"How long will you keep them there?" I asked.
Stan shrugged. "Three or four months. We will feed Hugo, of course. Not Isabel."
"And then?"
"We'll unchain him first. He will get a day's head start."
Bill's hand clamped down on my wrist. He didn't want me to ask any more questions.
Isabel looked at me and nodded. This seemed fair to her, she was saying. "All right," I said, holding my palms forward in the "Stop" position. "All right." And I turned and made my way slowly and carefully down the stairs.
I had lost some integrity, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what I could do differently. The more I tried to think about it, the more confused I got. I am not used to thinking through moral issues. Things are bad to do, or they aren't.
Well, there was a gray area. That's where a few things fell, like sleeping with Bill though we weren't married or telling Arlene her dress looked good, when in fact it made her look like hell. Actually, I couldn't marry Bill. It wasn't legal. But then, he hadn't asked me.
My thoughts wandered in a dithery circle around the miserable couple in the upstairs bedroom. To my amazement, I felt much sorrier for Isabel than for Hugo. Hugo, after all, was guilty of active evil. Isabel was only guilty of negligence.
I had a lot of time to maunder on and on through similar dead-end thought patterns, since Bill was having a rip-roaring good time at the party. I'd only been to a mixed vampire and human party once or twice before, and it was a mixture that was still uneasy after two years of legally recognized vampirism. Open drinking—that is, bloodsucking—from humans was absolutely illegal, and I am here to tell you that in Dallas's vampire headquarters, that law was strictly observed. From time to time, I saw a couple vanish for a while upstairs, but all the humans seemed to come back in good health. I know, because I counted and watched.
Bill had mainstreamed for so many months that apparently it was a real treat for him to get together with other vampires. So he was deep in conversation with this vamp or that, reminiscing about Chicago in the twenties or investment opportunities in various vampire holdings around the world. I was so shaky physically that I was content to sit on a soft couch and watch, sipping from time to time at my Screwdriver. The bartender was a pleasant young man, and we talked bars for a little while. I should have been enjoying my break from waiting tables at Merlotte's, but I would gladly have dressed in my uniform and taken orders. I wasn't used to big changes in my routine.
Then a woman maybe a little younger than me plopped down on the couch beside me. Turned out she was dating the vampire who acted as sergeant at arms, Joseph Velasquez, who'd gone to the Fellowship Center with Bill the night before. Her name was Trudi Pfeiffer. Trudi had hair done in deep red spikes, a pierced nose and tongue, and macabre makeup, including black lipstick. She told me proudly its color was called Grave Rot. Her jeans were so low I wondered how she got up and down in them. Maybe she wore them so low-cut to show off her navel ring. Her knit top was cropped very short. The outfit I'd worn the night the maenad had gotten me paled in comparison. So, there was lots of Trudi to see.
When you talked to her, she wasn't as bizarre as her appearance led you to believe. Trudi was a college student. I discovered, through absolutely legitimate listening, that she believed herself to be waving the red flag at the bull, by dating Joseph. The bull was her parents, I gathered.
"They would even rather I dated someone black," she told me proudly.
I tried to look appropriately impressed. "They really hate the dead scene, huh?"
"Oh, do they ever." She nodded several times and waved her black fingernails extravagantly. She was drinking Dos Equis. "My mom always says, 'Can't you date someone alive?'" We both laughed.
"So, how are you and Bill?" She waggled her eyebrows up and down to indicate how significant the question was.
"You mean . . . ?"
"How's he in bed? Joseph is un-fucking-believable."
I can't say I was surprised, but I was dismayed. I cast around in my mind for a minute. "I'm glad for you," I finally said. If she'd been my good friend Arlene, I might have winked and smiled, but I wasn't about to discuss my sex life with a total stranger, and I really didn't want to know about her and Joseph.
Trudi lurched up to get another beer, and remained in conversation with the bartender. I shut my eyes in relief and weariness, and felt the couch depress beside me. I cut my gaze to the right to see what new companion I had. Eric. Oh, great.
"How are you?" he asked.
"Better than I look." That wasn't true.
"You've seen Hugo and Isabel?"
"Yes." I looked at my hands folded in my lap.
"Appropriate, don't you think?"
I thought that Eric was trying to provoke me.
"In a way, yes," I said. "Assuming Stan sticks to his word."
"You didn't say that to him, I hope." But Eric looked only amused.
"No, I didn't. Not in so many words. You're all so damn proud."
He looked surprised. "Yes, I guess that's true."
"Did you just come to check up on me?"
"To Dallas?"
I nodded.
"Yes." He shrugged. He was wearing a knit shirt in a pretty tan-and-blue pattern, and the shrug made his shoulders look massive. "We are loaning you out for the first time. I wanted to see that things went smoothly without being here in my official capacity."
"Do you think Stan knows who you are?"
He looked interested in the idea. "It's not far-fetched," he said at last. "He would probably have done the same thing in my place."
"Do you think from now on, you could just let me stay at home, and leave me and Bill alone?" I asked.
"No. You are too useful," he said. "Besides, I'm hoping that the more you see me, the more I'll grow on you."
"Like a fungus?"
He laughed, but his eyes were fixed on me in a way that meant business. Oh, hell.
"You look especially luscious in that knit dress with nothing underneath," Eric said. "If you left Bill and came to me of your own free will, he would accept that."
"But I'm not going to do any such thing," I said, and then something caught at the edges of my consciousness.
Eric started to say something else to me, but I put my hand across his mouth. I moved my head from side to side, trying to get the best reception; that's the best way I can explain it.
"Help me up," I said.
Without a word, Eric stood and gently pulled me' to my feet. I could feel my eyebrows draw together.
They were all around us. They circled the house.
Their brains were wound up to fever pitch. If Trudi hadn't been babbling earlier, I might have heard them as they crept up to circle the house.
"Eric," I said, trying to catch as many thoughts as I could, hearing a countdown, oh, God!
"Hit the floor!" I yelled at the top of my lungs.
Every vampire obeyed.
So when the Fellowship opened fire, it was the humans that died.
Chapter 8
A yard away, Trudi was cut down by a shotgun blast.
The dyed dark red of her hair turned another shade of red and her open eyes stared at me forever. Chuck, the bartender, was only wounded, since the structure of the bar itself offered him some protection.
Eric was lying on top of me. Given my sore condition, that was very painful, and I started to shove at him. Then I realized that if he were hit with bullets, he would most likely survive. But I wouldn't. So I accepted his shelter gratefully for the horrible minutes of the first wave of the attack, when rifles and shotguns and handguns were fired into the suburban mansion over and over.
Instinctively, I shut my eyes while the blasting lasted. Glass shattered, vampires roared, humans screamed. The noise battered at me, just as the tidal wave of scores of brains at high gear washed over me. When it began to taper off, I looked up into Eric's eyes. Incredibly, he was excited. He smiled at me. "I knew I'd get on top of you somehow," he said.