"This is ridiculous," Victor said. His impatience was calculated. "Eric, this is the bottom line and my last offer. Do you accept my king's takeover of Louisiana and Arkansas, or do you want to fight to the death?"
There was another, shorter pause.
"I accept the sovereignty of your king," Eric said, his voice flat.
"Bill Compton?" Victor asked.
Bill looked at me, his dark eyes dwelling on my face. "I accept," he said.
And just like that, Louisiana had a new king, and the old regime was gone.
Chapter 13
I felt the tension whoosh out of me like the air out of a punctured tire.
Eric said, "Victor, call your people off. I want to hear you tell them."
Victor, beaming harder than ever, whipped a tiny cell phone from his pocket and called someone named Delilah to give her his orders. Eric used his own cell to phone Fangtasia. Eric told Clancy about the change in leadership.
"Don't forget to tell Pam," Eric said very clearly, "lest she kill off a few more of Victor's people."
There was an awkward pause. Everyone was wondering what came next.
Now that I was pretty sure I was going to live, I hoped Quinn would change back to his human form so I could talk to him. There was a lot to talk about. I wasn't sure I had a right to feel this, but I felt betrayed.
I don't think the world is about me. I could see he'd been forced into this situation.
There was always a lot of forcing around vampires.
As I saw it, this was the second time his mother had set Quinn up, quite inadvertently, to take her fall with the vamps. I got that she wasn't responsible; truly, I did. She'd never wanted to be raped, and she hadn't chosen to become mentally ill. I'd never met the woman and probably never would, but she was surely a loose cannon. Quinn had done what he could. He'd sent his sister ahead to warn us, though I wasn't exactly sure that had ended up helping so very much.
But points for trying.
Now, as I watched the tiger nuzzle Frannie, I knew I'd made mistakes all the way down the line with Quinn. And I felt the anger of betrayal; no matter how I reasoned with myself, the image of seeing my boyfriend on the side of vampires I had to regard as enemies had lit a fire in me. I shook myself, looking around the room.
Amelia had made a dash for the bathroom as soon as she could decently let go of Frannie, who was still crying. I suspected the tension had been too much for my witchy roommate, and sounds from the hall bathroom confirmed that. Eric was still on the phone with Clancy, pretending to be busy while he absorbed the huge change in his circumstances. I couldn't read his mind, but I knew that. He walked down the hall, maybe wanting some privacy to reassess his future.
Victor had gone outside to talk to his cohorts, and I heard one of them say, "Yeah!Yes!" as if his team had scored a winning goal, which I supposed was the case.
As for me, I felt a little weak in the knees, and my thoughts were in such a tumult they could scarcely be called thoughts. Bill's arm went around me, and he lowered me to the chair Eric had vacated. I felt his cool lips brush my cheek. I would have to possess a heart of stone not to be affected by his little speech to Victor—I hadn't forgotten it, no matter how terrifying the night had been—and my heart is not made of stone.
Bill knelt by my feet, his white face turned up to me. "I hope someday you'll turn to me," he said. "I'll never force myself or my company on you." And he got up and walked outside to meet his new vampire kin.
Okey-dokey.
God bless me; the night wasn't over yet.
I trudged back to my bedroom and pushed the door open, intending to wash my face or brush my teeth or make some stab at smoothing my hair, because I thought it might make me feel a little less trampled.
Eric was sitting on my bed, his face buried in his hands.
He looked up at me as I entered, and he looked shocked. Well, no wonder, what with the very thorough takeover and traumatic changing of the guard.
"Sitting here on your bed, smelling your scent," he said in a voice so low I had to strain to hear it. "Sookie . . . I remember everything."
"Oh,hell," I said, and went in the bathroom and shut the door. I brushed my hair and my teeth and scrubbed my face, but I had to come out. I was being as cowardly as Quinn if I didn't face the vampire.
Eric started talking the minute I emerged. "I can't believe I—"
"Yeah, yeah, I know, loved a mere human, made all those promises, was as sweet as pie and wanted to stay with me forever," I muttered. Surely there was a shortcut we could take through this scene.
"I can't believe I felt something so strongly and was so happy for the first time in hundreds of years," Eric said with some dignity. "Give me some credit for that, too."
I rubbed my forehead. It was the middle of the night, I'd thought I was going to die, the man I'd been thinking of as my boyfriend had just turned my whole picture of him upside down. Though now "his" vamps were on the same side as "my" vamps, I'd emotionally aligned myself with the vampires of Louisiana, even if some of them had been terrifying in the extreme. Could Victor Madden and his crew be any less scary? I thought not. This very night they'd killed quite a few vamps I'd known and liked.
Coming on top of all these events, I didn't think I could cope with an Eric who'd just had a revelation.
"Can we talk about this some other time, if we have to talk about it?" I asked.
"Yes," he said after a long pause. "Yes. This isn't the right moment."
"I don't know that any time will be right for this conversation."
"But we're going to have it," Eric said.
"Eric . . . oh, okay." I made an "erase" movement with my hand. "I'm glad the new regime wants to keep you on."
"It would hurt you if I died."
"Yeah, we're blood bound, yadda yadda yadda."
"Not because of the bond."
"Okay, you're right. It would hurt me if you died. Also I would have died, too, most likely, so it wouldn't have hurt for long. Now can you please scoot?"
"Oh, yes," he said with a return of the old Eric flare. "I'll scoot for now, but I'm going to see you later. And rest assured, my lover, we'll come to an understanding. As for the vampires of Las Vegas, they'll be well-suited to running another state that relies heavily on tourism. The King of Nevada is a powerful man, and Victor is not one you can take lightly. Victor is ruthless, but he won't destroy something he may be able to use. He's very good at reining in his temper."
"So you're not really that unhappy with the takeover?" I couldn't keep the shock out of my voice.
"It's happened," Eric said. "There's no goal to be met in being ‘unhappy' now. I can't bring anyone back to life, and I can't defeat Nevada by myself. I won't ask my people to die in a futile attempt."
I just couldn't match Eric's pragmatism. I could see his points, and in fact when I'd had some rest, I might agree with him. But not here, not now; he seemed way too cold for me. Of course, he'd had a few hundred years to get that way, and maybe he'd had to go through this process many times.
What a bleak prospect.
Eric paused on his way out the door to bend down to kiss me on the cheek. This was another evening for collecting kisses. "I'm sorry about the tiger," he said, and that was the final cap to the night as far as I was concerned. I sat slumped in the little chair in the bedroom corner until I was sure everyone was out of the house. When only one warm brain remained, Amelia's, I peered out of my room to get a visual. Yep, everyone else was gone.