Charlaine Harris - Deadlocked

When the elevator stopped at the ground level, we got out of it like we owned the hotel. We rounded a corner, and there was the back door, Palomino walking toward it ahead of us. She glanced over her shoulder and looked faintly gratified to see us coming. She tapped the code into the keypad by the door, and then she opened it. We strode by her into the parking lot. Palomino, on the way to her red car, looked curiously at the street beyond the fenced lot for a moment, as if she sensed something strange. I didn’t have time to check it out as we walked briskly between the parked employee cars and out the gap in the fence.

We were almost to Bil ’s car when the Weres caught up with us. There were four of them. I only recognized one; I’d seen him at Alcide’s house.

He was a gaunt-faced, long-haired, bearded guy named Van.

Vamps and Weres just don’t mix, general y speaking, so I stepped ahead of Bil and did my best to manage to smile. “Van, good to see you tonight,” I said, struggling to sound sincere when every nerve in my body was screaming at me to get the hel out of the vicinity. “You gonna let us get on our way?”

Van, who was several inches tal er than me, looked down at my face. He wasn’t thinking about my body, which was a nice change, but he was thinking about … making some kind of choice. It’s very hard to read Were thoughts, but that much I could discern.

“Miss Stackhouse,” he said, and nodded. His dark hair swung forward and back with the motion. “We been looking for you.”

“How come?” I might as wel get this settled. If we were going to fight, I needed to know why I was going to get beat up. I sure didn’t want that.

“Alcide’s found Warren.”

“Oh, good!” I was real y pleased. I smiled up at Van. Now Mustapha could come in from the cold, tel us what he’d seen, and al would be wel .

“Thing is, what we found is a dead body, and we ain’t sure it’s real y him,” Van said. When my face fel , he added, “I’m real sorry, but Alcide wants you to have a look at him and tel us it’s Warren for sure.”

So much for a happy ending.

Chapter 12

“You-all were headed somewhere?” Van asked.

“We were taking this one to the airport,” Bil said, nodding at Colton. This was news to me and to Colton, but it was good news. There real y was a plan to get Colton away from the reach of Felipe.

“Why don’t you two continue on, then,” Van said reasonably. He didn’t ask any further questions or demand to know Colton’s identity, which was a relief. “I can take Sookie to the body, she’l check the identity, and I’l get her home. Or we can meet up somewhere.”

“At Alcide’s?” Bil asked.

“Sure.”

“Sookie, you okay with that?”

“Yeah, al right,” I said. “Let me get my purse out of your car.”

Bil clicked his car open and I reached inside to get my purse, which held a change of clothes. I definitely wanted to find a couple of minutes of privacy to put on something a little less revealing.

I felt uneasy without knowing exactly why. We’d recovered Colton, and if he could get the hel out of town, he’d probably be safe. If Colton couldn’t tel the little he remembered about that evening at Fangtasia, Eric would be safer, and therefore I would be safer—and so would al of the Shreveport vamps. I ought to be feeling happier. I slung my bag over my shoulder, glad that I had the cluviel dor with me.

“You’re okay with these wolves?” Bil asked in a very low voice as Colton got into Bil ’s car and buckled his seat belt.

“Uh-huh,” I said, though I wasn’t so sure. But I shook myself and cal ed myself paranoid. “These are Alcide’s wolves, and he’s my friend. But just in case, cal him when you’re on your way, would you?”

“Go with me,” Bil said suddenly. “They can identify Warren by smel , maybe. Mustapha could definitely do that, when he resurfaces.”

“Nah, it’s okay. Get Colton to the airport,” I said. “Get him out of town.”

Bil looked at me searchingly, then nodded in a jerky way. I watched as Bil and Colton drove off.

Now that I was alone with the werewolves, I felt even odder.

“Van,” I said, “Where did you find Warren?”

The other three crowded around: a woman in her thirties with a pixie haircut, an airman from the Air Force base in Bossier City, and a girl in her teens with very generous curves. The teenager was in the first throes of experiencing her power as a Were, almost drunk with her newfound ability; it dominated her brain. The other two meant business. And that was al I could get of their thoughts. We were walking north on the street to a gray Camaro, which seemed to belong to Airman.

“I’l show you. It’s a little ways east of town. Since Mustapha wasn’t a pack member, we never met Warren.”

“Okay,” I said doubtful y. And I thought of making some excuse not to get in the car, because my uneasiness was mounting like a drumrol . We were alone on a dark street, and I realized they had boxed me in. I had no real reason to doubt that Van was tel ing me the truth—but I had an instinct that was tel ing me this situation stank. I wished instinct had spoken up more clearly a few minutes ago when I’d had Bil at my side. I got in the car, and the Weres crowded in. We buckled up, and in a second we were driving in the direction of the interstate.

Curiously, I almost didn’t want to discover that my suspicion was valid. I was tired of crises, tired of deceit, tired of life-or-death situations. I felt like a stone being skipped across a pond, longing only to sink to the anonymous bottom.

Wel , that was stupid. I gave myself a mental shake. Not time to long for things I couldn’t have at the moment. Time to be alert and ready for action. “Do you real y have Warren?” I asked Van. He was sitting to my right in the backseat of the Camaro. The plump teenager was crowded in to my left. She didn’t smel particularly good.

“Nope,” he said. “Ain’t ever seen him, that I know of.”

“Then why are you doing this?” I might as wel know, though I already felt sadly sure this was going to end poorly.

“Alcide asked that black bugger Mustapha to join the pack,” Van said. “He ain’t asked us.”

So they were al rogues. “But I saw you at the last pack meeting.”

“Yeah, I was going through rush, like they do in fraternities,” Van said, deeply sarcastic. “But I didn’t make the cut. Guess I got blackballed .”

“I thought he had to let you in,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t know the packleader got to pick and choose.”

“Alcide is a little too selective,” said the airman, who was driving. He turned a little so I could see his profile as he spoke. “He doesn’t want anyone with a serious criminal record in his pack.”

Alarm bel s sounded then in my brain, way too late. Mustapha had been in prison, though I didn’t know the charge … yet Alcide had been wil ing to accept him into the pack. What had these rogues done that had been so bad that a wolf pack wouldn’t have them?

The girl beside me tittered. The woman in the passenger’s side of the front seat cast her a dark look, and the girl stuck out her tongue like a ten-year-old.

“You got a police record?” I asked the plump girl.

Plump gave me a sly look. She had straight brown hair that fel to her shoulders. Her bangs were almost in her eyes. She’d stuffed herself into a striped tube top and blue jeans. She was wearing flip-flops. “I got a juvenile record,” she said proudly. “I set my house on fire. My mama got out just in time. My daddy and the boys didn’t.”

And I got what her daddy had been doing to her, just a single line of memory from her, and I was almost glad he hadn’t made it out. But the brothers? Little boys? I didn’t think she was too happy her mom had made it out, either.