Club Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #3)(48)
Author: Charlaine Harris

After a few seconds, his hand fell away. And he stopped moving. I drew air in with a deep, shuddering gasp. I was crying in earnest, one sob after another.

"Sookie?" Bill said uncertainly. "Sookie?"

I couldn’t answer.

"It’s you," he said, his voice hoarse and wondering. "It’s you. You were really there in that room?"

I tried to gather myself, but I felt very fuzzy and I was afraid I was going to faint. Finally, I was able to say, "Bill," in a whisper.

"It is you. Are you all right?"

"No," I said almost apologetically. After all, it was Bill who’d been held prisoner and tortured.

"Did I …" He paused, and seemed to brace himself. "Have I taken more blood than I should?"

I couldn’t answer. I laid my head on his arm. It seemed too much trouble to speak.

"I seem to be having sex with you in a closet," Bill said in a subdued voice. "Did you, ah, volunteer?"

I turned my head from side to side, then let it loll on his arm again.

"Oh, no," he whispered. "Oh, no." He pulled out of me and fumbled around a lot for the second time. He was putting me back to rights; himself, too, I guess. His hands patted our surroundings. "Car trunk," he muttered.

"I need air," I said, in a voice almost too soft to hear.

"Why didn’t you say so?" Bill punched a hole in the trunk. He was stronger. Good for him.

Cold air rushed in and I sucked it deep. Beautiful, beautiful oxygen.

"Where are we?" he asked, after a moment.

"Parking garage," I gasped. "Apartment building. Jackson." I was so weak, I just wanted to let go and float away.

"Why?"

I tried to gather enough energy to answer him. "Alcide lives here," I managed to mutter, eventually.

"Alcide who? What are we supposed to do now?"

"Eric’s … coming. Drink the bottled blood."

"Sookie? Are you all right?"

I couldn’t answer. If I could have, I might have said, "Why do you care? You were going to leave me anyway." I might have said, "I forgive you," though that doesn’t seem real likely. Maybe I would have just told him that I’d missed him, and that his secret was still safe with me; faithful unto death, that was Sookie Stackhouse.

I heard him open a bottle.

As I was drifting off in a boat down a current that seemed to be moving ever faster, I realized that Bill had never revealed my name. I knew they had tried to find it out, to kidnap me and bring me to be tortured in front of him for extra leverage. And he hadn’t told.

The trunk opened with a noise of tearing metal.

Eric stood outlined by the fluorescent lights of the garage. They’d come on when it got dark. "What are you two doing in here?" he asked.

But the current carried me away before I could answer.

***

"She’s coming around," Eric observed. "Maybe that was enough blood." My head buzzed for a minute, went silent again.

"She really is," he was saying next, and my eyes flickered open to register three anxious male faces hovering above me: Eric’s, Alcide’s, and Bill’s. Somehow, the sight made me want to laugh. So many men at home were scared of me, or didn’t want to think about me, and here were the three men in the world who wanted to have sex with me, or who at least had thought about it seriously; all crowding around the bed. I giggled, actually giggled, for the first time in maybe ten years. "The Three Musketeers," I said.

"Is she hallucinating?" Eric asked.

"I think she’s laughing at us," Alcide said. He didn’t sound unhappy about that. He put an empty TrueBlood bottle on the vanity table behind him. There was a large pitcher beside it, and a glass.

Bill’s cool fingers laced with mine. "Sookie," he said, in that quiet voice that always sent shivers down my spine. I tried to focus on his face. He was sitting on the bed to my right.

He looked better. The deepest cuts were scars on his face, and the bruises were fading.

"They said, was I coming back for the crucifixion?" I told him.

"Who said that to you?" He bent over me, his face intent, dark eyes wide.

"Guards at the gate."

"The guards at the gates of the mansion asked you if you were coming back for a crucifixion tonight? This night?"

"Yes."

"Whose?"

"Don’t know."

"I would have expected you to say, ‘Where am I? What happened to me?’" Eric said. "Not ask whose crucifixion would be taking place – perhaps is taking place," he corrected himself, glancing at the clock by the bed.

"Maybe they meant mine?" Bill looked a little stunned by the idea. "Maybe they decided to kill me tonight?"

"Or perhaps they caught the fanatic who tried to stake Betty Joe?" Eric suggested. "He would be a prime candidate for crucifixion."

I thought it over, as much as I was able to reason through the weariness that kept threatening to overwhelm me. "Not the picture I got," I whispered. My neck was very, very sore.

"You were able to read something from the Weres?" Eric asked.

I nodded. "I think they meant Bubba," I whispered, and everyone in the room froze.

"That cretin," Eric said savagely, after he’d had time to process that. "They caught him?"

"Think so." That was the impression I’d gotten.

"We’ll have to retrieve him," Bill said. "If he’s still alive."

It was very brave for Bill to say he would go back in that compound. I would never have said that, if I’d been him.

The silence that had fallen was distinctly uneasy.

"Eric?" Bill’s dark eyebrows arched; he was waiting for a comment.

Eric looked royally angry. "I guess you are right. We have the responsibility of him. I can’t believe his home state is willing to execute him! Where is their loyalty?"

"And you?" Bill’s voice was considerably cooler as he asked Alcide.

Alcide’s warmth filled the room. So did the confused tangle of his thoughts. He’d spent part of last night with Debbie, all right.

"I don’t see how I can," Alcide said desperately. "My business, my father’s, depends on my being able to come here often. And if I’m on the outs with Russell and his crew, that would be almost impossible. It’s going to be difficult enough when they realize Sookie must be the one who stole their prisoner."

"And killed Lorena," I added.

Another pregnant silence.

Eric began to grin. "You offed Lorena?" He had a good grasp of the vernacular, for a very old vampire.