Charlaine Harris - Deadlocked

—not by hitting anything, but by being nose down in the steep ditch. The headlights lit up the weeds, stil whipping, bugs flying up from the impact. I turned off the engine and sat gasping.

My poor car was nose down at a steep angle. The rain had had twenty-four hours to soak into the previously parched soil, so the ditch was fairly dry, which was a real blessing. Bel enos and the blonde appeared, working their way around the car to get to my door. Bel enos was carrying a spear, and his companion appeared to have two curved bladed weapons of some kind. Not exactly swords; real y long knives, as thin at the point as needles.

I tried to open the door, but my muscles wouldn’t obey my command. I realized I was crying. I had a sharp flash of memory: Claudine waking me when I fel asleep at the wheel on this same road. Bel enos’s lithe body moved across the headlights, and then he was by my door and wrenching it open.

“Sister!” he said, and turned to his companion. “Cut this strap, Gift.”

A knife passed right by my face in the next second, and the seat belt was severed. Oh, damn . Evidently, they didn’t understand buckles.

Gift bent down, and in the next instant I was out of the car and she was carrying me away.

“We didn’t mean to frighten you,” she murmured. “I’m sorry, my sister.”

She laid me down as easily as if I’d been an infant, and she and Bel enos squatted by me. I concluded, with no great certainty, that they weren’t going to kil and eat me. When I could speak, I said, “What were you out here doing?”

“Hunting,” Bel enos said, as if he suspected my head were addled. “You saw the deer?”

“Yes. Do you realize you’re not on my land anymore?” My voice was very unsteady, but there was nothing I could do about it.

“I see no fence, no boundaries. Freedom is good,” he said.

And the blonde nodded enthusiastical y. “It’s so good to run,” she said. “It’s so good to be out of a human building.”

The thing was … they seemed so happy . Though I knew absolutely I should read them the riot act, I found myself feeling not only profoundly sorry for the two fae, but frightened of—and for—them. This was a very uncomfortable mix of emotions. “I’m real glad you’re having a good time,” I wheezed. They both beamed at me. “How did you come to be named Gift?” I just couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“It’s Aelfgifu,” she said, smiling. “Elf-gift. But Gift is easier for human mouths.” Speaking of mouths, Aelfgifu’s teeth were not as ferocious as Bel enos’s. In fact, they were quite smal . But since she was leaning over me, I could see longer, sharper, thinner teeth folded against the roof of her mouth.

Fangs. Not vampire fangs, but snake fangs. Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea. Coupled with the pupil-less eyes, she was real y scary.

“Is this the way you do in Faery?” I asked weakly. “Hunt in the woods?”

They both smiled. “Oh, yes, no fences or boundaries there,” Aelfgifu said longingly. “Though the woods are not as deep as they once were.”

“I don’t want to … to chide you,” I said, wondering if I could sit up. They both stared at me, their eyes unreadable, their heads canted at inhuman angles. “But regular people real y shouldn’t see you without your human disguises. And even if you could make other people perceive you as human

… regular human couples don’t chase deer in the middle of the night. With sharp weapons.” Even around Bon Temps, where hunting is practical y a religion.

“You see us as we real y are,” Bel enos said. I could tel he hadn’t known that before. Maybe I’d given away a powerful bit of knowledge by revealing that.

“Yeah.”

“You have powerful magic,” Gift said respectful y. “That makes you our sister. When you first came to Hooligans, we weren’t sure about you. Are you on our side?”

Bel enos’s hand shot across me, and he gripped Aelfgifu’s shoulder. Their eyes met. In the weird light and shadows cast by the headlights, her eyes looked just as black as his.

“I don’t know what side that is,” I said, to break the moment up. It seemed to work, because she laughed and slid an arm underneath me, and I sat up. “You’re not hurt,” she said. “Dermot wil be pleased. He loves you.”

Bel enos put an arm around me, too, so our little trio was suddenly positioned in an uncomfortably intimate little scene there on the deserted road.

Bel enos’s teeth were awful y close to my flesh. Sure, I was used to Eric biting, but he didn’t rip off flesh and eat it.

“You’re shaking, Sister,” Aelfgifu observed. “You can’t be cold on a hot night like tonight! Is it the shock of your little accident?”

“You can’t be frightened of us?” Bel enos sounded mocking.

“You turkey,” I said. “Of course I’m scared of you. If you’d spent a while with Lochlan and Neave, you’d be scared, too.”

“We’re not like them,” Aelfgifu said in a much more subdued voice. “And we’re sorry, Sister. There are quite a few of us who endured their attentions. Not al lived to tel others about it. You’re very fortunate.”

“Did you have the magic then?” Bel enos asked.

This was the second time the elf had referred to my having magic. I was very curious to know why he said that, but at the same time, I hated to expose my total ignorance.

“Could I drive you two back to Monroe?” I asked, staving off Bel enos’s question.

“I couldn’t bear to be shut up in an iron box,” Gift said. “We’l run. May we come to hunt on your land tomorrow night?”

“How many of you?” I thought I should err on the side of caution, here.

They helped me to my feet, consulting with each other silently as they did so.

“Four of us,” Bel enos said, trying not to sound as if he were asking me.

“That would be okay,” I said. “Long as you let me explain where the boundaries are.”

I got simultaneous kisses on both sides of my face. Then the two fae leaped down in the ditch, bent over to get a grip below the hood of my car, a nd pushed . The car was back up on the road in seconds. Aside from the severed seat belt, it didn’t seem to be much the worse for the experience: dirty, of course, and the front fender was a little dented. Gift waved at me cheerful y as I took my place behind the wheel, and then the two were off, heading east toward Monroe … at least while I could see them. My car started up, thank God, and I turned around at the next driveway and headed home. My excursion was over. I was completely jangled.

As I pul ed up, I could tel the vampires were stil there. When I glanced at my car clock, I saw that only twenty minutes had passed since I’d left.

Suddenly, I began shivering al over when I thought of the incident—the panicked deer, the swift and deadly pursuit, the faes’ overly loving solicitousness. I turned off the car and got out slowly. I was going to be stiff al over the next morning, I just knew it. Of course Bil and Eric had heard me return, but neither of them came rushing out to see how I was. I reminded myself they didn’t have any idea something had happened to me.

I stepped out of the car and thought I’d go flat on my face. I was having some kind of reaction to the whole bizarre incident, and I couldn’t stop replaying the running figures in my mind. They had looked so alien, so very, very … not-human.

And now I knew that someone suspected I had some powerful fae magic. If the fae suspected it was contained in an item, I didn’t like my chances of keeping it, or of keeping my life, for that matter. Any supe would want such a thing, especial y the hodgepodge of fae trapped at Hooligans. They were yearning for the homeland of Faery, no matter how they’d come to be trapped in our world. Any power they could acquire would be more than they had now. And if they had the cluviel dor … they could wish the doors of Faery open to them again.