fly across the ceiling, narrowly avoiding the fan blades. A wolf came to my side and licked my face and whined, but turned and dashed away. Tara was screaming. I was not. I was so cold.

With my right hand, I covered the spot where the stake entered my body. I didn’t want to see it, and I was scared I’d look down. I could feel the growing wetness around the wound.

“Call nine-one-one!” Tara yelled as she landed on her knees beside me. The bartender and Betty Joe exchanged a look over her head. I understood.

“Tara,” I said, and it came out like a croak. “Honey, all the shifters are changing. It’s full moon. The police can’t come in here, and they’ll come if anyone calls nine-one-one.”

The shifter part just didn’t seem to register with Tara, who didn’t know such things were possible. “The vampires are not gonna let you die,” Tara said confidently. “You just saved one of them!”

I wasn’t so sure about that. I saw Franklin Mott’s face above Tara. He was looking at me, and I could read his expression.

“Tara,” I whispered, “you have to get out of here. This is getting crazy, and if there’s any chance the police are coming, you can’t be here.”

Franklin Mott nodded in approval.

“I’m not going to leave you until you have help,” Tara said, her voice full of determination. Bless her heart.

The crowd around me consisted of vampires. One of them was Eric. I could not decipher his face.

“The tall blond will help me,” I told Tara, my voice barely a rasp. I pointed a finger at Eric. I didn’t look at him for fear I’d read rejection in his eyes. If Eric wouldn’t help me, I suspected I would lie here and die on this polished wood floor in a vampire bar in Jackson, Mississippi.

My brother, Jason, would be so pissed off.

Tara had met Eric in Bon Temps, but their introduction had been on a very stressful night. She didn’t seem to identify the tall blond she’d met that night with the tall blond she saw tonight, wearing glasses and a suit and with his hair pulled back strictly into a braid.

“Please help Sookie,” she said to him directly, as Franklin Mott almost yanked her to her feet.

“This young man will beglad to help your friend,” Mott said. He gave Eric a sharp look that told Eric he damn well better agree.

“Of course. I’m a good friend of Alcide’s,” Eric said, lying without a blink.

He took Tara’s place by my side, and I could tell after he was on his knees that he caught the smell of my blood. His face went even whiter, and his bones stood out starkly under his skin. His eyes blazed.

“You don’t know how hard it is,” he whispered to me, “not to bend over and lick.”

“If you do, everyone else will,” I said. “And they won’t just lick, they’ll bite.” There was a German shepherd staring at me with luminous yellow eyes, just past my feet.

“That’s the only thing stopping me.”

“Who are you?” asked Russell Edgington. He was giving Eric a careful once-over. Russell was standing to my other side, and he bent over both of us. I had been loomed over enough, I can tell you that, but I was in no position to do a damn thing about it.

“I’m a friend of Alcide’s,” Eric repeated. “He invited me here tonight to meet his new girlfriend. My name is Leif.”

Russell could look down at Eric, since Eric was kneeling, and his golden brown eyes bored into Eric’s blue ones. “Alcide doesn’t hang with many vampires,” Russell said.

“I’m one of the few.”

“We have to get this young lady out of here,” Russell said.

The snarling a few feet away increased in intensity. There appeared to be a knot of animals gathered around something on the floor.

“Take that out of here!” roared Mr. Hob. “Out the back door! You know the rules!”

Two of the vampires lifted the corpse, for that was what the Weres and shifters were squabbling over, and carried it out the back door, followed by all the animals. So much for the black-haired fanatic.

Just this afternoon Alcide and I had disposed of a corpse. We’d never thought of just bringing it down to the club, laying it in the alley. Of course, this one was fresh.

“. . . maybe has nicked a kidney,” Eric was saying. I had been unconscious, or at least somewhere else, for a few moments.

I was sweating heavily, and