I had a blank moment again, and then we were in the foyer. The pain seemed to be fading away, and its absence left me giddy.
As the master of this mansion, Russell's return was a big event, and when the inhabitants smelled fresh blood, they were doubly quick to come thronging. I felt like I'd landed in the middle of romance cover model contest. I had never seen so many cute men in one place in my life. But I could tell they were not for me. Russell was like the gay vampire Hugh Hefner, and this was the Playboy Mansion, with an emphasis on the "boy."
"Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink," I said, and Eric laughed out loud. That was why I liked him, I thought rosily; he "got" me.
"Good, the shot's taking effect," said a white-haired man in a sports shirt and pleated trousers. He was human, and he might as well have had a stethoscope tattooed around his neck, he was so clearly a doctor. "Will you be needing me?"
"Why don't you stay for a while?" Russell suggested. "Josh will keep you company, I'm sure."
I didn't get to see what Josh looked like, because Eric was carrying me upstairs then.
"Rhett and Scarlet," I said.
"I don't understand," Eric told me.
"You haven't seen Gone with the Wind?" I was horrified. But then, why should a vampire Viking have seen that staple of the Southern mystique? But he'd read The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, which I had worked my way through in high school. "You'll have to watch it on video. Why am I acting so stupid? Why am I not scared?"
"That human doctor gave you a big dose of drugs," Eric said, smiling down at me. "Now I am carrying you to a bedroom so you can be healed."
"He's here," I told Eric.
His eyes flashed caution at me. "Russell, yes. But I'm afraid that Alcide made less than a stellar choice, Sookie. He raced off into the night after the other attacker. He should have stayed with you."
"Screw him," I said expansively.
"He wishes, especially after seeing you dance."
I wasn't feeling quite good enough to laugh, but it did cross my mind. "Giving me drugs maybe wasn't such a great idea," I told Eric. I had too many secrets to keep.
"I agree, but I am glad you're out of pain."
Then we were in a bedroom, and Eric was laying me on a gosh-to-goodness canopied four-poster. He took the opportunity to whisper, "Be careful," in my ear. And I tried to bore that thought into my drug-addled brain. I might blurt out the fact that I knew, beyond a doubt, that Bill was somewhere close to me.
Chapter Ten
There was quite a crowd in the bedroom, I noticed. Eric had gotten me situated on the bed, which was so high, I might need a stepstool to get down. But it would be convenient for the healing, I had heard Russell comment, and I was beginning to worry about what constituted "the healing." The last time I'd been involved in a vampire "healing," the treatment had been what you might call nontraditional.
"What's gonna happen?" I asked Eric, who was standing at the side of the bed on my left, non-wounded, side.
But it was the vampire who had taken his place to my right who answered. He had a long, horsy face, and his blond eyebrows and eyelashes were almost invisible against his pallor. His bare chest was hairless, too. He was wearing a pair of pants, which I suspected were vinyl. Even in the winter, they must be, um, unbreathing. I wouldn't like to peel those suckers off. This vamp's saving grace was his lovely straight pale hair, the color of white corn.
"Miss Stackhouse, this is Ray Don," Russell said.
"How de do." Good manners would make you welcome anywhere, my gran had always told me.
"Pleased to meet you," he responded correctly. He had been raised right, too, though no telling when that had been. "I'm not going to ask you how you're doing, cause I can see you got a great big hole in your side."
"Kind of ironic, isn't it, that it was the human that got staked," I said socially. I hoped I would see that doctor again, because I sure wanted to ask him what he'd given me. It was worth its weight in gold.
Ray Don gave me a dubious look, and I realized I'd just shot out of his comfort zone, conversationally. Maybe I could give Ray Don a Word of the Day calendar, like Arlene gave me every Christmas.
"I'll tell you what's going to happen, Sookie," Eric said. "You know, when we start to feed and our fangs come out, they release a little anticoagulant?"
"Um-hum."
"And when we are ready to finish feeding, the fangs release a little coagulant and a little trace of the, the-"
"Stuff that helps you all heal so fast?"
"Yes, exactly."
"So, Ray Don is going to what?"
"Ray Don, his nest mates say, has an extra supply of all these chemicals in his body. This is his talent."
Ray Don beamed at me. He was proud of that.
"So he will start the process on a volunteer, and when he has fed, he will begin cleaning your wound and healing it."
What Eric had left out of this narrative was that at some point during this process, the stake was going to have to come out, and that no drug in the world could keep that from hurting like a son of a bitch. I realized that in one of my few moments of clarity.
"Okay," I said. "Let's get the show on the road."
The volunteer turned out to be a thin blond human teenager, who was no taller than me and probably no wider in the shoulders. He seemed to be quite willing. Ray Don gave him a big kiss before he bit him, which I could have done without, since I'm not into public displays of carnal affection. (When I say "big," I don't mean a loud smack, but the intense, moaning, tonsil-sucking kind.) When that was done, to both their satisfactions, Blondie inclined his head to one side, and the taller Ray Don sank his fangs in. There was much cleaving, and much panting-and even to drug-addled me, Ray Don's vinyl pants didn't leave enough to the imagination.
Eric watched without apparent reaction. Vampires seem, as a whole, to be extremely tolerant of any sexual preference; I guess there aren't that many taboos when you've been alive a few hundred years.
When Ray Don drew back from Blondie and turned to face the bed, he had a bloody mouth. My euphoria evaporated as Eric instantly sat on the bed and pinned my shoulders. The Big Bad Thing was coming.
"Look at me," he demanded. "Look at me, Sookie."
I felt the bed indent, and I assumed Ray Don was kneeling beside it and leaning over to my wound.
There was a jar in the torn flesh of my side that jolted me down to the marrow of my bones. I felt the blood leave my face and felt hysteria bubbling up my throat like my blood was leaving the wound.
"Don't, Sookie! Look at me!" Eric said urgently.
I looked down to see that Ray Don had grabbed the stake.
Next he would …
I screamed over and over, until I didn't have the energy. I met Eric's eyes as I felt Ray Don's mouth sucking at the wound. Eric was holding my hands, and I was digging my nails into him like we were doing something else. He won't mind, I thought, as I realized I'd drawn blood.
And sure enough, he didn't. "Let go," he advised me, and I loosened my grip on his hands. "No, not of me," he said, smiling. "You can hold on to me as long as you want. Let go of the pain, Sookie. Let go. You need to drift away."
It was the first time I had relinquished my will to someone else. As I looked at him, it became easy, and I retreated from the suffering and uncertainty of this strange place.
The next thing I knew, I was awake. I was tucked in the bed, lying on my back, my formerly beautiful dress removed. I was still wearing my beige lace underwear, which was good. Eric was in the bed with me, which was not. He was really making a habit of this. He was lying on his side, his arm draped over me, one leg thrown over mine. His hair was tangled with my hair, and the strands were almost indistinguishable, the color was so similar. I contemplated that for a while, in a sort of misty, drifting state.