I gaped at him. "What do you mean?"
"Well, I don't mean they're holy," Eric said. "I mean that the fairies who inhabit the woods identify with the woods so strongly that to hurt one is to hurt the other. So they've suffered a great drop in numbers. Obviously, we vampires are not going to be up on fairy politics and survival issues, since we are so dangerous to them... simply because we find them intoxicating."
I'd never thought to ask Claudine about any of this. For one thing, she didn't seem to enjoy talking about being a fairy, and when she popped up, it was usually when I was in trouble and therefore sadly self-absorbed. For another thing, I'd imagined there were maybe a small handful of fairies left in the world, but Eric was telling me there once were as many fairies as there were vampires, though the fairy race was on the wane.
In sharp contrast, vampires - at least in America - were definitely on the increase. There were three bills wending their way through Congress dealing with vampire immigration. America had the distinction (along with Canada, Japan, Norway, Sweden, England, and Germany) of being a country that had responded to the Great Revelation with relative calm.
The night of the carefully orchestrated Great Revelation, vampires all over the world had appeared on television, radio, in person, whatever the best means of communication in the area might be, to tell the human population, "Hey! We actually exist. But we're not life threatening! The new Japanese synthetic blood satisfies our nutritional requirements."
The six years since then had been one big learning curve. Tonight I'd added a huge amount to my store of supernatural lore.
"So the vampires have the upper hand," I said.
"We're not at war," Eric said. "We haven't been at war for centuries."
"So in the past the vampires and the fairies have fought each other? I mean, like, pitched battles?"
"Yes," Eric said. "And if it came to that again, the first one I'd take out is Niall."
"Why?"
"He's very powerful in the fairy world. He is very magical. If he's sincere in his desire to take you under his wing, you're both very lucky and very unlucky." Eric started the car and we pulled out of the parking lot. I hadn't seen Niall come out of the restaurant. Maybe he'd just poofed out of the dining room. I hoped he'd paid our bill first.
"I guess I have to ask you to explain that," I said. But I had a feeling I didn't really want to know the answer.
"There were thousands of fairies in the United States once," Eric said. "Now there are only hundreds. But the ones that are left are very determined survivors. And not all of those are friends of the prince's."
"Oh, good. I needed another supernatural group who dislikes me," I muttered.
We drove through the night in silence, wending our way back to the interstate that would carry us east to Bon Temps. Eric seemed heavily thoughtful. I also had plenty of food for thought; more than I'd eaten at supper, that was for sure.
I found that on the whole, I felt cautiously happy. It was good to have a kind of belated great-grandfather. Niall seemed genuinely anxious to establish a relationship with me. I still had a heap of questions to ask, but they could wait until we knew each other better.
Eric's Corvette could go pretty damn fast, and Eric wasn't exactly sticking to the speed limit on the interstate. I wasn't awfully surprised when I saw the blinking lights coming up behind us. I was only astonished the cop car could catch up with Eric.
"A-hum," I said, and Eric cursed in a language that probably hadn't been spoken out loud in centuries. But even the sheriff of Area Five has to obey human laws these days, or at least he has to pretend to. Eric pulled over to the shoulder.
"With a vanity plate like BLDSKR, what do you expect?" I asked, not so secretly enjoying the moment. I saw the dark shape of the trooper emerging from the car behind us, walking up with something in his hand - clipboard, flashlight?
I looked harder. I reached out. A snarled mass of aggression and fear met my inner ear.
"Were! There's something wrong," I said, and Eric's big hand shoved me down into the floorboard, which would have provided a little more concealment if the car had been anything other than a Corvette.
Then the patrolman came up to the window and tried to shoot me.
Chapter 5
Eric had turned to fill the window and block the rest of the car from the shooter's aim, and he got it in the neck. For an awful moment, Eric slumped back in the seat, his face blank and dark blood flowing sluggishly down his white skin. I screamed as if noise would protect me, and the gun pointed at me as the gunman leaned into the car to aim past Eric.
But he'd been a fool to do that. Eric's hand clamped on the man's wrist, and Eric began squeezing. The "patrolman" started doing a little shrieking of his own, flailing uselessly at Eric with his empty hand. The gun fell on top of me. I'm just lucky it didn't discharge when it fell. I don't know much about handguns, but this one was big and lethal-looking, and I scrambled to an upright position and aimed it at the shooter.
He froze in place, half in and half out of the window. Eric had already broken his arm and had kept a tight grip. The fool should have been more afraid of the vampire who had a hold on him than the waitress who hardly knew how to fire the gun, but the gun commanded his attention.
I was sure I would have heard if the highway patrol had decided to start shooting speeders instead of ticketing them.
"Who are you?" I said, and no one could blame me if my voice wasn't too steady. "Who sent you?"
"They told me to," the Were gasped. Now that I had time to notice details, I could see he wasn't wearing a proper highway patrol uniform. It was the right color, and the hat was right, but the pants weren't uniform pants.
"They, who?" I asked.
Eric's fangs clamped into the Were's shoulder. Despite his wound, Eric was pulling the faux patrolman into the car inch by inch. It seemed only fair that Eric got some blood since he'd lost so much of his own. The assassin began crying.
"Don't let him turn me into one of them," he appealed to me.
"You should be so lucky," I said, not because I actually thought it was so darn great to be a vampire but because I was sure Eric had something much worse in mind.
I got out of the car because there was no point in trying to get Eric to release the Were. He wouldn't listen to me with the bloodlust on him so strong. My bond to Eric was the crucial factor in this decision. I was happy that he was enjoying himself, getting the blood he needed. I was furious that someone had tried to hurt him. Since both of these feelings would not normally be colors in my emotional palette, I knew what was to blame.