Dead until Dark

I felt, rather than heard, movement to my right. I turned the beam of the flashlight in that direction. The ground was buckling. As I watched, a white hand shot up from the red soil. The dirt began to heave and crumble. A figure climbed out of the ground.

"Bill?"

It moved toward me. Covered with red streaks, his hair full of dirt, Bill took a hesitant step in my direction.

I couldn't even go to him.

"Sookie," he said, very close to me, "why are you here?" For once, he sounded disoriented and uncertain.

I had to tell him, but I couldn't open my mouth.

"Sweetheart?"

I went down like a stone. I was abruptly on my knees in the sodden grass.

"What happened while I slept?" He was kneeling by me, bare and streaming with rain.

"You don't have clothes oh," I murmured.

"They'd just get dirty," he said sensibly. "When I'm going to sleep in the soil, I take them off."

"Oh. Sure."

"Now you have to tell me."

"You have to not hate me."

"What have you done?"

"Oh my God, it wasn't me! But I could have warned you more, I could have grabbed you and made you listen. I tried to call you, Bill!"

"What has happened?"

I put one hand on either side of his face, touching his skin, realizing how much I would have lost, how much I might yet lose.

"They're dead, Bill, the vampires from Monroe. And someone else with them."

"Harlen," he said tonelessly. "Harlen stayed over last night, he and Diane really hit if off." He waited for me to finish, his eyes fixed on mine.

"They were burned."

"On purpose."

"Yes."

He squatted beside me in the rain, in the dark, his face not visible to me. The flashlight was gripped in my hand, and all my strength had ebbed away. I could feel his anger.

I could feel his cruelty.

I could feel his hunger.

He had never been more completely vampire. There wasn't anything human in him.

He turned his face to the sky and howled.

I thought he might kill someone, the rage rolling off him was so great. And the nearest person was me.

As I comprehended my own danger, Bill gripped my upper arms. He pulled me to him, slowly. There was no point in struggling, in fact I sensed that would only excite Bill more. Bill held me about an inch from him, I could almost smell his skin, and I could feel the turmoil in him, I could taste his rage.

Directing that energy in another way might save me. I leaned that inch, put my mouth on his chest. I licked the rain off, rubbed my cheek against his nipple, pressed myself against him.

The next moment his teeth grazed my shoulder, and his body, hard and rigid and ready, shoved me so forcefully I was suddenly on my back in the mud. He slid directly into me as if he were trying to reach through me to the soil. I shrieked, and he growled in response, as though we were truly mud people, primitives from caves. My hands, gripping the flesh of his back, felt the rain pelting down and the blood under my nails, and his relentless movement. I thought I would be plowed into this mud, into my grave. His fangs sank into my neck.

Suddenly I came. Bill howled as he reached his own com­pletion, and he collapsed on me, his fangs pulling out and his tongue cleaning the puncture marks. I had thought he might kill me without even meaning to. My muscles would not obey me, even if I had known what I wanted to do. Bill scooped me up. He took me to his house, pushing open the door and carrying me straight through into the large bathroom. Laying me gently on the carpet, where I spread mud and rainwater and a little streak of blood, Bill turned on the warm water in the spa, and when it was full he put me in and then got in himself. We sat on the seats, our legs trailing out in the warm frothing water that became discolored quickly.

Bill's eyes were staring miles away.

"All dead?" he said, his voice nearly inaudible.

"All dead, and a human girl, too," I said quietly.

"What have you been doing all day?"

"Cleaning. Sam made me clean my house."

"Sam," Bill said thoughtfully. "Tell me, Sookie. Can you read Sam's mind?"

"No," I confessed, suddenly exhausted. I submerged my head, and when I came up, Bill had gotten the shampoo bottle. He soaped my hair and rinsed it, combed it as he had the first time we'd made love.

"Bill, I'm sorry about your friends," I said, so exhausted I could hardly get the words out. "And I am so glad you are alive." I slid my arms around his neck and lay my head on his shoulder. It was hard as a rock. I remember Bill drying me off with a big white towel, and I remember thinking how soft the pillow was, and I remember him sliding into bed beside me and putting his arm around me. Then I fell into sleep.

In the small hours of the morning, I woke halfway to hear someone moving around the room. I must have been dream­ing, and it must have been bad, because I woke with my heart racing. "Bill?" I asked, and I could hear the fear in my voice.

"What's wrong?" he asked, and I felt the bed indent as he sat on the edge.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, I was just out walking."

"No one's out there?"