Dead to the World (Sookie Stackhouse #4)(5)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"Wow." I couldn’t think of anything more helpful to say. "Eric Northman is the name you go by these days. Why are you out here?"

"I don’t know that, either."

I was sensing a theme here. "For real? You don’t remember anything?" I tried to get past being sure that at any second he’d grin down at me and explain everything and laugh, embroiling me in some trouble that would end in me… getting beaten up.

"For real." He took a step closer, and his bare white chest made me shiver with sympathetic goose bumps. I also realized (now that I wasn’t terrified) how forlorn he looked. It was an expression I’d never seen on the confident Eric’s face before, and it made me feel unaccountably sad.

"You know you’re a vampire, right?"

"Yes." He seemed surprised that I asked. "And you are not."

"No, I’m real human, and I have to know you won’t hurt me. Though you could have by now. But believe me, even if you don’t remember it, we’re sort of friends."

"I won’t hurt you."

I reminded myself that probably hundreds and thousands of people had heard those very words before Eric ripped their throats out. But the fact is, vampires don’t have to kill once they’re past their first year. A sip here, a sip there, that’s the norm. When he looked so lost, it was hard to remember he could dismember me with his bare hands.

I’d told Bill one time that the smart thing for aliens to do (when they invaded Earth) would be to arrive in the guise of lop-eared bunnies.

"Come get in my car before you freeze," I said. I was having that I’m-getting-sucked-in feeling again, but I didn’t know what else to do.

"I do know you?" he said, as though he were hesitant about getting in a car with someone as formidable as a woman ten inches shorter, many pounds lighter, and a few centuries younger.

"Yes," I said, not able to restrain an edge of impatience. I wasn’t too happy with myself, because I still half suspected I was being tricked for some unfathomable reason. "Now come on, Eric. I’m freezing, and so are you." Not that vampires seemed to feel temperature extremes, as a rule; but even Eric’s skin looked goosey. The dead can freeze, of course. They’ll survive it – they survive almost everything – but I understand it’s pretty painful. "Oh my God, Eric, you’re barefoot." I’d just noticed.

I took his hand; he let me get close enough for that. He let me lead him back to the car and stow him in the passenger seat. I told him to roll up the window as I went around to my side, and after a long minute of studying the mechanism, he did.

I reached in the backseat for an old afghan I keep there in the winter (for football games, etc.) and wrapped it around him. He wasn’t shivering, of course, because he was a vampire, but I just couldn’t stand to look at all that bare flesh in this temperature. I turned the heater on full blast (which, in my old car, isn’t saying much).

Eric’s exposed skin had never made me feel cold before – when I’d seen this much of Eric before, I’d felt anything but. I was giddy enough by now to laugh out loud before I could censor my own thoughts.

He was startled, and looked at me sideways.

"You’re the last person I expected to see," I said. "Were you coming out this way to see Bill? Because he’s gone."

"Bill?"

"The vampire who lives out here? My ex-boyfriend?"

He shook his head. He was back to being absolutely terrified.

"You don’t know how you came to be here?"

He shook his head again.

I was making a big effort to think hard; but it was just that, an effort. I was worn out. Though I’d had a rush of adrenaline when I’d spotted the figure running down the dark road, that rush was wearing off fast. I reached the turnoff to my house and turned left, winding through the black and silent woods on my nice, level driveway – that, in fact, Eric had had re-graveled for me.

And that was why Eric was sitting in my car right now, instead of running through the night like a giant white rabbit. He’d had the intelligence to give me what I really wanted. (Of course, he’d also wanted me to go to bed with him for months. But he’d given me the driveway because I needed it.)

"Here we are," I said, pulling around to the back of my old house. I switched off the car. I’d remembered to leave the outside lights on when I’d left for work that afternoon, thank goodness, so we weren’t sitting there in total darkness.

"This is where you live?" He was glancing around the clearing where the old house stood, seemingly nervous about going from the car to the back door.

"Yes," I said, exasperated.

He just gave me a look that showed white all around the blue of his eyes.

"Oh, come on," I said, with no grace at all. I got out of the car and went up the steps to the back porch, which I don’t keep locked because, hey, why lock a screened-in back porch? I do lock the inner door, and after a second’s fumbling, I had it open so the light I leave on in the kitchen could spill out. "You can come in," I said, so he could cross the threshold. He scuttled in after me, the afghan still clutched around him.

Under the overhead light in the kitchen, Eric looked pretty pitiful. His bare feet were bleeding, which I hadn’t noticed before. "Oh, Eric," I said sadly, and got a pan out from the cabinet, and started the hot water to running in the sink. He’d heal real quick, like vampires do, but I couldn’t help but wash him clean. The blue jeans were filthy around the hem. "Pull ’em off," I said, knowing they’d just get wet if I soaked his feet while he was dressed.

With not a hint of a leer or any other indication that he was enjoying this development, Eric shimmied out of the jeans. I tossed them onto the back porch to wash in the morning, trying not to gape at my guest, who was now clad in underwear that was definitely over-the-top, a bright red bikini style whose stretchy quality was definitely being tested. Okay, another big surprise. I’d seen Eric’s underwear only once before – which was once more than I ought to have – and he’d been a silk boxers guy. Did men change styles like that?

Without preening, and without comment, the vampire rewrapped his white body in the afghan. Hmmm. I was now convinced he wasn’t himself, as no other evidence could have convinced me. Eric was way over six feet of pure magnificence (if a marble white magnificence), and he well knew it.

I pointed to one of the straight-back chairs at the kitchen table. Obediently, he pulled it out and sat. I crouched to put the pan on the floor, and I gently guided his big feet into the water. Eric groaned as the warmth touched his skin. I guess that even a vampire could feel the contrast. I got a clean rag from under the sink and some liquid soap, and I washed his feet. I took my time, because I was trying to think what to do next,