Dead and Gone

alot of fun. Especially if Niall wants to see you; surely he’ll demand proof you’re alive before he surrenders. We have to leave you breathing . . . but the more terrible your plight, the faster the war will be over.” She had a mouthful of the longest, sharpest teeth I’d ever seen. Some of them were capped with gleaming silver points. It was a ghastly touch.

At the sight of those teeth, those awful shining teeth, I threw off the remnants of the magic they’d laid on me, which was a great pity.

I was completely and utterly lucid for the next hour, which was the longest of my life.

I found it bewildering—and utterly shocking—that I could feel such pain and not die of it.

I would have been glad to die.

I know a lot about humans, since I see into their minds every day, but I didn’t know a lot about fairy culture. I had to believe Thing One and Thing Two were in a league of their own. I couldn’t imagine that my great-grandfather would have laughed when I began to bleed. And I had to hope that he wouldn’t enjoy cutting a human with a knife, either, as One and Two did.

I’d read books where a person being tortured went “somewhere else” during the ordeal. I did my best to find somewhere else to go mentally, but I remained right there in the room. I focused on the strong faces of the farming family in the photograph, and I wished it wasn’t so dusty so I could see them clearly. I wished the picture was straight. I just knew that good family would have been horrifed at what they were witnessing now.

At moments when the fairy duo wasn’t hurting me, it was very hard to believe I was awake and that this was really happening. I kept hoping I was suffering through a particularly horrible dream, and I would wake from it . . . sooner, rather than later. I’d known from a very early age that there was cruelty in the world—believe me, I’d learned that—but I was still shocked that the Things wereenjoying themselves . I had no per sonhood to them—no identity. They were completely indifferent to the plans I’d had for my life, the pleasures I’d hoped to enjoy. I might have been a stray puppy or a frog they’d caught by the creek.

I myself would have thought doing these things to a puppy or a frog was horrible.

“Isn’t this the daughter of the ones we killed?” One asked Two while I was screaming.

“Yes. They tried to drive through water during a flood,” Two said in a tone of happy reminiscence. “Water! When the man had sky blood! They thought the iron can would protect them.”

“The water spirits were glad to pull them under,” One said.

My parents hadn’t died in an accident. They’d been murdered. Even through my pain, I registered that, though at the moment it was beyond me to form a feeling about the knowledge.

I tried to talk to Eric in my head in the hope he could find me through our bond. I thought of the only other adult telepath I knew, Barry, and I sent him messages—though I knew damn good and well that we were too far away from each other to transmit our thoughts. To my everlasting shame, toward the end of that hour I even considered trying to contact my little cousin Hunter. I knew, though, that not only was Hunter too young to understand, but also . . . I really couldn’t do that to a child.

I gave up hope, and I waited for death.

While they were having sex, I thought of Sam and how happy it would make me if I could see him now. I wanted to say the name of someone who loved me, but my throat was too hoarse from screaming.

I thought about vengeance. I wanted One and Two to die with a craving that burned through my gut. I hoped someone, any one of my supe friends—Claude and Claudine, Niall, Alcide, Bill, Quinn, Tray, Pam, Eric, Calvin, Jason—would tear these two limb from limb. Perhaps the other fairies could take the same length of time with them that they were taking with me.

One and Two had said that Breandan wanted them to spare me, but it didn’t take a telepath to realize they weren’t going to be capable of holding off. They were going to get carried away with their fun, as they had with Fintan and Crystal, and there would be no repairing me.

I became sure I was going to die.

I began to hallucinate. I thought I saw Bill, which made no sense at all. He was in my backyard probably, wondering where I was. He was back in the world thatmade sense . But I could swear I saw him creeping up behind the creatures, who were enjoying working with a pair of razor blades. He had his finger over his mouth as if he were telling me to keep silent. Since he wasn’t there, and my throat was too raw to speak anyway (I couldn’t even produce a decent scream anymore), that was easy. There was a black shadow following him, a shadow topped with a pale flame.

Two jabbed me with a sharp knife she’d just pulled from her boot, a knife that shone like her teeth. They both leaned close to me to drink in my reaction. I could only make a raspy noise. My face was crusted with tears and blood.

“Little froggy croaking,” One said.

“Listen to her. Croak, froggy. Croak for us.”

I opened my eyes and looked into hers, meeting them squarely for the first time in many long minutes. I swallowed and summoned up all my remaining strength.

“You’re going to die,” I said with absolute certainty. But I’d said it before, and they didn’t pay any more attention now than they had the first time.

I made my lips move up in a smile.

The male had just enough time to look startled before something gleaming flashed between his head and his shoulders. Then, to my intense pleasure, he was in two pieces and I was covered in a wash of fresh red blood. It ran over me, drenching the blood already dried on my skin. But my eyes were clear, so I could see a white hand gripped Two’s neck, lifting her, spinning her around, and her shock was intensely gratifying as teeth almost as sharp as her own ripped into her long neck.

Chapter 18

I wasn’t in a hospital.

But I was in a bed, not my own. And I was a little cleaner than I had been, and bandaged, and in a lot of pain; in fact, a dreadful amount of pain. The part where I was cleaner and bandaged—oh, a wholly desirable state. The other part, the pain—well, that was expected, understandable, and finite. At least no one was trying to hurt me any worse than I’d already been hurt. So I decided I was excellent.

I had a few holes in my memory. I couldn’t remember what had happened between being in the decrepit shack and being here; I could recall flashes of action, the sound of voices, but I had no coherent narrative to connect them. I remembered One’s head becoming detached, and I knew someone had bitten Two. I hoped she was as dead as One. But I wasn’t sure. Had I really seen Bill? What about the shadow behind him?

I heard aclick, click, click . I turned my head very slightly. Claudine, my fairy godmother, was sitting by the bed, knitting.

The sight of Claudine knitting was just as surrealistic as the sight of Bill appearing in the cave. I decided to go back to sleep—a cowardly retreat, but I thought I was entitled.

“She’s going to be all right,” Dr. Ludwig said. Her head came up past the side of my bed, which told me for sure that I wasn’t in a modern hospital bed.

Dr. Ludwig takes care of the cases who can’t go to the regular human hospital because the staff would flee screaming at the sight of them or the lab wouldn’t be able to analyze their blood. I could see Dr. Ludwig’s coarse brown hair as she walked around the bed to the door. Dr. Ludwig had a deep voice. I suspected she was a hobbit —not really, but she sure did look like one. Though she wore shoes, right? I spent some moments trying to remember if I’d ever caught a glimpse of Dr. Ludwig’s feet.

“Sookie,” she said, her eyes appearing at my elbow. “Is the medicine working?”

I didn’t know if this was a second visit of hers, or if I’d blanked out for a few moments. “I’m not hurting as much,” I said, and my voice was very rough and whispery. “I’m starting to feel a little numb. That’s just . . . excellent.”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Considering you’re human, you’re very lucky.”

Funny. I felt better than when I’d been in the shack, but I couldn’t say I felt lucky. I tried to scrape together some appreciation of my good fortune. There wasn’t any there to gather up. I was all out. My emotions were as