Behind him, forgotten on the corner bed, Tray Dawson made a superhuman effort and gripped the fairy’s shirt. With a negligent gesture, Breandan twisted slightly and brought the gleaming sword down on the defenseless Were, and when he pulled the sword back, it was freshly coated with red. But in the moment it took Breandan to do this, Bill thrust my trowel under Breandan’s raised arm. When Breandan turned back, his expression was startled. He looked down at the hilt as if he couldn’t imagine how it came to be sticking out of his side, and then blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
Bill began to fall.
Everything stood still for a moment, but only in my mind. The space in front of me was clear, and the woman abandoned her fight with Eric and leaped on top of the body of her prince. She screamed, long and loud, and since Bill was falling she aimed the thrust of her sword at me.
I squirted her with the lemon juice in my water pistol.
She screamed again, but this time in pain. The juice had fallen on her in a spray, across her chest and upper arms, and where the lemon had touched her smoke began to rise from her skin. A drop had hit her eyelid, I realized, because she used her free hand to rub at the burning eye. And while she did that, Eric swung his long knife and severed her arm, and then he stabbed her.
Then Niall filled the doorway of the room, and my eyes hurt to see him. He wasn’t wearing the black suit he wore when he met me in the human world but a sort of long tunic and loose pants tucked into boots. Everything about him was white, and he shone . . . except where he was splashed with blood.
Then there was a long silence. There was no one left to kill.
I slid to the floor, my legs as weak as Jell-O. I found myself slumped against the wall by Bill. I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. I was too shocked to weep and too horrified to scream. Some of my cuts had reopened, and the scent of the blood and the reek of fairy lured Eric, pumped full of the excitement of battle. Before Niall could reach me, Eric was on his knees beside me, licking the blood from a slice on my cheek. I didn’t mind; he’d given me his. He was recycling.
“Off her, vampire,” said my great-grandfather in a very soft voice.
Eric raised his head, his eyes shut with pleasure, and shuddered all over. But then he collapsed beside me. He stared at Clancy’s body. All the exultation drained from his face and a red tear made its way down his cheek.
“Is Bill alive?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. He looked down at his arm. He’d been wounded, too: a bad slash on his left forearm. I hadn’t even seen it happen. Through the torn sleeve, I watched the cut begin to heal.
My great-grandfather squatted in front of me.
“Niall,” I said, my lips and mouth working with great effort. “Niall, I didn’t think you would come in time.”
Truthfully, I was so stunned I hardly knew what I was saying or even which crisis I was referring to. For the first time, keeping on living seemed so difficult I wasn’t sure it was worth the trouble.
My great-grandfather took me in his arms. “You are safe now,” he said. “I am the only living prince. No one can take that away from me. Almost all of my enemies are dead.”
“Look around,” I said, though I lay my head on his shoulder. “Niall, look at all that’s been taken.” Tray Dawson’s blood trickled slowly down the soaked sheet to patter on the floor. Bill was crumpled against my right thigh. As my great-grandfather held me close and stroked my hair, I looked past his arm at Bill. He’d lived for so many years, survived by hook or by crook. He’d been ready to die for me. There is no female—human, fairy, vamp, Were—who wouldn’t be affected by that. I thought of the nights we’d spent together, the times we’d talked lying together in bed—and I cried, though I felt almost too tired to produce tears.
My great-grandfather sat back on his heels and looked at me. “You need to go home,” he said.
“Claudine?”
“She’s in the Summerland.”
I couldn’t stand any more bad news.
“Fairy, I leave cleaning this place to you,” Eric said. “Your great-granddaughter is my woman, mine and mine alone. I’ll take her to her home.”
Niall glared at Eric. “Not all the bodies are fae,” Niall said with a pointed glance at Clancy. “And what must we do with that one?” He jerked his head toward Tray.
“That one needs to go back into his house,” I said. “He has to be given a proper burial. He can’t just vanish.” I had no idea what Tray would have wanted, but I couldn’t let the fairies shovel his body into a pit somewhere. He deserved far better than that. And there was Amelia to tell. Oh, God. I tried to pull my legs up preparatory to standing, but my stitches yanked and pain shot through me.“Ahh,” I said, and clenched my teeth.
I stared down at the floor while I got my breath back. And while I was staring, one of Bill’s fingers twitched.
“He’s alive, Eric,” I said, and though it hurt like the dickens, I could smile about that. “Bill’s alive.”
“That’s good,” Eric said, though he sounded too calm. He flipped open his cell phone and speed-dialed someone. “Pam,” he said. “Pam, Sookie lives. Yes, and Bill, too. Not Clancy. Bring the van.”
Though I lost a little time somewhere in there, eventually Pam arrived with a huge van. It had a mattress in the back, and Bill and I were loaded in by Pam and Maxwell Lee, a black businessman who just happened to be a vampire. At least, that was the impression Maxwell always gave. Even on this night of violence and conflict, Maxwell looked neat and unruffled. Though he was taller than Pam, they got us into the back with gentleness and grace, and I appreciated it very much. Pam even forewent making any jokes, which was a welcome change.
As we drove back to Bon Temps, I could hear the vampires talking quietly about the end of the fairy war.
“It will be too bad if they leave this world,” Pam said. “I love them so much. They’re so hard to catch.”
Maxwell Lee said, “I never had a fairy.”
“Yum,” Pam said, and it was the most eloquent “yum” I’ve ever heard.
“Be quiet,” Eric said, and they both shut up.
Bill’s fingers found mine, gripped them.
“Clancy lives on in Bill,” Eric told the other two.
They received this news in a silence that seemed respectful to me.
“As you live on in Sookie,” Pam said very quietly.
My great-grandfather came to see me two days later. After she let him in, Amelia went upstairs to cry some more. She knew the truth, of course, though the rest of our community was shocked that someone had broken into Tray’s house and tortured him. Popular opinion said that his assailants must have believed Tray was a drug dealer, though there was absolutely no drug paraphernalia found in an intensive search of his house and shop. Tray’s ex-wife and his son were making the funeral arrangements, and Tray would be buried at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. I was going to try to go to support Amelia. I had another day to get better, but today I was content to lie on my bed, dressed in a nightgown. Eric couldn’t give me any more blood to complete my healing. For one thing, in the past few days he’d already given me blood twice, to say nothing of the nips we’d exchanged during lovemaking, and he said we were dangerously close to some undefined limit. For another thing, Eric needed all his blood to heal himself, and he took some of Pam’s, too. So I itched and healed, and saw that the vampire blood had filled in the bitten-out flesh of my legs.
That made my explanation of my injuries (a car accident; I’d been hit by a stranger who’d driven away) just feasible if not too many people examined the wounds. Of course, Sam had known right away that wasn’t the truth. I had ended up telling him what had happened the first time he came to see me. The patrons of Merlotte’s were very sympathetic, he reported when he came the second time. He had brought me daisies and a chicken basket from Dairy Queen. When he’d thought I wasn’t watching, Sam had looked at me with grim eyes.