I resolved to get up myself, because I’d rather perish on my feet than in a bed. I had at least that much courage left in me. Maybe, since I’d had Eric’s blood, I was feeling the heat of his battle rage. Nothing got Eric going like the prospect of a good fight. I struggled to my feet. I found I could walk, at least a little bit. There were some wooden crutches leaning against the wall. I couldn’t remember ever seeing wooden crutches, but none of the equipment at this hospital was standard human-hospital issue.
I took a crutch by the bottom, hefted it a little to see if I could swing it. The answer was “Probably not.” There was a good chance I’d fall over when I did, but active was better than passive. In the meantime, I had the weapons in my hand that I’d retrieved from my purse, and at least the crutch would hold me up.
All this happened quicker than I can tell you about it. Then the door was splintering, and the fairies were yanking hanging bits of wood away. Finally the gap was large enough to admit one, a tall, thin male with gossamer hair, his green eyes glowing with the joy of the fight. He struck at Eric with a sword, and Eric parried and managed to slash his opponent’s abdomen. The fairy shrieked and doubled over, and Clancy’s blow caught him on the back of the neck and severed his head.
I pressed my back against the wall and tucked the crutch under one arm. I gripped my weapons, one in each hand. Bill and I were side by side, and then he slowly and deliberately stepped in front of me. Bill threw his knife at the next fairy through the door, and the point went right into the fairy’s throat. Bill reached back and took my grandmother’s trowel.
The door was almost demolished by now, and the assaulting fairies seemed to move back. Another male stepped in through the splinters and over the body of the first fae, and I knew this must be Breandan. His reddish hair was pulled back in a braid and his sword slung a spray of blood from its blade as he raised it to swing at Eric.
Eric was the taller, but Breandan had a longer sword. Breandan was already wounded, for his shirt was drenched with blood on one side. I saw something bright, a knitting needle, protruding from Breandan’s shoulder, and I was sure the blood on his sword was Claudine’s. A rage went through me, and that held me up when I would have collapsed.
Breandan leaped sideways, despite Eric’s attempts to keep him engaged, and a very tall female warrior jumped into the spot Breandan had occupied and swung a mace—a mace, for God’s sake—at Eric. Eric ducked, and the mace continued its path and hit Clancy in the side of the head. Instantly his red hair was even redder, and he went down like a bag of sand. Breandan leaped over Clancy to face Bill, his sword slicing off Clancy’s head as he cleared the body. Breandan’s grin grew brighter. “You’re the one,” he said. “The one who killed Neave.”
“I took out her throat,” Bill said, and his voice seemed as strong as it ever had been. But he swayed on his feet.
“I see she’s killed you, too,” Breandan said, and smiled, his guard relaxing slightly. “I’ll only be the one to make you realize it.”
Behind him, forgotten on the corner bed, Tray Dawson made a superhuman effort and gripped the fairy’s shirt. With a negligent gesture, Breandan twisted slightly and brought the gleaming sword down on the defenseless Were, and when he pulled the sword back, it was freshly coated with red. But in the moment it took Breandan to do this, Bill thrust my trowel under Breandan’s raised arm. When Breandan turned back, his expression was startled. He looked down at the hilt as if he couldn’t imagine how it came to be sticking out of his side, and then blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
Bill began to fall.
Everything stood still for a moment, but only in my mind. The space in front of me was clear, and the woman abandoned her fight with Eric and leaped on top of the body of her prince. She screamed, long and loud, and since Bill was falling she aimed the thrust of her sword at me.
I squirted her with the lemon juice in my water pistol.
She screamed again, but this time in pain. The juice had fallen on her in a spray, across her chest and upper arms, and where the lemon had touched her smoke began to rise from her skin. A drop had hit her eyelid, I realized, because she used her free hand to rub at the burning eye. And while she did that, Eric swung his long knife and severed her arm, and then he stabbed her.
Then Niall filled the doorway of the room, and my eyes hurt to see him. He wasn’t wearing the black suit he wore when he met me in the human world but a sort of long tunic and loose pants tucked into boots. Everything about him was white, and he shone . . . except where he was splashed with blood.
Then there was a long silence. There was no one left to kill.
I slid to the floor, my legs as weak as Jell-O. I found myself slumped against the wall by Bill. I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. I was too shocked to weep and too horrified to scream. Some of my cuts had reopened, and the scent of the blood and the reek of fairy lured Eric, pumped full of the excitement of battle. Before Niall could reach me, Eric was on his knees beside me, licking the blood from a slice on my cheek. I didn’t mind; he’d given me his. He was recycling.
“Off her, vampire,” said my great-grandfather in a very soft voice.
Eric raised his head, his eyes shut with pleasure, and shuddered all over. But then he collapsed beside me. He stared at Clancy’s body. All the exultation drained from his face and a red tear made its way down his cheek.
“Is Bill alive?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. He looked down at his arm. He’d been wounded, too: a bad slash on his left forearm. I hadn’t even seen it happen. Through the torn sleeve, I watched the cut begin to heal.
My great-grandfather squatted in front of me.
“Niall,” I said, my lips and mouth working with great effort. “Niall, I didn’t think you would come in time.”
Truthfully, I was so stunned I hardly knew what I was saying or even which crisis I was referring to. For the first time, keeping on living seemed so difficult I wasn’t sure it was worth the trouble.
My great-grandfather took me in his arms. “You are safe now,” he said. “I am the only living prince. No one can take that away from me. Almost all of my enemies are dead.”
“Look around,” I said, though I lay my head on his shoulder. “Niall, look at all that’s been taken.” Tray Dawson’s blood trickled slowly down the soaked sheet to patter on the floor. Bill was crumpled against my right thigh. As my great-grandfather held me close and stroked my hair, I looked past his arm at Bill. He’d lived for so many years, survived by hook or by crook. He’d been ready to die for me. There is no female—human, fairy, vamp, Were—who wouldn’t be affected by that. I thought of the nights we’d spent together, the times we’d talked lying together in bed—and I cried, though I felt almost too tired to produce tears.
My great-grandfather sat back on his heels and looked at me. “You need to go home,” he said.
“Claudine?”
“She’s in the Summerland.”
I couldn’t stand any more bad news.
“Fairy, I leave cleaning this place to you,” Eric said. “Your great-granddaughter is my woman, mine and mine alone. I’ll take her to her home.”
Niall glared at Eric. “Not all the bodies are fae,” Niall said with a pointed glance at Clancy. “And what must we do with that one?” He jerked his head toward Tray.
“That one needs to go back into his house,” I said. “He has to be given a proper burial. He can’t just vanish.” I had no idea what Tray would have wanted, but I couldn’t let the fairies shovel his body into a pit somewhere. He deserved far better than that. And there was Amelia to tell. Oh, God. I tried to pull my legs up preparatory to standing, but my stitches yanked and pain shot through me.“Ahh,” I said, and clenched my teeth.
I stared down at the floor while I got my breath back. And while I was staring, one of Bill’s fingers twitched.
“He’s alive, Eric,” I said, and though it hurt like the dickens, I could smile about that. “Bill’s alive.”
“That’s good,” Eric said, though he sounded too calm. He flipped open his cell phone and speed-dialed someone. “Pam,” he said. “Pam, Sookie lives. Yes, and Bill, too. Not Clancy. Bring the van.”
Though I lost a little time somewhere in there, eventually Pam arrived with a huge van. It had a mattress in the back, and Bill and I were loaded in by Pam and Maxwell Lee, a black businessman who just happened to be a vampire. At least, that was the impression Maxwell always gave. Even on this night of violence and conflict, Maxwell looked neat and unruffled. Though he was taller than Pam, they got us into the back with gentleness and grace, and I appreciated it very much. Pam even forewent making any jokes, which was a welcome change.
As we drove back to Bon Temps, I could hear the vampires talking quietly about the end of the fairy war.
“It will be too bad if they leave this world,” Pam said. “I love them so much. They’re so hard to catch.”
Maxwell Lee said, “I never had a fairy.”
“Yum,” Pam said, and it was the most eloquent “yum” I’ve ever heard.
“Be quiet,” Eric said, and they both shut up.
Bill’s fingers found mine, gripped them.
“Clancy lives on in Bill,” Eric told the other two.
They received this news in a silence that seemed respectful to me.
“As you live on in Sookie,” Pam said very quietly.
My great-grandfather came to see me two days later. After she let him in, Amelia went upstairs to cry some more. She knew the truth, of course, though the rest of our community was shocked that someone had broken into Tray’s house and tortured him. Popular opinion said that his assailants must have believed Tray was a drug dealer, though there was absolutely no drug paraphernalia found in an intensive search of his house and shop. Tray’s ex-wife and his son were making the funeral arrangements, and Tray would be buried at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. I was going to try to go to support Amelia. I had another day to get better, but today I was content to lie on my bed, dressed in a nightgown. Eric couldn’t give me any more blood to complete my healing. For one thing, in the past few days he’d already given me blood twice, to say nothing of the nips we’d exchanged during lovemaking, and he said we were dangerously close to some undefined limit. For another thing, Eric needed all his blood to heal himself, and he took some of Pam’s, too. So I itched and healed, and saw that the vampire blood had filled in the bitten-out flesh of my legs.
That made my explanation of my injuries (a car accident; I’d been hit by a stranger who’d driven away) just feasible if not too many people examined the wounds. Of course, Sam had known right away that wasn’t the truth. I had ended up telling him what had happened the first time he came to see me. The patrons of Merlotte’s were very sympathetic, he reported when he came the second time. He had brought me daisies and a chicken basket from Dairy Queen. When he’d thought I wasn’t watching, Sam had looked at me with grim eyes.
After Niall pulled a chair close to the bed, he took my hand. Maybe the events of the past few days had made the fine wrinkles in his skin a fraction deeper. Maybe he looked a little sad. But my royal great-grandfather was still beautiful, still regal, still strange, and now that I knew what his race could do . . . he looked frightening.
“Did you know Lochlan and Neave killed my parents?” I asked.
Niall nodded after a perceptible pause. “I suspected,” he said. “When you told me your parents had drowned, I had to consider it possible. They all had an affinity to water, Breandan’s people.”
“I’m glad they’re dead,” I said.
“Yes, I am, too,” he said simply. “And most of Breandan’s followers are dead, as well. I spared two females, since we need them so much, and though one of them was the mother of Breandan’s child, I let her live.”
He seemed to want my praise for that. “What about the child?” I asked.
Niall shook his head, and the sheet of pale hair moved with the gesture.
He loved me, but he was from a world even more savage than mine.
As if he had heard my thoughts, Niall said, “I’m going to finish blocking the passage to our land.”
“But that’s what the war was over,” I said, bewildered. “That was what Breandan wanted.”
“I have come to think that he was right, though for the wrong reason. It isn’t the fae who need to be protected from the human world. It’s the humans who need to be protected from us.”
“What will that mean? What are the consequences?”
“Those of us who’ve been living among the humans will have to choose.”
“Like Claude.”
“Yes. He’ll have to cut his ties with our secret land, if he wants to live out here.”
“And the rest? The ones who live there already?”
“We won’t be coming out anymore.” His face was luminous with grief.
“I won’t get to see you?”
“No, dear heart. It’s better not.”
I tried to summon up a protest, to tell him that it wasnot better, it was awful, since I had so few relatives, that I would not talk to him again. But I just couldn’t make the words come out of my mouth. “What about Dermot?” I said instead.
“We can’t find him,” Niall said. “If he’s dead, he went to ash somewhere we haven’t discovered. If he’s here, he’s being very clever and very quiet. We’ll keep trying until the door closes.”
I hoped devoutly that Dermot was on the fairy side of that door.
At that moment, Jason came in.
My great-grandfather—our great-grandfather—leaped to his feet. But after a moment, he relaxed. “You must be Jason,” he said.
My brother stared at him blankly. Jason had not been himself since the death of Mel. The same edition of our local paper that had carried the story about the awful discovery of the body of Tray Dawson had carried another story about the disappearance of Mel Hart. There was wide conjecture that maybe the two events were connected somehow.
I didn’t know how the werepanthers had covered up the scene in back of Jason’s house, and I didn’t want to know. I didn’t know where Mel’s body was, either. Maybe it had been eaten. Maybe it was at the bottom of Jason’s pond. Maybe it lay in the woods somewhere.
The last was what I suspected. Jason and Calvin had told the police that Mel had said he was going hunting by himself, and Mel’s truck was found parked at a hunting preserve where he had a share. There were some bloodstains discovered in the back of the truck that made police suspect Mel might know something about Crystal Stackhouse’s awful death, and now Andy Bellefleur had been heard to say he wouldn’t be surprised if old Mel hadn’t killed himself out in the woods.
“Yeah, I’m Jason,” my brother said heavily. “You must be . . . my great-grandfather?”
Niall inclined his head. “I am. I’ve come to bid your sister good-bye.”
“But not me, huh? I’m not good enough.”
“You are too much like Dermot.”
“Well, crap.” Jason threw himself down on the foot of the bed. “Dermot didn’t seem too bad to me,Great-grandfather . Least, he came to warn me about Mel, let me know that Mel had killed my wife.”
“Yes,” Niall said remotely. “Dermot may have been partial to you because of the resemblance. I suppose you know that he helped to kill your parents?”
We both stared at Niall.
“Yes, the water fae who followed Breandan had pulled the truck into the stream, as I hear it, but only Dermot was able to touch the door and pull your parents out. Then the water nymphs held them underwater.”
I shuddered.
“Ask me, I’m glad you’re saying good-bye,” Jason said. “I’m glad you’re leaving. I hope you never come back, not a one of you.”
Pain flitted over Niall’s face. “I can’t dispute your feeling,” he said. “I only wanted to know my great-granddaughter. But I’ve brought Sookie nothing but grief.”
I opened my mouth to protes
t, and then I realized he was telling the truth. Just not all the truth.
“You brought me the reassurance that I had family who loved me,” I said, and Jason made a choking sound. “You sent Claudine to save my life, and she did, more than once. I’ll miss you, Niall.”
“The vampire is not a bad man, and he loves you,” Niall said. He rose. “Good-bye.” He bent and kissed my cheek. There was power in his touch, and I suddenly felt better. Before Jason could gather himself to object, Niall kissed his forehead, and Jason’s tense muscles relaxed.
Then my great-grandfather was gone before I could ask him which vampire he meant.
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,
South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Dead and Gone ss(v-9 Page 24
