Jason staggered in. “I found Pam,” he said. He sat down very suddenly on an armchair. “She needed blood.”
“But she’s moving?”
“Only barely. She’s cut, her ribs are kicked in, and her left arm and her right leg are broken.”
“Oh God,” I said, and dashed back to find her. I definitely hadn’t been thinking straight because of the drugs, or she would’ve been my first priority once I found Eric alive. She’d begun crawling to the living room from the bathroom, where Alexei had evidently trapped her. The knife slashes were the most obvious injury, but Jason had been right about the broken bones. And this was after she’d had Jason’s blood.
“Don’t say anything,” she grunted. “He caught me unawares. I am. so. stupid. How is Eric?”
“He’s going to be okay. Can I help you up?”
“No,” she said bitterly. “I prefer to drag myself along the hardwood floor.”
“Bitch,” I said, squatting to help her up. It was hard work, but since Jason had donated so much blood to Pam, I hated to ask him for help. We staggered into the living room.
“Who would have thought Alexei could do so much damage? He’s so puny, and you’re a great fighter.”
“Flattery,” she said, her voice ragged, “is not effective at this point. It was my fault. The little shit was following Bobby around, and I saw he’d gotten a knife from the kitchen. I tried to corner him while Bobby got out of the house. To give Ocella a chance to cool the boy down. But he went for me. He’s fast as a snake.”
I was beginning to doubt I could get Pam to the couch.
Eric rose unsteadily and put his arm around her. Between us, we maneuvered her over to the couch he’d vacated.
“Do you need my blood?” he asked her. “I thank you for doing your best to stop him.”
“He’s my kin, too,” Pam said, settling back on a pillow with relief.
“Through you, I’m related to that little murderer.” Eric made a gesture with his wrist. “No, you need all your blood if you’re going after him. I’m healing.”
“Since you got a few pints of mine,” Jason said weakly, with a ghost of his usual swagger.
“It was good. Thank you, panther,” she said, and I thought my brother smirked a little; but just then, his cell phone rang. I knew the ring tone; it was from a song he loved, Queen’s “We Are the Champions.” Jason extricated the phone from his pocket and opened it. “Hey,” he said, and then he listened.
“You okay?” he asked.
He listened some more.
“Okay. Thanks, honey. You stay inside, lock the doors, and don’t answer them until you hear my voice. Wait, wait! Until you hear my cell phone! Okay?”
Jason flipped the phone shut. “That was Michele,” he said. “Alexei was just at my house looking for me. She went to the door, but when she saw he was a deader, she didn’t ask him in. He told her he wants to warm himself in my life, whatever that means. He’d tracked me there from your house by my smell.” Jason looked self-conscious, as if he were afraid he’d forgotten to put on deodorant.
“Did the older one come after him?” I asked. I leaned against a handy wall. I was beginning to feel really ragged.
“Yeah, within a minute.”
“What did Michele tell them?”
“She told ’em to go back to your house. She figured if they were vamps, they were some problem of yours.” That was Michele, all right.
My cell was out in Jason’s truck. I used his to call my house. Claude answered. “What are you doing there?” I said.
“We’re closed on Monday,” he said. “Why’d you call if you didn’t want me to answer?”
“Claude, there is a very bad vamp headed to the house. And he can come in, he’s been there before,” I said. “You gotta get out. Get in your car and get out.”
Alexei’s psychotic break plus Claude’s fairy allure to vampires: This was a deadly combination. The night, apparently, was still not over. I wondered if it ever would be. For an awful moment, I looked into an endless nightmare of wandering from crisis to crisis, always one step behind.
“Give me your keys, Jason,” I said. “You’re in no shape to drive after your blood donation, and Eric’s still healing. I don’t want to drive his car.” My brother fished his keys from his pocket and tossed them to me, and I was grateful for someone who didn’t argue.
“I’m coming,” Eric said, and pushed to his feet once more. Pam had shut her eyes, but they flew open as she realized we were leaving.
“All right,” I said, since I would take any help I could get. Even a weak Eric was stronger than almost anything. I told Jason about the cleanup crew that was coming, and then we were out the door and into the truck with Pam still protesting that if we loaded her in she would heal along the way.
I drove, and I drove fast. There was no point in asking if Eric could fly so he could get there faster, because I knew he couldn’t. Eric and I didn’t talk along the way. We had either too much to say, or not enough. When we were about four minutes away from the house, Eric doubled over with pain. It wasn’t his. I got a backwash of it from him. Something big had happened. We were rocketing down the driveway to my house less than forty-five minutes after we’d left Shreveport, which was pretty damn good.
The security light in my front yard illuminated a strange scene. A pale-haired fairy I’d never seen before was standing back-to-back with Claude. The one I didn’t know had a long, thin sword. Claude had two of my longest kitchen knives, one in each hand. Alexei, who appeared to be unarmed, was circling them like a small white killing machine. He was naked and covered in splotches, which were all shades of red. Ocella was lying sprawled on the gravel. His head was covered in dark blood. That seemed to be the theme of the night.
We skidded to a stop and scrambled out of Jason’s truck. Alexei smiled, so he knew we were there, but he didn’t stop his circling. “You didn’t bring Jason,” he called. “I wanted to see him.”
“He had to give Pam a lot of blood to keep her from dying,” I said. “He was too weak.”
“He should have let her pass away,” Alexei called, and darted under the sword to give the unknown fairy a hard fist to the stomach. Though Alexei had a knife, he seemed to be feeling playful. The fairy swung the sword faster than I could follow with my eyes, and it nicked Alexei, adding another rivulet to the blood already coursing down his chest.
“Can you please stop?” I asked. I staggered, because I seemed to have run out of steam. Eric put his arm around me.
“No,” Alexei said in his high boy’s voice. “Eric’s love for you is pouring through our bond, Sookie, but I can’t stop. This is the best I’ve felt in decades.” He did feel wonderful; I could feel that coming through the bond. Though the drugs had temporarily deadened it, now I was feeling nuances, and there was such a contradictory bundle of them that it was like standing in a wind that kept changing directions.
Eric was trying to ease us over to where his maker lay. “Ocella,” he said, “do you live?”
Ocella opened one black eye behind a mask of blood. He said, “For the first time in centuries, I think I wish I didn’t.”
I think I wish you didn’t, too, I thought, and I felt him glance at me. “She’ll kill me with no compunction, that one,” the Roman said, almost sounding amused. In the same voice he said, “Alexei has severed my spinal column, and until it heals, I will not be able to move.”
“Alexei, please don’t kill the fairies,” I said. “That’s my cousin Claude, and I don’t have much family left.”
“Who’s the other one?” the boy asked, making an incredible leap to pull at Claude’s hair and vault the other fairy, whose sword was not quick enough this time.
“I have no idea,” I said. I started to add that he was no friend of mine and was probably an enemy, since I figured he was the one who’d been colluding with Basim, but I didn’t want to see anyone else die. except possibly Appius Livius.
“I am Colman,” the fairy
bellowed. “I am of the sky fae, and my child is dead because of you, woman!”
Oh.
This was the father of Claudine’s baby.
When Eric’s arms left me, I had to struggle to stay on my feet. Alexei did one of his darting runs into the circle of blades, punching Colman’s leg so hard that the fairy almost went down. I wondered if Colman’s leg had broken. But while Alexei was close, Claude managed to stab backward and wound Alexei in the spot right below his shoulder. It would have killed the boy if he’d been human. As it was, Alexei nearly slipped on the gravel but managed to scrabble to his feet and keep on going. Vampire or not, the boy was tiring. I didn’t dare look away to see what Eric was doing, where he was.
I had an idea. Under its impetus, I ran into the house, though I couldn’t run in a straight line and I had to stop and breathe on my way up the porch steps.
In a drawer in my night table was the silver chain I’d gotten so long ago when the drainers had kidnapped Bill for his blood. I grabbed the chain, staggered back out of the house with it concealed in my hand behind my back, and edged near to the three combatants—but closest of all to the dancing, whirling Alexei. Even in that short time I’d been gone, he seemed to have gotten a little slower—but Colman was down on one knee.
I hated my plan, but this had to stop.
The next time the boy came by I was ready, with plenty of slack in the chain I was gripping with both hands. I swung my arms up, then down, the slack of the chain landing around Alexei’s neck. I crossed my hands and pulled. Then Alexei was on the ground and screaming, and a shaved moment after that, Eric was there with a tree branch he’d broken off. He raised both arms and brought them down. The second after that, Alexei, tsarevitch of Russia, had gone to his final death.
I panted, because I was too exhausted to cry, and I sank to the ground. The two fairies gradually dropped their battle stances. Claude helped Colman stand, and they put their hands on each others’ shoulders.
Eric stood between the fairies and me, keeping a watchful eye on them. Colman was my enemy, no doubt about that, and Eric was being cautious. I took advantage of the fact that he wasn’t looking at me to pull the stake from Alexei and crawl over to the helpless Appius. He watched me coming with a smile.
“I want to kill you right now,” I said, very quietly. “I want you dead so bad.”
“Since you’ve stopped to speak to me, I know you’re not going to do it.” He said that with the utmost confidence. “You won’t keep Eric, either.”
I wanted to prove him wrong on both counts. But there’d been so much death and blood already that night. I hesitated. Then I raised the broken bit of branch. For the first time, Appius looked a little worried—or maybe he was simply resigned.
“Don’t,” Eric said.
I might still have done it if there hadn’t been pleading in his voice.
“You know what you could do that would actually be some help, Appius Livius?” I said. There was a shout from Eric. Appius Livius’s eyes flickered past me, and I felt him tell me to move. I thrust myself off to the side with every ounce of strength left in my body. The sword intended for me went right into Appius Livius, and it was a fairy blade. The Roman went into convulsions instantly, as the area around the wound blackened with shocking rapidity. Colman, who had been looking down at his accidental murder victim with shocked eyes, stiffened, and his shoulders went back. He began to topple, and I saw that there was a dagger between them. Eric shoved the quivering Colman away.
“Ocella!” Eric screamed, terror in his voice. Suddenly, Appius Livius went still.
“Well, all right,” I said wearily, and turned my heavy head to see who had thrown the knife. Claude was looking down at the two blades still in his hands as if he expected to see one of them vanish.
Color us puzzled.
Eric seized the wounded Colman and latched on to his neck. Fairies are incredibly attractive to vampires—their blood, that is—and Eric had a great reason to kill this fairy. He wasn’t holding back at all, and it was pretty gross. The gulping, the blood running down Colman’s neck, his glazed eyes. Both of them had glazed eyes, I realized. Eric’s were full of bloodlust, and Colman’s were becoming full of death. Colman had been too weakened by his many wounds to fight Eric off. Eric was looking rosier by the second.
Claude limped over to sit on the grass beside me. He put my knives carefully on the ground by me, as if I’d been badgering him for their return. “I was trying to persuade him to go home,” my cousin said. “I saw him only once or twice. He had an elaborate scheme to put you in a human jail. He planned to kill you until he saw you with the child Hunter in the park. He thought of taking the child, but even in a rage he couldn’t do it.”
“You moved in to protect me,” I said. That was amazing, from someone as selfish as Claude.
“My sister loved you,” Claude said. “Colman was fond of Claudine, and very proud she chose him to father her child.”
“I guess he was one of Niall’s followers.” He’d said he was one of the sky fairies.
“Yes, ‘Colman’ means ‘dove.’ ”
It didn’t make any difference now. I was sorry for him. “He had to know nothing I said would have stopped Claudine from doing what she thought was right,” I said.
“He knew,” Claude admitted. “That was why he couldn’t bring himself to kill you, even before he saw the child. That’s why he talked to the werewolf, concocted such an indirect scheme.” He sighed. “If Colman had really been convinced you caused Claudine’s death, nothing would have stopped him.”
“I would have stopped him,” said a new voice, and Jason stepped out of the woods. No, it was Dermot.
“Okay, you threw the knife,” I said. “Thanks, Dermot. Are you okay?”
“I hope. ” Dermot looked at us pleadingly.
“Colman had a spell on him,” Claude observed. “At least, I think so.”
“He said you didn’t have a lot of magic,” I said to Claude. “He told me about the spell, as close as he could say it. I thought it must be the other fairy, Colman, who put it on him. But since Colman is dead, I would have thought that would break the spell.”
Claude frowned. “Dermot, so it wasn’t Colman who laid the spell?”
Dermot sank to the ground in front of us. “So much longer,” he said elliptically. I puzzled over that for a moment.
“He was spelled much longer ago,” I said, finally feeling a little throb of excitement. “Are you saying that you were spelled months ago?”
Dermot seized my hand in his left and took Claude’s hand in his right.
Claude said, “I think he means that he’s been spelled for much longer. For years.” Tears rolled down Dermot’s cheeks.
“I bet you money that Niall did it,” I said. “He probably had it all worked out in his head. Dermot deserved it for, I don’t know, having qualms about his fairy legacy or something.”
“My grandfather is very loving but not very. tolerant,” Claude said.
“You know how they undo spells in fairy tales?” I said.
“Yes, I have heard that humans tell fairy tales,” Claude said. “So, tell me how they say to break spells.”
“In the fairy tales, a kiss does it.”
“Easily done,” Claude said, and as if we had practiced synchronized kissing, we leaned forward and kissed Dermot.
And it worked. He shuddered all over, then looked at us both, intelligence flooding his eyes. He began to weep in earnest, and after a moment Claude got to his knees and helped Dermot up. “I’ll see you in a while,” he said. Then he guided Dermot into the house.
Eric and I were alone. Eric had sunk onto his haunches a little distance from the three bodies in my front yard.
“This is positively Shakespearean,” I said, looking around at the remains and the blood soaking into the ground. Alexei’s corpse was already flaking away, but much more slowly than that of his ancient maker. Now that Alexei had met his final death, the pathetic bones in h
is grave in Russia would vanish, too. Eric had cast the body of the fairy onto the gravel, where it began to turn to dust, in the way fairies did. It was quite different from vampire disintegration, but just as handy. I realized I wouldn’t have three corpses to hide. I was so tired from the sum total of a truly horrific day that I found it the happy moment of the past few hours. Eric looked and smelled like something out of a horror movie. Our eyes met. He looked away first.
“Ocella taught me everything about being a vampire,” Eric said very quietly. “He taught me how to feed, how to hide, when it was safe to mingle with humans. He taught me how to make love with men, and later he freed me to make love with women. He protected me and loved me. He caused me pain for decades. He gave me life. My maker is dead.” He spoke as if he could scarcely believe it, didn’t know how to feel. His eyes lingered on the crumbling mass of flakes that had been Appius Livius Ocella.
“Yes,” I said, trying not to sound happy. “He is. And I didn’t do it.”
“But you would have,” Eric said.
“I was thinking about it,” I said. There was no point in denying it.
“What were you going to ask him?”
“Before Colman stabbed him?” Though “stabbed” was hardly the right word. “Transfi xed” was more accurate. Yes, “transfixed.” My brain was moving like a turtle.
“Well,” I said. “I was going to tell him I’d be glad to let him live if he’d kill Victor Madden for you.”
I’d startled Eric, as much as anyone as wiped out as he was could be startled. “That would have been good,” he said slowly. “That was a good idea, Sookie.”
“Yeah, well. Not gonna happen.”
“You were right,” Eric said, still in that very slow voice. “This is just like the end of one of Shakespeare’s plays.”
“We’re the people left standing. Yay for us.”
“I’m free,” Eric said. He closed his eyes. Thanks to the last traces of the drug, I could practically watch the fairy blood zinging through his system. I could see his energy level picking up. Everything physically wrong with him had healed, and now with the rush of Colman’s blood he was forgetting his grief for his maker and his brother, and feeling only the relief of being free of them. “I feel so good.” He actually drew a breath of the night air, still tainted with the odors of blood and death. He seemed to savor the smell. “You are my dearest,” he said, his eyes manic blue.
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