Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [694]
“Sooner or later,” he said, “we’re gonna be in a room with a bed, no phones, and a door that will lock.”
I smiled up at him and spied the Thrashes easing out of the door. I hoped their car had been brought around. And that was the last normal thought I had for some time.
A head flew past Quinn’s shoulder. It was moving too fast for me to pin down whose head it was, but it looked familiar. A spray of blood created a ruddy cloud in the head’s wake.
I made a sound. It wasn’t a scream or a gasp; more like “Eeeeep.”
Quinn stopped dead, though the music didn’t for a long moment. He looked in all directions, trying to analyze what was happening and how we could survive it. I’d thought one dance would be okay, but we should have gone with the Were couple. Quinn began pulling me over to the side of the ballroom, and he said, “Backs against the wall.” We’d know from which direction the danger was coming: good thinking. But someone cannoned into us and Quinn’s hold on my hand was broken.
There was a lot of screaming and a lot of movement. The screaming was all from the Weres and other supes who’d been invited to the party, and the movement was mostly from the vampires, who were looking for their allies amid the chaos. This was where the horrible outfits worn by the king’s followers came into their own. It was instantly easy to see who belonged to the king. Of course, that made them an easy target, too, if you didn’t happen to like the king and his minions.
A thin black vampire with dreadlocks had whipped a sword with a curved blade out of nowhere, apparently. The blade was bloody, and I thought Dreadlocks was the headlopper. He was wearing the awful suit, so he was someone I wanted to dodge. If I had any allies here, it wasn’t anyone working for Peter Threadgill. I’d gotten behind one of the pillars holding up the ceiling of the west end of the refectory, and I was trying to figure out the safest way from the room when my foot bumped something that shifted. I looked down to see the head. It belonged to Wybert. I wondered for a fraction of a second if it would move or speak, but decapitation is pretty final, no matter what species you are.
“Oh,” I moaned, and decided I’d better get a good hold on myself, or I was gonna look just like Wybert, at least in one important respect.
Fighting had broken out throughout the room. I hadn’t seen the precipitating incident, but on some pretext the black vampire had attacked Wybert and cut off his head. Since Wybert was one of the queen’s bodyguards and Dreadlocks was one of Peter’s attendants, the beheading was a pretty decisive act.
The queen and Andre were standing back to back in the middle of the floor. Andre was holding a gun in one hand and a long knife in the other, and the queen had acquired a carving knife from the buffet. There was a circle of white coats surrounding them, and when one fell, another would take its place. This was like Custer’s last stand, with the queen standing in for Custer. Sigebert was equally besieged on the bandstand, and the orchestra, part Were or shifter and part vampire, had separated into its various components. Some were joining in the combat, while others were trying to flee. Those who were doing their best to get the hell out of there were clogging the door leading to the long corridor. The effect was a logjam.
The king was under attack from my three friends Rasul, Chester, and Melanie. I was sure I’d find Jade Flower at his back, but she was having her own problems, I was glad to see. Mr. Cataliades was doing his best to—well, it looked like he was just trying to touch her. She was parrying his attempts with her whacking big sword, the sword that had sliced Gladiola in two, but neither of them looked like they were giving up any time soon.
Just then I was knocked flat