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tell you everything I know, but what I tell you . . . it’s true.”
“Why?”
“The blood exchange has worked both ways,” he said. “I’ve had the blood of many women. I’ve had
almost utter control over them. But they never drank mine. It’s been decades, maybe centuries since I
gave any woman my blood. Maybe not since I turned Pam.”
“Is this the general policy among vampires you know?” I wasn’t quite sure how to ask what I wanted to
know.
He hesitated, nodded. “For the most part. There are some vampires who like to take total control over a
human . . . make that human their Renfield.” He used the term with distaste.
“That’s from Dracula, right?”
“Yes, Dracula’s human servant. A degraded creature . . . Why someone of Dracula’s eminence would
want so debased a man as that . . .” Eric shook his head disgustedly. “But it does happen. The best of us
look askance at a vampire who makes servant after servant. The human is lost when the vampire
assumes too much control. When the human goes completely under, he isn’t worth turning. He isn’t
worth anything at all. Sooner or later, he has to be killed.”
“Killed! Why?”
“If the vampire who’s assumed so much control abandons the Renfield, or if the vampire himself is
killed . . . the Renfield’s life is not worth living after that.”
“They have to be put down,” I said. Like a dog with rabies.
“Yes.” Eric looked away.
“But that’s not going to happen to me. And you won’t ever turn me.” I was absolutely serious.
“No. I won’t ever force you into subservience. And I will never turn you, since you don’t want it.”
“Even if I’m going to die, don’t turn me. I would hate that more than anything.”
“I agree to that. No matter how much I may want to keep you.”
Right after we’d met, Bill had not changed me when I had been close to death. I’d never realized he
might have been tempted to do so. He’d saved my human life instead. I put that away to consider later.
Tacky to think about one man when you’re in bed with another.
“You saved me from being bonded to Andre,” I said. “But it cost me.”
“If he’d lived, it would have cost me, too. No matter how mild his reaction, Andre would have paid me
back for my intervention.”
“He seemed so calm about it that night,” I said. Eric had persuaded Andre to let him be his proxy. I’d
been very grateful at the time, since Andre gave me the creeps and he didn’t give a damn about me,
either. I remembered my talk with Tara. If I’d let Andre share blood that night, I’d be free now, since
he’s dead. I still couldn’t decide how I felt about that—probably three different ways.
Tonight was turning out to be a huge one for realizations. They could just stop coming any old time now.
“Andre never forgot a challenge to his will,” Eric said. “Do you know how he died, Sookie?”
Ah-oh.
“He got stuck in the chest with a big splinter of wood,” I said, swallowing a little. Like Eric, I didn’t
always tell the whole truth. The splinter hadn’t gotten in Andre’s chest by accident. Quinn had done that.
Eric looked at me for what seemed like a very long time. He could feel my anxiety, of course. I waited
to see if he’d push the issue. “I don’t miss Andre,” he said finally. “I regret Sophie-Anne, though. She
was brave.”
“I agree,” I said, relieved. “By the way, how are you getting along with your new bosses?”
“So far, so good. They’re very forward-thinking. I like that.”
Since the end of October, Eric had had to learn the structure of a new and larger organization, the
characters of the vampires who made it work, and how to liaise with the new sheriffs. Even for him, that
was a big bite to chew.
“I bet the vamps you had with you before that night are extra glad they pledged loyalty to you, since
they survived when so many of the other vamps in Louisiana died that night.”
Eric smiled broadly. It would have been really scary if I hadn’t seen the fang display before. “Yes,” he
