Death’s Excellent Vacation (Sookie Stackhouse #9.5)(53)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"What the hell are you?" Tim rasped. Diana hissed, tore herself from the man, and leaped up at Tim. She attacked with her fingers hooked into claws, and now panic raced like poison through his veins. What the hell had he done? Why had he intervened? He grabbed her by the wrists, but she was strong. She spun him around and slammed him into the wall, and that long mouth thrust at him, long black tongue darting out, and now Tim saw that it had a glistening stinger on the tip. He shoved her backward, clenched his fist, and struck her in the temple. He punched her again and again, drove her against the mirrored closet door, which shattered into hundreds of shards that cut their feet as they grappled. Tim caught only a glimpse of the room service guy out of the corner of his eye before the guy smashed him in the head with the telephone. He spun backward and crashed into the wall, sliding to the carpet even as blood trickled down into his right eye and pain clutched viselike at his skull. Darkness danced around the edges of his vision, and for several seconds he blacked out. He opened his eyes again to the room service guy’s voice. Full of desperation, pitiful and withered, half the life already leeched from him, the poor bastard’s c**k was still hard. "Please. Finish, " he pleaded. The hideously disfigured mouth on the creature Tim knew as Diana twitched, then smiled. She reached out and took the lost soul’s hand and led him back to bed, mounting him again, reattaching her lamprey mouth to his heart and her sex to his. Amid the tortured music of the headboard and their moans, Tim managed to stagger to his bloodied feet. He nearly tripped over the guy’s uniform as he shoved the room service cart out of the way. Through the wreckage of the closet door he saw a body laid out on the floor inside. The shriveled thing between its legs had once been a penis. The skin was like shrunken leather, split in several places to reveal dry pink meat inside, and the cheeks had torn badly enough to show bone. It looked as though all of the moisture had been sucked out of him, along with all of his youth and vigor, and his life. Kirk. And now this guy. Tim had tried. Whatever Diana had done to Kirk, and who knew how many guys before him, she was now doing to the room service guy, and like some kind of junkie, he needed it now, needed her to finish the job. The hook was in deep. The things that made him him had already been taken away. Kirk’s no longer with me. I guess I was a little too much for him. Tim opened the door and staggered out of the room and down the corridor on bloodied feet. He banged the elevator call button and then ran on to the stairwell door and slammed it open. Ever since Jenny’s death, the people who loved him had told him that she would be watching over him. He had never quite believed it–she had gone from this world, a wall thrown up between them–but after this night he was not so sure. It seemed that even those walls could be thin at times. As he raced down the steps to the lobby, he wondered again if Jenny had ever forgiven him for what he had done. Yet for the first time, it was an idle curiosity. He had loved her as well as he was able and knew she had loved him in return, but she was gone now and would never be able to give him the forgiveness he sought. He would have to claim it for himself. And he would. Tim had done his penance. Tonight most of all.

Chapter Thirty-two

The Heart Is Always Right

LILITH SAINTCROW

Lilith Saintcrow is the author of the Dante Valentine, Jill Kismet, and Strange Angels series. She lives in Vancouver, Washington, with her two children and assorted other strays.

MOST gargoyles go to Paris. It’s ridiculous. When you spend all your time hanging on the sides of buildings, why go to a place where you just do more of the same? Even if the Heart is there beating under the streets. Even if it is, for pretty much any stoneskin, home. No, I didn’t want to spend two weeks of vacation hanging on to the side of a building. I was gonna go to Bermuda. Had my plane tickets and everything. I was even packing. Suntan lotion, BluBlocker sunglasses, flip-flops. It was an adventure buying the flip-flops at EvilMart. I was thinking about how in my trueform I only had three toes, and flip- flops are built wrong for that kind of foot. Then I figured I wasn’t going to be fighting any evil on the beach, so it didn’t matter that there aren’t three-toe flip-flops out there. It’s too bad there aren’t. Someone could make a killing. I guess I shouldn’t say things like that, should I? I got to the front of the EvilMart, wincing at the bright fluorescent light, and for once the Heart was kind to me. She was there. Blond. The kind of blond that looks dishwater under tubes of buzzing EvilMart light but lights up in island sunlight. Blue eyes, usually tired and bloodshot, and an aristocratic nose under them. She’s got a pretty mouth, too, though it’s always pulled tight with something like pain. I think if she ever relaxed, she’d be a knockout. Who am I kidding? Even in a blue polyester EvilMart vest that does nothing for her va-va-vooms, she’s a knockout. I like ’em juicy. Give me a girl with real hips any day, not a stick with mosquito bites. As if I’ve ever gotten close enough to smell a girl. But I can still look, right? I’m not dead. Just gargoyle. Her nametag says Kate. And there are always dark circles under her eyes. She was just reaching up to turn off the light over her register when I shambled up. It was about two A. M. , quitting time. She hesitated, one hand in the air, and I wished I were shorter. Or at least less broad in the shoulders. We stoneskin are built like linebackers–wide and stupid. The sloppy brown hair, hat pulled down to hide my ears, stubble to hide my gnarled skin, and the smell of concrete and rain on me probably isn’t very pretty either. A tendril of that blond hair was falling in her face, and I stopped dead, planting my cheap canvas shoes. My heart made a funny jumping noise inside my ribs, knocking at the cathedral arches. Then she smiled. It was her usual pained smile, the mouth pulled tight, but her eyes lit up and my heart not only banged on the old ribs, but splashed in my guts. My skin felt too tingling-small, and I had to take a deep breath, reminding myself that my real form wasn’t something anyone here would want to see. "Come on up, " she said, and flipped her light off. "I’m just about to go, but I can fit in one more. " "Oh. I . . . Gee. Thanks. " Yeah, I actually said gee. Her smile widened a bit, and I had to make my feet move. They were tingling, too, just like the rest of me. I stumped up to her checkout stand and started unloading the carrying basket. Two beach towels, both printed in big block colors. Two pairs of orange flip-flops, size fourteen wide. White socks–you can’t ever have too many socks. Two family-size bags of CornNuts. Sunblock. A two- liter of Coke. A pair of ragg-wool gloves. And three jumbo tins of Bag Balm. Hey, when your skin rasps against rock and concrete all the time, it gets cracked and stuff. Bag Balm is the best. Her hands sorted the items without any real effort on her part, the checkstand beeping and booping. Her nails were bitten down, and she wore a thin gold necklace. It looked cheap but it smelled real–I’ve got a nose for metal. The small gold ball earrings she wore were real, too. And this close her skin was dewy even under the glare. I bulged shapelessly, like a balloon without quite enough air. I’ve got a boxer’s face, including pointed cauliflower ears–not that boxers have pointed ears, you know. I’ve got a mushroom nose that looks like it’s been broken one too many times, and the scarred, pitted skin of any gargoyle past puberty. My eyes are too small, and they’re yellow. And my hair is okay–thick and dark–but I must be the only curly-headed stoneskin on the continent. I’m even ugly to my own Heartkin. "You must like CornNuts. " A quick flutter of a glance from under her long blond-brown lashes. Her hands kept working, bagging everything. "I see you getting them all the time. " She was talking to me. My brain went absolutely f**king blank. "Um, " I managed. "Yeah. Like ’em a lot. " Her smile widened a bit. The tips of her two front teeth showed, very white. "I could never eat them. They make my teeth hurt. " It’s real fun when you spit ’em at pigeons. Knock ’em right on their little heads; you can feed yourself that way for a while if you’re awful poor. You can even spit a CornNut right through them if you get it going fast enough. "You can just suck on ’em until they’re soft, " I mumbled, and blushed when her eyebrows went up a little. Her smile hovered between genuine and embarrassed for a half second, and a round of cursing went off inside my head. "Maybe I’ll give that a try, " she finally said. Uncomfortable silence bloomed between us. She took the cash, her skin brushing mine. "Is it still raining out there?" So soft and warm. They don’t feel hard and cold like us. No, they’re soft and pink and perfect. Especially her. "Pouring. " It was raining as if it wanted to drown the city, in fact. "Well, you’ve got towels. " She grinned, but I only caught the very beginning of her smile because I had to look down in a hurry or I might’ve grinned back, and a crooked yellow picket fence of teeth is not something she’d want to see. "All right, there you go. You always have exact change. It’s nice. " Because I have to. Any gargoyle does; it’s a compulsion. Once a gargoyle gets a hoard, we like counting exact change. Each penny is taken from muggers or other Bad People. But that’s no reason to waste it, and the count makes us irrationally happy. Plus, you have to pay in cash when you don’t have a real name or a social security number. My pulse was pounding so hard. Was I going to have an attack right here? Heart, I hoped not. I muttered something and took my bag, almost tripped in my hurry to get out. I left her standing there in the glare, and it wasn’t until I got outside that I realized I wasn’t having a cardiac arrest or a reaction. I was just stupid. I loitered outside under the awning for a little while, breathing deep lungfuls of wet, smog- laden air. The cars all hunched their shoulders and turned their backs to the storm, wet metal and rubber moving only under protest. I hung around near the end of the covered section, waiting to see if the rain would slacken. It probably wouldn’t until I was halfway home no matter how long I waited, that’s just my luck. Besides, about ten minutes after, Kate came out through the sighing automatic doors. She walked straight out into the rain, her thin denim jacket completely inadequate for the weather, and I saw that one of her sneaker soles was flapping a little at the heel. The sight of the heel rubber sticking to the wet ground, then flopping as she lifted her foot, made something inside my chest hurt. I guess they didn’t pay her enough to buy a new pair, even at EvilMart prices. She hunched her shoulders and hurried. Who was I kidding? I followed her, drifting behind and staying on a parallel course as if I were looking for my own car. I’d done it every night I’d come in for the past month. She had a rusted-down blue Chevy Caprice, and I usually made sure she got in and it started before I faded into the shadows. Hey, it’s a dangerous world. If there’s not the Big Bad out stalking, there’s other bad waiting right around the corner. Sometimes it’s Evil with a capital E. Other times it’s grim luck, predators, accident, or just plain human foulness. I swung my bag a little as I walked, kept her in my peripheral vision. She parked way the hell out in the farthest regions of the lot–I guess EvilMart doesn’t want the employees snuggling up to the store. Kate walked with her head down, her steps slowing as she got out near her car. She looked nervous, and I wasn’t sure but I thought she was shaking. It was certainly cold enough. Even I was a bit chilled, and stoneskin don’t feel it the way the soft pink ones do. She jangled her keys slightly, sweet music. The lights were out here in the corner of the lot. That was the first wrong thing. The next was the thickness in the rainy air, like rancid soup. Last was the shadows crowding around, and the red pinprick lamps of eyes blinking on and off. What the hell? I dropped my plastic bags and my trueform shredded out through the mask of disguise. There went another cheap pair of canvas shoes–my real feet tore out through them, claws spreading lightly on concrete. My legs burned a little as I crouched, gathering myself. The darkness reached down from the sky to touch the ground in a thick, wet curtain. The Big Bad likes to take its victims in the dark. So Heartkin have infrared and other ways of seeing. She was like a lamp, heat and life shining along my skin, and for a moment it was so bright I was confused but already committed to my leap. The thing after her was a kolthulu. I hit in the middle of the nest of rubbery, snakelike tentacles. They’re lined with dry hairy suckers that can strip flesh off bone, but that’s no match for gargoyle skin. They give reluctantly under claws, so just brute force is needed to tear the things apart. There was Kate screaming, but I wasn’t worried about that just yet because it was a terror sound, not a pain sound. And who wouldn’t be terrified in the dark with the sounds of ripping and crunching all around? The kind of light she was giving off didn’t cast shadows, so it was a type of blindness all over me. My coat flapped; I dug my hind claws into concrete that gave like butter and pulled. The heartstring of the beast ripped out with a sound of gristle tearing from bone, and the screaming didn’t diminish as the tentacles lost their will and life, and became just twitching meat. There were other sounds, too. Soft sliding sounds, and her voice choked off hard. Where there’s kolthulu, there’s always bloodsuckers, too. I whirled, the battlefield drenched with directionless illumination that didn’t come in through the regular visual spectrum. The Heart in me gave a single loud knock against my meat and bone, thrilling up into hypersonic, and I tore through their hard, thin bodies. They were clustered around her, and the not-light of her dimmed and faltered. Holy shit. It was only then I realized what was happening. They were clustering her, and a soft sucking sound echoed against wet pavement and the dark curtain holding the world away. The not-light dimmed even further, infrared taking up the slack in a deep crimson haze. Six of them, one of me, bad odds when I could smell coppery blood. But bad odds aren’t something that worries a gargoyle. The Heart always wins, that’s what we say. Even if I fell here, others of my kin would get these things. I’d go into the Heart and come back stronger and better. Or so they said. I didn’t want to put it to the test. Metal crunched as I flung one of them. A car alarm went off, the sound knifing through the other din that I ignored because it wasn’t the screaming. The screaming had stopped, and that was a bad sign. A snap of greenstick neck-breaking, and the three remaining bloodsuckers fled, one of them limping badly and hissing in their weird piping tongue. They can’t talk right when their teeth are out, the little idiots. The darkness fled with them, the Big Bad picking up its toys and going home. I stood, half snarling, stone flexing over my skin and the strength of the Heart thudding underneath it. Regular sight returned, and I looked down. Kate lay sprawled on the wet concrete, rain beading on her pale skin. One of them had ripped her shirt open, and there were her br**sts in a cheap black-lace bra. Hey, I looked.