We didn’t make it.
Jake Purifoy was after us, and he was hungry.
Since Amelia was behind me (I’d had a head start) he dove to grab her ankle. She shrieked as she went down, and I spun around to help her. I didn’t think at all, because I would have kept on going out the door if I had. The new vamp’s fingers were wrapped around Amelia’s bare ankle like a shackle, and he was pulling her toward him across the smooth laminated-wood floor. She was clawing at the floor with her fingers, trying to find something to stop her progress toward his mouth, which was wide open with the fangs extended full length, oh God! I grabbed her wrists and began pulling. I hadn’t known Jake Purifoy in life, so I didn’t know what he’d been like. And I couldn’t find anything human left in his face, anything I could appeal to. “Jake!” I yelled. “Jake Purifoy! Wake up!” Of course, that didn’t do a damn bit of good. Jake had changed into something that was not a nightmare but a permanent otherness, and he could not be roused from it: he was it. He was making a kind of gnarr-gnarr-gnarr noise, the hungriest sound I’d ever heard, and then he bit down on the calf of Amelia’s leg, and she screamed.
It was like a shark had hold of her. If I yanked at her any more, he might take out the bit his teeth had clamped on. He was sucking on the leg wound now, and I kicked him in the head with my heel, cursing my lack of shoes. I put everything I had behind it, and it didn’t faze the new vampire in the least. He made a noise of protest, but continued sucking, and the witch kept shrieking with pain and shock. There was a candlestick on the table behind one of the loveseats, a tall glass candlestick with lots of heft to it. I plucked the candle from it, grasped it with both hands, and brought it down as hard as I could on Jake Purifoy’s head. Blood began to run from his wound, very sluggishly; that’s how vampires bleed. The candlestick came apart with the blow, and I was left with empty hands and a furious vampire. He raised his blood-smeared face to glare at me, and I hope I’m never on the receiving end of another look like that again in my life. His face held the mindless rage of a mad dog.
But he’d let go of Amelia’s leg, and she began to scramble away. It was obvious she was hurt, and it was kind of a slow scramble, but she made the effort. Tears were streaming down her face and her breathing was all over the place, harsh in the night’s silence. I could hear a siren drawing closer and I hoped it was coming here. It would be too late, though. The vampire launched himself from the floor to knock me down, and I didn’t have time to think about anything.
He bit down on my arm, and I thought the teeth would penetrate the bone. If I hadn’t thrown up the arm, those teeth would have gripped my neck, and that would have been fatal. The arm might be preferable, but just at this moment the pain was so intense I nearly passed out, and I’d better not do that. Jake Purifoy’s body was heavy on top of mine, and his hands were pressing my free arm to the floor, and his legs were on top of mine. Another hunger was wakening in the new vampire, and I felt its evidence pressing against my thigh. He freed a hand to begin yanking at my pants.
Oh, no . . . this was so bad. I would die in the next few minutes, here in New Orleans in my cousin’s apartment, far away from my friends and my family.
Blood was all over the new vampire’s face and hands.
Amelia crawled awkwardly across the floor toward us, her leg trailing blood behind her. She should have run, since she couldn’t save me. No more candlesticks. But Amelia had another weapon, and she reached out with a violently shaking hand to touch the vampire. “Utinam hic sanguis in ignem commutet!” she yelled.
The vampire reared back, screaming and clawing at his face, which was suddenly covered by tiny licking blue flames.
And the police came through the door.
They were vampires, too.
For an interesting moment, the police officers thought we had attacked Jake Purifoy. Amelia and I, bleeding and screaming, were shoved up against the wall. But in the meantime, the spell Amelia had cast on the new undead lost its efficacy and he leaped on the nearest uniformed cop, who happened to be a black woman with a proud straight back and a high-bridged nose. The cop whipped out her nightstick and used it with a reckless disregard for the new vamp’s teeth. Her partner, a very short man whose skin was the color of butterscotch, fumbled to open a bottle of TrueBlood that was stuck in his belt like another tool. He bit off the tip, and stuck the rubber cap in Jake Purifoy’s questing mouth. Suddenly, all was silence as the new vamp sucked down the contents of the bottle. The rest of us stood panting and bleeding.
“He will be quiet now,” said the female officer, the cadence of her voice letting me know that she was far more African than American. “I think we have subdued him.”
Amelia and I sank onto the floor, after the male cop gave us a nod to let us know we were off the hook. “Sorry we got confused about who was the bad guy,” he said in a voice as warm as melted butter. “You ladies okay?” It was a good thing his voice was so reassuring, since his fangs were out. I guess the excitement of the blood and the violence triggered the reaction, but it was kind of disconcerting in a law enforcement officer.
“I think not,” I said. “Amelia here is bleeding pretty bad, and I guess I am, too.” The bite didn’t hurt as badly as it was going to. The vamp’s saliva secretes a tiny bit of anesthetic, along with a healing agent. But the healing agent was meant for sealing the pinpricks of fangs, not for actual large tears in human flesh. “We’re going to need a doctor.” I’d met a vamp in Mississippi who could heal large wounds, but it was a rare talent.
“You both human?” he asked. The female cop was crooning in a foreign language to the new vampire. I didn’t know if the former werewolf, Jake Purifoy, could speak the language, but he recognized safety when he saw it. The burns on his face healed as we sat there.
“Yes,” I said.
While we waited for the paramedics to come, Amelia and I leaned against each other wordlessly. Was this the second body I’d found in a closet, or the third? I wondered why I even opened closet doors any more.
“We should have known,” Amelia said wearily. “When he didn’t smell at all, we should have known.”
“Actually, I figured that out. Since it was only thirty seconds before he woke up, it didn’t do a hell of a lot of good,” I said. My voice was just as limp as hers.
Everything got very confusing after that. I kept thinking it would be a good time to faint if I was ever going to, because this was really not a process I wanted to be in on, but I just couldn’t pass out. The paramedics were very nice young men who seemed to think we’d been partying with a vamp and it had gotten out of hand. I guessed neither of them would be calling Amelia or me for a date any time soon.
“You don’t want to be messing with no vampires, cherie,” said the man who was working on me. His name tag read DELAGARDIE. “They supposed to be so attractive to women, but you wouldn’t believe how many poor girls we’ve had to patch up. And that was the lucky ones,” Delagardie said grimly. “What’s your name, young lady?”
“Sookie,” I said. “Sookie Stackhouse.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Sookie. You and your friend seem like nice girls. You need to hang with better people, live people. This city’s overrun with the dead, now. It was better when everyone here was breathing, I tell you the truth. Now let’s get you to the hospital and get you stitched up. I’d shake your hand if you wasn’t all bloody,” he said. He gave me a sudden smile, white-toothed and charming. “I’m giving you good advice for free, pretty lady.”
I smiled, but it was the last time I was going to be doing that for a while. The pain was beginning to make itself felt. Very quickly, I became preoccupied with coping.
Amelia was a real warrior. Her teeth were gritted as she fought to keep herself together, but she managed all the way to the hospital. The emergency room seemed to be packed. By a combination of bleeding, being escorted by cops, and the friendly Delagardie and his partner putting in a word for us, Amelia and I got put in curtained cubicles right awa
y. We weren’t adjacent to each other, but we were in line to see a doctor. I was grateful. I knew that had to be quick, for an urban emergency room.
As I listened to the bustle around me, I tried not to swear at the pain in my arm. In moments when it wasn’t throbbing as much, I wondered what had happened to Jake Purifoy. Had the vampire cops taken him to a vampire cell at the jail, or was everything excused since he was a brand new vamp with no guidance? There’d been a law passed about that, but I couldn’t remember the terms and strictures. It was hard for me to be too concerned. I knew the young man was a victim of his new state; that the vampire who had made him should have been there to guide him through his first wakening and hunger. The vampire to blame was most likely my cousin Hadley, who had hardly expected to be murdered. Only Amelia’s stasis spell on the apartment had kept Jake from rising months ago. It was a strange situation, probably unprecedented even in vampire annals. And a werewolf who’d become a vampire! I’d never heard tell of such a thing. Could he still change?
I had a while to think about that and quite a few other things, since Amelia was too far away for conversation, even if she’d been up to it. After about twenty minutes, during which time I was disturbed only by a nurse who wrote down some information, I was surprised to see Eric peer around the curtain.
“May I come in?” he asked stiffly. His eyes were wide and he was speaking carefully. I realized that to a vampire, the smell of blood in the emergency room was enchanting and pervasive. I caught a glimpse of his fangs.
“Yes,” I said, puzzled by Eric’s presence in New Orleans. I wasn’t really in an Eric mood, but there was no point in telling the former Viking he couldn’t come into the curtained area. This was a public building, and he wasn’t bound by my words. Anyway, he could simply stand outside and talk to me through the cloth until he found out whatever he’d come to discover. Eric was nothing if not persistent. “What on earth are you doing here in town, Eric?”
“I drove down to bargain with the queen for your services during the summit. Also, Her Majesty and I have to negotiate how many of my people I can bring with me.” He smiled at me. The effect was disconcerting, what with the fangs and all. “We’ve almost reached an agreement. I can bring three, but I want to bargain up to four.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Eric,” I snapped. “That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard. Modern invention, known as the telephone?” I moved restlessly on the narrow bed. I couldn’t find a comfortable position. Every nerve in my body was jangling with the aftermath of the fear of my encounter with Jake Purifoy, new child of the night. I was hoping that when I finally saw a doctor, he or she would give me an excellent painkiller. “Leave me alone, okay? You don’t have a claim on me. Or a responsibility to me.”
“But I do.” He had the gall to look surprised. “We have a bond. I’ve had your blood, when you needed strength to free Bill in Jackson. And we’ve made love often, according to you.”
“You made me tell you,” I protested. And if I sounded a little on the whiny said, well, dammit, I thought it was okay to whine a little. Eric had agreed to save a friend of mine from danger if I’d spill the truth to him. Is that blackmail? Yes, I think so.
But there wasn’t any way to untell him. I sighed. “How’d you get here, anyway?”
“The queen monitors what happens to vampires in her city very closely, of course. I thought I’d come provide moral support. And, of course, if you need me to clean you of blood . . .” His eyes flashed as he inspected my arm. “I’d be glad to do it.”
I almost smiled, very reluctantly. He never gave up.
“Eric,” said Bill’s cool voice, and he slipped around the curtain to join Eric at my bedside.
“Why am I not surprised to see you here?” Eric said, in a voice that made it clear he was displeased.
Eric’s anger wasn’t something Bill could ignore. Eric outranked Bill, and he looked down his substantial nose at the younger vampire. Bill was around one hundred thirty-five years old: Eric was perhaps over a thousand. (I had asked him once, but he honestly didn’t seem to know.) Eric had the personality for leadership. Bill was happier on his own. The only thing they had in common was that they’d both made love to me: and just at the moment, they were both pains in my butt.
“I heard over the police band radio at the queen’s headquarters that the vampire police had been called in to subdue a fresh vampire, and I recognized the address,” Bill said by way of explanation. “Naturally, I found out where Sookie had been brought, and came here as fast as I could.”
I closed my eyes.
“Eric, you’re tiring her out,” Bill said, his voice even colder than usual. “You should leave Sookie alone.”
There was a long moment of silence. It was fraught with some big emotion. My eyes opened and went from one face to another. For once, I wished I could read vampire minds.
As much as I could read from his expression, Bill was deeply regretting his words, but why? Eric was looking at Bill with a complex expression compounded of resolve and something less definable; regret, maybe.
“I quite understand why you want to keep Sookie isolated while she’s in New Orleans,” Eric said. His r’s became more pronounced, as they did when he was angry.
Bill looked away.
Despite the pain pulsing in my arm, despite my general exasperation with the both of them, something inside me sat up and took notice. There was an unmistakable significance to Eric’s tone. Bill’s lack of response was curious . . . and ominous.
“What?” I said, my eyes flicking from one to the other. I tried to prop myself up on my elbows and settled for one when the other arm, the bitten one, gave a big throb of pain. I pressed the button to raise the head of the bed. “What’s all the big hinting about, Eric? Bill?”
“Eric should not be agitating you when you’ve got a lot to handle already,” Bill said, finally. Though never known for its expressiveness, Bill’s face was what my grandmother would have described as “locked up tighter than a drum.”
Eric folded his arms across his chest and looked down at them.
“Bill?” I said.
“Ask him why he came back to Bon Temps, Sookie,” Eric said very quietly.
“Well, old Mr. Compton died, and he wanted to reclaim his . . .” I couldn’t even describe the expression on Bill’s face. My heart began to beat faster. Dread gathered in a knot in my stomach. “Bill?”
Eric turned to face away from me, but not before I saw a shade of pity cross his face. Nothing could have scared me more. I might not be able to read a vampire’s mind, but in this case his body language said it all. Eric was turning away because he didn’t want to watch the knife sliding in.
“Sookie, you would find out when you saw the queen . . . Maybe I could have kept it from you, because you won’t understand . . . but Eric has taken care of that.” Bill gave Eric’s back a look that could have drilled a hole through Eric’s heart. “When your cousin Hadley was becoming the queen’s favorite . . .”
And suddenly I saw it all, knew what he was going to say, and I rose up on the hospital bed with a gasp, one hand to my chest because I felt my heart shattering. But Bill’s voice went on, even though I shook my head violently.
“Apparently, Hadley talked about you and your gift a lot, to impress the queen and keep her interest. And the queen knew I was originally from Bon Temps. On some nights, I’ve wondered if she sent someone to kill the last Compton and hurry things along. But maybe he truly died of old age.” Bill was looking down at the floor, didn’t see my left hand extended to him in a “stop” motion.
“She ordered me to return to my human home, to put myself in your way, to seduce you if I had to . . .”
I couldn’t breathe. No matter how my right hand pressed to my chest, I couldn’t stop the decimation of my heart, the slide of the knife deeper into my flesh.
“She wanted your gift harnessed for her own use,” he said, and he opened his mouth to say more. My eyes were so blurred with
tears that I couldn’t see properly, couldn’t see what expression was on his face and didn’t care anyway. But I could not cry while he was anywhere near me. I would not.
“Get out,” I said, with a terrible effort. Whatever else happened, I could not bear for him to see the pain he had caused.
He tried to look me straight in the eyes, but mine were too full. Whatever he wanted to convey, it was lost on me. “Please let me finish,” he said.
“I never want to see you again, ever in my life,” I whispered. “Ever.”
He didn’t speak. His lips moved, as if he were trying to form a word or phrase, but I shook my head. “Get out,” I told him, in a voice so choked with hatred and anguish that it didn’t sound like my own. Bill turned and walked past the curtain and out of the emergency room. Eric did not turn around to see my face, thank God. He reached back to pat me on the leg before he left, too.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to kill someone with my bare hands.
I had to be by myself. I could not let anyone see me suffer this much. The pain was tied up with a rage so profound that I had never felt its like. I was sick with anger and hurt. The snap of Jake Purifoy’s teeth had been nothing compared to this.
I couldn’t stay still. With some difficulty, I eased off the bed. My feet were still bare, of course, and I noticed with an odd detached part of my mind that they were extraordinarily dirty. I staggered out of the triage area, spotted the doors to the waiting room, and aimed myself in that direction. Walking was a problem.
A nurse bustled up to me, a clipboard in her hand. “Miss Stackhouse, a doctor’s going to be with you in just a minute. I know you’ve had to wait, and I’m sorry, but . . .”
I turned to look at her and she flinched, took a step backward. I kept on toward the doors, my steps uncertain but my purpose clear. I wanted out of there. Beyond that, I didn’t know. I made it to the doors and pushed and then I was dragging myself through the waiting room thronged with people. I blended in perfectly with the mix of patients and relatives waiting to see a doctor. Some were dirtier and bloodier than I was, and some were older—and some were way younger. I supported myself with a hand against a wall and kept moving to the doors, to the outside.
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