Living Dead in Dallas

vampires. Away from the media. They would enjoy Hugo’s story all too much.”
    “What are they gonna do with him?”
    “That’s for Stan to decide.”
    “Remember the deal we had with Stan? If humans are found guilty by evidence of mine, they don’t get killed.”
    Bill obviously didn’t want to debate me on this now. His face shut down. “Sookie, you have to go to sleepnow. We’ll talk about it when you get up.”
    “But by then he may be dead.”
    “Why should you care?”
    “Because that was the deal! I know Hugo is a shit, and I hate him, too, but I feel sorry for him; and I don’t think I can be implicated in his death and live with a clear conscience.”
    “Sookie, he will still be alive when you get up. We’ll talk about it then.”
    I felt sleep pulling me under like the undertow of the surf. It was hard to believe it was only two o’clock in the morning.
    “Thanks for coming after me.”
    Bill said, after a pause, “First you weren’t at the Fellowship, just traces of your blood and dead rapist. When I found you weren’t at the hospital, that you had been spirited out of there somehow . . .”
    “Mmmmh?”
    “I was very, very scared. No one had any idea where you were. In fact, while I stood there talking to the nurse who admitted you, your name went off the computer screen.”
    I was impressed. Those shapeshifters were organized to an amazing degree. “Maybe I should send Luna some flowers,” I said, hardly able to get the words out of my mouth.
    Bill kissed me, a very satisfying kiss, and that was the last thing I remembered.

Chapter 7
    I  TURNED OVER  laboriously and peered at the illuminated clock on the bedside table. It was not yet dawn, but dawn would come soon. Bill was in his coffin already: the lid was closed. Why was I awake? I thought it over.
    There was something I had to do. Part of me stood back in amazement at my own stupidity as I pulled on some shorts and a T-shirt and slid my feet into sandals. I looked even worse in the mirror, to which I gave only a sideways glance. I stood with my back to it to brush my hair. To my astonishment and pleasure, my purse was sitting on the table in the sitting room. Someone had retrieved it from the Fellowship headquarters the night before. I stuck my plastic key in it and made my way painfully down the silent halls.
    Barry was not on duty anymore, and his replacement was too well trained to ask me what the hell I was doing going around looking like something a train had dragged in. He got me a cab and I told the driver where I needed to go. The driver looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Wouldn’t you rather go to a hospital?” he suggested uneasily.
    “No. I’ve already been.” That hardly seemed to reassure him.
    “Those vampires treat you so bad, why do you hang around them?”
    “People did this to me,” I said. “Not vampires.”
    We drove off. Traffic was light, it being nearly dawn on a Sunday morning. It only took fifteen minutes to get to the same place I’d been the night before, the Fellowship parking lot.
    “Can you wait for me?” I asked the driver. He was a man in his sixties, grizzled and missing a front tooth. He wore a plaid shirt with snaps instead of buttons.
    “I reckon I can do that,” he said. He pulled a Louis L’Amour western out from under his seat and switched on a dome light to read.
    Under the glare of the sodium lights, the parking lot showed no visible traces of the events of the night before. There were only a couple of vehicles remaining, and I figured they’d been abandoned the night before. One of these cars was probably Gabe’s. I wondered if Gabe had had a family; I hoped not. For one thing, he was such a sadist he must have made their lives miserable, and for another, for the rest of their lives they’d have to wonder how and why he’d died. What would Steve and Sarah Newlin do now? Would there be enough members left of their Fellowship to carry on? Presumably the guns and provisions were still in the church. Maybe they’d been stockpiling against the apocalypse.
    Out of the dark shadows next to the church a figure emerged. Godfrey. He was still bare-chested, and he still looked like a fresh-faced sixteen. Only the alien character of the tattoos and his eyes gave the lie to his body.
    “I came to watch,” I said, when he was close to me, though maybe “bear witness” would have been more accurate.
    “Why?”
    “I owe it to you.”
    “I am an evil