Dead Reckoning: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

point?”
    “The point would be the lesson he’d be making to other vampires who might be thinking of trying to overthrow him.” Eric’s eyes focused on the mantelpiece, crowded with Stackhouse family pictures. He didn’t want to look into my face when he said what he was going to tell me next. “Heidi told me that two years ago, when Victor was still a sheriff in Nevada, in Reno . . . a new vampire named Chico talked back to him. Chico’s father was dead, but his mother was still living, and in fact had married again and had other children. Victor had her abducted. To correct Chico’s manners, he cut out the mother’s tongue while Chico watched. He made Chico eat it.”
    There was so much disturbing about that, that I had a hard time thinking it through. “Vampires can’t eat,” I said. “What . . . ?”
    “Chico was violently ill, and in fact threw up blood,” Eric said. He still didn’t meet my eyes. “He became too weak to move. While he lay on the floor, his mother bled to death. He couldn’t crawl to her to give her blood to save her.”
    “Heidi volunteered this story?”
    “Yes. I had asked her why she was so pleased she’d been sent to Area Five.”
    Heidi, a vamp who specialized in tracking, had become part of Eric’s crew courtesy of Victor. Of course she was supposed to spy on Eric, and because that was not a secret, no one seemed to mind. I didn’t know Heidi well, but I knew she had a living child, a drug addict in Reno, so I wasn’t at all surprised that she’d taken Victor’s lesson to heart. Learning this would indeed cause any vampire with living relatives, or any human loved ones, to fear Victor. But they’d also loathe him and want him dead—and this was the aspect Victor hadn’t thought of, I guessed, when he’d taught that lesson.
    “Victor’s either shortsighted or super cocky,” I concluded out loud, and Eric nodded.
    “Maybe both,” he said.
    “How’d you feel when you heard that story?” I asked.
    “I . . . didn’t want that to happen to you,” he said. He gave me a puzzled face. “What are you looking for, Sookie? What answer shall I give?”
    Though I knew it was futile—knew I was barking up the wrong tree—I was looking for moral repugnance. I was looking for “I would never be so cruel to a woman and her son.”
    At the same time I was wanting a thousand-year-old vampire to be upset about the death of a human woman he hadn’t known—a death he couldn’t have prevented—I knew it was crazy, wrong, and bad that I myself was plotting to kill Victor. His complete absence was what I longed for. I had no doubt that if Pam called to say a safe had fallen on top of Victor, I would dance around with glee.
    “That’s okay,” I said. “Never mind.”
    Eric gave me a dark look. He couldn’t see the depth of my unhappiness—not now, not since the bond was severed. But he certainly knew me well enough to see that I wasn’t content. I forced myself to address the problem at hand. “You know who you should talk to,” I said. “Remember the night we went to Vampire’s Kiss, that server who tipped me off about the fairy blood by just a look and a thought.”
    Eric nodded.
    “I hate to pull him in any further. But I don’t see we have another choice. We have to do this with everything we’ve got, or we’re going down.”
    “Sometimes,” Eric said, “you astonish me.”
    Sometimes—and not always in a good way—I astonished myself.
    Eric and I drove to Vampire’s Kiss again. The parking lot was crowded, maybe not as much as it had been on our previous visit. We parked out back behind the club. If Victor was actually in the club that night, there’d be no reason for him to check out the employee parking lot, and there’d be no reason for him to remember which car was mine. While we waited, I got a text from Amelia telling me that they were back at the house, and how was I doing?
    “Am ok,” I texted back. “We’re good. C & D there?”
    “Yes,” she replied. “Sniffing porch, don’t know why. Fairies! Got ur keys?”
    I told her I did, but that I wasn’t sure I’d be home that night. We were a little closer to Shreveport than Bon Temps, and I’d need to take Eric home unless he flew. But his car would be . . . Oh, well, that was why he always had a daytime guy.
    “Did you replace Bobby yet?” I asked. I hated to bring up a sore subject, but I wanted to know.
    “Yes,” Eric said. “I hired a man two days ago. He came