The next few nights of life in Bon Temps, Louisiana passed mostly like they had before the invitation arrived and Eric and I were torn from the house, questioned and tortured. Eric spent a few hours of nearly every night at Fangtasia making sure things would be taken care of while we were at the conference, and he had even brought in a vampire accountant to help out Chow with the financial aspects of running a business for the duration of our time in London. I worked on the house and tried to repair the damages Malia and the agents had made when they took first Eric and then me from the house, kicking and screaming all the way. I'd even been to Merlotte's a couple times to hang out with Sam and Tara, and Eric had even joined me for one of them. Tara, who had been "Team Eric" since he had taken care of her little problem known as "Mickey" shared a booth with us and even brought her relatively new husband, J.B. DuRone. Tara was nearly four months pregnant and just starting to look a little bit like she was smuggling a watermelon under her shirt. J.B. was still very nervous around me, and absolutely terrified of Eric, but working very hard to not show it. We had been talking about the conference for a while, and Eric had been explaining what I should expect, at least according to the last one he attended in 1940. His move to America in the 1850's had complicated his European and Scandinavian travels in the days before vampire Airlines.
"So London, huh?" J.B. said, and scrambled to come up with something else to say. J.B. was one of the nicest men you'd ever meet, but he was no Einstein. Tara, sensing his loss off words, jumped in for the save.
"So what are you going to wear?" Normally this would be the time for her to shamelessly plug her shop, Tara's Togs, but Eric and I were already more than familiar. We were her best customers.
Eric jumped in with an answer for this one, "The vampires attending the conference wear typical business attire, but the vampires attending the ball afterwards generally wear traditional clothing from the countries in which they live." This was news to me, and I thought hard about what that would mean I was wearing. Daisy Dukes? Wife-beaters? Those were very Southern… "I promised Pam I'd let her take Sookie out shopping before the conference." This was excellent news for me, since Pam had more than a hundred years of fashion knowledge on me. She was the kind of girl that could wear a garbage bag with a belt and end up in VVogue, or Vampire Vogue magazine.
Tara, who was as fashion-forward as Northern Louisiana gets, was very jealous. She was trying to control her thoughts and keep them as happy as possible, but pregnancy was doing nothing for her temper. "Don't worry Tara," I interrupted her chain of thought, "I'll bring you back something!" She wordlessly hinted at something for the baby, while simultaneously thinking about a new pair of shoes in size 7 ½. "I'll see what I can do." J.B. was finally making the connection that Tara was telling me something that she didn't want to say out loud, and, bless him, he started to wonder if the telepathy rumor was true. Like I said, a couple fries short of a happy-meal.
I could sense that Eric was itching to leave: he never socialized with humans outside of work, and this was boring him to near-tears. He checked his Blackberry every twelve seconds, waiting for an excuse to jump up and leave. "Well, we've got some packing to do." I broke the silence that was starting to grow awkward.
"Okay then." Tara nodded, she understood, because J.B. was also more than ready to leave the company of vampires. "Well, call me when you get back. Wish I could go with you." She said, returning to her best-friend-since-forever tone. It would be weird seeing her grow old and not growing old with her. We'd always joked we'd be roomies in the nursing home, but that was clearly never going to happen. It was a weird thought that I'd still be around and still be 26 when she, and Sam, and my brother and his friends all grew old and died. It broke my heart a bit to even think about it.
"Race you home?" Eric grinned- we'd started doing this over short distances to see how fast he could fly and I could drive.
"Can you at least wait until I turn the engine on this time?" I faux-whined. I'd blamed my last three losses on his head start.
"I'm waiting…" I loved that man to pieces, but he was quite possibly the most impatient thing- alive or dead- on this planet. I jumped in the corvette and the engine roared to life, and Eric started running towards the exit of the parking lot, and after about fifteen lightning steps, he clumsily lifted off and started gaining height and settled into the sky a few feet above the tree line. I threw the car into second and with a bump-bump, it lurched towards the same route Eric had taken. I could feel him above and slightly ahead of me until I turned onto Hummingbird Road, and then I felt him veer left and take a more direct route to the house. I had worked the car into sixth gear by now, and was close to hitting 120 before I had to slow down a bit for the curve in the road. I would survive the crash, but Eric's little red corvette wouldn't. I took it down to fourth for the curve and then fifth and back to sixth, and then reached out for Eric's presence. I was winning! With two miles left of Hummingbird Road before the turn-off into my long, newly-concreted driveway (thanks to Eric's attempts at "courting" a few months ago) I let the speedometer get up to 175, and less than a minute later, slowed down to a near-halt and flew into the driveway, drove up behind the house and threw on the parking break, turned off the engine and jumped out of the driver's seat, closed the door behind me and leaned on it as though I'd been waiting for hours. Eric appeared above the tree line only two or three seconds later and then slowed down, and prepared for landing. He had many different ways of lifting off, but landing was always the same, he turned his body so he looked like he was simply standing in air, and then gently sunk down in the air until his feet touched the earth so gently, you would have no idea he had only seconds before that had been racing through the sky.
But it didn't work like that this time. With three feet left before his landing, a deep growl came from the woods at the side of the house, and Eric dropped suddenly, landing on his back as a naked man jumped horizontally from the woods, and landed on Eric, a tiger.
Eric threw up his arm to block his face and screamed "Get in the house!" in my direction, trying to kick the tiger off of him and choke it at the same time. Thinking quickly, I ran inside and in to my room and opened up the ballerina jewelry box that Gran had been given as a wedding present. I pulled a tank top out of the top drawer, and making sure my hand was covered, grabbed a silver necklace off the top. I had once worn this to protect myself against unwanted vampire attention, and taking care not to touch myself with the chain, I dashed down the stairs and out the door to find Eric struggling to his feet, his hands prying open a tiger's jaws. Blood was dripping down his hands and I felt my knees wobble as the smell reached my nose. Stay strong I told myself, with one bare hand, I grabbed one end of that long silver chain and leapt onto the tiger, lacing the chain around his neck while trying my best to ignore my own pain, and gave the silver a firm tug, and watched as the tiger struggled on his back legs to stay standing, and Eric was able to throw down the tiger once a for all, slamming its head into the ground. I dropped the silver a fraction of a second later, and stretched my hands towards Eric, gasping in pain as my hands bled, I felt Eric's strong hands take mine and pull them to his face. He gently kissed each palm, his cool lips leaving patches suddenly free of any pain. "Thank you." He said sweetly, looking down at me through those cold blue eyes.
My palms were already starting to heal, and while I hated to ruin the moment, it had to be said. "What do we do with the tiger?"
"Would you like me to take care of this?" He asked, coolly.
I knew what taking care of meant, so I declined his offer. We looked over at the tiger to see that he had been knocked out cold by the blow to the head, and had changed back into a naked man. Quinn, the were-tiger, was a once-lover of mine, and a great foe of Eric's. This was not the first time he had surprised me with such a visit, but it was the first time he had actually tried to kill Eric. "You know," I told him, "I'll take care of it." I gave Eric a little wink, and he smiled that smile that he had when he was up to something no good. "Why don't you go pack?"
"I'll be right inside if you need anything." He said, stepping towards the door. "Don't be too long."
"Oh trust me- this won't take long at all."
It took Quinn a couple minutes to wake up- which must have meant that Eric had thrown his down a lot harder than it looked like he did- shifters heal very quickly and when they get knocked out, it's generally only for a second or two. "Good evening, Quinn." I flipped my hair back suggestively. "How nice of you to drop in on me like that." I really hoped Eric hadn't knocked him too silly to understand that he was about as wanted here as a field of garlic.
"Sookie, babe…" He started, but just stopped speaking as his eyes took me in, starting at my high-heeled feet to my highlighted curls, but focusing on my newly-attained pallor. His thoughts went from angry, to jealous, and then to furious. "What did he do to you?!" He jumped up, totally ignoring his nudity, and started yelling, "what the hell is so good about a dead guy? What, am I not good enough for you? And you can't just fuck him, you have to let him kill you, too?"
"Quinn, please," I said softly, but he continued with the accusations. "Quinn, you don't understand," and he ignored me once again. Instead of trying a third time to soothe the tiger, I found myself with my hand around his throat, holding up against my house, nearly a foot off the ground. "Quinn. We're over. We've been over for quite a while. You had bigger priorities in your life than me, and that's fine. But you have to move on. This isn't healthy." Nor was the strangulation he was seconds away from suffering, so I dropped my arm. He landed clumsily, and clutching his own throat to check for damage, he spoke hoarsely.
"But he killed you. You let him kill you." He was thoroughly perplexed.
I tried to stay strong, but thinking about my end was still a painful memory. Not because of how it was done, but why. "I was dying, Quinn. I didn't have a choice." This was apparently news to the naked Were that was leaning up against my house. "I had cancer, and they found it too late. The only way I was going to make it was as a vampire, so here I am. I'm sorry you had to find out like this, but that's just the way things are not. I'm sorry, Quinn."
His fury had shifted into something more serious, and he looked damaged by my words. "Babe…" was all he could manage.
"I've got to go, Quinn. Eric and I are leaving for London tomorrow- I need to pack." He nodded morosely, and knew he was done here. He started to turn back towards the woods where he had presumably left his clothes. "Oh! One more thing!" I yelled after him. "Call next time!"