All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #7)(68)
Author: Charlaine Harris

I’d been a fool to discount, even for a minute, the warning that Clovache had passed along. I was so angry at myself I could hardly stand to be inside my own skin. But I had to shove that aside and we had to act now.

"Listen to what I think," I said. I’d been putting things together in my head. "Some of the waiters have been avoiding Barry and me over the past couple of days, as soon as they found out what we were."

Barry nodded. He’d noticed, too. He looked oddly guilty, but that had to wait.

"They know what we are. They didn’t want us to know what they’re about to do, I’m assuming. So I’m also assuming it must be something really, really bad. And Jake Purifoy was in on it."

Mr. Cataliades had been looking faintly bored, but now he began to look seriously alarmed. Diantha’s big eyes went from face to face.

"What shall we do?" Cecile asked, which earned her high marks in my book.

"It’s the extra coffins," I said. "And the blue suitcase in the queen’s suite. Barry, you were asked to bring up a suitcase, too, right? And it didn’t belong to anyone?"

Barry said, "Right. It’s still sitting in the foyer of the king’s suite, since everyone passes through there. We thought someone would claim it. I was going to take it back to the luggage department today."

I said, "The one I went down for is sitting in the living room of the queen’s suite. I think the guy who was in on it was Joe, the manager down in the luggage and delivery area. He’s the one who called me down to get the suitcase. No one else seemed to know anything about it."

"The suitcases will blow up?" Diantha said in her shrill voice. "The unclaimed coffins in the basement, too? If the basement goes, the building will collapse!" I’d never heard Diantha sound so human.

"We have to wake them up," I said. "We have to get them out."

"The building’s going to blow," said Barry, trying to process the idea.

"The vamps won’t wake up." Cecile the practical. "They can’t."

"Quinn!" I said. I was thinking of so many things at once that I was standing rooted in place. Fishing my phone from my pocket, I punched his number on speed dial and heard his mumble at the other end. "Get out," I said. "Quinn, get your sister and get out. There’s going to be an explosion." I only waited to hear him sound more alert before I shut the phone.

"We have to save ourselves, too," Barry was saying.

Brilliantly, Cecile ran down the hall to a red fixture and flipped the fire alarm. The clamor almost split our eardrums, but the effect was wonderful on the sleeping humans on this floor. Within seconds, they began to come out of the rooms.

"Take the stairs," Cecile directed them in a bellow, and obediently, they did. I was glad to see Carla’s dark head among them. But I didn’t see Quinn, and he was always easy to spot.

"The queen is high up," said Mr. Cataliades.

"Can those glass panels be busted from the inside?" I asked.

"They did it on Fear Factor," Barry said.

"We could try sliding the coffins down."

"They’d break on impact," Cecile said.

"But the vamps would survive the explosion," I pointed out.

"To be burned up by the sun," Mr. Cataliades said. "Diantha and I will go up and try to get out the queen’s party, wrapped up in blankets. We’ll take them…" He looked at me desperately.

"Ambulances! Call 911 now! They can figure out where to take them!"

Diantha called 911 and was incoherent and desperate enough to get ambulances started to an explosion that had not happened yet. "The building’s on fire," she said, which was like a future truth.

"Go," I told Mr. Cataliades, actually shoving the demon, and off he sped to the queen’s suite.

"Go try to get your party out," I said to Barry, and he and Cecile ran for the elevator, though at any minute it might be unworkable.

I’d done everything about getting humans out that I could. Cataliades and Diantha could take care of the queen and Andre. Eric and Pam! I knew where Eric’s room was, thank God. I took the stairs. As I ran up, I met a party coming down: the two Britlingens, both with large packs on their backs, carrying a wrapped bundle. Clovache had the feet, Batanya the head. I had no doubt that the bundle was the King of Kentucky, and that they were doing their duty. They both nodded as I hugged the wall to let them by. If they weren’t as calm as if they were out for a stroll, they were close to it.

"You set off the fire alarm?" Batanya said. "Whatever the Fellowship is doing, it’s today?"

"Yes," I said.

"Thanks. We’re getting out now, and you should, too," Clovache said.

"We’ll go back to our place after we deposit him," Batanya said. "Good-bye."

"Good luck," I told them stupidly, and then I was running upstairs as if I’d trained for this. As a result, I was huffing like a bellows when I flung open the door to the ninth floor. I saw a lone maid pushing a cart down a long corridor. I ran up to her, frightening her even more than the fire alarm already had.

"Give me your master key," I said.

"No!" She was middle-aged and Hispanic, and she wasn’t about to give in to such a crazy demand. "I’ll get fired."

"Then open this door" – I pointed to Eric’s – "and get out of here." I’m sure I looked like a desperate woman, and I was. "This building is going to blow up any minute."

She flung the key at me and made tracks down the hallway to the elevators. Dammit.

And then the explosions began. There was a deep, resounding quiver and a boom from way below my feet, as if some gargantuan sea creature were making its way to the surface. I staggered over to Eric’s room, thrusting the plastic key into the slot and shoving open the door in a moment of utter silence. The room was in complete darkness.

"Eric, Pam!" I yelled. I fumbled for a light switch in the pitch-black room, felt the building sway. At least one of the upper charges had gone off. Oh, shit! Oh, shit! But the light came on, and I saw that Eric and Pam had gotten in the beds, not the coffins.

"Wake up!" I said, shaking Pam since she was closest. She didn’t stir at all. It was exactly like shaking a doll stuffed with sawdust. "Eric!" I screamed right in his ear.

This got a bit of a reaction; he was much older than Pam. His eyes opened a slit and tried to focus. "What?" he said.

"You have to get up! You have to! You have to go out!"

"Daytime," he whispered. He began to flop over on his side.