“Yes,” I said, because I had to be honest. “Because we had the beginning of something good going, and I may have made a huge mistake sending him away. But I’ve never been seriously involved with two men at the same time, and I’m not starting now. Right now, that man is you.”
“You love me,” he said, and he nodded.
“I appreciate you,” I said cautiously. “I have big lust for you. I enjoy your company.”
“There’s a difference,” Eric said.
“Yes, there is. But you don’t see me bugging you to spell out how you feel about me, right? Because I’m pretty damn sure I wouldn’t like the answer. So maybe you better rein it in a little yourself.”
“You don’t want to know how I feel about you?” Eric looked incredulous. “I can’t believe you’re a human woman. Womenalways want to know how you feel about them.”
“And I’ll bet they’re sorry when you tell them, huh?”
He lifted one eyebrow. “If I tell them the truth.”
“That’s supposed to put me in a confiding mood?”
“I always tell you the truth,” he said. And there wasn’t a trace of that smile left on his face. “I may not tell you everything I know, but what I tell you . . . it’s true.”
“Why?”
“The blood exchange has worked both ways,” he said. “I’ve had the blood of many women. I’ve had almost utter control over them. But they never drank mine. It’s been decades, maybe centuries since I gave any woman my blood. Maybe not since I turned Pam.”
“Is this the general policy among vampires you know?” I wasn’t quite sure how to ask what I wanted to know.
He hesitated, nodded. “For the most part. There are some vampires who like to take total control over a human . . . make that human their Renfield.” He used the term with distaste.
“That’s fromDracula , right?”
“Yes, Dracula’s human servant. A degraded creature . . . Why someone of Dracula’s eminence would want so debased a man as that . . .” Eric shook his head disgustedly. “But it does happen. The best of us look askance at a vampire who makes servant after servant. The human is lost when the vampire assumes too much control. When the human goes completely under, he isn’t worth turning. He isn’t worth anything at all. Sooner or later, he has to be killed.”
“Killed! Why?”
“If the vampire who’s assumed so much control abandons the Renfield, or if the vampire himself is killed . . . the Renfield’s life is not worth living after that.”
“They have to be put down,” I said. Like a dog with rabies.
“Yes.” Eric looked away.
“But that’s not going to happen to me. And you won’t ever turn me.” I was absolutely serious.
“No. I won’t ever force you into subservience. And I will never turn you, since you don’t want it.”
“Even if I’m going to die, don’t turn me. I would hate that more than anything.”
“I agree to that. No matter how much I may want to keep you.”
Right after we’d met, Bill had not changed me when I had been close to death. I’d never realized he might have been tempted to do so. He’d saved my human life instead. I put that away to consider later. Tacky to think about one man when you’re in bed with another.
“You saved me from being bonded to Andre,” I said. “But it cost me.”
“If he’d lived, it would have cost me, too. No matter how mild his reaction, Andre would have paid me back for my intervention.”
“He seemed so calm about it that night,” I said. Eric had persuaded Andre to let him be his proxy. I’d been very grateful at the time, since Andre gave me the creeps and he didn’t give a damn about me, either. I remembered my talk with Tara.If I’d let Andre share blood that night, I’d be free now, since he’s dead . I still couldn’t decide how I felt about that—probably three different ways.
Tonight was turning out to be a huge one for realizations. They could just stop coming any old time now.
“Andre never forgot a challenge to his will,” Eric said. “Do you know how he died, Sookie?”
Ah-oh.
“He got stuck in the chest with a big splinter of wood,” I said, swallowing a little. Like Eric, I didn’t always tell the whole truth. The splinter hadn’t gotten in Andre’s chest by accident. Quinn had done that.
Eric looked at me for what seemed like a very long time. He could feel my anxiety, of course. I waited to see if he’d push the issue. “I don’t miss Andre,” he said finally. “I regret Sophie-Anne, though. She was brave.”
“I agree,” I said, relieved. “By the way, how are you getting along with your new bosses?”
“So far, so good. They’re very forward-thinking. I like that.”
Since the end of October, Eric had had to learn the structure of a new and larger organization, the characters of the vampires who made it work, and how to liaise with the new sheriffs. Even for him, that was a big bite to chew.
“I bet the vamps you had with you before that night are extra glad they pledged loyalty to you, since they survived when so many of the other vamps in Louisiana died that night.”
Eric smiled broadly. It would have been really scary if I hadn’t seen the fang display before. “Yes,” he said with a whole bunch of satisfaction. “They owe me their lives, and they know it.”
He slid his arms around me and held me against his cool body. I was content and sated, and my fingers trailed through the happy trail of golden hair that led downward. I thought of the provocative picture of Eric as Mr. January in the “Vampires of Louisiana” calendar. I liked the one he’d given me even more. I wondered if I could get a poster-sized blowup.
He laughed when I asked him. “We should think of producing another calendar,” he said. “It was a real earner for us. If I can have a picture of you in the same pose, I’ll give you a poster of me.”
I thought about it for twenty seconds. “I don’t think I could do a nude picture,” I said with some regret. “They always seem to show up to bite you in the ass.”
Eric laughed again, low and husky. “You talk a lot about that,” he said. “Shall I bite you in the ass?” This led to a lot of other things, wonderful and playful things. After those things had come to a happy completion, Eric glanced at the clock beside my bed.
“I have to go,” he whispered.
“I know,” I said. My eyes were heavy with sleep.
He began to dress for his return to Shreveport, and I pulled down the covers and snuggled into the bed properly. It was hard to keep my eyes open, though watching him move around my bedroom was a sweet sight.
He bent to kiss me, and I put my arms around his neck. For a second, I knew he was thinking of crawling back in the bed with me; I hoped it was his body language and his murmur of pleasure that cued me to his thoughts. Every now and then, I got a flash from a vampire mind, and it scared me to death. I didn’t think I’d last long if vampires realized I could read their minds, no matter how seldom that occurred.
“I want you again,” he said, sounding a little surprised. “But I have to go.”
“I’ll see you soon, I guess?” I was awake enough to feel uncertain.
“Yes,” he said. His eyes were bright and his skin glowed. The mark on his wrist was gone. I touched where it had been. He leaned over to kiss the place on my neck where he’d bitten me, and I shivered all over. “Soon.”
Then he was gone, and I heard the back door close quietly behind him. With the last bit of energy in my muscles, I rose and passed through the kitchen in the dark to shoot the dead bolt. I saw Amelia’s car parked by mine; at some point, she’d returned home.
I went to the sink to get a drink of water. I knew the dark kitchen like the back of my hand, so I didn’t need a light. I drank and realized how thirsty I was. As I turned to go back to bed, I saw something move at the edge of the woods. I froze, my heart pounding in a very unpleasant way.
Bill stepped out of the trees. I knew it was him, though I couldn’t see his face clearly. He stood looking up, and I knew he must have watched Eric take flight. Bill had recovered from the fight with Quinn, then.