Somehow, after he renamed the place and renovated it, Sam had turned balance sheets around. He made a nice living off it now. But tonight was a Monday night, not a big drinking night in our neck of the woods, which happened to be in northern Louisiana. I pulled around to the employee parking lot, which was right in front of Sam Merlotte's trailer, which itself is behind and at right angles to the employee entrance to the bar. I hopped out of the driver's seat, trotted through the storeroom, and peeked through the glass pane in the door to check the short hall with its doors to the rest rooms and Sam's office. Empty. Good. And when I knocked on Sam's door, he was behind his desk, which was even better.
Sam is not a big man, but he's very strong. He's a strawberry blond with blue eyes, and he's maybe three years older than my twenty-six. I've worked for him for about that many years. I'm fond of Sam, and he's starred in some of my favorite fantasies; but since he dated a beautiful but homicidal creature a couple of months before, my enthusiasm has somewhat faded. He's for sure my friend, though.
"'Scuse me, Sam," I said, smiling like an idiot.
"What's up?" He closed the catalog of bar supplies he'd been studying.
"I need to stash someone in here for a little while."
Sam didn't look altogether happy. "Who? Has Bill gotten back?"
"No, he's still traveling." My smile got even brighter. "But, um, they sent another vampire to sort of guard me? And I need to stow him in here while I work, if that's okay with you."
"Why do you need to be guarded? And why can't he just sit out in the bar? We have plenty of TrueBlood." TrueBlood was definitely proving to be the front-runner among competing blood replacements. "Next best to the drink of life," its first ad had read, and vampires had responded to the ad campaign.
I heard the tiniest of sounds behind me, and I sighed. Bubba had gotten impatient.
"Now, I asked you - " I began, starting to turn, but never got further. A hand grasped my shoulder and whirled me around. I was facing a man I'd never seen before. He was cocking his fist to punch me in the head.
Though the vampire blood I had ingested a few months ago (to save my life, let me point out) has mostly worn off - I barely glow in the dark at all now - I'm still quicker than most people. I dropped and rolled into the man's legs, which made him stagger, which made it easier for Bubba to grab him and crush his throat.
I scrambled to my feet and Sam rushed out of his office. We stared at each other, Bubba, and the dead man.
Well, now we were really in a pickle.
"I've kilt him," Bubba said proudly. "I saved you, Miss Sookie."
Having the Man from Memphis appear in your bar, realizing he's become a vampire, and watching him kill a would-be assailant - well, that was a lot to absorb in a couple of minutes, even for Sam, though he himself was more than he appeared.
"Well, so you have," Sam said to Bubba in a soothing voice. "Do you know who he was?"
I had never seen a dead man - outside of visitation at the local funeral home - until I'd started dating Bill (who of course was technically dead, but I mean human dead people).
It seems I run across them now quite often. Lucky I'm not too squeamish.
This particular dead man had been in his forties, and every year of that had been hard. He had tattoos all over his arms, mostly of the poor quality you get in jail, and he was missing some crucial teeth. He was dressed in what I thought of as biker clothes: greasy blue jeans and a leather vest, with an obscene T-shirt underneath.
"What's on the back of the vest?" Sam asked, as if that would have significance for him.
Bubba obligingly squatted and rolled the man to his side. The way the man's hand flopped at the end of his arm made me feel pretty queasy. But I forced myself to look at the vest. The back was decorated with a wolf's head insignia. The wolf was in profile, and seemed to be howling. The head was silhouetted against a white circle, which I decided was supposed to be the moon. Sam looked even more worried when he saw the insignia. "Werewolf," he said tersely. That explained a lot.
The weather was too chilly for a man wearing only a vest, if he wasn't a vampire. Weres ran a little hotter than regular people, but mostly they were careful to wear coats in cold weather, since Were society was still secret from the human race (except for lucky, lucky me, and probably a few hundred others). I wondered if the dead man had left a coat out in the bar hanging on the hooks by the main entrance; in which case, he'd been back here hiding in the men's room, waiting for me to appear. Or maybe he'd come through the back door right after me. Maybe his coat was in his vehicle.
"You see him come in?" I asked Bubba. I was maybe just a little light-headed.
"Yes, ma'am. He must have been waiting in the big parking lot for you. He drove around the corner, got out of his car, and went in the back just a minute after you did. You hightailed it through the door, and then he went in. And I followed him. You mighty lucky you had me with you."
"Thank you, Bubba. You're right; I'm lucky to have you. I wonder what he planned to do with me." I felt cold all over as I thought about it. Had he just been looking for a lone woman to grab, or did he plan on grabbing me specifically? Then I realized that was dumb thinking. If Eric had been alarmed enough to send a bodyguard, he must have known there was a threat, which pretty much ruled out me being targeted at random. Without comment, Bubba strode out the back door. He returned in just a minute.
"He's got him some duct tape and gags on the front seat of his car," Bubba said. "That's where his coat is. I brought it to put under his head." He bent to arrange the heavily padded camouflage jacket around the dead man's face and neck. Wrapping the head was a real good idea, since the man was leaking a little bit. When he had finished his task, Bubba licked his fingers.
Sam put an arm around me because I had started shaking.
"This is strange, though," I was saying, when the door to the hall from the bar began to open. I glimpsed Kevin Pryor's face. Kevin is a sweet guy, but he's a cop, and that's the last thing we needed.
"Sorry, toilet's back-flowing," I said, and pushed the door shut on his narrow, astonished, face. "Listen, fellas, why don't I hold this door shut while you two take this guy and put him in his car? Then we can figure out what to do with him." The floor of the hall would need swabbing. I discovered the hall door actually locked. I'd never realized that.
Sam was doubtful. "Sookie, don't you think that we should call the police?" he asked.