Death's Excellent Vacation (Sookie Stackhouse 9.5)

THERE was a phone box up the street. I stood outside it for a long time in the fine midday misting rain, my hat dripping all around the brim and my shoulders soaked. It wasn't until a stray gleam of sun broke through under the rolled edges of cloud that I realized I was standing in a puddle and it had soaked through my sneakers. All things considered, she'd taken it really well. Six months ago she'd been married and in a car crash--in that order. The husband was buried, the job at EvilMart all she could get with no experience after being a housewife for five years. The car crash had left her in a hospital emergency room, miraculously healed of a collage of broken bones and bloody bruising between one breath and the next after they'd applied the shock pads. It was like white light, she told me. But not real white light--it was like being blind. I knew what she was talking about. It's the Heart choosing its victim. We stoneskin feel the Heart's pull, but sometimes it pulls the soft pink ones, too. The Tiend takes a few so the rest of us can go on. Or at least, that's what we're told. I stepped closer to the phone booth. Its edges were beaded, pearled with rain that was still falling. There was going to be a rainbow soon. Beautiful weather, the type you don't often see in a city where it rains all the time. Instead of dialing, I took two steps back from the phone booth. Sooner or later the Heart would take her. I didn't have to speed the process up. But what the hell was I going to do? She was my problem. I was stoneskin. Serving the Heart is what we do. Indecision warred with duty, ending in a burp of exasperated indigestion tasting of CornNuts. I'd eaten the whole damn bag on the way here. It don't matter. The Heart takes its own. And she's so pretty. The indigestion turned into sourness. I'd left her with an awkward suggestion that she might want to take a shower and that I'd bring her some clothes for the trip. But why Paris? she'd wanted to know. What's there? All I could do was mumble that it was what I was supposed to do, that she would want for nothing, that she would . . . Be happy. And safe. And the shell-shocked look in her swollen red-rimmed eyes was enough to make me feel as if I'd stepped on a fluffy little helpless kitten. Or two. Or a hundred. I forced myself back to the phone booth. Put my hand on the receiver. It probably wasn't working, anyway. If it was out of order, that would be a sign that I didn't have to make this call. It seemed too heavy to lift. I did it anyway and put it gingerly to my ear. The dial tone was really, really loud. I went to hang it up, and duty caught my hand halfway. You know what happens if you don't call in. Come on. The CornNuts tried to crawl free again. The dial tone mocked me. I held my stomach down with sheer force of will and punched the number I never thought I'd call. 'Cause what are the chances of finding a Heart candidate if you never get close to the pinks? Only this time I had, and it figures. Two rings, and it was picked up. The click of relays punched through my temple; I swallowed a shapeless sound. The voice was even, well modulated, with a hint of tenor sweetness. "Report. " I gave my control phrase and my district. Then the seven little words. "I have a Heart candidate. Request transit. " That was the only thing this number was ever used for. A slight pause. "Congratulations. " He said it like he meant it. "You'll have the tickets and requisitions in six hours. " No point in messing around. "Okay. " There was nothing left to say, so I hung up. I thought I caught a muffled "Good luck" before the receiver hit the rest of the phone so hard it shattered. My claws were out, slicing through plastic, metal, and the innards of the phone. My stomach curdled afresh. Shit. That's public property. But what did it matter? After I brought the Heart its candidate, I would stay at the Sanctum and become one of the Inners, keepers of the Mystery and honored servants of the Heart. Any gargoyle in his right mind wants to be part of the Sanctum. From the moment we're hatched or brought in, we're told it's the place to be. The phone died with a gurgle. Quarters spilled out, and the LED screen on the debit-card reader up top flashed wildly twice. That's the trouble with the world. It isn't built strong enough to withstand anything. I turned on my heel. My sneakers were squeaking, since my feet were spreading, toes fusing together and the hind claw jabbing at cheap material. When you shred your shoes all the time, you learn not to buy anything high-end. When I had everything all back together and human-sized again, I trudged back up the block toward home. I suppose I should've been ready for what happened next. When I got back into my cell, it was empty. Maybe I should've locked the door. Or thought the stone panel would obey a candidate as well as a Heartkin. Her car was already hauled out of the EvilMart parking lot. I guess they don't believe in waiting around. There were stars and glittering cascades of pebbly broken safety glass, the damp noxious perfume of the Big Bad, and a lighter gray smell of rain and daylight. The broken purse had already been swept up and taken away somewhere, too. Midday shoppers didn't glance at me--I was too far out in the lot. After a few moments of standing with my eyes closed, sniffing a little, I found what I was after. The thin thread of gold necklace almost burned my fingers. My nose twitched as I turned its supple length over and over. Waiting for the little tingle. A nose for metal is a nose for tracking, that's what the older gargoyles say. Me, I just wait for the tingle. Often as not--even oftener than that--it leads me right to what I'm looking for. This time it ran along my nerves like burning gasoline and almost pulled me out of my human skin. It was hard work, keeping my shambling shape in some modicum of normalcy as I whipped around, the pull hard and close. That's when the cop cars arrived, and the smell of the Big Bad wasn't being rubbed out by the rain. It was fresh and fuming from the EvilMart. "Shit, " I whispered, and lunged into a clumsy run. The cops had their guns out. A SWAT van pulled up, and people started screaming and running because there was a pocka-pocka-pocka of automatic fire from inside the building. Somebody was taking their shopping a little too personally. Or they were trying to kill my Heart candidate. They kill them wherever they find them, and I'd made a lot of noise and fuss last night alerting them to the fact that there was a stoneskin around and a Heart candidate to kill. Stupid me. I leapt on two cars because of the clots of people spilling out in the parking lot. They crunched under my feet, sloping away as I jumped. It was chaos. The cars crumpled because I had blurred out into trueform. Who cared what they saw? The screaming inside was taking on a more panicked, desperate quality, and for once I was glad I'm not imaginative. Imagination just gets in the way when you have a job to do. The automatic doors didn't open, so I busted through. Glass tinkled, shattered, and flew. I was moving almost too fast for human eyes to track, and all that mass moving so quickly means it's hard to slow down or stop. My claws dug huge furrows in the flooring as I bounded into the store and had to twist to avoid smooshing some of the pinks who were running around. Oh, great. Just great. Harpies. There were four of them. EvilMarts are built so warehouse- high, the feathered bitches could even skim the tops of aisles. They were circling, looking for something. And there were a bunch of little gray gneevil-gnomes with AK-47s. Heart have mercy, it's an invasion! I squashed one gneevil by landing on him, spun and leapt, and my nose tingled. Good luck finding Kate in all this--but I had to find her, and the Heart inside me told me she was here. Well, best way is the most direct way. The Heart in me pulled, and I followed it, building up every iota of speed I could. One of the nice things about being stoneskin: Walls don't hold up to us. Stone we can whisper aside. Steel struts? They break. And drywall? Don't make me laugh. One of the harpies let out a chilling scream. It'd seen me. The sound shattered glass, and one of the aisles exploded. Dish soap, laundry soap, cleaning products spilled out in a tide. I was going fast enough it didn't matter, claws ground into the flooring as I uncoiled and flew, wind whistling in my ears and bullets spattering behind me. The wall crumpled like paper. I blew through it and landed in something that looked like a conference room, a long table and a wall with a whiteboard and sheets of fluttering paper tacked to it. Chairs spun as I cracked right through the cheap- ass table. I skidded through another wall and found a break room. The impact broke the coffeepot, hurling it across the room, and the Heart in me sent a ringing thrill through every inch of nerve and meat I owned. There was a group of screaming pinks cowering in the break room. Drywall dust filled the air. I coughed, digging my hind claws in, and jolted to a stop. Kate wasn't screaming. She stood in the middle of them, mouth ajar and eyes wide, staring at me. She clutched her broken purse to her chest. She also wore one of my hooded sweatshirt jackets, zipped up to the very top and absurdly big on her. Her hair, long and loose, fluttered on the breeze from me busting through the wall. I opened my mouth to say something right before one of the harpies plowed through the hole I'd made and things got interesting. I hate harpies. They smell horrible. When you rip 'em apart, they screech so bad it makes your ears want to bleed. They aren't that bad if they're grounded, though. And then there was just Kate to worry about--grabbing her and getting her away from the gnomes with guns.