With that arched eyebrow, Eric was telling me that this was my best bet, that he would try not to hurt me, that being tied to him was infinitely preferable to being tied to Andre.
I knew all this not only because I wasn't stupid, but because we were bound together. Both Eric and Bill had had my blood, and I theirs. For the first time, I understood there was a real connection. Didn't I see the two of them as more human than vampire? Didn't they have the power to wound me more than any others? It wasn't only my past relationships with the two that kept me tied to them. It was the blood exchange. Maybe because of my unusual heritage, they couldn't order me around. They didn't have mind control over me, and they couldn't read my thoughts; and I couldn't do any of those things to them. But we did share a tie. How often had I heard their lives humming away in the background, without realizing what I was listening to?
It takes way longer to tell this than it did to think it.
"Eric," I said, and tilted my head to one side. He read as much from the gesture and word as I had from his. He stepped over to me and extended his arms to hold the black cloak out as he leaned over me, so the cloak and the hood could give us some illusion of privacy. The gesture was hokey, but the idea was nice. "Eric, no sex," I said in a voice as hard as I could make it. I could tolerate this if it wasn't like a lovers' blood exchange. I wouldn't have sex in front of another person. Eric's mouth was in the bend of my neck and shoulder, and his body pressed against mine. My arms slid around him, because that was simply the easiest way to stand. Then he bit, and I couldn't choke back a gasp of pain.
He didn't stop, thank God, because I wanted to get this over with. One of his hands stroked my back as if he was trying to soothe me.
After a long few seconds, Eric licked my neck to be sure his coagulant-laden saliva had coated the little wounds. "Now, Sookie," he said right into my ear. I couldn't reach his neck unless we were lying down, not without him bending over awkwardly. He started to hold his wrist up to my mouth, but we'd have to rearrange ourselves for that to work. I unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it open. I hesitated. I always hated this part, because human teeth are not nearly as sharp as vampire teeth, and I knew it would be messy when I bit. Eric did something that surprised me, then; he produced the same small ceremonial knife he'd used in marrying Mississippi and Indiana. With the same quick motion he'd used on their wrists, Eric sliced a cut in his chest right below his nipple. The blood oozed out sluggishly, and I took advantage of the flow to latch on. This was embarrassingly intimate, but at least I didn't have to look at Andre, and he couldn't see me.
Eric moved restlessly, and I realized he was getting aroused. There was nothing I could do about it, and I held our bodies apart that crucial couple of inches. I sucked hard, and Eric made a small noise, but I was strictly trying to get this over with. Vampire blood is thick and almost sweet, but when you think about what you're actually doing and you're not sexually aroused, it's not pleasant at all. When I thought I'd done it long enough, I let go and rebuttoned Eric's shirt with unsteady hands, thinking this little incident was over and I could hide somewhere until my heart stopped pounding.
And then Quinn flung open the door and stepped into the corridor.
"What the hell are you doing?" he roared, and I wasn't sure if he meant me, or Eric, or Andre.
"They are obeying orders," Andre said sharply.
"My woman doesn't have to take orders from you," Quinn said.
I opened my mouth to protest, but under these circumstances, it was hard to hand Quinn the line that I could take care of myself.
There was no social guideline to cover a calamity like this, and even my grandmother's all-purpose rule of etiquette ("Do what will make everyone most comfortable") could not remotely stretch to encompass my situation. I wondered what Dear Abby would say.
"Andre," I said, trying to sound firm instead of cowed and scared, "I'll finish the job I undertook to do for the queen here, because I shook on it. But I'll never work for you two again. Eric, thank you for making that as pleasant for me as you could." (Though pleasant hardly seemed the right word.)
Eric had staggered a step over to lean against the wall. He'd allowed the cloak to fall open, and the stain on his pants was clearly visible. "Oh, no problem," Eric said dreamily.
That didn't help. I suspected he was doing it on purpose. I felt heat rise in my cheeks. "Quinn, I'll talk to you later, as we agreed," I snapped. Then I hesitated. "That is, if you're still willing to talk to me." I thought, but couldn't say because it would have been too grossly unfair, that it would have been more help to me if he'd come ten minutes earlier...or not at all.
Looking neither to the right nor the left, I made myself march down that hall, took the right-angle turn, and walked through a swinging doorway directly into the kitchen.
This clearly wasn't where I wanted to be, but at least it was away from the three men in the hall. "Where's the baggage area?" I asked the first uniformed staff person I saw. She was a server loading glasses of synthetic blood onto a huge round tray, and she didn't pause in her task but nodded her head toward a door in the south wall marked EXIT. I was taking a lot of those this evening.
This door was heavier and led to a flight of stairs descending to a lower level, which I figured was actually under the ground. We don't have basements where I come from (the water table's too high), so it gave me a little frisson to be below street level.
I'd been walking as if something was chasing me, which in a nonliteral way was absolutely true, and I'd been thinking about the damn suitcase so I wouldn't have to think about anything else. But when I reached the landing, I came a complete stop.
Now that I was out of sight and truly alone, I took a moment to stand still, one hand resting against the wall. I let myself react to what had just happened. I began shaking, and when I touched my neck, I realized my collar felt funny. I pulled the material out and away and did a sort of sideways downward squinch to have a look at it. The collar was stained with my blood. Tears began flooding my eyes, and I sank to my haunches on the landing of that bleak staircase in a city far from home.
Chapter 12
I SIMPLY COULDN'T PROCESS WHAT HAD JUST HAPPENED ; it didn't jibe with my inner picture of myself or how I behaved. I could only think, You had to be there. And even then that didn't sound convincing.
Okay, Sookie, I said to myself. What else could you have done? It wasn't the time to do a lot of detailed thinking, but a quick scan of my options came up zero. I couldn't have fought off Andre or persuaded him to leave me alone. Eric could have fought Andre, but he chose not to because he wanted to keep his place in the Louisiana hierarchy, and also because he might have lost. Even if he'd chanced to win, the penalty would have been incredibly heavy. Vampires didn't fight over humans.