Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set

by Charlaine Harris

  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 about 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?”

  “Then we need to know that, too. The sooner the better.”

  I put my hand on the old phone that hung on the kitchen wall right by the end of the counter. A high stool sat below it. My grandmother had always sat on the stool to conduct her lengthy phone conversations, with a pad and pencil handy. I missed her every day. But at the moment I had no room in my emotional palette for grief, or even nostalgia. I looked in my little address book for the number of Fangtasia, the vampire bar in Shreveport that provided Eric’s principal income and served as the base of his operations, which I understood were far wider in scope. I didn’t know how wide or what these other moneymaking projects were, and I didn’t especially want to know.

  I’d seen in the Shreveport paper that Fangtasia, too, had planned a big bash for the evening—“Begin Your New Year with a Bite”—so I knew someone would be there. While the phone was ringing, I swung open the refrigerator and got out a bottle of blood for Eric. I popped it in the microwave and set the timer. He followed my every move with anxious eyes.

  “Fangtasia,” said an accented male voice.

  “Chow?”

  “Yes, how may I serve you?” He’d remembered his phone persona of sexy vampire just in the nick of time.

  “It’s Sookie.”

  “Oh,” he said in a much more natural voice. “Listen, Happy New Year, Sook, but we’re kind of busy here.”

  “Looking for someone?”

  There was a long, charged silence.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, and then I heard nothing.

  “Pam,” said Pam. She’d picked up the receiver so silently that I jumped when I heard her voice.

  “Do you still have a master?” I didn’t know how much I could say over the phone. I wanted to know if she’d been the one who’d put Eric in this state, or if she still owed him loyalty.

  “I do,” she said steadily, understanding what I wanted to know. “We are under . . . we have some problems.”

  I mulled that over until I was sure I’d read between the lines. Pam was telling me that she still owed Eric her allegiance, and that Eric’s group of followers was under some kind of attack or in some kind of crisis.

  I said, “He’s here.” Pam appreciated brevity.

  “Is he alive?”

  “Yep.”

  “Damaged?”

  “Mentally.”

  A long pause, this time.

  “Will he be a danger to you?”

  Not that Pam cared a whole hell of a lot if Eric decided to drain me dry, but I guess she wondered if I would shelter Eric. “I don’t think so at the moment,” I said. “It seems to be a matter of memory.”

  “I hate witches. Humans had the right idea, burning them at the stake.”

  Since the very humans who had burned witches would have been delighted to sink that same stake into vampire hearts, I found that a little amusing—but not very, considering the hour. I immediately forgot what she’d been talking about. I yawned.

  “Tomorrow night, we’ll come,” she said finally. “Can you keep him this day? Dawn’s in less than four hours. Do you have a safe place?”

  “Yes. But you get over here at nightfall, you hear me? I don’t want to get tangled up in your vampire shit again.” N
ormally, I don’t speak so bluntly; but like I say, it was the tail end of a long night.

  “We’ll be there.”

  We hung up simultaneously. Eric was watching me with unblinking blue eyes. His hair was a snarly tangled mess of blond waves. His hair is the exact same color as mine, and I have blue eyes, too, but that’s the end of the similarities.

  I thought of taking a brush to his hair, but I was just too weary.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” I told him. “You stay here the rest of the night and tomorrow, and then Pam and them’ll come get you tomorrow night and let you know what’s happening.”

  “You won’t let anyone get in?” he asked. I noticed he’d finished the blood, and he wasn’t quite as drawn as he’d been, which was a relief.

  “Eric, I’ll do my best to keep you safe,” I said, quite gently. I rubbed my face with my hands. I was going to fall asleep on my feet. “Come on,” I said, taking his hand. Clutching the afghan with the other hand, he trailed down the hall after me, a snow white giant in tiny red underwear.

  My old house has been added onto over the years, but it hasn’t ever been more than a humble farmhouse. A second story was added around the turn of the century, and two more bedrooms and a walk-in attic are upstairs, but I seldom go up there anymore. I keep it shut off, to save money on electricity. There are two bedrooms downstairs, the smaller one I’d used until my grandmother died and her large one across the hall from it. I’d moved into the large one after her death. But the hidey-hole Bill had built was in the smaller bedroom. I led Eric in there, switched on the light, and made sure the blinds were closed and the curtains drawn across them. Then I opened the door of the closet, removed its few contents, and pulled back the flap of carpet that covered the closet floor, exposing the trapdoor. Underneath was a light-tight space that Bill had built a few months before, so that he could stay over during the day or use it as a hiding place if his own home was unsafe. Bill liked having a bolt-hole, and I was sure he had some that I didn’t know about. If I’d been a vampire (God forbid), I would have, myself.