Definitely Dead

It took just two of them to subdue me, and I was kicking and screaming, biting and hitting, with every bit of energy I had. It took four for Quinn, but those four succeeded only because they used a stun gun. Otherwise, I'm sure he could have taken six or eight of them out of action, instead of the three he took care of before they got him.

I knew I would be overcome, and I knew I could save myself some bruises and maybe a broken bone if I just assented to be taken. But I have my pride. More practically, I wanted to be sure that Amelia heard what was happening above her. She'd do something. I wasn't sure what she'd do, but she'd act.

I was hustled down the stairs, my feet hardly touching them, by two husky men I'd never seen before. These same two men had bound my wrists together with duct tape. I'd done my best to arrange for a little slack, but I was afraid they'd done a fair job of it.

"Mmm, smells like sex," the shorter one said as he pinched my butt. I ignored his tacky leer and took some satisfaction in eyeing the bruise I'd given him on his cheekbone with my fist. (Which, by the way, was aching and smarting over the knuckles. You can't hit someone without paying for it yourself.)

They had to carry Quinn, and they weren't gentle about it. He got banged around against the stairs, and once they dropped him. He was a big guy. Now he was a bleeding big guy, since one of the blows had cut the skin above his left eye. He'd had the duct tape treatment, too, and I wondered how the fur would react to the tape.

We were being held side by side in the courtyard, briefly, and Quinn looked over at me as if he desperately wanted to speak to me. The blood was running down his cheek from the wound over his eyes, and he looked groggy from the stun gun. His hands were changing back to regular hands. I lunged toward him, but the Weres kept us apart.

Two vans drove into the circular drive, two vans that said BIG EASY ELECTRIC on the side. They were white and long and windowless in the back, and the logo on the side had been covered up with mud, which looked highly suspicious. A driver jumped out of the cab of each van, and the first driver threw open the doors to the rear of the first vehicle.

While our captors were hustling Quinn and me over to that van, the rest of the raiding party was being brought down the stairs. The men Quinn had managed to hurt were damaged far worse than Quinn, I'm glad to say. Claws can do an amazing amount of damage, especially wielded with the force a tiger can exert. The guy I'd hit with the lamp was unconscious, and the one who'd reached Quinn first was possibly dead. He was certainly covered with blood and there were things exposed to the light that should have been neatly packed in his belly.

I was smiling with satisfaction when the men holding me shoved me into the back of the van, which I discovered was awash with trash and absolutely filthy. This was a high-class operation. There was a wide-mesh screen between the two front seats and the open rear, and the shelves in the rear had been emptied, I supposed for our occupancy.

I was crammed into the narrow aisle between the shelves, and Quinn was jammed in after me. They had to work hard because he was still so stunned. My two escorts were slamming the rear van doors on the two of us as the hors de combat Weres were loaded into the other van. I was guessing the vans had been parked out on the street briefly so we wouldn't hear the vehicles pulling into the driveway. When they were ready to load us up, our captors had pulled into the courtyard. Even the people of a brawling city like New Orleans would notice some battered bodies being loaded into vans... in the pouring rain.

I hoped the Weres wouldn't think of grabbing Amelia and Bob, and I prayed that Amelia would think cleverly and hide herself, rather than do some impulsive and brave witch thing. I know it's a contradiction, right? Praying for one thing (asking God a favor) while at the same time hoping your enemies would be killed. All I can say is, I have a feeling Christians have been doing that from the get-go - at least bad ones, like me.

"Go, go, go," bellowed the shorter man, who'd hopped into the front seat. The driver obliged with a completely unnecessary squealing of tires, and we lurched out of the courtyard as if the president had just been shot and we had to get him to Walter Reed.

Quinn came to completely as we turned off Chloe Street to head for our final destination, wherever it might be. His hands were bound behind him, which is painful, and he hadn't quit bleeding from the head. I'd expected him to remain groggy and shocked. But when his eyes focused on my face, he said, "Babe, they beat you bad." I must not look too good.

"Yeah, well, you seem to be in the same boat," I said. I knew the driver and his companion could hear us, and I didn't give a damn.

With a grim attempt at a smile, he said, "Some defender I turned out to be."

In the Weres' estimation, I wasn't very dangerous, so my hands had been bound in front. I squirmed until I was able to put pressure on the cut on Quinn's forehead. That had to have hurt even more, but he didn't say a word in protest. The motion of the van, the effects of the beating, and the constant shifting and smell of the trash all around us combined to make the next ten minutes very unpleasant. If I'd been very clever, I could have told which way we were going - but I wasn't feeling very clever. I marveled that in a city with as many famed restaurants as New Orleans had, this van was awash with Burger King wrappers and Taco Bell cups. If I got a chance to rummage through the debris, I might find something useful.

"When we're together, we get attacked by Weres," Quinn said.

"It's my fault," I said. "I'm so sorry I dragged you into this."

"Oh, yeah," he said. "I'm known for hanging with a desperate crowd."

We were lying face to face, and Quinn sort of nudged me with his leg. He was trying to tell me something, and I wasn't getting it.

The two men in the front seat were talking to each other about a cute girl crossing the street at a traffic light. Just listening to the conversation was almost enough to make you swear off men, but at least they weren't listening to us.

"Remember when we talked about my mental condition?" I said carefully. "Remember what I told you about that?"

It took him a minute because he was hurting, but he got the hint. His face squinched up as if he were about to chop some boards in half, or something else requiring all his concentration, and then his thought shoved into my head. Phone in my pocket, he told me. The problem was, the phone was in his right pocket, and he was lying on that side. There was hardly room for him to turn over.

This called for a lot of maneuvering, and I didn't want our captors to see it. But I managed, finally, to work my fingers into Quinn's pocket, and made a mental note to advise him that, under this set of circumstances, his jeans were too tight. (Under other circumstances, no problem with the way they fit.) But extricating that phone, with the van rocking, while our Were assailants checked on us every minute or so, that was difficult.

Queen's headquarters on speed dial, he told me when he felt the phone leave his pocket. But that was lost on me. I didn't know how to access speed dial. It took me a few moments to make Quinn understand that, and I'm still not sure I how I did it, but finally he thought the phone number at me, and I awkwardly punched it in and pressed send. Maybe we hadn't thought that through all the way, because when a tiny voice said, "Hello?" the Weres heard it.

"You didn't search him?" the driver asked the passenger incredulously.

"Hell no, I was trying to get him in the back and get myself out of the rain," the man who had pinched me snarled right back. "Pull over, dammit!"

Has someone had your blood? Quinn asked me silently, though this time he could have spoken, and after a precious second, my brain kicked in. "Eric," I said, because the Weres were out their doors and running to open the rear doors of the van.

"Quinn and Sookie have been taken by some Weres," Quinn said into the phone I was holding to his mouth. "Eric the Northman can track her."

I hoped Eric was still in New Orleans, and I further hoped whoever answered the phone at the queen's headquarters was on the ball. But then the two Weres were yanking open the van doors and dragging us out, and one of them socked me while the other hit Quinn in the gut. They yanked the phone from my swollen fingers and tossed it into the thick undergrowth at the side of the road. The driver had pulled over by an empty lot, but up and down the road were widely spaced houses on stilts in a sea of grasses. The sky was too overcast for me to get a fix on our direction, but I was sure now we'd driven south into the marshes. I did manage to read our driver's watch, and was surprised to find out it was already past three in the afternoon.

"You dumb shit, Clete! Who was he calling?" yelled a voice from the second van, which had pulled over to the side of the road when we did. Our two captors looked at each other with identical expressions of consternation, and I would have been laughing if I hadn't been hurting so badly. It was as if they'd practiced looking stupid.

This time Quinn was searched very thoroughly, and I was, too, though I had no pockets or anywhere else to conceal anything, unless they wanted to do a body cavity check. I thought Clete - Mr. Pinch-Ass - was going to, just for a second, as his fingers jabbed the spandex into me. Quinn thought so, too. I made an awful noise, a choked gasp of fear, but the sound that came from Quinn's throat was beyond a snarl. It was a deep, throaty, coughing noise, and it was absolutely menacing.

"Leave the girl alone, Clete, and let's get back on the road," the tall driver said, and his voice had that "I'm done with you" edge to it. "I don't know who this guy is, but I don't think he changes into a nutria."

I wondered if Quinn would threaten them with his identity - most Weres seemed to know him, or know of him - but since he didn't volunteer his name, I didn't speak.

Clete shoved me back into the van with a lot of muttering along the lines of "Who died and made you God? You ain't the boss of me," and so on. The taller man clearly was the boss of Clete, which was a good thing. I wanted someone with brains and a shred of decency between me and Clete's probing fingers.

They had a very hard time getting Quinn into the van again. He didn't want to go, and finally two men from the other van came over, very reluctantly, to help Clete and the driver. They bound Quinn's legs with one of those plastic things, the kind where you run the pointed tip through a hole and then twist it. We'd used something similar to close the bag when we'd baked a turkey last Thanksgiving. The tie they used on Quinn was black and plastic and it actually locked with what looked like a handcuff key.

They didn't bind my legs.

I appreciated Quinn's getting angry at their treatment of me, angry enough to struggle to be free, but the end result was that my legs were free and his weren't - because I still didn't present a threat to them, at least in their minds.

They were probably right. I couldn't think of anything to do to prevent them from taking us wherever we were going. I didn't have a weapon, and though I worried at the duct tape binding my hands, my teeth didn't seem to be strong enough to make a weak spot. I rested for a minute, shutting my eyes wearily. The last blow had opened a cut on my cheek. A big tongue rasped over my bleeding face. Then again.

"Don't cry," said a strange, guttural voice, and I opened my eyes to check that it was, indeed, coming from Quinn.

Quinn had so much power that he could stop the change once it had begun. I suspected he could trigger it, too, though I'd noticed that fighting could bring it on in any shape-shifter. He'd had the claws during the fight in Hadley's apartment, and they'd almost tipped the balance in our favor. Since he'd gotten so enraged at Clete during the episode by the side of the road, Quinn's nose had flattened and broadened. I had a close-up view of the teeth in his mouth, teeth that had altered into tiny daggers.

"Why didn't you change fully?" I asked, in a tiny whisper.

Because there wouldn't be enough room for you in this space, babe. After I change, I'm seven feet long and I weigh about four hundred fifty pounds.

That will make any girl gulp. I could only be grateful he'd thought that far ahead. I looked at him some more.

Not grossed out?

Clete and the driver were exchanging recriminations about the phone incident. "Why, grandpa, what big teeth you have," I whispered. The upper and lower canines were so long and sharp they were really scary. (I called them canines; to cats, that might be an insult.)

Sharp... they were sharp. I worked my hands up close to his mouth, and begged him with my eyes to understand. As much as I could tell from his altered face, Quinn was worried. Just as our situation aroused his defensive instincts, the idea I was trying to sell to him excited other instincts. I will make your hands bleed, he warned me, with a great effort. He was partially animal now, and the animal thought processes didn't necessarily travel the same paths as the human.

I bit my own bottom lip to keep from gasping as Quinn's teeth bit into the duct tape. He had to exert a lot of pressure to get the three-inch canines to pierce the duct tape, and that meant that those shorter, sharp incisors bit into my skin, too, no matter how much care he took. Tears began rolling down my face in an unending stream, and I felt him falter. I shook my bound hands to urge him on, and reluctantly he bent back to his task.

"Hey, George, he's biting her," Clete said from the passenger's seat. "I can see his jaw moving."

But we were so close together and the light was so poor that he couldn't see that Quinn was biting the binding on my hands. That was good. I was trying hard to find good things to cling to, because this was looking like a bleak, bleak world just at this moment, lying in the van traveling through the rain on an unknown road somewhere in southern Louisiana.

I was angry and bleeding and sore and lying on my already injured left arm. What I wanted, what would be ideal, would be to find myself clean and bandaged in a nice bed with white sheets. Okay, clean and bandaged and in a clean nightgown. And then Quinn would be in the bed, completely in his human form, and he would be clean and bandaged, too. And he'd have had some rest, and he'd be wearing nothing at all. But the pain of my cut and bleeding arms was becoming too demanding to ignore any longer, and I couldn't concentrate enough to cling to my lovely daydream. Just when I was on the verge of whimpering - or maybe just out-and-out screaming - I felt my wrists separate.

For a few seconds I just lay there and panted, trying to control my reaction to the pain. Unfortunately Quinn couldn't gnaw on the binding on his own hands, since they'd been bound behind him. He finally succeeded in turning over so I could see his wrists.

George said, "What are they doing?"

Clete glanced back at us, but I had my hands together. Since the day was dark, he couldn't see very clearly. "They're not doing anything. He quit biting her," Clete said, sounding disappointed.

Quinn succeeded in getting a claw hooked into the silvery duct tape. His claws were not sharp-edged along their curve like a scimitar; their power lay in the piercing point backed by a tiger's huge strength. But Quinn couldn't get the purchase to exercise that strength. So this was going to take time, and I suspected the tape was going to make a ripping noise when he succeeded in slicing it open.

We didn't have much time left. Any minute even an idiot like Clete would notice that all was not well.

I began the difficult maneuvering to get my hands down to Quinn's feet without giving away the fact that they weren't bound any longer. Clete glanced back when he glimpsed my movement, and I slumped against the empty shelves, my hands clasped together in my lap. I tried to look hopeless, which was awfully easy. Clete got more interested in lighting a cigarette after a second or two, giving me a chance to look at the plastic strap binding Quinn's ankles together. Though it had reminded me of the bag tie we used last Thanksgiving, this plastic was black and thick and extra tough, and I didn't have a knife to cut it or a key to unlock it. I did think Clete had made a mistake putting the restraint on, however, and I hurried to try to take advantage of it. Quinn's shoes were still on, of course, and I unlaced them and pulled them off. Then I held one foot pointed down. That foot began to slide up inside the circle of the tie. As I'd suspected, the shoes had held his feet apart and allowed for some slack.

Though my wrists and hands were bleeding onto Quinn's socks (which I left on so the plastic wouldn't scrape him) I was managing pretty well. He was being stoic about my drastic adjustments to his foot. Finally I heard his bones protest at being twisted into a strange position, but his foot slid up out of the restraint. Oh, thank God.

It had taken me longer to think about than to do. It had felt like hours.

I pulled the restraint down and shoved it into the debris, looked up at Quinn, and nodded. His claw, hooked in the duct tape, ripped at it. A hole appeared. The sound hadn't been loud at all, and I eased myself back full length beside Quinn to camouflage the activity.

I stuck my thumbs in the hole in the duct tape and yanked, achieving very little. There's a reason duct tape is so popular. It's a reliable substance.

We had to get out of that van before it reached its destination, and we had to get away before the other van could pull up behind ours. I scrabbled around through the chalupa wrappers and the cardboard french fry cartons on the floor of the van and finally, in a little gap between the floor and the side, I found an overlooked Phillips screwdriver. It was long and thin.

I looked at it and took a deep breath. I knew what I had to do. Quinn's hands were bound and he couldn't do it. Tears rolled down my face. I was being a crybaby, but I just couldn't help it. I looked at Quinn for a moment, and his features were steely. He knew as well as I did what needed to be done.

Just then the van slowed and took a turn from a parish road, reasonably well paved, onto what felt like a graveled track running into the woods. A driveway, I was sure. We were close to our destination. This was the best chance, maybe the last chance, we would have.

"Stretch your wrists," I murmured, and I plunged the Phillips head into the hole in the duct tape. It became larger. I plunged again. The two men, sensing my frantic movement, were turning as I stabbed at the duct tape a final time. While Quinn strained to part the perforated bindings, I pulled myself to my knees, gripping the latticed partition with my left hand, and I said, "Clete!"

He turned and leaned between the seats, closer to the partition, to see better. I took a deep breath and with my right hand I drove the screwdriver between the crosshatched metal. It went right into his cheek. He screamed and bled and George could hardly pull over fast enough. With a roar, Quinn separated his wrists. Then Quinn moved like lightning, and the minute the van slammed into Park, he and I were out the back doors and running through the woods. Thank God they were right by the road.

Beaded thong sandals are not good for running in the woods, I just want to say here, and Quinn was only in his socks. But we covered some ground, and by the time the startled driver of the second van could pull over and the passengers could leap out in pursuit, we were out of sight of the road. We kept running, because they were Weres, and they would track us. I'd pulled the screwdriver out of Clete's cheek and had it in my hand, and I remember thinking that it was dangerous to run with a pointed object in my hand. I thought about Clete's thick finger probing between my legs, and I didn't feel so bad about what I'd done. In the next few seconds, while I was jumping over a downed tree snagged in some thorny vines, the screwdriver slipped from my hand and I had no time to search for it.

After running for some time, we came to the swamp. Swamps and bayous abound in Louisiana, of course. The bayous and swamps are rich in wildlife, and they can be beautiful to look at and maybe tour in a canoe or something. But to plunge into on foot, in pouring rain, they suck.

Maybe from a tracking point of view this swamp was a good thing, because once we were in the water we wouldn't be leaving any scent. But from my personal point of view, the swamp was awful, because it was dirty and had snakes and alligators and God knows what else.

I had to brace myself to wade in after Quinn, and the water was dark and cool since it was still spring. In the summer, it would feel like wading through warm soup. On a day so overcast, once we were under the overhanging trees, we would be almost invisible to our pursuers, which was good; but the same conditions also meant that any lurking wildlife would be seen approximately when we stepped on it, or when it bit us. Not so good.

Quinn was smiling broadly, and I remembered that some tigers have lots of swamps in their natural habitat. At least one of us was happy.

The water got deeper and deeper, and soon we were swimming. There again, Quinn swam with a large grace that was kind of daunting to me. I was trying with all my might just to be quiet and stealthy. For a second, I was so cold and so frightened I began to think that... no, it wouldn't be better to still be in the van... but it was a near thing, just for a second.

I was so tired. My muscles were shaking with the aftermath of the adrenalin surge of our escape, and then I'd dashed through the woods, and before that there'd been the fight in the apartment, and before that... oh my God, I'd had sex with Quinn. Sort of. Yes, definitely sex. More or less.

We hadn't spoken since we'd gotten out of the van, and suddenly I remembered I'd seen his arm bleeding when we'd burst out of the van. I'd stabbed him with the Phillips head, at least once, while I was freeing him.

And here I was, whining. "Quinn," I said. "Let me help you."

"Help me?" he asked. I couldn't read his tone, and since he was forging through the dark water ahead of me, I couldn't read his face. But his mind, ah, that was full of snarled confusion and anger that he couldn't find a place to stuff. "Did I help you? Did I free you? Did I protect you from the fucking Weres? No, I let that son of a bitch stick his finger up you, and I watched, I couldn't do anything."

Oh. Male pride. "You got my hands free," I pointed out. "And you can help me now."

"How?" he turned to me, and he was deeply upset. I realized that he was a guy who took his protecting very seriously. It was one of God's mysterious imbalances, that men are stronger than women. My grandmother told me it was his way of balancing the scales, since women are tougher and more resilient. I'm not sure that's true, but I knew that Quinn, perhaps because he was a big, formidable guy and, perhaps because he was a weretiger who could turn into this fabulously beautiful and lethal beast, was in a funk because he hadn't killed all our attackers and saved me from being sullied by their touch.

I myself would have preferred that scenario a lot, especially considering our present predicament. But events hadn't fallen out that way. "Quinn," I said, and my voice was just as weary as the rest of me, "they have to have been heading somewhere around here. Somewhere in this swamp."

"That's why we turned off," he said in agreement. I saw a snake twined around a tree branch overhanging the water right behind him, and my face must have looked as shocked as I felt, because Quinn whipped around faster than I could think and had that snake in his hand and snapped it once, twice, and then the snake was dead and floating away in the sluggish water. He seemed to feel a lot better after that. "We don't know where we're going, but we're sure it's away from them. Right?" he asked.

"There aren't any other brains up and running in my range," I said, after a moment's checking. "But I've never denned how big my range is. That's all I can tell you. Let's try to get out of the water for a minute while we think, okay?" I was shivering all over.

Quinn slogged through the water and gathered me up. "Link your arms around my neck," he said.

Sure, if he wanted to do the man thing, that was fine. I put my arms around his neck and he began moving through the water.

"Would this be better if you turned into a tiger?" I asked.

"I might need that later, and I've already partially changed twice today. I better save my strength."

"What kind are you?"

"Bengal," he said, and just then the pattering of the rain on the water stopped.

We heard voices calling then, and we came to a stop in the water, both of our faces turned to the source of the sound. As we were standing there stock-still, I heard something large slide into the water to our right. I swung my eyes in that direction, terrified of what I'd see - but the water was almost still, as if something had just passed. I knew there were tours of the bayous south of New Orleans, and I knew locals made a good living out of taking people out on the dark water and letting them see the alligators. The good thing was, these natives made money, and out-of-staters got to see something they'd never have seen otherwise. The bad thing was, sometimes the locals threw treats to attract the gators. I figured the gators associated humans with food.

I laid my head on Quinn's shoulder and I closed my eyes. But the voices didn't get any closer, and we didn't hear the baying of wolves, and nothing bit my leg to drag me down. "That's what gators do, you know," I told Quinn. "They pull you under and drown you, and stick you somewhere so they can snack on you."

"Babe, the wolves aren't going to eat us today, and neither will the gators." He laughed, a low rumble deep in his chest. I was so glad to hear that sound. After a moment, we began moving through the water again. The trees and the bits of land became close together, the channels narrow, and finally we came up on a piece of land large enough to hold a cabin.

Quinn was half supporting me when we staggered out of the water.

As shelter, the cabin was poor stuff. Maybe the structure had once been a glorified hunting camp, three walls and a roof, no more than that. Now it was a wreck, halfway fallen. The wood had rotted and the metal roof had bent and buckled, rusting through in spots. I went over to the heap of man-tailored material and searched very carefully, but there didn't seem to be anything we could use as a weapon.

Quinn was occupied by ripping the remnants of the duct tape off his wrists, not even wincing when some skin went with it. I worked on my own more gently. Then I just gave out.

I slumped dismally to the ground, my back against a scrubby oak tree. Its bark immediately began making deep impressions in my back. I thought of all the germs in the water, germs that were doubtless speeding through my system the moment they'd gained entry through the cuts on my wrists. The unhealed bite, still covered by a now-filthy bandage, had doubtless received its share of nasty particles. My face was swelling up from the beating I'd taken. I remembered looking in the mirror the day before and seeing that the marks left by the bitten Weres in Shreveport had finally almost faded away. Fat lot of good that had done me.

"Amelia should have done something by now," I said, trying to feel optimistic. "She probably called vampire HQ. Even if our own phone call didn't reach anyone who'd do something about it, maybe someone's looking for us now."

"They'd have to send out human employees. It's still technically daylight, even though the sky's so dark."

"Well, at least the rain's over with," I said. At that moment, it began to rain again.

I thought about throwing a fit, but frankly, it didn't seem worth using up the energy. And there was nothing to do about it. The sky was going to rain, no matter how many fits I threw. "I'm sorry you got caught up in this," I said, thinking that I had a lot for which to apologize.

"Sookie, I don't know if you should be telling me you're sorry." Quinn emphasized the pronouns. "Everything has happened when we were together."

That was true, and I tried to believe all this wasn't my fault. But I was convinced that somehow, it really was.

Out of the blue, Quinn said, "What's your relationship with Alcide Herveaux? We saw him in the bar last week with some other girl. But the cop, the one in Shreveport, said you'd been engaged to him."

"That was bullshit," I said, sitting slumped in the mud. Here I was, deep inside a southern Louisiana swamp, the rain pelting down on me...

Hey, wait a minute. I stared at Quinn's mouth moving, realized he was saying something, but waited for the trailing end of a thought to snag on something. If there'd been a lightbulb above my head, it would have been flashing. "Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea," I said reverently. "That's who's doing this."

Quinn squatted in front of me. "You've picked who's been doing what? How many enemies do you have?"

"At least I know who sent the bitten Weres, and who had us kidnapped," I said, refusing to be sidetracked. Crouched together in the downpour like a couple of cave people, Quinn listened while I talked.

Then we discussed probabilities.

Then we made a plan.