Dead Reckoning (Sookie Stackhouse #11)(22)
Author: Charlaine Harris

Victor looked at the pallid woman as if he were only just now noticing her. "Oh, do you know her?" he asked negligently. "Yes, I believe someone mentioned that. Eric, is this the woman you told me Pam wanted to bring over? I’m so sorry I had to say no, since by my reckoning she may not have too long to live."

Pam didn’t move. She didn’t even twitch.

"You may go," Victor said, overdoing the offhanded air. "Since I’ve given you the news about my regency, and you’ve seen my beautiful club. Oh, I’m thinking of opening a tattoo establishment and maybe a lawyer’s office, though my man for that post has to study modern law. He received his law degree in Paris in the eighteen hundreds." Victor’s indulgent smile faded completely. "You know that as regent, I have the right to open a business in anyone’s sheriffdom? All the money from the new clubs will come directly to me. I hope your revenues don’t suffer too much, Eric."

"Not at all," Eric said. (I didn’t think that actually had any meaning.) "We’re all a part of your turf, Master." If his voice had been laundry, it would have flapped in the wind, it was so dry and empty.

We rose, more or less as one, and dipped our heads to Victor. He waved a dismissive hand at us and bent to kiss Mindy Simpson. Mark huddled closer on the vampire’s other side to nuzzle Victor’s shoulder. Pam went over to Miriam Earnest and bent over the girl to put her arm around her and help her to rise. Once on her feet and supported by Pam, Miriam focused on making it out the door. Her mind might be clouded, but her eyes were screaming.

We left the club in grim silence (at least as far as our own conversation went; the music just never let up), escorted by Luis and Antonio. The brothers bypassed sturdy Ana Lyudmila to follow us out into the parking lot, which surprised me.

When we had filed through the first row of cars, Eric turned to face them. Not coincidentally, the bulk of an Escalade blocked the view between Ana Lyudmila and our little party. "Do you two have something to say to me?" he asked very softly. As if she suddenly understood she was out of Vampire’s Kiss, Miriam gasped and began crying, and Pam took her in her arms.

"It wasn’t our idea, sheriff," said Antonio, the shorter of the two. His oiled abs gleamed under the parking lot lights.

Luis said, "We’re loyal to Felipe, our true king, but Victor is not easy to serve. It was a bad night for us when we were dispatched to Louisiana to serve him. Now that Bruno and Corinna have disappeared, he hasn’t found anyone to take their places. No strong lieutenant. He’s traveling constantly, trying to keep his eye on every corner of Louisiana." Luis shook his head. "We’re badly overextended. He needs to settle in New Orleans, building back up the vampire structure there. We don’t need to be trailing around in leather scarcely covering our asses, draining the income from your club. Halving the available income is not good economics, and the startup costs were steep."

"If you’re trying to lure me into betraying my new master, you’ve picked the wrong vampire," Eric said, and I tried not to let my mouth hang open. I’d thought it was Christmas in June when Luis and Antonio revealed their discontent, but obviously I hadn’t been thinking deviously enough . . . again.

Pam said, "Leather shorts are attractive compared to the black synthetics I have to wear." She was holding up Miriam, but she didn’t look at her or refer to her, as if she wanted everyone else to forget the girl was there.

Her costume complaint was not out of character, but it was irrelevant. Pam had always been nothing if not on task. Antonio gave her a look of disillusioned disgust. "You were supposed to be so fierce," he muttered. He looked at Eric. "And you were supposed to be so bold." He and Luis turned and strode back into the club.

After that, Pam and Eric began to move with speed, as if we had a deadline to get off the property.

Pam simply picked up Miriam and hurried to Eric’s car. He opened the back door, and she got her girlfriend in and slid in after her. Seeing that haste was the order of the night, I climbed into the front passenger seat and buckled up in silence. I looked back to see that Miriam had passed out the minute she realized she was safe.

As the car left the parking lot, Pam began sniggering and Eric grinned broadly. I was too startled to ask them what was funny.

"Victor just can’t restrain himself," Pam said. "Making the show of my poor Miriam."

"And then the priceless offer from the leather twins!"

"Did you see Antonio’s face?" Pam demanded. "Honestly, I haven’t had so much fun since I flashed my fangs at that old woman who complained about the color I painted my house!"

"That’ll give them something to think about," Eric said. He glanced over at me, his fangs glistening. "That was a good moment. I can’t believe he thought we’d fall for that."

"What if Antonio and Luis were sincere?" I asked. "What if Victor had taken Miriam’s blood or brought her over himself?" I twisted in my seat to look back at Pam.

She was looking at me almost with pity, as if I were a hopeless romantic. "He couldn’t," she said. "He had her in a public place, she has lots of human relatives, and he has to know I’d kill him if he did that."

"Not if you were dead first," I said. Eric and Pam didn’t seem to have my own respect for Victor’s lethal tactics. They seemed almost insanely cocky. "And why are you both so sure that Antonio and Luis were making all that up just to see how you’d react?"

"If they meant what they said, they’ll approach us again," Eric said bluntly. "They have no other recourse, if they’ve tried Felipe and he’s turned them down. I suspect he has. Tell me, lover, what was the problem with the drinks?"

"The problem was that he’d rubbed the inside of the glasses with fairy blood," I said. "The human server, the guy with the gray eyes, gave me the tip-off."

And the smiles vanished as if they’d been turned off with a switch. I had a moment of unpleasant satisfaction.

Pure fairy blood is intoxicating to vampires. There’s no telling what Pam or Eric would have done if they’d drunk from those glasses. And they’d have gulped it down as quickly as they could because the smell is just as entrancing as the actual substance.

As poisoning attempts went, this one was subtle.

"I don’t think that amount could have caused us to behave in an uncontrollable way," Pam said. But she didn’t sound so confident. Eric raised his blond eyebrows. "It was a cautious experiment," he said thoughtfully. "We might have attacked anyone in the club, or we might have gone for Sookie, since she has that interesting streak of fairy. We would have made public fools of ourselves, in any case. We might have been arrested. It was an excellent thing that you stopped us, Sookie."