I gave the packleader a hug, and I said hello to Annabelle and to Jannalynn, who gave me a curt nod.
“What is this problem Eric called me about?” Alcide was saying as I stood aside to let them enter. When the Weres realized they were in a room with three vampires, all of them tensed. They’d expected only Eric. When I glanced back at the vampires, I saw they were all standing, too, and even Alexei was on the alert.
Jason said, “Alcide, good to see you. Ladies, looking mighty fine tonight.”
I went into high gear. “Hi, you-all!” I said brightly. “It was so nice of you to come at such short notice. Eric, you know Alcide. Alcide, this is Eric’s longtime friend Appius Livius Ocella, who’s in town visiting with his, ah, protégé, Alexei. Eric, I don’t know if you’ve met Alcide’s friend Annabelle, a new pack member, and Jannalynn, who’s been in the Long Tooth pack for ages. Jannalynn, we’ve never had a chance to talk much, but of course Sam talks about you all the time. And I think you all know my brother, Jason.”
Whew. I felt like I’d run an introduction marathon. Since vamps don’t shake hands, that concluded the opening ceremonies. Then I had to get them all to sit down while I offered them drinks, which no one accepted.
Eric fired the opening volley. “Alcide, one of my trackers went over Sookie’s land after Basim al Saud warned her about the strangers he smelled in her woods. Our tracker has found a new body buried there.”
Alcide looked at Eric as though he had begun speaking in tongues.
“We didn’t kill anyone that night,” Alcide said. “Basim said he told Sookie we smelled an old body, and a fairy or two, and a vampire. But he didn’t mention a fresh body.”
“Yet there’s a new burial there now.”
“Which we had nothing to do with.” Alcide shrugged. “We were there three nights before your tracker smelled the scent of a fresh body.”
“It seems quite a huge coincidence, doesn’t it? A body on Sookie’s land, right after your pack is there?” Eric was looking aggravatingly reasonable.
“Maybe it’s more of a coincidence that there was already a body on Sookie’s land.”
Oh, boy, I really didn’t want to go there.
Jannalynn was actually snarling at Eric. It was an interesting look, with the eye makeup and all. Annabelle was standing with her arms slightly away from her body, waiting to see which way she needed to jump.
Alexei was staring off into space, which seemed to be his fallback stance, and Appius Livius simply seemed bored.
“I say we should go see who it is,” Jason said unexpectedly.
I looked at him with approval.
So out we went into the woods to dig up a corpse.
Chapter 9
Alcide changed to some boots he had in the truck, and he shed his tie and coat. Jannalynn wisely took off her spike-heeled sandals and Annabelle her own more modest heels. I gave them both some sneakers of mine, and I offered Jannalynn an old T-shirt to cover her shiny silver dress so it wouldn’t snag in the woods. She pulled it over her head. She even said, “Thanks,” though she didn’t sound actually grateful. I retrieved two shovels from the toolshed. Alcide took one shovel, Eric the other. Jason carried one of those great big flashlights called a lantern that he’d fished out of the toolbox on his truck. The lantern was for my benefit. The vampires could see perfectly well in the dark, and the Weres could see very well, too. Since Jason was a werepanther, he had excellent night vision. I was the blind one in the group.
“Do we know where we’re going?” Annabelle said.
“Heidi said it was due east, close to the stream, in a clearing,” I said, and we slogged eastward. I kept running into stuff, and after a while Eric handed off his shovel to Jason and crouched so I could cling to his back. I kept my head tucked behind his so branches wouldn’t hit me in the face. Our progress was smoother after that.
“I smell it,” Jannalynn said suddenly. She was out ahead of us all, as if her job in the pack were to make the way clear for the packleader. She was a different woman out in the woods. Though I couldn’t see very well, I could see that. She was quick, sure-footed, and decisive. She darted ahead, and after a moment she called back, “Here it is!”
We got there to find her standing over a patch of dirt in a little clearing. It had been disturbed recently, though an attempt had been made to camouflage that disturbance.
Eric eased me down onto the ground, and Jason shone the lantern at the earth. “It’s not.?” I whispered, knowing everyone there could hear me.
“No,” Eric said firmly. “Too recent.” Not Debbie Pelt. She was elsewhere, in an older grave.
“Only one way to find out who it is,” Alcide said. Jason and Alcide began to dig, and since they were both very strong, it went quickly. Alexei came over to stand by me, and it occurred to me that a grave in the woods had to be a bad flashback for him. I put an arm around him as if he were still human, though I noticed that Appius gave me a sardonic look. Alexei’s eyes were on the gravediggers, especially Jason. I knew this child could dig the grave with his bare hands as fast as they were digging with shovels, but Alexei looked so frail it was hard to think of him being as strong as other vampires. I wondered how many people had made that mistake in the past few decades, and how many of those had died at Alexei’s small hands.
Jason and Alcide could make the dirt fly. While they worked, Annabelle and Jannalynn prowled around the little clearing, probably trying to pick up what scents they could. Despite the rain of two nights ago, there might be something in the areas protected by the trees. Heidi hadn’t been looking for a murderer; she’d been trying to make a list of who’d crossed the land. I was thinking that the only creatures who hadn’t been tromping through my woods had been regular old humans. If the Weres were lying, a Were could be the killer. Or it could be one of the fae, who were a violent race, as I had observed. Or the killer could be Bill, since Heidi thought the vampire she’d scented was my neighbor.
I hadn’t smelled the body while it was under the dirt as the others had, since my sense of smell was only a fraction of theirs. But as the dirt piles grew and the hole got deeper, I could tell it was there. Oh gosh, could I.
I put my hand across my nose, which didn’t help at all. I couldn’t imagine how the others were enduring it, since it would be so much sharper to their senses. Maybe they were also more practical, or simply more accustomed.
Then both the diggers stopped. “He’s wrapped up,” Jason said. Alcide bent over and fumbled with something at the bottom of the hole.
“I think I got it pulled apart,” Alcide said after a moment.
“Pass me the lantern, Sookie,” Jason said, and I tossed it to him. He shone it down. “I don’t know this man,” he said.
“I do,” said Alcide in a strange voice. Annabelle and Jannalynn were at the edge of the grave instantly. I had to brace myself to step forward to look down into the pit.
I recognized him instantly. The three Weres threw back their heads and howled.
“It’s the Long Tooth enforcer,” I told the vampires. I gagged and had to wait a minute before I could go on. “It’s Basim al Saud.” The passage of days had made a great difference, but I knew him instantly. Those corkscrew curls I’d envied, the muscled body.
“Shit,” screamed Jannalynn, when the howling was done.
And that about summed it up.
When the Weres had calmed down, there was a lot to talk about.
“I only met him the once,” I said. “Of course, he was fine when he got in the truck with Alcide and Annabelle.”
“He told me what he’d smelled on the property, and I told him to tell Sookie,” Alcide told Eric. “She had a right to know. We didn’t talk about anything in particular on the way back to Shreveport, did we, Annabelle?”