Dead and Gone (Sookie Stackhouse #9)(60)
Author: Charlaine Harris

He slid his free arm under my neck to raise my head. This was not going to be fun or erotic, like a nip during sex. And for a moment I wondered at my own unquestioning acquiescence. But he’d said we didn’t have time. On one level I knew what that meant, but on another I was too weak to do more than consider the time factor as a fleeting and nearly irrelevant fact.

I opened my mouth and swallowed. I was in so much pain and I was so appalled by the damage done to my body that I didn’t think more than once about the wisdom of what I was doing. I knew how quick the effects of ingesting vampire blood would be. His wrist healed once, and he reopened it.

"Are you sure you should do this?" I asked as he bit himself for the second time. My throat rippled with pain, and I regretted trying a whole sentence.

"Yes," he said. "I know how much is too much. And I fed well before I came here. You need to be able to move." He was behaving in such a practical way that I began to feel a little better. I couldn’t have stood pity.

"Move?" The idea filled me with anxiety.

"Yes. At any moment, Breandan’s followers may – will – find this place. They’ll be tracking you by scent now. You smell of the fairies who hurt you, and they know now Niall loves you enough to kill his own kind for you. Hunting you down would make them very, very happy."

At the thought of any more trouble, I stopped drinking and began crying. Eric’s hand stroked my face gently, but he said, "Stop that now. You must be strong. I’m very proud of you, you hear me?"

"Why?" I put my mouth on his wrist and drank again.

"You are still together; you are still a person. Lochlan and Neave have left vampires and fairies in rags – literally, rags … but you survived and your personality and soul are intact."

"I got rescued." I took a deep breath and bent back to his wrist.

"You would have survived much more." Eric leaned over to get the bottle of TrueBlood, and he drank it down quickly.

"I wouldn’t have wanted to." I took another deep breath, aware that my throat was aching still but not as sharply. "I hardly wanted to live after …"

He kissed my forehead. "But you did live. And they died. And you are mine, and you will be mine. They will not get you."

"You really think they’re coming?"

"Yes. Breandan’s remaining forces will find this place sooner or later, if not Breandan himself. He has nothing to lose, and his pride to retain. I’m afraid they’ll find us shortly. Ludwig has removed almost all the other patients." He turned a little, as if he were listening. "Yes, most of them are gone."

"Who else is here?"

"Bill is in the next room. He’s been getting blood from Clancy."

"Were you not going to give him any?"

"If you were irreparable … no, I would have let him rot."

"Why?" I asked. "He actually came to rescue me. Why get mad at him? Where were you?" Rage bubbled up my throat.

Eric flinched almost a half inch, a big reaction from a vampire his age. He looked away. I could not believe I was saying these things.

"It’s not like you were obliged to come find me," I said, "but I hoped the whole time – I hoped you would come, I prayed you would come, I thought over and over you might hear me… ."

"You’re killing me," he said. "You’re killing me." He shuddered beside me, as if he could scarcely endure my words. "I’ll explain," he said in a muted voice. "I will. You will understand. But now, we don’t have enough time. Are you healing yet?"

I thought about it. I didn’t feel as miserable as I had before the blood. The holes in my flesh were itching almost intolerably, which meant they were healing. "I’m beginning to feel like I’ll be better sometime," I said carefully. "Oh, is Tray Dawson still here?"

He looked at me with a very serious expression. "Yes; he can’t be moved."

"Why not? Why didn’t Dr. Ludwig take him?"

"He would not survive being moved."

"No," I said, shocked even after all that I’d been through.

"Bill told me about the vampire blood he ingested. They hoped he’d go crazy enough to hurt you, but his leaving you alone was good enough. Lochlan and Neave were delayed; a pair of Niall’s warriors found them, attacked them, and they had to fight. Afterward, they decided to stake out your house. They wanted to be sure Dawson wouldn’t come to help you. Bill called me to tell me that you and he went to Dawson’s house. By that time, they already had Dawson. They had fun with him before they had … before they caught you."

"Dawson’s that hurt? I thought the effects of the bad vamp blood would wear off by now." I couldn’t imagine the big man, the toughest Were I knew, being defeated.

"The vampire blood they used was just a vehicle for the poison. They’d never tried it on a Were, I suppose, because it took a long time to act. And then they practiced their arts on him. Can you rise?"

I tried to gather my muscles to make the effort. "Maybe not yet."

"I’ll carry you."

"Where?"

"Bill wants to talk to you. You have to be brave."

"My purse," I said. "I need something from it."

Wordlessly Eric put the soft cloth purse, now spoiled and stained, on the bed beside me. With great concentration, I was able to open it and slide my hand inside. Eric raised his eyebrows when he saw what I’d pulled out of the purse, but he heard something outside that made him looked alarmed. Eric was up and sliding his arms under me, and then he straightened as easily as if I’d been a plate of spaghetti. At the door he paused, and I managed to turn the knob for him. He used his foot to push it open, and out we went into the corridor. I was able to see that we were in an old building, some kind of small business that had been converted to its present purpose. There were doors up and down the hall, and there was a glass-enclosed control room of some kind about midway down. Through the glass on its opposite side, I could see a gloomy warehouse. There were a few lights on in it, just enough to disclose that it was empty except for some discards, like dilapidated shelving and machine parts.

We turned right to enter the room at the end of the hall. Again, I performed the honors with the knob, and this time it wasn’t quite as agonizing to grip the knob and turn it.

There were two beds inside this room.

Bill was in the right-hand bed, and Clancy was sitting in a plastic chair pulled up right against the side. He was feeding Bill the same way Eric had fed me. Bill’s skin was gray. His cheeks had caved in. He looked like death.