Dead in the Family (Sookie Stackhouse #10)(39)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"That’s just not right." I was genuinely indignant. Then I remembered there was something very important I had to tell Eric. "I guess Heidi reported back to you after she sniffed out my land? She told you about the body?" My hand jerked involuntarily.

Eric was watching my every move, his eyes narrowed. "We already talked about Debbie Pelt. If you really want me to, I’ll move her."

I shivered all over. I wanted to tell him that the body was fresh. I’d started out to do that, but somehow I was having trouble formulating my sentence. I felt so peculiar. Eric cocked his head, his eyes locked on my face. "You’re behaving very strangely, Sookie."

"Do you think Alcide could tell from the smell that the corpse was Debbie?" I asked. What was wrong with me?

"Not from the scent," he said. "A body is a body. It doesn’t retain the distinctive scent that identified it as a particular person, especially after this long. Are you so worried about what Alcide thinks?"

"Not as much as I used to be," I said, babbling on. "Hey, I heard on the radio today that one of the senators from Oklahoma came out as a Were. He said he’d register with some government bureau the day they pried his fangs from his cold, dead corpse."

"I think the backlash from this will benefit vampires," Eric said with some satisfaction. "Of course, we’d always realized the government would want to keep track of us somehow. Now it seems that if the Weres win their fight to be free of supervision, we may be able to do the same."

"You better get dressed," I said. Something bad was going to happen soon, and Eric needed clothes.

He turned and peered at himself in the mirror one last time. "All right," he said, a little surprised. He was still nude and magnificent. But at the moment, I wasn’t feeling a bit lusty. I was feeling jangly, and nervous, and worried. I felt like spiders were crawling all over my skin. I didn’t know what could be happening to me. I tried to speak but found I couldn’t. I made my fingers move in a "hurry up" gesture.

Eric gave me a quick, worried glance and wordlessly began searching for his clothes. He found his pants, and he pulled them on.

I sank down to the floor, my hands on both sides of my head. I thought my skull might detach from my spine. I whimpered. Eric dropped his shirt.

"Can you tell me what’s wrong?" he asked, sinking down to the floor beside me.

"Someone’s coming," I said. "I feel so strange. Someone’s coming. Almost here. Someone with your blood." I realized I’d felt a faint, faint trace of this same oddness before, when I’d confronted Bill’s maker, Lorena. I hadn’t had a blood bond with Bill, or at least not one anything like as binding as the one I had with Eric.

Eric rose to his feet in less than the blink of an eye, and I heard him make a sound deep in his chest. His hands were in white fists. I was huddled against my bed, and he was between me and the open window. In the blink of an eye, I realized there was someone right outside.

"Appius Livius Ocella," Eric said. "It’s been a hundred years."

Geez Louise. Eric’s maker.

Chapter 8

Between Eric’s legs I could see a man, very scarred and very muscular, with dark eyes and hair. I knew he was short because I could only see his head and shoulders. He was wearing jeans and a Black Sabbath T-shirt. I couldn’t help it. I giggled.

"Haven’t you missed me, Eric?" The Roman’s voice had an accent I really couldn’t have broken down, it had so many layers.

"Ocella, your presence is always an honor," Eric said. I giggled harder. Eric was lying.

"What is wrong with my wife?" he asked.

"Her senses are confused," the older vampire said. "You have my blood. She’s had your blood. And another child of mine is here. The bond between us all is scrambling her thoughts and feelings."

No shit.

"This is my new son, Alexei," Appius Livius Ocella told Eric.

I peered past Eric’s legs. The new "son" was a boy of no more than thirteen or fourteen. In fact, I could hardly see his face. I froze, trying not to react.

"Brother," said Eric by way of greeting his new sibling. The words came out level and cold.

I was going to stand up now. I was not going to crouch here any longer. Eric had crowded me into a very small space between the bed and the nightstand, with the bathroom door to my right. He hadn’t shifted from his defensive posture.

"Excuse me," I said, with a great effort, and Eric took a step forward to give me room, keeping himself between me and his maker and the boy. I rose to my feet, pushing on the bed to get upright. I still felt fried. I looked Eric’s sire right in his dark and liquid eyes. For a fraction of a second, he looked surprised.

"Eric, you need to go to the front door and let them in," I said. "I’ll bet they don’t really need an invitation."

"Eric, she’s rare," said Ocella in his oddly accented English. "Where did you find her?"

"I’m asking you in out of courtesy, because you’re Eric’s dad," I said. "I could just leave you outside." If I didn’t sound as strong as I wanted, at least I didn’t sound frightened.

"But my child is in this house, and if he is welcome, so am I. Am I not?" Ocella’s thick black brows rose. His nose … Well, you could tell why they coined the term "Roman nose." "I waited to come in out of courtesy. We could have appeared in your bedroom."

And the next moment they were inside.

I didn’t dignify that with an answer. I spared a glance for the boy, whose face was absolutely blank. He was no ancient Roman. He hadn’t been a vampire a full century, I estimated, and he seemed to come from Germanic stock. His hair was light and short and cut evenly, his eyes were blue, and when he met my own, he inclined his head.

"Your name is Alexei?" I asked.

"Yes," said his maker, while the boy stood mute. "This is Alexei Romanov."

Though the boy didn’t react, and neither did Eric, I had a moment of sheer horror. "You didn’t," I said to Eric’s maker, who was about my height. "You didn’t."

"I tried to save one of his sisters, too, but she was beyond my recall," Ocella said bleakly. His teeth were white and even, though he was missing the one next to his left canine. If you had lost teeth before you became a vampire, they didn’t regenerate.

"Sookie, what is it?" Eric was not following, for once.

"The Romanovs," I said, trying to keep my voice hushed as though the boy couldn’t hear me from twenty yards away. "The last Russian royal family."