I Have Gone Out (Part 11)
Story: I Have Gone Out
Fandom: Southern Vampire Novels
Characters: Ensemble
Pairing: Sookie/Eric
Rating: R, adult themes
Summary: Would you eat from the tree and have your eyes opened or stay a happy child in the garden forever? Follows the events of Dead and Gone with answers and questions. Part 11, in which everything is changing.
Spoilers: For all books up to Dead and Gone
Note: Before anyone gets nervous about the cast of characters, I'm not introducing new villains here so much as providing a more through setting... not that that probably seems to make any sense. Enjoy! Oh and bonus points and an honorable mention to anyone who answers the question at the end.
Chapter 22
The door looked like any of the others but it opened out instead of in. Behind it was another door with a keypad lock. 9-9-7-4-5-2, said Simon's mind calmly. But before he could put the numbers to use to use, his cell phone spoke its piece. The way my own personal spy calmly checked the phone made me feel slightly better, despite the fact that we were looking at a concealed door while standing in a dungeon. Well, a really good imitation dungeon. Like the Cheese Whiz of dungeons, a genuine dungeon-like product.
I giggled and Bill drew an eyebrow down in concern.
Okay, so I was still a little nervous. I whispered the locking sequence to Bill while it was still fresh in my mind and Simon was distracted.
It was a good thing I did too because the images that I was suddenly getting from Simon did nothing to calm my nerves. He was imagining a bunch of angry looking people perform some really aggressive vandalism. His imagination seemed to be on fast forward... or maybe the scene looked too fast and too familiar. “Who are the Silver Sisters? And the Sons of the Stake?” I heard the disbelief in my own voice. You find the oddest things in people's heads.
Simon held up a finger, asking for silence. “Do everything you can to delay any acts of vengeance.” He gave a nod that the caller couldn't see. “Alright,” he said with a note of conclusion. “I'll be in touch.”
Simon flipped his phone closed and sighed. It was the only crack in his composure I'd seen yet. I guess if you work for vampires you (as Jason would say) get really good at keeping your shit together. He's already heard the whole conversation, Simon thought with a glance at Bill. “The Silver Sisters and the Sons of the Stake are two anti-vampire gangs that started on the west coast but they made it to Vegas pretty quickly.” They were termites, his tone said, and he'd lost the number for the Orkin man.
I really need to start putting my head up from time to time and get a better grasp of national events. I guess we have enough of our own problems back in Bon Temps that I hadn't been thinking too much about vampire goings-on in the rest of the country. “You've got your own Fellowship of the Sun?”
“The Fellowship is chartered as a religious institution. It has far greater numbers than the gangs since people can join it openly and legally,” Bill said. Of course he would know that. “The gangs are more prone to violent acts and don't associate with any particular religion.”
So Vegas had two fledgling Fellowships to deal with, and not the family friendly versions.
“Lots of hate, not much Jesus,” Simon added.
“Funny- that sounds exactly like the Fellowship.”
Simon shrugged. He didn't share my convictions about the goodness of real Christianity but he also didn't feels strongly enough to argue. “Once you move out of the Bible belt, there's still the hate but less of a need to try to justify it. Vampires over on the coast started joining the Bloods and the Crips a few years back. To put it bluntly, it really freaked people out. Human gangs were bad enough.”
“What, did they like the names?” I blurted.
Simon smiled. “The names, the violence....” He shrugged. “The Sons formed as a result of the threat. The Sisters formed up later.”
“The gangs are divided by gender, correct?” Bill asked. I was interested but also eying the door.
“Mostly. Sometimes we call the Sisters the 'Buffys' but, well, they're almost always more vicious than the men.”
“What's with the super speedy people?” I asked. He knew I was telepathic. No reason to play games.
He looked steadily at Bill and then back to me. “We know as much about them as you do about the humans who attacked in your kingdom. Enhanced strength and speed. This wasn't the first attack. We've had several over the past week. The humans are all suspected gang members. Some of them have made suicide attacks, openly picked fights with vampires. It's been hell trying to keep it out of the media.”
“Have you caught any of them?” My lack of subtlety was rewarded with images of more double doors, though they didn't all appear to be in the mock dungeon. Most of them looked like regular old hotel room doors.
“Yes,” Simon admitted. “But questioning has not gone as smoothly as we'd hoped. We can't detain them very long.”
“They'd be treated as missing persons by the police after twenty-four hours,” Bill said in response to my confused look. “If several members of anti-vampire gangs suddenly went missing, the law would certainly scrutinize area vampires.”
“Right,” Simon admitted. “It's a fine line. They won't go to the cops because gang activity is illegal and, as you can see, they're definitely on some kind of drug.”
Drug? “They look like they're on vamp blood,” I said. “Way too much vamp blood.”
This idea had occurred to Felipe's brain trust before. Bill was shaking his head. Simon said, “They can't have taken enough to change like that without actually turning. It's just not possible.”
I saw a series of images inside Simon's head. Interrogations. Nt the nice kind. “Some of them died!” The words left my mouth with my breath, they came straight out of my lungs. There was nothing I could do to stop them. I gathered words and breath and forged on. “Some of the men and women you questioned died.”
“We didn't have anything to do with their deaths, except that they happened here.” Simon's eyes flicked left to right. He believed what he was saying but he probably didn't like having to say it in a hotel hallway. Even if it did look like a dungeon. The fact that we weren't bringing the conversation inside had me nervous all over again. “We had autopsies done. All three of them died from massive cardiac arrests.”
“That happens with torture,” I said icily.
“No torture,” Simon maintained. “Two of them died before we even asked any questions. And before you ask, the toxicity reports were clean. No evidence of vampire blood or any other narcotics.”
Well, darn it all, there went my Brilliant Idea. “Someone's going to have to figure it out or this is going to get really bad really fast.” Simon and I locked eyes. Though we barely knew one another, we effortlessly communicated the same sudden dread of beings that are swiftly being swallowed by a world we used to own. If things continued, it could mean war. The real kind. Not a skirmish between packs or a fight with renegade witches.
I tasted fear, sour and metallic; I felt cold ... then, the briefest of glimpses into Bill's head. I felt a wash of relief and loneliness. His eyes were alien. He would never feel like Simon and I were feeling right now.
Like vampire minds do, Bill's had bubbled up through me, pressing on things, shoving aside parts of me to make room. Then it was gone as if it had budded right off my mind and drifted away to rejoin the vampire. Bill had to notice that I was shaking. “Can we just go in, already?” I asked. At the moment I'd take any kind of distraction.
“Of course.” The showmanship had gone out of Simon. He approached the door with the air of a landlord showing an apartment that refuses to sell, one who fumbles with the keys and says, “You might as well take a look.”
He dutifully kept his body between us and the keypad but I could hear him repeating the code to himself again. As the pins ground in the electric locking system, I took a step back and bumped shoulders with Bill who was stepping forward to get between me and the door.
The door must have been heavy because Simon pushed it forward with some difficulty. I wasn't foolish enough to believe that we were just taking a tour of the creepy basement. I expected to see something blood-curdling behind that door- a mass grave, a collection of gang prisoners, a torture chamber built to fit the décor. Hell, part of me even thought Simon might have taken us down here to show off a part of the set for the documentary. Maybe there would be an Inquisition-era prison cell complete with HBO-style grittiness and realism.
The truth is, there was no electricity. So I couldn't really see much of anything. But I could smell it. I put a hand over my mouth and nose to block the stench. I really wished I had a shirt collar to use as an air filter instead of the neckline of this stupid dress.
I heard the soft pops of Bill's fangs and then Simon ushered us inside the room.
There was no way on this side of the promised land that I was going in there. I pressed my hand more firmly to my face, my wrist felt oddly swollen.
Bill took a step forward and I put a hand on his arm to stop him. He turned to me, nostrils flared. “There's only one person in there. A human.” There wasn't any real danger, he was saying. My senses all screamed otherwise.
I cast my mind around in panic. I found Simon's thoughts (anxious about the smell spreading) and then another set. The second set was cursing the brightness of the light and that was all.
“I'd prefer if you'd come inside and close the door,” Simon said. His face, even in the red torchlight, looked a little green. This was not a smell you got used to.
I took a step forward, praying that I could keep it together. My wrists felt strange, like I was wearing sleeves that were too tight at the cuff. My fingers started tingling and I took another step. When I passed the thresh hold, Simon closed the door behind me. Inside, the smell was no better. I knew it from memories almost as raw as my own.
Roasting meat and condensed death.
Burning skin and hair.
Every instinct I'd developed since my race crawled up out of primordial ooze screamed at me to run.
Our torches cast a shifting circle of dim illumination on the room. I wondered how people did anything at night before electricity. I could barely see my own feet. As my eyes adjusted I could see a bare cement floor (wise decision, there'd be no getting this smell out of carpet) and then the near end of a cot.
“You have visitors, Mr. Walker.”
“Aren't they supposed to stay on the other side of the glass, talk through the phone so I don't grab them as hostages?” The voice came from a dark shape that was slowly coming into focus on the cot. I knew it, of course.
Simon ignored Jack's flippant response. “I'm sure you have questions for Mr. Walker, Miss Stackhouse. I'll leave you to them.”
Jack laughed. “There's champion idea. Go away and leave them in a locked room. I'm sure they'll go for that, Si.”
Simon's eyes practically glowed as he rolled them. “He's trying to frighten you because he doesn't want to talk to you.”
“Maybe so,” Bill replied. “But it is a valid point.” I wondered about the door and how much of an obstacle it would be if Bill wanted to get through it.
Simon had something to say about that and Bill had a response but I was too busy thinking to process the retorts. “How and why did I end up here?” I said, raising a hand to signal that the men needed to stop arguing. Now. “What is Felipe trying to pull?”
Simon took a moment to formulate his response. I eavesdropped on all the early attempts. “This is one of our... domestic terrorists. We've been able to hold him for longer... because he does not seem to have gang affiliation. Or anyone looking for him, for that matter. Mr. Madden was hoping you'd use your considerable talents to help us with any information Mr. Walker might have.”
Now it was my turn to search for a response. Simon really believed what he was saying. He thought Jack was another vampire hater who was on whatever drug the gangs were using. I seized the one part that was sticking out like a warning flag. “Victor? You brought us here on Victor's orders.”
“That's right.”
“What about Felipe?”
Simon's mind went on a search for the answer and came up dry. “I'm sure Mr. Madden is acting on Mr. De Castro's orders,” he said finally.
“He's been glamoured,” Bill said. I'd already figured that out.
“But why would Victor tell him to bring us here if not on Felipe's orders?” My mind was hastily supplying possibilities. Most of them were pretty unpleasant. “Felipe will notice if we go missing.”
“As will Eric, I think.” Not the time for jokes, Bill.
Part of me wanted to wring Simon's freckled neck until he told us how to open the door (there was no knob on the inside). The other part of me rationalized that just because someone wanted me to talk to Jack was no reason to let the opportunity pass. “What do we do with him?” Asked my rational side as I jerked my head to indicate a befuddled Simon.
“There is a bathroom,” Bill, who had much better night vision, said. And then to Simon, “Wait in there.”
Simon didn't protest. He was still assessing the blank spaces in his memory. It must be a real bitch to know all about glamours and not realize you've been glamoured. He shut himself in the bathroom and the light of his torch illuminated a dull orange outline around the closed door. “He can probably still hear everything we say,” I pointed out.
“I'll glamour him,” Bill said calmly.
I huffed forcefully enough to disturb the flame of my torch. “We're just pinatas to you, aren't we? Whack, whack, whack and when we burst open the party's over and it's time to get a new one.”
“I don't understand. You are upset that he has been glamoured multiple times?”
Okay, so it wasn't a very good metaphor but you try and come up with something better on the spot. And for the record, Bill did understand. “Yes.”
“It's the best way.”
“I know.” I looked in the direction Simon had gone. “Can I speak to Jack for a while?” Bill understood what I meant again even though it made even less sense that banishing Simon to the bathroom. He extinguished his torch and went to stand in the darkness beside the bathroom door so I could pretend my conversation was private.
With that settled I steeled myself and turned toward the cot. “Jack, I'm here to help you,” I said to the dark spot on the bed.
“Help me what? I know I'm chained to this sorry excuse for a bed but one of my guards already took me to the bathroom today so I'm all set.” His voice was muffled like his face was pressed into the bed. No need to wipe my ass woman. “Though I'd sure I'd rather you do it than him.”
I sighed, already remembering just how much a girl had to ignore if she wanted to have a civil conversation with the Walker. “I promised Emma I'd get you out.”
“I promised Emma I'd get myself out.”
“You promised your sister a lot of things.”
There was an extra beat of silence from the dark. When he did answer, Jack's voice was less muffled, I thought I could see his eyes glinting in the torchlight. “Go away, Sookie Stackhouse. I'm the hero of this fairy tale. I don't need to be rescued.” As an after thought he added, “And that torch is too bright.”
“Fine,” I said. I thought I felt a little disbelief roll off him.
“You are easier than I remember.” Jack quipped suggestively. “What's next? Are you going to threaten me with the vampire? He won't like the taste of me. Not for long, anyway.”
I stepped toward the cot, letting the light from my torch cast the bed in its weak light. There was Jack, lying on his stomach, casually propped up on his elbows. Dark stubble covered his cheeks and his hair had grown enough to start to curl at the ends. Across his back were dark fissures, thick stripes that drank in the darkness of the room. They gleamed wetly in the light. I remembered what Amelia had said about Walkers and burning. I thought of the stench of the room. I was very nearly ill.
For all that, there was still something glorious about him. He gave the impression of both mercury made to stand still and granite convinced to dance. There was a reason this was the First Man. He was a man other men would like to follow.
I didn't comment on his wounds since he seemed unwilling to be troubled by them. “I came here because I promised Emma I would,” I reiterated. “But you're right. She might not know it but she's better without you.” I wasn't going for reverse psychology. It was the truth. “But you could at least give me some answers before I leave you to your Cheese-whiz dungeon.”
Jack laughed. Then he thought of chess pieces being moved around a board. Maybe not. “You're only here because of my sister?” The pitch of his voice said he expected a “no.”
“And Eric,” I said since he already knew the answer.
“You're putting us all in danger for him. You don't even know him.”
This again. Couldn't he give it a break?
“You're treating Emma like she's an idiot and you don't even know here.”
“I've known her since the beginning of time.” Literally.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said like I encountered ancient beings everyday. “You've known the Density for a long time. You don't know Emma any more than you think I know Eric.”
Jack laughed. “Fine woman. I'll answer your questions about where and who and why if you answer one for me.”
“Shoot.”
Jack grinned in the dark. There was something sad about the smile, like the Cheshire cat's last radiant display of teeth. “Given the choice, with repercussions only for yourself, would you eat from the tree of knowledge and have your eyes opened or would you remain a happy child in the garden forever?”
Chapter 23
It took me a second to process what he was asking. Then my stomach sank, slid right down to keep my pedicure company. You don't ask that kind of question in a place like this unless there's a chance of mayhem breaking loose.
There's a famous riddle with a man at a crossroads to Heaven and Hell. Both roads look the same. Very Robert Frost. There's a guard on each road and one of them always lies and one always tells the truth. He's allowed to ask them one question and based on the answer he has to decide his own fate.
It’s one of the ones that makes your brain hurt even when you know the answer. Plus, I've always wondered why God would give Heaven a secret password and make it so difficult.
I've been that guy plenty of times. But, here, in a basement that's not a dungeon, in a room that is a cell, things are backwards. Jack didn't say there would be real consequences but I wasn't born yesterday. Would I remain stupid and happy or would I grow wise and damn myself? I was the guard at the crossroads and I'd forgotten the punch line.
I thought about the day Bill had come in to Merlotte's. I'd had the strangest feeling... when I walked toward him, I already knew that everything behind me was past. The life I had been living was already dead and gone. Like Gran is now. Like Debbie Pelt and Dawn, like Crystal and her baby. Like Claudine and Tray and too many others.
There was a flaw in Jack's question. The consequences wouldn't just be for me.
Down one path they all got to live, down another, I got to live....
I shook myself out of my own thoughts and saw Jack, still prone, looking back at me. For once his face didn't wear that ever-present grin. The soul behind his eyes was old as sin, older, and it made me doubt the shape of my own. He had seen me outside of my skin.
I told myself it was them or me. But maybe that was just a lie that kept me sane. Down one path I became me, as I am now, and they died along the way. Down the other I became me, feared, pitied, and virginal; me without Bill, or Eric, or the lingering memory of Blue Suede Shoes; me, without fairy heritage, or King's favors, or diagrams drawn in scars; me, without a body in the woods, or the world's best shower, or the sinking floating feeling that the vampire was not a bad man and I might love him. Me, without a blood bond. Me, with a free will that was free.
Would I change what I had done, given the choice? Would I ask Arlene to wait on him? Would I turn back toward my dead past and stay there so everyone we could all be ignorant, and happy, and alive?
Yes.
But, a practical voice in my head reminded me, that's not what the Walker's offering. You can't go back. You can live forever but you can't go back.
It sounded an awful lot like Eric.
I took a deep breath. I wasn't a child in the garden. I was at the crossroads . Happy, wise, ignorant, and damned. I'd already been down all those paths and run smack into Heaven and Hell in all directions.
The answer to that famous riddle is the guy asks each guard which way the other guy would tell him to go. But there was no other me to ask or to answer for.
So I told him the answer I'd won for all my painful, lonely years as the only one of my kind. “I can't very well choose to be what I'm not.”
Jack's grin didn't betray a thing. No help there. He'd wait to see if I'd pick the fruit before he'd bite.
“Hell, I've already eaten. I might as well bury the core and grow myself a new tree and climb up and take a look around.” I smiled, a little embarrassed, I guess, that I couldn't even lie about undoing the Fall.
Jack smiled back and I pictured him napping under a tree at the crossroads of Heaven and Hell. “Ask your questions.”
“Does Felipe plan on killing Eric?”
Jack stretched, insolent and lovely, as if he really was under a shade tree and not half-rotting in a dungeon. But the smell of the room betrayed him. “And how would I know that?”
I tapped my foot on the concrete floor with annoyance, the click of my impractical shoe echoing water that was dripping somewhere. “You admitted to Walking in Victor so why not Felipe?”
He inclined his shaggy head in agreement.
“So take a guess,” I said.
“No,” he said lightly. “He's worth more to Felipe alive than dead. And killing a vampire who saved his life would be... distasteful.”
I snorted. I couldn't help it. I'd heard it all before. “Well thank God he has good taste then.”
“God? God has very little to do with it, I think.” Jack shifted like he wanted to turn over and then thought better of it.
“I guess you would know.”
“Next question.”
“Why should Victor Madden want us to see you?” Bill had stepped out of the shadows and fixed and impressively intense stare on Jack like I'd called him in for a well-timed tag team.
“All part of the show,” Jack said, and I didn't think he meant the documentary. “He wants Louisiana.”
Lousisana? “What does that have to do with anything?” I asked, grasping at straws. Jack could make this much easier with a few stray thoughts but for as easily as his mouth seemed to be open to us, his mind was closed to me. “Eric's not King....”
“And Victor can't be either,” Bill said, the tone of his voice added, 'not everything is about Eric.' “Not without Felipe granting it to him.”
Jack turned his grin on Bill who seemed little affected by the expression. But that was pretty much Bill's M.O. “Go on.”
Even without the help of telepathy, I hopped on Bill's brainwave. “Victor is Felipe's second in command, right?” Just like Andre had been Sophie-Anne's. “You'd think he might want to delegate a little since he's got three states and all.” I felt the familiar creeping sensation that usually came when I thought of Andre, like my skin wanted to walk in the opposite direction of anything to do with him, including my own memories. And just like that, something clicked. “But... is Felipe Victor's maker?”
“No,” Bill said. “And Felipe wouldn't hand over a third of his kingdom to a vampire subject to another maker.”
“Double jeopardy points go to the dead man,” Jack said. He sounded almost as tired of the whole situation as I was. I wondered how many many things he'd grown tired of over the years. A morbid part of me wondered if life wasn't one of them. “Sookie, put it together for the win.”
But I didn't think enough like a vampire (or a Walker) to solve the puzzle before Bill did. “Victor needs someone to kill his maker.”
“Oh!” I said, very intelligently and at the same time Jack made a rather patronizing, “Ding!” I looked down the Walker, at his beautiful broken skin stretched painfully across thinning shoulders. I wondered how he might be the missing piece to so many puzzles. I had everything to do with the shape inside his skin. “And I guess Victor can't kill his maker himself.” I cast a sidelong glance at Bill and could almost see the vampire Lorena out of the corner of my eye.
“No,” Bill agreed. “And Felipe would not want to cause a scandal by murdering a vampire for the sake of an underling. Or have the murder traced back to him.”
“Then who?” There was an idea nibbling at the edge of my brain like that faint buzzing feeling before lightning, everything poised for the strike. I didn't know if it needed my attention of my distraction to flesh itself out. It would have to be someone reckless and powerful. Someone who wouldn't be tied back to Victor and Felipe. Someone....
I was looking down at Jack even as he was turning his eyes up to me. His eyes shone in the torchlight like mirrors waiting to be broken. I saw myself, face and fingers sticky with knowledge, wishing I had never bitten. “I need to know,” he said. But without hearing his thoughts I knew he already did know. “I need to be sure.”
“She said if I brought you back, she'd take the blame for the kidnappings,” I said slowly. “That doesn't mean she'd kill a vampire. Not for Victor, he's the one that's been holding you here.”
Jack barked a short laugh- at which of the things I'd said, I wasn't exactly sure. “At my request. At least, at first.”
I felt very much like a tollbooth on the road of other people's plans. “You want to check on her,” I said. Not a question. “And the easiest way is through me. That's why you've been answering my questions.”
“That and the goodness of my heart.”
“Fine.” For all I knew he'd been through me dozens of times already, hundreds. “But I have some more questions first.”
“Quickly,” he said. “You've been here a while already and they have ways of persuading me back.”
My eyes stuck and shied away from the evidence of that persuasion. “Who's been kidnapping the young vampires?”
“My sister,” he said immediately. “If you want a why, I'll need time and some Walking distance. Money's part of it, but not all, I think.”
His voice was easy, almost shockingly so, as if the crime in question wouldn't have fire, brimstone, and fangs raining down on Emma if word got out. I couldn't tell if he was casually damning her or just really confident that she carried a good umbrella. “Where do these super-humans come from?”
He cocked his head to the side, puzzled at the question and at me for asking it. What do I look like, a Magic 8-Ball? “Try again later.”
“You don't know?”
“I haven't exactly had a lot of opportunity to leave this room lately. I'm sure you noticed my bracelets.” He rattled the chains that secured him to the bed. “I noticed yours. Which one of us is the prisoner, I wonder.”
“I'm not a Walker,” I said. My fingers had moved of their own will to touch the mess of strings at my wrists. The thoughts and prayers of home.
Jack clicked his tongue in admonition. “It's much better to talk about the past, Sookie. You weren't a Walker. The present is much harder to nail down. You can't stop it and take a good look without changing it.”
“Rhetoric,” Bill said, voice creaking with the threat of avalanche. “Answer her question.”
“I don't know,” Jack said. “I don't know anything about the humans to which you are referring. But I'd be happy to find out. Are we finished?”
He could go at any time he wanted, of course, but he couldn't be sure we wouldn't burn him out. “One more question. You know something....”
“I would certainly hope so. And more than one thing, too.”
If he wasn't injured and chained to a bed I probably would have given him a good smack. As it was, I'd have felt like the personification of kicking someone while he's down. “About Eric. Something you don't want to tell me.” I hadn't missed the hints he'd dropped or the parts in his stories that didn't fit. He'd had Emma killed....
Grudgingly, he bowed. It was an oddly formal acknowledgment.
“Tell me.”
“Why?”
“He's important to me.” I felt the slightest twinge of regret that Bill was here for this part of the conversation, and wished he'd fade back into the shadows so I could pretend it wasn't hurting him. But there he was, gray-faced and silent, still half-dead from from defending me. Half extra dead.
“He's been a round a while, I'd imagine he's been important to a lot of people.” Jack's reluctance to answer this, of all my questions, had my insides twisting.
“I'm important to him.”
“Better.”
“He loves me.” He thinks so anyway. I think so anyway.
Jack curled his long body and twisted to sit, arms contorted awkwardly in his chains. “You are one of hers,” he said proudly, sadly. “If you bite the fruit, remember, the taste lingers. You can't be rid of it with soap.” Or poison, or love. “You can't spit it out. You can't go back.”
“We've been over this,” I said. Afraid he would make me afraid.
“You give me time to Walk, I'll tell you what you want to know,” Jack reasoned.
“Ok,” I said amiably. “But flip the order.”
Bill made a disapproving sound but I ignored him. I lowered my torch toward the Walker, just a little. The inches made me ill but something in me was straining- something frighteningly eager to smash itself against whatever truth Jack had to offer. It was the part of me that had grown all twisted and snarled around Bill's betrayal, the part that held up a few too many blood exchanges as proof against real feeling.
Jack sighed and I thought I could hear him faintly in my mind, counting the passing seconds. “I'll tell you part now and part after. My word on it.”
He knew how far that had gotten him the last time. Still, I did want to know if Emma really had plans to murder Victor's maker, if this whole pageant of absurdity was part of an elaborate plan by the King of Nevada, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Excuse me, Mr. De Castro. And at the very least I'd be getting some new clues out of the bargain. “Fine. Deal.”
Time to see if I'd bitten off more than I could chew.
“Eric and I are nearly contemporaries. I am older by only a few decades.” Jack spoke as if he was telling a tale that was being ruined in its rushing. “What I am is far older than what he is but it's much better to talk about the past.” I rolled my eyes. “What he once was, who he once was, is older than I have ever been. Almost the oldest.”
“The oldest what?” Time for eye-rolling past.
“The oldest anything.”
“Who was he?” I asked, teeth clenched, bite taken, juice running from my mouth.
In a voice that didn't quite believe itself, Jack said, “He was Samael, who set the stars on fire.”
A memory of dazzling light bloomed behind my eyes, light that made the sun look dull and watery.
I blinked, blind once again in the poorly lit dungeon. “Jack,” I said, in a voice that didn't quite believe itself, “Remember to wipe your damn feet.”
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Next Chapter>>
Fandom: Southern Vampire Novels
Characters: Ensemble
Pairing: Sookie/Eric
Rating: R, adult themes
Summary: Would you eat from the tree and have your eyes opened or stay a happy child in the garden forever? Follows the events of Dead and Gone with answers and questions. Part 11, in which everything is changing.
Spoilers: For all books up to Dead and Gone
Note: Before anyone gets nervous about the cast of characters, I'm not introducing new villains here so much as providing a more through setting... not that that probably seems to make any sense. Enjoy! Oh and bonus points and an honorable mention to anyone who answers the question at the end.
Chapter 22
The door looked like any of the others but it opened out instead of in. Behind it was another door with a keypad lock. 9-9-7-4-5-2, said Simon's mind calmly. But before he could put the numbers to use to use, his cell phone spoke its piece. The way my own personal spy calmly checked the phone made me feel slightly better, despite the fact that we were looking at a concealed door while standing in a dungeon. Well, a really good imitation dungeon. Like the Cheese Whiz of dungeons, a genuine dungeon-like product.
I giggled and Bill drew an eyebrow down in concern.
Okay, so I was still a little nervous. I whispered the locking sequence to Bill while it was still fresh in my mind and Simon was distracted.
It was a good thing I did too because the images that I was suddenly getting from Simon did nothing to calm my nerves. He was imagining a bunch of angry looking people perform some really aggressive vandalism. His imagination seemed to be on fast forward... or maybe the scene looked too fast and too familiar. “Who are the Silver Sisters? And the Sons of the Stake?” I heard the disbelief in my own voice. You find the oddest things in people's heads.
Simon held up a finger, asking for silence. “Do everything you can to delay any acts of vengeance.” He gave a nod that the caller couldn't see. “Alright,” he said with a note of conclusion. “I'll be in touch.”
Simon flipped his phone closed and sighed. It was the only crack in his composure I'd seen yet. I guess if you work for vampires you (as Jason would say) get really good at keeping your shit together. He's already heard the whole conversation, Simon thought with a glance at Bill. “The Silver Sisters and the Sons of the Stake are two anti-vampire gangs that started on the west coast but they made it to Vegas pretty quickly.” They were termites, his tone said, and he'd lost the number for the Orkin man.
I really need to start putting my head up from time to time and get a better grasp of national events. I guess we have enough of our own problems back in Bon Temps that I hadn't been thinking too much about vampire goings-on in the rest of the country. “You've got your own Fellowship of the Sun?”
“The Fellowship is chartered as a religious institution. It has far greater numbers than the gangs since people can join it openly and legally,” Bill said. Of course he would know that. “The gangs are more prone to violent acts and don't associate with any particular religion.”
So Vegas had two fledgling Fellowships to deal with, and not the family friendly versions.
“Lots of hate, not much Jesus,” Simon added.
“Funny- that sounds exactly like the Fellowship.”
Simon shrugged. He didn't share my convictions about the goodness of real Christianity but he also didn't feels strongly enough to argue. “Once you move out of the Bible belt, there's still the hate but less of a need to try to justify it. Vampires over on the coast started joining the Bloods and the Crips a few years back. To put it bluntly, it really freaked people out. Human gangs were bad enough.”
“What, did they like the names?” I blurted.
Simon smiled. “The names, the violence....” He shrugged. “The Sons formed as a result of the threat. The Sisters formed up later.”
“The gangs are divided by gender, correct?” Bill asked. I was interested but also eying the door.
“Mostly. Sometimes we call the Sisters the 'Buffys' but, well, they're almost always more vicious than the men.”
“What's with the super speedy people?” I asked. He knew I was telepathic. No reason to play games.
He looked steadily at Bill and then back to me. “We know as much about them as you do about the humans who attacked in your kingdom. Enhanced strength and speed. This wasn't the first attack. We've had several over the past week. The humans are all suspected gang members. Some of them have made suicide attacks, openly picked fights with vampires. It's been hell trying to keep it out of the media.”
“Have you caught any of them?” My lack of subtlety was rewarded with images of more double doors, though they didn't all appear to be in the mock dungeon. Most of them looked like regular old hotel room doors.
“Yes,” Simon admitted. “But questioning has not gone as smoothly as we'd hoped. We can't detain them very long.”
“They'd be treated as missing persons by the police after twenty-four hours,” Bill said in response to my confused look. “If several members of anti-vampire gangs suddenly went missing, the law would certainly scrutinize area vampires.”
“Right,” Simon admitted. “It's a fine line. They won't go to the cops because gang activity is illegal and, as you can see, they're definitely on some kind of drug.”
Drug? “They look like they're on vamp blood,” I said. “Way too much vamp blood.”
This idea had occurred to Felipe's brain trust before. Bill was shaking his head. Simon said, “They can't have taken enough to change like that without actually turning. It's just not possible.”
I saw a series of images inside Simon's head. Interrogations. Nt the nice kind. “Some of them died!” The words left my mouth with my breath, they came straight out of my lungs. There was nothing I could do to stop them. I gathered words and breath and forged on. “Some of the men and women you questioned died.”
“We didn't have anything to do with their deaths, except that they happened here.” Simon's eyes flicked left to right. He believed what he was saying but he probably didn't like having to say it in a hotel hallway. Even if it did look like a dungeon. The fact that we weren't bringing the conversation inside had me nervous all over again. “We had autopsies done. All three of them died from massive cardiac arrests.”
“That happens with torture,” I said icily.
“No torture,” Simon maintained. “Two of them died before we even asked any questions. And before you ask, the toxicity reports were clean. No evidence of vampire blood or any other narcotics.”
Well, darn it all, there went my Brilliant Idea. “Someone's going to have to figure it out or this is going to get really bad really fast.” Simon and I locked eyes. Though we barely knew one another, we effortlessly communicated the same sudden dread of beings that are swiftly being swallowed by a world we used to own. If things continued, it could mean war. The real kind. Not a skirmish between packs or a fight with renegade witches.
I tasted fear, sour and metallic; I felt cold ... then, the briefest of glimpses into Bill's head. I felt a wash of relief and loneliness. His eyes were alien. He would never feel like Simon and I were feeling right now.
Like vampire minds do, Bill's had bubbled up through me, pressing on things, shoving aside parts of me to make room. Then it was gone as if it had budded right off my mind and drifted away to rejoin the vampire. Bill had to notice that I was shaking. “Can we just go in, already?” I asked. At the moment I'd take any kind of distraction.
“Of course.” The showmanship had gone out of Simon. He approached the door with the air of a landlord showing an apartment that refuses to sell, one who fumbles with the keys and says, “You might as well take a look.”
He dutifully kept his body between us and the keypad but I could hear him repeating the code to himself again. As the pins ground in the electric locking system, I took a step back and bumped shoulders with Bill who was stepping forward to get between me and the door.
The door must have been heavy because Simon pushed it forward with some difficulty. I wasn't foolish enough to believe that we were just taking a tour of the creepy basement. I expected to see something blood-curdling behind that door- a mass grave, a collection of gang prisoners, a torture chamber built to fit the décor. Hell, part of me even thought Simon might have taken us down here to show off a part of the set for the documentary. Maybe there would be an Inquisition-era prison cell complete with HBO-style grittiness and realism.
The truth is, there was no electricity. So I couldn't really see much of anything. But I could smell it. I put a hand over my mouth and nose to block the stench. I really wished I had a shirt collar to use as an air filter instead of the neckline of this stupid dress.
I heard the soft pops of Bill's fangs and then Simon ushered us inside the room.
There was no way on this side of the promised land that I was going in there. I pressed my hand more firmly to my face, my wrist felt oddly swollen.
Bill took a step forward and I put a hand on his arm to stop him. He turned to me, nostrils flared. “There's only one person in there. A human.” There wasn't any real danger, he was saying. My senses all screamed otherwise.
I cast my mind around in panic. I found Simon's thoughts (anxious about the smell spreading) and then another set. The second set was cursing the brightness of the light and that was all.
“I'd prefer if you'd come inside and close the door,” Simon said. His face, even in the red torchlight, looked a little green. This was not a smell you got used to.
I took a step forward, praying that I could keep it together. My wrists felt strange, like I was wearing sleeves that were too tight at the cuff. My fingers started tingling and I took another step. When I passed the thresh hold, Simon closed the door behind me. Inside, the smell was no better. I knew it from memories almost as raw as my own.
Roasting meat and condensed death.
Burning skin and hair.
Every instinct I'd developed since my race crawled up out of primordial ooze screamed at me to run.
Our torches cast a shifting circle of dim illumination on the room. I wondered how people did anything at night before electricity. I could barely see my own feet. As my eyes adjusted I could see a bare cement floor (wise decision, there'd be no getting this smell out of carpet) and then the near end of a cot.
“You have visitors, Mr. Walker.”
“Aren't they supposed to stay on the other side of the glass, talk through the phone so I don't grab them as hostages?” The voice came from a dark shape that was slowly coming into focus on the cot. I knew it, of course.
Simon ignored Jack's flippant response. “I'm sure you have questions for Mr. Walker, Miss Stackhouse. I'll leave you to them.”
Jack laughed. “There's champion idea. Go away and leave them in a locked room. I'm sure they'll go for that, Si.”
Simon's eyes practically glowed as he rolled them. “He's trying to frighten you because he doesn't want to talk to you.”
“Maybe so,” Bill replied. “But it is a valid point.” I wondered about the door and how much of an obstacle it would be if Bill wanted to get through it.
Simon had something to say about that and Bill had a response but I was too busy thinking to process the retorts. “How and why did I end up here?” I said, raising a hand to signal that the men needed to stop arguing. Now. “What is Felipe trying to pull?”
Simon took a moment to formulate his response. I eavesdropped on all the early attempts. “This is one of our... domestic terrorists. We've been able to hold him for longer... because he does not seem to have gang affiliation. Or anyone looking for him, for that matter. Mr. Madden was hoping you'd use your considerable talents to help us with any information Mr. Walker might have.”
Now it was my turn to search for a response. Simon really believed what he was saying. He thought Jack was another vampire hater who was on whatever drug the gangs were using. I seized the one part that was sticking out like a warning flag. “Victor? You brought us here on Victor's orders.”
“That's right.”
“What about Felipe?”
Simon's mind went on a search for the answer and came up dry. “I'm sure Mr. Madden is acting on Mr. De Castro's orders,” he said finally.
“He's been glamoured,” Bill said. I'd already figured that out.
“But why would Victor tell him to bring us here if not on Felipe's orders?” My mind was hastily supplying possibilities. Most of them were pretty unpleasant. “Felipe will notice if we go missing.”
“As will Eric, I think.” Not the time for jokes, Bill.
Part of me wanted to wring Simon's freckled neck until he told us how to open the door (there was no knob on the inside). The other part of me rationalized that just because someone wanted me to talk to Jack was no reason to let the opportunity pass. “What do we do with him?” Asked my rational side as I jerked my head to indicate a befuddled Simon.
“There is a bathroom,” Bill, who had much better night vision, said. And then to Simon, “Wait in there.”
Simon didn't protest. He was still assessing the blank spaces in his memory. It must be a real bitch to know all about glamours and not realize you've been glamoured. He shut himself in the bathroom and the light of his torch illuminated a dull orange outline around the closed door. “He can probably still hear everything we say,” I pointed out.
“I'll glamour him,” Bill said calmly.
I huffed forcefully enough to disturb the flame of my torch. “We're just pinatas to you, aren't we? Whack, whack, whack and when we burst open the party's over and it's time to get a new one.”
“I don't understand. You are upset that he has been glamoured multiple times?”
Okay, so it wasn't a very good metaphor but you try and come up with something better on the spot. And for the record, Bill did understand. “Yes.”
“It's the best way.”
“I know.” I looked in the direction Simon had gone. “Can I speak to Jack for a while?” Bill understood what I meant again even though it made even less sense that banishing Simon to the bathroom. He extinguished his torch and went to stand in the darkness beside the bathroom door so I could pretend my conversation was private.
With that settled I steeled myself and turned toward the cot. “Jack, I'm here to help you,” I said to the dark spot on the bed.
“Help me what? I know I'm chained to this sorry excuse for a bed but one of my guards already took me to the bathroom today so I'm all set.” His voice was muffled like his face was pressed into the bed. No need to wipe my ass woman. “Though I'd sure I'd rather you do it than him.”
I sighed, already remembering just how much a girl had to ignore if she wanted to have a civil conversation with the Walker. “I promised Emma I'd get you out.”
“I promised Emma I'd get myself out.”
“You promised your sister a lot of things.”
There was an extra beat of silence from the dark. When he did answer, Jack's voice was less muffled, I thought I could see his eyes glinting in the torchlight. “Go away, Sookie Stackhouse. I'm the hero of this fairy tale. I don't need to be rescued.” As an after thought he added, “And that torch is too bright.”
“Fine,” I said. I thought I felt a little disbelief roll off him.
“You are easier than I remember.” Jack quipped suggestively. “What's next? Are you going to threaten me with the vampire? He won't like the taste of me. Not for long, anyway.”
I stepped toward the cot, letting the light from my torch cast the bed in its weak light. There was Jack, lying on his stomach, casually propped up on his elbows. Dark stubble covered his cheeks and his hair had grown enough to start to curl at the ends. Across his back were dark fissures, thick stripes that drank in the darkness of the room. They gleamed wetly in the light. I remembered what Amelia had said about Walkers and burning. I thought of the stench of the room. I was very nearly ill.
For all that, there was still something glorious about him. He gave the impression of both mercury made to stand still and granite convinced to dance. There was a reason this was the First Man. He was a man other men would like to follow.
I didn't comment on his wounds since he seemed unwilling to be troubled by them. “I came here because I promised Emma I would,” I reiterated. “But you're right. She might not know it but she's better without you.” I wasn't going for reverse psychology. It was the truth. “But you could at least give me some answers before I leave you to your Cheese-whiz dungeon.”
Jack laughed. Then he thought of chess pieces being moved around a board. Maybe not. “You're only here because of my sister?” The pitch of his voice said he expected a “no.”
“And Eric,” I said since he already knew the answer.
“You're putting us all in danger for him. You don't even know him.”
This again. Couldn't he give it a break?
“You're treating Emma like she's an idiot and you don't even know here.”
“I've known her since the beginning of time.” Literally.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said like I encountered ancient beings everyday. “You've known the Density for a long time. You don't know Emma any more than you think I know Eric.”
Jack laughed. “Fine woman. I'll answer your questions about where and who and why if you answer one for me.”
“Shoot.”
Jack grinned in the dark. There was something sad about the smile, like the Cheshire cat's last radiant display of teeth. “Given the choice, with repercussions only for yourself, would you eat from the tree of knowledge and have your eyes opened or would you remain a happy child in the garden forever?”
Chapter 23
It took me a second to process what he was asking. Then my stomach sank, slid right down to keep my pedicure company. You don't ask that kind of question in a place like this unless there's a chance of mayhem breaking loose.
There's a famous riddle with a man at a crossroads to Heaven and Hell. Both roads look the same. Very Robert Frost. There's a guard on each road and one of them always lies and one always tells the truth. He's allowed to ask them one question and based on the answer he has to decide his own fate.
It’s one of the ones that makes your brain hurt even when you know the answer. Plus, I've always wondered why God would give Heaven a secret password and make it so difficult.
I've been that guy plenty of times. But, here, in a basement that's not a dungeon, in a room that is a cell, things are backwards. Jack didn't say there would be real consequences but I wasn't born yesterday. Would I remain stupid and happy or would I grow wise and damn myself? I was the guard at the crossroads and I'd forgotten the punch line.
I thought about the day Bill had come in to Merlotte's. I'd had the strangest feeling... when I walked toward him, I already knew that everything behind me was past. The life I had been living was already dead and gone. Like Gran is now. Like Debbie Pelt and Dawn, like Crystal and her baby. Like Claudine and Tray and too many others.
There was a flaw in Jack's question. The consequences wouldn't just be for me.
Down one path they all got to live, down another, I got to live....
I shook myself out of my own thoughts and saw Jack, still prone, looking back at me. For once his face didn't wear that ever-present grin. The soul behind his eyes was old as sin, older, and it made me doubt the shape of my own. He had seen me outside of my skin.
I told myself it was them or me. But maybe that was just a lie that kept me sane. Down one path I became me, as I am now, and they died along the way. Down the other I became me, feared, pitied, and virginal; me without Bill, or Eric, or the lingering memory of Blue Suede Shoes; me, without fairy heritage, or King's favors, or diagrams drawn in scars; me, without a body in the woods, or the world's best shower, or the sinking floating feeling that the vampire was not a bad man and I might love him. Me, without a blood bond. Me, with a free will that was free.
Would I change what I had done, given the choice? Would I ask Arlene to wait on him? Would I turn back toward my dead past and stay there so everyone we could all be ignorant, and happy, and alive?
Yes.
But, a practical voice in my head reminded me, that's not what the Walker's offering. You can't go back. You can live forever but you can't go back.
It sounded an awful lot like Eric.
I took a deep breath. I wasn't a child in the garden. I was at the crossroads . Happy, wise, ignorant, and damned. I'd already been down all those paths and run smack into Heaven and Hell in all directions.
The answer to that famous riddle is the guy asks each guard which way the other guy would tell him to go. But there was no other me to ask or to answer for.
So I told him the answer I'd won for all my painful, lonely years as the only one of my kind. “I can't very well choose to be what I'm not.”
Jack's grin didn't betray a thing. No help there. He'd wait to see if I'd pick the fruit before he'd bite.
“Hell, I've already eaten. I might as well bury the core and grow myself a new tree and climb up and take a look around.” I smiled, a little embarrassed, I guess, that I couldn't even lie about undoing the Fall.
Jack smiled back and I pictured him napping under a tree at the crossroads of Heaven and Hell. “Ask your questions.”
“Does Felipe plan on killing Eric?”
Jack stretched, insolent and lovely, as if he really was under a shade tree and not half-rotting in a dungeon. But the smell of the room betrayed him. “And how would I know that?”
I tapped my foot on the concrete floor with annoyance, the click of my impractical shoe echoing water that was dripping somewhere. “You admitted to Walking in Victor so why not Felipe?”
He inclined his shaggy head in agreement.
“So take a guess,” I said.
“No,” he said lightly. “He's worth more to Felipe alive than dead. And killing a vampire who saved his life would be... distasteful.”
I snorted. I couldn't help it. I'd heard it all before. “Well thank God he has good taste then.”
“God? God has very little to do with it, I think.” Jack shifted like he wanted to turn over and then thought better of it.
“I guess you would know.”
“Next question.”
“Why should Victor Madden want us to see you?” Bill had stepped out of the shadows and fixed and impressively intense stare on Jack like I'd called him in for a well-timed tag team.
“All part of the show,” Jack said, and I didn't think he meant the documentary. “He wants Louisiana.”
Lousisana? “What does that have to do with anything?” I asked, grasping at straws. Jack could make this much easier with a few stray thoughts but for as easily as his mouth seemed to be open to us, his mind was closed to me. “Eric's not King....”
“And Victor can't be either,” Bill said, the tone of his voice added, 'not everything is about Eric.' “Not without Felipe granting it to him.”
Jack turned his grin on Bill who seemed little affected by the expression. But that was pretty much Bill's M.O. “Go on.”
Even without the help of telepathy, I hopped on Bill's brainwave. “Victor is Felipe's second in command, right?” Just like Andre had been Sophie-Anne's. “You'd think he might want to delegate a little since he's got three states and all.” I felt the familiar creeping sensation that usually came when I thought of Andre, like my skin wanted to walk in the opposite direction of anything to do with him, including my own memories. And just like that, something clicked. “But... is Felipe Victor's maker?”
“No,” Bill said. “And Felipe wouldn't hand over a third of his kingdom to a vampire subject to another maker.”
“Double jeopardy points go to the dead man,” Jack said. He sounded almost as tired of the whole situation as I was. I wondered how many many things he'd grown tired of over the years. A morbid part of me wondered if life wasn't one of them. “Sookie, put it together for the win.”
But I didn't think enough like a vampire (or a Walker) to solve the puzzle before Bill did. “Victor needs someone to kill his maker.”
“Oh!” I said, very intelligently and at the same time Jack made a rather patronizing, “Ding!” I looked down the Walker, at his beautiful broken skin stretched painfully across thinning shoulders. I wondered how he might be the missing piece to so many puzzles. I had everything to do with the shape inside his skin. “And I guess Victor can't kill his maker himself.” I cast a sidelong glance at Bill and could almost see the vampire Lorena out of the corner of my eye.
“No,” Bill agreed. “And Felipe would not want to cause a scandal by murdering a vampire for the sake of an underling. Or have the murder traced back to him.”
“Then who?” There was an idea nibbling at the edge of my brain like that faint buzzing feeling before lightning, everything poised for the strike. I didn't know if it needed my attention of my distraction to flesh itself out. It would have to be someone reckless and powerful. Someone who wouldn't be tied back to Victor and Felipe. Someone....
I was looking down at Jack even as he was turning his eyes up to me. His eyes shone in the torchlight like mirrors waiting to be broken. I saw myself, face and fingers sticky with knowledge, wishing I had never bitten. “I need to know,” he said. But without hearing his thoughts I knew he already did know. “I need to be sure.”
“She said if I brought you back, she'd take the blame for the kidnappings,” I said slowly. “That doesn't mean she'd kill a vampire. Not for Victor, he's the one that's been holding you here.”
Jack barked a short laugh- at which of the things I'd said, I wasn't exactly sure. “At my request. At least, at first.”
I felt very much like a tollbooth on the road of other people's plans. “You want to check on her,” I said. Not a question. “And the easiest way is through me. That's why you've been answering my questions.”
“That and the goodness of my heart.”
“Fine.” For all I knew he'd been through me dozens of times already, hundreds. “But I have some more questions first.”
“Quickly,” he said. “You've been here a while already and they have ways of persuading me back.”
My eyes stuck and shied away from the evidence of that persuasion. “Who's been kidnapping the young vampires?”
“My sister,” he said immediately. “If you want a why, I'll need time and some Walking distance. Money's part of it, but not all, I think.”
His voice was easy, almost shockingly so, as if the crime in question wouldn't have fire, brimstone, and fangs raining down on Emma if word got out. I couldn't tell if he was casually damning her or just really confident that she carried a good umbrella. “Where do these super-humans come from?”
He cocked his head to the side, puzzled at the question and at me for asking it. What do I look like, a Magic 8-Ball? “Try again later.”
“You don't know?”
“I haven't exactly had a lot of opportunity to leave this room lately. I'm sure you noticed my bracelets.” He rattled the chains that secured him to the bed. “I noticed yours. Which one of us is the prisoner, I wonder.”
“I'm not a Walker,” I said. My fingers had moved of their own will to touch the mess of strings at my wrists. The thoughts and prayers of home.
Jack clicked his tongue in admonition. “It's much better to talk about the past, Sookie. You weren't a Walker. The present is much harder to nail down. You can't stop it and take a good look without changing it.”
“Rhetoric,” Bill said, voice creaking with the threat of avalanche. “Answer her question.”
“I don't know,” Jack said. “I don't know anything about the humans to which you are referring. But I'd be happy to find out. Are we finished?”
He could go at any time he wanted, of course, but he couldn't be sure we wouldn't burn him out. “One more question. You know something....”
“I would certainly hope so. And more than one thing, too.”
If he wasn't injured and chained to a bed I probably would have given him a good smack. As it was, I'd have felt like the personification of kicking someone while he's down. “About Eric. Something you don't want to tell me.” I hadn't missed the hints he'd dropped or the parts in his stories that didn't fit. He'd had Emma killed....
Grudgingly, he bowed. It was an oddly formal acknowledgment.
“Tell me.”
“Why?”
“He's important to me.” I felt the slightest twinge of regret that Bill was here for this part of the conversation, and wished he'd fade back into the shadows so I could pretend it wasn't hurting him. But there he was, gray-faced and silent, still half-dead from from defending me. Half extra dead.
“He's been a round a while, I'd imagine he's been important to a lot of people.” Jack's reluctance to answer this, of all my questions, had my insides twisting.
“I'm important to him.”
“Better.”
“He loves me.” He thinks so anyway. I think so anyway.
Jack curled his long body and twisted to sit, arms contorted awkwardly in his chains. “You are one of hers,” he said proudly, sadly. “If you bite the fruit, remember, the taste lingers. You can't be rid of it with soap.” Or poison, or love. “You can't spit it out. You can't go back.”
“We've been over this,” I said. Afraid he would make me afraid.
“You give me time to Walk, I'll tell you what you want to know,” Jack reasoned.
“Ok,” I said amiably. “But flip the order.”
Bill made a disapproving sound but I ignored him. I lowered my torch toward the Walker, just a little. The inches made me ill but something in me was straining- something frighteningly eager to smash itself against whatever truth Jack had to offer. It was the part of me that had grown all twisted and snarled around Bill's betrayal, the part that held up a few too many blood exchanges as proof against real feeling.
Jack sighed and I thought I could hear him faintly in my mind, counting the passing seconds. “I'll tell you part now and part after. My word on it.”
He knew how far that had gotten him the last time. Still, I did want to know if Emma really had plans to murder Victor's maker, if this whole pageant of absurdity was part of an elaborate plan by the King of Nevada, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Excuse me, Mr. De Castro. And at the very least I'd be getting some new clues out of the bargain. “Fine. Deal.”
Time to see if I'd bitten off more than I could chew.
“Eric and I are nearly contemporaries. I am older by only a few decades.” Jack spoke as if he was telling a tale that was being ruined in its rushing. “What I am is far older than what he is but it's much better to talk about the past.” I rolled my eyes. “What he once was, who he once was, is older than I have ever been. Almost the oldest.”
“The oldest what?” Time for eye-rolling past.
“The oldest anything.”
“Who was he?” I asked, teeth clenched, bite taken, juice running from my mouth.
In a voice that didn't quite believe itself, Jack said, “He was Samael, who set the stars on fire.”
A memory of dazzling light bloomed behind my eyes, light that made the sun look dull and watery.
I blinked, blind once again in the poorly lit dungeon. “Jack,” I said, in a voice that didn't quite believe itself, “Remember to wipe your damn feet.”
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