Extraits Tome 8

Extrait 1: Sookie, Eric

Okay, I’d yucked myself out. I was a human woman. I tried to be a good woman. I had to find Quinn because I had committed myself to him… sort of.

No, no quibbling!

“What are you thinking about, Sookie?” Eric asked out of the darkness. “Your face has had thoughts rippling across it too fast to follow.”

The fact that he could see me - not only in the dark, but while he was supposed to be watching the road – was exasperating and scary. And proof of his superiority, my inner cave-woman said.

“Eric, just get me home. I’m in emotional overload.”

He didn’t speak again. Maybe he was being wise, or maybe the healing was painful.

“We need to talk about this again,” he said when he pulled into my driveway. He parked in front of the house, turned to me as much as he could in the little car. “Sookie, I’m hurting… can I…” He leaned over, brushed his fingers over my neck.

At the very idea, my body betrayed me. A throbbing started down low, and that was just wrong. A person shouldn’t get excited at the idea of being bitten. That’s bad, right? I clenched my fists so tightly my fingernails made my palms hurt.

Now that I could see him better, now that the interior of the car was illuminated with the harsh glare of the security light, I realized that Eric was even paler than usual. As I watched, the bullet began exiting the wound, and he leaned back against his seat, his eyes shut. Millimeter by millimeter, the bullet was extruded until it dropped into my waiting hand. I remembered Eric getting me to suck out a bullet in his arm. Ha! What a fraud he’d been. The bullet would’ve come out of its own. My indignation made me feel more like myself.

“I think you can make it home,” I said, though I felt an almost irresistible urge to lean over to him and offer my neck or my wrist. I gritted my teeth and got out of the car. “You can stop at Merlotte’s and get bottled blood if you really need some.”

“You’re hard-hearted,” Eric said, but he didn’t sound truly angry or affronted.

“I am,” I said, and I smiled at him. “You be careful, you hear?”

“Of course,” he said. “And I’m not stopping for any policeman.”

Extrait 2 : Sookie, Bill

Bill glided into my room quite silently.

“What’s up?” I asked, trying to keep my voice very quiet, very calm, though every nerve in my body had started shrieking.

“I’m uneasy,” he said in his cool voice, and I almost laughed. “Pam had to leave for Fangtasia. She called me to take her place here.

“Why?”

[…] “Pam couldn’t get Cleo on the phone,” he said. “Eric left the club to run an errand, and Pam couldn’t raise him, either. But I got his voicemail; I’m sure he’ll call back. It’s Cleo not answering that’s the rub.”

“Pam and Cleo are friends?”

“No, not at all,” he said, matter-of-factly. “But Pam should be able to talk to her all-night grocery. Cleo always answers.”

“Why was Pam trying to reach her,” I asked.

“They call each other every night,” Bill said. “Then Cleo calls Arla Yvonne. They have a chain. It should not be broken, not in these days.” Bill stood up with a speed that I couldn’t follow. “Listen!” he whispered, his voice as light on my ear as a moth wing. “Do you hear?”

I didn’t hear jack shit. I held still under the covers, wishing passionately that this whole thing would just go away. Weres, vampires, trouble, strife… But no such luck. “What do you hear?” I asked, trying to be as quiet as Bill was being, an effort doomed in the attempt.

“Someone’s coming,” he said.

And then I heard a knock on the front door. It was a very quiet knock.

A venir...