Dead and Gone

“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.

Tray Dawson was in the next bed. If Bill looked like he was dying, Tray looked like he was already dead. His face was bruised blue. One of his ears had been bitten off. His eyes were swollen shut. There was crusted blood everywhere. And this was just what I could see of his face. His arms were lying on top of the sheet, and they were both splinted.

Eric laid me down beside Bill. Bill’s eyes opened, and at least they were the same: dark brown, fathomless. He stopped drinking from Clancy, but he didn’t move or look better.

“The silver is in his system,” Clancy said quietly. “Its poison has traveled to every part of his body. He’ll need more and more blood to drive it out.”

I wanted to say, “Will he get better?” But I couldn’t, not with Bill lying there. Clancy rose from beside the bed, and he and Eric began having a whispered conversation—a very unpleasant one, if Eric’s expression was any indication.

Bill said, “How are you, Sookie? Will you heal?” His voice faltered.

“Exactly what I want to ask you,” I said. Neither of us had the strength or energy to hedge our conversation.

“You will live,” he said, satisfied. “I can smell that Eric has given you blood. You would have healed anyway, but that will help the scarring. I’m sorry I didn’t get there faster.”

“You saved my life.”

“I saw them take you,” he said.

“What?”

“I saw them take you.”

“You . . .” I wanted to say, “You didn’t stop them?” But that seemed too horrendously cruel.

“I knew I couldn’t defeat the two of them together,” he said simply. “If I’d tried to take them on and they’d killed me, you would have been as good as dead. I know very little about fairies, but even I had heard of Neave and her brother.” These few sentences seemed to exhaust Bill. He tried to turn his head on the pillow so he could look directly into my face, but he managed to turn only an inch. His dark hair looked lank and lusterless, and his skin no longer had the shine that had seemed so beautiful to me when I’d seen it the first time.

“So you called Niall?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, his lips barely moving. “Or at least, I called Eric, told him what I’d seen, told him to call Niall.”

“Where was the old house?” I asked.

“North of here, in Arkansas,” he said. “It took a while to track you. If they’d gotten in a car . . . but they moved through the fae world, and with my sense of smell and Niall’s knowledge of fae magic, we were able to find you. Finally. At least your life was saved. I think it was too late for the Were.”

I hadn’t known Tray was in the shack. Not that the knowledge would have made any difference, but maybe I would have felt a little less lonely.

Of course, that was probably why the two fairies hadn’t let me see him. I was willing to bet there wasn’t much about the psychology of torture that Neave and Lochlan hadn’t known.

“Are you sure he’s . . .”

“Sweetheart, look at him.”

“I haven’t passed yet,” Tray mumbled.

I tried to get up, to go over to him. That was still a little out of my reach, but I turned on my side to face him. The beds were so close together that I could hear him easily. I think he could sort of see where I was.

“Tray,” I said, “I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head wordlessly. “My fault. I should have known . . . the woman in the woods . . . wasn’t right.”

“You did your best. If you had resisted her, you would have been killed.”

“Dying now,” he said. He made himself try to open his eyes. He almost managed to look right at me. “My own damn fault,” he said.

I couldn’t stop crying. He seemed to fall unconscious. I slowly rolled over to face Bill. His color was a little better.

“I would not, for anything, have had them hurt you,” he said. “Her dagger was silver, and she had silver caps on her teeth. . . . I managed to rip her throat out, but she didn’t die fast enough. . . . She fought to the end.”

“Clancy’s given you blood,” I said. “You’ll get better.”

“Maybe,” he said, and his voice was as cool and calm as it had always been. “I’m feeling some strength now. It will get me through the fight. That will be time enough.”

I was shocked almost beyond speech. Vampires died only from staking, decapitation, or from a rare severe case of Sino-AIDS. Silver poisoning?

“Bill,” I said urgently, thinking of so many things I wanted to say to him. He’d closed his eyes, but now he opened them to look at me.

“They’re coming,” Eric said, and all those words died in my throat.

“Breandan’s people?” I said.

“Yes,” Clancy said briefly. “They’ve found your scent.” He was scornful even now, as if I’d been weak in leaving a scent to track.

Eric drew a long, long knife from a sheath on his thigh. “Iron,” he said, smiling.

And Bill smiled, too, and it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “Kill as many as you can,” he said in a stronger voice. “Clancy, help me up.”

“No,” I said.

“Sweetheart,” Bill said, very formally, “I have always loved you, and I will be proud to die in your service. When I’m gone, say a prayer for me in a real church.”

Clancy bent to help Bill out of the bed, giving me a very unfriendly look while he did so. Bill swayed on his feet. He was as weak as a human. He threw off the hospital gown to stand there clad only in drawstring pajama pants.