"Charlaine Harris - Sookie Stackhouse 03 - Club Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harris Charlaine)

because my feet were so tired, and I leaned against Bill's knees.

"The queen of Louisiana," he said, almost in a whisper.

Because he looked so solemn, I tried to keep a straight face, but it was no use. I began to laugh,
little giggles that I couldn't suppress.

"You're serious?" I asked, knowing he must be. Bill was almost always a serious kind of fellow. I
buried my face on his thigh so he couldn't see my amusement. I rolled my eyes up for a quick look at his
face. He was looking pretty pissed.
"I am as serious as the grave," Bill said, and he sounded so steely, I made a major effort to
change my attitude.

"Okay, let me get this straight," I said in a reasonably level tone. I sat back on the floor,
cross-legged, and rested my hands on my knees. "You work for Eric, who is the boss of Area 5, but
there is also a queen? Of Louisiana?"
Bill nodded.

"So the state is divided up into Areas? And she's Eric's superior, since he runs a business in
Shreveport, which is in Area 5."

Again with the nod. I put my hand over my face and shook my head. "So, where does she live,
Baton Rouge?" The state capital seemed the obvious place.

"No, no. New Orleans, of course."
Of course. Vampire central. You could hardly throw a rock in the Big Easy without hitting one of
the undead, according to the papers (though only a real fool would do so). The tourist trade in New
Orleans was booming, but it was not exactly the same crowd as before, the hard-drinking, rollicking
crowd who'd filled the city to party hearty. The newer tourists were the ones who wanted to rub elbows
with the undead; patronize a vampire bar, visit a vampire prostitute, watch a vampire sex show.

This was what I'd heard; I hadn't been to New Orleans since I was little. My mother and father
had taken my brother, Jason, and me. That would have been before I was seven, because that's when
they died.
 Mama and Daddy died nearly twenty years before vampires had appeared on network television
to announce the fact that they were actually present among us, an announcement that had followed on the
Japanese development of synthetic blood that actually maintained a vampire's life without the necessity of
drinking from humans.
The United States vampire community had let the Japanese vampire clans come forth first. Then,
simultaneously, in most of the nations of the world that had televisionтАФand who doesn't these
days?тАФthe announcement had been made in hundreds of different languages, by hundreds of carefully
picked personable vampires.

That night, two and half years ago, we regular old live people learned that we had always lived
with monsters among us.

"But"тАФthe burden of this announcement had beenтАФ"now we can come forward and join with
you in harmony. You are in no danger from us anymore. We don't need to drink from you to live."
As you can imagine, this was a night of high ratings and tremendous uproar. Reaction varied
sharply, depending on the nation.