Dead and Gone

choking and gagging.
    “Should I call the doctor? A human one? Or Dr. Ludwig?”
    “No.” That sounded definite enough. “I’m trying to get rid of it,” he gasped, after another bout of retching. “But it’s too late.”
    “You know who gave it to you?”
    “Yeah. That new girlfriend . . .” He faded out for a few seconds. “Out in the woods. Vampire Bill’s new fuck.”
    I had an instinctive reaction. “He wasn’t with her, right?” I called.
    “No, she—” More awful noises. “She came from the direction of his house, said she was his . . .”
    I knew, without a doubt, that Bill didn’t have a new girlfriend. Though it embarrassed me to admit it to myself, I was so sure because I knew he wanted me back. I knew he wouldn’t jeopardize that by taking someone else to his bed or by permitting such a woman to roam in the woods where I might encounter her.
    “What was she?” I said, resting my forehead against the cool wood of the door. I was getting tired of yelling.
    “She was some fangbanger.” I felt Tray’s brain shift around through the fog of sickness. “At least, she felt like a human.”
    “The same way Dermot felt human. And you drank something she handed you.” It was kind of mean of me to sound incredulous, but honestly!
    “I couldn’t help it,” he said very slowly. “I was so thirsty. I had to drink it.”
    He’d been under some kind of compulsion spell. “And what was it? The stuff you drank?”
    “It tasted like wine.” He groaned. “Goddammit, it must have been vampire blood! I can taste it in my mouth now!”
    Vampire blood was still the hot drug on the underground marketplace, and human reactions to it varied so widely that drinking the blood was very much like playing Russian roulette, in more ways than one. Vampires hated the Drainers who collected the blood because the Drainers often left the vampire exposed to the day. So vampires also loathed the users of the blood, since they created the market. Some users became addicted to the ecstatic sensation that the blood could offer, and those users sometimes tried to take the blood right from the source in a kind of suicide attack. But every now and then, the user went berserk and killed other humans. Either way, it was all bad press for the vamps who were trying to mainstream.
    “Why would you do that?” I asked, unable to keep the anger out of my voice.
    “I couldn’t help it,” he said, and the bathroom door finally opened. I took a couple of steps back. Tray looked bad and smelled worse. He was wearing pajama pants and nothing else, and a vast expanse of chest hair was right at my eye level. It was covered in goose pimples.
    “How come?”
    “I couldn’t . . . not drink it.” He shook his head. “And then I came back here and got in bed with Amelia, and I tossed and turned all night. I was up when the K—when Bubba came in and went to bed in your closet. He said something about a woman talking to him, but I was feeling really bad by then, and I don’t remember what he said. Did Bill send her over here? Does he hate you that bad?”
    I looked up then and met his eyes. “Bill Compton loves me,” I said. “He would never hurt me.”
    “Even now that you’re screwing the big blond?”
    Amelia couldn’t keep her mouth shut.
    “Even now that I’m screwing the big blond,” I said.
    “You can’t read vampire minds, Amelia says.”
    “No, I can’t. But some things you just know.”
    “Right.” Though Tray didn’t have enough energy to look skeptical, he gave it a good shot. “I have to go to bed, Sookie. I can’t take care of you today.”
    I could see that. “Why don’t you go back to your own house and try to get some rest in your own bed?” I said. “I’m going to work today, and I’ll be around someone.”
    “No, you gotta be covered.”
    “I’ll call my brother,” I said, surprising even myself. “He’s not going to work now, and he’s a panther. He should be able to watch my back.”
    “Okay.” It was a measure of Tray’s wretchedness that he didn’t argue, though he wasn’t a Jason fan by any means. “Amelia knows I’m not feeling good. If you talk to her before I do, tell her I’ll call her tonight.”
    The werewolf staggered out to his truck. I hoped he was good to drive home, and I called after him to make sure, but he just waved a hand at me and drove down the driveway.
    Feeling oddly numb, I watched him go. I’d done the prudent thing for once; I’d called