Dead Ever After

other on a job well done. Steve was smiling the whole time. “I was glad to help,” he said, as if he’d taken out the garbage for Claude. “After what happened to my poor wife.”
    “And I was glad to help,” Johan Glassport said, “just because I hate you, Sookie.”
    “Why?” I really couldn’t understand it.
    “You nearly ruined everything for Sophie-Anne and me at Rhodes,” he said. “And you didn’t come to get us when you knew the building was going to collapse. You got your pretty boy Eric, instead.”
    “Sophie-Anne is dead, and it doesn’t make any difference,” I snapped. “I figured you were like a cockroach, you’d survive a nuclear blast!”
    Okay, that maybe wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever said, but honestly! It was insane to think I’d run to help two people I didn’t particularly like when I knew the hotel was going to explode any second. Of course I’d gotten the people I had the strongest feelings for.
    “Actually, I just like to hurt women,” Glassport said. “I don’t really need a reason. I like dark women better, but you’ll do. In a pinch.” And saying that, he poked the flesh of my arm with the knife. And I shrieked.
    “We practically fell over the other guys who were after you,” Newlin said conversationally, as if I weren’t bleeding on the van floor. He’d pulled himself against the driver’s-side wall of the van. There was a strap there for him to hold on to, which he needed, because Claude was driving very fast, and he wasn’t a good driver. “But apparently you’ve taken care of them. And with the vampire on guard duty in your woods, we couldn’t watch you at night. So we knew God was being good to us when we saw our opportunity tonight.”
    “Claude, what about you,” I said, hoping to put off Johan sticking me anymore. “Why do you hate me?”
    “Niall was going to kill me, anyway, since I was trying to organize a coup against him. And that would have been a noble death. But after Dermot blabbed about me searching for the cluviel dor, my dear grandfather decided killing me was too quick. So he tortured me for quite some time.”
    “It hasn’t been that long,” I protested.
    “You’ve been tortured,” he said. “How long did that seem to you?”
    Good point.
    “Besides, we were in Faery, and time passes differently there. And the fae can take more punishment than humans.”
    “Though we intend to discover your limits,” Glassport said.
    “Where are we going?” I dreaded the answer.
    “Oh, we’ve found a little place,” Glassport said. “Just down the road a piece.” He delivered the colloquialism mockingly.
    Pam had wasted her blood healing me. I’d just have more flesh to torture. I don’t mind saying, I was at my wit’s end and then some. I didn’t know how fast Sam or Jason and Michele would be able to follow me, if they even had a clue which direction the van had taken. Maybe the furor over the abduction and the stabbing of the bouncer would impede them even getting out the door. And my guardian vampire, Karin, was back at my house, presumably making sure no coons came out of the woods to steal my tomatoes.
    The first rule about kidnapping attempts is, Don’t get in the car. Well, we were already past that, though I’d given it a try. Probably the next rule was, Observe where you’re going. Oh, I knew that! We were going either north or south or east or west. I told myself not to be a Helpless Hilda, and I thought back. We’d turned to the right out of the parking lot, so we were going north. Okay. That should have been visible from Stompin’ Sally’s, because there weren’t many trees to obscure the line of sight . . . if anyone had had the presence of mind to watch.
    I didn’t think Claude had made any turns since then, which even Claude would know was dumb, so we were going straight to whatever place they’d decided was secure, and it must be very close. I assumed they planned on getting there and concealing the van pretty quickly, before pursuit could even start out.
    I felt like giving up right then. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so defeated. Johan Glassport was still looking at me with that sickly anticipation, and Steve Newlin was praying out loud, thanking the Lord for delivering his enemy into his hands. My heart sank as low as it could go.
    I’d been tortured before, as Claude had so thoughtfully reminded me, and I still bore the scars on my body. I had the scars on my spirit, too, and I