Deadlocked

I would love to feel an absolute conviction that yanking that cluviel dor out of my pocket and wishing with all my heart that Eric would stay with me was the right thing to do.

I poked at that thought. I prodded that thought. But it just didn't feel right to me.

I took a much-needed nap. When I got up, though I wasn't really all that hungry, I microwaved a dish of lasagna and picked at it as I thought. No one at the bar had heard news of any more mysterious deer deaths, and now I was sure there never would be. I wondered about Hooligans, presumably now sitting empty, but it wasn't anything to do with me anymore. Oh, gosh, the guys were sure to have left some stuff upstairs. Maybe this evening I'd pack it up. Not that there was any address to forward it to.

Okay, maybe I'd take the clothes to Goodwill.

I watched television for a while-an old black-and-white movie about a man and a woman who loved one another but had to overcome all sorts of things to be together, a cooking show, a couple of episodes of Jeopardy. (I couldn't get any answers right.) My only phone call was from a fund-raising organization. I turned them down.

They were disappointed in me, I could tell.

When the phone rang again, I picked it up without bothering to turn down the sound on the TV.

"Sookie?" said a familiar voice.

I pressed the Off button on the remote. "Alcide, how is Warren?"

"He's much better. I think he's gonna be fine. Listen, I need you and Sam to come to the old farm tonight."

"Your dad's place?"

"Yeah. Your presence was requested."

"By whom?"

"By Jannalynn."

"You found her?"

"Yeah."

"But Sam, too? She wants Sam?"

"Yeah. She deceived him, too. He has a right to be there."

"Did you call him?"

"He's on his way to pick you up."

"Do I have to?" I said.

"You whining, Sookie?"

"Yeah, I guess I am, Alcide. I'm mighty tired, and more bad stuff has happened than you know."

"I can't take any more than I have on my plate. Just come. If it makes you want to attend this little soiree more, your honey's gonna be there."

"Eric?"

"Yeah. The King of Cold himself."

Fear and longing rippled along my skin. "Okay," I said. "I'll come."

By the time I heard Sam's truck in the driveway, the lack of sleep I'd experienced the night before was hitting me in a major way. I'd spent the minutes I'd waited by refreshing my memory about the route to Alcide's family place, and I'd written the directions out. When Sam knocked on the door, I stuck the paper in my purse. We were going to be walking around a farm at night; I'd want to leave my purse in the car. I made certain the cluviel dor was still in my pocket and I felt the now-familiar curved shape.

Sam's face was grim and hard, and it felt wrong to see him that way.

We didn't talk on the way to the farm.

I had to turn on Sam's overhead light from time to time to read my directions, but I was able to steer us right. I think the preoccupation with actually getting there helped keep us from worrying too much about what we'd see when we arrived.

We found a mess of cars parked higgledy-piggledy in the front yard of the old farmhouse. To call it "remote" was to be kind. Though there was more cleared land around it than there had ever been at my place, it was even more private. No one lived here full time any longer. Alcide's dad's dad had owned the farm, and Jackson Herveaux had kept it after he'd gone into construction so he'd have a place to run at the full moon. The pack had used it often. The front of the house was dark, but I could hear voices around the back. Sam and I trudged through the high weeds. We didn't say a word to each other.

We might as well have walked into another country.

The meadow behind the house was mowed and smooth. There were lights up. I could see from posts that normally there was a volley-ball net set up across a sand court. A few yards away, there was a pool that looked new. I even spotted a baseball diamond farther back. A Weber grill was under the covered patio. Clearly, this was where the pack came to relax and have fellowship.

I saw the tall and quiet Kandace first. She smiled at me and pointed to Alcide, who stood out among his people as much as Niall did among his. Tonight Alcide looked like a king. A king in jeans and a T-shirt, a barefoot king. And he looked dangerous. The power gathered around him. The air was humming with the magic of the pack.

Good. We needed more tension.

Eric shone like the moon; he was pale and commanding, and there was a large empty space around him. He was alone. He held out his hand to me, and I took it, to a flare of dismay from the twoeys.

"You know, about Jannalynn and Claude?" I looked up at him.

"Yes, I know. Niall sent me a message."

"He's gone. They've all gone."

"He told me I would not hear from him again."

I nodded and gulped. No more crying. "So what's going to happen tonight?"

"I don't know what we're here to see," he said. "An execution? A duel? With the wolves, I can't predict."

Sam was standing by himself, just under the awning over the patio. Alcide went up to him and spoke, and Sam shrugged, then nodded. He stepped out to stand by Alcide.

I looked around at the faces of the pack members. They were all restless because of the night and because of the promise of violence in the air. There was going to be bleeding tonight.

Alcide raised an arm, and four figures were led from the back of the house. Their hands were bound. Van, Plump, the bandaged Airman (Laidlaw, Mustapha had called him), and Jannalynn. I didn't know where they'd caught up with her, but her face was bruised. She'd put up a fight, which was no surprise at all.

Then I saw Mustapha. He'd blended with the darkness. He was magnificently nude. Warren was in the shadows behind him, huddled in a folding lawn chair. He was too far away for me to get a good look at him.

Mustapha had a sword. Too many of those in my life these days, I thought, feeling Eric's cold hand tightening on mine.

"We are here to judge tonight," Alcide said. "We've had to judge members all too often lately. The pack has been full of dissension and disloyalty. Tonight I require all of you to renew your oaths, and tonight I say that the penalty for breaking them is death."

The werewolves drew in breath sharply, collectively, like a single quiet scream. I looked around. Werewolfism manifests itself along with puberty, so none of the faces were younger than early teens, but that was young enough to make their presence shocking.

"After the judgments are rendered tonight, anyone who likes can challenge me on this spot," Alcide said. His face was savage. "No candidate has announced against me, but if anyone would like to win here and now, without a ceremony, you're welcome to try single combat. Prepare yourself to fight to the death."

Everyone was frozen in place now. This was not at all like the packmaster challenge I'd seen before, the one in which Alcide's father had died. That had been a formal, ceremonial contest. Alcide himself had succeeded to the position when his father's challenger, Patrick Furnan, had died fighting side by side with Alcide against a common enemy. Packmaster by acclamation, I guess you'd term it. Tonight Alcide was throwing down the gauntlet to every wolf present. It was a big gamble.

"Now for judgment," Alcide said, when he had looked into the face of every pack member.

The prisoners were pushed forward to land on their knees in the sand of the volleyball court. Roy, the Were who was dating Palomino, seemed to be in charge of the miscreants.

"The three rogues I had turned down for admission into the pack acted against us," Alcide said in a voice that carried across the yard. "They abducted Warren, the friend of Mustapha, who in turn is a friend-though not a member-of this pack. If he hadn't been found in time, Warren would have died."

Everyone moved in unison, turning to stare at the people on their knees.

"The three rogues were incited by Jannalynn Hopper, not only a pack member, but also my enforcer. Jannalynn couldn't subdue her pride and ambition. She couldn't wait until she was strong enough to challenge me openly. Instead she started a campaign of undermining me. She looked for power in the wrong places. She even accepted money from a fairy in return for finding a half-bitch who would try to get Eric Northman arrested for murder. When Eric was too smart to act the way she thought he would, Jannalynn stole into his yard and murdered Kym Rowe herself, so Kym wouldn't tell the police who'd hired her. Some of you remember running with Oscar, Kym's father. He's joined us tonight."

Kym's father, Oscar, was skulking behind Alcide. He looked oddly out of place, and I wondered how long it had been since he'd come to a pack meeting. What regrets did Oscar have now about his daughter's life and death? If he was any kind of father, any kind of human being, he had to be thinking about how she'd lost her job, how she'd needed money so badly that she'd agreed to be bait for a vampire. He had to be wondering if he could've helped her out.

But maybe I was just projecting. I had to keep my mind in the here and now.

"Jannalynn was willing to sacrifice Were blood to serve her own interests and those of the fae?" Roy said. I was pretty sure Alcide had prepped him to ask that.

"She was. She admits it. She has written a confession and mailed it to the Shreveport police station. Now we're going to ensure it's taken seriously."

Alcide dialed a number. His cell was on speakerphone. "Detective Ambroselli," said a recognizable voice.

Alcide held the phone in front of Jannalynn. Her eyes closed for a moment as she was readying herself to step off a cliff. The Were said, "Detective, this is Jannalynn Hopper."

"Uh-huh? Wait, you're the bartender at Hair of the Dog, right?"

"Yeah. I have a confession to make."

"Then come on in, and we'll sit down," Ambroselli said cautiously.

"I can't do that. I'm about to vanish. And I've mailed you a letter. But I wanted to tell you, so you can hear it's my voice. Are you recording this?"

"Yeah, I am now," Ambroselli said. I could hear a lot of movement on her end.

"I killed Kym Rowe. I came up on her when she was leaving Eric Northman's house, and I snapped her neck. I'm a werewolf. We're pretty strong."

"Why'd you do that?" Ambroselli asked. I could hear someone muttering to her, and I guessed she was getting advice from the other detectives around her.

For a moment, Jannalynn's face looked blank. She hadn't thought of a motive, at least not a simple one. Then she said, "Kym stole my wallet from my purse, and when I tracked her down and made her give it back, she disrespected me. I ... have a bad temper, and she said some stuff that made me sick. I lost it. I have to go now. But I don't want anyone else blamed for something I did."

And Alcide hung up. "We'll hope that will clear Eric. That's our responsibility," he said, and nodded at Eric, who nodded back.

Jannalynn made her face hard and looked around, but I noticed she didn't actually meet anyone's eyes. Even mine.

"How'd she get these sleazeballs to help her?" Roy asked, jerking his head at the kneeling prisoners. He'd definitely been prepped.

"She promised them membership in the pack when she became packleader," Alcide told the Weres. "Van is a convicted rapist. Coco burned her own family, father and two brothers, in their home. Laidlaw, though not convicted in a human court, was thrown out of his own pack in West Virginia for attacking a human child during his moon time. This is why I had turned them down for the Long Tooth pack. But Jannalynn would admit these people to run with us. And they did her bidding."

There was a long silence. Neither Van, nor Plump (Coco), nor Laidlaw denied the charges against them. They didn't try to justify themselves, which was pretty damn impressive.

"What do you think we should do with the rogues?" Roy asked when the silence had lasted long enough.

"What crimes did they commit here?" asked a young woman just past her teens.

"They abducted Warren and imprisoned him at Jannalynn's family home. They didn't feed him and left him in an attic room without air-conditioning or any means of relief from the heat. He almost died as a result. They abducted Sookie and were taking her to their own place, and we can only imagine what they would have done with her there. Those actions were at the behest of Jannalynn."

"And she held out the promise of admission to the pack upon your death." The young woman sounded like she was thinking hard. "Those are bad things to do, but in fact Warren lived, and Sookie was rescued by the pack. Jannalynn won't be your successor, and they won't join the pack."

"This is all true," Alcide said.

"So they acted about like you'd expect rogues to act," the young woman persisted.

"Yes. Not lone wolves," Alcide explained for the benefit of the youngest Weres present. "But rogues, who've been turned down for pack membership, maybe by more than one pack."

"And what about Kandace?" the young woman said, pointing to the short-haired rogue.

"Kandace told us what was happening because she didn't want to be a part of it," Alcide said. "So we're going to put her membership to the vote in a month. After people have time to get to know her."

There was a general round of nodding, kind of guarded. Kandace might have told on the other rogues because it was the right thing to do, or she might be a natural snitch. Getting to talk to her on an individual basis was the best course.