Death's Excellent Vacation Read online

  I had lunch at yet another casino in the middle of the afternoon. Each casino seemed to have two or three places to eat. I decided I couldn’t face another buffet. I made my way to the lower-priced restaurant that offered menus. When I tired of people-watching, I pulled out the paperback I carried in my purse.

  At the casino after that, I had to fend off a persistent admirer, a man missing an important front tooth. He wore his hair pulled back in a long, graying ponytail. He was sure we could have some fun together, and I was just as sure we could not. I got back on the shuttle.

  I returned to Harrah’s with a feeling of relief. I’d seen lots of new things, including a riverboat and a golf course, but all in all the casinos seemed kind of sad to me. The gamblers weren’t people like you see in James Bond movies, rich people dressed to the nines who could afford losing. Some of the people I’d seen today didn’t look like they could afford to waste even ten dollars. But I had to admit, they’d seemed to be having a good time, and after all, that was the point of a vacation.

  It was lovely to shut the door of my room and enjoy the silence. I threw myself down on the bed and closed my eyes. It wouldn’t be long until Pam rose.

  Sure enough, she knocked on the door thirty minutes later. “Did you get some tickets?” she asked.

  “Hi, Pam, good to see you. Yes, I had an interesting day,” I said. “I got us tickets to the Mucho Macho contest.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a strongman competition. I wasn’t sure you’d like any of the music acts. The groups I actually knew, they were all sold out for tonight. So I got tickets to see big strong guys. I thought you’d like that? You like guys too, right?”

  “I like men,” Pam agreed guardedly.

  “Well, we have an hour before the show,” I said. “You want to go get some warm blood?”

  “Yes,” she said, and followed me to the elevator, still looking dubious.

  While Pam drank a couple of bottles of TrueBlood Type A, I had a bowl of ice cream. (Calories don’t count while you’re on vacation.) Then we went to the casino next door to watch the Mucho Macho contestants do their manly thing. I got to say, I really enjoyed it: muscular guys lifting heavy weights, swinging big hammers, pulling farm equipment with their teeth. No, I’m just kidding about the teeth. They used a rope harness.

  It was like monster trucks, but with men. Even Pam got into the spirit, yelling encouragement to Billy Bob the Brawler from Yazoo City as he harnessed up for his second attempt to move the tractor a yard across the floor.

  Of course, Pam herself could have done it easily.

  She got a call on her cell phone as we were leaving the show.

  “Yes, Eric. Oh, we’ve just finished watching big, muscular, sweaty men move large things around. Sookie’s idea.”

  Her eyes went sideways to meet mine. She grinned at me. “I’m sure you could, Eric. You could probably do it without your hands!” She laughed. Whatever Eric said next got her serious attention. “All right, then. We’ll go now.” She handed the phone to me. I didn’t like the compressed lips and narrowed eyes. Something was up.

  “Hey,” I said. I felt a surge of lust down to my toenails just knowing that Eric was on the other end of the connection.

  “I miss you,” he said.

  I pictured him in his office at Fangtasia, the nightclub he and Pam owned. He’d be sitting in his leather office chair, his thick golden hair falling in a waving curtain past his shoulders, and he’d be wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Eric had been a Viking, and he looked like it.

  “I miss you, too,” I whispered. I knew he could hear me. He could hear a cricket fart at twenty paces.

  “When you return, I’ll show you how much.”

  “I look forward to that,” I said, trying to sound brisk and businesslike, since Pam could hear the conversation.

  “You’re not in any danger tonight,” he said, sounding more businesslike himself. “Victor insisted you go with Pam. The vampire you’re meeting has a human companion. You will know if Michael is dealing with us in good faith or not.”

  “Can you tell me what this is about?”

  “Pam will brief you on the way. I wish I’d had time to discuss it with you myself, but this opportunity came up very quickly.” He sounded, just for a second, like he was wondering why it had come up so quickly.

  “Is something funny about that?” I asked. “Funny strange, I mean?”

  “No,” he said, “I was considering that . . . but no. Let me talk to Pam again.”

  I handed the phone back. A glimmer of surprise crossed Pam’s face. “Sir?” she said.

  Whatever transpired in the rest of the conversation was lost to me, because the Ittabena Hulk plowed through the crowd in his street clothes, looking neither to the right nor the left. He was intent on the stacked brunette who was waiting for him by the “wait to be seated” sign at the entrance to yet another buffet. She curved in all the right places. She was wearing a tight leopard-print stretch top and a black leather miniskirt grazing the tops of her tan legs. Four-inch black heels completed the ensemble.

  “Wow,” I said, in genuine tribute. “I wish I had the guts to wear something that bold.” The cumulative effect was literally stunning.

  “I would look excellent in that,” Pam said, a simple statement of fact.

  “But would you want to?”

  “I see what you mean.” Pam looked down at her own silk blouse and well-cut pants, her low heels and conservative jewelry.

  “So where are we going?” I asked, after the valet had retrieved Pam’s car. We turned north on 61. The traffic was heavy. Though it was a weekday, everyone seemed to be in a great hurry to lose their hard- earned cash and experience something a little different from their everyday lives.

  “We’re going to a club that’s just west of this highway, about ten miles north of here,” Pam said. “It’s called Blonde, and it’s owned by a vampire named Michael.”

  I remembered my conversation with the couple on the bus. “This would be a ‘gentleman’s club’?”

  Pam looked massively sardonic. “Yes, that’s what they call it.”

  “Why are we going there? Eric said a vampire runs it. We’re across the state line in Russell Edgington’s territory.” Russell Edgington was the vampire king of Mississippi. Though most humans didn’t know it, there were other systems of government in the USA besides the one in Washington, D.C.

  Not every state has its own vampire ruler; some states are populous enough to have two or even more. (New York City has its own king, I understand.) Visiting vamps were supposed to check in when they had to cross into another vamp’s territory. I’d met Russell, and he was no joke.

  “This must go no further, you understand?” Pam gave me a very meaningful look before turning her attention back to the road. The oncoming traffic heading south from Memphis was moving easily, but it was also nonstop.

  “I understand,” I said. I didn’t sound enthusiastic. Vampire secrets are unpleasant and dangerous.

  “Our new masters have been chipping away at Edgington’s control of Mississippi,” Pam said.

  This was very bad news. Louisiana, where Bon Temps lay, had been taken over from its previous management by the vampires of Nevada. Since Arkansas had previously allied with Louisiana (long story), the king of Nevada (Felipe de Castro) had gotten two states for the price of one. His ambitious lieutenant, Victor Madden, had apparently decided to go for the trifecta.

  “Why would they want to do that?” Felipe owned two poor states. If he added Mississippi, he’d have the equivalent of one prosperous state, but his people would be spread thin.

  “The casinos,” Pam said.

  Of course. The big business in Nevada was casinos, and there were lots of casinos in Mississippi. Felipe had already acquired casinos in Louisiana, and had the state of Arkansas thrown in for free.

  “Vampires can’t own casinos,” I said. “It’s against the law.” A powerful human lobby had pushed that legisla
tion.

  “Do you imagine that Felipe doesn’t control what happens at the casinos in Las Vegas? At least in large part?”

  “No,” I admitted. I’d met Felipe.

  “In fact, our king is bringing a lawsuit to challenge that legislation through the human courts, and I’m confident he’ll win,” Pam said. “In the meantime, Victor told Eric to use us as an advance team.”

  I had seen Victor much more often than the king himself. Victor Madden was Felipe de Castro’s man on the ground in Louisiana, while Felipe stayed at his castle in Las Vegas. “Ah, Pam, do you think this is all on the up-and-up?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I thought she knew perfectly well what I meant. “Victor specified us. Why do we have this top secret mission, instead of someone better at negotiation? Not that you’re not a great fighter,” I added quickly. “But you’d think if we’re trying to pinch off parts of Mississippi, Victor would send Eric himself.” Eric was the only remaining sheriff that the previous ruler had put in place. All the others were dead. I remembered Victor’s adorable, smiling face, and I got worried. “You sure this Michael is willing to ditch Russell?”

  “Victor says so.”

  “And Michael has a human companion.”

  “Yes, a man named Rudy.”

  “This is dangerous, no matter what Victor told Eric. We’re in foreign territory. This isn’t a real vacation. We’re poaching.”

  “Russell doesn’t know why we’re here.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I told his headquarters that I was having a weekend here, so they wouldn’t think my presence was caused by business of any kind.”

  “And?”

  “Russell himself came on the phone to extend his hospitality. He told me to feel free to enjoy myself in the area, that Eric’s second in command was always welcome.”

  “And you don’t think that’s fishy?”

  “If Russell had any idea what Felipe was considering, he would have counterattacked by now.”

  Vampires pretty much wrote the book on chicanery, double dealing, and what you might call drastic politics. If Pam wasn’t worried, should I be?

  Sure. Pam could take a lot more damage than I could.

  Blonde was not an attractive edifice. No matter how much female beauty might be on the inside (and the billboards promised plenty), on the outside it was a metal building in the middle of nowhere. It had a huge parking lot, and there were at least forty vehicles there. The ground had risen as we approached Memphis and its bluffs, and the club stood on top of a hill with a deep ravine behind. The whole area outside the parking lot was covered with kudzu, like it had been carpeted in the plant. The trees were covered, too.

  “We go to the back,” Pam said, and she drove around the building.

  The back was even less appealing than the front. The parking lot was poorly lit. Michael was not too concerned for the safety of his workers. Of course, I told myself, maybe he walks each of the girls to her car every night. But I doubted it. “Pam, I have a bad feeling about this,” I said. “I want to be on record as letting you know that.”

  “Thanks for the pep talk,” Pam muttered, and I realized that she had more misgivings than she’d revealed. “But I have my orders and I have to do this.”

  “Who issued those orders—Felipe, Victor, or Eric?”

  “Victor called me into Eric’s office and told me what to do and to take you. Eric was present.”

  “How do you think he feels about this?”

  “He isn’t happy,” Pam said. “But he’s under new management, and he has to obey direct orders.”

  “So we have to do this.”

  “I have to. I am Eric’s to command.” Eric had made Pam a vampire. “You aren’t, though Eric pretends to Victor that you obey him in all things. You can leave. Or you can stay in the car and wait for me. There’s a pistol under the backseat.”

  “What?”

  “A pistol, a gun, you know? Eric thought you’d feel more comfortable with one, since we’re so much stronger than you.”

  I hate guns. Having said that, I also have to admit that a firearm has saved my life in the past. “You’re not going in by yourself, armed or unarmed,” I said. I hesitated, because I was afraid. “Give it to me,” I said. We were parked at the very back of the lot, right by the kudzu. I hoped it wouldn’t take Pam’s car while we were inside.

  Pam reached under the seat and drew out a revolver. “Point and shoot,” she said, shrugging. “Eric got it for you specially. He says it is called a Ruger LCP. It fires six shots, and there’s one in the chamber.”

  It was about as big as a cell phone. Good God Almighty. “What if I need to reload?”

  “If you have to shoot that much, we are dead.”

  I got that feeling that had become familiar since I’d started hanging with vampires; the feeling that says, How the hell did I get into this? If you examined the process step by step, you could see how it had happened; but when you looked at where you’d ended up, you just had to shake your head. I was walking into a very dubious situation, and Eric thought I needed a gun. “Hey, at least we’ll match the décor,” I said at last.

  Pam looked blank.

  “Blondes,” I said helpfully. “Us.”

  She almost smiled.

  We got out of the car. I tucked the gun in the small of my back, and Pam checked to make sure it was covered by my fitted black jacket. I never looked as put-together as Pam, but since we’d been going to a show and then out, I’d worn my good black pants and a blue and black knit top with long sleeves. The jacket didn’t look ridiculous, since the temperature had fallen into the forties. Pam pulled on her white trench coat and belted it tightly around her waist, and then off she went.

  I trotted along behind her, second-guessing myself every step of the way. Pam knocked once on the employee entrance. After a pause, the door opened, and I saw that the male holding it was a vampire. Not Michael, though, if I was any judge at all. This male had only been a vampire for a few years. He had a Mohawk, colored green and gelled to a high crest on his otherwise bald head. I tried to imagine going through the centuries like that, and I thought I might throw up.

  “We’re here to see Michael,” Pam said, her voice especially cool and regal. “We’re expected.”

  “You the ladies from Shreveport?”

  “We are.”

  “There’s a lot going on here tonight,” he said. “You going to try out after you talk to Michael? I’m in charge of the tryouts.” He was proud of that. “Just come right to this door when you’re ready.” He pointed at a door to the right that had a hand- lettered sheet of typing paper taped to it. Straggly letters spelled DANCERS IN HERE.

  We didn’t say anything to that, and he cast a glance back at us that I couldn’t read.

  “Let me see if the boss is ready,” Mohawk said.

  When he’d knocked and been admitted through a door on the left, Pam said, “I can’t believe they let someone so deficient answer the door. In fact, I can’t believe anyone bothered to turn him. I think he’s slow.”

  Mohawk popped back out of the door as quickly as he’d popped in.

  “He’s ready for you,” he said, which I found an ominous way to put it.

  Pam and I followed his sweeping gesture, which led into an unexpectedly luxurious office. Michael believed in treating himself well. The room was carpeted in dark blue and topped with a lovely Persian-style rug in cream, blue, and red. The furniture was dark and polished. The contrast with the bare corridor was almost painful.

  Michael himself was a short, broad blond with a distinct Slavic look. Russian, maybe. A dull throb underlay all the polish of his office, and I realized the throb, which I’d been aware of since I entered the building, was the sound of the music playing in the club. The bass was turned up all the way. It was impossible to tell what the song was, not that the lyrics were the point.

  “Ladies, be seated, please,” Michael said. He gestured towar
d the two very impressive guest chairs in front of his desk. He had a heavy accent and a bad suit. He was smoking. It smelled just as bad when a vampire did it. Of course, he wouldn’t suffer any consequences. An open bottle of Royalty Blended was on the desk by the ashtray. “This is my associate, Rudy,” Michael told us.

  Rudy was standing behind Michael. He was the human I’d come to read. He was slim and black-haired, with an extensively scarred face. He looked as if he was eighteen, but I figured he was at least ten years older than that. He gave off a very strange mental signature. Maybe he wasn’t completely human. Everyone I know has a brain pattern: Humans have one kind, weres of all sorts have another, fairies are opaque but identifiable, and vampires leave a sort of void. Rudy didn’t fall into any of those categories.

  “You can leave,” Michael said to Mohawk, his voice contemptuous. “Go back to organize the tryouts. We’ll be there soon.” Mohawk backed out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him. The noise level abruptly dropped, thank God. The boss’s office was soundproofed. But the drumbeat was pulsing in my head, and I swore I could feel it through my feet even if I couldn’t hear it any longer.

  “Please let me offer you a drink,” Michael said, smiling at both of us. Rudy decided to smile, too. His teeth were very sharp; in fact, they were pointed. Okay, half-human at most. I was suddenly and deeply frightened. The last time I’d seen teeth like that, they’d bitten bits out of me.

  “You’ve never met anyone like Rudy?” Michael asked. He was looking directly at me.

  I’m good at schooling my face. Telepaths learn that lesson early in life, or they don’t survive, is my guess. How had he known?

  “I sense your pulse speeding up,” Michael said charmingly, and I knew I didn’t like him at all. “Rudy is a rarity, aren’t you, my darling one?”

  Rudy smiled again. It was just as bad the second time.

  “Half human and half what?” Pam said. “Elf, I suppose. The teeth are a giveaway.”

  “I’ve seen teeth like that before,” I said, “on fairies who’d filed them to look that way.”

  “Mine are natural,” said Rudy. His voice was surprisingly deep and smooth. “What can I get you to drink?”