From Dead to Worse

it’s hard work. They like to keep to themselves for the most part. They like moderate climates. I don’t know what they eat or drink when they’re by themselves. They sample the food of other cultures; I’ve even seen a fairy try blood. They have a higher opinion of themselves than they have any right to. When they give their word, they keep it.” He thought for a moment. “They have different magics. They can’t all do the same things. And they are very magical. It’s their essence. They have no gods but their own race, for they’ve often been mistaken for gods. In fact, some of them have taken on the attributes of a deity.”
    I gaped at him. “What do you mean?”
    “Well, I don’t mean they’re holy ,” Eric said. “I mean that the fairies who inhabit the woods identify with the woods so strongly that to hurt one is to hurt the other. So they’ve suffered a great drop in numbers. Obviously, we vampires are not going to be up on fairy politics and survival issues, since we are so dangerous to them . . . simply because we find them intoxicating.”
    I’d never thought to ask Claudine about any of this. For one thing, she didn’t seem to enjoy talking about being a fairy, and when she popped up, it was usually when I was in trouble and therefore sadly self-absorbed. For another thing, I’d imagined there were maybe a small handful of fairies left in the world, but Eric was telling me there once were as many fairies as there were vampires, though the fairy race was on the wane.
    In sharp contrast, vampires—at least in America—were definitely on the increase. There were three bills wending their way through Congress dealing with vampire immigration. America had the distinction (along with Canada, Japan, Norway, Sweden, England, and Germany) of being a country that had responded to the Great Revelation with relative calm.
    The night of the carefully orchestrated Great Revelation, vampires all over the world had appeared on television, radio, in person, whatever the best means of communication in the area might be, to tell the human population, “Hey! We actually exist. But we’re not life threatening! The new Japanese synthetic blood satisfies our nutritional requirements.”
    The six years since then had been one big learning curve. Tonight I’d added a huge amount to my store of supernatural lore.
    “So the vampires have the upper hand,” I said.
    “We’re not at war,” Eric said. “We haven’t been at war for centuries.”
    “So in the past the vampires and the fairies have fought each other? I mean, like, pitched battles?”
    “Yes,” Eric said. “And if it came to that again, the first one I’d take out is Niall.”
    “Why?”
    “He’s very powerful in the fairy world. He is very magical. If he’s sincere in his desire to take you under his wing, you’re both very lucky and very unlucky.” Eric started the car and we pulled out of the parking lot. I hadn’t seen Niall come out of the restaurant. Maybe he’d just poofed out of the dining room. I hoped he’d paid our bill first.
    “I guess I have to ask you to explain that,” I said. But I had a feeling I didn’t really want to know the answer.
    “There were thousands of fairies in the United States once,” Eric said. “Now there are only hundreds. But the ones that are left are very determined survivors. And not all of those are friends of the prince’s.”
    “Oh, good. I needed another supernatural group who dislikes me,” I muttered.
    We drove through the night in silence, wending our way back to the interstate that would carry us east to Bon Temps. Eric seemed heavily thoughtful. I also had plenty of food for thought; more than I’d eaten at supper, that was for sure.
    I found that on the whole, I felt cautiously happy. It was good to have a kind of belated great-grandfather. Niall seemed genuinely anxious to establish a relationship with me. I still had a heap of questions to ask, but they could wait until we knew each other better.
    Eric’s Corvette could go pretty damn fast, and Eric wasn’t exactly sticking to the speed limit on the interstate. I wasn’t awfully surprised when I saw the blinking lights coming up behind us. I was only astonished the cop car could catch up with Eric.
    “A-hum,” I said, and Eric cursed in a language that probably hadn’t been spoken out loud in centuries. But even the sheriff of Area Five has to obey human laws these days, or at least he has to pretend to. Eric