Dead and Gone

believe I was saying these things.
    “It’s not like you were obliged to come find me,” I said, “but I hoped the whole time—I hoped you would come, I prayed you would come, I thought over and over you might hear me. . . .”
    “You’re killing me,” he said. “You’re killing me.” He shuddered beside me, as if he could scarcely endure my words. “I’ll explain,” he said in a muted voice. “I will. You will understand. But now, we don’t have enough time. Are you healing yet?”
    I thought about it. I didn’t feel as miserable as I had before the blood. The holes in my flesh were itching almost intolerably, which meant they were healing. “I’m beginning to feel like I’ll be better sometime,” I said carefully. “Oh, is Tray Dawson still here?”
    He looked at me with a very serious expression. “Yes; he can’t be moved.”
    “Why not? Why didn’t Dr. Ludwig take him?”
    “He would not survive being moved.”
    “No,” I said, shocked even after all that I’d been through.
    “Bill told me about the vampire blood he ingested. They hoped he’d go crazy enough to hurt you, but his leaving you alone was good enough. Lochlan and Neave were delayed; a pair of Niall’s warriors found them, attacked them, and they had to fight. Afterward, they decided to stake out your house. They wanted to be sure Dawson wouldn’t come to help you. Bill called me to tell me that you and he went to Dawson’s house. By that time, they already had Dawson. They had fun with him before they had . . . before they caught you.”
    “Dawson’s that hurt? I thought the effects of the bad vamp blood would wear off by now.” I couldn’t imagine the big man, the toughest Were I knew, being defeated.
    “The vampire blood they used was just a vehicle for the poison. They’d never tried it on a Were, I suppose, because it took a long time to act. And then they practiced their arts on him. Can you rise?”
    I tried to gather my muscles to make the effort. “Maybe not yet.”
    “I’ll carry you.”
    “Where?”
    “Bill wants to talk to you. You have to be brave.”
    “My purse,” I said. “I need something from it.”
    Wordlessly Eric put the soft cloth purse, now spoiled and stained, on the bed beside me. With great concentration, I was able to open it and slide my hand inside. Eric raised his eyebrows when he saw what I’d pulled out of the purse, but he heard something outside that made him looked alarmed. Eric was up and sliding his arms under me, and then he straightened as easily as if I’d been a plate of spaghetti. At the door he paused, and I managed to turn the knob for him. He used his foot to push it open, and out we went into the corridor. I was able to see that we were in an old building, some kind of small business that had been converted to its present purpose. There were doors up and down the hall, and there was a glass-enclosed control room of some kind about midway down. Through the glass on its opposite side, I could see a gloomy warehouse. There were a few lights on in it, just enough to disclose that it was empty except for some discards, like dilapidated shelving and machine parts.
    We turned right to enter the room at the end of the hall. Again, I performed the honors with the knob, and this time it wasn’t quite as agonizing to grip the knob and turn it.
    There were two beds inside this room.
    Bill was in the right-hand bed, and Clancy was sitting in a plastic chair pulled up right against the side. He was feeding Bill the same way Eric had fed me. Bill’s skin was gray. His cheeks had caved in. He looked like death.
    Tray Dawson was in the next bed. If Bill looked like he was dying, Tray looked like he was already dead. His face was bruised blue. One of his ears had been bitten off. His eyes were swollen shut. There was crusted blood everywhere. And this was just what I could see of his face. His arms were lying on top of the sheet, and they were both splinted.
    Eric laid me down beside Bill. Bill’s eyes opened, and at least they were the same: dark brown, fathomless. He stopped drinking from Clancy, but he didn’t move or look better.
    “The silver is in his system,” Clancy said quietly. “Its poison has traveled to every part of his body. He’ll need more and more blood to drive it out.”
    I wanted to say, “Will he get better?” But I couldn’t, not with Bill lying there. Clancy rose from beside the bed, and he and Eric began having a whispered conversation—a