Dead as a Doornail (Sookie Stackhouse #5)(55)
Author: Charlaine Harris

When I came back less than a minute later, Eric had finished whatever he was going to say to Tara. She was touching her neck gingerly, and she took the bag from me and held it to her throat. While I was leaning over her, anxious and scared, Eric was back on his cell phone.

I twitched with worry. "You need a doctor," I urged her.

"No," she said.

I looked up at Eric, who was just finishing his phone call. He was the injury expert.

"She’ll heal without going to the hospital," he said briefly. His indifference made a chill run down my spine. Just when I thought I was used to them, vampires would show me their true face, and I would have to remind myself all over again that they were a different race. Or maybe it was centuries of conditioning that made the difference; decades of disposing of people as they chose, taking what they wanted, enduring the dichotomy of being the most powerful beings on earth in the darkness, and yet completely helpless and vulnerable during the hours of light.

"But will she have some permanent damage? Something doctors could fix if she got to them quick?"

"I’m fairly certain that her throat is only badly bruised. She has some broken ribs from the beating, possibly some loose teeth. Mickey could have broken her jaw and her neck very easily, you know. He probably wanted her to be able to talk to you when he brought her here, so he held back a little. He counted on you panicking and letting him in. He didn’t think you could gather your thoughts so quickly. If I’d been him, my first move would have been to damage your mouth or neck so you couldn’t rescind my entrance."

That possibility hadn’t occurred to me, and I blanched.

"When he backhanded you, I think that was what he was aiming for," Eric continued dispassionately.

I’d heard enough. I thrust a broom and dustpan into his hands. He looked at them as if they were ancient artifacts and he could not fathom their use.

"Sweep up," I said, using a wet washcloth to clean the blood and dirt off my friend. I didn’t know how much of this conversation Tara was absorbing, but her eyes were open and her mouth was shut, so maybe she was listening. Maybe she was just working through the pain.

Eric moved the broom experimentally and made an attempt to sweep the glass into the pan while it lay in the middle of the floor. Of course, the pan slid away. Eric scowled.

I’d finally found something Eric did poorly.

"Can you stand?" I asked Tara. She focused on my face and nodded very slightly. I squatted and took her hands. Slowly and painfully, she drew her knees up, and then she pushed as I pulled. Though the window had broken mostly in big pieces, a few bits of glass fell from her as she rose, and I flicked an eye at Eric to make sure he understood he should clean them up. He had a truculent set to his mouth.

I tried to put my arm around Tara to help her into my bedroom, but my wounded shoulder gave a throb of pain so unexpected that I flinched. Eric tossed down the dustpan. He picked up Tara in one smooth gesture and put her on the couch instead of my bed. I opened my mouth to protest and he looked at me. I shut my mouth. I went into the kitchen and fetched one of my pain pills, and I got Tara to swallow one, which took some coaxing. The medicine seemed to knock her out, or maybe she just didn’t want to acknowledge Eric anymore. Anyway, she kept her eyes closed and her body slack, and gradually her breathing grew even and deep.

Eric handed me the broom with a triumphant smile. Since he’d lifted Tara, clearly I was stuck with his task. I was awkward because of my bad shoulder, but I finished sweeping up the glass and disposing of it in a garbage bag. Eric turned toward the door. I hadn’t heard anyone arrive, but Eric opened the door to Bill before Bill even knocked. Eric’s earlier phone conversation must have been with Bill. In a way, that made sense; Bill lived in Eric’s fiefdom, or whatever they called it. Eric needed help, so Bill was obliged to supply it. My ex was burdened with a large piece of plywood, a hammer, and a box of nails.

"Come in," I said when Bill halted in the doorway, and without speaking a word to each other, the two vampires nailed the wood across the window. To say I felt awkward would be an understatement, though thanks to the events of the evening I wasn’t as sensitive as I would’ve been at another time. I was mostly preoccupied with the pain in my shoulder, and Tara’s recovery, and the current whereabouts of Mickey. In the extra space I had left over after worrying about those items, I crammed in some anxiety about replacing Sam’s window, and whether the neighbors had heard enough of this fracas to call the police. On the whole, I thought they hadn’t; someone would be here by now.

After Bill and Eric finished their temporary repair, they both watched me mopping up the water and blood on the linoleum. The silence began to weigh heavily on all three of us: at least, on my third of the three of us. Bill’s tenderness in caring for me the night before had touched me. But Eric’s just acquired knowledge of our intimacy raised my self-consciousness to a whole new level. I was in the same room with two guys who both knew I’d slept with the other.

I wanted to dig a hole and lie down in it and pull the opening inside with me, like a character in a cartoon. I couldn’t look either of them in the face.

If I rescinded both their invitations, they’d have to walk outside without a word; but in view of the fact that they’d both just helped me, such a procedure would be rude. I’d solved my problems with them before in exactly that way. Though I was tempted to repeat it to ease my personal embarrassment, I simply couldn’t. So what did we do next?

Should I pick a fight? Yelling at one another might clear the air. Or maybe a frank acknowledgment of the situation… no.

I had a sudden mental picture of us all three climbing in the double bed in the little bedroom. Instead of duking out our conflicts, or talking out our problems, we could… no. I could feel my face flame red, as I was torn between semihysterical amusement and a big dash of shame at even thinking the thought. Jason and his buddy Hoyt had often discussed (in my hearing) that every male’s fantasy was to be in bed with two women. And men who came into the bar echoed that idea, as I knew from checking Jason’s theory by reading a random sample of male minds. Surely I was allowed to entertain the same kind of fantasy? I gave a hysterical kind of giggle, which definitely startled both vampires.

"This is amusing?" Bill asked. He gestured from the plywood, to the recumbent Tara, to the bandage on my shoulder. He omitted pointing from Eric to himself. I laughed out loud.

Eric cocked a blond eyebrow. "We are amusing?"

I nodded wordlessly. I thought, Instead of a cook-off, we could have a cock-off. Instead of a fishing derby, we could have a…