Dead Reckoning(6)

“Honey,” I said, holding on to my own temper with an effort. I put my arm around Eric’s waist, and tried again. “Honey, Bud and Truman are in charge here, and they have their rules to follow. I’m okay.” Though I was trembling, which of course he could feel.

“You were frightened,” Eric said. I felt his own rage that something had happened to me that he had not been able to prevent. I suppressed a sigh at having to babysit Eric’s emotions when I wanted to be free to have my own nervous breakdown. Vampires are nothing if not possessive when they’ve claimed someone as theirs, but they’re also usually anxious to blend into the human population, not cause any unnecessary waves. This was an overreaction.

Eric was mad, sure, but normally he was also quite pragmatic. He knew I wasn’t seriously hurt. I looked up at him, puzzled. My big Viking hadn’t been himself in a week or two. Something other than the death of his maker was bothering him, but I hadn’t built up enough courage to ask him what was wrong. I’d cut myself some slack. I’d simply wanted to enjoy the peace we’d shared for a few weeks.

Maybe that had been a mistake. Something big was pressing on him, and all this anger was a by-product.

“How’d you get here so quick?” Bud asked Eric.

“I flew,” Eric said casually, and Bud and Truman gave each other a wide-eyed look. Eric had had the ability for (give or take) a thousand years, so he disregarded their amazement. He was focused on me, his fangs still out.

They couldn’t know that Eric had felt the swell of my terror the minute I’d seen the running figure. I hadn’t had to call him when the incident was over. “The sooner we get all this settled,” I said, baring my teeth right back at him in a terrible smile, “the sooner we can leave.” I was trying, not so subtly, to send Eric a message. He finally calmed down enough to get my subtext.

“Of course, my darling,” he said. “You’re absolutely right.” But his hand took mine and squeezed too hard, and his eyes were so brilliant they looked like little blue lanterns.

Bud and Truman looked mighty relieved. The tension ratcheted down a few notches. Vampires = drama.

While Sam was getting his hand treated and Truman was taking pictures of what remained of the bottle, Bud asked me what I’d seen.

“I caught a glimpse of someone out in the parking lot running toward the building, and then the bottle came through the window,” I said. “I don’t know who threw it. After the window broke and the fire spread from all the lit napkins, I didn’t notice anything but the people trying to leave and Sam trying to put it out.”

Bud asked me the same thing several times in several different ways, but I couldn’t help him any more than I already had.

“Why do you think someone would do this to Merlotte’s, to Sam?” Bud asked.

“I don’t understand it,” I said. “You know, we had those demonstrators from the church in the parking lot a few weeks ago. They’ve only come back once since then. I can’t imagine any of them making a — was that a Molotov cocktail?”

“How do you know about those, Sookie?”

“Well, one, I read books. Two, Terry doesn’t talk about the war much, but every now and then he does talk about weapons.” Terry Bellefleur, Detective Andy Bellefleur’s cousin, was a decorated and damaged Vietnam veteran. He cleaned the bar when everyone was gone and came in occasionally to substitute for Sam. Sometimes he just hung at the bar watching people come in and out. Terry did not have much of a social life.

As soon as Bud declared himself satisfied, Eric and I went to my car. He took the keys from my shaking hand. I got in the passenger side. He was right. I shouldn’t drive until I’d recovered from the shock.

Eric had been busy on his cell phone while I was talking to Bud, and I wasn’t totally surprised to see a car parked in front of my house. It was Pam’s, and she had a passenger.

Eric pulled around back where I always park, and I scrambled out of the car to hurry through the house to unlock the front door. Eric followed me at a leisurely pace. We hadn’t exchanged a word on the short drive. He was preoccupied and still dealing with his temper. I was shocked by the whole incident. Now I felt a little more like myself as I went out on the porch to call, “Come in!”

Pam and her passenger got out. He was a young human, maybe twenty-one, and thin to the point of emaciation. His hair was dyed blue and cut in an extremely geometric way, rather as if he’d put a box on his head, knocked it sideways, then trimmed around the edges. What didn’t fit inside the lines had been shaved.