When I woke up, I was still in the woods, still lying on the ground. Someone was stretched out beside me; it was the vampire. I could see his glow. I could feel his tongue moving on my head. He was licking my head wound. I could hardly begrudge him.
"Do I taste different from other people?" I asked.
"Yes," he said in a thick voice. "What are you?"
It was the third time he'd asked. Third time's the charm, Gran always said.
"Hey, I'm not dead," I said. I suddenly remembered I'd expected to check out for good. I wiggled my arm, the one that had been broken. It was weak, but it wasn't flopping any longer. I could feel my legs, and I wiggled them, too. I breathed in and out experimentally and was pleased with the resulting mild ache. I struggled to sit up. That proved to be quite an effort, but not an impossibility. It was like my first fever-free day after I'd had pneumonia as a kid. Feeble but blissful. I was aware I'd survived something awful.
Before I finished straightening, he'd put his arms under me and cradled me to him. He leaned back against a tree. I felt very comfortable sitting on his lap, my head against his chest.
"What I am, is telepathic," I said. "I can hear people's thoughts."
"Even mine?" He sounded merely curious.
"No. That's why I like you so much," I said, floating on a sea of pinkish well-being. I couldn't seem to be bothered with camouflaging my thoughts.
I felt his chest rumble as he laughed. The laugh was a little rusty.
"I can't hear you at all," I blathered on, my voice dreamy. "You have no idea how peaceful that is. After a lifetime of blah, blah, blah, to hear ... nothing."
"How do you manage going out with men? With men your age, their only thought is still surely how to get you into bed."
"Well, I don't. Manage. And frankly, at any age, I think their goal is get a woman in bed. I don't date. Everyone thinks I'm crazy, you know, because I can't tell them the truth; which is, that I'm driven crazy by all these thoughts, all these heads. I had a few dates when I started working at the bar, guys who hadn't heard about me. But it was the same as always. You can't concentrate on being comfortable with a guy, or getting a head of steam up, when you can hear they're wondering if you dye your hair, or thinking that your butt's not pretty, or imagining what your boobs look like."
Suddenly I felt more alert, and I realized how much of myself I was revealing to this creature.
"Excuse me," I said. "I didn't mean to burden you with my problems. Thank you for saving me from the Rats."
"It was my fault they had a chance to get you at all," he said. I could tell there was rage just under the calm surface of his voice. "If I had had the courtesy to be on time, it would not have happened. So I owed you some of my blood. I owed you the healing."
"Are they dead?" To my embarrassment, my voice sounded squeaky.
"Oh, yes."
I gulped. I couldn't regret that the world was rid of the Rats. But I had to look this straight in the face, I couldn't dodge the realization that I was sitting in the lap of a murderer. Yet I was quite happy to sit there, his arms around me.
"I should worry about this, but I'm not," I said, before I knew what I was going to say. I felt that rusty laugh again.
"Sookie, why did you want to talk to me tonight?"
I had to think back hard. Though I was miraculously recovered from the beating physically, I felt a little hazy mentally.
"My grandmother is real anxious to know how old you are," I said hesitantly. I didn't know how personal a question that was to a vampire. The vampire in question was stroking my back as though he were soothing a kitten.
"I was made vampire in 1870, when I was thirty human years old." I looked up; his glowing face was expressionless, his eyes pits of blackness in the dark woods.
"Did you fight in the War?"
"Yes."
"I have the feeling you're gonna get mad. But it would make her and her club so happy if you'd tell them a little bit about the War, about what it was really like."
"Club?"
"She belongs to Descendants of the Glorious Dead."
"Glorious dead." The vampire's voice was unreadable, but I could tell, sure enough, he wasn't happy.
"Listen, you wouldn't have to tell them about the maggots and the infections and the starvation," I said. "They have their own picture of the War, and though they're not stupid people—they've lived through other wars—they would like to know more about the way people lived then, and uniforms and troop movements."
"Clean things."
I took a deep breath. "Yep."
"Would it make you happy if I did this?"
"What difference does that make? It would make Gran happy, and since you're in Bon Temps and seem to want to live around here, it would be a good public relations move for you,"
"Would it make you happy?"
He was not a guy you could evade. "Well, yes."
"Then I'll do it."
"Gran says to please eat before you come," I said.
Again I heard the rumbling laugh, deeper this time.
"I'm looking forward to meeting her now. Can I call on you some night?"
"Ah. Sure. I work my last night tomorrow night, and the day after I'm off for two days, so Thursday would be a good night." I lifted my arm to look at my watch. It was running, but the glass was covered with dried blood. "Oh, yuck," I said, wetting my finger in my mouth and cleaning the watch face off with spit. I pressed the button that illuminated the hands, and gasped when I saw what time it was.
"Oh, gosh, I got to get home. I hope Gran went to sleep."
"She must worry about you being out so late at night by yourself," Bill observed. He sounded disapproving. Maybe he was thinking of Maudette? I had a moment of deep unease, wondering if in fact Bill had known her, if she'd invited him to come home with her. But I rejected the idea because I was stubbornly unwilling to dwell on the odd, awful, nature of Maudette's life and death; I didn't want that horror to cast a shadow on my little bit of happiness.
"It's part of my job," I said tartly. "Can't be helped. I don't work nights all the time, anyway. But when I can, I do."
"Why?" The vampire gave me a shove up to my feet, and then he rose easily from the ground.
"Better tips. Harder work. No time to think."
"But night is more dangerous," he said disapprovingly.
He ought to know. "Now don't you go sounding like my grandmother," I chided him mildly. We had almost reached the parking lot.
"I'm older than your grandmother," he reminded me. That brought the conversation up short.
After I stepped out of the woods, I stood staring. The parking lot was as serene and untouched as if nothing had ever happened there, as if I hadn't been nearly beaten to death on that patch of gravel only an hour before, as if the Rats hadn't met their bloody end.
The lights in the bar and in Sam's trailer were off.
The gravel was wet, but not bloody.
My purse was sitting on the hood of my car.
"And what about the dog?" I said.
I turned to look at my savior.
He wasn't there.
Chapter 2
I GOT UP very late the next morning, which was not too surprising. Gran had been asleep when I got home, to my relief, and I was able to climb into my bed without waking her.
I WAS DRINKING a cup of coffee at the kitchen table and Gran was cleaning out the pantry when the phone rang. Gran eased her bottom up onto the stool by the counter, her normal chatting perch, to answer it.
"Hel-lo," she said. For some reason, she always sounded put out, as if a phone call were the last thing on earth she wanted. I knew for a fact that wasn't the case.