Шарлин Харрис - Dead and Gone

Two jabbed me with a sharp knife she’d just pulled from her boot, a knife that shone like her teeth. They both leaned close to me to drink in my reaction. I could only make a raspy noise. My face was crusted with tears and blood.

“Little froggy croaking,” One said.

“Listen to her. Croak, froggy. Croak for us.”

I opened my eyes and looked into hers, meeting them squarely for the first time in many long minutes. I swallowed and summoned up all my remaining strength.

“You’re going to die,” I said with absolute certainty. But I’d said it before, and they didn’t pay any more attention now than they had the first time.

I made my lips move up in a smile.

The male had just enough time to look startled before something gleaming flashed between his head and his shoulders. Then, to my intense pleasure, he was in two pieces and I was covered in a wash of fresh red blood. It ran over me, drenching the blood already dried on my skin. But my eyes were clear, so I could see a white hand gripped Two’s neck, lifting her, spinning her around, and her shock was intensely gratifying as teeth almost as sharp as her own ripped into her long neck.

I wasn’t in a hospital.

But I was in a bed, not my own. And I was a little cleaner than I had been, and bandaged, and in a lot of pain; in fact, a dreadful amount of pain. The part where I was cleaner and bandaged—oh, a wholly desirable state. The other part, the pain—well, that was expected, understandable, and finite. At least no one was trying to hurt me any worse than I’d already been hurt. So I decided I was excellent.

I had a few holes in my memory. I couldn’t remember what had happened between being in the decrepit shack and being here; I could recall flashes of action, the sound of voices, but I had no coherent narrative to connect them. I remembered One’s head becoming detached, and I knew someone had bitten Two. I hoped she was as dead as One. But I wasn’t sure. Had I really seen Bill? What about the shadow behind him?

I heard a click, click, click . I turned my head very slightly. Claudine, my fairy godmother, was sitting by the bed, knitting.

The sight of Claudine knitting was just as surrealistic as the sight of Bill appearing in the cave. I decided to go back to sleep—a cowardly retreat, but I thought I was entitled.

“She’s going to be all right,” Dr. Ludwig said. Her head came up past the side of my bed, which told me for sure that I wasn’t in a modern hospital bed.

Dr. Ludwig takes care of the cases who can’t go to the regular human hospital because the staff would flee screaming at the sight of them or the lab wouldn’t be able to analyze their blood. I could see Dr. Ludwig’s coarse brown hair as she walked around the bed to the door. Dr. Ludwig had a deep voice. I suspected she was a hobbit—not really, but she sure did look like one. Though she wore shoes, right? I spent some moments trying to remember if I’d ever caught a glimpse of Dr. Ludwig’s feet.

“Sookie,” she said, her eyes appearing at my elbow. “Is the medicine working?”

I didn’t know if this was a second visit of hers, or if I’d blanked out for a few moments. “I’m not hurting as much,” I said, and my voice was very rough and whispery. “I’m starting to feel a little numb. That’s just . . . excellent.”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Considering you’re human, you’re very lucky.”

Funny. I felt better than when I’d been in the shack, but I couldn’t say I felt lucky. I tried to scrape together some appreciation of my good fortune. There wasn’t any there to gather up. I was all out. My emotions were as crippled as my body.

“No,” I said. I tried to shake my head, but even the pain-killers couldn’t disguise the fact that my neck was too sore to twist. They’d choked me repeatedly.

“You’re not dead,” Dr. Ludwig pointed out.

But I’d come pretty damn close; I’d sort of stepped over the line. There’d been an optimum rescue time. If I’d been liberated before that time, I would have laughed all the way to the secret supernatural clinic, or wherever I was. But I’d looked at death too closely—close enough to see all the pores in Death’s face—and I’d suffered too much. I wouldn’t bounce back this time.

My emotional and physical state had been sliced and gouged and pinched and bitten to a rough, raw surface. I didn’t know if I could spackle myself back into my pre-kidnap smoothness. I said this, in much simpler words, to Dr. Ludwig.

“They’re dead, if that helps,” she said.

Yes indeedy, that helped quite a bit. I’d been hoping I hadn’t imagined that part; I’d been a little afraid their deaths had been a delightful fantasy.

“Your great-grandfather beheaded Lochlan,” she said. So he’d been One. “And the vampire Bill Compton tore the throat out of Lochlan’s sister, Neave.” She’d been Two.

“Where’s Niall now?” I said.

“Waging war,” she said grimly. “There’s no more negotiation, no more jockeying for advantage. There’s only killing now.”

“Bill?”

“He was badly hurt,” the little doctor said. “She got him with her blade before she bled to death. And she bit him back. There was silver in her knife and silver caps on her teeth. It’s in his system.”

“He’ll get better,” I said.

She shrugged.

I thought my heart was going to plunge down out of my chest, through the bed. I could not look this misery in the face.

I struggled to think of something besides Bill. “And Tray? He’s here?”

She regarded me silently for a moment. “Yes,” she said finally.

“I need to see him. And Bill.”

“No. You can’t move. Bill’s in his daytime sleep for now. Eric is coming tonight, actually in a couple of hours, and he’ll bring at least one other vampire with him. That’ll help. The Were is too badly wounded for you to disturb.”

I didn’t absorb that. My mind was racing ahead. It was a mighty slow race, but I was thinking a little more clearly. “Has someone told Sam, do you know?” How long had I been out? How much work had I missed?

Dr. Ludwig shrugged. “I don’t know. I imagine so. He seems to hear everything.”

“Good.” I tried to shift positions, gasped. “I’m going to have to get up to use the bathroom,” I warned her.

“Claudine,” Dr. Ludwig said, and my cousin put away her knitting and rose from the rocking chair. For the first time, I registered that my beautiful fairy godmother looked like someone had tried to push her through a wood chipper. Her arms were bare and covered with scratches, scrapes, and cuts. Her face was a mess. She smiled at me, but it was painful.

When she lifted me in her arms, I could feel her effort. Normally Claudine could heft a large calf without any trouble if she chose to.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can walk. I’m sure.”

“Don’t think of it,” Claudine said. “See, we’re already there.”

When our mission was accomplished, she scooped me up and took me back to bed.

“What happened to you?” I asked her. Dr. Ludwig had departed without another word.

“I got ambushed,” she said in her sweet voice. “Some stupid brownies and one fairy. Lee, his name was.”

“I guess they were allied with this Breandan?”

She nodded, fished out her bundle of knitting. The item she was working on appeared to be a tiny sweater. I wondered if it was for an elf. “They were,” she said. “They are bits of bone and flesh now.” She sounded quite pleased.

Claudine would never become an angel at this rate. I wasn’t quite sure how the progression worked, but reducing other beings to their component parts was probably not the route of choice. “Good,” I said. The more of Breandan’s followers who met their match, the better. “Have you seen Bill?”