Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (86 page)

And inside that cheap coat, in a specially sewn pocket, he carried a stake.

Horribly enough, I hesitated. If I stopped him, I would be revealing my hidden talent, and to reveal that would be to unmask my identity. The consequences of this revelation would depend on what Edgington knew about me; he apparently knew Bill’s girlfriend was a barmaid at Merlotte’s in Bon Temps, but not her name. That’s why I’d been free to introduce myself as Sookie Stackhouse. If Russell knew Bill’s girlfriend was a telepath, and he discovered I was a telepath, who knew what would happen then?

Actually, I could make a good guess.

As I dithered, ashamed and frightened, the decision was made for me. The man with the black hair reached inside his coat and the fanaticism roiling in his head reached fever pitch. He pulled out the long sharpened piece of ash, and then a lot happened.

I yelled,
“STAKE!”
and lunged for the fanatic’s arm, gripping it desperately with both my hands. The vampires and their humans whirled around looking for the threat, and the shifters and Weres wisely scattered to the walls to leave the floor free for the vampires. The tall man beat at me, his big hands pounding at my head and shoulders, and his dark-haired companion kept twisting his arm, trying to free it from my grasp. He heaved from side to side to throw me off.

Somehow, in the melee, my eyes met those of the taller man, and we recognized each other. He was G. Steve Newlin, former leader of the Brotherhood of the Sun, a militant anti-vampire organization whose Dallas branch had more or less bit the dust after I’d paid it a visit. He was going to tell them who I was, I just knew it, but I had to pay attention to what the man with the stake was doing. I was staggering around on my heels, trying to keep my feet, when the assassin finally had a stroke of brilliance and transferred the stake from his pinned right hand to his free left.

With a final punch to my back, Steve Newlin dashed for the exit, and I caught a flash of creatures bounding in pursuit. I heard lots of yowling and tweeting, and then the black-haired man threw back his left arm and plunged the stake into my waist on my right side.

I let go of his arm then, and stared down at what he’d done to me. I looked back up into his eyes for a long moment, reading nothing there but a horror to mirror my own. Then Betty Joe Pickard swung back her gloved fist and hit him twice—boom-boom. The first blow snapped his neck. The second shattered his skull. I could hear the bones break.

And then he went down to the floor, and since my legs were tangled with his, I went down, too. I landed flat on my back.

I lay looking up at the ceiling of the bar, at the fan that was rotating solemnly above my head. I wondered why the fan was on in the middle of winter. I saw a hawk fly across the ceiling, narrowly avoiding the fan blades. A wolf came to my side and licked my face and whined, but turned and dashed away. Tara was screaming. I was not. I was so cold.

With my right hand, I covered the spot where the stake entered my body. I didn’t want to see it, and I was scared I’d look down. I could feel the growing wetness around the wound.

“Call nine-one-one!” Tara yelled as she landed on her knees beside me. The bartender and Betty Joe exchanged a look over her head. I understood.

“Tara,” I said, and it came out like a croak. “Honey, all the shifters are changing. It’s full moon. The police can’t come in here, and they’ll come if anyone calls nine-one-one.”

The shifter part just didn’t seem to register with Tara, who didn’t know such things were possible. “The vampires are not gonna let you die,” Tara said confidently. “You just saved one of them!”

I wasn’t so sure about that. I saw Franklin Mott’s face above Tara. He was looking at me, and I could read his expression.

“Tara,” I whispered, “you have to get out of here. This is getting crazy, and if there’s any chance the police are coming, you can’t be here.”

Franklin Mott nodded in approval.

“I’m not going to leave you until you have help,” Tara said, her voice full of determination. Bless her heart.

The crowd around me consisted of vampires. One of them was Eric. I could not decipher his face.

“The tall blond will help me,” I told Tara, my voice barely a rasp. I pointed a finger at Eric. I didn’t look at him for fear I’d read rejection in his eyes. If Eric wouldn’t help me, I suspected I would lie here and die on this polished wood floor in a vampire bar in Jackson, Mississippi.

My brother, Jason, would be so pissed off.

Tara had met Eric in Bon Temps, but their introduction had been on a very stressful night. She didn’t seem to identify the tall blond she’d met that night with the tall blond she saw tonight, wearing glasses and a suit and with his hair pulled back strictly into a braid.

“Please help Sookie,” she said to him directly, as Franklin Mott almost yanked her to her feet.

“This young man will be
glad
to help your friend,” Mott said. He gave Eric a sharp look that told Eric he damn well better agree.

“Of course. I’m a good friend of Alcide’s,” Eric said, lying without a blink.

He took Tara’s place by my side, and I could tell after he was on his knees that he caught the smell of my blood. His face went even whiter, and his bones stood out starkly under his skin. His eyes blazed.

“You don’t know how hard it is,” he whispered to me, “not to bend over and lick.”

“If you do, everyone else will,” I said. “And they won’t just lick, they’ll bite.” There was a German shepherd staring at me with luminous yellow eyes, just past my feet.

“That’s the only thing stopping me.”

“Who are you?” asked Russell Edgington. He was giving Eric a careful once-over. Russell was standing to my other side, and he bent over both of us. I had been loomed over enough, I can tell you that, but I was in no position to do a damn thing about it.

“I’m a friend of Alcide’s,” Eric repeated. “He invited me here tonight to meet his new girlfriend. My name is Leif.”

Russell could look down at Eric, since Eric was kneeling, and his golden brown eyes bored into Eric’s blue ones. “Alcide doesn’t hang with many vampires,” Russell said.

“I’m one of the few.”

“We have to get this young lady out of here,” Russell said.

The snarling a few feet away increased in intensity. There appeared to be a knot of animals gathered around something on the floor.

“Take that out of here!” roared Mr. Hob. “Out the back door! You know the rules!”

Two of the vampires lifted the corpse, for that was what the Weres and shifters were squabbling over, and carried it out the back door, followed by all the animals. So much for the black-haired fanatic.

Just this afternoon Alcide and I had disposed of a corpse. We’d never thought of just bringing it down to the club, laying it in the alley. Of course, this one was fresh.

“. . . maybe has nicked a kidney,” Eric was saying. I had been unconscious, or at least somewhere else, for a few moments.

I was sweating heavily, and the pain was excruciating. I felt a flash of chagrin when I realized I was sweating all over my dress. But possibly the big bloody hole had already ruined the dress anyway, huh?

“We’ll take her to my place,” Russell said, and if I hadn’t been sure I was very badly hurt, I might have laughed. “The limo’s on its way. I’m sure a familiar face would make her more comfortable, don’t you agree?”

What I thought was, Russell didn’t want to get his suit nasty picking me up. And Talbot probably couldn’t lug me. Though the small vampire with curly black hair was still there, and still smiling, I would be awful bulky for him . . .

And I lost some more time.

“Alcide turned into a wolf and chased after the assassin’s companion,” Eric was telling me, though I didn’t remember asking. I started to tell Eric who the companion was, and then I realized that I’d better not. “Leif,” I muttered, trying to commit the name to memory. “Leif. I guess my garters are showing. Does that mean . . . ?”

“Yes, Sookie?”

. . . and I was out again. Then I was aware I was moving, and I realized that Eric was carrying me. Nothing had ever hurt so badly in my life, and I reflected, not for the first time, that I’d never even been in a hospital until I’d met Bill, and now I seemed to spend half my time battered or recovering from being battered. This was very significant and important.

A lynx padded out of the bar beside us. I looked down into the golden eyes. What a night this was turning out to be for Jackson. I hoped all the good people had decided to stay home tonight.

And then we were in the limo. My head was resting on Eric’s thigh, and in the seat across from us sat Talbot, Russell, and the small curly-haired vampire. As we stopped at a light, a bison lumbered by.

“Lucky no one’s out in downtown Jackson on a weekend night in December,” Talbot was remarking, and Eric laughed.

We drove for what seemed like some time. Eric smoothed my skirt over my legs, and brushed my hair out of my face. I looked up at him, and . . .

“. . . did she know what he was going to do?” Talbot was asking.

“She saw him pull the stake out, she said,” Eric said mendaciously. “She was going to the bar to get another drink.”

“Lucky for Betty Joe,” Russell said in his smooth Southern drawl. “I guess she’s still hunting the one that got away.”

Then we pulled up into a driveway and stopped at a gate. A bearded vampire came up and peered in the window, looking at all the occupants carefully. He was far more alert than the indifferent guard at Alcide’s apartment building. I heard an electronic hum, and the gate opened. We went up a driveway (I could hear the gravel crunching) and then we swung around in front of a mansion. It was lit up like a birthday cake, and as Eric carefully extracted me from the limo, I could see we were under a porte cochere that was as fancy as all get-out. Even the carport had columns. I expected to see Vivian Leigh come down the steps.

I had a blank moment again, and then we were in the foyer. The pain seemed to be fading away, and its absence left me giddy.

As the master of this mansion, Russell’s return was a big event, and when the inhabitants smelled fresh blood, they were doubly quick to come thronging. I felt like I’d landed in the middle of romance cover model contest. I had never seen so many cute men in one place in my life. But I could tell they were not for me. Russell was like the gay vampire Hugh Hefner, and this was the Playboy Mansion, with an emphasis on the “boy.”

“Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink,” I said, and Eric laughed out loud. That was why I liked him, I thought rosily; he “got” me.

“Good, the shot’s taking effect,” said a white-haired man in a sports shirt and pleated trousers. He was human, and he might as well have had a stethoscope tattooed around his neck, he was so clearly a doctor. “Will you be needing me?”

“Why don’t you stay for a while?” Russell suggested. “Josh will keep you company, I’m sure.”

I didn’t get to see what Josh looked like, because Eric was carrying me upstairs then.

“Rhett and Scarlet,” I said.

“I don’t understand,” Eric told me.

“You haven’t seen
Gone with the Wind
?” I was horrified. But then, why should a vampire Viking have seen that staple of the Southern mystique? But he’d read
The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner
, which I had worked my way through in high school. “You’ll have to watch it on video. Why am I acting so stupid? Why am I not scared?”

“That human doctor gave you a big dose of drugs,” Eric said, smiling down at me. “Now I am carrying you to a bedroom so you can be healed.”

“He’s here,” I told Eric.

His eyes flashed caution at me. “Russell, yes. But I’m afraid that Alcide made less than a stellar choice, Sookie. He raced off into the night after the other attacker. He should have stayed with you.”

“Screw him,” I said expansively.

“He wishes, especially after seeing you dance.”

I wasn’t feeling quite good enough to laugh, but it did cross my mind. “Giving me drugs maybe wasn’t such a great idea,” I told Eric. I had too many secrets to keep.

“I agree, but I am glad you’re out of pain.”

Then we were in a bedroom, and Eric was laying me on a gosh-to-goodness canopied four-poster. He took the opportunity to whisper, “Be careful,” in my ear. And I tried to bore that thought into my drug-addled brain. I might blurt out the fact that I knew, beyond a doubt, that Bill was somewhere close to me.

T
HERE WAS QUITE a crowd in the bedroom, I noticed. Eric had gotten me situated on the bed, which was so high, I might need a stepstool to get down. But it would be convenient for the healing, I had heard Russell comment, and I was beginning to worry about what constituted “the healing.” The last time I’d been involved in a vampire “healing,” the treatment had been what you might call nontraditional.

“What’s gonna happen?” I asked Eric, who was standing at the side of the bed on my left, non-wounded, side.

But it was the vampire who had taken his place to my right who answered. He had a long, horsy face, and his blond eyebrows and eyelashes were almost invisible against his pallor. His bare chest was hairless, too. He was wearing a pair of pants, which I suspected were vinyl. Even in the winter, they must be, um, unbreathing. I wouldn’t like to peel those suckers off. This vamp’s saving grace was his lovely straight pale hair, the color of white corn.

“Miss Stackhouse, this is Ray Don,” Russell said.

“How de do.” Good manners would make you welcome anywhere, my gran had always told me.

“Pleased to meet you,” he responded correctly. He had been raised right, too, though no telling when that had been. “I’m not going to ask you how you’re doing, cause I can see you got a great big hole in your side.”

“Kind of ironic, isn’t it, that it was the human that got staked,” I said socially. I hoped I would see that doctor again, because I sure wanted to ask him what he’d given me. It was worth its weight in gold.