Eric had liberated the Lincoln from a drug dealer, I was willing to bet. And that drug dealer had disabled the inner trunk release for reasons I didn't even want to think about too closely.
Oh, give me a break, I thought indignantly. (It was easy just then to forget the many breaks I'd had during the day.) Unless I got a final break, and got out of this trunk before Bill awoke, none of the others would exactly count.
It was a Sunday, and very close to Christmas, so the garage was silent. Maybe some people had gone home for the holidays, and the legislators had gone home to their constituency, and the other people were busy doing … Christmas, Sunday stuff. I heard one car leave while I lay there, and then I heard voices after a time; two people getting off the elevator. I screamed, and banged on the trunk lid, but the sound was swallowed up in the starting of a big engine. I quieted immediately, frightened of using more air than I could afford.
I'll tell you, time spent in the nearly pitch-black dark, in a confined space, waiting for something to happen-that's pretty awful time. I didn't have a watch on; I would have had to have one with those hands that light up, anyway. I never fell asleep, but I drifted into an odd state of suspension. This was mostly due to the cold, I expect. Even with the quilted jacket and the blanket, it was very cold in the trunk. Still, cold, unmoving, dark, silent. My mind drifted.
Then I was terrified.
Bill was moving. He stirred, made a pain noise. Then his body seemed to go tense. I knew he had smelled me.
"Bill," I said hoarsely, my lips almost too stiff with cold to move. "Bill, it's me, Sookie. Bill, are you okay? There's some bottled blood in here. Drink it now."
He struck.
In his hunger, he made no attempt to spare me anything, and it hurt like the six shades of hell.
"Bill, it's me," I said, starting to cry. "Bill, it's me. Don't do this, honey. Bill, it's Sookie. There's TrueBlood in here."
But he didn't stop. I kept talking, and he kept sucking, and I was becoming even colder, and very weak. His arms were clamping me to him, and struggling was no use, it would only excite him more. His leg was slung over my legs.
"Bill," I whispered, thinking it was already maybe too late. With the little strength I had left, I pinched his ear with the fingers of my right hand. "Please listen, Bill."
"Ow," he said. His voice sounded rough; his throat was sore. He had stopped taking blood. Now another need was on him, one closely related to feeding. His hands pulled down my sweatpants, and after a lot of fumbling and rearranging and contorting, he entered me with no preparation at all. I screamed, and he clapped a hand over my mouth. I was crying, sobbing, and my nose was all stopped up, and I needed to breathe through my mouth. All restraint left me and I began fighting like a wildcat. I bit and scratched and kicked, not caring about the air supply, not caring that I would enrage him. I just had to have air.
After a few seconds, his hand fell away. And he stopped moving. I drew air in with a deep, shuddering gasp. I was crying in earnest, one sob after another.
"Sookie?" Bill said uncertainly. "Sookie?"
I couldn't answer.
"It's you," he said, his voice hoarse and wondering. "It's you. You were really there in that room?"
I tried to gather myself, but I felt very fuzzy and I was afraid I was going to faint. Finally, I was able to say, "Bill," in a whisper.
"It is you. Are you all right?"
"No," I said almost apologetically. After all, it was Bill who'd been held prisoner and tortured.
"Did I …" He paused, and seemed to brace himself. "Have I taken more blood than I should?"
I couldn't answer. I laid my head on his arm. It seemed too much trouble to speak.
"I seem to be having sex with you in a closet," Bill said in a subdued voice. "Did you, ah, volunteer?"
I turned my head from side to side, then let it loll on his arm again.
"Oh, no," he whispered. "Oh, no." He pulled out of me and fumbled around a lot for the second time. He was putting me back to rights; himself, too, I guess. His hands patted our surroundings. "Car trunk," he muttered.
"I need air," I said, in a voice almost too soft to hear.
"Why didn't you say so?" Bill punched a hole in the trunk. He was stronger. Good for him.
Cold air rushed in and I sucked it deep. Beautiful, beautiful oxygen.
"Where are we?" he asked, after a moment.
"Parking garage," I gasped. "Apartment building. Jackson." I was so weak, I just wanted to let go and float away.
"Why?"
I tried to gather enough energy to answer him. "Alcide lives here," I managed to mutter, eventually.
"Alcide who? What are we supposed to do now?"
"Eric's … coming. Drink the bottled blood."
"Sookie? Are you all right?"
I couldn't answer. If I could have, I might have said, "Why do you care? You were going to leave me anyway." I might have said, "I forgive you," though that doesn't seem real likely. Maybe I would have just told him that I'd missed him, and that his secret was still safe with me; faithful unto death, that was Sookie Stackhouse.
I heard him open a bottle.
As I was drifting off in a boat down a current that seemed to be moving ever faster, I realized that Bill had never revealed my name. I knew they had tried to find it out, to kidnap me and bring me to be tortured in front of him for extra leverage. And he hadn't told.
The trunk opened with a noise of tearing metal.
Eric stood outlined by the fluorescent lights of the garage. They'd come on when it got dark. "What are you two doing in here?" he asked.
But the current carried me away before I could answer.
***
"She's coming around," Eric observed. "Maybe that was enough blood." My head buzzed for a minute, went silent again.
"She really is," he was saying next, and my eyes flickered open to register three anxious male faces hovering above me: Eric's, Alcide's, and Bill's. Somehow, the sight made me want to laugh. So many men at home were scared of me, or didn't want to think about me, and here were the three men in the world who wanted to have sex with me, or who at least had thought about it seriously; all crowding around the bed. I giggled, actually giggled, for the first time in maybe ten years. "The Three Musketeers," I said.
"Is she hallucinating?" Eric asked.
"I think she's laughing at us," Alcide said. He didn't sound unhappy about that. He put an empty TrueBlood bottle on the vanity table behind him. There was a large pitcher beside it, and a glass.
Bill's cool fingers laced with mine. "Sookie," he said, in that quiet voice that always sent shivers down my spine. I tried to focus on his face. He was sitting on the bed to my right.
He looked better. The deepest cuts were scars on his face, and the bruises were fading.
"They said, was I coming back for the crucifixion?" I told him.
"Who said that to you?" He bent over me, his face intent, dark eyes wide.
"Guards at the gate."
"The guards at the gates of the mansion asked you if you were coming back for a crucifixion tonight? This night?"
"Yes."
"Whose?"
"Don't know."
"I would have expected you to say, 'Where am I? What happened to me?'" Eric said. "Not ask whose crucifixion would be taking place-perhaps is taking place," he corrected himself, glancing at the clock by the bed.
"Maybe they meant mine?" Bill looked a little stunned by the idea. "Maybe they decided to kill me tonight?"
"Or perhaps they caught the fanatic who tried to stake Betty Joe?" Eric suggested. "He would be a prime candidate for crucifixion."
I thought it over, as much as I was able to reason through the weariness that kept threatening to overwhelm me. "Not the picture I got," I whispered. My neck was very, very sore.