Dead Until Dark

warmth of the dog through my nightgown; I must have gotten hot during the night and thrown off the sheet. I drowsily patted the animal’s head and began to stroke his fur, my fingers running idly through the thick hair. He wriggled even closer, sniffed my face, put his arm around me.
    His arm ?
    I was off the bed and shrieking in one move.
    In my bed, Sam propped himself on his elbows, sunny side up, and looked at me with some amusement.
    “Oh, ohmyGod! Sam, how’d you get here? What are you doing? Where’s Dean?” I covered my face with my hands and turned my back, but I’d certainly seen all there was to see of Sam.
    “Woof,” said Sam, from a human throat, and the truth stomped over me in combat boots.
    I whirled back to face him, so angry I felt like I was going to blow a gasket.
    “You watched me undress last night, you . . . you . . . damn dog!”
    “Sookie,” he said, persuasively. “Listen to me.”
    Another thought struck me. “Oh, Sam. Bill will kill you.” I sat on the slipper chair in the corner by the bathroom door. I put my elbows on my knees and hung my head. “Oh, no,” I said. “No, no, no.”
    He was kneeling in front of me. The wirey red gold hair of his head was duplicated on his chest and trailed in a line down to . . . I shut my eyes again.
    “Sookie, I was worried when Arlene told me you were going to be alone,” Sam began.
    “Didn’t she tell you about Bubba?”
    “Bubba?”
    “This vampire Bill left watching the house.”
    “Oh. Yeah, she said he reminded her of some singer.”
    “Well, his name is Bubba. He likes to drain animals for fun.”
    I had the satisfaction of seeing (through my fingers) Sam turn pale.
    “Well, isn’t it lucky you let me in, then,” he said finally.
    Suddenly recalled to his guise of the night before, I said, “What are you, Sam?”
    “I’m a shapeshifter. I thought it was time you knew.”
    “Did you have to do it quite like that?”
    “Actually,” he said, embarrassed, “I had planned on waking up and getting out before you opened your eyes. I just overslept. Running around on all fours kind of tires you out.”
    “I thought people just changed into wolves.”
    “Nope. I can change into anything.”
    I was so interested I dropped my hands and tried to just stare at his face. “How often?” I asked. “Do you get to pick?”
    “I have to at the full moon,” he explained. “Other times, I have to will it; it’s harder and it takes longer. I turn into whatever animal I saw before I changed. So I keep a dog book open to a picture of a collie on my coffee table. Collies are big, but nonthreatening.”
    “So, you could be a bird?”
    “Yeah, but flying is hard. I’m always scared I’m going to get fried on a power line, or fly into a window.”
    “Why? Why did you want me to know?”
    “You seemed to handle Bill being a vampire really well. In fact, you seemed to enjoy it. So I thought I would see if you could handle my . . . condition.”
    “But what you are,” I said abruptly, off on a mental tangent, “can’t be explained by a virus! I mean, you utterly change!”
    He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me, the eyes now blue, but just as intelligent and observant.
    “Being a shapeshifter is definitely supernatural. If that is, then other things can be. So . . .” I said, slowly, carefully, “Bill hasn’t got a virus at all. Being a vampire, it really can’t be explained by an allergy to silver or garlic or sunlight . . . that’s just so much bullshit the vampires are spreading around, propaganda, you might say . . . so they can be more easily accepted, as sufferers from a terrible disease. But really they’re . . . they’re really . . .”
    I dashed into the bathroom and threw up. Luckily, I made it to the toilet.
    “Yeah,” Sam said from the doorway, his voice sad. “I’m sorry, Sookie. But Bill doesn’t just have a virus. He’s really, really dead.”

    I WASHED MY face and brushed my teeth twice. I sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling too tired to go farther. Sam sat beside me. He put his arm around me comfortingly, and after a moment I nestled closer, laying my cheek in the hollow of his neck.
    “You know, once I was listening to NPR,” I said, completely at random. “They were broadcasting a piece about cryogenics, about how lots of people are opting to just freeze their head because it’s so much cheaper than getting your whole body frozen.”
    “Ummm?”
    “Guess what song they