From the Waist Down
Chapter 11
"What is this?" Felipe de Castro growled, staring at the contents of a small box mailed overnight from Shreveport, Louisianan.
"It looks like a skull, Sir," his assistant frowned. She had curled black hair and a sallow complexion, as though trying to look more like a vampire. Her garish red lipstick was smeared around her face like a clown's mask.
"Thank you, Louise. I can see that. What I want to know is why Eric Northman sent me a skull in a box."
"It doesn't look like his handwriting," Louise murmured, taking the note from de Castro's desk. She turned it over and over in her hands. Louise handled the majority of the King's correspondence. Letters of state went out to all the sheriffs in de Castro's wide territory, and they all required direct, hand-written response. But this note, this note had a feminine touch that removed Eric Northman from the list of possible writers.
"Did you read the note, Sir?" Louise cocked her head to one side. She placed the small square of white paper in front of him.
"Read it," de Castro grunted.
"It's the skull of Victor Madden, Sir. Oh," she looked at the box and carefully lifted the head. A small black rock rolled out of it and rattled onto the desk. "And his heart."
"Get Northman on the phone," de Castro roared. "Now!"
***
"Are you sure you want to do this, Sookie? You may stay here as long as you like," Eric sighed, touching my shoulder carefully. Sam sat near my feet, his pretty blue eyes gazing up at me. He licked his nose thoughtfully.
"I'm sure," I nodded. "I need to go home. I can't live here forever, trapped here like some kind of…of…" I wanted to say 'victim,' but it sounded wrong. I wasn't a victim! I was Sookie Stackhouse, vampire lover, telepath, waitress. I wasn't Sookie Stackhouse, rape victim. Even though I hadn't said it out loud, the word tasted like acid on my tongue.
"Sookie, I…" Eric started. He was quickly interrupted by the persistent ring of his cellular phone. He averted his eyes toward his pocket but ignored it.
"Your phone is ringing," I said flatly.
"If it is important, they will leave a message."
"Yeah, I guess," I nodded. "Anyway, if we go back tonight, I can be at work tomorrow."
At my feet, Sam the dog barked. It didn't sound like a happy, Sookie is going back to work bark. It sounded like an unhappy, oh no you cannot bark. I opened the front door and stared at Eric's car, sitting at the curb. He drove a pristine black Camaro with a shiny coal stripe over the matte black body. It was an Eric sort of vehicle in every way, sleek and smooth and glossy and dark, full of mischief and yet painfully honest. My eyes rolled slowly to the back of the vehicle, the trunk. A shiver rolled through my skin, rendering me immobile.
"Sookie," Eric whispered near my ear. "What is it?"
"The trunk," I replied, my voice quavering. He'd put me in a trunk just like that one, trapped me without windows or doors, driven me away from everything I'd ever known, given me a new and horrible perspective. Tears rolled down my cheeks before I even realized I needed to cry. My knees wobbled. I remembered things I'd been trying to forget.
"It's okay, my love. You're safe. I'll keep you safe," Eric soothed. His hand touched mine and I flinched. I forgot how to breathe, and when my body needed me to remember, I started hyperventilating. Sam's nose rubbed against my wrist.
"The trunk, I can't…" I whimpered, fumbling over words. "I can't…"
"Ssh," Eric whispered. He walked quickly to the trunk and put his key in the lock. I froze on the spot, Sam near my ankle, and shook. Eric unlocked and popped open the trunk. He searched around the spare tire, the extra gas can, and the blanket. Then he held his hand out to me.
"It's empty, Sookie," he assured me. I couldn't take his hand, couldn't will my legs to move. "Come see."
"No,"
"Trust me, Sookie," he said calmly. "It's empty."
"I'm scared," I admitted carefully. It felt like I was still in there, still trapped. My skin was hot and clammy to the touch, and my heart beat so heavily that my head hurt to hear it. I wanted to trust him, to believe him, but I was still in there, still a victim of Victor Madden.
"Don't be afraid," Eric murmured, close to me. He was beside me, his hands on my shoulders, his lips near my ear. He guided me to the trunk, held my hand firmly. We stood behind the car for several minutes while I looked inside the cavity, empty and black.
***
My pocket buzzed and began to ring a second time. I hissed under my breath, low enough to avoid spooking Sookie. She finally relaxed enough to move away from the trunk. I closed it carefully and went around front to help her into the car. Sam crawled into the backseat and stretched out on the leather. He was a comfort to her, a companion when I couldn't be. There was no way in Hell I'd let a collie in my car for any other reason. I buckled her in and went around to the driver's side. The phone beeped impatiently.
"Why don't you just answer it?" Sookie asked. She was staring vacantly out the front window, her hands clutching the folds of a long skirt Pam had selected from her own wardrobe. Her knuckles were white.
"You are my only concern, Sookie. Everyone else can wait until I am ready to speak to them."
She nodded, perhaps lost in her own thoughts. Her body screamed agony at me, as though she were being stabbed from afar by a magician with a voodoo doll. On the surface, she looked ghostly white but otherwise fine. She still had bruises on her neck, but they were hidden by her freely flowing yellow gold hair. The bruises on her arms and legs were covered by Pam's skirt and a long sleeved sweater. To the outside observer, she was simply Sookie Stackhouse, waitress. On the inside, she was in peril.
"I'm hungry," Sookie murmured as we got onto the highway toward Bon Temps. I stared at her, taking my eyes off the dark road. In two days, Sookie hadn't eaten so much as a cracker. She'd barely taken drinks of water. Everything made her nauseous, and it was physically painful to listen to her guts gurgle for want of food. I'd tried to encourage her, tried to force feed her, but she would have none of it.
"What would you like?" I asked, trying to seem unexcited.
"Pie," she replied succinctly. In the backseat, Sam sat up. He wanted pie as well.
"There's a diner up ahead. We'll pull over."
Two miles up the road, I turned off the interstate and pulled into the busy parking lot of an all-night diner. It was in the middle of nowhere, a truck stop most likely. This would be one of those gristly, greasy places that served fried alligator and candy bars dipped in frying oil. The smell of these places, in all their disgusting, lard-dipped decadence, made me sick. Still, they were guaranteed to have pie, the Southern dessert staple.
"Do you want to come in, Sookie?" I asked gently, looking at the gathering of flannel-wearing truckers littering the fluorescent dining hall. Most of them had not seen a woman that was not a lot lizard or a waitress in several months, if ever. I couldn't imagine Sookie's telepathic brain on overdrive, their heartless eyes watching her every step.
"No," she shook her head. She was watching them too, and it made her skin crawl and her heartbeat quicken.
"What kind of pie would you like, my love?" I asked, pulling my billfold from my back pocket.
"Pecan," she nodded quietly. She felt nostalgic, sad. I nodded, trying to appear softer to her, as though I could understand the loss of her family. I didn't have to read her mind to know that she missed the ones she'd lost.
"Wait here, with Sam," I nodded to the dog in the back. "I'll return soon."
***
I watched him crunch across the gravel. He dug his cellular phone from his pocket as he went. The screen door of the old diner smacked the door frame behind him. I sighed and looked out the window. Beside me, Sam Merlotte crawled into the front seat. He kept his ears up, listening, but lay down on the soft leather bucket seat. His muzzle rested over my hand.
I looked out the window, watched the moonlight bounce off the hoods of foreign vehicles. Most of them were beat up out here, off the beaten path, outside of Shreveport. In Louisiana, movement between big cities was reserved for vagrants, truckers, and the homeless. At this rest stop, they seemed to attract truckers first and vagrant women second. I could see them inside the diner, sitting at booths in groups of three and four, trying to catch the eyes of passing truck drivers. I felt sick.
Was that what I looked like to Victor Madden? Was I no more than a cheap fang-banging slut to him?
The few spare trees in the parking lot shivered in a breeze sweeping up from the South. Were Madden's henchmen out there, watching me? Were they waiting to steal me away again, to capture me and drag me back to Fangtasia? Would they attack me right here on the gravel, under the hazy light of a security lamp?
Sam nudged my hand and I screamed.
The sound barely had a chance to ricochet around the car before Eric was yanking the door open, pie in hand, his hair falling around his face in disarray.
"What is it, Sookie? What's wrong?" If he could have breathed, he'd have been panting.
"I was just…nothing," I lied.
"Sookie," he frowned, getting into the car. Sam hopped to the backseat before the Viking could slump behind the wheel. "It is okay to be afraid."
"I'm not so hungry anymore," I frowned, looking at the Styrofoam container that held a sweetly scented slice of pecan pie.
"That's fine. You have an icebox at home. We will make use of it." He paused and placed the pie in the backseat, on the floor. After closing the car door, he stretched out an arm to me. I stared at it cautiously and finally submitted.
I want to say it was warm in his embrace, but it wasn't. He was cold, like a breezy December night. I hid there anyway, trying to keep away from the garish shadows of the gravel lot.
"Ask me to take you back to Shreveport," Eric whispered. Had he intended to speak to me, or was it something he had only been thinking? I couldn't tell.
"I'll feel safe in my own home, Eric. I know I will."
"I do not want to leave you alone."
It took a long while to get back to the farmhouse, nestled alongside the cemetery in Bon Temps. I gazed up at the big white house, and saw Amelia standing on the back porch. Jason sat on the swing, his arms over his chest. What was he doing here? I couldn't face my brother and Amelia too, and I suddenly wanted to go racing back to Shreveport. There, I wouldn't have to deal with thoughts, unspoken and spoken, invading my already aching brain. Eric's constant worrying I could do, but this? Gotta be strong, Sookie. You can do this. Gran needs you. Heck, you need Gran.
"Can you stay the night?" I asked the Viking. I kept my eyes on the floor of the car, but I wasn't sure where the shame was coming from.
"You could not get rid of me if you tried, Sookie."
