Шарлин Харрис: Dead and Gone

I wanted to say, “Will he get better?” But I couldn’t, not with Bill lying there. Clancy rose from beside the bed, and he and Eric began having a whispered conversation—a very unpleasant one, if Eric’s expression was any indication.

Bill said, “How are you, Sookie? Will you heal?” His voice faltered.

“Exactly what I want to ask you,” I said. Neither of us had the strength or energy to hedge our conversation.

“You will live,” he said, satisfied. “I can smell that Eric has given you blood. You would have healed anyway, but that will help the scarring. I’m sorry I didn’t get there faster.”

“You saved my life.”

“I saw them take you,” he said.

“What?”

“I saw them take you.”

“You . . .” I wanted to say, “You didn’t stop them?” But that seemed too horrendously cruel.

“I knew I couldn’t defeat the two of them together,” he said simply. “If I’d tried to take them on and they’d killed me, you would have been as good as dead. I know very little about fairies, but even I had heard of Neave and her brother.” These few sentences seemed to exhaust Bill. He tried to turn his head on the pillow so he could look directly into my face, but he managed to turn only an inch. His dark hair looked lank and lusterless, and his skin no longer had the shine that had seemed so beautiful to me when I’d seen it the first time.

“So you called Niall?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, his lips barely moving. “Or at least, I called Eric, told him what I’d seen, told him to call Niall.”

“Where was the old house?” I asked.

“North of here, in Arkansas,” he said. “It took a while to track you. If they’d gotten in a car . . . but they moved through the fae world, and with my sense of smell and Niall’s knowledge of fae magic, we were able to find you. Finally. At least your life was saved. I think it was too late for the Were.”

I hadn’t known Tray was in the shack. Not that the knowledge would have made any difference, but maybe I would have felt a little less lonely.

Of course, that was probably why the two fairies hadn’t let me see him. I was willing to bet there wasn’t much about the psychology of torture that Neave and Lochlan hadn’t known.

“Are you sure he’s . . .”

“Sweetheart, look at him.”

“I haven’t passed yet,” Tray mumbled.

I tried to get up, to go over to him. That was still a little out of my reach, but I turned on my side to face him. The beds were so close together that I could hear him easily. I think he could sort of see where I was.

“Tray,” I said, “I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head wordlessly. “My fault. I should have known . . . the woman in the woods . . . wasn’t right.”

“You did your best. If you had resisted her, you would have been killed.”

“Dying now,” he said. He made himself try to open his eyes. He almost managed to look right at me. “My own damn fault,” he said.

I couldn’t stop crying. He seemed to fall unconscious. I slowly rolled over to face Bill. His color was a little better.

“I would not, for anything, have had them hurt you,” he said. “Her dagger was silver, and she had silver caps on her teeth. . . . I managed to rip her throat out, but she didn’t die fast enough. . . . She fought to the end.”

“Clancy’s given you blood,” I said. “You’ll get better.”

“Maybe,” he said, and his voice was as cool and calm as it had always been. “I’m feeling some strength now. It will get me through the fight. That will be time enough.”

I was shocked almost beyond speech. Vampires died only from staking, decapitation, or from a rare severe case of Sino-AIDS. Silver poisoning?

“Bill,” I said urgently, thinking of so many things I wanted to say to him. He’d closed his eyes, but now he opened them to look at me.

“They’re coming,” Eric said, and all those words died in my throat.

“Breandan’s people?” I said.

“Yes,” Clancy said briefly. “They’ve found your scent.” He was scornful even now, as if I’d been weak in leaving a scent to track.

Eric drew a long, long knife from a sheath on his thigh. “Iron,” he said, smiling.

And Bill smiled, too, and it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “Kill as many as you can,” he said in a stronger voice. “Clancy, help me up.”

“No,” I said.

“Sweetheart,” Bill said, very formally, “I have always loved you, and I will be proud to die in your service. When I’m gone, say a prayer for me in a real church.”

Clancy bent to help Bill out of the bed, giving me a very unfriendly look while he did so. Bill swayed on his feet. He was as weak as a human. He threw off the hospital gown to stand there clad only in drawstring pajama pants.

I didn’t want to die in a hospital gown, either.

“Eric, have you a knife to spare for me?” Bill asked, and without turning from the door, Eric passed Bill a shorter version of his own knife, which was halfway to being a sword, according to me. Clancy was also armed.

No one said a word about trying to shift Tray. When I glanced over at him, I thought he might have already died.

Eric’s cell phone rang, which made me jump a couple of inches. He answered it with a curt, “Yes?” He listened and then clicked it shut. I almost laughed, the idea of the supes communicating by cell phones seemed so funny. But when I looked at Bill, gray in the face, leaning against the wall, I didn’t think anything in the world would ever be funny again.

“Niall and his fae are on the way,” Eric told us, his voice as calm and steady as if he were reading us a story about the stock market. “Breandan’s blocked all the other portals to the fae land. There is only one opening now. Whether they’ll come in time, I don’t know.”

“If I live through this,” Clancy said, “I’ll ask you to release me from my vow, Eric, and I’ll seek another master. I find the idea of dying in the defense of a human woman to be disgusting, no matter what her connection to you is.”

“If you die,” Eric said, “you’ll die because I, your sheriff, ordered you into battle. The reason is not pertinent.”

Clancy nodded. “Yes, my lord.”

“But I will release you, if you should live.”

“Thank you, Eric.”

Geez Louise. I hoped they were happy now they’d gotten that settled.

Bill was swaying on his feet, but neither Eric nor Clancy regarded him with anything but approval. I couldn’t hear what they were hearing, but the tension in the room mounted almost unbearably as our enemies came closer.

As I watched Bill, waiting with apparent calm for death to come to him, I had a flash of him as I’d known him: the first vampire I’d ever met, the first man I’d ever gone to bed with, the first suitor I’d ever loved. Everything that followed had tainted those memories, but for one moment I saw him clearly, and I loved him again.

Then the door splintered, and I saw the gleam of an ax blade, and I heard high-pitched shouts of encouragement from the other fairies to the ax wielder.

I resolved to get up myself, because I’d rather perish on my feet than in a bed. I had at least that much courage left in me. Maybe, since I’d had Eric’s blood, I was feeling the heat of his battle rage. Nothing got Eric going like the prospect of a good fight. I struggled to my feet. I found I could walk, at least a little bit. There were some wooden crutches leaning against the wall. I couldn’t remember ever seeing wooden crutches, but none of the equipment at this hospital was standard human-hospital issue.

I took a crutch by the bottom, hefted it a little to see if I could swing it. The answer was “Probably not.” There was a good chance I’d fall over when I did, but active was better than passive. In the meantime, I had the weapons in my hand that I’d retrieved from my purse, and at least the crutch would hold me up.