Death’s Excellent Vacation (Sookie Stackhouse #9.5)(54)
Author: Charlaine Harris

Chapter Thirty-three

I might be ugly, but I’m not dead. "Oh, shit, " I said. My ears tingled, and I stared at her chest. There on the pale slope of her left breast, a sinuous fleur-de- lis curved. The lines were sharp black, as if they’d been inked by a master. But it wasn’t a tattoo. It ran with its own odd light, a dark fluorescence human eyes wouldn’t see. She was a Heart candidate. And I heard running feet and shouts behind me, as black- looking blood mixed with rain and threaded down from the puncture wounds in her throat. She was bleeding. She was a candidate, and she’d been bitten with a gargoyle right next to her, and there were people coming. It was a moment’s work to scoop her up and cradle her close. Her purse fell free, its patent-leather strap broken, and her jacket was in shreds. The sole of her sneaker had been almost torn off. Her sharp chin tipped back, the blood on her skin doing funny things to the inside of my head. "Jesus!" someone yelled, and I compressed myself like a spring, ready to leap. Situation: One parking lot, people beginning to cluster now that the excitement was over and the cloaking darkness was worn away. One gargoyle, shifted fully into stoneskin and hulking inside his raincoat, his hat knocked off and his hair unraveling away from high-pointed ears. One mortal woman, bleeding from a vampire bite. Her car was a shattered hulk of metal and glass, and just before I sprang I heard sirens in the distance. Wow someone actually called the cops this once?, Figures. The world turned underneath me. There was a scream as I vaulted over the heads of the gathering crowd, a sound of effort like grinding boulders escaping me, muscles and bone working overtime. I bounded like a springheel jack, Kate’s unconscious head bouncing against my shoulder, and all I could think of was that she might get a concussion if she hit her head on me too hard. I’ve never claimed to be the smartest gargoyle in the world. But just that once, maybe I did the right thing. On the other hand, she was bitten. And things were about to get even more interesting.

MY flight left for Bermuda at five the next morning. Instead of sitting uncomfortably in a business- class seat, pouring down the drinks so I wouldn’t think of the empty air between me and the ground, I was crouched in the belfry of Immaculate Conception downtown. The rain beat steadily against the bell tower as I watched the clouds lighten by imperceptible degrees toward dawn. Yep. I was at home when my vacation started. Lucky me. Once dawn had a good grip on the city, I climbed down the rickety stairs. This particular church was built in 1911, and it’s got the standard architecture–and the winding little stairway behind a painted panel of Saint Stephen in a small side chapel, going down to my cell. It’s actually a comfortable little place. I’ve got my hot plate and my little fridge–the gargoyle before me wired the place for electricity. I do all my laundry down the street at the Kleen Kloze Washateria, and I’ve got a toilet and a shower. It’s damp, kind of, since it’s all underground. But that doesn’t matter much to a gargoyle. And there, on my barely-big-enough bed, Kate lay. Her chest rose and fell with regular breaths, her thin gold necklace gone but her earrings still there. She hadn’t moved since I’d laid her down and checked her clumsily for concussion. I tried to repair her sneaker with duct tape, too, because it hurt me to see it all torn up like that. Now, I touched the supple lines of the fleur-de-lis and felt them quiver against the calluses on my fingertips. The Heart under my skin banged into life, blinding me for a moment, and when vision returned, I caught the lines shifting just the tiniest fraction, settling into the familiar circled fleur–the mark all stoneskin spend their nights fighting the Big Bad for. It means a lot of things. Light. Blessing. Beauty. Those things we’re denied, or the things we’re too ugly to be comfortable with. The messy double puncture wounds on her throat had finally sealed up, since I’d painted them carefully with the coagulant that works best–gargoyle spit and garlic paste. Chewing that stuff up raw makes my eyes water. I pulled my hand back, and not a moment too soon. The mark twitched, her breathing changed, and she sat right up and screamed. "Jesus!" I almost went over backward. She scrambled back, producing an amazing kettle whistle of sound, and hit the wall. Tried to keep going, her eyes bugged out of her head and her hands flailing. I wasn’t so worried about the sound getting out. The painted panel of Saint Stephen is over a thick shell of rock that only a stoneskin could whisper aside, and there’s the stairs and the other oak door, too. But the sound of her scream burrowed into my head, tugged at the Heart under my skin, and I had to fight against my trueform hulking out and making things interesting. She stopped for breath, the scream hitching into sharp little sucking sounds as she tried to get in something to breathe and push out the yelling at the same time. I backed up, my heel hitting an empty energy-drink can and sending it rattling. I had both hands up, trying to look harmless, but it’s so hard to do when you’re built like a weightlifter. Another can crunched underfoot; I stumbled. We stared at each other, Kate and I, and the screaming petered out. We both took a deep breath, and then we spoke at the same time. "Please don’t hurt me–" I was a little more on the ball. "I’m not gonna hurt you–" Boy, is that a lie. We stared at each other some more. I tried again. "Hi. " The word was totally inadequate. "How do you feel?" Her hand flew to her throat, and her eyes got very round. Then she noticed her shirt was torn open, and a flush rose up the curve of her neck, exploding in her cheeks like New Year’s fireworks. She gulped audibly, and my heart made a funny bursting movement. It was like the movement of the other Heart under my skin, the stone that makes the change into stoneskin possible. If both hearts decided to go wiggy on me, I would be gasping and blushing myself. She snatched her ruined shirt together. "If you have to rape me, " she managed in a queer little choked voice, "please, please use a condom. " Uh, what? "Um. " My jaw worked soundlessly for a moment. "I, uh. I’m not gonna rape you, ma’am. I just, um, I thought this was the safest place for you. " I swallowed hard, trying not to think that her shirt really wasn’t covering much and that I’d seen what she was trying to hide–the shells of the bra, cheap black lace cupping white skin, and the mark shifting against itself. "Since they’re trying to kill you. Because you’re . . . That mark on you. You’ve had a near-death experience lately, haven’t you?" Her eyes were full of welling water, washing out the blue and trickling down one smooth cheek. "Oh, shit, " she whispered, like she’d been punched. "You . . . You’re one of them. " Well, that answered that question. She’d brushed up against the Big Bad recently. "I ain’t one of them. They’re the Big Bad, and I’m stoneskin. I fight them. " Swallowed hard again. Suddenly I was very conscious of my ears poking up–I don’t wear my hat at home– and the stone walls and cans on the floor were probably weird to someone who worked at a reasonable dead-end job. "Uh, you got bit. I think you’re okay, though. " "Bit?" She shook her head. Her hair wasn’t dishwater under the energy-efficient bulbs I have down here. No, it was gold. Spun gold. "I . . . You . . . " Well, this is going pretty okay. "You had a near-death experience, right? Six months to a year ago, I’d reckon. Right? " "How did you–" She was having trouble getting whole sentences out. I didn’t blame her. EvilMart probably didn’t prepare her for this. "Look, is this some kind of joke?" Not even close. "I’ll explain everything. That mark on your chest showed up after your nearly dying. It’s changed again because it’s been triggered. You’re a Heart, and I’ve got to take you to Paris. " Tense, ticking silence stretched between us like a high wire between buildings, bowing under the weight of a daredevil’s feet. Finally, she gulped audibly again. "Say what?" All things considered, it was probably the only response she could make. I tried not to stare at her hands, loosening on what was left of her shirt. "The Heart of Hearts is in Paris. I’ve got to take you there. We’ll fly first class, probably. " I ran out of words. She stared at me for another fifteen seconds, then began to laugh. When she finished with that, she burst into tears while I stood there uselessly staring. Even with her skin all blotchy and her nose all full, she was . . . Well. I didn’t even think to get her any tissues until she was covered in tears and full of snot. It wasn’t a good beginning. She finally calmed down, and I wondered if she was going to be any trouble. Because I was lying to her. I was going to take her to Paris. But I didn’t think she’d like what happened when we got there. Of all the jokes life’s played on me, this one had to be the most sadistic.