Definitely Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #6)(43)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"We could just call the queen," Amelia said. "After all, the body’s been here, and Hadley either killed him or hid the body. No way could he have died the night she went out with Waldo to the cemetery."

"Why not?" I had a sudden, awful thought.

"You got a cell phone?" I asked, rising to my feet as I spoke. Amelia nodded. "Call the queen’s place. Tell them to send someone over right now."

"What?" Her eyes were confused, even as her fingers were punching in numbers.

Looking into the closet, I could see the fingers of the corpse twitch.

"He’s rising," I said quietly.

It only took a second for her to get it. "This is Amelia Broadway on Chloe Street! Send an older vampire over here right now," she yelled into the phone. "New vamp rising!" She was on her feet now, and we were running for the door.

We didn’t make it.

Jake Purifoy was after us, and he was hungry.

Since Amelia was behind me (I’d had a head start) he dove to grab her ankle. She shrieked as she went down, and I spun around to help her. I didn’t think at all, because I would have kept on going out the door if I had. The new vamp’s fingers were wrapped around Amelia’s bare ankle like a shackle, and he was pulling her toward him across the smooth laminated-wood floor. She was clawing at the floor with her fingers, trying to find something to stop her progress toward his mouth, which was wide open with the fangs extended full length, oh God! I grabbed her wrists and began pulling. I hadn’t known Jake Purifoy in life, so I didn’t know what he’d been like. And I couldn’t find anything human left in his face, anything I could appeal to. "Jake!" I yelled. "Jake Purifoy! Wake up!" Of course, that didn’t do a damn bit of good. Jake had changed into something that was not a nightmare but a permanent otherness, and he could not be roused from it: he was it. He was making a kind of gnarr-gnarr-gnarr noise, the hungriest sound I’d ever heard, and then he bit down on the calf of Amelia’s leg, and she screamed.

It was like a shark had hold of her. If I yanked at her any more, he might take out the bit his teeth had clamped on. He was sucking on the leg wound now, and I kicked him in the head with my heel, cursing my lack of shoes. I put everything I had behind it, and it didn’t faze the new vampire in the least. He made a noise of protest, but continued sucking, and the witch kept shrieking with pain and shock. There was a candlestick on the table behind one of the loveseats, a tall glass candlestick with lots of heft to it. I plucked the candle from it, grasped it with both hands, and brought it down as hard as I could on Jake Purifoy’s head. Blood began to run from his wound, very sluggishly; that’s how vampires bleed. The candlestick came apart with the blow, and I was left with empty hands and a furious vampire. He raised his blood-smeared face to glare at me, and I hope I’m never on the receiving end of another look like that again in my life. His face held the mindless rage of a mad dog.

But he’d let go of Amelia’s leg, and she began to scramble away. It was obvious she was hurt, and it was kind of a slow scramble, but she made the effort. Tears were streaming down her face and her breathing was all over the place, harsh in the night’s silence. I could hear a siren drawing closer and I hoped it was coming here. It would be too late, though. The vampire launched himself from the floor to knock me down, and I didn’t have time to think about anything.

He bit down on my arm, and I thought the teeth would penetrate the bone. If I hadn’t thrown up the arm, those teeth would have gripped my neck, and that would have been fatal. The arm might be preferable, but just at this moment the pain was so intense I nearly passed out, and I’d better not do that. Jake Purifoy’s body was heavy on top of mine, and his hands were pressing my free arm to the floor, and his legs were on top of mine. Another hunger was wakening in the new vampire, and I felt its evidence pressing against my thigh. He freed a hand to begin yanking at my pants.

Oh, no… this was so bad. I would die in the next few minutes, here in New Orleans in my cousin’s apartment, far away from my friends and my family.

Blood was all over the new vampire’s face and hands.

Amelia crawled awkwardly across the floor toward us, her leg trailing blood behind her. She should have run, since she couldn’t save me. No more candlesticks. But Amelia had another weapon, and she reached out with a violently shaking hand to touch the vampire. "Utinam hie sanguis in ignem commutet!" she yelled.

The vampire reared back, screaming and clawing at his face, which was suddenly covered by tiny licking blue flames.

And the police came through the door.

They were vampires, too.

For an interesting moment, the police officers thought we had attacked Jake Purifoy. Amelia and I, bleeding and screaming, were shoved up against the wall. But in the meantime, the spell Amelia had cast on the new undead lost its efficacy and he leaped on the nearest uniformed cop, who happened to be a black woman with a proud straight back and a high-bridged nose. The cop whipped out her nightstick and used it with a reckless disregard for the new vamp’s teeth. Her partner, a very short man whose skin was the color of butterscotch, fumbled to open a bottle of TrueBlood that was stuck in his belt like another tool. He bit off the tip, and stuck the rubber cap in Jake Purifoy’s questing mouth. Suddenly, all was silence as the new vamp sucked down the contents of the bottle. The rest of us stood panting and bleeding.

"He will be quiet now," said the female officer, the cadence of her voice letting me know that she was far more African than American. "I think we have subdued him."

Amelia and I sank onto the floor, after the male cop gave us a nod to let us know we were off the hook. "Sorry we got confused about who was the bad guy," he said in a voice as warm as melted butter. "You ladies okay?" It was a good thing his voice was so reassuring, since his fangs were out. I guess the excitement of the blood and the violence triggered the reaction, but it was kind of disconcerting in a law enforcement officer.

"I think not," I said. "Amelia here is bleeding pretty bad, and I guess I am, too." The bite didn’t hurt as badly as it was going to. The vamp’s saliva secretes a tiny bit of anesthetic, along with a healing agent. But the healing agent was meant for sealing the pinpricks of fangs, not for actual large tears in human flesh. "We’re going to need a doctor." I’d met a vamp in Mississippi who could heal large wounds, but it was a rare talent.

"You both human?" he asked. The female cop was crooning in a foreign language to the new vampire. I didn’t know if the former werewolf, Jake Purifoy, could speak the language, but he recognized safety when he saw it. The burns on his face healed as we sat there.