Dead As A Doornail (EXPORT) (Gollancz S.F.)

I knew my brother was going to turn into a panther before he did. Driving him out to the crossroads community of Hotshot, I watched Jason stare into the January sunset, his face tight with a fear he was trying to master. “You got your cell phone in your pocket?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Tonight was the first full moon of the new year. When I parked, he turned to me, and even in the dim light, I saw the change in his eyes. They weren't blue like mine anymore. They were yellow. “My face feels funny,” he said, still not putting it all together. The man waiting for us, Calvin Norris, had eyes like golden-green jewels. “I'll take good care of him,” Calvin promised. Behind him, the air around my brother seemed to shimmer. I had to make myself say, “Thank you.”

When Jason showed up at my door the next morning, bruised and scratched, he was quiet at first. Then, over coffee, he told me. “It was the most incredible experience of my life,” he said, his blue eyes normal again. “It's the most awesome rush…You feel the magic in you, feel your bones moving and adapting, your vision changes. And then you're down on the ground and walking in a whole different way, and as for running - damn, you can run.” He wasn't suicidal. He wasn't even despairing. The relief was so incredible it was like a drug, and for the first time since he'd been bitten, I felt a flicker of hope. He was going to be okay.

That fragile peace shattered a few nights later. I was working my shift at Merlotte's, the air thick with smoke and chatter, when Sam Merlotte, my boss, followed me out to the parking lot at closing time. Just as I turned to say something, I saw his expression shift from waiting to shock. A dark red stain spread across his left leg, and I heard the crack of a gunshot. Then there was blood everywhere, and Sam collapsed to the ground as I started to scream. He was the third shifter to be shot in as many weeks. A young were-fox named Heather Kinman was already dead, and Calvin Norris was clinging to life in the hospital. Someone was hunting us.

With Sam laid up, I had no choice but to go to Shreveport for help, to the vampire bar Fangtasia. The air inside hummed with a dangerous energy, a mix of mortal curiosity and undead power. I found Eric Northman, the vampire Sheriff of the area, holding court in a corner booth, looking every bit the Viking outlaw he once was. After I explained that Sam needed a temporary bartender - and that he couldn't risk another shifter - Eric agreed. The man he sent was a new hire, an English vampire with a black eye patch and the theatrical flair of a pirate. “Charles Twining, at your service,” he'd said with a flourish. And just like that, I had a new guardian, whether I wanted one or not.

The threats kept piling on. A pair of private investigators appeared at my door, asking questions about the night Debbie Pelt disappeared. She was Alcide Herveaux's ex-fiancée, a volatile were-creature who'd tried to kill me in my own kitchen. I'd shot her in self-defense, and Eric, in the grip of a witch's curse that had wiped his memory, had helped me dispose of the body. Now, facing the cold eyes of the investigators, the secret felt like a stone in my gut. As if that wasn't enough, my house burned. I was pulled from the smoke by my fairy godmother, Claudine, just as the back porch and kitchen were engulfed in flames. Charles killed the arsonist, a stranger with a Fellowship of the Sun membership card in his wallet. Suddenly, I was homeless, living in one of Sam's spare duplexes.

Pulled deeper into the supernatural world, I found myself a reluctant witness at a contest to name the new packmaster for the Shreveport werewolves. Alcide's father, Jackson, was one of the two contenders. The other was a brutish man named Patrick Furnan. The contest was a brutal series of trials - of agility, endurance against silver, and finally, combat. When I sensed Furnan was cheating, I spoke up, exposing a plot to drug his opponent. The pack's judgment was swift but strange: the contest would continue, but to win, Furnan would have to kill Jackson. I stood there, helpless, and watched as the fight ended in a spray of blood, as Furnan tore out Jackson's throat. In his grief and anger, Alcide blamed me for not preventing it, and another friendship turned to dust.

My own life was the next to hang in the balance. Leaving the library one evening, I felt a sharp, sickening pulse of malice from a mind nearby. I ducked an instant before the shot, the bullet tearing through my shoulder instead of my heart. The sniper had finally come for me. The attack proved what some had suspected: the killer was choosing victims by scent, mistaking me for a shifter because I'd been close to Calvin and Alcide. The town was on edge, and so was I, wondering which shadow the next bullet would come from.

The truth began to unravel in pieces. After a brutal confrontation in an alley behind Merlotte's, the sniper was revealed to be Sweetie Des Arts, our new cook. She was a half-were, bitten against her will, and her life had been ruined. Consumed by self-loathing, she had taken to hunting down other two-natured folk, trying to purge the world of the creature she'd become. She cornered me and a local detective, Andy Bellefleur, and in the ensuing standoff, Andy shot her dead. But one piece didn't fit: the bullet that hit Sam didn't match the others. There was a second shooter.

The final, chilling truth came from a cryptic message delivered by Bubba, the undead King of Rock ‘n' Roll. “It ain't what it seems,” he told me, sent by Eric. The new bartender, Charles Twining, wasn't who he claimed to be. He wasn't from Mississippi; he was an assassin sent by the father of a vampire Eric had been forced to execute. His mission was revenge: to kill me, the one person whose death would cause Eric the most pain. He shot Sam himself to create the job opening at Merlotte's. He set the fire and framed the dead man. Trapped in the hallway of the bar, I fought for my life, shoving my broken silver chain into his mouth as he lunged for my throat. The scent of burning flesh filled the air, and the men of Bon Temps, my neighbors and friends, poured out of the bar to finish what I had started.

In the quiet aftermath, Eric found me. He knew everything now - about Debbie Pelt, about our time together when his memory was gone. “You said I told you that you were the best I ever had,” he murmured, his blue eyes holding mine. “But did you return the compliment?” I stood there, bruised and bone-weary, a survivor of fires and bullets and the tangled debts of the dead. Looking at the ancient vampire before me, a small smile touched my lips. “Wouldn't you like to know?” I said, and went back to work.