Living Dead in Dallas

Hispanic woman in the hall,and as her eyes flicked over to us, I caught a mental signature I’d only felt once before. Then, it came from Sam Merlotte. This woman, like Sam, was a shapeshifter, and her big eyes widened as she caught the waft of “difference” from me. I tried to catch her gaze, and for a minute we stared at each other, me trying to send her a message, and her trying not to receive it.
    “Did I tell you the first church to occupy this site was built in the early sixties?” Sarah was saying, as the tiny woman went on down the hall at a fast clip. She glanced back over her shoulder, and I met her eyes again. Hers were frightened. Mine said, “Help.”
    “No,” I said, startled at the sudden turn in the conversation.
    “Just a little bit more,” Sarah coaxed. “We’ll have seen the whole church.” We’d come to the last door at the end of the corridor. The corresponding door on the other wing had led to the outside. The wings had seemed to be exactly balanced from the outside of the church. My observations had obviously been faulty, but still . . .
    “It’s certainly a large place,” said Hugo agreeably. Whatever ambivalent emotions had been plaguing him seemed to have subsided. In fact, he no longer seemed at all concerned. Only someone with no psychic sense at all could fail to be worried about this situation.
    That would be Hugo. No psychic sense at all. He looked only interested when Polly opened the last door, the door flat at the end of the corridor. It should have led outside.
    Instead, it led down.

Chapter 6
    “ Y OU KNOW , I have a touch of claustrophobia,” I said instantly. “I didn’t know many Dallas buildings had a basement, but I have to say, I just don’t believe I want to see it.” I clung to Hugo’s arm and tried to smile in a charming but self-deprecating way.
    Hugo’s heart was beating like a drum because he was scared shitless—I’ll swear he was. Faced with those stairs, somehow his calm was eroding again. What was with Hugo? Despite his fear, he gamely patted my shoulder and smiled apologetically at our companions. “Maybe we should go,” he murmured.
    “But I really think you should see what we’ve got underground. We actually have a bomb shelter,” Sarah said, almost laughing in her amusement. “And it’s fully equipped, isn’t it, Steve?”
    “Got all kinds of things down there,” Steve agreed. He still looked relaxed, genial, and in charge, but I no longer saw those as benign characteristics. He stepped forward, and since he was behind us, I had to step forward or risk him touching me, which I found I very much did not want.
    “Come on,” Sarah said enthusiastically. “I’ll bet Gabe’s down here, and Steve can go on and see what Gabe wanted while we look at the rest of the facility.” She trotted down the stairs as quickly as she’d moved down the hall, her round butt swaying in a way I probably would have considered cute if I hadn’t been just on the edge of terrified.
    Polly waved us down ahead of her, and down we went. I was going along with this because Hugo seemed absolutely confident that no harm would come to him. I was picking that up very clearly. His earlier fear had completely abated. It was as though he’d resigned himself to some program, and his ambivalence had vanished. Vainly, I wished he were easier to read. I turned my focus on Steve Newlin, but what I got from him was a thick wall of self-satisfaction.
    We moved farther down the stairs, despite the fact that my steps had slowed, and then become slower again. I could tell Hugo was convinced that he would get to walk back up these stairs: after all, he was a civilized person. These were all civilized people.
    Hugo really couldn’t imagine that anything irreparable could happen to him, because he was a middle-class white American with a college education, as were all the people on the stairs with us.
    I had no such conviction. I was not a wholly civilized person.
    That was a new and interesting thought, but like many of my ideas that afternoon, it had to be stowed away, to be explored at leisure. If I ever had leisure again.
    At the base of the stairs there was another door, and Sarah knocked on it in a pattern. Three fast, skip, two fast, my brain recorded. I heard locks shooting back.
    Black Crewcut—Gabe—opened the door. “Hey, you brought me some visitors,” he said enthusiastically. “Good show!” His golf shirt was tucked neatly into hispleated