Living Dead in Dallas

tears from coursing down my cheeks. I managed not to sob out loud, so I wouldn't attract any more attention, but it was impossible to keep completely still.

I was concentrating so desperately on maintaining my silence that I almost missed Bill. He was pacing along the road looking into the woods, and I could tell by the way he was walking that he was alert to danger. Bill knew something was wrong.

'Bill,' I whispered, but with his vampire hearing, it was like a shout.

He was instantly still, his eyes scanning the shadows. 'I'm here,' I said, and swallowed back a sob. 'Watch out.' I might be a living booby trap.

In the moonlight, I could see that his face was clean of emotion, but I knew he was weighing the odds, just as I was. One of us had to move, and I realized if I came out into the moon glow, at least Bill could see more clearly if anything attacked.

I stuck my hands out, gripped the grass, and pulled. I couldn't even get up to my knees, so this progress was my best speed. I pushed a little with my feet, though even that use of my back muscles was excruciating. I didn't want to look at Bill while I moved toward him, because I didn't want to soften at the sight of his rage. It was an almost palpable thing.

'What did this to you, Sookie?' he asked softly.

'Get me in the car. Please, get me out of here,' I said, doing my best to hold myself together. 'If I make a lot of noise, she might come back.' I shivered all over at the thought. 'Take me to Eric,' I said, trying to keep my voice even. 'She said this was a message for Eric Northman.'

Bill squatted beside me. 'I have to lift you,' he told me.

Oh, no. I started to say, 'There must be some other way,' but I knew there wasn't. Bill knew better than to hesitate. Before I could anticipate the pain to its full extent, he scooted an arm under me and applied his other hand to my crotch, and in an instant he had me dangling across his shoulder.

I screamed out loud. I tried not to sob after that, so Bill could listen for an attack, but I didn't manage that very well. Bill began to run along the road, back to the car. It was running already, its engine idling smoothly. Bill flung open the back door and tried to feed me gently but quickly onto the backseat of the Cadillac. It was impossible not to cause me more pain by doing this, but he made the attempt.

'It was her,' I said, when I could say anything coherent. 'It was her who made the car stop and made me get out.' I was keeping an open mind about whether she'd caused the fight to begin with.

'We'll talk about it in a little while,' he said. He sped toward Shreveport, at the highest speed he could, while I clawed at the upholstery in an attempt to keep control over myself.

All I remember about that ride was that it was at least two years long.

Bill got me to the back door of Fangtasia somehow, and kicked it to get attention.

'What?' Pam sounded hostile. She was a pretty blond vampire I'd met a couple of times before, a sensible sort of individual with considerable business acumen. 'Oh, Bill. What's happened? Oh, yum, she's bleeding.'

'Get Eric,' Bill said.

'He's been waiting in here,' she began, but Bill strode right by her with me bouncing on his shoulder like a bag of bloody game. I was so out of it by that time that I wouldn't have cared if he'd carried me onto the dance floor of the bar out front, but instead, Bill blew into Eric's office laden with me and rage.

'This is on your account,' Bill snarled, and I moaned as he shook me as though he were drawing Eric's attention to me. I hardly see how Eric could have been looking anywhere else, since I was a full-grown female and probably the only bleeding woman in his office.

I would have loved to faint, to pass right out. But I didn't. I just sagged over Bill's shoulder and hurt. 'Go to hell,' I mumbled.

'What, my darling?'

'Go to hell!'

'We must lay her on her stomach on the couch,' Eric said. 'Here, let me …' I felt another pair of hands grip my legs, Bill sort of turned underneath me, and together they deposited me carefully on the broad couch that Eric had just bought for his office. It had that new smell, and it was leather. I was glad, staring at it from the distance of half an inch, that he hadn't gotten cloth upholstery. 'Pam, call the doctor.' I heard footsteps leave the room, and Eric crouched down to look into my face. It was quite a crouch, because Eric, tall and broad, looks exactly like what he is, a former Viking.

'What has happened to you?' he asked.

I glared at him, so incensed I could hardly speak. 'I am a message to you,' I said, almost in a whisper. 'This woman in the woods made Bill's car stop, and maybe even made us argue, and then she came up to me with this hog.'

'A pig?' Eric could not have been more astonished if I'd said she had a canary up her nose.

'Oink, oink. Razorback. Wild pig. And she said she wanted to send you a message, and I turned in time to keep her from getting my face, but she got my back, and then she left.'

'Your face. She would have gotten your face,' Bill said. I saw his hands clenching by his thighs, and the back of him as he began pacing around the office. 'Eric, her cuts are not so deep. What's wrong with her?'

'Sookie,' Eric said gently, 'what did this woman look like?'

His face was right by mine, his thick golden hair almost touching my face.

'She looked nuts, I'll tell you how she looked. And she called you Eric Northman.'

'That's the last name I use for human dealings,' he said. 'By looking nuts, you mean she looked … how?'

'Her clothes were all ragged and she had blood around her mouth and in her teeth, like she'd just eaten something raw. She was carrying this kind of wand thing, with something on the end of it. Her hair was long and tangled … look, speaking of hair, my hair is getting stuck to my back.' I gasped.

'Yes, I see.' Eric began trying to separate my long hair from my wounds, where blood was acting as an adherent as it thickened.

Pam came in then, with the doctor. If I had hoped Eric meant a regular doctor, like a stethoscope and tongue depressor kind of person, I was once again doomed to disappointment. This doctor was a dwarf, who hardly had to bend over to look me in the eyes. Bill hovered, vibrating with tension, while the small woman examined my wounds. She was wearing a pair of white pants and a tunic, just like doctors at the hospital; well, just like doctors used to, before they started wearing that green color, or blue, or whatever crazy print came their way. Her face was full of her nose, and her skin was olive. Her hair was golden brown and coarse, incredibly thick and wavy. She wore it clipped fairly short. She put me in mind of a hobbit. Maybe she was a hobbit. My understanding of reality had taken several raps to the head in the past few months.

'What kind of doctor are you?' I asked, though it took some time for me to collect myself enough.

'The healing kind,' she said in a surprisingly deep voice. 'You have been poisoned.'

'So that's why I keeping thinking I'm gonna die,' I muttered.

'You will, quite soon,' she said.

'Thanks a lot, Doc. What can you do about that?'

'We don't have a lot of choices. You've been poisoned. Have you ever heard of Komodo dragons? Their mouths are teeming with bacteria. Well, maenad wounds have the same toxic level. After a dragon has bitten you, the creature tracks you for hours, waiting for the bacteria to kill you. For maenads, the delayed death adds to the fun. For Komodo dragons, who knows?'

Thanks for the National Geographic side trip, Doc. 'What can you do?' I asked, through gritted teeth.

'I can close the exterior wounds. But your bloodstream has been compromised, and your blood must be removed and replaced. That is a job for the vampires.' The good doctor seemed positively jolly at the prospect of everyone working together. On me.

She turned to the gathered vamps. 'If only one of you takes the poisoned blood, that one will be pretty miserable. It's the element of magic that the maenad imparts. The Komodo dragon bite would be no problem for you guys.' She laughed heartily.

I hated her. Tears streamed down my face from the pain.

'So,' she continued, 'when I'm finished, each of you take a turn, removing just a little. Then we'll give her a transfusion.'