“I’m not worse,” he said. He shrugged, a minimal lift of the shoulders.
“What’s with the apathy?” I said.
“I don’t seem to want anything any longer,” Bill told me, after a lengthy pause. “I’m not interested in my computer anymore. I’m not inclined to work on the incoming additions and subtractions to my database. Eric sends Felicia over to package up the orders and send them out. She gives me some blood while she’s here.” Felicia was the bartender at Fangtasia. She hadn’t been a vampire that long.
Could vampires suffer from depression? Or was the silver poisoning responsible?
“Isn’t there anyone who can help you? I mean, help you heal?”
He smiled in a sardonic sort of way. “My creator,” he said. “If I could drink from Lorena, I would have healed completely by now.”
“Well, that sucks.” I couldn’t let him know that bothered me, but
ouch
. I’d killed Lorena. I shook the feeling off. She’d needed killing, and it was over and done with. “Did she make any other vampires?”
Bill looked slightly less apathetic. “Yes, she did. She has another living child.”
“Well, would that help? Getting blood from that vamp?”
“I don’t know. It might. But I won’t. I can’t reach out to her.”
“You don’t know if it would help or not? You-all need a Handy Hints rule book or something.”
“Yes,” he said, as if he’d never heard of such an idea. “Yes, we do indeed.”
I wasn’t going to ask Bill why he was reluctant to contact someone who could help him. Bill was a stubborn and persistent man, and I wasn’t going to be able to persuade him otherwise since he’d made up his mind. We sat in silence for a moment.
“Do you love Eric?” Bill said, all of a sudden. His deep brown eyes were fi xed on me with the total attention that had played a large part in attracting me to him when we’d met.
Was everyone I knew fixated on my relationship with the sheriff of Area Five? “Yes,” I said steadily. “I do love him.”
“Does he say he loves you?”
“Yes.” I didn’t look away.
“I wish he would die, some nights,” Bill said.
We were being really honest tonight. “There’s a lot of that going around. There are a couple of people I wouldn’t miss myself,” I admitted. “I think about that when I’m grieving over the people I’ve cared about who’ve passed, like Claudine and Gran and Tray.” And they were just at the top of the list. “So I guess I know how you feel. But I—please don’t wish bad stuff on Eric.” I’d lost about as much as I could stand to lose in the way of important people in my life.
“Who do you want dead, Sookie?” There was a spark of curiosity in his eyes.
“I’m not about to tell you.” I gave him a weak smile. “You might try to make it happen for me. Like you did with Uncle Bartlett.” When I’d discovered Bill had killed my grandmother’s brother, who’d molested me—that’s when I should have cut and run. Wouldn’t my life have been different? But it was too late now.
“You’ve changed,” he said.
“Sure, I have. I thought I was going to die for a couple of hours. I hurt like I’ve never hurt before. And Neave and Lochlan enjoyed it so much. That snapped something inside me. When you and Niall killed them, it was like an answer to the biggest prayer I’d ever prayed. I’m supposed to be a Christian, but most days I don’t feel like I can even presume to say that about myself any longer. I have a lot of mad left over. When I can’t sleep, I think about the other people who didn’t care how much pain and trouble they caused me. And I think about how good I’d feel if they died.”
That I could tell Bill about this awful secret part of me was a measure of how close I’d been to him.
“I love you,” he said. “Nothing you do or say will change that. If you asked me to bury a body for you—or to make a body—I would do it without a qualm.”
“We’ve got some bad history between us, Bill, but you’ll always have a special place in my heart.” I cringed inside when I heard the hackneyed phrase coming from my own mouth. But sometimes clichés are true; this was the truth. “I hardly feel worthy of being cared about that strongly,” I admitted.
He managed a smile. “As to your being worthy, I don’t think falling in love has much to do with the worth of the object of love. But I’d dispute your assessment. I think you’re a fine woman, and I think you always try to be the best person you can be. No one could be. carefree and sunny. after coming as close to death as you did.”
I rose to leave. Sam had wanted me to see Bill, to understand his situation, and I’d done that. When Bill got up to see me to the door, I noticed he didn’t have the lightning speed he’d once had. “You’re going to live, right?” I asked him, suddenly frightened.
“I think so,” he said, as if it didn’t make any difference one way or another. “But just in case, give me a kiss.”
I put one arm around his neck, the arm that wasn’t burdened with the flashlight, and I let him put his lips against mine. The feeling of him, the smell of him, triggered a lot of memories. For what seemed like a very long time, we stood pressed together, but instead of growing excited, I grew calmer. I was oddly conscious of my breathing—slow and steady, almost like the respiration of someone sleeping.
I could see that Bill looked better when I stepped away. My eyebrows flew up.
“Your fairy blood helps me,” he said.
“I’m just an eighth fairy. And you didn’t take any.”
“Proximity,” he said briefly. “The touch of skin on skin.” His lips quirked up in a smile. “If we made love, I would be much closer to being healed.”
Bullshit,
I thought. But I can’t say that cool voice didn’t make something leap south of my navel, in a momentary twinge of lust. “Bill, that’s not gonna happen,” I said. “But you should think about tracking down that other vampire child of Lorena’s.”
“Yes,” he said. “Maybe.” His dark eyes were curiously luminous; that might have been an effect of the poisoning, or it might have been the candlelight. I knew he wouldn’t make an effort to reach out to Lorena’s other get. Whatever spark my visit had raised in him was already dying out.
Feeling sad, concerned, and also just a tiny smidge pleased—you can’t tell me it’s not flattering to be loved so much, because it is—I went home through the graveyard. I patted Bill’s tombstone by habit. As I walked carefully over the uneven ground, I thought about Bill, naturally enough. He’d been a Confederate soldier. He’d survived the war only to succumb to a vampire after his return home to his wife and children, a tragic end to a hard life.
I was glad all over again that I’d killed Lorena.
Here’s something I didn’t like about myself: I realized I didn’t feel bad when I killed a vampire. Something inside me kept insisting they were dead already, and that the first death had been the one that was most important. When I’d killed a human I’d loathed, my reaction had been much more intense.
Then I thought,
You’d think I’d be glad that I was avoiding some pain instead of thinking I should feel worse about taking out Lorena
. I hated trying to figure out what was best morally, because so often that didn’t jibe with my gut reaction.
The bottom line of all this self-examination was that I’d killed Lorena, who could have cured Bill. Bill had gotten wounded when he came to my rescue. Clearly, I had a responsibility. I’d try to figure out what to do.
By the time I realized I’d been alone in the dark and should have been mortally afraid (at least according to D’Eriq), I was walking into my well-lit backyard. Maybe worrying about my spiritual life was a welcome distraction from reliving physical torture. Or maybe I felt better because I’d done someone a good turn; I’d hugged Bill, and that had made him feel better. When I went to bed that night, I was able to lie on my side in my favorite position instead of tossing and turning, and I slept with no dreams—at least, none that I could remember in the morning.
For the next week, I enjoyed untroubled sleep, and as a result I began to feel much more like my former self. It was gradual, but perceptible. I hadn’t thought of a way to help Bill, but I bought him a new CD (Beethoven) and put it where he’d find it when he got out of his daytime hiding place. Another day I sent him an e-card. Just so he knew I was thinking about him.
Each time I saw Eric, I felt a little more cheerful. And finally, I had my very own orgasm, a moment so explosive it was like I’d been saving up for a holiday.
“You. Are you all right?” Eric asked. His blue eyes looked down at me, and he was half-smiling, as if he weren’t sure whether he should be clapping or calling an ambulance.
“I am very, very all right,” I whispered. Grammar be damned. “I’m so all right I might slide off the bed and lie in a puddle on the floor.”
His smile became more secure. “So that was good for you? Better than it’s been?”
“You knew that.?”
He cocked an eyebrow.
“Well, of course you knew. I just. had some issues that had to work themselves out.”
“I knew it couldn’t be my lovemaking, wife of mine,” Eric said, and though the words were cocky, his expression was definitely on the relieved side.
“Don’t call me your wife. You know our so-called marriage is just strategy. To get back to your previous statement.
A-one
lovemaking, Eric.” I had to give credit where credit was due. “The no-orgasm problem was in my head. Now I’ve self-corrected.”
“You are bullshitting me, Sookie,” he murmured. “But I’ll show you some A-one lovemaking. Because I think you can come again.”
As it turned out, I could.
APRIL
I love spring for all the obvious reasons. I love the flowers blooming (which happens early here in Louisiana); I love the birds twittering; I love the squirrels scampering across my yard.
I love the sound of werewolves howling in the distance.
No, just kidding. But the late, lamented Tray Dawson had once told me that spring is the favorite season of werewolves. There’s more prey, so the hunt is over quickly, leaving more time to eat and play. Since I’d been thinking about Weres, it wasn’t such a surprise to hear from one.
On that sunny morning in the middle of April, I was sitting on my front porch with my second cup of coffee and a magazine, still wearing my sleep pants and my Superwoman T-shirt, when the Shreveport packleader called me on my cell phone.
“Huh,” I said, when I recognized the number. I flipped the phone open. “Hello,” I said cautiously.
“Sookie,” said Alcide Herveaux. I hadn’t seen Alcide in months. Alcide had ascended to the position of packleader the year before in a single evening of mayhem. “How are you?”
“Right as rain,” I said, nearly meaning it. “Happy as a clam. Fit as a fiddle.” I watched a rabbit hop across the clover and grass twenty feet away. Spring.
“You’re still dating Eric? He the reason for the good mood?”
Everyone
wanted to know. “I’m still dating Eric. That sure helps keep me happy.” Actually, as Eric kept telling me, “dating” was a misleading term. Though I didn’t think of myself as married since I’d simply handed him a ceremonial knife (Eric had used my ignorance as part of his master strategy), the vampires did. A vampire-human marriage isn’t exactly like a “love, honor, and obey” human pairing, but Eric had expected the marriage would earn me some perks in the vampire world. Since then, things had gone pretty well, vampire-wise. Aside from the huge glitch of Victor not letting Eric come to my aid when I was dying, that is—Victor, who really needed to die.
I turned my thoughts away from this dark direction with the determination of long practice. See? That was better. Now I was hopping out of bed every day with (almost) my old vigor. I’d even gone to church the past Sunday. Positive! “What’s happening, Alcide?” I asked.
“I got a favor to ask,” Alcide said, not entirely to my surprise.
“What can I do for you?”
“Can we use your land for our full-moon run tomorrow night?”
I made myself pause to think about his request rather than automatically saying yes. I’m learning through experience. I had the open land the Weres needed; that wasn’t the issue. I still own twenty-odd acres around my house, though my grandmother had sold off most of the original farm when she was faced with the financial burden of raising my brother and me. Though Sweet Home Cemetery took a chunk out of the land between my place and Bill’s, there’d be enough room—especially if Bill didn’t mind allowing access to his land as well. I remembered the pack had been here once before.
I turned the idea around to look at it from all angles. I couldn’t see any obvious downside. “You’re welcome to come,” I said. “I think you should check with Bill Compton, too.” Bill hadn’t responded to any of my little gestures of concern.
Vampires and werewolves are not inclined to be buddies, but Alcide is a practical man. “I’ll call Bill tonight, then,” he said. “You got his number?”
I gave it to him. “Why are you-all not going to your place, Alcide?” I asked, out of sheer curiosity. He’d told me in casual conversation that the Long Tooth pack celebrated the full moon at the Herveaux farm south of Shreveport. Most of the Herveaux land was left in timber for the pack hunts.
“Ham called today to tell me there’s a small party of oneys camping by the stream.” “Oneys,” the one-natured, is what the two-natured Weres call regular humans. I knew Hamilton Bond by sight. His farm was adjacent to the Herveaux place, and Ham farmed a few acres for Alcide. The Bond family had belonged to the Long Tooth pack as long as the Herveauxes.
“Did they have your permission to camp there?” I asked.
“They told Ham my dad always gave them permission to fish there in the spring, so they didn’t think to ask me. It might be true. I don’t remember them, though.”
“Even if they’re telling the truth, that’s pretty rude. They should have called you,” I said. “They should have asked you if it was convenient for you. You want me to talk to them? I can find out if they’re lying.” Jackson Herveaux, Alcide’s late dad, hadn’t seemed like the kind of man who’d casually allow people to use his land on a regular basis.
“No thanks, Sookie. I hate to ask you for another favor. You’re a friend of the pack. We’re supposed to watch out for you, not you for us.”
“Don’t worry about it. Y’all can come out here. And if you want me to shake hands with these supposed buddies of your dad’s, I can do that.” I was curious about their appearance on the Herveaux farm so close to the full moon. Curious and suspicious.
Alcide told me he’d think about the fishermen situation, and thanked me about six times for saying yes.
“No big deal,” I said, and hoped I was telling the truth. Eventually, Alcide felt he’d thanked me enough, and we hung up.
I went inside with my coffee cup. I didn’t know I was smiling until I looked in the living room mirror. I admitted to myself I was looking forward to the wolves’ arrival. It would be pleasant to feel I wasn’t alone in the middle of the woods. Pathetic, huh?
Though our few evenings together were good, Eric was still spending a
lot
of time on vampire business. I was getting a little tired of it. Well, not a little. If you’re the boss, you should be able to get some time off, right? That’s one of the perks of being a boss.
But something was up with the vampires; I was unhappily familiar with the signs. By now, the new regime should have been firmly in place, and Eric should have thoroughly established his new role in the scheme of things. Victor Madden should have been fully occupied down in New Orleans with the running of the kingdom, since he was Felipe’s representative in Louisiana. Eric should have been left to run Area Five in his own efficient way.
But Eric’s blue eyes got all glittery and steely when Victor’s name came up. Mine probably did, too. As things stood now, Victor had power over Eric, and there wasn’t much we could do about that.
I’d asked Eric if he thought Victor might claim dissatisfaction with Eric’s performance in Area Five, a terrifying possibility.
“I’m keeping paperwork to prove differently,” Eric said. “And I’m keeping it in several places.” The lives of all Eric’s people, and maybe my life, depended on Eric planting his feet firmly in the new regime. I knew so much rested on Eric’s making his position impregnable, and I knew I shouldn’t whine. It’s not always easy to make yourself feel the way you ought to feel.
All in all, some howling around the house would be a nice change. At least it would be something new and different.
When I went to work that day, I told Sam about Alcide’s phone call. True shapeshifters are rare. Since there aren’t any others in this area, Sam occasionally spends time with others who have two forms. “Hey, why don’t you come out to the house, too?” I suggested. “You could turn into a wolf, right, since you’re a pure shifter? And then you’d blend right in.”
Sam leaned back in his old swivel chair, glad to have an excuse to stop filling in forms. Sam, who is thirty, is three years older than me.
“I’ve been dating someone in the pack, so it might be fun,” he said, considering the idea. But he shook his head after a moment. “That would be like going to an NAACP meeting in blackface. Being an imitation in front of the real thing. That’s why I’ve never gone out with the panthers, though Calvin’s told me I’d be welcome.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling embarrassed. “I didn’t think of that. I’m sorry.” I did wonder who he was dating, but there again, not my business.
“Ah, don’t worry about it.”
“I’ve known you for years, and I should know more about you,” I said. “Your culture, that is.”
“My own
family
is still learning. You know more than they do.”
Sam had come out when the Weres had. His mother had come out the same night. His family had had a rough time handling the revelation. In fact, Sam’s stepfather had shot Sam’s mother, and now they were getting divorced—no big surprise there.
“Is your brother’s wedding back on?” I said.
“Craig and Deidra are going to counseling. Her parents were pretty upset that she was marrying into a family with people like me and Mom in it. They don’t understand that any kids Craig and Deidra have simply can’t turn into animals. It’s only the firstborn of a pure shifter couple.” He shrugged. “I think they’ll pull through, though. I’m just waiting for them to set a new date. You still willing to go with me?”
“Sure,” I said, though I had an uneasy twitch when I pictured myself telling Eric I was going out of state with another man. At the time I’d promised Sam I’d go, the situation between Eric and me hadn’t gelled into a relationship. “You’re assuming taking a Were as your date would be offensive to Deidra’s family?”
“Truth be told,” Sam said, “the Great Reveal in Wright didn’t go over as well for the two-natured as it did in Bon Temps.”
I knew from the local news that Bon Temps had been lucky. Its citizens had simply blinked when the Weres and the other two-natured announced their existence, taking a page from the vampire book. “Just let me know what happens,” I said. “And come out to my place tomorrow if you change your mind about having a run with the pack.”
“Packmaster didn’t invite me,” Sam said, smiling.
“Landowner did.”
We didn’t talk about it any more the rest of my shift, so I figured Sam would find something else to do for his moon time. The monthly change actually runs for three nights—three nights when all the two-natured, if they can, take to the woods (or the streets) in their animal form. Most of the twoeys—those born with their condition—can change at other times, but the moon time. that’s special to all of them, including those who’d come to their extra nature by being bitten. There’s a drug you can take, I hear, that can suppress your change; Weres in the military, among others, have to use it. But they all hate to do that, and I understand they’re really no fun to be around on those nights.
Fortunately for me, the next day was one of my days off that week. If I’d had to come home from the bar late at night, the short distance from the car into the house might have been a little nerve-racking with the wolves on the loose. I’m not sure how much of their human consciousness remains when the Weres change, and not all of Alcide’s pack members are personal friends of mine. Since I’d be at home, the prospect of hosting the Weres was more or less carefree. When company’s coming to hunt in your woods, there’s no preparation to be done. You don’t have to cook or clean house.
However, having outside company was good motivation to complete some yard chores. Since it was another beautiful day, I put on one of my bikinis, pulled on sneakers and gloves, and set to work. Sticks and leaves and pinecones all went in the burn barrel, along with some hedge clippings. I made sure all the yard tools were put away in the shed, which I locked. I wound up the hose I’d used to water the potted plants I’d arranged around the back steps. I checked the clamp on the lid on the big garbage can. I’d bought the can specifically to keep the raccoons out of the trash, but a wolf might get interested, too.
I passed a pleasant afternoon, puttering around in the sun, singing off-key whenever the spirit moved me.
Right at dusk, the cars started arriving. I went to the window. I noticed the Weres had been considerate enough to carpool; there were several people in each vehicle. Even so, my driveway would be blocked until morning.
Lucky I planned to stay at home,
I thought. I knew some of the pack members, and I recognized a few of the others by sight. Hamilton Bond, who’d grown up with Alcide, pulled up and sat in his truck, talking on his cell phone. My eyes were drawn to a skinny, vivid young woman who favored flashy fashions, the kind I thought of as MTV clothes. I’d first noticed her in the Hair of the Dog bar in Shreveport, and she’d been assigned the task of executing injured enemies after Alcide’s pack had won the Were war; I thought her name was Jannalynn. I also recognized two women who’d been members of the attacking pack; they’d surrendered at the end of the fight. Now they’d joined their former enemies. A young man had surrendered, too, but he could have been any one of a dozen moving restlessly around my yard.
Finally, Alcide arrived in his familiar truck. There were two other people sitting in the cab.
Alcide himself is tall and husky, as Weres tend to be. He’s an attractive man. He’s got black hair and green eyes, and of course, he’s very strong. Alcide is usually well mannered and considerate—but he has his tough side, for sure. I’d heard rumors through Sam and Jason that since he’d ascended to packleader, that tough side had been getting a workout. I noticed that Jannalynn made a special effort to be at the truck door when Alcide emerged.
The woman who slid out after him was in her late twenties, and she had some good solid hips on her. She wore her brown hair slicked back into a little knob, and her camo tank top let me know she was muscular and fit. At the moment, Camo was looking around the front yard like she was the tax assessor. The man who got out the other door was a little older and a lot harder.
Sometimes, even if you’re not telepathic, you can tell by looking at a man that he’s had a rough life. This man had. The way he moved told me he was on the alert for trouble. Interesting.
I watched him, because he needed watching. He had shoulder-length dark brown hair that flared around his head in a cloud of cork-screws. I found myself eyeing it enviously. I’d always wished I could get my hair to do that.
After I’d gotten over my hair envy, I noticed that his skin was the brown of mocha ice cream. Though he wasn’t as tall as Alcide, he had thick shoulders on an aggressively muscled body.
If I’d had a “Bad to the Bone” alert on the brick path up to the front porch, it would have gone off just after Corkscrew set his foot on it. “Danger, Will Robinson,” I said out loud. I’d never seen Camo or Corkscrew before. Hamilton Bond got out of his truck and came over to join the little group, but he didn’t come up the porch steps to stand beside Alcide, Corkscrew, and Camo. Ham held back. Jannalynn joined him. The Long Tooth pack appeared to be both expanding its ranks and rearranging its pecking order.