Шарлин Харрис - Dead to the World

"This is a bad night to be out driving around," Calvin observed.

I knew I'd have to tread carefully, as much as I wanted to grab the front of his flannel shirt and scream in his face. This man was a ruler. The size of the kingdom didn't really matter.

"Calvin," I said, as calmly as I could, "did you know that the police found a panther print on the dock, by Jason's bootprint?"

"No," he said, after a long moment. I could see the anger building behind his eyes. "We don't hear a lot of town gossip out here. I wondered why the search party had men with guns, but we make other people kind of nervous, and no one was talking to us much. Panther print. Huh."

"I didn't know that was your, um, other identity, until tonight."

He looked at me steadily. "You think that one of us made off with your brother."

I stood silent, not shifting my eyes from his. Sam was equally still beside me.

"You think Crystal got mad at your brother and did him harm?"

"No," I said. His golden eyes were getting wider and rounder as I spoke to him.

"Are you afraid of me?" he asked suddenly.

"No," I said. "I'm not."

"Felton," he said.

I nodded.

"Let's go see," he said.

Back out into the snow and darkness. I could feel the sting of the flakes on my cheeks, and I was glad my jacket had a hood. Sam's gloved hand took mine as I stumbled over some discarded tool or toy in the yard of the house next to Felton's. As we trailed up to the concrete slab that formed Felton's front porch, Calvin was already knocking at the door.

"Who is it?" Felton demanded.

"Open," said Calvin.

Recognizing his voice, Felton opened the door immediately. He didn't have the same cleanliness bug as Calvin, and his furniture was not so much arranged as shoved up against whatever wall was handiest. The way he moved was not human, and tonight that seemed even more pronounced than it had at the search. Felton, I thought, was closer to reverting to his animal nature. Inbreeding had definitely left its mark on him.

"Where is the man?" Calvin asked without preamble.

Felton's eyes flared wide, and he twitched, as if he was thinking about running. He didn't speak.

"Where?" Calvin demanded again, and then his hand changed into a paw and he swiped it across Felton's face. "Does he live?"

I clapped my hands across my mouth so I wouldn't scream. Felton sank to his knees, his face crossed with parallel slashes filling with blood.

"In the shed in back," he said indistinctly.

I went back out the front door so quickly that Sam barely caught up with me. Around the corner of the house I flew, and I fell full-length over a woodpile. Though I knew it would hurt later, I jumped up and found myself supported by Calvin Norris, who, as he had in the woods, lifted me over the pile before I knew what he intended. He vaulted it himself with easy grace, and then we were at the door of the shed, which was one of those you order from Sears or Penney's. You have your neighbors come help put it up, when the concrete truck comes to pour your slab.

The door was padlocked, but these sheds aren't meant to repel determined intruders, and Calvin was very strong. He broke the lock, and pushed back the door, and turned on the light. It was amazing to me that there was electricity out here, because that's certainly not the norm.

At first I wasn't sure I was looking at my brother, because this creature looked nothing like Jason. He was blond, sure, but he was so filthy and smelly that I flinched, even in the freezing air. And he was blue with the cold, since he had only pants on. He was lying on a single blanket on the concrete floor.

I was on my knees beside him, gathering him up as best I could in my arms, and his eyelids fluttered open. "Sookie?" he said, and I could hear the disbelief in his voice. "Sookie? Am I saved?"

"Yes," I said, though I was by no means so sure. I remember what had happened to the sheriff who'd come out here and found something amiss. "We're going to take you home."

He'd been bitten.

He'd been bitten a lot.

"Oh, no," I said softly, the significance of the bites sinking in.

"I didn't kill him," Felton said defensively, from outside.

"You bit him," I said, and my voice sounded like another person's. "You wanted him to be like you."

"So Crystal wouldn't like him better. She knows we need to breed outside, but she really likes me best," Felton said.

"So you grabbed him, and you kept him, and you bit him."

Jason was too weak to stand.

"Please carry him to the truck," I said stiffly, unable to meet the eyes of anyone around me. I could feel the fury rising in me like black wave, and I knew I had to restrain it until we were out of here. I had just enough control to do this. I knew I did.

Jason cried out when Calvin and Sam lifted him. They got the blanket, too, and sort of tucked it around him. I stumbled after them as they made their way back to Calvin's and the truck.

I had my brother back. There was a chance he was going to turn into a panther from time to time, but I had him back. I didn't know if the rules for all shifters were the same, but Alcide had told me that Weres who were bitten, not born—created Weres, rather than genetic Weres—changed into the half-man, half-beast creatures who populated horror movies. I forced myself to get off that track, to think of the joy of having my brother back, alive.

Calvin got Jason into the truck and slid him over, and Sam climbed into the driver's seat. Jason would be between us after I climbed into the truck. But Calvin had to tell me something first.

"Felton will be punished," he said. "Right now."

Punishing Felton hadn't been at the top of my list of things to think about, but I nodded, because I wanted to get the hell out of there.

"If we're taking care of Felton, are you going to go to the police?" he asked. He was standing stiffly, as if he was trying to be casual about the question. But this was a dangerous moment. I knew what happened to people who drew attention to the Hotshot community.

"No," I said. "It was just Felton." Though, of course, Crystal had to have known, at least on some level. She'd told me she'd smelled an animal that night at Jason's. How could she have mistaken the smell of panther, when she was one? And she had probably known all along that that panther had been Felton. His smell would be familiar to her. But it just wasn't the time to go into that; Calvin would know that as well as I, when he'd had a moment to think. "And my brother may be one of you now. He'll need you," I added, in the most even voice I could manage. It wasn't very even, at that.

"I'll come get Jason, next full moon."

I nodded again. "Thank you," I told him, because I knew we would never have found Jason if he'd stonewalled us. "I have to get my brother home now." I knew Calvin wanted me to touch him, wanted me to connect with him somehow, but I just couldn't do it.

"Sure," he said, after a long moment. The shape-shifter stepped back while I scrambled up into the cab. He seemed to know I wouldn't want any help from him right now.

I'd thought I'd gotten unusual brain patterns from the Hotshot people because they were inbred. It had never occurred to me they were something other than wolves. I'd assumed. I know what my high school volleyball coach always said about "assume." Of course, he'd also told us that we had to leave everything out on the court so it would be there when we came back, which I had yet to figure out.

But he'd been right about assumptions.

Sam had already gotten the heater in the truck going, but not at full blast. Too much heat too soon would be bad for Jason, I was sure. As it was, the second Jason began to warm up, his smell was pretty evident, and I nearly apologized to Sam, but sparing Jason any further humiliation was more important.