Шарлин Харрис - Dead and Gone

“He’s not entirely human,” I said.

Mel looked relieved. “Well, that’s good to know,” he said. “My pride was pretty much shot to hell when he threw me around. I mean, I’m a full-blood panther, and it was like I was kindling or something.”

Jason laughed. “I thought he’d come on in and kill me then, thought I was a goner. But once Mel was down, this guy just started talking to me. Mel was playing possum, and here’s this fella looks a lot like me, telling me what a favor he’s done me . . .”

“It was weird,” Mel agreed, but he looked uncomfortable. “You know I’d’ve been on my feet if he’d started punching on you, but he really rang my bell, and I figured I might as well stay down once it looked like he wasn’t going to go after you.”

“Mel, I hope you’re really okay.” I made my voice concerned, and I moved a little closer. “Let me have a look at that shoulder.” I extended my hand, and Jason’s eyebrows knit together.

“Why do you need to . . . ?” An awful suspicion was creeping over his face. Without another word, he stepped behind his friend and held him firm, his hands gripping Mel on either side right below Mel’s shoulders. Mel winced with pain, but he didn’t say anything, not a word; he didn’t even pretend to be indignant or surprised, and that was almost enough.

I put a hand on either side of Mel’s face, and I closed my eyes, and I looked in his head. And this time Mel was thinking about Crystal, not Jason.

“He did it,” I said. I opened my eyes and looked at my brother’s face across Mel’s shoulder. I nodded.

Jason screamed, and it wasn’t a human sound. Mel’s face seemed to melt, as if all the muscles and bones had shifted. He hardly looked human at all.

“Let me look at you,” Mel pleaded.

Jason looked confused, since Mel was looking at me; he couldn’t look anywhere else, the way Jason was holding him. Mel wasn’t struggling, but I could see every muscle under his skin standing out, and I didn’t think he’d be passive forever. I bent down and picked up the rifle, glad Jason had reloaded it.

“He wants to look at you, not me,” I told my brother.

“Goddammit,” Jason said. His breathing was heavy and ragged as if he’d been running, and his eyes were wide. “You have to tell me why .”

I stepped back and raised the rifle. At this distance, even I couldn’t miss. “Turn him around, since he wants to talk to you face-to-face.”

They were in profile to me when Jason spun Mel around. Jason’s grip refastened on the werepanther, but now Jason’s face was a foot from Mel’s.

Calvin walked around the house. Crystal’s sister, Dawn, was with him. There was also a boy of about fifteen trailing along. I remembered meeting the boy at the wedding. He was Jacky, Crystal’s oldest first cousin. Adolescents practically reek of emotion and confusion, and Jacky was no exception. He was struggling to conceal the fact that he was both nervous and excited. Maintaining a cool demeanor was just killing him.

The three newcomers took in the scene. Calvin shook his head, his face solemn. “This is a bad day,” he said quietly, and Mel jerked at the sound of his leader’s voice.

Some of the tension leaked out of Jason when he saw the other werepanthers.

“Sookie says he did it,” he said to Calvin.

“That’s good enough for me,” Calvin said. “But, Mel—you should tell us yourself, brother.”

“I’m not your brother,” Mel said bitterly. “I haven’t lived with you for years.”

“That was your own choice,” Calvin said. He walked around so he could see Mel’s face, and the other two followed him. Jacky was snarling; any pretense at being cool had vanished. The animal was showing through.

“There isn’t anyone else in Hotshot like me. I would have been alone.”

Jason looked blank. “There are lots of guys in Hotshot like you,” he said.

“No, Jason,” I said. “Mel’s gay.”

“We’re not okay with that?” my brother asked Calvin. Jason hadn’t yet gotten the party line on a few issues, apparently.

“We’re okay with people doing what they want to do in bed after they’ve done their duty to the clan,” Calvin said. “Purebred males have to father a young ’un, no matter what.”

“I couldn’t do it,” Mel said. “I just plain couldn’t do it.”

“But you were married once,” I said, and wished I hadn’t spoken. This was a matter for the clan now. I hadn’t called Bud Dearborn; I’d called Calvin. My word was good enough for Calvin, not for court.

“Our marriage didn’t work in that department,” Mel said. His voice sounded almost normal. “Which was okay with her. She had her own fish to fry. We never had . . . conventional sex.”

If I found this distressing, I could only imagine how hard it had been for Mel. But when I remembered what Crystal had looked like up on that cross, all my sympathy drained away in a hurry.

“Why did you do that to Crystal?” I asked. I could tell from the rage building in the brains around me that the time for talking was almost over.

Mel looked beyond me, past my brother, away from his leader, his victim’s sister and cousin. He seemed to be focused on the winter-bare limbs of the trees around the still, brown pond. “I love Jason,” he said. “I love him. And she abused him and his child. Then she taunted me. She came here that day. . . . I’d stopped off to get Jason to help me build some shelves at the shop, but he wasn’t here. She drove up while I was out in the yard writing Jason a note. She began to say . . . she said awful things. Then she told me I had to have sex with her, that if I did, she’d tell them at Hotshot and I’d be able to go back to live there, and Jason could come live with me. She said, ‘His baby’s inside me; doesn’t that get you all hot?’ And it got worse and worse. The bed of the truck was down because the wood I’d bought was sticking out, and she kind of backed up to it and lay down, and I could see her. It was . . . she was . . . she kept telling me what a pussy I was and that Jason would never care about me . . . and I slapped her as hard as I could.”

Dawn Norris turned to one side as though she was going to throw up. But she pressed her lips together in a hard line and straightened up. Jacky wasn’t that tough.

“She wasn’t dead, though.” My brother forced the words between his clenched teeth. “She bled all down the cross. She lost the baby after she’d been hung up.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Mel said. His gaze returned from the pond and the trees and focused on my brother. “I thought the blow had killed her—I really did. I would never have left her to go in the house if I’d thought she was still alive. I would never have let someone else get her. What I did was bad enough, because I intended for her to die. But I didn’t crucify her. Please believe me. No matter what you think of me for hurting her, I would never have done that. I thought if I took her somewhere else, no one would think you did it. I knew you were going out that night, and I figured if I put her somewhere else, you’d have an alibi. I figured you’d end up spending the night with Michele.” Mel smiled at Jason, and it was such a tender look that my heart ached. “So I left her in the back of the truck, and I came in the house to have a drink. And when I came back out, she was gone. I couldn’t believe it. I thought she’d gotten up and walked away. But there wasn’t any blood, and the wood was gone, too.”

“Why Merlotte’s?” Calvin said, and his voice came out like a growl.

“I don’t know, Calvin,” Mel said. His face was almost sublime with his relief from the load of his guilt, with the release of confessing his crime and his love for my brother. “Calvin, I know I’m about to die, and I swear to you that I have no idea what happened to Crystal after I went into the house. I did not do that horrible thing to her.”