Dead and Gone

“Trouble,” she said. “And Eric.”

One and the same, I thought. “Are there other patients here? Is this, like, a hospital?”

“Yes,” she said. “But Ludwig and her aide are evacuating the patients who can walk.”

I’d assumed I’d had as much fear as I could handle, but my exhausted emotions began to revive as I absorbed some of her tension.

About thirty minutes later, she raised her head and I could tell she was listening. “Eric is coming,” she said. “I’ll have to leave you with him. I can’t cover my scent like Grandfather can.” She rose and unlocked the door. She swung it open.

Eric came in very quietly; one moment I was looking at the door, and the next minute, he filled it. Claudine gathered up her paraphernalia and left the room, keeping as far from Eric as the room permitted. His nostrils flared at the delicious scent of fairy. Then she was gone, and Eric was by the bed, looking down at me. I didn’t feel happy or content, so I knew that even the bond was exhausted, at least temporarily. My face hurt so much when I changed expressions that I knew it was covered with bruises and cuts. The vision in my left eye was awfully blurry. I didn’t need a mirror to tell me how terrible I looked. At the moment, I simply couldn’t care.

Eric tried hard to keep the rage from his face, but it didn’t work.

“Fuckingfairies ,” he said, and his lip curled in a snarl.

I couldn’t remember hearing Eric curse before.

“Dead now,” I whispered, trying to keep my words to a minimum.

“Yes. A fast death was too good for them.”

I nodded (as much as I could) in wholehearted agreement. In fact, it would almost be worth bringing them back to life just to kill them again more slowly.

“I’m going to look at your wounds,” Eric said. He didn’t want to startle me.

“Okay,” I whispered, but I knew the sight would be pretty gross. What I’d seen when I pulled up my gown in the bathroom had looked so awful I hadn’t had any desire to examine myself further.

With a clinical neatness, Eric folded down the sheets and the blanket. I was wearing a classic hospital gown—you’d think a hospital for supes would come up with something more exotic—and of course, it was scooted up above my knees. There were bite marks all over my legs—deep bite marks. Some of the flesh was missing. Looking at my legs made me think of Shark Week on the Discovery Cha

Ludwig had bandaged the worst ones, and I was sure there were stitches under the white gauze. Eric stood absolutely still for a long moment. “Pull up the gown,” he said, but when he realized that my hands and arms were too weak to cooperate, he did it.

They’d enjoyed the soft spots the most, so this was really unpleasant, actually disgusting. I couldn’t look after one quick glance. I kept my eyes shut, like a child who’s wandered into a horror film. No wonder the pain was so bad. I would never be the same person again, physically or mentally.

After a long time, Eric covered me and said, “I’ll be back in a minute,” and I heard him leave the room. He was back quickly with a couple of bottles of TrueBlood. He put them on the floor by the bed.

“Move over,” he said, and I glanced up at him, confused. “Move over,” he said again with impatience. Then he realized I couldn’t, and he put an arm behind my back and another under my knees and shifted me easily to the other side of the bed. Fortunately, it was much larger than a real hospital bed, and I didn’t have to turn on my side to make room for him.

Eric said, “I’m going to feed you.”

“What?”

“I’m going to give you blood. You’ll take weeks to heal otherwise. We don’t have that kind of time.”

He sounded so briskly matter-of-fact that I felt my shoulders finally relax. I hadn’t realized how tightly wound I’d been. Eric bit into his wrist and put it in front of my mouth. “Here,” he said, as if there was no question I’d take it.

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 begi

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.