"Sookie," Eric said. I didn't think he'd heard a word. "Yield to me."
Well, that was pretty direct.
"No," I said, in the most definite voice I could summon. "No."
"I will protect you from Bill."
"You're the one that's gonna need protection!" When I reflected on that sentence, I was not proud of it.
"You think Bill is stronger than me?"
"I am not having this conversation." Then I proceeded to have it. "Eric, I appreciate your offering to help me, and I appreciate your willingness to come to an awful place like this."
"Believe me, Sookie, this little gathering of trash is nothing, nothing, compared to some of the places I have been."
And I believed him utterly. "Okay, but it's awful to me. Now, I realize that I should've known this would, ah, rouse your expectations, but you know I did not come out here tonight to have sex with anyone. Bill is my boyfriend." Though the words boyfriend and Bill sounded ludicrous in the same sentence, "boyfriend" was Bill's function in my world, anyway.
"I am glad to hear it," said a cool, familiar voice. "This scene would make me wonder, otherwise."
Oh, great.
Eric rose up off of me, and I scrambled off the hood of the car and stumbled in the direction of Bill's voice.
"Sookie," he said, when I drew near, "it's getting to where I just can't let you go anywhere alone."
As far as I could tell in the poor lighting, he didn't look very glad to see me. But I couldn't blame him for that. "I sure made a big mistake," I said, from the bottom of my heart. I hugged him.
"You smell like Eric," he said into my hair. Well, hell, I was forever smelling like other men to Bill. I felt a flood of misery and shame, and I realized things were about to happen.
But what happened was not what I expected.
Andy Bellefleur stepped out of the bushes with a gun in his hand. His clothes looked torn and stained, and the gun looked huge.
"Sookie, step away from the vampire," he said.
"No." I wrapped myself around Bill. I didn't know if I was protecting him or he was protecting me. But if Andy wanted us separated, I wanted us joined.
There was a sudden surge of voices on the porch of the cabin. Someone clearly had been looking out of the window—I had kind of wondered if Eric had made that up—because, though no voices had been raised, the showdown in the clearing had attracted the attention of the revelers inside. While Eric and I had been in the yard, the orgy had progressed. Tom Hardaway was naked, and Jan, too. Eggs Tallie looked drunker.
"You smell like Eric," Bill repeated, in a hissing voice.
I reared back from him, completely forgetting about Andy and his gun. And I lost my temper.
This is a rare thing, but not as rare as it used to be. It was kind of exhilarating. "Yeah, uh-huh, and I can't even tell what you smell like! For all I know you've been with six women! Hardly fair, is it?"
Bill gaped at me, stunned. Behind me, Eric started laughing. The crowd on the sundeck was silently enthralled. Andy didn't think we should all be ignoring the man with the gun.
"Stand together in a group," he bellowed. Andy had had a lot to drink.
Eric shrugged. "Have you ever dealt with vampires, Bellefleur?" he asked.
"No," Andy said. "But I can shoot you dead. I have silver bullets."
"That's—" I started to say, but Bill's hand covered my mouth. Silver bullets were only definitely fatal to werewolves, but vampires also had a terrible reaction to silver, and a vampire hit in a vital place would certainly suffer.
Eric raised an eyebrow and sauntered over to the orgiasts on the deck. Bill took my hand, and we joined them. For once, I would have loved to know what Bill was thinking.
"Which one of you was it, or was it all of you?" Andy bellowed.
We all kept silent. I was standing by Tara, who was shivering in her red underwear. Tara was scared, no big surprise. I wondered if knowing Andy's thoughts would help any, and I began to focus on him. Drunks don't make for good reading, I can tell you, because they only think about stupid stuff, and their ideas are quite unreliable. Their memories are shaky, too. Andy didn't have too many thoughts at the moment. He didn't like anyone in the clearing, not even himself, and he was determined to get the truth out of someone.
"Sookie, come here," he yelled.
"No," Bill said very definitely.
"I have to have her right here beside me in thirty seconds, or I shoot—her!" Andy said, pointing his gun right at me.
"You will not live thirty seconds after, if you do," Bill said.
I believed him. Evidently Andy did, too.
"I don't care," Andy said. "She's not much loss to the world."
Well, that made me mad all over again. My temper had begun to die down, but that made it flare up in a big way.
I yanked free from Bill's hand and stomped down the steps to the yard. I wasn't so blind with anger that I ignored the gun, though I was sorely tempted to grab Andy by his balls and squeeze. He'd still shoot me, but he'd hurt, too. However, that was as self-defeating as drinking was. Would the moment of satisfaction be worth it?
"Now, Sookie, you read the minds of those people and you tell me which one did it," Andy ordered. He gripped the back of my neck with his big hands, like I was an untrained puppy, and swiveled me around to face the deck.
"What the hell do you think I was doing here, you stupid shit? Do you think this is the way I like to spend my time, with assholes like these?"
Andy shook me by my neck. I am very strong, and there was a good chance that I could break free from him and grab the gun, but it was not close enough to a sure thing to make me comfortable. I decided to wait for a minute. Bill was trying to tell me something with his face, but I wasn't sure what it was. Eric was trying to cop a feel from Tara. Or Eggs. It was hard to tell.
A dog whined at the edge of the woods. I rolled my eyes in that direction, unable to turn my head. Well, great. Just great.
"That's my collie," I told Andy. "Dean, remember?" I could have used some human-shaped help, but since Sam had arrived on the scene in his collie persona, he'd have to stay that way or risk exposure.
"Yeah. What's your dog doing out here?"
"I don't know. Don't shoot him, okay?"
"I'd never shoot a dog," he said, sounding genuinely shocked.
"Oh, but me, it's okay," I said bitterly.
The collie padded over to where we were standing. I wondered what was on Sam's mind. I wondered if he retained much human thinking while he was in his favorite form. I rolled my eyes toward the gun, and Sam/Dean's eyes followed mine, but how much comprehension was in there, I just couldn't estimate.
The collie began to growl. His teeth were bared and he was glaring at the gun.
"Back up, dog," Andy said, annoyed.
If I could just hold Andy still for a minute, the vampires could get him. I tried to work out all the moves in my mind. I'd have to grab his gun hand with both of my hands and force it up. But with Andy holding me out from him like this, that wasn't going to be easy.
"No, sweetheart," Bill said.
My eyes flashed over to him. I was considerably startled. Bill's eyes moved from my face to behind Andy. I could take a hint.
"Oh, who is being held like a little cub?" inquired a voice behind Andy.
Oh, this was just peachy.
"It is my messenger!" The maenad sauntered around Andy in a wide circle and came to stand to his right, a few feet before him. She was not between Andy and the group on the deck. She was clean tonight, and wearing nothing at all. I guessed she and Sam had been out in the woods making whoopee, before they heard the crowd. Her black hair fell in a tangled mass all the way to her hips. She didn't seem cold. The rest of us (except the vampires) were definitely feeling the nip in the air. We'd come dressed for an orgy, not an outdoors party.