Living Dead in Dallas

remember?”
    “Yes, I remember.”
    “So we need to go.”
    “Do you have any evidence? Do you know what you wanted to find out?”
    “I don’t have any more evidence than I had before tonight, not evidence you can hand out in court.” I made myself put my arms around his ribs. “But I know who did it. It was Mike, Tom, and maybe Cleo.”
    “This is interesting,” Eric said, with a complete lack of sincerity. His tongue flicked into my ear. I happen to particularly like that, and I could feel my breathing speed up. Maybe I wasn’t as immune to uninvolved sex as I’d thought. But then, I liked Eric, when I wasn’t afraid of him.
    “No, I just hate this,” I said, reaching some inner conclusion. “I don’t like any part of this.” I shoved Eric hard, though it didn’t make a bit of difference. “Eric, you listen to me. I’ve done everything for Lafayette andAndy Bellefleur I can, though it’s precious little. He’ll just have to go from here on the little snatches I caught. He’s a cop. He can find court evidence. I’m not selfless enough to go any further with this.”
    “Sookie,” Eric said. I didn’t think he’d heard a word. “Yield to me.”
    Well, that was pretty direct.
    “No,” I said, in the most definite voice I could summon. “No.”
    “I will protect you from Bill.”
    “You’re the one that’s gonna need protection!” When I reflected on that sentence, I was not proud of it.
    “You think Bill is stronger than me?”
    “I am not having this conversation.” Then I proceeded to have it. “Eric, I appreciate your offering to help me, and I appreciate your willingness to come to an awful place like this.”
    “Believe me, Sookie, this little gathering of trash is nothing, nothing, compared to some of the places I have been.”
    And I believed him utterly. “Okay, but it’s awful to me. Now, I realize that I should’ve known this would, ah, rouse your expectations, but you know I did not come out here tonight to have sex with anyone. Bill is my boyfriend.” Though the words boyfriend and Bill sounded ludicrous in the same sentence, “boyfriend” was Bill’s function in my world, anyway.
    “I am glad to hear it,” said a cool, familiar voice. “This scene would make me wonder, otherwise.”
    Oh, great.
    Eric rose up off of me, and I scrambled off the hood of the car and stumbled in the direction of Bill’s voice.
    “Sookie,” he said, when I drew near, “it’s getting to where I just can’t let you go anywhere alone.”
    As far as I could tell in the poor lighting, he didn’t look very glad to see me. But I couldn’t blame him forthat. “I sure made a big mistake,” I said, from the bottom of my heart. I hugged him.
    “You smell like Eric,” he said into my hair. Well, hell, I was forever smelling like other men to Bill. I felt a flood of misery and shame, and I realized things were about to happen.
    But what happened was not what I expected.
    Andy Bellefleur stepped out of the bushes with a gun in his hand. His clothes looked torn and stained, and the gun looked huge.
    “Sookie, step away from the vampire,” he said.
    “No.” I wrapped myself around Bill. I didn’t know if I was protecting him or he was protecting me. But if Andy wanted us separated, I wanted us joined.
    There was a sudden surge of voices on the porch of the cabin. Someone clearly had been looking out of the window—I had kind of wondered if Eric had made that up—because, though no voices had been raised, the showdown in the clearing had attracted the attention of the revelers inside. While Eric and I had been in the yard, the orgy had progressed. Tom Hardaway was naked, and Jan, too. Eggs Tallie looked drunker.
    “You smell like Eric,” Bill repeated, in a hissing voice.
    I reared back from him, completely forgetting about Andy and his gun. And I lost my temper.
    This is a rare thing, but not as rare as it used to be. It was kind of exhilarating. “Yeah, uh-huh, and I can’t even tell what you smell like! For all I know you’ve been with six women! Hardly fair, is it?”
    Bill gaped at me, stunned. Behind me, Eric started laughing. The crowd on the sundeck was silently enthralled. Andy didn’t think we should all be ignoring the man with the gun.
    “Stand together in a group,” he bellowed. Andy had had a lot to drink.
    Eric shrugged. “Have you ever dealt with vampires, Bellefleur?” he asked.
    “No,” Andy said. “But I can shoot you dead. I have silver