The Sookie Stackhouse Companion

isn’t all that big, it can sure adapt.
    Back in high school we were studying Shakespeare, and there was this quote in Hamlet that seems to describe the last few years: “There are more things in heaven and on earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Everyone trots that out in bad horror movies, but there’s a reason for that. It really does say it all.
    I always thought that life, and society, wouldn’t change in my little corner of Louisiana. That was before the whole world got shocked one evening when we found out that vampires were real and not just something that you saw in cheesy late-night movies.
    Two years later, a real vampire walked into my life one night in Merlotte’s and pulled me smack-dab into the middle of his world. There are times that I wish I had not been working that night, but I know it would have happened one way or another.

THE VAMPIRES
    I love the sun. I felt so sorry for vampires when I really considered what it would mean to live your life in the darkness—to never see the blue sky, watch butterflies, see a hummingbird at a feeder . . . just enjoy the day. And some vampires haven’t seen the light of day for over a thousand years. A thousand years of night! It’s hard to wrap my mind around.
    And all the time they kept their existence as secret as they could. They’d still be skulking around picking off humans if some Japanese scientists hadn’t managed to create a form of synthetic blood that was just like the real stuff; in fact, in English they named one brand TrueBlood. I figure there were probably stories in the newspaper or on television about this product when it was getting approved for the market, though I don’t remember seeing any.
    But the vamps were all over it. It gave them the impetus they needed to start networking, trying to form a plan to coordinate their entrance into the modern world. After a lot of palaver, they decided to, as they say, “come out of the coffin” to let us know they are here and have been here for a long time. The vamps were very anxious to present themselves as no threat to the normal human population. They wanted everyone to know that they were the person next door—except for the “not going out in the day” thing, the fangs problem, and the blood addiction. They downplayed that part, emphasized the “not Eurotrash in a tuxedo” aspect.
    A lot of vampires, like my ex-boyfriend Bill Compton, wanted to “mainstream,” to live as much like humans as possible. That presented a few problems ; when you can only go out at night, you can’t exactly be running a Main Street shop. But they all seem to manage to make a dollar or two; that’s the American way, isn’t it? Bill invests in real estate and does computer programming; my current love interest, Eric Northman, owns the vampire bar Fangtasia over in Shreveport. I know there are vampire strippers and builders, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if there’s a vampire private detective or electrician. There are a lot of tandem partnerships—someone does the job during the day; someone of the fanged persuasion takes over at night.
    A few of the countries around the world went wacky and killed all the vamps they could get their hands on. But the good old U.S. of A. was always a melting pot, so we figured they were just another minority wanting a new home, a dangerous minority if pressed the wrong way, but still one that wanted the same freedoms as the rest of the people in this nation. There’s been a lot of arguing about whether vampires should have equal rights with humans; even if they get them, there will always be people opposed to the idea.
    Oh, things weren’t all just hunky-dory once the vamps had stood up and said, “We’re here.” It didn’t take folks too long to find out that vampires’ blood is almost a narcotic for humans plus helps injured people heal faster. (I know that last part from personal experience.) Since America’s the land of free enterprise, before much time had passed scumbags were lining up to make money pushing vampire blood. And the vampires weren’t willing donors. Teams developed methods to subdue vamps and drain them. And if you drain too much blood from vampires and leave them out in the open, they die, usually from exposure to the sun. That first night that Bill came into Merlotte’s, I had to save him from a couple of Drainers who had trapped him outside the bar.
    The humans who prey on vampires don’t care who