Living Dead in Dallas

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.

'Are you trying to make me mad so I'll forget how scared I am?'

'No, I'm just opportunistic.'

I wiggled, trying to get out from under him, and he said, 'Oh, do that again. It felt great.'

'Eric, that girl I was just talking to is about three feet away from us with part of her head missing.'

'Sookie,' he said, suddenly serious, 'I've been dead for a few hundred years. I am used to it. But she is not quite gone. There is a spark. Do you want me to bring her over?'

I was shocked speechless. How could I make that decision?

And while I thought about it, he said, 'She is gone.'

While I stared up at him, the silence became complete. The only noise in the house was the sobbing of Farrell's wounded date, who was pressing both hands to his reddened thigh. From outside came the remote sounds of vehicles pulling out in a hurry up and down the quiet suburban street. The attack was over. I seemed to be having trouble breathing, and figuring out what I should do next. Surely there was something, some action, I should be taking?

This was as close to war as I would ever come.

The room was full of the survivors' screams and the vampires' howls of rage. Bits of stuffing from the couch and chairs floated in the air like snow. There was broken glass on everything and the heat of the night poured into the room. Several of the vampires were already up and giving chase, Joseph Velasquez among them, I noticed.

'No excuse to linger,' Eric said with a mock sigh, and lifted off of me. He looked down at himself. 'My shirts always get ruined when I am around you.'

'Oh shit, Eric.' I got to my knees with clumsy haste. 'You're bleeding. You got hit. Bill! Bill!' My hair was slithering around my shoulders as I turned from side to side searching the room. The last time I'd noticed him he'd been talking to a black-haired vampire with a pronounced widow's peak. She'd looked something like Snow White, to me. Now I half-stood to search the floor and I saw her sprawled close to a window. Something was protruding from her chest. The window had been hit by a shotgun blast, and some splinters had flown into the room. One of