Living Dead in Dallas

fully understand my telepathy, and neither did the Fellowship, or they wouldn’t have left me in here with him.
    Or maybe Hugo was as expendable to them as he was to me. And he certainly would be to the vampires; I could hardly wait to tell Isabel that her boy toy was a traitor.
    That sobered up my bloodlust. When I realized what Isabel would do to Hugo, I realized that I would take no real satisfaction in it if I witnessed it. In fact, it would terrify me and sicken me.
    But part of me thought he richly deserved it.
    To whom did this conflicted lawyer owe fealty?
    One way to find out.
    I sat up painfully, pressed my back against the wall. I would heal pretty fast—the vampire blood, again—but I was still a human, and I still felt awful. I knew my face was badly bruised, and I was willing to believe my cheekbone was fractured. The left side of my face was swelling something fierce. But my legs weren’t broken, and I could still run, given the chance; that was the main thing.
    Once I was braced and as comfortable as I was going to get, I said, “Hugo, how long have you been a traitor?”
    He flushed an incredible red. “To whom? To Isabel, or to the human race?”
    “Take your pick.”
    “I betrayed the human race when I took the side of the vampires in court. If I’d had any idea of what they were . . . I took the case sight unseen, because I thought it would be an interesting legal challenge. I have always been a civil rights lawyer, and I was convinced vampires had the same civil rights as other people.”
    Mr. Floodgates. “Sure,” I said.
    “To deny them the right to live anywhere they wanted to, that was un-American, I thought,” Hugo continued. He sounded bitter and world-weary.
    He hadn’t seen bitter, yet.
    “But you know what, Sookie? Vampires aren’t American. They aren’t even black or Asian or Indian. They aren’t Rotarians or Baptists. They’re all just plain vampires. That’s their color and their religion and their nationality.”
    Well, that was what happened when a minority went underground for thousands of years. Duh.
    “At the time, I thought if Stan Davis wanted to live on Green Valley Road, or in the Hundred-Acre Wood, that was his right as an American. So I defended him against the neighborhood association, and I won. I was real proud of myself. Then I got to know Isabel, and Itook her to bed one night, feeling real daring, really the big man, the emancipated thinker.”
    I stared at him, not blinking or saying a word.
    “As you know, the sex is great, the best. I was in thrall to her, couldn’t get enough. My practice suffered. I started seeing clients only in the afternoon, because I couldn’t get up in the morning. I couldn’t make my court dates in the morning. I couldn’t leave Isabel after dark.”
    This sounded like an alcoholic’s tale, to me. Hugo had become addicted to vampiric sex. I found the concept fascinating and repellent.
    “I started doing little jobs she found for me. This past month, I’ve been going over there and doing the housekeeping chores, just so I can hang around Isabel. When she wanted me to bring the bowl of water into the dining room, I was excited. Not at doing such a menial task—I’m a lawyer, for God’s sake! But because the Fellowship had called me, asked me if I could give them any insight into what the vampires of Dallas intended to do. At the time they called, I was mad at Isabel. We’d had a fight about the way she treated me. So I was open to listening to them. I’d heard your name pass between Stan and Isabel, so I passed it on to the Fellowship. They have a guy who works for Anubis Air. He found out when Bill’s plane was coming in, and they tried to grab you at the airport so they could find out what the vamps wanted with you. What they’d do to get you back. When I came in with the bowl of water, I heard Stan or Bill call you by name, so I knew they’d missed you at the airport. I felt like I had something to tell them, to make up for losing the bug I’d put in the conference room.”
    “You betrayed Isabel,” I said. “And you betrayed me, though I’m human, like you.”
    “Yes,” he said. He didn’t look me in the eyes.
    “What about Bethany Rogers?”
    “The waitress?”
    He was stalling. “The dead waitress,” I said.
    “They took her,” he said, shaking his head from side to side, as if he were actually saying, No, they couldn’t have done what they did. “They took her, and I didn’t know