Dead Until Dark (26 page)

realize she had to be honest.

"Anyone that would have her," Belinda said bluntly.

I saw an image in Belinda's mind, but she had to think the name.

"Which one from here?" I asked suddenly, and then I had the name. My eyes sought his corner before I could open my mouth, and then he was on me, Long Shadow, vaulting over the chair holding Belinda to land on top of me as I crouched in front of her. I was bowled over backward into Eric's desk, and only my upflung arms saved me from his teeth sinking into my throat and ripping it out. He bit my forearm savagely, and I screamed; at least I tried to, but with so little air left from the impact it was more like an alarmed choking noise.

I was only conscious of the heavy figure on top of me and the pain of my arm, my own fear. I hadn't been frightened that the Rats were going to kill me until almost too late, but I understood that to keep his name from leaving my lips, Long Shadow was ready to kill me instantly, and when I heard the awful noise and felt his body press even harder on me I didn't have any idea what it meant. I'd been able to see his eyes over the top of my arm. They were wide, brown, crazed, icy. Suddenly they dulled and seemed to almost flat-ten. Blood gushed out of Long Shadow's mouth, bathing my arm. It flowed into my open mouth, and I gagged. His teeth relaxed, and his face fell in on itself. It began to wrinkle. Hiseyes turned into gelatinous pools. Handfuls of his thick black hair fell on my face. I was shocked beyond moving. Hands gripped my shoul-ders and began pulling me out from under the decaying corpse. I pushed with my feet to scrabble back faster.

There wasn't an odor,
bat there was gunk, black
and streaky, and the absolute horror and disgust of watching Long Shadow deconstruct with incredible speed. There was a stake sticking out of his back. Eric stood watching, as we all were, but he had a mallet in his hand. Bill was behind me, having pulled me out from under Long Shadow. Pam was standing by the door, her hand gripping Belinda's arm. The waitress looked as rocky as I must have.

Even the gunk began to vanish in smoke. We all stood frozen until the last wisp was gone. The carpet had a kind of scorched mark on it.

"You'll have to get you an area rug," I said, completely out of the blue. Honest to God, I couldn't stand the silence any more.

"Your mouth is bloody," Eric said. All the vampires had fully extended fangs. They'd gotten pretty excited. "He bled onto me." "Did any go down your throat?" "Probably. What does that mean?" 'That remains to be seen," Pam said. Her voice was dark and husky. She was eyeing Belinda in a way that would have made me distinctly nervous, but Belinda seemed to be preen-ing, incredibly. "Usually," Pam went on, her eyes on Be-linda's pouty lips, "we drink from humans, not the other way around." Eric was looking at me with interest, the same kind of interest that Pam had in Belinda. "How do things look to you now, Sookie?" he asked in such a smooth voice you'd never think he'd just executed an old friend.

How
did
things look to me now? Brighter. Sounds were clearer, and I could hear better. I wanted to turn and look at Bill, but I was scared to take my eyes off Eric.

"Well, I guess Bill and me'll go now," I said, as if no other process was possible. "I did that for you, Eric,
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and now we get to go. No retaliation for Ginger and Belinda andBruce, okay? We agreed." I started toward the door with an assurance I was far from feeling. "I'll just bet you need to go see how the bar is doing, huh? Who's mixing the drinks, tonight?"

"We got a substitute," Eric said absently, his eyes never leaving my neck. "You smell different, Sookie," he mur-mured, taking a step closer.

"Well, remember now, Eric, we had a deal," I reminded him, my smile broad and tense, my voice snapping with good cheer. "Bill and I are going home now, aren't we?" I risked a glance behind me at Bill. My heart sank. His eyes were open wide, unblinking, his lips drawn back in a silent snarl to expose his extended fangs. His pupils were dilated enor-mously. He was staring at Eric.

"Pam, get out of the way," I said, quietly but sharply. Once Pam was distracted from her own blood lust, she evaluated the situation in one glance. She swung open the office door and propelled Belinda through it, stood beside it to usher us out. "Call Ginger," I suggested, and the sense of what I was saying penetrated Pam's fog of desire. "Ginger," she called hoarsely, and the blond girl stumbled from a door down the hall. "Eric wants you," Pam told her. Ginger's face lit up like she had a date with David Duchovny, and she was in the room and rubbing against Eric almost as fast as a vampire could have. As if he'd woken from a spell, Eric looked down at Ginger when she ran her hands up his chest. As he bent to kiss her, Eric looked at me over her head. "I'll see you again," he said, and I pulled Bill out the door as quick as a wink. Bill didn't want to go. It was like trying to tow a log. But once we were out in the hall he seemed to be a little more aware of the need to get out of there, and we hurried from Fangtasia and got into Bill's car.

I looked down at myself. I was bloodstained and wrinkled, and I smelled funny. Yuck. I looked over at Bill to share my disgust with him, but he was looking at me in an unmistak-able way.

"No," I said forcefully. "You start this car and get out of here before anything else happens, Bill Compton. I tell you flat, I'm not in the mood."

He scooted across the seat toward me, his arms scoopingme up before I could say anything else. Then his mouth was on mine, and after a second his tongue began licking the blood from my face. I was really scared. I was also really angry. I grabbed his ears and pulled his head away from mine using every ounce of strength I possessed, which happened to be more than I thought I had. His eyes were still like caves with ghosts dwelling in their depths.

"Bill!" I shrieked. I shook him. "Snap out of it!"

Slowly, his personality seeped back into his eyes. He drew a shuddering sigh. He kissed me lightly on the lips.

"Okay, can we go home now?" I asked, ashamed that my voice was so quavery.

"Sure," he said, sounding none too steady himself.

"Was that like sharks scenting blood?" I asked, after a fifteen-minute silent drive that almost had us out of Shreve-port.

"Good analogy."

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He didn't need to apologize. He'd been doing what nature dictated, as least as natural as vampires got. He didn't bother to. I would kind of liked to have heard an apology.

"So, am I in trouble?" I asked finally. It was two in the morning, and I found the question didn't bother me as much as it should have.

"Eric will hold you to your word," Bill said. "As to whether he will leave you alone personally, 1 don't know. I wish..." but his voice trailed off. It was the first time I'd heard Bill wish for anything.

"Sixty thousand dollars isn't a lot of money to a vampire, surely," I observed. "You all seem to have plenty of money." "Vampires rob their victims, of course," Bill said matter-of-factly. "Early on, we take the money from the corpse. Later, when we're more experienced, we can exert enough control to persuade a human to give us money willingly, then forget it's been done. Some of us hire money managers, some of us go into real estate, some of us live on the interest from our investments. Eric and Pam went in together on the bar. Eric put up most of the money, Pam the rest. They hadknown Long Shadow for a hundred years, and they hired him to be bartender. He betrayed them."

"Why would he steal from them?"

"He must have had some venture he needed the capital for," Bill said absently. "And he was in a mainstreaming position. He couldn't just go out and kill a bank manager after hypnotizing him and persuading the man to give him the money. So he took it from Eric."

"Wouldn't Eric have loaned it to him?"

"If Long Shadow hadn't been too proud to ask, yes," Bill said. We had another long silence. Finally I said, "I always think of vampires as smarter than humans, but they're not, huh?"

"Not always," he agreed.

When we reached the outskirts of Bon Temps, I asked Bill to drop me off at home. He looked sideways at me, but didn't say anything. Maybe vampires were smarter than humans, after all.

THE NEXT DAY, when I was getting ready for work, I realized I was definitely off vampires for a while. Even Bill.

I was ready to remind myself I was a human.

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The trouble was, I had to notice that I was a changed human.

It wasn't anything major. After the first infusion of Bill's blood on the night the Rats had beaten me, I'd felt healed, healthy, stronger. But not markedly different. Maybe more— well, sexier. After my second draft of Bill's blood, I'd felt really strong, and I'd been braver because I'd had more confidence. I felt more secure in my sexuality and its power. It seemed appar-ent I was handling my disability with more aplomb and capa-bility.

I'd had Long Shadow's blood by accident. The next morn-ing, looking in the mirror, my teeth were whiter and sharper. My hair looked lighter and livelier, and my eyes were brighter. I looked like a poster girl for good hygiene, or some healthy cause like taking vitamins or drinking milk. The sav-age bite on my arm (Long Shadow's last bite on this earth, I realized) was not completely healed, but it was well on its way.

Then my purse spilled as I picked it up, and my changerolled under the couch. I held up the end of the couch with one hand while with the other I retrieved the coins.

Whoa.

I straightened and took a deep breath. At least the sunlight didn't hurt my eyes, and I didn't want to bite everyone I saw. I'd enjoyed my breakfast toast, rather than longing for tomato juice. I wasn't turning into a vampire. Maybe I was sort of an enhanced human?

Life had sure been simpler when I hadn't dated.

When I got to Merlotte's, everything was ready except for slicing the lemons and limes. We served the fruit both with mixed drinks and with tea, and I got out the cutting board and a sharp knife. Lafayette was tying on his apron as I got the lemons from the big refrigerator.

"You highlighted your hair, Sookie?"

I shook my head. Under the enveloping white apron, La-fayette was a symphony of color; he was wearing a fuschia thin-strap tee, dark purple jeans, red thong sandals, and he had sort of raspberry eye shadow on.

"It sure looks lighter," he said skeptically, raising his own plucked brows.

"I've been out in the sun a lot," I assured him. Dawn had never gotten along with Lafayette, whether because he was black or because he was gay, I didn't know ... maybe both. Arlene and Charlsie just accepted the cook, but didn't go out of their ways to be friendly. But I'd always kind of liked Lafayette because he conducted what had to be a tough life with verve and grace.

I looked down at the cutting board. All the lemons had been quartered. All the limes had been sliced. My hand was holding the knife, and it was wet with juices. I had done it without knowing it. In about thirty seconds. I closed my eyes. My God.

When I opened them, Lafayette was staring from my face to my hands.

"Tell me I didn't just see that, girlfriend," he suggested.

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"You didn't," I said. My voice was cool and level, I was surprised to note. "Excuse me, I got to put these away." I put the fruit in separate containers in the big cooler behind the bar where Sam kept the beer. When I shut the door, Samwas standing there, his arms crossed across his chest. He didn't look happy.

"Are you all right?" he asked. His bright blue eyes scanned me up and down. "You do something to your hair?" he said uncertainly.

I laughed. I realized that my guard had slid into place easily, that it didn't have to be a painful process.

"Been out in the sun," I said. "What happened to your arm?" I looked down at my right forearm. I'd covered the bite with a bandage. "Dog bit me." "Had it had its shots?" "Sure."

I looked up at Sam, not too far, and it seemed to me his wiry, curly, red-blond hair snapped with energy. It seemed to me I could hear his heart beating. I could feel his uncer-tainly, his desire. My body responded instantly. I focussed on his thin lips, and the rich smell of his aftershave filled my lungs. He moved two inches closer. I could feel the breath going in and out of his lungs. I knew his penis was stiffening. Then Charlsie Tooten came in the front door and slammed it behind her. We both took a step away from each other. Thank God for Charlsie, I thought. Plump, dumb, good-natured, and hardworking, Charlsie was a dream employee. Married to Ralph, her high school sweetheart, who worked at one of the chicken processing plants, Charlsie had a girl in the eleventh grade and a married daughter. Charlsie loved to work at the bar so she could get out and see people, and she had a knack for dealing with drunks that got them out the door without a fight.

"Hi, you two!" she called cheerfully. Her dark brown hair (L'Oreal, Lafayette said) was pulled back dramatically to hang from the crown of her head in a cascade of ringlets. Her blouse was spotless and the pockets of her shorts gaped since the contents were too packed. Charlsie was wearing sheer black support hose and Keds, and her artificial nails were a sort of burgundy red.

"That girl of mine is expecting. Just call me Grandma!" she said, and I could tell Charlsie was happy as a clam. I

gave her the expected hug, and Sam patted her on the shoul-der. We were both glad to see her.

"When is the baby due?" I asked, and Charlsie was off and running. I didn't have to say anything for the next five minutes. Then Arlene trailed in, makeup inexpertly covering the hickeys on her neck, and she listened to everything all over again. Once my eyes met Sam's, and after a little mo-ment, we looked away simultaneously.

Then we began serving the lunchtime crowd, and the in-cident was over.