“That’s what I said.”
“Okay then, until Tuesday.”
“I love you,” Eric said in a drained voice. “And you are my wife, in the only way that matters to me.”
“Love you, too,” I said, passing on the last half of his closing statement because I didn’t know what it meant. I got up to go, and Pam appeared by my side to walk me to my car. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eric get up and walk over to the Boudreaux table to make sure his important visitors were happy.
Pam said, “He’ll ruin Eric if he stays.”
“How so?”
“The boy will kill again, and we won’t be able to cover it up. He can escape if you so much as blink. He has to be watched constantly. Yet Ocella argues with himself about putting the boy down.”
“Pam, let Ocella decide,” I warned her. I thought since we were by ourselves I could take the huge liberty of calling Eric’s maker by his personal name. “I’m serious. Eric’ll have to let him kill you if you take Alexei out.”
“You care, don’t you?” Pam was unexpectedly touched.
“You’re my bud,” I said. “Of course I care.”
“We are friends,” Pam said.
“You know it.”
“This isn’t going to end well,” Pam said, as I got in my car.
I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
She was right.
I ate a Little Debbie cinnamon roll when I got home, just because I thought I deserved one. I was so worried I couldn’t even think of going to bed just yet. Alexei had given me his own personal nightmare. I’d never heard of a vampire (or any other being, human or not) being able to transmit a memory like that. It struck me as peculiarly horrible that it should be Alexei who was so “gifted,” when he had such a ghastly memory to share. I went though the royal family’s excruciating ordeal again. I could understand why the boy was the way he was. But I could also understand why he might have to be—put to sleep. I pushed up from the table, feeling thoroughly exhausted. I was ready for bed. But my plan got altered when the doorbell rang.
You’d think, living out in the country at the end of a long driveway through the woods, that I would have plenty of warning of guests. But that wasn’t always the case, especially with supes. I didn’t recognize the woman I saw through the peephole, but I knew she was a vampire. That meant she couldn’t come in without being invited, so it was safe to find out why she was there. I opened the door, feeling mostly curious.
“Hi, can I help you?” I asked.
She looked me up and down. “Are you Sookie Stackhouse?”
“I am.”
“You e-mailed me.”
Alexei had blown out my brain cells. I was slow tonight. “Judith Vardamon?”
“The same.”
“So Lorena was your sire? Your maker?”
“She was.”
“Please come in,” I said, and stepped aside. I might have been making a big mistake, but I’d almost given up hope that Judith would respond to my message. Since she’d come all the way here from Little Rock, I thought I owed her that much trust.
Judith raised her eyebrows and stepped over my threshold. “You must love Bill, or else you’re a fool,” she said.
“Neither, I hope. You want some TrueBlood?”
“Not now, thank you.”
“Please, have a seat.”
I sat on the edge of the recliner while Judith took the couch. I thought it was incredible that Lorena had “made” both Bill and Judith. I wanted to ask a lot of questions, but I didn’t want to offend or irritate this vampire, who’d already done me a huge favor.
“Do you know Bill?” I said, to kick off the talk we had to have.
“Yes, I know him.” She seemed cautious, which was odd when I considered how much stronger she was than I.
“You’re the younger sister?” She looked to be about thirty, or at least that had been her death age. She had dark brown hair and blue eyes, and she was short and pleasantly round. She was one of the most nonthreatening vampires I’d ever met, at least superficially. And she looked oddly familiar.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Lorena turned you after she turned Bill? Why’d she pick you?”
“You were Bill’s lover for some months, I gather? Reading between the lines of your message?” she asked in turn.
“Yes, I was. I’m with someone else now.”
“How is it that he never told you how he came to meet Lorena?”
“I don’t know. His choice.”
“Very strange.” She looked openly distrustful.
“You can think it’s strange till the cows come home,” I said. “I don’t know why Bill didn’t tell me, but he didn’t. If you want to tell me, fine. Tell me. But that’s not really important. The important thing is that Bill’s not getting well. He got bitten by a fairy with silver-tipped teeth. If he has your blood, he might get over it.”
“Did Bill perhaps hint to you that you should ask me?”
“No, ma’am, he didn’t. But I hate to see him hurting.”
“Has he mentioned my name?”
“Ah. No. I found out by myself so I could get in touch with you. It seems to me that if you’re Lorena’s get, too, you must have known he was suffering. I find myself wondering why you haven’t shown up before.”
“I’ll tell you why.” Judith’s voice was ominous.
Oh, great, another tale of pain and suffering. I knew I wasn’t going to like this story.
I was right.
Chapter 12
Judith began her story by asking me a question. “Have you ever met Lorena?”
“Yes,” I said, and left it at that. Evidently, Judith didn’t know exactly how I’d met Lorena, which had been a few seconds before I drove a stake through her heart and ended her long, nasty life.
“Then you know she’s ruthless.”
I nodded.
“You need to know why I’ve stayed away from Bill all these years, when I’m very fond of him,” Judith said. “Lorena has had a hard life. I wouldn’t necessarily believe everything she’s told me, but I’ve heard confirmation of a few parts of it from others.” Judith wasn’t seeing me anymore; she was looking past me, down the years, I guess.
“How old was she?” I said, just to keep the story rolling.
“By the time Lorena met Bill she had been a vampire for many decades. She had been turned in 1788 by a man named Solomon Brunswick. He met her in a brothel in New Orleans.”
“He met her in the obvious way?”
“Not exactly. He was there to take blood from another whore, one who specialized in the odder desires of men. Compared to some of her other customers, a little bite wasn’t anything too remarkable.”
“Had Solomon been a vampire a long time?” I was curious despite myself. Vampires as living history. Well, since they’d come out of the coffin, they’d added a lot to college courses. Bring a vampire to class to tell his or her story, and you got great attendance.
“Solomon had been a vampire for twenty years by then. He became a vampire by accident. He was a sort of tinker. He sold pots and pans, and he mended broken ones. He had other goods that were hard to find in New England then: needles, thread, odds and ends like that. He took his horse and cart from town to town and farm to farm, all by himself. Solomon encountered one of us while he camped in the woods one night. He told me that he survived the first encounter, but the vampire followed him during the night to his next camp and attacked him again. This second attack was a critical one. Solomon was one of the unfortunates who get turned accidentally. Since the vampire who drank from him left him for dead, unaware of the change—or at least, I like to think so—Solomon was untrained and had to learn all by himself.”
“Sounds really awful,” I said, and I meant that.
She nodded. “It must have been. He worked his way down to New Orleans to avoid people who wondered why he hadn’t aged. Where he came upon Lorena. After he’d had his meal, he was leaving out the back when he spotted her in the dark courtyard. She was with a man. The customer tried to leave without paying, and in the blink of an eye Lorena seized him and cut his throat.”