All Together Dead recap

Weeks after a hurricane destroys New Orleans and ruins the Queen of Louisiana, Sookie is hired as her telepath for a vampire summit in the northern city of Rhodes, where Sophie-Anne must answer a charge of murdering her husband, the King of Arkansas. Sookie works the summit alongside Quinn, who is running the event, and Barry, the only other telepath she knows, reading human minds for the Queen's advantage. The vampire pressing the case is found slaughtered in her suite, and the remaining Arkansas witness is shot dead with an arrow while testifying; the Queen is cleared and awarded Arkansas. Meanwhile Andre tries to force a blood exchange to bind Sookie to Louisiana forever, and Eric takes his place, leaving Sookie blood-bonded to Eric instead. On the last day, Sookie and Barry sense a plot in human minds: the Fellowship of the Sun has bombed the hotel. The building collapses with hundreds of vampires helpless inside. Sookie and Barry search the rubble for survivors, Sophie-Anne loses her legs, Andre is killed in the wreckage by Quinn, and Bill is burned rescuing people. Sookie goes home alive and permanently tied to Eric.

Sookie Stackhouse is a telepathic waitress at Merlotte's bar in Bon Temps, Louisiana, in a world where vampires live openly. Her boss Sam is a shapeshifter, her brother Jason is a bitten werepanther, and she has survived a maenad, a coven of witches, a sniper hunting shifters, and imprisonment by the anti-vampire Fellowship of the Sun. Her relationship with the vampire Bill Compton ended twice over: first when he planned to leave her for the vampire who made him and nearly killed her while starving, and finally when she learned he had been sent to Bon Temps by the Queen of Louisiana to seduce her because her cousin Hadley had told the Queen that Sookie could read minds. She shot Debbie Pelt dead in her own kitchen and hid it, a secret Eric Northman shares. Eric, the thousand-year-old vampire sheriff of her area, lived in her house while cursed with amnesia, became her lover, forgot it, and then remembered it. Sookie has since inherited her cousin's New Orleans estate, taken in the witch Amelia Broadway as a tenant, and started seeing Quinn, a weretiger who organizes supernatural events. Queen Sophie-Anne Leclerq killed her own husband, the King of Arkansas, in a battle at her headquarters, and Sookie was there. Arkansas has not let the matter drop.

A hurricane has destroyed New Orleans. The Queen of Louisiana has lost her headquarters, her income and much of her household, refugees have scattered north into parishes like Sookie's, and the balance of power among American vampires has shifted overnight against her. In Bon Temps, Sookie is waiting tables, sharing her house with Amelia Broadway, and watching her old friend Arlene drift toward the anti-vampire Fellowship of the Sun through the man she is seeing. Sookie has agreed to be the Queen's telepath at a vampire summit in the northern city of Rhodes, where rulers from across the country will meet for business, ceremony and law. It is well-paid work, and the reason for it is grim: Sophie-Anne Leclerq is to be tried for the murder of her husband, Peter Threadgill of Arkansas, and Sookie was a witness to how he died.

The Louisiana party flies to Rhodes: the Queen, her bodyguard and child Andre, her lawyer Mr. Cataliades, Eric Northman, Pam, Bill Compton, and assorted sheriffs and human employees. Sookie has to work in the same rooms as Bill, which she manages badly. The summit is held in the Pyramid of Gizeh, a vampire-friendly hotel where the guest floors are sealed against daylight. Quinn is there running the event, which means Sookie sees little of him. She also finds Barry, the Dallas hotel telepath she met years ago, now working openly for the King of Texas; the two of them can speak mind to mind, something neither can do with anyone else, and they agree to compare notes and to hire themselves out jointly to any ruler who will pay.

Sookie's job is to sit among vampires and read the humans who serve them, catching intentions the vampires cannot. The case against the Queen is being pressed by Jennifer Cater of Arkansas, who wants Sophie-Anne executed and her kingdom forfeit. Before the trial can begin, Sookie goes to Cater's suite and finds Jennifer Cater and her party slaughtered inside, which removes the strongest voice against Louisiana and makes Sophie-Anne the obvious suspect. The summit fills with maneuvering: other kings and queens weigh whether Louisiana is worth defending, the King of Kentucky arrives with armored bodyguards hired from another dimension, and the Queen's expensive human attorney sets about salvaging a defense from a very bad position.

Andre decides that a telepath contracted by the year is not good enough for a ruined queen, and moves to bind Sookie to Louisiana permanently by forcing a blood exchange with her, which would make her his to summon and to feel for the rest of her life. Eric intervenes and takes Andre's place, exchanging blood with Sookie himself. It leaves her tied to Eric instead: she can feel his moods at a distance, he can find her anywhere, and neither the bond nor its consequences can be undone. Sookie understands that Eric has protected her from something worse and helped himself at the same time, and she is furious with both of them. The trial then opens, with a surviving Arkansas vampire, Henrik Feith, as the last witness against the Queen and convinced that someone means to kill him first.

Henrik Feith is killed in front of the assembled court, shot with an arrow while giving evidence. The archer is a vampire hired for the job, and the killing collapses what remained of the Arkansas case. The tribunal finds for Sophie-Anne Leclerq: she is cleared of murdering her husband, and Arkansas is awarded to Louisiana, a victory that leaves her a queen of two ruined territories with no money to hold either. Sookie and Barry go on working the summit for hire, reading human staff for whichever ruler pays, and in the course of it Sookie starts picking up something in the minds around the hotel that she cannot place: not vampire politics at all, but human intent, coordinated and hidden.

Sookie and Barry work out what they have been sensing far too late. The Fellowship of the Sun has infiltrated the hotel, and bombs have been planted through the building to bring it down during the day, when every vampire in it is helpless. They manage to warn a handful of people and get some of them out of the building. Then the bombs go off. The Pyramid of Gizeh collapses with hundreds of vampires and their human staff inside, and the survivors on the ground spend the day in the ruins with emergency crews who cannot hear what the telepaths can. Sookie and Barry walk the rubble, finding buried survivors by their minds and marking where to dig, until both of them are past the end of their strength.

The death toll among American vampires is catastrophic: kings, queens, sheriffs and staff from a dozen states are destroyed in a single morning, and the Fellowship of the Sun has proved it can kill vampires by the hundred. The plot was helped from inside by Jake Purifoy, the werewolf made vampire against his will, who let the Fellowship's people and devices into the building and does not survive the day. Sophie-Anne Leclerq lives but loses her legs, and her legal victory over Arkansas is worth almost nothing now. Andre is found injured in the wreckage and killed there by Quinn, which ends the threat he posed to Sookie without anyone having to explain it. Bill is badly burned pulling survivors out of the rubble and tells Sookie he loves her; she does not take him back. Eric and Pam survive. Sookie goes home to Bon Temps alive, well paid, blood-bonded to Eric whether she likes it or not, and with a boyfriend who is hurt and a country full of vampires who no longer have anyone in charge.

The Fellowship of the Sun destroys the summit. Bombs planted through the hotel bring the building down in daylight, when the vampires are helpless in their rooms, and the death toll among the assembled kings, queens, sheriffs and their human staff is enormous. Sookie and Barry, who felt the plot forming in human minds too late to stop it, get some people out beforehand and then spend the day walking the rubble, using their telepathy to find survivors buried in it. Jake Purifoy, the werewolf made vampire against his will, turns out to have helped the Fellowship get its people and its devices into the building, and he does not survive. Sophie-Anne Leclerq lives, but she loses her legs and what remained of her power; her legal victory over Arkansas is worth very little in the ruins. Andre is found injured in the wreckage and killed there by Quinn, which quietly ends the threat he represented to Sookie. Bill is badly burned pulling people out of the rubble, and tells Sookie plainly that he loves her; she does not take him back. Eric and Pam survive. Sookie goes home alive, paid, and bound by blood to Eric Northman, able to feel his moods across a distance and unable to undo it. Quinn is injured and their relationship is intact but strained, the vampire hierarchy of the whole country has been gutted, and the Fellowship of the Sun has proved it can kill vampires by the hundred.