful.
"Fight like coyotes over a bone," Daisy said, wheezing softly with laughter. She winced, and stopped.
"Always that way between you?" the bear asked curiously.
"Sometimes worse," I admitted, putting the blankets back.
It was the truth. The fight at Sanctum had been far more bruising than this one. Half smiling to myself, I glanced at Sookie, who was pacing, gesturing sharply as she said something I couldn't quite hear to Thalia. She was pale, and shivering again. She'd lost too much blood.
"How was she injured?" I asked, sitting back on my heels.
The bear looked over too, his smile fading. "The vamp wanted to fake her death, get paid twice over."
"Twice?"
"Yeah. From de Castro for her death, and the Fed for her life. The Fed was gonna take her, once he knew what she could do. Shook her up."
"It would." Sookie feared that above all, a life of being used, of being controlled. I understood that after Ocella. I gestured at the farmhouse. "Go find her some food. And something to drink. I will stay with your sister."
"Sure." He chuckled as he got to his feet. "Sweeten her up with something sweet, eh? Used to try that on my ex too."
"Did it work?"
"Once in a blue moon."
…
The bear brought Sookie food and a mug of something steaming. Hot chocolate, by the smell that reached me. Thalia fetched her a battered chair to sit on while she ate. I intended to give it five minutes and approach her again, but my phone rang first.
"Is it safe?" Rory's voice asked briskly. "Are you near the patient?"
"Yes and yes."
There was a pop and she appeared beside me. The bear, who was talking to Sookie, started, his eyes widening, and Sookie turned to look. Rory, who was carrying a holdall and wearing pale green surgical scrubs, gave a low whistle at the destruction and gave me a sharp look. Then she caught sight of Sookie, grinned at me and commented in Romanian:"You never do anything by halves, do you, brother? Showing off, were you?"
"No," I said shortly. Folding my arms, I nodded to Daisy who was eyeing Rory with frank curiosity. "Your patient."
Rory dropped the holdall and got down to business. Returning Daisy's curiosity with interest, she knelt beside her and said, "Interesting aura. You're a rarity, aren't you?"
The bear ambled over as Daisy narrowed her eyes and replied, "And you are fae."
"Why so surprised?" Rory flicked her eyes to Sookie, who had turned away. "Eric is no stranger to diversity."
When she reached for the blankets, Daisy stiffened and warned, "I have dealings with Brigant."
Rory raised an eyebrow. "Shouldn't have told me that. The Brigants are no friends of mine."
The bear stepped forward as if to interfere, and Daisy gritted out harshly, "Are you Water fae?"
"No. Neither am I of the Sky."
Strangely, that admission was all it took for Daisy to relax and wave the bear's concerns aside. He knelt at her head as Rory stripped off the blankets and examined the wound. She rattled off a round of questions about when Daisy had last eaten, and how much magic she'd done. Daisy said something about tapping into the earth to help a shapeshifter bound in silver. Digger, I realised.
"That complicates things," Rory said. She looked over her shoulder at me. "The attempt left her drained. I will need your blood."
I did not want to strengthen the tie between me and the spirit-keeper. "I already gave her some."
"Travelling here cost me. This will not be possible without extra energy and you are the nearest, strongest source. Do you want her healed or not?"
I looked towards the prisoners and grimaced. There was no way Thalia would agree to donate in my place. "Very well."
"You," she said to the bear. "Hold her down. This will hurt."
He nodded grimly.
I asked, "What would you have me do?"
She snapped her fingers and pointed to the dirt behind Daisy. "Sit there. I need you to pull out the steel, smoothly and swiftly. Then flood the wound with your blood as soon as it is out. Can you do that?"
I rolled my eyes. "Did you forget how fast I can move?"
She smiled for the first time since she appeared. "No. But this requires a steady hand too. Here." She fished a vial of her tonic out of a hip pocket and thrust it into my hand. She gave me a stern look. "I will need this when it is done. At once."
"Of course." I slipped it carefully into my pocket, and grasped the steel.
Rory pulled the gauze out of the way and put her hands on either side of metal. I felt the stirrings of her power through our blood tie. She nodded at the bear, and once he'd tightened his grip on Daisy's shoulders she commanded, "Now, Eric."
The metal withdrew cleanly, with a wet sucking noise and a gobbet of blood. Daisy cried out hoarsely as Rory thrust her hands straight into the wound. Ripping my wrist open, I added my thick blood to the mix, braced for a rush of emotion from the injured woman that never came.
Daisy arched once and passed out, which was probably best for both of us.
Rory pulled her bloodied hands slowly from the wound, healing as she went. When it was done, a scant minute later, she was pale and breathing fast. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed to the ground, limp. Cursing, I snatched the tonic from my pocket, gathered her up and poured it into her mouth, massaging her throat until she swallowed. Some colour returned to her cheeks and with a splutter and a cough, she lifted her head.
"How is she?" she demanded of the bear, who was cradling his sister in his arms much as I was cradling mine.
"She's breathing easier," he said, staring down at Daisy in wonder. He looked up at me. "I owe you, Northman. Our people, too."
…
There was a hose by the house. The bear and I carried our sisters to it, so they could rinse away the blood and gore. Both were weak, but Rory was on her feet and ushering the others into the house when I left them. I had to see to the small matter of an interrogation.
"Daisy okay?" Sookie asked when I stepped into the light cast by the lantern.
"Weak, but recovering." I nodded at the prisoners. "We should finish this."
"Yeah." Sookie tapped her empty mug with her fingernails. "Pete said this was your idea."
So the bear had ratted me out. Typical. "It was."
"Thanks." She cast a look towards the house and scuffed the dirt with her shoe. "Sorry for losing my temper earlier."
Perhaps the bear had done me a favour. "It has been a trying night," I said diplomatically.
"Amen to that." She stood and stretched. "I'm ready to dig up some secrets when you are."
I moved her chair over to the FBI man, and gestured for her to sit. She pulled the blanket around her as she did and I squatted on the other side of him. "Gag on or off?"
"On," she said, grimly. "His mind is enough, believe me. You ask the questions, I'll get the answers."
But the FBI man proved a tough nut to crack. Sookie shook her head after a few minutes. "Damn it. He's just thinking the same thing over and over. Some regulation or other."
"Not for long." I leaned forward to catch his eye. Nothing happened except his eyes crinkled. He was amused, I realised after a moment. It was not easy to read his face with the gag obscuring half of it.
"That won't work. He's protected," Sookie said. She squinted over at the Weres. "Grouch over there is a witch as well as a Were. He gave him something." She grinned suddenly. "Got it. It's round his neck."
Ah. Tearing open Tabner's shirt I found a silver chain, hung with a talisman of some kind. Tabner didn't look so amused when I tore a piece of cloth from his coat to protect my hand, snapped the chain and tossed the talisman aside.
Sookie leaned forward, focusing on Tabner as I caught his eye again. Then she gasped and reached over him to clutch my arm. "Stop!"
Enjoying the contact, I stilled and asked calmly, "What did you hear?"
"You can't glamour him. He'll know you've done it."
"The FBI have a way to detect glamour." It wasn't a question.
"Yes," she said, eye narrowing as she looked at me. "Some sort of brain scan, an MRI or something. It's cumbersome, but they're trying to refine it, come up with a field test. How did you know?"
"There have been rumours." I eyed the once-again smug human lying in the dirt, and smiled menacingly at him. "It does not matter. I will glamour him and after we have his secrets, I will kill him."
She stiffened and her hand fell from my arm. "Eric... I don't know I approve of that."
"He knows what you can do, Sookie," I reminded her quietly, looking her in the eye.
"I know," she said, closing her eyes. "But you can't just kill him."
"You would trade your freedom for your Christian principles?" I asked evenly.
"No. But I don't want his blood on my hands. There must be another way."
"Either I glamour it from him or I kill him. There is no other way."
"Eric, I don't —" She looked down at the man between us and groaned. "Son of a bitch! You can't kill him either. He makes notes of what he's investigating. Where he's going, who he's meeting. Mails them to himself. If he dies or disappears, his bosses will investigate and work out it was you."
"How? Did he know I would be here tonight?"
"No, but he knew the Weres had Daisy and Pete. He has someone watching Liz's house. I was seen there with them. So were you. He has our descriptions." Her hands clenched. "He's FBI, Eric. And his bosses, if they connect you to his death…"
She didn't have to spell out how dire the consequences of that would be. Fuck. I cursed softly in Norse.
"We need some black ops specialist of our own," she muttered, glaring at the Weres again.
"That would be handy." I ran my hand through my hair. This was turning into a clusterfuck. "Someone to make him disappear for us."
"Wait … Daisy made Lattesta forget me."
"She will not be up to that any time soon," I said slowly. "But there are other witches."
"Got any on speed dial?" she joked.
"No." I took out my phone and smiled at her. "But I know a king or two."
"Stan?" she asked.
"It is his state. And forensics being the pain in the ass it is, we could do with some assistance tidying that up." I waved at the barn as I typed Stan's private number one-handed and put the phone to my ear as it started to ring.
…
Two hours later the situation was much improved. We had questioned the Weres first. Sookie viewed the one with the moustache more favourably than Tabner, or at least her face didn't contort with outright disgust while she read his mind. It did when we got to the FBI man.
Between my glamour and Sookie's telepathy, we extracted the most pertinent details from Tabner, sure that it would not come back to bite either of us in the ass. Stan did indeed know a witch or two who he thought could wipe his mind in an undetectable way.
There was also a team of Texan vampires and Weres on their way to wipe the scene of our crimes against a Federal agent.
With explosives and fire. There would be not a shred of evidence left, Stan assured me.
There wasn't a shred of Sookie left in Tabner's mind either. I'd made sure of that after our interrogation, once Sookie was out of his sight. She was currently inside the farmhouse with the others, taking shelter from the cold.
We had the names of two Generals and three Senators involved in the plot, and some details of the agency he worked for, which was a good start. Stan planned for Tabner and the Weres to enjoy a few days of Texan hospitality so he could find out more: what their end-game was, what laws they were pushing the government to pass against the Two-Natured, and what they had in mind for us too. With a telepath of his own, Stan was confident he'd turn up enough dirt on the agent to control him and his puppet-masters that way.
That was the thing with black-hats. Much like us, they worked best in the dark and would do anything to avoid exposure to the light of day.
Stan and I were both agreed that this level of organisation against supes was bigger than our alliance and had to be taken to the Amun council as soon as possible. Not to mention the existence of the taser weapons and solid confirmation that the FBI could detect glamour, albeit only that it had been used, not who had used it or what memories and been taken.
All, however, extremely worrisome developments. The council would not be pleased.
I had also called Elaine Randall and, with Stan's reluctant permission, she was on her way to Texas. Maybe Sookie's accusations about keeping her in the dark had hit close to the bone and I was going soft, but it did make sense to involve the Caucus early when this latest threat was focused on the shapeshifters.
If it was also a calculated move on our part that meant the Caucus would owe us for stopping the killings and exposing the deeper plot behind them...
Well, we were vampires. What did they expect?
Thalia grumbled as we readied the prisoners for the Texans, eager get back to Lanzo. I had decided to leave him to her tender mercies as Sookie couldn't read his mind and he was unlikely to talk. Voluntarily, anyway.
The cavalry arrived just as Thalia and I deposited the Weres and Tabner in their own van. Sookie said using it would be poetic justice, and I understood once I saw the inside. It still smelt faintly of her, and her fear, and I was rough with Tabner in consequence.
I strode over to direct the team Stan had sent. We had three hours until dawn, and a lot to cover up.
