CHAPTER 37

Jan and Daniel were patrolling the yard when we walked back from the cemetery to the house. I blushed a little at the thought of Eric strolling in with a big wet stain on the front of his pants, but I was beginning to get used to the idea that the other vampires pretty much always knew what were up to. Their sense of smell was so acute, they would know without the stain. Even so, I was glad he was holding the blanket. It might spare me any winks or nods from Amelia.

My witch was in the kitchen and was already healing her wounds with what looked like a bloody Mary. How appropriate I thought! Jordun looked comfortably ensconced at the table, a True Blood in front of him and a big honking sword leaning against his leg in a scabbard.

"I thought I'd just start on organizing some of these," Amelia said brightly. She had already just about filled the top of the table with little stacks of documents and photos. "I don't know who a lot of these people are, but there's a lot of the same faces. You'll probably recognize them."

"I think we're going to take a shower first," I said. "Then I want to show that picture of Gran to Eric."

Eric had come in behind me and Jordun was already sniffing the air. Best to get my Viking cleaned up and changed before anything else.

"What picture?" Eric asked after he had greeted Amelia, looking intently at all the stuff on the table.

"I'll explain in the shower."

Taking him by the hand, I pulled him in the direction of my room, but his attention was caught by the cradle, still sitting next to the trunk in what little space was left in the room.

"This is the child's bed you mentioned?" he asked disbelievingly. The tone of his voice was not what I had expected. I had been hoping he would like the cradle. I nodded and explained.

"Yes. This was mine when I was a baby. We'll have a crib too, in the baby's room, but we can keep the cradle in our room, next to the bed."

His brows furrowed a bit, then he pulled out a chair, sat down and went still. "It is very small," he said and he seemed to look a shade paler, if that was even possible.

"Well, babies aren't very big, Eric," I said uncertainly. Amelia and Jordun were looking at Eric with curiosity, waiting to see what his point was.

"I had forgotten," he said, and a wave of sorrow washed over him and into me.

"Eric?" I said uncertainly.

"It is a fine cradle," he said, shaking himself, and I realized he had been thinking of his own children that he had had to leave behind centuries before. I patted him on the shoulder, not knowing what else to do. How do you comfort a wound like that?

The ringing of Eric's cell phone from his pocket broke the silence at the table, and after looking at the caller ID, Eric gestured for Jordun to follow him and went back outside without a word.

"Well, I'm going to take a shower," I said and headed to the bathroom. Eric joined me soon after, looking more than a little annoyed as he ducked under the shower spray.

"Is everything okay, Eric?" I asked, watching his gorgeous and very large body as he used up all the hot water.

"Yes, just some business that needed attending to. Jan will see to it."

I wondered what kind of business needed Jan the Assassin to take care of it. I could have asked, and Eric might even have told me, but I didn't want to know. I knew that violence was part of the supernatural world. I had been its victim more than once. Maybe God would judge me for it, but I was beginning to think that some people (be they vampire, were or fairy) needed killing. Anyway, maybe Eric was just sending Jan out to help Pam at the bar. Fat chance, I knew.

"I wonder what you are thinking about, Lover. The expressions on your face are changing so rapidly, I am unable to decipher them." Eric pulled me back under the showerhead so I could rinse off the last of the soap.

Not wanting to try to explain what I had been thinking, even if I even fully understood it myself, I ignored his question and began to tell him about the "angel spot" on my grandmother's picture. He agreed that it was a good idea to see if we could find a pattern of when the reflections occurred.

"The more I think about it though, I wonder if it really matters," I said. "Would it tell us anything if we knew that Gran had an angel?"

"Probably not, but it never hurts to acquire knowledge, although you may not realize any benefit from it until you need it."

"I suppose that's true," I agreed, turning off the water and climbing out of the tub.

Eric seemed fascinated by all of the pictures of my family, especially the ones that included me as a child. His ability to read facial expression, acquired from years of watching and preying on humanity, came in handy when Amelia and I couldn't decide who someone in a particular picture might be. Most of them weren't labeled, or only labeled with a location and date.

I told Eric about each member of my family that I could recognize. He looked especially closely at a picture of my Aunt Linda and her daughter Hadley, since he had known Hadley after she had become vampire. He scrutinized my face carefully when I brushed by the picture of my Uncle Bartlett with no information on our relationship beyond a terse identification. He lingered over the pictures of a younger Gran, weighing the similarities of features with me and Jason.

I regretted that I had never had the chance to sit down with Gran and look at all of this. Gran had been a big buff of family history, but she had kept most of what she knew in her own head. Maybe she meant to organize it and set it all down on paper some day and life just got in the way. She had managed only a list of names and dates and relationships. Now, much of what could have been interesting, if we knew the story, was just a sea of faces with no stories to tell. Some of the stories, her stories, she might have been unwilling to tell anyway. I hoped that some of it would be found in the journals.

"There don't seem to be any other reflections. Maybe that one was just some kind of artifact from the light after all and doesn't mean anything," Jordun said, when we had finally gone through all the photographs.

"That's what I'm thinking too," I agreed. "But there is only the one picture of her during pregnancy, so maybe the angels only watch over pregnant women."

Eric was not convinced, since he insisted that our dream of the angel watching over Baby Claudine was a true vision. "But we may never know," he conceded.

Amelia was on what I thought was her fourth drink and it had been a while since she had contributed to the conversation. It seemed the better part of valor to put her to bed. She could sleep in late in the morning, and would no doubt brew one of her very nasty hangover concoctions when she got up.

Coming back downstairs after making sure Amelia was tucked in, I heard Jan talking in hushed tones with Eric and wondered again what was going on as I went into the bedroom to get myself ready for bed. When my vampire came in, he was so solicitous about making sure I was tucked in properly, that I forgot to ask.

I thought it must be the noise of someone opening the door to the kitchen that woke me up, although it seemed as if someone was in the room. No, I was alone. It was light out, so it must be morning. Squinting at the clock on the bedside table, I could see that it was barely seven o'clock. Amelia must be up early, I thought, maybe she was making the coffee or brewing something for her hangover.

Even though I didn't need to get up this early, my human needs, as the vampires called them, were urging me to come out of the warm cocoon of the bedclothes. I nuzzled the pillow for a moment, enjoying the lingering dry sweet smell of my vampire before I stumbled into the bathroom.

I took care of business, then wondered if I shouldn't just crawl back into bed. But as I splashed a little water on my face, an ominous feeling of dread came over me, as if a cold finger was tapping insistently on my shoulder.

"Claudine?" I whispered and looked into the mirror. The strange glow that had been in the wedding photos was hovering there, right behind me, and I had a feeling that it was trying to tell me something. I closed my eyes, opened my shields and let my consciousness probe the house.

It wasn't Amelia in the kitchen. I could hear the hum of her sleeping brain from the bedroom upstairs. She wasn't even dreaming. Who was here then, one of the guards? No. I couldn't feel them at all, or maybe…. Yes! They were outside. Three brains, but not awake. Were brains were hard to read, but these were dimmed, as if they were hiding behind a curtain. That wasn't good. I could read two more signals, one in the kitchen and one in the yard. Bob and someone else. Oh my God, Quinn! What was he doing here? Eric would kill him. And why hadn't the guards stopped Bob? They probably didn't even know that Bob had moved out.

Throwing on a robe, and not even bothering with slippers, I creeped out of my room and opened the door, being as silent as a mouse, careful of any loose floorboards in this creaky old house. Bob was looking for something, opening the drawer by the phone.

"She wrote it down in her little book," I could hear Bob thinking. "She writes everything down."

I saw it all clearly then, as if I was in Bob's head. It was like I had Amelia's daybook right in front of me. Addresses, bits of spells and shopping lists. And codes. Her ATM number and the codes for the alarm at her house in New Orleans. And the code for the lair, where Eric was sleeping! My heart stopped.

Bob had sold Eric out to Victor. He hadn't been here for Amelia; he hated Amelia. He had been spying, reporting to Quinn, and making good money doing it. He would pass on everything he heard in Bon Temps or from Amelia. The news about Eric and me, the baby, the guards, the housekeeper and even what Jason was doing. And now, the fact that Eric was staying at the house and Amelia had the codes.

The sound of the kitchen door. Bob was going out to the yard, to Quinn. He would give him the code. Quinn hated Eric, and Quinn worked for Victor now. Quinn wasn't here to see me; he was here to kill Eric. For a moment, all I could feel was panic. Bile rose in my throat as the world began to spin. Eric, helpless in his bed. Eric, my husband, my lover, the love of my life.

"Snap out of it, Sookie." It might have been my own voice, prodding me to get myself together. Now was not the time to faint or fall apart. Stackhouse women had more grit than that. I could almost hear Gran saying, "Any woman worth her salt can do whatever needs doing to defend her family". And with that thought, my panic turned to rage.

I had to stop him, but what could I do against a were? Not just any were, either. Quinn was one of the last remaining male were tigers. He had fought and survived three years in the pits, battling for his life against other weres while the vampires bet on his survival. And he had survived, because he was one of the fiercest and strongest weres that walked the earth.

I ran to the kitchen. There was no need for stealth now. I would get Jason's shotgun. The vision of Bob, dressed in his black slacks and white shirt, looking like a Mormon, with his glasses and his bicycle flashed through my mind. I saw him again, as a cat, his soft-as-silk fur gleaming as his pink tongue licked and groomed. I remembered Debbie Pelt's body, her upper chest and neck exploding with the blast of the gun, the blood splashed everywhere in my kitchen. God forgive me, I had killed Debbie Pelt with that shotgun. It would kill Quinn just as easily, and Bob, if it came to that.

The tears began streaming down my face as I reached behind the water heater. I couldn't lose Eric; I didn't care how many I killed. I wouldn't lose him! Where was the blasted shotgun? God damn, Jason! He'd taken it back. He knew I had moved out and he'd come and gotten his shotgun, his prized Benelli. Damn it, Jason! But it wasn't Jason's fault. I didn't live here anymore. I was guarded like Fort Knox and I had left my brother behind, like I had left almost all of Bon Temps behind. Of course he would want his shotgun back, it hadn't been doing me any good.

"Eric!" I called to him in my mind, through the bond, to warn him. But the sun was up. He would be helpless. I was feeling helpless too now as I burst through the back door. If I could delay Quinn, distract him, maybe someone would come and help me. Bob was talking to him, giving him the codes. Oh my God, Quinn was carrying a sword!

"Think, Sookie," I told myself. "Think. Get yourself together. Think." And it came to me – Jordun. Jordun could walk in the daylight. If I could call to him, would he hear me? I had called Jan to me once, but I had not meant to. What had he said? "The Queen's blood was calling." If I focused on Jordun, could I call him to me? Did I have to be bleeding?

I sent my thoughts out to Jordun, in much the same way I had contacted Barry the Bellboy in Dallas. "Jordun, Eric is in danger. Jordun, wake up."

Surveying the yard, I could see the guards sprawled out near the chairs where they had been having their morning coffee. The thermos was still there, the cups spilled onto the ground next to them, the coffee forming little puddles of mud.

I could feel them, so they weren't dead. No pain either. I could feel when someone was in pain. So not injured. Drugged? Okay, I was on my own. Could Amelia do anything? Maybe, if I could take the time to wake her. Did I want to put her in the line of fire too? Maybe she could work a spell? There wasn't time. Quinn was walking to the garage, towards Eric.

"Jordun, wake up. You have to save Eric. Wake up." I called in my mind, but I didn't hear him.

"Quinn!" I screamed as I flung the door open and ran onto the porch. "Quinn, no, you can't do this!"

My robe was half open, the fabric flying behind me as I leaped down the porch steps and ran as fast as I could, screaming for first Jordun, and then Quinn. I felt the gravel tear into my bare feet making little painful cuts as I ran towards the tiger, hurtling myself into him as he put up his hands to stop me. There was an "oomph" sound as the impact of running into such a huge man almost knocked me over, but he grabbed me, his big beautiful violet eyes looking at me and filling not with regret or affection, but with determination.

"I'm sorry, Sookie, I have to do this. Bob, take her back into the house," he said, and I thought I heard pity in his voice as he looked me over. Half naked, tears streaming down my face, my feet bleeding, hysterical with fear and rage.

I began beating my hands against his chest. I was no lightweight. I drank vampire blood and it had made me strong, and I was mad as hell. I pounded my fists into him and he grunted with the force of the blows, but he didn't let go. He was so big, and so strong.

"Why are you doing this, why?" I screamed, but I knew the answer already. Victor still had his mother in Nevada. He was impotent against the vampires. He blamed them for everything, for the years in the pits, for him leaving me unwarned while he worked with Victor to betray Sophie Anne. For banning him from his work in Louisiana and the income he needed to pay for his mother's upkeep. But mostly for losing me. And for that, he hated Eric.

Victor would cancel his debts to the vampires, if he gave them Eric. And when Victor came back to Louisiana, when it was in chaos after Eric's death, then Victor would give him what he wanted, me. But he was fooling himself, if he thought the vampires would let him go, or let me go. They wouldn't remove their hooks from him, not while he had a weakness, his mother. He just didn't get it.

"They'll let me go if I do this, Sookie. And you'll be free of that bloodsucker. He has trapped you with his blood bond. He's taken your will and left you bound as his whore. You know you loved me. He's raped you with his blood as surely as the fairies did. You'll never be free until he's dead."

"And you think Victor will treat me so well? You think Victor won't use me, like he's used you, like he's using you now?"

"Come with me, Sookie. Victor promised you to me. You don't know your own mind. You'll see things more clearly when he's dead. I'll take care of you, and your baby. I know what you're going through, when Frannie was born…"

But I cut him off. "Is that what you think? That I'm crazy, like your mother? Because I was raped I've lost my mind? And you're going to be my savior? Get real, Quinn! You can't keep me from Victor if he wants me, the vampires will keep you on a string like the puppet you are, like you have been for years. You don't care about me, and you can't make this about me. I love Eric, Quinn, and I will never love you."

I could see the hurt and disbelief in his eyes, but I could also see the rage and I knew that there was no point in trying to reason with Quinn. He had been an honorable man, doing his best for his family in a hard and cruel world. Maybe it wasn't his fault that he had come to this point, where he would do something so dishonorable and try to rationalize it.

Quinn had nothing more that he could say to me, and he knew it. It didn't matter whether I went with him willingly or not at this point. Eric was going to die regardless. Quinn handed me over to Bob and turned to what he had come for.

"Jordun, Jordun, Jordun, wake up," I called in my head, and I thought I heard his mind stirring. "Wake up! Brother, wake up!" I screamed as I struggled to get away from Bob.

Bob grabbed my arms and yanked them up behind my back, pulling at my shoulders with a force that made me cry out. I was thrown off balance, and we both went down, the thud knocking the wind out of me as Bob's weight landed full force on top of me. He had my hands in a tight grip before I could take a breath and flung them out to the side, pinning me like a specimen laid out for dissection.

"Don't make me hurt you, Sookie," Bob threatened.

I struggled against him, digging my knees into the ground and pushing with all my might. I was screaming now, frantic. "Jordun, Jordun, Jordun. Help Eric. Please God!"

I could imagine what was happening, as I lay trapped in my fruitless struggle with Bob. Quinn would be in the garage already, typing in the code, his sword ready at hand. Would he be down the stairs yet? And Eric, my beautiful Eric. Would he have heard me calling? Would he wake, not able to come to me, in time to see the sword fall?

I heard the kitchen door and I knew that Amelia was coming. I could hear the fevered workings of her brain, hung over and still half asleep. Bob was hurting me; she wasn't going to have that! But she would be too late. She might stop Bob, but I couldn't get to Eric in time. I couldn't stop Quinn if I did. My heart stopped for a moment and I quit struggling, as despair overwhelmed me. And Amelia began to chant.