The month following the telepath's visit was largely uneventful. The fallout of the police raid was minimal. Fortunately there were no casualties, either vampire or human. A vampire death would have required me to take action, and as the perpetrators were human police, exacting vengeance would create entanglements I do not need. Human losses would likewise have caused problems.
The vampires that frequent Fangtasia have been coached on raid protocol. They are expected to flee and not fight. Giving my people this order was difficult for me. I do not mind exercising my power as Sheriff, but I do object to making vampires run from humans. We are superior to them in every respect, yet their numbers force us to work around their petty laws and customs. In this particular instance pride has yielded to practicality. I do not need the hassle of dealing with human law enforcement, and I want nothing to interfere with my lucrative businesses.
Vampires cannot master the human race through force alone. The fallout of an out and out war would be too substantial. I believe economics to be a more effective tool of dominance. Money, not governments, rules the human world. Our immortality gives us the time to acquire wealth. With patience comes power.
Garrett, the vampire who flouted my rules regarding feeding on the club's premises, has been punished for his disobedience. I had forgotten how talented Pam is with a whip. I really ought to have carried out the penalty myself, but found myself disinterested. I told Pam I didn't wish to sully my hands by dealing with such an insignificant vampire.
When I delivered his sentence the fool complained that I have previously engaged in similar activity. He was correct of course, I have tasted the odd human on the desk of my office. If Bill Compton had been cooperative I would have had Sookie Stackhouse in this manner. Regardless, Garrett failed to take into account that I am Sheriff and he is not.
After his sentence was carried out I ordered Garrett back to his maker to relearn obedience. I wonder what his maker could have been thinking in turning him. Garrett is such a stupid, petulant vampire, I can't imagine what he like as a human. The reason Garrett is so fond of Fangtasia's livestock is that they bestow their indiscriminate worship on anything with fangs. Fang-bangers are likely the only creatures in either the human or supernatural world that can stand his company. Perhaps he was an accident. This is rare but it does happen. One too many deep consecutive feeding on the wrong human and suddenly you have an unwanted eternal companion. If it had been me I would have been tempted to stake him rather than deal with the hassle. I have been much more fortunate with my children.
As if sensing my thoughts, Pam appeared in the doorway of my office.
"Eric, your accountant wishes to speak with you." Pam smiled, her fangs slightly extended. The human she ushered into the office was pudgy and balding, most definitely not her type, so I could only assume her fangs were out because she had been terrorizing him. The man did seem unusually nervous, fidgeting and sweating profusely.
"Mr…Mr…Mr. Northman. " The human's stuttering voice aroused both my curiosity and irritation. This degree of nerves was not the result of Pam's teasing. I could smell the fear rolling off him in waves. After a few deep breaths him appeared to somewhat calm himself.
"There appear to be some..er..discrepancies..in your books." The man clasped his hands in front of him, no doubt to keep them from shaking, as he waited for my response.
"Discrepancies?" I kept my voice soft to avoid pushing the human's already accelerated heart rate beyond its limits and killing him before I could obtain all of his information.
"Yes sir, $60,000 dollars, seems to have…gone missing." Someone was stealing from me. From me, Eric Northman, Sheriff of Area 5 in the Kingdom of Louisiana. The amount was irrelevant. The act was the enraging thing. Someone had had the unmitigated gall to take what is mine.
"Missing? Are you certain this isn't a clerical error of some kind?" Despite my efforts to conceal my fury something must have leaked into my voice because the accountant's face suddenly became white as a vampire's.
"I'm sure, Mr. Northman. I quadruple checked the figures when I found the anomaly. I wouldn't have bothered you otherwise." No, I doubt he would have. He seemed absolutely terrified of me. His fear was justified. If I thought he was responsible for the robbery I would have no compunction about draining him dry here and now. Luckily for him I didn't believe he had the nerve. Still it never hurt to be cautious. Now what was his name? Something with a B, I'm sure Brian, Brandon, Bruce…yes that was it.
" Bruce," I laden my voice with my thousand years of vampiric power. He was caught instantly. "Did you steal that money from me?"
"No, I'm not that crazy." Bruce spoke to me through the fog of my influence. I had no doubt he was telling the truth.
"Do you know who did?"
"No. I wish I did." Interesting. Perhaps, despite his protests, Bruce did have aspirations towards my wealth.
"Why?"
"To keep you from killing me." Ah, he sought to save himself by presenting me with the culprit. He was so willing to turn on his own kind in exchange for his own life. Humans really were quite predictable.
"Who else have you told?" This information had to be contained.
"No one." At least that was good news. The thief wouldn't realize their time was up. Bruce had no more useful information to give.
"Bruce you will remember that you informed me about the missing money. You will not tell anyone we have spoken. You will return to Fangtasia tomorrow, and hour after sunset. You are dismissed." I released Bruce from his thrall and after shaking his head a few times, he scurried out of my office. Pam, who had been standing by the door throughout the interview, made no comment as the accountant passed her. Once he he'd left and the office door had closed she spoke.
"What are your orders, Sheriff?" Pam, despite her teasing nature, had the uncanny ability to sense when was and was not a good time to rile me. Now she clearly understood was not one of those times. There was much more to this theft than the simple loss of money. Reputation was important to any vampire, but it was essential to ranking vampires, such as myself. If word got out that I had allowed human to steal from me, my position would be weakened. If it became general knowledge before the culprit was apprehended and suitably punished it would be worse still.
I needed to consider my options. I could put all Fangtasia employees to death and search their homes and bank accounts at leisure. This option would certainly be an outlet for my ire, but there were many drawbacks. The death of one fang-banger would be one thing. Members of the subculture were notoriously unstable, self-destructive creatures. The police wouldn't be too suspicious at an apparent suicide or even disappearance of one of their number. The deaths of Fangtasia's entire staff however might start an inquiry. There was also the additional, though minor concern, that honest (or as honest as humans can be) employees would be punished along with the guilty. Though I have little conscience to speak of, I dislike rewarding good service with death. Not to mention the hassle of replacing all the staff.
My next option was torture. Again there are many drawbacks to this approach. The first issue is that information obtained through torture tends to be unreliable. People will say anything to get the pain to stop. Also the marks left by torture were impossible to glamour away. To destroy the evidence, I'd need to destroy the entire body, creating all the problems of option one.
My next thought was glamour. I could question the humans without arousing suspicions of the human authorities. There would only be minimal mental damage to the innocent parties. Who would I question first? The waitresses? The humans who ran the gift shop? Which of them seemed most likely to steal from me and get away with it? Who among them had the nerve or the intelligence to mastermind such a thing. I had no answer. The human staff of Fangtasia are competent at their menial jobs, but lacked the cunning to deceive me. So who did that leave as suspects? The only vampires with enough assess were Pam and Long Shadow.
I wanted to automatically dismiss Pam as a possibility. Sentimental but true. The thought that my child, my favorite child, would betray me was…discomforting. However I couldn't ignore that she knew me better than Long Shadow did and would therefore be better able to deceive me. Looking at her, my companion of over two hundred years, I considered if it was possible that she had wronged me for so slight a temptation as $60,000. My instincts (I refuse to be mawkish and call them feelings) told me it was impossible. My brain told me it was unlikely.
Long Shadow seemed the more promising candidate. He was not particularly close to me despite the decades we'd known each other. He was secretive, even for a vampire. A human might call him shifty. Furthermore he was discontented with his function at the bar. Serving did not come easily for him. In fact he'd recently mentioned he was considering moving to a different state, perhaps back to his maker in Kansas. Had he been laying the ground work for his departure before the missing money had been discovered? The more I thought about it, the more plausible it sounded. The question was how to find proof.
Long Shadow couldn't be glamoured, and torturing or killing him without justification would earn me major penalties. Long Shadow could have a human accomplice, but if he'd been coercing him or her with glamour, my own glamour might not be able to pull it from the human's mind. Long Shadow may have also influenced the human to confess sole guilt if questioned under hypnosis. What I needed was a way to see past the magic of glamour. What I needed was Sookie Stackhouse.
"Pam, tell Long Shadow and all the human employees I need them here an hour after sunset tomorrow. I want both of your help interrogating the staff." Pam nodded to me and went back out to the bar. Now to arrange for Long Shadow's surprise.
As I dialed Bill's number I mused that if Bill had not brought his human to Fangtasia a month ago I would be without a good solution to my problem. I could do nothing to Long Shadow without proof, I couldn't get proof through any means available to me. I would have been forced to stomach working with the traitor, hoping to catch him in the act, all the while risking my oversight becoming general knowledge. If Long Shadow realized he was being watched he could easily have disappeared, taking with him my money and my reputation. The fates had clearly smiled on me when they brought Sookie Stackhouse into my bar.
"Bill Compton." At last Bill had chosen to answer his phone.
"This is your Sheriff." I waited for my words to sink in. Bill would know this was not a social call. After a considerably pause Bill responded with a cold "yes". I smiled. Did Bill think he was going to put me off by being unfriendly?
"I require your telepath," I paused for moment before continuing, "to be at Fangtasia tomorrow an hour and half after sunset." From his silence I understood Bill was not pleased by my demand. When he did speak he sounded more rigid than I'd ever heard him. Considering Bill Compton is generally stiffer than a corpse post rigor this was quite an accomplishment.
"I do not know whether Miss Stackhouse is available tomorrow evening. I have not yet spoken with her tonight." Bill is priceless sometimes. For a man with no sense of humor he can be quite amusing.
"When you are consulting with your human about her schedule, try to impart how crucial her acceptance of my invitation is to the continued well-being of your relationship." It can be hard on a couple when one of its members is tortured then ejected from the state. Or so I would assume, never having been part of a "couple" since my human days. Bill was not such a fool that he couldn't hear the threat in my voice.
"Sookie is mine." I have to admit while I find Bill irritating in many respects, he is not without spine. He is without brain, foresight, and a clear vision of things to come, but not spine.
"I am not summoning your human for personal reasons, this time at least. I need her assistance with a business matter." I'm sure my inclusion of "this time" did not please Mr. Compton, however I saw no reason to mask my intentions. Sookie is a valued commodity, and I have no intention of letting Bill Compton waste her in that backwater town, Bon Temps. There was nothing he could do to stop me, and he knew it. Some days it was very rewarding to be Sheriff.
"What business matter?" Did Bill think I was somehow obligated to share my affairs with him?
"One which will not require your presence. Miss Stackhouse may drive herself or I will send Pam to pick her up." Truthfully I wanted Bill in room when Sookie revealed Long Shadow as the treacherous snake he is. A vampiric witness who is not my child could prove useful, if whatever action I take against the bartender turns into a legal matter. My motive for saying otherwise was to steer the conversation to the point where Bill had accepted my will and considered himself lucky to have gotten what he believes to be a concession. Sure enough Bill did not disappoint.
"I will escort Sookie. She will not take being summoned by you kindly, nor will she feel comfortable being alone in the company of vampires beside myself." Was Bill deliberately hinting that his human preferred him to me? It was almost enough to make my previously insincere demand a real one. I refrained from losing my temper. Another reason for Bill presence occurred to me, he could witness firsthand how I dealt with vampires who crossed me.
"Well then by all means come. I wouldn't dream of making Sookie uncomfortable." I hung up, confident the suggestive manner in which I spoke my last line was received as intended.
I took a moment to ponder Bill's last statement. Could what he said be accurate? Is Sookie really 'uncomfortable' in my presence. The only time I'd heard a woman say I made her 'uncomfortable' it wasn't due to my presence, but rather the size of my…well let's just say she wasn't entirely complaining about the matter.
If I took 'uncomfortable' to mean 'afraid' that would make a little more sense. I am a vampire after all and she a human. It is not extraordinary for prey to fear their predators. And yet when I met her in Fangtasia she hadn't acted afraid. She had been polite, but not subservient and she had smiled, not shivered. In comparison to Bruce she spoke to me with fearlessness, poise, and the slightest hint of a challenge. The memory brought a smile to my face that was quickly erased by my next thought.
Bill hadn't said Sookie was uncomfortable around vampires, he had said she was uncomfortable around vampires who weren't Bill. That had to be a lie. She couldn't sincerely prefer Bill Compton to me. Bill Compton was less powerful, less handsome, and had all the personality of a block of wood. I am the better lover. I have no way to know for this with absolute certainty as Bill and I had never shared a human before, but with my natural endowments and a thousand years of practice I have trouble believing anyone could be better. What possible attraction could Compton have that makes him preferable to me?
If Sookie does, in fact favor Bill, it could only be for his willingness to play the role of the tame, mainstreaming vampire. Perhaps Bill makes her feel safe, almost as if she's with another human. If this is the case either Bill will grow tired of his charade or Sookie will realize that safety is a puny thing, compared what I offer. Either way it is only a matter of time. With patience comes power. With patience also comes pleasure.