Club Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #3)(58)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"So how’d these guys get here? How’d they know where Sookie lived, who she really was?"

"She used her own name at Club Dead. They didn’t know the name of Bill’s human girlfriend. You were faithful."

"I hadn’t been faithful in other ways," Bill said bleakly. "I thought it was the least I could do for her."

And this was the guy whom I’d shot the bird. On the other hand, this was the guy who was talking like I wasn’t in the room. And most importantly, this was the guy who’d had another "darling," for whom he’d planned to leave me flat.

"So the Weres may not know she was your girlfriend; they only know she was staying in the apartment with Alcide when Jerry disappeared. They know Jerry may have come by the apartment. This Alcide says that the packmaster in Jackson told Alcide to leave and not return for a while, but that he believed Alcide had not killed Jerry."

"This Alcide … he seemed to have a troubled relationship with his girlfriend."

"She is engaged to someone else. She believes he is attached to Sookie."

"And is he? He has the gall to tell this virago Debbie that Sookie is good in bed."

"He wanted to make her jealous. He has not slept with Sookie."

"But he likes her." Bill made it sound like a capital crime.

"Doesn’t everyone?"

I said, with great effort, "You just killed a bunch of guys who didn’t seem to like me at all." I was tired of them talking about me right above my head, as illuminating as it was. I was hurting real bad, and my living room was full of dead men. I was ready for both those situations to be remedied.

"Bill, how’d you get here?" I asked in a raspy whisper.

"My car. I negotiated a deal with Russell, since I didn’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my existence. Russell was in a tantrum when I called him. Not only had I disappeared and Lorena vanished, but his hired Weres had disobeyed him and thus jeopardized business dealings Russell has with this Alcide and his father."

"Who was Russell angriest with?" Eric asked.

"Lorena, for letting me escape.’

They had a good laugh over that one before Bill continued his story. Those vamps. A laugh a minute.

"Russell agreed to return my car and leave me alone if I would tell him how I’d escaped, so he could plug the hole I’d wiggled out of. And he asked me to put in a bid for him to share in the vampire directory."

If Russell had just done that in the first place, it would have saved everyone a lot of grief. On the other hand, Lorena would still be alive. So would the thugs who’d beaten me, and perhaps so would Jerry Falcon, whose death was still a mystery.

"So," Bill continued, "I sped down the highway, on the way to tell you two that the Weres and their hired hands were pursuing you, and that they had gone ahead to lie in wait. They had discovered, via the computer, that Alcide’s girlfriend Sookie Stackhouse lived in Bon Temps."

"These computers are dangerous things," Eric said. His voice sounded weary, and I remembered the blood on his clothes. Eric had been shot twice, because he’d been with me.

"Her face is swelling," Bill said. His voice was both gentle and angry.

"Eric okay?" I asked wearily, figuring I could skip a few words if I got the idea across.

"I will heal," he said, from a great distance. "Especially since having all that good …"

And then I fell asleep, or passed out, or some blend of the two.

***

Sunshine. It had been so long since I’d seen sunshine; I’d almost forgotten how good it looked.

I was in my own bed, and I was in my soft blue brushed-nylon nightgown, and I was wrapped up like a mummy. I really, really had to get up and get to the bathroom. Once I moved enough to establish how awful walking was going to be, only my bladder compelled me to get out of that bed.

I took tiny steps across the floor, which suddenly seemed as wide and empty as the desert. I covered it inch by painful inch. My toenails were still painted bronze, to match my nails. I had a lot of time to look at my toes as I made my journey.

Thank God I had indoor plumbing. If I’d had to make it into the yard to an outhouse, as my grandmother had as a child, I would’ve given up.

When I had completed my journey and pulled on a fleecy blue robe, I inched my way down the hall to the living room to examine the floor. I noticed along the way that the sun outside was brilliant and the sky was the deep rich blue of heaven. It was forty-two, said the thermometer Jason had given me on my birthday. He’d mounted it for me on the window frame, so I could just peek out to read it.

The living room looked real good. I wasn’t sure how long the vampire cleaning crew had been at work the night before, but there were no body parts visible. The wood of the floor was gleaming, and the furniture looked spanky clean. The old throw rug was missing, but I didn’t care. It had been no wonderful heirloom anyway, just a sort of pretty rug Gran had picked up at a flea market for thirty-five dollars. Why did I remember that? It didn’t matter at all. And my grandmother was dead.

I felt the sudden danger of weeping, and I pushed it away. I wasn’t going to fall back into a trough of self-pity. My reaction to Bill’s unfaithfulness seemed faint and far away now; I was a colder woman, or maybe my protective hide had just grown thicker. I no longer felt angry with him, to my surprise. He’d been tortured by the woman – well, the vampire – he’d thought loved him. And she’d tortured him for financial gain – that was the worst.

To my startled horror, suddenly I relived the moment when the stake had gone in under her ribs, and I was feeling the movement of the wood as it plowed through her body.

I made it back to the hall bathroom just in time.

Okay, I’d killed someone.

I’d once hurt someone who was trying to kill me, but that had never bothered me: oh, the odd dream or two. But the horror of staking the vampire Lorena felt worse. She would’ve killed me a lot quicker, and I was sure it would have been no problem whatsoever for Lorena. She probably would’ve laughed her ass off.

Maybe that was what had gotten to me so much. After I’d sunk the stake in, I was sure I’d had a moment, a second, a flash of time in which I’d thought, So there, bitch. And it had been pure pleasure.

***

A couple of hours later, I’d discovered it was the early afternoon, and it was Monday. I called my brother on his cell phone, and he came by with my mail. When I opened my door, he stood for a long minute, looking me up and down.

"If he did that to you, I’m heading over there with a torch and a sharpened broom handle," he said.

"No, he didn’t."