Definitely Dead

"Look!" I said, and pulled one side of my bodice away. He did, God bless him, and I kicked him in the balls so hard I thought they'd come out through his mouth. That's go

I had maybe a yard to go when someone grabbed my foot, and down I went. I slipped in a pool of blood and landed on my knees in it. It was vamp blood, I could tell by the color.

"Bitch," said Jade Flower. "Whore." I didn't think I'd ever heard her talk before. I could have done without it now. She began dragging me, hand over hand, toward her extended fangs. She wasn't getting up to kill me, because one of her legs was missing. I almost threw up but became more concerned with getting away than with ralphing. My hands scrabbled at the smooth wood floor, and my knees tried to get purchase so I could pull away from the vampire. I didn't know if Jade Flower would die of this terrible wound or not. Vampires could survive so many things that would kill a human, which of course was a big part of the attraction… Snap to, Sookie! I told myself fiercely.

The shock must be getting to me.

I threw out my hand and managed to get a grip on the door frame. I pulled and pulled, but I couldn't break free from Jade Flower's hold, and her fingers were digging into the flesh of my ankle. Soon she would snap the bones, and then I wouldn't be able to walk.

With my free foot I kicked the little Asian woman in the face. I did it again and again. Her nose was bleeding, and her lips were, too, but she would not let go. I don't think she even felt it.

Then Bill jumped on her back, landing with enough force to break her spine, and her hold on my ankle relaxed. I scrambled away while he raised a carving knife very like the one the queen had had. He sank it into Jade Flower's neck, over and over, and then her head was off and he was looking at me.

He didn't speak, just gave me that long, dark look. Then he was up and gone, and I had to get the hell out of there.

The queen's apartments were dark. That wasn't good. Beyond where the light penetrated from the ballroom, who knew what could be lurking?

There just had to be an outside door through here. The queen wouldn't leave herself bottled up. She'd have a way to get outside. And if I was remembering the orientation of the building, I needed to walk straight ahead to reach the correct wall.

I gathered myself and decided I'd just stride right on through. No more of this skulking around the wall. The hell with it.

And to my surprise, it worked, up to a point. I went through one room—a sitting room, I figured—before I ended up in what must have been the queen's bedroom. A whisper of movement in the room retriggered my fear switch, and I fumbled along the wall for the light. When I flipped it, I found I was in the room with Peter Threadgill. He was facing Andre. A bed was between them, and on the bed was the queen, who had been badly wounded. Andre didn't have his sword, but then neither did Peter Threadgill. Andre did have a gun, and when I turned on the light, he shot the king right in the face. Twice.

There was a door beyond the body of Peter Threadgill. It had to lead to the grounds. I began to sidle around the room, my back pressed against the wall. No one paid a bit of attention to me.

"Andre, if you kill him," the queen said quite calmly, "I'll have to pay a huge fine." She had a hand pressed to her side, and her beautiful orange dress was dark and wet with her blood.

"But wouldn't it be worth it, lady?"

There was a thoughtful silence on the queen's part, while I unlocked about six locks.

"On the whole, yes," Sophie-A

"Oh, good" Andre said happily, and raised the gun. He had a stake in the other hand, I saw. I didn't stick around to see how Andre did the deed.

I set off across the lawn in my green evening shoes. Amazingly, the evening shoes were still intact. In fact, they were in better shape than my ankle, which Jade Flower had hurt pretty badly. I was limping by the time I'd taken ten steps. "Watch out for the lion," called the queen, and I looked behind me to see that Andre was carrying her out of the building. I wondered whose side the lion was on.

Then the big cat appeared right in front of me. One minute my escape route was clear, and the next it was filled by a lion. The outside security lights were off, and in the moonlight the beast looked so beautiful and so deadly that fear pulled the air right out of my lungs.

The lion made a low, guttural sound.

"Go away," I said. I had absolutely nothing to fight a lion with, and I was at the end of my rope. "Go away!" I yelled. "Get out of here!"

And it slunk into the bushes.

I don't think that is typical lion behavior. Maybe it smelled the tiger coming, because a second or two later, Qui

"Well, I can't do that," I said, and even to my own ears, I sounded grumpy. "Can I stand on your back? I'll take my heels off." Qui

After all I'd faced this evening, it seemed stupid to balk at falling a few feet. But I sat on the wall, telling myself I was an idiot, for several long moments. Then I managed to flip over onto my stomach, let myself down as far as I could reach, and said out loud, "One, two, three!" Then I fell.

For a couple of minutes I just lay there, stu

Here I was, lying on a sidewalk in historical New Orleans, with my boobs hanging out of my dress, my hair coming down, my sandals on my arm, and a large tiger licking my face. Qui

"Do you think it would be better to walk back as a tiger, or as a large naked man?" I asked the tiger. "Because either way, you might attract some attention. I think you stand a better chance of getting shot if you're a tiger, myself."

"That will not be necessary," said a voice, and Andre loomed above me. "I am here with the queen in her car, and we will take you where you need to go."

"That's mighty nice of you," I said, as Qui

"Her Majesty feels that she owes you," Andre said.

"I don't see it that way," I said. Why was I being so frank, now? Couldn't I just keep my mouth shut? "After all, if I hadn't found the bracelet and given it back, the king would have…"

"Started the war tonight anyway," Andre said, helping me to my feet. He reached out and quite impersonally pushed my right breast under the scanty lime-green fabric. "He would have accused the queen of breaking her side of the contract, which held that all gifts must be held in honor as tokens of the marriage. He would have brought suit against the queen, and she would have lost almost everything and been dishonored. He was ready to go either way, but when the queen was wearing the second bracelet, he had to go with violence. Ra Shawn set it off by beheading Wybert for bumping against him." Ra Shawn had been Dreadlock's name, I assumed.