Dead to the World

then when this vampire ho contacted him somehow, he went a-running.” For all I knew, she’d emailed him. “He’d had an affair with her before, and she turned out to be his, I don’t know what you call ’em, the one who turned him into a vampire. Brought him over, he said. So Bill took back up with her. He says he had to. And then he found out”—I looked sideways at Eric with a significant raise of the eyebrows, and Eric looked fascinated—“that she was just trying to lure him over to the even-darker side.”
    “Pardon?”
    “She was trying to get him to come over to another vampire group in Mississippi and bring with him the really valuable computer data base he’d put together for your people, the Louisiana vamps,” I said, simplifying a little bit for the sake of brevity.
    “What happened?”
    This was as much fun as talking to Arlene. Maybe even more, because I’d never been able to tell her the whole story. “Well, Lorena, that’s her name, she tortured him,” I said, and Eric’s eyes widened. “Can you believe that? She could torture someone she’d made love with? Someone she’d lived with for years?” Eric shook his head disbelievingly. “Anyway, you told me to go to Jackson and find him, and I sort of picked up clues at this nightclub for supes only.” Eric nodded. Evidently, I didn’t have to explain that “supes” meant “supernatural beings.” “Its real name is Josephine’s, but the Weres call it Club Dead. You told me to go there with this really nice Were who owed you a big favor, and I stayed at his place.” Alcide Herveaux still figured in my daydreams. “But I ended up getting hurt pretty bad,” I concluded. Hurt pretty bad, as always.
    “How?”
    “I got staked, believe it or not.”
    Eric looked properly impressed. “Is there a scar?”
    “Yeah, even though—” And here I stopped dead.
    He gave every indication he was hanging on my words. “What?”
    “You got one of the Jackson vampires to work on the wound, so I’d survive for sure . . . and then you gave me blood to heal me quick, so I could look for Bill at daylight.” Remembering how Eric had given me blood made my cheeks turn red, and I could only hope Eric would attribute my flush to the heat of the fire.
    “And you saved Bill?” he said, moving beyond that touchy part.
    “Yes, I did,” I said proudly. “I saved his ass.” I rolled onto my back and looked up at him. Gee, it was nice to have someone to talk to. I pulled up my T-shirt and inclined partially on my side to show Eric the scar, and he looked impressed. He touched the shiny area with a fingertip and shook his head. I rearranged myself.
    “And what happened to the vampire ho?” he asked
    I eyed him suspiciously, but he didn’t seem to be making fun of me. “Well,” I said, “um, actually, I kind of . . . She came in while I was getting Bill untied, and she attacked me, and I kind of . . . killed her.”
    Eric looked at me intently. I couldn’t read his expression. “Had you ever killed anyone before?” he asked.
    “Of course not!” I said indignantly. “Well, I did hurt a guy who was trying to kill me, but he didn’t die. No, I’m a human . I don’t have to kill anyone to live.”
    “But humans kill other humans all the time. And they don’t even need to eat them or drink their blood.”
    “Not all humans.”
    “True enough,” he said. “We vampires are all murderers.”
    “But in a way, you’re like lions.”
    Eric looked astonished. “Lions?” he said weakly.
    “Lions all kill stuff.” At the moment, this idea seemed like an inspiration. “So you’re predators, like lions and rap-tors. But you use what you kill. You have to kill to eat.”
    “The catch in that comforting theory being that we look almost exactly like you. And we used to be you. And we can love you, as well as feed off you. You could hardly say the lion wanted to caress the antelope.”
    Suddenly there was something in the air that hadn’t been there the moment before. I felt a little like an antelope that was being stalked—by a lion that was a deviant.
    I’d felt more comfortable when I was taking care of a terrified victim.
    “Eric,” I said, very cautiously, “you know you’re my guest here. And you know if I tell you to leave, which I will if you’re not straight with me, you’ll be standing out in the middle of a field somewhere in a bathrobe that’s too short for you.”
    “Have I said something to make you