"It felt like it," Karla said. "She was going to leave. I could feel it. She was losing and she decided to just cut her losses and go; to start this up again somewhere else, with another person up on her meat-tree, about to get stabbed for her so-called god-who-comes. Maybe Bobby or Kennedy could have stabbed her, but she'd be just as dead that way. But we couldn't just let her go. And we had no one to turn her over to; the police in Sookie's town were just two more of her mind-controlled victims."

Had there been another way? Karla couldn't be sure. She'd been terrified and furious. That bitch had stolen her Sapphire and tried to kill her. She was abusing landens people and taking away their will. Every instinct Karla had had pushed her to kill her where she stood, to make sure she could never harm anyone again.

And to take vengeance for what she'd done.

"I suppose we could have given her over to the vampires," she said, a little bitterly.