Dead Ever After

"Let's dance," I called to Sam. Though he was right next to me, a raised voice was necessary. Sam was looking a little worried as he eyed the dancers. "I'm not that good," he called back. "Why don't you and Jason take a turn while me and Michele admire you?" Michele, who was able to hear the gist of the exchange, smiled and pushed Jason, so my brother and I went out onto the dance floor. I saw Sam watching, smiling, and I felt truly happy. I knew it might be only for a moment, but I was willing to take it when I could get it.

Jason and I stomped and sashayed and moved smoothly through all the steps in good synchronization, beaming at each other. We started out side by side, me in the outer ring, Jason in the inner, and as we circled, we moved away from Sam and Michele's table at the back of the big room, and closer to the door. When the inner circle rotated a bit, I looked to my left to see my new partner - and recognized the Reverend Steve Newlin.

The shock almost knocked me down, and I lunged away from him with no plan except to put distance between us. But someone stopped me. An iron grip caught my arm and pulled me toward the door. Johan Glassport was much stronger than he looked, and before I knew it, I was on my way out into the parking lot. "Help!" I yelled to the big bouncer, and Xavier's eyes widened and he stepped forward, his hand extended to Glassport's shoulder. Without slowing down, Glassport shoved a knife into the poor man and yanked it out, and I filled my lungs with air and screamed like a banshee. I drew plenty of attention, but too late. From behind me, Newlin shoved me out the door, and Glassport dragged me to the van waiting there, engine idling.

He pulled the side door open and shoved me inside, launching himself in on top of me. From the flurry of knees and elbows, I could tell Glassport had jumped into the van, too. We took off. I could hear yelling behind us and even a gunshot.

I was gasping for air and sanity. I looked around me, trying to orient myself. I was in a large van with two small passenger and driver doors at the front, a larger side door. The back seats had been removed to create an empty, carpeted space. Only the driver's seat was occupied.

From my position sprawled on the floor, I tried to identify the driver. He half turned to look down at me. His face was like a nightmare, scarred and twisted. I could see his teeth, though he wasn't smiling, and I saw shiny red patches on his cheeks. Someone had burned this guy, recently and severely. Only his long black hair seemed familiar.

Then he started laughing.

Full of horror and pity, I said, "Shepherd of Judea! Claude, is that you?"

Chapter 21

My fairy cousin Claude was never supposed to see the human world again. Yet here he was, with two of my worst enemies, and he was kidnapping me. I lost it.

"How many enemies do I have?" I screamed.

"Lots and lots, Sookie," Claude said. His voice was smooth and silky, but not warm. The seductive voice combined with the nightmare of a face . . . oh, it was horrible. "It was very easy to hire Steve and Johan to help me track you."

Steve Newlin and Johan Glassport had sorted themselves out and were sitting against the walls, congratulating each other on a job well done. Steve was smiling the whole time. "I was glad to help," he said, as if he'd taken out the garbage for Claude. "After what happened to my poor wife."

"And I was glad to help," Johan Glassport said, "just because I hate you, Sookie."

"Why?" I really couldn't understand it.

"You nearly ruined everything for Sophie-Anne and me at Rhodes," he said. "And you didn't come to get us when you knew the building was going to collapse. You got your pretty boy Eric, instead."

"Sophie-Anne is dead, and it doesn't make any difference," I snapped. "I figured you were like a cockroach, you'd survive a nuclear blast!"

Okay, that maybe wasn't the smartest thing I'd ever said, but honestly! It was insane to think I'd run to help two people I didn't particularly like when I knew the hotel was going to explode any second. Of course I'd gotten the people I had the strongest feelings for.

"Actually, I just like to hurt women," Glassport said. "I don't really need a reason. I like dark women better, but you'll do. In a pinch." And saying that, he poked the flesh of my arm with the knife. And I shrieked.

"We practically fell over the other guys who were after you," Newlin said conversationally, as if I weren't bleeding on the van floor. He'd pulled himself against the driver's-side wall of the van. There was a strap there for him to hold on to, which he needed, because Claude was driving very fast, and he wasn't a good driver. "But apparently you've taken care of them. And with the vampire on guard duty in your woods, we couldn't watch you at night. So we knew God was being good to us when we saw our opportunity tonight."

"Claude, what about you," I said, hoping to put off Johan sticking me anymore. "Why do you hate me?"

"Niall was going to kill me, anyway, since I was trying to organize a coup against him. And that would have been a noble death. But after Dermot blabbed about me searching for the cluviel dor, my dear grandfather decided killing me was too quick. So he tortured me for quite some time."

"It hasn't been that long," I protested.

"You've been tortured," he said. "How long did that seem to you?"

Good point.

"Besides, we were in Faery, and time passes differently there. And the fae can take more punishment than humans."

"Though we intend to discover your limits," Glassport said.

"Where are we going?" I dreaded the answer.

"Oh, we've found a little place," Glassport said. "Just down the road a piece." He delivered the colloquialism mockingly.

Pam had wasted her blood healing me. I'd just have more flesh to torture. I don't mind saying, I was at my wit's end and then some. I didn't know how fast Sam or Jason and Michele would be able to follow me, if they even had a clue which direction the van had taken. Maybe the furor over the abduction and the stabbing of the bouncer would impede them even getting out the door. And my guardian vampire, Karin, was back at my house, presumably making sure no coons came out of the woods to steal my tomatoes.

The first rule about kidnapping attempts is, Don't get in the car. Well, we were already past that, though I'd given it a try. Probably the next rule was, Observe where you're going. Oh, I knew that! We were going either north or south or east or west. I told myself not to be a Helpless Hilda, and I thought back. We'd turned to the right out of the parking lot, so we were going north. Okay. That should have been visible from Stompin' Sally's, because there weren't many trees to obscure the line of sight . . . if anyone had had the presence of mind to watch.

I didn't think Claude had made any turns since then, which even Claude would know was dumb, so we were going straight to whatever place they'd decided was secure, and it must be very close. I assumed they planned on getting there and concealing the van pretty quickly, before pursuit could even start out.

I felt like giving up right then. I didn't think I'd ever felt so defeated. Johan Glassport was still looking at me with that sickly anticipation, and Steve Newlin was praying out loud, thanking the Lord for delivering his enemy into his hands. My heart sank as low as it could go.

I'd been tortured before, as Claude had so thoughtfully reminded me, and I still bore the scars on my body. I had the scars on my spirit, too, and I always would, no matter how well I'd recovered. Worst of all, I knew what was coming. I just wanted the whole thing to be over, even if I died . . . and I knew they intended to kill me. Death would be easier than going through that again. I was very clear on that. But I tried to rally. The only thing I could do was talk.

"I feel sorry for you, Claude," I said. "I'm sorry Niall did that to you." His face was an especially cruel target, since Claude had been outstandingly handsome and very proud. If he'd wanted women, he could have had them by the dozens, instead of sampling one now and then. As it happened, Claude liked men, men rough around the edges, and they'd responded to him with enthusiasm. Niall had found a perfectly devastating punishment for Claude's treachery.

"Don't feel sorry for me," Claude said. "Wait to see what we're going to do to you."

"Cutting me will make you well again?"

"That's not what I'm after."

"What are you after?"

"Vengeance," he said.

"What did I do to you, Claude?" I asked, genuinely curious. "I let you live in my house. I cooked for you. I let you sleep in my bed when you were lonely." Of course, all the time he was scouring my house looking for the cluviel dor, but I hadn't known that. I'd been genuinely glad to have him there. I also hadn't known anything about the plot against Niall, the rebellion Claude was fomenting among the other fae who hadn't made it into Faery when Niall closed the portals.

"You were the cause of Niall's wanting to close Faery off," Claude said, surprised at my even having to ask.

"Wasn't he going to do that, anyway?" Geez Louise.

Steve Newlin leaned forward to bitch-slap me. "Shut up, you godforsaken whore," he said.

"Don't hit her again unless I tell you to," Claude said. And he must have given them great cause to fear him earlier in their partnership, because Glassport put his knife away and Newlin settled back against the wall of the van. They hadn't tied me; I guessed that was the weak point of an impromptu kidnapping, nothing to bind the victim with.

"You think I am unfounded in hating you," Claude said, and we made a hard left turn. I rolled over on my side, and only when the van straightened out was I able to make some cautious moves to sit up myself. To avoid the two men, I had to stay in the middle, so any turn or bump in the road was going to knock me over. Well, great. Then I spied a grip on the back of the passenger seat, and I grabbed it.

"I do think so," I said. "There's no reason for you to hate me. I never hated you."

"You didn't want to sleep with me," Claude pointed out.

"Well, damn, Claude, you're gay! Why would I want to have sex with someone who's fantasizing about beard stubble?"

Neither Claude nor I considered what I'd said anything extraordinary, but you'd have thought I'd stuck a cattle prod where the sun didn't shine on the two humans.

"Is this true, Claude? You're a fairy who's a fairy?" Steve Newlin's voice had gone super-ugly, and Johan Glassport had pulled his knife out again.

"Uh-oh," I said, just to alert Claude - since, after all, he was driving the vehicle - that there was dissension in his ranks. "Claude, your buddies are homophobes."

"What does that mean?" he asked me.

"They hate men who like men."

Claude appeared perplexed, but I could see the distortion and hatred in the brains of the two men, and I knew that completely without intending to, I'd hit the perk button on their ethical coffeemaker.

Ordinarily, in the interest of making trouble in the ranks, I'd be glad they had such a huge issue with Claude's orientation. But then again, he was driving and I was the instantly available victim.

"He seemed like a tough man to me," Glassport said to Steve Newlin. "He would have killed that young man if the lawyer hadn't interfered."

I finally had a clue about what had happened to Barry. I hoped the "lawyer" reference meant Mr. Cataliades had rescued him.

Claude said in a puzzled way, "Johan, are you calling me less than a strong man because I like other men in bed?"

Glassport winced, and his mouth compressed with disgust. "I am saying that I think less of you," he replied. "I do not like contact with you."

"And I think you're going straight to hell with the imps of Satan," Steve Newlin said. "You're an abomination."

There was more than one "abomination" in the van, but I wasn't going to point that out. Very cautiously, I wiggled a little closer to the spot where the back of the passenger seat was very close to the sliding side door. Glassport had his back against the door a little farther away from the front of the van.

If Glassport would move away from the door, just a little, I would open it and throw myself out. I could see that the door was unlocked. Of course, it would be nice if Claude slowed down first. I had no idea what was outside the van, since I couldn't see out the front windows; but I was assuming we were still in farmland, and there was a chance that with all the rain we'd had lately, I could make a relatively soft landing. Maybe. I would have to act with speed and no hesitation.

I defy you to throw yourself out of a moving vehicle without hesitating. Just the idea was giving me qualms.

"Then we have to have a serious discussion," Claude said, and his voice became sexy as hell. "A very serious discussion about how we all have the right to find someone who wants to have sex with us." The voice oozed over us like warm caramel.

It wasn't working nearly as much on me as it was affecting Newlin and Glassport, who were looking oddly shaken and horribly frightened.

"Yes, many men love to think about the curved hips and firm thighs of other men," Claude said.

Okay, he could stop anytime now. I was acutely uncomfortable.

"To think about their hard dicks and full balls," Claude said, spinning a spell with his voice. That popped the sexy bubble for me, but the two men were eyeing each other with obvious lust, and I couldn't bear to look at their crotches. Oh, yuck. Not these guys. Gross.

And then Claude made a huge mistake. He was so confident in his own sexuality, he was so sure of his audience, that he did the psychic equivalent of flipping them off. "See?" he said, and the spell dropped away. "There is nothing to it."