"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."
"Of human blood," I said, wanting to make that perfectly clear. I'd had to have Bill's blood once to survive massive injuries and once to survive an examination of sorts, and I'd had another vampire's blood by accident, unlikely as that sounds. I'd been able to see changes in me after that blood ingestion, changes I didn't want to amplify by taking another dose. Vampire blood was the drug of choice among the wealthy now, and as far as I was concerned, they could have it.
"If Eric can pull some strings and get the human blood," the dwarf said. "At least half the transfusion can be synthetic. I'm Dr. Ludwig, by the way."
"I can get the blood, and we owe her the healing," I heard Eric say, to my relief. I would have given a lot to see Bill's face, at that moment. "What is your type, Sookie?" Eric asked.
"O positive," I said, glad my blood was so common.
"That shouldn't be a problem," Eric said. "Can you take care of that, Pam?"
Again, a sense of movement in the room. Dr. Ludwig bent forward and began licking my back. I shrieked.
"She's the doctor, Sookie," Bill said. "She will heal you this way."
"But she'll get poisoned," I said, trying to think of an objection that wouldn't sound homophobic and sizist. Truly, I didn't want anyone licking my back, female dwarf or large male vampire.
"She is the healer," Eric said, in a rebuking kind of way. "You must accept her treatment."
"Oh, all right," I said, not even caring how sullen I sounded. "By the way, I haven't heard an 'I'm sorry' from you yet." My sense of grievance had overwhelmed my sense of self-preservation.
"I am sorry that the maenad picked on you."
I glared at him. "Not enough," I said. I was trying hard to hang on to this conversation.
"Angelic Sookie, vision of love and beauty, I am prostrate that the wicked evil maenad violated your smooth and voluptuous body, in an attempt to deliver a message to me."
"That's more like it." I would have taken more satisfaction in Eric's words if I hadn't been jabbed with pain just then. (The doctor's treatment was not exactly comfortable.) Apologies had better be either heartfelt or elaborate, and since Eric didn't have a heart to feel (or at least I hadn't noticed it so far) he might as well distract me with words.
"I take it the message means that she's going to war with you?" I asked, trying to ignore the activities of Dr. Ludwig. I was sweating all over. The pain in my back was excruciating. I could feel tears trickling down my face. The room seemed to have acquired a yellow haze; everything looked sickly.
Eric looked surprised. "Not exactly," he said cautiously. "Pam?"
"It's on the way," she said. "This is bad."
"Start," Bill said urgently. "She's changing color."
I wondered, almost idly, what color I'd become. I couldn't hold my head off the couch anymore, as I'd been trying to do to look a little more alert. I laid my cheek on the leather, and immediately my sweat bound me to the surface. The burning sensation that radiated through my body from the claw marks on my back grew more intense, and I shrieked because I just couldn't help it. The dwarf leaped from the couch and bent to examine my eyes.
She shook her head. "Yes, if there's to be any hope," she said, but she sounded very far away to me. She had a syringe in her hand. The last thing I registered was Eric's face moving closer, and it seemed to me he winked.
Chapter 3
I opened my eyes with great reluctance. I felt that I'd been sleeping in a car, or that I'd taken a nap in a straight-back chair; I'd definitely dozed off somewhere inappropriate and uncomfortable. I felt groggy, and I ached all over. Pam was sitting on the floor a yard away, her wide blue eyes fixed on me.
"It worked," she commented. "Dr. Ludwig was right."
"Great."
"Yes, it would have been a pity to lose you before we'd gotten a chance to get some good out of you," she said with shocking practicality. "There are many other humans associated with us the maenad could have picked, and those humans are far more expendable."
"Thanks for the warm fuzzies, Pam," I muttered. I felt the last degree of nasty, as if I'd been dipped in a vat of sweat and then rolled in the dust. Even my teeth felt scummy.
"You're welcome," she said, and she almost smiled. So Pam had a sense of humor, not something vampires were noted for. You never saw vampire stand-up comedians, and human jokes just left vampires cold, ha-ha. (Some of their humor could give you nightmares for a week.)
"What happened?"
Pam relaced her fingers around her knee. "We did as Dr. Ludwig said. Bill, Eric, Chow, and I all took a turn, and when you were almost dry we began the transfusion."
I thought about that for a minute, glad I'd checked out of consciousness before I could experience the procedure. Bill always took blood when we were making love, so I associated it with the height of erotic activity. To have "donated" to so many people would have been extremely embarrassing to me if I'd been there for it, so to speak. "Who's Chow?" I asked.
"See if you can sit up," Pam advised. "Chow is our new bartender. He is quite a draw."
"Oh?"
"Tattoos," Pam said, sounding almost human for a moment. "He's tall for an Asian, and he has a wonderful set of … tattoos."
&nb
sp; I tried to look like I cared. I pushed up, feeling a certain tenderness that made me very cautious. It was like my back was covered with wounds that had just healed, wounds that might break open again if I weren't careful. And that, Pam told me, was exactly the case.
Also, I had no shirt on. Or anything else. Above the waist. Below, my jeans were still intact, though remarkably nasty.
"Your shirt was so ragged we had to tear it off," Pam said, smiling openly. "We took turns holding you on our laps. You were much admired. Bill was furious."
"Go to hell" was all I could think of to say.
"Well, as to that, who knows?" Pam shrugged. "I meant to pay you a compliment. You must be a modest woman." She got up and opened a closet door. There were shirts hanging inside; an extra store for Eric, I assumed. Pam pulled one off a hanger and tossed it to me. I reached up to catch it and had to admit that movement was comparatively easy.
"Pam, is there a shower here?" I hated to pull the pristine white shirt over my grimy self.
"Yes, in the storeroom. By the employees' bathroom."
It was extremely basic, but it was a shower with soap and a towel. You had to step right out into the storeroom, which was probably just fine with the vampires, since modesty is not a big issue with them. When Pam agreed to guard the door, I enlisted her help in pulling off the jeans and shucking my shoes and socks. She enjoyed the process a little too much.
It was the best shower I'd ever had.
I had to move slowly and carefully. I found I was as shaky as though I'd passed through a grave illness, like pneumonia or a virulent strain of the flu. And I guess I had. Pam opened the door enough to pass me some underwear, which was a pleasant surprise, at least until I dried myself and prepared to struggle into it. The underpants were so tiny and lacy they hardly deserved to be called panties. At least they were white. I knew I was better when I caught myself wishing I could see how I looked in a mirror. The underpants and the white shirt were the only garments I could bear to put on. I came out barefoot, to find that Pam had rolled up the jeans and everything else and stuffed them in a plastic bag so I could get them home to the wash. My tan looked extremely brown against the white of the snowy shirt. I walked very slowly back to Eric's office and fished in my purse for my brush. As I began to try to work through the tangles, Bill came in and took the brush from my hand.
"Let me do that, darling," he said tenderly. "How are you? Slide off the shirt, so I can check your back." I did, anxiously hoping there weren't cameras in the office—though from Pam's account, I might as well relax.
"How does it look?" I asked him over my shoulder.
Bill said briefly, "There will be marks."
"I figured." Better on my back than on my front. And being scarred was better than being dead.
I slipped the shirt back on, and Bill began working on my hair, a favorite thing for him. I grew tired very quickly and sat in Eric's chair while Bill stood behind me.
"So why did the maenad pick me?"
"She would have been waiting for the first vampire to come through. That I had you with me—so much easier to hurt—that was a bonus."
"Did she cause our fight?"
"No, I think that was just chance. I still don't understand why you got so angry."
"I'm too tired to explain, Bill. We'll talk about it tomorrow, okay?"
Eric came in, along with a vampire I knew must be Chow. Right away I could see why Chow would bring in customers. He was the first Asian vampire I'd seen, and he was extremely handsome. He was also covered—at least the parts I could see—with that intricate tattooing that I'd heard members of the Yakuza favored. Whether Chow had been a gangster when he was human or not, he was certainly sinister now. Pam slid through the door after another minute had passed, saying, "All locked up. Dr. Ludwig left, too."
So Fangtasia had closed its doors for the night. It must be two in the morning, then. Bill continued to brush my hair, and I sat in the office chair with my hands on my thighs, acutely conscious of my inadequate clothing. Though, come to think of it, Eric was so tall his shirt covered as much of me as some of my short sets. I guess it was the French-cut bikini panties underneath that made me so embarrassed. Also, no bra. Since God was generous with me in the bosom department, there's no mistaking when I leave off a bra.
But no matter if my clothes showed more of me than I wanted, no matter if all of these people had seen even more of my boobs than they could discern now, I had to mind my manners.
"Thank you all for saving my life," I said. I didn't succeed in sounding warm, but I hope they could tell I was sincere.
"It was truly my pleasure," said Chow, with an unmistakable leer in his voice. He had a trace of an accent, but I don't have enough experience with the different characteristics of the many strains of Asians to tell you where he came from originally. I am sure "Chow" was not his complete name, either, but it was all the other vampires called him. "It would have been perfect, without the poison."
I could feel Bill tense behind me. He laid his hands on my shoulders, and I reached up to put my fingers over his.
Eric said, "It was worth ingesting the poison." He held his fingers to his lips and kissed them, as if praising the bouquet of my blood. Ick.
Pam smiled. "Any time, Sookie."
Oh, just fantastic. "You, too, Bill," I said, leaning my head back against him.
"It was my privilege," he said, controlling his temper with an effort.
"You two had a fight before Sookie's encounter with the maenad?" Eric asked. "Is that what I heard Sookie say?"
"That's our business," I snapped, and the three vampires smiled at each other. I didn't like that one bit. "By the way, why did you want us to come over here tonight, anyway?" I asked, hoping to get off of the topic of Bill and me.
"You remember your promise to me, Sookie? That you would use your mental ability to help me out, as long as I let the humans involved live?"
"Of course I remember." I am not one to forget a promise, especially one made to a vampire.
"Since Bill has been appointed investigator of Area 5, we have not had a lot of mysteries. But Area 6, in Texas, has need of your special asset. So we have loaned you out."
I realized I'd been rented, like a chainsaw or backhoe. I wondered if the vampires of Dallas had had to put down a deposit against damage.
"I won't go without Bill." I looked Eric steadily in the eye. Bill's fingers gave me a little squeeze, so I knew I'd said the right thing.
"He'll be there. We drove a hard bargain," Eric said, smiling broadly. The effect was really disconcerting, because he was happy about something, and his fangs were out. "We were afraid they might keep you, or kill you, so an escort was part of our deal all along. And who better than Bill? If anything should render Bill incapable of guarding you, we will send another escort right out. And the vampires of Dallas have agreed to providing a car and chauffeur, lodgings and meals, and of course, a nice fee. Bill will get a percentage of that."
When I'd be doing the work? "You must work out your financial arrangement with Bill," Eric said smoothly. "I am sure he will at least recompense you for your time away from your bar job."
Had Ann Landers ever covered "When Your Date Becomes Your Manager"?
"Why a maenad?" I asked, startling all of them. I hoped I was pronouncing the word correctly. "Naiads are water and dryads are trees, right? So why a maenad, out there in the woods? Weren't maenads just women driven mad by the god Bacchus?"
"Sookie, you have unexpected depths," Eric said, after an appreciable pause. I didn't tell him I'd learned that from reading a mystery. Let him think I read ancient Greek literature in the original language. It couldn't hurt.
Chow said, "The god entered some women so completely that they became immortal, or very close to it. Bacchus was the god of the grape, of course, so bars are very interesting to maenads. In fact, so interesting that they don't like other creatures of the darkness becoming involved. Maenads consider that the violence sparked by
the consumption of alcohol belongs to them; that's what they feed off, now that no one formally worships their god. And they are attracted to pride."
That rang a chime. Hadn't Bill and I both been feeling our pride, tonight?
"We had only heard rumors one was in the area," Eric said. "Until Bill brought you in."
"So what was she warning you of? What does she want?"
"Tribute," Pam said. "We think."
"What kind?"
Pam shrugged. It seemed that was the only answer I was going to get.
"Or what?" I asked. Again with the stares. I gave a deep sigh of exasperation. "What's she gonna do if you don't pay her tribute?"
"Send her madness." Bill sounded worried.
"Into the bar? Merlotte's?" Though there were plenty of bars in the area.
The vampires eyed each other.
"Or into one of us," Chow said. "It has happened. The Halloween massacre of 1876, in St. Petersburg."
They all nodded solemnly. "I was there," Eric said. "It took twenty of us to clean up. And we had to stake Gregory, it took all of us to do that. The maenad, Phryne, received tribute after that, you can be sure."
For the vampires to stake one of their own, things had to be pretty serious. Eric had staked a vampire who had stolen from him, and Bill had told me Eric had had to pay a severe penalty. Who to, Bill hadn't said, and I hadn't asked. There were some things I could live quite well without knowing.
"So you'll give a tribute to this maenad?"
They were exchanging thoughts on this, I could tell. "Yes," Eric said. "It is better if we do."
"I guess maenads are pretty hard to kill," Bill said, a question in his voice.
Eric shuddered. "Oh, yes," he said. "Oh, yes."
***
During our ride back to Bon Temps, Bill and I were silent. I had a lot of questions about the evening, but I was tired from my bones out to my skin.
"Sam should know about this," I said, as we stopped at my house.
Bill came around to open my door. "Why, Sookie?" He took my hand to pull me from the car, knowing that I could barely walk.
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