"Do you think God made you?" she asked, twirling a bit of hair around her fingers. She liked to do that while she thought: it grounded her. Kept her in the world and not in her fantasies of what the world could be like if, if, if.
He smiled down at her. Silly. "God doesn't exist," he said. "But if he did, I doubt he'd have made me. He'd have had more sense than that."
"No," she said. "All of you. Did God make vampires? Did Satan? Who decided that you would walk the earth instead of lying in the dust?"
"Ah," he said with a chuckle, and shook his head. "Who made anything? Who made you, a woman so beautiful and strange? Does it matter, lover?"
"I suppose not. Not really. But I wonder, sometimes."
"Of course you do." He pulled her to him. "You're curious, still. You haven't been around long enough for all that wonder to erode into weariness."
"I hope I never am," she said, looking up at him, shivering. "It sounds awful."
"It was. Until I met you."
The deck of the ferry was slick with rain and seaspray, halfway between water and ice. He had given her green wellies in anticipation of the constant cold and wet, but they were doing little to protect her. She'd already slipped once in a puddle and tumbled to the deck, and her forehead bore a round purple bruise from the railing that kept passengers from the frothing iron-grey sea below. He had been inside - she couldn't stand the confinement, not now, even the rain was better - and hadn't managed to sprint out to her before she fell. He had growled in anger and raised his fist, holding her close to him, but there was nothing for his anger: it was precisely as useful to shout at the clouds as at God himself. The clouds, for their part, moved across the moon like ghosts, unseeing.
The bruise joined a procession of the same, snaking down her neck and across her arms, down her back, across her legs. A toe was broken and lay bound to its neighbour, throbbing in her boot.
That's what happens when you trust vampires, she thought.
"No. That's what happens when you trust Bill," Eric said.
She had spoken out loud. He was hurt, she knew it, but she was too weary to take it back. Perhaps she didn't want to.
"I am sorry," she said, though.
He took her arm, gently, gently, and guided her inside. The ferry would approach Prince Edward Island in another hour. It was early fall and the air was already cold this far north, not bitterly but soggily, drearily. In Charlottetown, this was the weather that brought daydreams of hot chocolate by the fire, and damp socks drying woolen and fuzzy over radiators. For Sookie, the Canadian sea was an alien landscape and the air was a sodden nightmare. A wave of spray crested and soaked her further, and she shivered. He didn't.
"Did it have to be Canada? This isn't my kind of place," she said. She knew the answer, but wanted to make sure he heard her displeasure. "I like the warmth."
"No one else wants to come here, either," he replied. "It's safe. Or, at least, as safe a place as I can find. I have a little farm here."
"Of all places."
"The red sand is beautiful in summer," he said. "The towns are... quaint. Lots of corn, lots of cows. Not much traffic, no pollution. Few to no vamps. No bullshit."
"There's bullshit everywhere," she said.
"Of course. But this is where I am taking you, and this is where you'll be for a while."
"With you?"
He gave her a half-smile. "Where else would I be?"
"I don't know. Your bar? With Pam? With anyone other than me?"
"You underestimate how drawn I am to you," he said.
"Maybe so."
"Don't do that anymore."
They were quiet. She thought of Bill, left behind his house in chains. He had cried as he beat her, sobbed until his shirt was red. The Queen had stood behind him. She trembled as she thought of her smile, her wet red mouth, white teeth and enormous fangs, as he hit her. He had cried out with each strike, each time his fist met her body. "I am sorry," he'd cried to her, over and over. "I am so sorry. I am so sorry. So sorry." And yet he had done it, and the Queen had watched. And she'd watched from the ground, battered and half-drained, as the Queen had chained him to the porch. She had taken Sookie's blood, so much of it.
She had passed out.
And woken up in a car driven by Eric Northman, paler even than a glacier, speeding, getting her out of there. After she had sent him away, he had come back, found her, saved her.
Was Bill alive? She did not know. Was the Queen? She hoped not. What she did know was that Eric had somehow found her, picked her up, taken her away, across the border, across a small sliver of ocean, and was now holding her. And now he was propelling her through a set of glass doors into the ferry's cabin.
Inside, a few other drenched souls sat on red plastic chairs, while the smarter ones, dry, read various drugstore-counter books. No one looked at anyone else, and no one's thoughts were anything but dull. The interior was lit by fluorescent bulbs, the energy-saving kind, and Eric's skin glowed skim-milk blue. He was hale but weary.
"It's warmer in here," he said. "That matters to you."
"Not to you?"
"Only inasmuch as it stops you from shivering."
"Are they alive?"
It was the question she had been afraid to ask. She didn't want the answer, not really.
"I don't know," he said. She'd been hoping he'd say that.
"Will she come after me?"
"I expect so," he said, low. "But I won't allow her to find you. And I won't allow him, either."
Part of her thrilled with relief, and part of her grieved. She closed her eyes and a vision of Bill's face appeared behind her eyelids, lighting the dark. He was smiling, and then he was crying. He was looking at her tenderly, asking her to be his wife. His face, lit by firelight, as he had bitten her, made love to her. Admitting to her that he had lied to her, that he had allowed her to be beaten, he had been ordered to love her. (No... ordered to pretend. Not ordered to love.) He was tumbling onto the grass as she screamed at him, as she released the anger and humiliation of the lie.
Then had come the faeries - and then he'd dragged her back, across the void, calling through her blood, calling her. She had run to him, left Claudine to call after her. Stupid. Awful. How could she have been such an idiot, after all he'd done to her, after all she'd discovered, little by little?
"Shhhhh," said a voice beside her. Eric's.
"When did you learn to be so kind?" she asked him.
"I am not kind. But I owe you. You did this for me. It's... fair."
"That's all?"
For a long moment, he was very still. The fluorescent bulbs hummed and the rain beat at the windows, the other passengers sighed and muttered. Damp hung in the air and, idly, the toe bound to her broken one itched. Then he said, "No. That's not all."
Her heart, already bruised, began to beat, and it hurt.
"When we arrive, we'll talk further. We have a long night ahead of us, and we are likely being pursued. I need to think. For now, rest."
She did.
A car was waiting for them at the ferry, a silver Mercedes sedan. "Perhaps a bit too flashy for the island," Eric said, but bundled her into it anyway, and got into the driver's seat. The heated seat did little to stop her shivering. Warm damp was still damp.
They drove to a tiny farmhouse off a dirt road about an hour from the ferry dock. It was in the middle of the island: not a seashore in sight, "and hidden from tourists," he said. As dawn approached, he showed her into the root cellar he had converted. Down a ladder hidden in the pantry of a kitchen that had seen better days in the 70s. "Best stay in here with me," he told her. "You'll be sleeping days for a while, anyhow."
"I need to call Sam," she said, numbly. "I need to get home."
"Neither of those things will be happening for a while," he said. He brought blankets and a sleeping bag down for her and made a small nest, then locked the trapdoor to the first floor. "I am sorry." He reached out to her, held her for a long moment, and shut the interior door. She was alone in the basement.
"You said we'd talk further when we got where we were going," she called into the darkness.
"We're not there yet," came the muffled voice, and then deep silence.
Sadness and anger warred with fear and grief, all of it blanketed by sleep. The short nap on the ferry had not been enough. Her cellphone, soaked but still working, would not connect: it would be impossible to get a signal this far out in the country, or perhaps it was because they were underground. No matter. She was cut off completely.
She cried as she drifted off, tears soaking her shirt, which was filthy with blood and earth. There was no pillow. Vampires had no need of such things.
She thought of Bill, who she had loved, and of Eric, who she had not. The earth was shifting and rending beneath her, she knew, as sleep found her.
