Sookie Stackhouse 8.1 Gift Wrapped, page 1
Gift Wrap.
Charlaine Harris.
Charlaine Harris is the New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels and the Harper Connelly series. She’s been nominated for a bunch of awards, and she even won a few of them. She lives in southern Arkansas in a country house that has a fluctuating population of people and animals. She loves to read.
It was Christmas Eve. I was all by myself.
Does that sound sad and pathetic enough to make you say, “Poor Sookie Stackhouse!”?
You don’t need to. I was feeling plenty sorry for myself, and the more I thought about my solitude at this time of the year, the more my eyes welled and my chin quivered.
Most people hang with their family and friends at the holiday season. I actually do have a brother, but we aren’t speaking. I’d recently discovered I have a living great-grandfather, though I didn’t believe he would even realize it was Christmas. (Not because he’s senile, far from it—but because he’s not a Christian.) Those two are it for me, as far as close family goes.
I actually do have friends, too, but they all seemed to have their own plans this year.
Amelia Broadway, the witch who lives on the top floor of my house, had driven down to New Orleans to spend the holiday with her father. My friend and employer, Sam Merlotte, had gone home to Texas to see his mom, stepfather, and siblings. My childhood friends Tara and JB would be spending Christmas Eve with JB’s family; plus, it was their first Christmas as a married couple. Who could horn in on that? I had other friends . . .
friends close enough that if I’d made puppy-dog eyes when they were talking about their holiday plans, they would have included me on their guest list in a heartbeat. In a fit of perversity, I hadn’t wanted to be pitied for being alone. I guess I wanted to manage that all by myself.
Sam had gotten a substitute bartender, but Merlotte’s Bar closes at two o’clock in the afternoon on Christmas Eve and remains closed until two o’clock the day after Christmas, so I didn’t even have work to break up a lovely uninterrupted stretch of misery.
My laundry was done. The house was clean. The week before, I’d put up my grandmother’s Christmas decorations, which I’d inherited along with the house. Opening the boxes of ornaments made me miss my grandmother with a sharp ache. She’d been gone almost two years, and I still wished I could talk to her. Not only had Gran been a lot of fun, she’d been really shrewd and she’d given good advice—if she decided you really needed some. She’d raised me from the age of seven, and she’d been the most important figure in my life.
She’d been so pleased when I’d started dating the vampire Bill Compton. That was how desperate Gran had been for me to get a beau; even Vampire Bill was welcome. When you’re telepathic like I am, it’s hard to date a regular guy; I’m sure you can see why.
Humans think all kinds of things they don’t want their nearest and dearest to know about, much less a woman they’re taking out to dinner and a movie. In sharp contrast, vampires’ brains are lovely silent blanks to me, and werewolf brains are nearly as good as vampires’, though I get a big waft of emotions and the odd snatch of thought from my occasionally furred acquaintances.
Naturally, after I’d thought about Gran welcoming Bill, I began wondering what Bill was doing. Then I rolled my eyes at my own idiocy. It was mid-afternoon, daytime. Bill was sleeping somewhere in his house, which lay in the woods to the south of my place, across the cemetery. I’d broken up with Bill, but I was sure he’d be over like a shot if I called him—once darkness fell, of course.
Damned if I would call him. Or anyone else.
But I caught myself staring longingly at the telephone every time I passed by. I needed to get out of the house or I’d be phoning someone, anyone.
I needed a mission. A project. A task. A diversion.
I remembered having awakened for about thirty seconds in the wee hours of the morning.
Since I’d worked the late shift at Merlotte’s, I’d only just sunk into a deep sleep. I’d stayed awake only long enough to wonder what had jarred me out of that sleep. I’d heard something out in the woods, I thought. The sound hadn’t been repeated, and I’d dropped back into slumber like a stone into water.
Now I peered out the kitchen window at the woods. Not too surprisingly, there was nothing unusual about the view. “The woods are snowy, dark, and deep,” I said, trying to recall the Frost poem we’d all had to memorize in high school. Or was it “lovely, dark, and deep”?
Of course, my woods weren’t lovely or snowy—they never are in Louisiana at Christmas, even northern Louisiana. But it was cold (here, that meant the temperature was about thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit). And the woods were definitely dark and deep—and damp. So I put on my lace-up work boots that I’d bought years before when my brother, Jason, and I had gone hunting together, and I shrugged into my heaviest “I don’t care what happens to it” coat, really more of a puffy quilted jacket. It was pale pink.
Since a heavy coat takes a long time to wear out down here, the coat was several years old, too; I’m twenty-seven, definitely past the pale pink stage. I bundled all my hair up under a knit cap, and I pulled on the gloves I’d found stuffed into one pocket. I hadn’t worn this coat for a long, long time, and I was surprised to find a couple of dollars and some ticket stubs in the pockets, plus a receipt for a little Christmas gift I’d given Alcide Herveaux, a werewolf I’d dated briefly.
Pockets are like little time capsules. Since I’d bought Alcide the sudoku book, his father had died in a struggle for the job of packmaster, and after a series of violent events, Alcide himself ascended to the leadership. I wondered how pack affairs were going in Shreveport. I hadn’t talked to any of the Weres in two months. In fact, I’d lost track of when the last full moon had been. Last night?
Now I’d thought about Bill and Alcide. Unless I took action, I’d begin brooding over my most recent lost boyfriend, Quinn. It was time to get on the move.
My family has lived in this humble house for over a hundred and fifty years. My much-adapted home lies in a clearing in the middle of some woods off Hummingbird Road, outside of the small town of Bon Temps, in Renard Parish. The trees are deeper and denser to the east at the rear of the house, since they haven’t been logged in a good fifty years. They’re thinner on the south side, where the cemetery lies. The land is gently rolling, and far back on the property there’s a little stream, but I hadn’t walked all the way back to the stream in ages. My life had been very busy, what with hustling drinks at the bar, telepathing (is that a verb?) for the vampires, unwillingly participating in vampire and Were power struggles, and other magical and mundane stuff like that.
It felt good to be out in the woods, though the air was raw and damp, and it felt good to be using my muscles.
I made my way through the brush for at least thirty minutes, alert for any indication of what had caused the ruckus the night before. There are lots of animals indigenous to northern Louisiana, but most of them are quiet and shy: possums, raccoons, deer. Then there are the slightly less quiet, but still shy, mammals; like coyotes and foxes. We have a few more formidable creatures. In the bar, I hear hunters’ stories all the time. A couple of the more enthusiastic sportsmen had glimpsed a black bear on a private hunting preserve about two miles from my house. And Terry Bellefleur had sworn to me he’d seen a panther less than two years ago. Most of the avid hunters had spotted feral hogs, razorbacks.
Of course, I wasn’t expecting to encounter anything like that. I had popped my cell phone into my pocket, just in case, though I wasn’t sure I could get a signal out in the woods.
By the time I’d worked my way through the thick woods to the stream, I was warm inside the puffy coat. I was ready to crouch down for a minute or two to examine the soft ground by the water. The stream, never big to begin with, was level with its banks after the recent rainfall. Though I’m not Nature Girl, I could tell that deer had been here; raccoons, too; and maybe a dog. Or two. Or three. That’s not good, I thought with a hint of unease. A pack of dogs always had the potential to become dangerous. I wasn’t anywhere near savvy enough to tell how old the tracks were, but I would have expected them to look dryer if they’d been made over a day ago.
There was a sound from the bushes to my left. I froze, scared to raise my face and turn in toward the right direction. I slipped my cell phone out of my pocket, looked at the bars.
OUTSIDE OF AREA, read the legend on the little screen. Crap, I thought. That hardly began to cover it.
The sound was repeated. I decided it was a moan. Whether it had issued from man or beast, I didn’t know. I bit my lip, hard, and then I made myself stand up, very slowly and carefully. Nothing happened. No more sounds. I got a grip on myself and edged cautiously to my left. I pushed aside a big stand of laurel.
There was a man lying on the ground, in the cold wet mud. He was naked as a jaybird, but patterned in dried blood.
I approached him cautiously, because even naked bleeding muddy men could be mighty dangerous; maybe especially dangerous.
“Ah,” I said. As an opening statement, that left a lot to be desired. “Ah, do you need help?” Okay, that ranked right up there with “How do you feel?” as a stupid opening statement.
His eyes opened—tawny eyes, wild and round like an owl’s. “Get away,” he said urgently. “They may be coming back.”
“Then we’d better hurry,” I said. I had no intention of leaving an injured man
“No, run,” he said. “It’s not long until dark.” Painfully, he stretched out a hand to grip my ankle. He definitely wanted me to pay attention.
It was really hard to listen to his words since there was a lot of bareness that kept my eyes busy. I resolutely focused my gaze above his chest. Which was covered, not too thickly, with dark brown hair. Across a broad expanse. Not that I was looking!
“Come on,” I said, kneeling beside the stranger. A mélange of prints indented the mud, indicating a lot of activity right around him. “How long have you been here?”
“A few hours,” he said, gasping as he tried to prop himself up on one elbow.
“In this cold?” Geez Louise. No wonder his skin was bluish. “We got to get you indoors,”
I said. “Now.” I looked from the blood on his left shoulder to the rest of him, trying to spot other injuries.
That was a mistake. The rest of him—though visibly muddy, bloody, and cold—was really, really . . .
What was wrong with me? Here I was, looking at a complete (naked and handsome) stranger with lust, while he was scared and wounded. “Here,” I said, trying to sound resolute and determined and neutered. “Put your good arm around my neck, and we’ll get you to your knees. Then you can get up and we can start moving.”
There were bruises all over him, but not another injury that had broken the skin, I thought. He protested several more times, but the sky was getting darker as the night drew in, and I cut him off sharply. “Get a move on,” I advised him. “We don’t want to be out here any longer than we have to be. It’s going to take the better part of an hour to get you to the house.”
The man fell silent. He finally nodded. With a lot of work, we got him to his feet. I winced when I saw how scratched and filthy they were.
“Here we go,” I said encouragingly. He took a step, did a little wincing of his own.
“What’s your name?” I said, trying to distract him from the pain of walking.
“Preston,” he said. “Preston Pardloe.”
“Where you from, Preston?” We were moving a little faster now, which was good. The woods were getting darker and darker.
“I’m from Baton Rouge,” he said. He sounded a little surprised.
“And how’d you come to be in my woods?”
“Well . . .”
I realized what his problem was. “Are you a Were, Preston?” I asked. I felt his body relax against my own. I’d known it already from his brain pattern, but I didn’t want to scare him by telling him about my little disability. Preston had a—how can I describe it?—a smoother, thicker pattern than other Weres I’d encountered, but each mind has its own texture.
“Yes,” he said. “You know, then.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.” I knew way more than I’d ever wanted to. Vampires had come out in the open with the advent of the Japanese-marketed synthetic blood that could sustain them, but other creatures of the night and shadows hadn’t yet taken the same giant step.
“What pack?” I asked, as we stumbled over a fallen branch and recovered. He was leaning on me heavily. I feared we’d actually tumble to the ground. We needed to pick up the pace. He did seem to be moving more easily now that his muscles had warmed up a little.
“The Deer Killer pack, from south of Baton Rouge.”
“What are you doing up here in my woods?” I asked again.
“This land is yours? I’m sorry we trespassed,” he said. His breath caught as I helped him around a devil’s walking stick. One of the thorns caught in my pink coat, and I pulled it out with difficulty.
“That’s the least of my worries,” I said. “Who attacked you?”
“The Sharp Claw pack from Monroe.”
I didn’t know any Monroe Weres.
“Why were you here?” I asked, thinking sooner or later he’d have to answer me if I kept asking.
“We were supposed to meet on neutral ground,” he said, his face tense with pain. “A werepanther from out in the country somewhere offered the land to us as a midway point, a neutral zone. Our packs have been . . . feuding. He said this would be a good place to resolve our differences.”
My brother had offered my land as a Were parley ground? The stranger and I struggled along in silence while I tried to think that through. My brother, Jason, was indeed a werepanther, though he’d become one by being bitten; his estranged wife was a born werepanther, a genetic panther. What was Jason thinking, sending such a dangerous gathering my way? Not of my welfare, that’s for sure.
Granted, we weren’t on good terms, but it was painful to think he’d actually want to do me harm. Any more than he’d already done me, that is.
A hiss of pain brought my attention back to my companion. Trying to help him more efficiently, I put my arm around his waist and he draped his arm across my shoulder. We were able to make better time that way, to my relief. Five minutes later, I saw the light I’d left on above the back porch.
“Thank God,” I said. We began moving faster, and we reached the house just as dark fell.
For a second, my companion arched and tensed, but he didn’t change. That was a relief.
Getting up the steps turned into an ordeal, but finally I got Preston into the house and seated at the kitchen table. I looked him over anxiously. This wasn’t the first time I’d brought a bleeding and naked man into my kitchen, oddly enough. I’d found a vampire named Eric under similar circumstances. Was that not incredibly weird, even for my life?
Of course, I didn’t have time to mull that over, because this man needed some attention.
I tried to look at the shoulder wound in the improved light of the kitchen, but he was so grimy it was hard to examine in detail. “Do you think you could stand to take a shower?”
I asked, hoping I didn’t sound like I thought he smelled or anything. Actually, he did smell a little unusual, but his scent wasn’t unpleasant.
“I think I can stay upright that long,” he said briefly.
“Okay, stay put for a second,” I said. I brought the old afghan from the back of the living room couch and arranged it around him carefully. Now it was easier to concentrate.
I hurried to the hall bathroom to turn on the shower controls, added long after the claw-footed bathtub had been installed. I leaned over to turn on the water, waited until it was hot, and got out two fresh towels. Amelia had left shampoo and crème rinse in the rack hanging from the showerhead, and there was plenty of soap. I put my hand under the water. Nice and hot.
“Okay!” I called. “I’m coming to get you!”
My unexpected visitor was looking startled when I got back to the kitchen. “For what?”
he asked, and I wondered if he’d hit his head in the woods.
“For the shower, hear the water running?” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “I can’t see the extent of your wounds until I get you clean.”
We were up and moving again, and I thought he was walking better, as if the warmth of the house and the smoothness of the floor helped his muscles relax. He’d just left the afghan on the chair. No problem with nudity, like most Weres, I noticed. Okay, that was good, right? His thoughts were opaque to me, as Were thoughts sometimes were, but I caught flashes of anxiety.
Suddenly he leaned against me much more heavily, and I staggered into the wall.
“Sorry,” he said, gasping. “Just had a twinge in my leg.”
“No problem,” I said. “It’s probably your muscles stretching.” We made it into the small bathroom, which was very old-fashioned. My own bathroom off my bedroom was more modern, but this was less personal.
Preston didn’t seem to note the black-and-white-checkered tile. With unmistakable eagerness, he was eyeing the hot water spraying down into the tub.
“Ah, do you need me to leave you alone for a second before I help you into the shower?”
I asked, indicating the toilet with a tip of my head.
He looked at me blankly. “Oh,” he said, finally understanding. “No, that’s all right.” So we made it to the side of the tub, which was a high one. With a lot of awkward maneuvering, Preston swung a leg over the side, and I shoved, and he was able to raise the second leg enough to climb completely in. After making sure he could stand by himself, I began to pull the shower curtain closed.
