Almost three years ago, on the night of the Great Revelation, the vampires had gone on TV in every nation to announce their existence. It had been a night in which many of the world's assumptions had been knocked sideways and rearranged for good.
This coming-out party had been prompted by the Japanese development of a synthetic blood that can keep vamps satisfied nutritionally. Since the Great Revelation, the United States has undergone numerous political and social upheavals in the bumpy process of accommodating our newest citizens, who just happen to be dead. The vampires have a public face and a public explanation for their condition—they claim an allergy to sunlight and garlic causes severe metabolic changes—but I've seen the other side of the vampire world. My eyes now see a lot of things most human beings don't ever see. Ask me if this knowledge has made me happy.
No.
But I have to admit, the world is a more interesting place to me now. I'm by myself a lot (since I'm not exactly Norma Normal), so the extra food for thought has been welcome. The fear and danger haven't. I've seen the private face of vampires, and I've learned about Weres and shifters and other stuff. Weres and shifters prefer to stay in the shadows—for now—while they watch how going public works out for the vamps.
See, I had all this to mull over while collecting tray after tray of glasses and mugs, and unloading and loading the dishwasher to help Tack, the new cook. (His real name is Alphonse Petacki. Can you be surprised he likes "Tack" better?) When our part of the cleanup was just about finished, and this long evening was finally over, I hugged Arlene and wished her a happy New Year, and she hugged me back. Holly's boyfriend was waiting for her at the employees' entrance at the back of the building, and Holly waved to us as she pulled on her coat and hurried out.
"What're your hopes for the New Year, ladies?" Sam asked. By that time, Kenya was leaning against the bar, waiting for him, her face calm and alert. Kenya ate lunch here pretty regularly with her partner, Kevin, who was as pale and thin as she was dark and rounded. Sam was putting the chairs up on the tables so Terry Bellefleur, who came in very early in the morning, could mop the floor.
"Good health, and the right man," Arlene said dramatically, her hands fluttering over her heart, and we laughed. Arlene has found many men—and she's been married four times—but she's still looking for Mr. Right. I could "hear" Arlene thinking that Tack might be the one. I was startled, I hadn't even known she'd looked at him.
The surprise showed on my face, and in an uncertain voice Arlene said, "You think I should give up?"
"Hell, no," I said promptly, chiding myself for not guarding my expression better. It was just that I was so tired. "It'll be this year, for sure, Arlene." I smiled at Bon Temp's only black female police officer. "You have to have a wish for the New Year, Kenya. Or a resolution."
"I always wish for peace between men and women," Kenya said. "Make my job a lot easier. And my resolution is to bench-press one-forty."
"Wow," said Arlene. Her dyed red hair contrasted violently with Sam's natural curly red-gold as she gave him a quick hug. He wasn't much taller than Arlene—though she's at least five foot eight, two inches taller than I. "I'm going to lose ten pounds, that's my resolution." We all laughed. That had been Arlene's resolution for the past four years. "What about you, Sam? Wishes and resolutions?" she asked.
"I have everything I need," he said, and I felt the blue wave of sincerity coming from him. "I resolve to stay on this course. The bar is doing great, I like living in my double-wide, and the people here are as good as people anywhere."
I turned to conceal my smile. That had been a pretty ambiguous statement. The people of Bon Temps were, indeed, as good as people anywhere.
"And you, Sookie?" he asked. Arlene, Kenya, and Sam were all looking at me. I hugged Arlene again, because I like to. I'm ten years younger—maybe more, since though Arlene says she's thirty-six, I have my doubts—but we've been friends ever since we started working at Merlotte's together after Sam bought the bar, maybe five years now.
"Come on," Arlene said, coaxing me. Sam put his arm around me. Kenya smiled, but drifted away into the kitchen to have a few words with Tack.
Acting on impulse, I shared my wish. "I just hope to not be beaten up," I said, my weariness and the hour combining in an ill-timed burst of honesty. "I don't want to go to the hospital. I don't want to see a doctor." I didn't want to have to ingest any vampire blood, either, which would cure you in a hurry but had various side effects. "So my resolution is to stay out of trouble," I said firmly.
Arlene looked pretty startled, and Sam looked—well, I couldn't tell about Sam. But since I'd hugged Arlene, I gave him a big hug, too, and felt the strength and warmth in his body. You think Sam's slight until you see him shirtless unloading boxes of supplies. He is really strong and built really smooth, and he has a high natural body temperature. I felt him kiss my hair, and then we were all saying good night to each other and walking out the back door. Sam's truck was parked in front of his trailer, which is set up behind Merlotte's Bar but at a right angle to it, but he climbed in Kenya's patrol car to ride to the bank. She'd bring him home, and then Sam could collapse. He'd been on his feet for hours, as had we all.
As Arlene and I unlocked our cars, I noticed Tack was waiting in his old pickup; I was willing to bet he was going to follow Arlene home.
With a last "Good night!" called through the chilly silence of the Louisiana night, we separated to begin our new years.
I turned off onto Hummingbird Road to go out to my place, which is about three miles southeast of the bar. The relief of finally being alone was immense, and I began to relax mentally. My headlights flashed past the close-packed trunks of the pines that formed the backbone of the lumber industry hereabouts.
The night was extremely dark and cold. There are no streetlights way out on the parish roads, of course. Creatures were not stirring, not by any means. Though I kept telling myself to be alert for deer crossing the road, I was driving on autopilot. My simple thoughts were filled with the plan of scrubbing my face and pulling on my warmest nightgown and climbing into my bed.
Something white appeared in the headlights of my old car.
I gasped, jolted out of my drowsy anticipation of warmth and silence.
A running man: At three in the morning on January first, he was running down the parish road, apparently running for his life.
I slowed down, trying to figure out a course of action. I was a lone unarmed woman. If something awful was pursuing him, it might get me, too. On the other hand, I couldn't let someone suffer if I could help. I had a moment to notice that the man was tall, blond, and clad only in blue jeans, before I pulled up by him. I put the car into park and leaned over to roll down the window on the passenger's side.
"Can I help you?" I called. He gave me a panicked glance and kept on running.
But in that moment I realized who he was. I leaped out of the car and took off after him.
"Eric!" I yelled. "It's me!"
He wheeled around then, hissing, his fangs fully out. I stopped so abruptly I swayed where I stood, my hands out in front of me in a gesture of peace. Of course, if Eric decided to attack, I was a dead woman. So much for being a good Samaritan.
Why didn't Eric recognize me? I'd known him for many months. He was Bill's boss, in the complicated vampire hierarchy that I was beginning to learn. Eric was the sheriff of Area Five, and he was a vampire on the rise. He was also gorgeous and could kiss like a house afire, but that was not the most pertinent side of him right at the moment. Fangs and strong hands curved into claws were what I was seeing. Eric was in full alarm mode, but he seemed just as scared of me as I was of him. He didn't leap to attack.
"Stay back, woman," he warned me. His voice sounded like his throat was sore, raspy and raw.
"What are you doing out here?"
"Who are you?"
"You known darn good and well who I am. What's up with you? Why are you out here without your car?" Eric drove a sleek Corvette
, which was simply Eric.
"You know me? Who am I?"
Well, that knocked me for a loop. He sure didn't sound like he was joking. I said cautiously, "Of course I know you, Eric. Unless you have an identical twin. You don't, right?"
"I don't know." His arms dropped, his fangs seemed to be retracting, and he straightened from his crouch, so I felt there'd been a definite improvement in the atmosphere of our encounter.
"You don't know if you have a brother?" I was pretty much at sea.
"No. I don't know. Eric is my name?" In the glare of my headlights, he looked just plain pitiful.
"Wow." I couldn't think of anything more helpful to say. "Eric Northman is the name you go by these days. Why are you out here?"
"I don't know that, either."
I was sensing a theme here. "For real? You don't remember anything?" I tried to get past being sure that at any second he'd grin down at me and explain everything and laugh, embroiling me in some trouble that would end in me . . . getting beaten up.
"For real." He took a step closer, and his bare white chest made me shiver with sympathetic goose bumps. I also realized (now that I wasn't terrified) how forlorn he looked. It was an expression I'd never seen on the confident Eric's face before, and it made me feel unaccountably sad.
"You know you're a vampire, right?"
"Yes." He seemed surprised that I asked. "And you are not."
"No, I'm real human, and I have to know you won't hurt me. Though you could have by now. But believe me, even if you don't remember it, we're sort of friends."
"I won't hurt you."
I reminded myself that probably hundreds and thousands of people had heard those very words before Eric ripped their throats out. But the fact is, vampires don't have to kill once they're past their first year. A sip here, a sip there, that's the norm. When he looked so lost, it was hard to remember he could dismember me with his bare hands.
I'd told Bill one time that the smart thing for aliens to do (when they invaded Earth) would be to arrive in the guise of lop-eared bunnies.
"Come get in my car before you freeze," I said. I was having that I'm-getting-sucked-in feeling again, but I didn't know what else to do.
"I do know you?" he said, as though he were hesitant about getting in a car with someone as formidable as a woman ten inches shorter, many pounds lighter, and a few centuries younger.
"Yes," I said, not able to restrain an edge of impatience. I wasn't too happy with myself, because I still half suspected I was being tricked for some unfathomable reason. "Now come on, Eric. I'm freezing, and so are you." Not that vampires seemed to feel temperature extremes, as a rule; but even Eric's skin looked goosey. The dead can freeze, of course. They'll survive it—they survive almost everything—but I understand it's pretty painful. "Oh my God, Eric, you're barefoot." I'd just noticed.
I took his hand; he let me get close enough for that. He let me lead him back to the car and stow him in the passenger seat. I told him to roll up the window as I went around to my side, and after a long minute of studying the mechanism, he did.
I reached in the backseat for an old afghan I keep there in the winter (for football games, etc.) and wrapped it around him. He wasn't shivering, of course, because he was a vampire, but I just couldn't stand to look at all that bare flesh in this temperature. I turned the heater on full blast (which, in my old car, isn't saying much).
Eric's exposed skin had never made me feel cold before—when I'd seen this much of Eric before, I'd felt anything but. I was giddy enough by now to laugh out loud before I could censor my own thoughts.
He was startled, and looked at me sideways.
"You're the last person I expected to see," I said. "Were you coming out this way to see Bill? Because he's gone."
"Bill?"
"The vampire who lives out here? My ex-boyfriend?"
He shook his head. He was back to being absolutely terrified.
"You don't know how you came to be here?"
He shook his head again.
I was making a big effort to think hard; but it was just that, an effort. I was worn out. Though I'd had a rush of adrenaline when I'd spotted the figure running down the dark road, that rush was wearing off fast. I reached the turnoff to my house and turned left, winding through the black and silent woods on my nice, level driveway—that, in fact, Eric had had re-graveled for me.
And that was why Eric was sitting in my car right now, instead of running through the night like a giant white rabbit. He'd had the intelligence to give me what I really wanted. (Of course, he'd also wanted me to go to bed with him for months. But he'd given me the driveway because I needed it.)
"Here we are," I said, pulling around to the back of my old house. I switched off the car. I'd remembered to leave the outside lights on when I'd left for work that afternoon, thank goodness, so we weren't sitting there in total darkness.
"This is where you live?" He was glancing around the clearing where the old house stood, seemingly nervous about going from the car to the back door.
"Yes," I said, exasperated.
He just gave me a look that showed white all around the blue of his eyes.
"Oh, come on," I said, with no grace at all. I got out of the car and went up the steps to the back porch, which I don't keep locked because, hey, why lock a screened-in back porch? I do lock the inner door, and after a second's fumbling, I had it open so the light I leave on in the kitchen could spill out. "You can come in," I said, so he could cross the threshold. He scuttled in after me, the afghan still clutched around him.
Under the overhead light in the kitchen, Eric looked pretty pitiful. His bare feet were bleeding, which I hadn't noticed before. "Oh, Eric," I said sadly, and got a pan out from the cabinet, and started the hot water to running in the sink. He'd heal real quick, like vampires do, but I couldn't help but wash him clean. The blue jeans were filthy around the hem. "Pull 'em off," I said, knowing they'd just get wet if I soaked his feet while he was dressed.
With not a hint of a leer or any other indication that he was enjoying this development, Eric shimmied out of the jeans. I tossed them onto the back porch to wash in the morning, trying not to gape at my guest, who was now clad in underwear that was definitely over-the-top, a bright red bikini style whose stretchy quality was definitely being tested. Okay, another big surprise. I'd seen Eric's underwear only once before—which was once more than I ought to have—and he'd been a silk boxers guy. Did men change styles like that?
Without preening, and without comment, the vampire rewrapped his white body in the afghan. Hmmm. I was now convinced he wasn't himself, as no other evidence could have convinced me. Eric was way over six feet of pure magnificence (if a marble white magnificence), and he well knew it.
I pointed to one of the straight-back chairs at the kitchen table. Obediently, he pulled it out and sat. I crouched to put the pan on the floor, and I gently guided his big feet into the water. Eric groaned as the warmth touched his skin. I guess that even a vampire could feel the contrast. I got a clean rag from under the sink and some liquid soap, and I washed his feet. I took my time, because I was trying to think what to do next,
"You were out in the night," he observed, in a tentative sort of way.
"I was coming home from work, as you can see from my clothes." I was wearing our winter uniform, a long-sleeved white boat-neck T-shirt with "Merlotte's Bar" embroidered over the left breast and worn tucked into black slacks.
"Women shouldn't be out alone this late at night," he said disapprovingly.
"Tell me about it."
"Well, women are more liable to be overwhelmed by an attack than men, so they should be more protected—"
"No, I didn't mean literally. I meant, I agree. You're preaching to the choir. I didn't want to be working this late at night."
"Then why were you out?"
"I need the money," I said, wiping my hand and pulling the roll of bills out of my pocket and dropping it on the table while I was thinking a
bout it. "I got this house to maintain, my car is old, and I have taxes and insurance to pay. Like everyone else," I added, in case he thought I was complaining unduly. I hated to poor-mouth, but he'd asked.
"Is there no man in your family?"
Every now and then, their ages do show. "I have a brother. I can't remember if you've ever met Jason." A cut on his left foot looked especially bad. I put some more hot water into the basin to warm the remainder. Then I tried to get all the dirt out. He winced as I gently rubbed the washcloth over the margins of the wound. The smaller cuts and bruises seemed to be fading even as I watched. The hot water heater came on behind me, the familiar sound somehow reassuring.
"Your brother permits you to do this working?"
I tried to imagine Jason's face when I told him that I expected him to support me for the rest of my life because I was a woman and shouldn't work outside the home. "Oh, for goodness sake, Eric." I looked up at him, scowling. "Jason's got his own problems." Like being chronically selfish and a true tomcat.
I eased the pan of water to the side and patted Eric dry with a dishtowel. This vampire now had clean feet. Rather stiffly, I stood. My back hurt. My feet hurt. "Listen, I think what I better do is call Pam. She'll probably know what's going on with you."
"Pam?"
It was like being around a particularly irritating two-year-old.
"Your second-in-command."
He was going to ask another question, I could just tell. I held up a hand. "Just hold on. Let me call her and find out what's happening."
"But what if she has turned against me?"
Dead to the World ss(v-4 Page 2
