Dead and Gone

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 a click, 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 crippled as my body.
    “No,” I said. I tried to shake my head, but even the pain-killers couldn’t disguise the fact that my neck was too sore to twist. They’d choked me repeatedly.
    “You’re not dead,” Dr. Ludwig pointed out.
    But I’d come pretty damn close; I’d sort of stepped over the line. There’d been an optimum rescue time. If I’d been liberated before that time, I would have laughed all the way to the secret supernatural clinic, or wherever I was. But I’d looked at death too closely—close enough to see all the pores in Death’s face—and I’d suffered too much. I wouldn’t bounce back this time.
    My emotional and physical state had been sliced and gouged and pinched and bitten to a rough, raw surface. I didn’t know if I could spackle myself back into my pre-kidnap smoothness. I said this, in much simpler words, to Dr. Ludwig.
    “They’re dead, if that helps,” she said.
    Yes indeedy, that helped quite a bit. I’d been hoping I hadn’t imagined that part; I’d been a little afraid their deaths had been a delightful fantasy.
    “Your great-grandfather beheaded Lochlan,” she said. So he’d been One. “And the vampire Bill Compton tore the throat out of Lochlan’s sister, Neave.” She’d been Two.
    “Where’s Niall now?” I said.
    “Waging war,” she said grimly. “There’s no more negotiation, no more jockeying for advantage. There’s only killing now.”
    “Bill?”
    “He was badly hurt,” the little doctor said. “She got him with her blade before she bled to death. And she bit him back. There was silver in her knife and silver caps on her teeth. It’s in his system.”
    “He’ll get better,” I said.
    She shrugged.
    I thought my heart was going to plunge down out of my chest, through the bed. I could not look this misery in the face.
    I struggled to think of something besides Bill. “And Tray? He’s here?”
    She regarded me silently for a moment. “Yes,” she said finally.
    “I need to see him. And Bill.”
    “No. You can’t move. Bill’s in his daytime sleep for now. Eric is coming tonight, actually in a couple of hours, and he’ll bring at least one other vampire with him. That’ll help. The Were is too badly