Chapter Fourteen

 "We got her," said a voice I didn't recognize. I had been yanked to my feet, and I was swaying between two men who were holding me up.

"What about the vamp?"

"I shot him twice, but he's in the woods. He got away."

"That's bad news. Work fast."

I could sense that there were many men in the room with me, and I opened my eyes. They'd turned on the lights. They were in my house. They were in my home. As much as the blow to my jaw, that made me sick. Somehow, I'd assumed my visitors would be Sam or Arlene or Jason.

There were five strangers in my living room, if I was thinking clearly enough to count. But before I could form another idea, one of the men-and now I realized he was wearing a familiar leather vest-punched me in the stomach.

I didn't have enough breath to scream.

The two men holding me pulled me back upright.

"Where is he?"

"Who?" I really couldn't remember, at this point, what particular missing person he wanted me to locate. But, of course, he hit me again. I had a dreadful minute when I needed to gag but hadn't the air to do it. I was strangling and suffocating.

Finally, I drew in a long breath. It was noisy and painful and just heaven.

My Were interrogator, who had light hair shaved close to his scalp and a nasty little goatee, slapped me, hard, open-handed. My head rocked on my neck like a car on faulty shock absorbers. "Where's the vampire, bitch?" the Were said. He drew his fist back.

I couldn't take any more of this. I decided to speed things up. I pulled my legs up, and while the two at my sides kept desperate grips on my arms, I kicked the Were in front of me with both feet. If I hadn't had on bedroom slippers, it probably would have been more effective. I'm never wearing safety boots when I need them. But Nasty Goatee did stagger back, and then he came for me with my death in his eyes.

By then my legs had swung back to the floor, but I made them keep going backward, and threw my two captors completely off balance. They staggered, tried to recover, but their frantic footing was in vain. Down we all went, the Were along with us.

This might not be better, but it was an improvement over waiting to get hit.

I'd landed on my face, since my arms and hands weren't under my control. One guy did let go as we fell, and when I got that hand underneath me for leverage, I yanked away from the other man.

I'd gotten halfway to my feet when the Were, quicker than the humans, managed to grab my hair. He dealt a slap to my face while he wound my hair around his hand for a better grip. The other hired hands closed in, either to help the two on the floor to rise, or just to see me get battered.

A real fight is over in a few minutes because people wear out quick. It had been a very long day, and the fact was, I was ready to give up against these overwhelming odds. But I had a little pride and I went for the guy closest to me, a potbellied pig of a man with greasy dark hair. I dug my fingers into his face, trying to cause any damage I could, while I could.

The Were kneed me in the belly and I screamed, and the pig-man began to yell for the others to get me off of him, and the front door crashed open as Eric came in, blood covering his chest and right leg. Bill was right behind him.

They lost all control.

I saw firsthand what a vampire could do.

After a second, I realized my help would not be needed, and I decided the Goddess of Really Tough Gals would have to excuse me while I closed my eyes.

In two minutes, all the men in my living room were dead.

***

"Sookie? Sookie?" Eric's voice was hoarse. "Do we need to take her to the hospital?" he asked Bill.

I felt cool fingers on my wrist, touching my neck. I almost explained that for once I was conscious, but it was just too hard. The floor seemed like a good place to be.

"Her pulse is strong," Bill reported. "I'm going to turn her over."

"She's alive?"

"Yes."

Eric's voice, suddenly closer, said, "Is the blood hers?"

"Yes, some of it."

He drew a deep, shuddering breath. "Hers is different."

"Yes," Bill said coldly. "But surely you are full by now."

"It's been a long time since I had real blood in quantity," Eric said, just exactly like my brother, Jason, would have remarked it had been a long time since he'd had blackberry cobbler.

Bill slid his hands underneath me. "For me, too. We'll need to put them all out in the yard," he said casually, "and clean up Sookie's house."

"Of course."

Bill began rolling me over, and I began crying. I couldn't help it. As strong as I wanted to be, all I could think of was my body. If you've ever been really beaten, you'll know what I mean. When you've been really beaten, you realize that you are just an envelope of skin, an easily penetrated envelope that holds together a lot of fluids and some rigid structures, which in their turn can simply be broken and invaded. I thought I'd been badly hurt in Dallas a few weeks before, but this felt worse. I knew that didn't mean it was worse; there was a lot of soft tissue damage. In Dallas, my cheekbone had been fractured and my knee twisted. I thought maybe the knee had been compromised all over again, and I thought maybe one of the slaps had rebroken the cheekbone. I opened my eyes, blinked, and opened them again. My vision cleared after a few seconds.

"Can you speak?" Eric said, after a long, long moment.

I tried, but my mouth was so dry, nothing came out.

"She needs a drink." Bill went to the kitchen, having to take a less than direct route, since there were a lot of obstructions in the way.

Eric's hands stroked back my hair. He'd been shot, I remembered, and I wanted to ask him how he felt, but I couldn't. He was sitting on his butt beside me, leaning on the cushions of my couch. There was blood on his face, and he looked pinker than I'd ever seen him, ruddy with health. When Bill returned with my water-he'd even added a straw-I looked at his face. Bill looked almost sunburned.

Bill held me up carefully and put the straw to my lips. I drank, and it was the best thing I'd ever tasted.

"You killed them all," I said in a creaky voice.

Eric nodded.

I thought of the circle of brutish faces that had surrounded me. I thought of the Were slapping me in the face.

"Good," I said. Eric looked a little amused, just for a second. Bill didn't look anything in particular.

"How many?"

Eric looked around vaguely, and Bill pointed a finger silently as he toted them up.

"Seven?" Bill said doubtfully. "Two in the yard and five in the house?"

"I was thinking eight," Eric murmured.

"Why did they come after you like that?"

"Jerry Falcon."

"Oh," said Bill, a different note in his voice. "Oh, yes. I've encountered him. In the torture room. He is first on my list."

"Well, you can cross him off," Eric said. "Alcide and Sookie disposed of his body in the woods yesterday."

"Did this Alcide kill him?" Bill looked down at me, reconsidered. "Or Sookie?"

"He says no. They found the corpse in the closet of Alcide's apartment, and they hatched a plan to hide his remains." Eric sounded like that had been kind of cute of us.

"My Sookie hid a corpse?"

"I don't think you can be too sure about that possessive pronoun."

"Where did you learn that term, Northman?"

"I took 'English as a Second Language' at a community college in the seventies."

Bill said, "She is mine."

I wondered if my hands would move. They would. I raised both of them, making an unmistakable one-fingered gesture.

Eric laughed, and Bill said, "Sookie!" in shocked admonishment.

"I think that Sookie is telling us she belongs to herself," Eric said softly. "In the meantime, to finish our conversation, whoever stuffed the corpse in the closet meant to saddle Alcide with the blame, since Jerry Falcon had made a blatant pass at Sookie in the bar the night before, and Alcide had taken umbrage."