Dead Until Dark

look in his face. This time he didn’t stop me. I stared at Bill, seeing something in his face that I’d never seen before. “You have to do this,” I said, appalled. I could not imagine someone giving Bill an order. “But honey, I don’t want to go see Eric.”
    I could see that made no difference.
    “What is he, the Godfather of vampires?” I asked, angry and incredulous. “Did he make you an offer you couldn’t refuse?”
    “He is older than me. More to the point, he is stronger.”
    “Nobody’s stronger than you,” I said stoutly.
    “I wish you were right.”
    “So is he the head of Vampire Region Ten, or something?”
    “Yes. Something like that.”
    Bill was always closemouthed about how vampires controlled their own affairs. That had been fine with me, until now.
    “What does he want? What will happen if I don’t go?”
    Bill just sidestepped the first question. “He’ll send someone—several someones—to get you.”
    “Other vampires.”
    “Yes.” Bill’s eyes were opaque, shining with his difference, brown and rich.
    I tried to think this through. I wasn’t used to being ordered around. I wasn’t used to no choices at all. It took my thick skull several minutes to evaluate the situation.
    “So, you’d feel obliged to fight them?”
    “Of course. You are mine.”
    There was that “mine” again. It seemed he really meant it. I sure felt like whining, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good.
    “I guess I have to go,” I said, trying not to sound bitter. “This is just plain old blackmail.”
    “Sookie, vampires aren’t like humans . Eric is using the best means to achieve his goal, which is getting you to Shreveport. He didn’t have to spell all this out; I understood it.”
    “Well, I understand it now, but I hate it. I’m between a rock and hard place! What does he want me for, anyway?” An obvious answer popped right into my mind, and I looked at Bill, horrified. “Oh, no, I won’t do that!”
    “He won’t have sex with you or bite you, not without killing me.” Bill’s glowing face lost all vestiges of familiarity and became utterly alien.
    “And he knows that,” I said tentatively, “so there must be another reason he wants me in Shreveport.”
    “Yes,” Bill agreed, “but I don’t know what it is.”
    “Well, if it doesn’t have to do with my physical charms, or the unusual quality of my blood, it must have to do with my . . . little quirk.”
    “Your gift.”
    “Right,” I said, sarcasm dripping from my voice. “My precious gift.” All the anger I thought I’d eased off my shoulders came back to sit like a four-hundred-pound gorilla. And I was scared to death. I wondered how Bill felt. I was even scared to ask that.
    “When?” I asked instead.
    “Tomorrow night.”
    “I guess this is the downside of nontraditional dating.” I stared over Bill’s shoulder at the pattern of the wallpaper my grandmother had chosen ten years ago. I promised myself that if I got through this, I would repaper.
    “I love you.” His voice was just a whisper.
    This wasn’t Bill’s fault. “I love you, too,” I said. I had to stop myself from begging, Please don’t let the bad vampire hurt me, please don’t let the vampire rape me. If I was between a rock and a hard place, Bill was doubly so. I couldn’t even begin to estimate the self-control he was employing. Unless he really was calm? Could a vampire face pain and this form of helplessness without some inner turmoil?
    I searched his face, the familiar clear lines and white matte complexion, the dark arches of his brows and proud line of his nose. I observed that Bill’s fangs were only slightly extended, and rage and lust ran them full out.
    “Tonight,” he said. “Sookie . . .” His hands began urging me to lie beside him.
    “What?”
    “Tonight, I think, you should drink from me.”
    I made a face. “Ick! Don’t you need all your strength for tomorrow night? I’m not hurt.”
    “How have you felt since you drank from me? Since I put my blood inside you?”
    I mulled it over. “Good,” I admitted.
    “Have you been sick?”
    “No, but then I almost never am.”
    “Have you had more energy?”
    “When you weren’t taking it back!” I said tartly, but I could feel my lips curve up in a little smile.
    “Have you been stronger?”
    “I—yes, I guess I have.” I realized for the first time how extraordinary it was that I’d carried in a new chair, by myself, the week before.
    “Has