'But it's time for me to go, darling. The world is full of woods and people that need to learn their lesson. I must be paid tribute. They mustn't forget me. I'm owed,' she said, in her sated voice, 'owed the madness and death.' She began to drift to the edge of the woods.
'After all,' she said over her shoulder, 'it can't always be hunting season.'
Chapter 11
Even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't have walked over to see what was on the deck. Bill and Eric seemed subdued, and when vampires seem subdued, it means you don't really want to go investigate.
'We'll have to burn the cabin,' Eric said from a few yards away. 'I wish Callisto had taken care of her own mess.'
'She never has,' Bill said, 'that I have heard. It is the madness. What does true madness care about discovery?'
'Oh, I don't know,' Eric said carelessly. He sounded as if he was lifting something. There was a heavy thud. 'I have seen a few people who were definitely mad and quite crafty with it.'
'That's true,' Bill said. 'Shouldn't we leave a couple of them on the porch?'
'How can you tell?'
'That's true, too. It's a rare night I can agree with you this much.'
'She called me and asked me to help.' Eric was responding to the subtext rather than the statement.
'Then, all right. But you remember our agreement.'
'How can I forget?'
'You know Sookie can hear us.'
'Quite all right with me,' Eric said, and laughed. I stared up at the night and wondered, not too curiously, what the hell they were talking about. It's not like I was Russia, to be parceled out to the strongest dictator. Sam was resting beside me, back in his human form, and stark naked. At the moment, I could not have cared less. The cold didn't bother Sam, since he was a shapeshifter.
'Whoops, here's a live one,' Eric called.
'Tara,' Sam called.
Tara scrambled down the steps of the deck and over to us. She flung her arms around me and began sobbing. With tremendous weariness, I held her and let her boo-hoo. I was still in my Daisy Duke outfit, and she was in her fire-engine lingerie. We were like big white water lilies in a cold pond, we two. I made myself straighten up and hold Tara.
'Would there be a blanket in that cabin, you think?' I asked Sam. He trotted over to the steps, and I noticed the effect was interesting from behind. After a minute, he trotted back—wow, this view was even more arresting —and wrapped a blanket around the two of us.
'I must be gonna live,' I muttered.
'Why do you say that?' Sam was curious. He didn't seem unduly surprised by the events of the night.
I could hardly tell him it was because I'd watched him bounce around, so I said, 'How are Eggs and Andy?'
'Sounds like a radio show,' Tara said suddenly, and giggled. I didn't like the sound of it.
'They're still standing where she left them,' Sam reported. 'Still staring.'
'I'm—still—staring,' Tara sang, to the tune of Elton's 'I'm Still Standing.'
Eric laughed.
He and Bill were just about to start the fire. They strolled over to us for a last-minute check.
'What car did you come in?' Bill asked Tara.
'Ooo, a vampire,' she said. 'You're Sookie's honey, aren't you? Why were you at the game the other night with a dog like Portia Bellefleur?'
'She's kind, too,' Eric said. He looked down at Tara with a sort of beneficent but disappointed smile, like a dog breeder regarding a cute, but inferior, puppy.
'What car did you come in?' Bill asked again. 'If there is a sensible side to you, I want to see it now.'
'I came in the white Camaro,' she said, quite soberly. 'I'll drive it home. Or maybe I better not. Sam?'
'Sure, I'll drive you home. Bill, you need my help here?'
'I think Eric and I can cope. Can you take the skinny one?'
'Eggs? I'll see.'
Tara gave me a kiss on the cheek and began picking her way across the yard to her car. 'I left the keys in it,' she called.
'What about your purse?' The police would surely wonder if they found Tara's purse in a cabin with a lot of bodies.
'Oh … it's in there.'
I looked at Bill silently, and he went in to fetch the purse. He returned with a big shoulder bag, large enough to contain not only makeup and everyday items, but also a change of clothing.
'This is yours?'
'Yes, thanks,' Tara said, taking the bag from him as if she were afraid his fingers might touch hers. She hadn't been so picky earlier in the evening, I thought.
Eric was carrying Eggs to her car. 'He will not remember any of this,' Eric told Tara as Sam opened the back door of the Camaro so Eric could lay Eggs inside.
'I wish I could say the same.' Her face seemed to sag on its bones under the weight of the knowledge of what had happened this night. 'I wish I'd never seen that thing, whatever she is. I wish I'd never come here, to start with. I hated doing this. I just thought Eggs was worth it.' She gave a look to the inert form in the backseat of her car. 'He's not. No one is.'
'I can remove your memory, too.' Eric made the offer offhandedly.
'No,' she said. 'I need to remember some of this, and it's worth carrying the burden of the rest.' Tara sounded twenty years older. Sometimes we can grow up all in a minute; I'd done that when I was about seven and my parents died. Tara had done that this night.
'But they're all dead, all but me and Eggs and Andy. Aren't you afraid we'll talk? Are you gonna come after us?'
Eric and Bill exchanged glances. Eric moved a little closer to Tara. 'Look, Tara,' he began, in a very reasonable voice, and she made the mistake of glancing up. Then, once her gaze was fixed, Eric began to erase the memory of the night. I was just too tired to protest, as if that would do any good. If Tara could even raise the question, she shouldn't be burdened with the knowledge. I hoped she wouldn't repeat her mistakes, having been separated from the knowledge of what they had cost her; but she couldn't be allowed to tell tales.
Tara and Eggs, driven by Sam (who had borrowed Eggs's pants), were on their way back to town when Bill began arranging a natural-looking fire to consume the cabin. Eric was apparently counting bones up on the deck, to make sure the bodies there were complete enough to reassure the investigators. He went across the yard to check on Andy.
'Why does Bill hate the Bellefleurs so much?' I asked him again.
'Oh, that's an old story,' Eric said. 'Back from before Bill had even changed over.' He seemed satisfied by Andy's condition and went back to work.
I heard a car approaching, and Bill and Eric both appeared in the yard instantly. I could hear a faint crackle from the far side of the cabin. 'We can't start the fire from more than one place, or they may be able to tell it wasn't natural,' Bill said to Eric. 'I hate these strides in police science.'
'If we hadn't decided to go public, they'd have to blame it on one of them,' Eric said. 'But as it is, we are such attractive scapegoats … it's galling, when you think of how much stronger we are.'
'Hey, guys, I'm not a Martian, I'm a human, and I can hear you just fine,' I said. I was glaring at them, and they were looking perhaps one-fiftieth embarrassed, when Portia Bellefleur got out of her car and ran to her brother. 'What have you done to Andy?' she said, her voice harsh and cracking. 'You damn vampires.' She pulled the collar of Andy's shirt this way and that, looking for puncture marks.
