Dead Reckoning (29 page)

“I’ll be there soon.”

I relayed this information to Dermot, who was simply looking puzzled. He told me a couple of times he didn’t understand why he was on the floor, and I began to get worried about him. At least he seemed content to stay there.

“Sookie!” Before it had started raining, Dermot had opened the windows because of the sanding. I could hear Bill clearly.

I trailed over to the window with my fringe swaying.

“How is he?” Bill asked, staying well away. “How can I help?”

“You’ve been wonderful,” I said, meaning it. “One of the fae from Monroe is coming over, Bill, so you better go back to your house. When my clothes get dry, could you just leave them on my back steps sometime when it’s not raining? Or if you just put them on your front porch, I can pick ’em up any time.”

“I feel I’ve failed you,” he said.

“How come? You gave me a place to hide; you cleared my driveway; you checked out the house so no one could ambush me again.”

“I didn’t kill them,” he said. “I’d like to.”

I didn’t feel hardly creepy at all at his admission. I was getting used to drastic pronouncements. “Hey, don’t worry about it,” I assured him. “Someone will, if they keep doing stuff like this.”

“Did you form any idea of who had hired them?”

“I’m afraid not.” I really regretted that. “They were going to tie me on some vehicle and take me somewhere.” I hadn’t seen the vehicle in their thoughts, so that part was fuzzy.

“Where was their car parked?”

“I don’t know. I never saw one.” I hadn’t exactly had time to think about it.

Bill stared up at me longingly. “I feel useless, Sookie. I know you need help getting him down the stairs. But I don’t dare try to approach him again.”

Bill’s head turned with a suddenness that made me blink. Then he was gone.

“I’m here,” called a voice from the back door. “I am Bellenos the elf, vampire. Tell Sookie I’m here to see my friend Dermot.”

“An elf. I haven’t seen one of you in over a hundred years,” I heard Bill’s voice, much fainter.

“And you won’t again for another hundred,” Bellenos’s deep voice responded. “There aren’t many of us left.”

I went down the stairs again, as fast as I could without breaking my neck. I unlocked the back door and stepped across the porch to unlock the porch door. I could see both the elf and the vampire through the glass.

“Since you’re here, I’ll be on my way,” Bill said. “I can’t be of any help.” He was out in the yard. The harsh security light mounted on the pole made him look whiter than white, truly alien. The rain was only dripping now, but the air smelled pregnant with moisture. I didn’t think it would hold off for long.

“Fairy intoxication?” Bellenos said. He was pale, too, but no one could be more washed out than a vamp. Bellenos’s light brown freckles looked like little shadows on his face, and his smooth hair seemed an even darker auburn. “Elves smell different from fairies.”

“Yes, you do,” Bill said, and I could hear the distaste in his voice. Bellenos’s smell seemed to repel at least one vampire. Maybe I could scrape some skin cells from Bellenos to scatter over my great-uncle so I could have vampires over. Oh, gosh, what was I going to do about the meeting with Eric and Pam?

“Are you two through swapping how-de-dos?” I called. “Because Dermot could use some help.”

Bill vanished into the woods, and I opened the door for the elf. He smiled at me, and it was hard not to twitch when I saw the long, pointed teeth.

“Come in,” I said, though I knew he could enter without being invited.

As I led him through the kitchen, he was looking around him with some curiosity. I hoisted my trailing wrapper to precede him up the stairs, and I hoped Bellenos wasn’t getting too much of an eyeful. When we reached the attic, before I could say anything the elf was on his knees beside Dermot. After a quick survey, Bellenos rolled the fairy onto his side to examine the wound. The curiously slanted brown eyes were intent on his wounded friend.

Well, he might have glanced at my bare shoulders a little.

More than a little.

“You need to cover up,” Bellenos said bluntly. “That’s too much human skin for me.”

Okay, I’d totally misread that, to my embarrassment. Just as Bill had been repelled by Bellenos’s scent, Bellenos was repelled by the sight of me.

“I’ll be glad to put on real clothes now that there’s someone to stay with Dermot.”

“Good,” Bellenos said.

As blunt as Claude could be, Bellenos had him beat. It was actually almost entertaining. I asked Bellenos to carry Dermot down to the guest room on the ground floor, and I preceded them to make sure the room was okay. After a cursory look to make sure the bedspread was pulled up over the sheets, I moved aside for Bellenos, who was carrying Dermot as easily as he would a child, though Dermot was certainly less maneuverable on the narrow staircase.

While Bellenos settled Dermot on the bed, I zipped into my room to dress. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to unwind the fringed and flowered shawl and put on some jeans (not shorts, out of deference to Bellenos’s human skin aversion). It was too hot to even think of a longsleeved shirt, but my offensive shoulders were properly covered with a striped T-shirt.

Dermot was fully conscious when I returned to check on him. Bellenos was kneeling by the bed, stroking Dermot’s golden hair and talking to him in a language I didn’t know. My great-uncle was alert and lucid. My heart settled into a happier rhythm when Dermot even smiled at me, though it was a shadow of his usual grin.

“They didn’t hurt you,” he said, obviously relieved. “So far, Niece, it seems living with you is more dangerous than staying with my own kind.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed and taking his hand. “I don’t know how they were able to get into the house with the wards in place. People who mean me harm aren’t supposed to be able to enter, whether I’m here or not.”

Despite his blood loss, Dermot flushed. “That would be my fault.”

“What?” I stared down at him. “Why?”

“It was human magic,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “Your little witch friend, she’s quite good for a human, but fae magic is much, much better. So I deconstructed her spells, and I intended to put my own around your house as soon as I finished sanding the floor.”

I really couldn’t think of a thing to say.

There was a sticky little moment of silence.

“We’d better tend to your head,” I said briskly. I cleaned it some more and dabbed the wound with Neosporin. I certainly wasn’t going to try to sew it up, though it seemed to me that someone should. When I mentioned stitches, both of the fae seemed utterly disgusted by the idea. I put some butterfly bandages on the wound to hold it shut. I figured that was the best I could do.

“Now I’ll treat him,” Bellenos said, and I was pleased to hear that he intended to do something more active than carry Dermot down the stairs to the bed. Not that that hadn’t been a help, but I’d expected a bit more, somehow. “Of course the blood of the one who harmed him would be best, and maybe we can do something about that, but for now . . .”

“What will you do?” I hoped I could watch and learn.

“I will breathe into him,” Bellenos said, as if I were a fool not to know that. My amazement startled him. He shrugged, as if I were too ignorant for words. “You can watch if you want.” He looked down at Dermot, who nodded, then winced.

Bellenos stretched out on the bed beside Dermot and kissed him.

I’d certainly never thought of curing a head wound that way. If my lack of knowledge of fae ways had been a surprise to him, this was a surprise to me.

After a second I understood that though their mouths were together, the elf was breathing the air in his own lungs into Dermot. After detaching to take in another lungful, Bellenos repeated the procedure.

I tried to imagine a human doctor treating a patient this way. Lawsuit! Though I could tell it wasn’t sexual—well, not overtly—this was a little too personal for me. This might be a good time to clean up. I collected the used sterile wipes and bandage wrappers to pitch into the kitchen trash can, and while I was by myself, I took the time to have a snit.

Yeah, fae magic was probably great,
when you used it
. Amelia’s spells might have been human and therefore inferior, but
they’d been in place to protect me
. Until Dermot had removed them . . . and left me with nothing at all. “Jackass,” I muttered, and scrubbed the counter with enough pressure to kill any germs by force. That was about as mad as I could get, since Dermot’s mistaken sense of superiority had ended with his incurring a severe head injury.

“He’s resting and healing. Very soon, he and I have things we must do,” Bellenos said. He’d come into the kitchen behind me without my sensing so much as a change in the air. He really enjoyed watching me jump. He laughed, which was weird, because he did it with his mouth wide as if he were panting. His laugh was more a breathy “heeheehee” than the human guffaw.

“He’s able to move?” I was delighted, but surprised.

“Yes,” Bellenos said. “Besides, he tells me you have vampires coming later, and he would need to be elsewhere, anyway.”

At least Bellenos didn’t chide me for expecting vampire guests, and he also didn’t ask me to cancel my plans to accommodate Dermot’s injury.

I’d considered calling Eric’s cell phone to postpone our powwow. But I thought that it was entirely possible that Hod and Kelvin were part and parcel of the same struggle, albeit a clumsy part.

“Wait here for a minute, please,” I said politely, and I went to talk to Dermot. He was propped up on the bed, and I spared a second to thank Amelia for making it before she left, though I needed to change the sheets, but I could do that at my leisure—okay, time to stop making housekeeping notes, since Dermot was looking all pale and brave. When I sat by him, he took me in a surprisingly strong embrace. I returned it with interest.

“I’m sorry this happened to you,” I said. I bypassed the whole warding issue. “Are you sure you want to go to Monroe? Will they really take care of you? I can cancel the thing for tonight. I’d be glad to nurse you.”

Dermot was silent for a moment. I could feel him breathing in my arms, and the smell of his skin surrounded me. Naturally he didn’t smell like Jason, though they could have been twins.

“Thanks for not ripping me a new one,” he said. “See, I’ve mastered modern human speech.” He managed a real smile. “I’ll see you later. Bellenos and I have an errand to complete.”

“You need to take it easy. You were hurt pretty bad. How are you feeling?”

“Better by the moment. Bellenos has shared his breath with me, and I’m excited about the hunt.”

Okay, I didn’t quite understand that, but if he was pleased, I was pleased. Before I could ask him questions, he said, “I failed you about the wards, and I didn’t stop the intruders. While I lay there, I feared they’d found you.”

“You shouldn’t have worried about me,” I said, and I was sincere, though I was sure grateful he had. “I hid over at Bill’s and they didn’t find me.”

While Dermot and I were hugging each other, an embrace that was lasting a bit too long, I could hear Bellenos outside. He was circling the house in the rain (which had begun again) and darkness, and his voice rose and fell. I could only catch snatches of what he was saying, but it was in that other language and its meaning was lost on me. Dermot seemed satisfied, and that was reassuring.

“I’ll make this up to you,” Dermot said, releasing me gently.

“No need,” I said. “I’m good, and since you didn’t have any permanent damage, we’ll just say that was a learning experience.” As in,
Don’t erase wards without putting in new ones.

Dermot stood, and he seemed very steady on his feet. His eyes were shining. He looked . . . excited, as if he were going to a birthday party or something.

“Don’t you need a raincoat?” I suggested.

Dermot laughed, put his hands on my shoulders, and kissed me. My heart leaped in shock, but I recognized the stance. He was breathing into me.

For a few seconds I thought I’d strangle or suffocate, but somehow I didn’t, and then it was over.

He smiled down at me and then he was gone. I heard the back doors slam after him, and I turned to the window to see a blur as he and Bellenos disappeared into the dark woods.

I couldn’t think of anything to do after such a crisis. I got the blood off the floor in the attic, I put the shawl in the kitchen sink to soak in some Woolite, and I changed the sheets in the guest bedroom.

After that I showered. I needed to wash the fairy scent off me before Eric and Pam got here. Besides, after being rain soaked, my hair was just a mass of nastiness. I got dressed—again—and sat down for a minute or two in the living room, to watch the Weather Channel gloating over the big storm.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up with sand in my mouth. The Weather Channel was still on, and Eric and Pam were knocking at the front door.

I staggered over to unlock it, as stiff as though someone had kicked me while I slept. I was feeling the result of my desperate run through the rain.

“What’s happened?” Eric asked, holding my shoulders and giving me a narrow-eyed look. Pam was sniffing the air, her blond head thrown back dramatically. She gave me a sideways grin. “Ooooh, who’s been entertaining . . . Wait . . . An elf, a fairy, and Bill?”

“You been taking tracking lessons from Heidi?” I asked weakly.

“As a matter of fact, I have,” she said. “There’s an art to drawing in air to sample it, since we no longer need to breathe.”

Eric was still waiting, and not patiently.

I remembered I’d bought them some bottled blood, and I went to the kitchen to heat it up with the two vampires trailing behind. While I was taking care of the hospitality portion of the evening, I gave them the
Reader’s Digest
version of my adventure.