Living Dead in Dallas

vampires actually aren’t, it seems they are no more immune to that syndrome than humans, and Eric’s libido was up because of the blood in the room.
    But I was worried about Bill, and I was shocked by the violence, so after a long hot moment of forgetting the horror around me, I pulled away. Eric’s lips were bloody now. He licked them slowly. “Go look for Bill,” he said in a thick voice.
    I glanced at his shoulder again, to see the hole had begun to close. I picked up the bullet off the carpet, tacky as it was with blood, and wrapped it in a scrap from Eric’s shirt. It seemed like a good memento, at the time. I really don’t know what I was thinking. There were still the injured and dead on the floor in the room, but most of those who were still alive had help from other humans or from two vampires who hadn’t joined in the chase.
    Sirens were sounding in the distance.
    The beautiful front door was splintered and pitted. I stood to one side to open it, just in case there was a lone vigilante in the yard, but nothing happened. I peered around the doorframe.
    “Bill?” I called. “Are you okay?”
    Just then he sauntered back in the yard looking positively rosy.
    “Bill,” I said, feeling old and grim and gray. A dull horror, that really was just a deep disappointment, filled the pit of my stomach.
    He stopped in his tracks.
    “They fired at us and killed some of us,” he said. His fangs gleamed, and he was shiny with excitement.
    “You just killed somebody.”
    “To defend us.”
    “To get vengeance.”
    There was a clear difference between the two, in my mind, at that moment. He seemed nonplussed.
    “You didn’t even wait to see if I was okay,” I said. Once a vampire, always a vampire. Tigers can’t change their stripes. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I heard every warning anyone had ever fed me, in the warm drawl of home.
    I turned and went back into the house, walking obliviously through the bloodstains and chaos and mess as if I saw such things every day. Some of the things I saw I didn’t even register I’d seen, until the next week when my brain would suddenly throw out a picture for my viewing: maybe a closeup of a shattered skull, or a spouting artery. What was important to me at the moment was that I find my purse. I found that purse in the second place I looked. While Bill fussed with the wounded so he wouldn’t have to talk to me, I walked out of that house and got in that rental car and, despite my anxiety, I drove. Being at this house was worse than the fear of big city traffic. I pulled away from the house right before the police got there.
    After I’d driven a few blocks, I parked in front of a library and extricated the map from the glove compartment. Though it took twice as long as it should have, since my brain was so shell-shocked it was almost not functioning, I figured out how to get to the airport.
    And that’s where I went. I followed the signs that said RENTAL CARS and I parked the car and left the keys in it and walked away. I got a seat on the next flight toShreveport, which was leaving within the hour. I thanked God I had my own credit card.
    Since I’d never done it before, it took me a few minutes to figure out the pay phone. I was lucky enough to get hold of Jason, who said he’d meet me at the airport.
    I was home in bed by early morning.
    I didn’t start crying until the next day.

Chapter 9
    W E ’ D FOUGHT BEFORE , Bill and I. I’d gotten fed up before, tired of the vampirey stuff I had to learn to accommodate, frightened of getting in deeper. Sometimes, I just wanted to see humans for a while.
    So for over three weeks, that was what I did. I didn’t call Bill; he didn’t call me. I knew he was back from Dallas because he left my suitcase on my front porch. When I unpacked it, I found a black velvet jeweler’s box tucked in the side pocket. I wish I’d had the strength to keep from opening it, but I didn’t. Inside was a pair of topaz earrings, and a note that said, “To go with your brown dress.” Which meant the taupe knit thing I’d worn to the vampires’ headquarters. I stuck my tongue out at the box, and drove over to his house that afternoon to leave it in his mailbox. He’d finally gone out and bought me a present, and here I had to return it.
    I didn’t even try to “think things through.” I figured my brain would clear up in a while, and then I would know what to do.
    I did read the papers. The vampires of Dallas