Dead Ever After

chapter 16

At that point, it would have been nice if I could have fainted. But I didn’t. I lay there and tried to gather my wits, tried to comprehend what had just occurred. My shoulder was warm and wet.

I’d been shot.

I slowly understood that Mustapha had tried to save me (and himself) by throwing us to the ground, while Warren had fired at the shooter. I wondered what had happened inside the house.

“You hurt?” Mustapha growled, and I could feel him sliding off me.

“Yes,” I said. “I think I am.” My shoulder hurt like the very effing hell.

Mustapha had gotten to his knees but pressed himself against my car, using the still-open door as cover. Warren moved past us, gun at the ready, looking like a different person from the wispy ex-con who normally seemed a mere shadow of his brawny friend. Warren looked utterly deadly.

“A rattlesnake in a moth outfit,” I said.

“Say what?”

“Warren. He looks like a movie shooter now.”

Mustapha glanced after his buddy-and-maybe-more. “Yeah, he does. He’s the best.”

“Did he get the guy?” I said, and then I groaned between clenched teeth. “Wow, this hurts. We calling an ambulance?”

“He’s dead,” Warren called.

“Good to know,” Mustapha called back. “I figured. Good shot.”

“How’s Sookie?” Warren’s boots came into my constricting field of vision.

“Shoulder, not fatal, but she’s bleeding like a stuck pig. You calling 911?”

“Sure thing.” I heard the beeps and then the voice of the dispatcher.

“Need at least one ambulance, possibly two,” Warren said. “The Stackhouse place on Hummingbird Road.” I felt I’d missed part of the conversation.

“Sookie, I’m going to turn you over,” Mustapha said.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” I said between clenched teeth. “Really. Don’t.”

I could endure the status quo, but I was afraid any movement at all would make things worse.

“Okay,” he said. “Warren’s going to hold this jacket against your shoulder to apply some pressure, slow down that bleeding.”

Big boots were replaced by little boots. “Pressure” sounded painful. Sure enough, it was.

“Shepherd of Judea,” I said through clenched teeth, though I wanted to say something much, much worse. “Wow, dammit. How are the people in the house?”

“Mustapha’s checking on them now. I just glanced in to make sure they were all friendlies. One of ’em’s on the floor.”

“Who shot us?”

“Big guy, looks black but with a lot of white mixed in,” Warren said. “His features are real fine. Well, they were. And his hair is almost red.”

“Wearing . . . a uniform?”

“No,” Warren said, puzzled by my question. But I remembered the face and the hair, and I associated it with a uniform of some kind. Not armed forces . . . if I could just stop hurting, I could remember.

Someone in the house started screaming, and this time it was a woman.

“Why is she screaming?” I asked Warren.

“I guess she’s worried about . . .” Warren said.

I must have missed another second or two. Well, the pressure on the shoulder, Warren was serious about maintaining it. Mustapha was back when I opened my eyes. “Warren’s not supposed to be armed,” he told me.

“Huh?” I said with a huge effort, because I actually was beginning to feel swimmy and weird. Finally. Bring on the unconsciousness, I thought; and for once, I got my wish.

I woke to chaos. The two paramedics who had come to get Tara when she went into labor were now bending over me. They looked intent on their work, which at that moment was wheeling my stretcher to the ambulance.

So here’s the story, a voice was saying in my head. Thoughts don’t have voices, of course, and I wasn’t sure who was telling me this, since I was too tired to turn my head to look around the yard. The gun is yours. Someone gave it to you. You asked Warren to take you target shooting because you wanted to be sure you knew how to use it. He cleaned it for you. That’s the only reason he had it with him. Then that a*shole came out of the house and fired at you, and naturally, Warren fired back, since he didn’t want you to get killed. Nod if you understand.

“That’s what really almost happened,” I said, moving my head up and down. The medics looked at me with concern. I had misspoken. “That’s what happened, but not really.” More accurate?

“Sookie, how are you feeling?” one of them asked. The taller one.

“Not too good,” I said.

“We’re getting you to Clarice. You’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said, a little optimistically.

“Who else is hurt?” I said.

“Just worry about yourself right now,” she said. “The guy who shot you, they tell me he’s dead.”

“Good,” I said, and they seemed surprised. Is it not okay to be glad that someone who tried to kill you is down on the ground? If I were a better person, a much better person, I would be sorry that anyone in the world ever got hurt, but I had to face the fact that I was never going to be that nice a person. Even my grandmother hadn’t been that good.

We got to the hospital, and everything that happened after that was really unpleasant. Fortunately, I don’t remember a lot of it. And I took a nap for a while after it was over.

I didn’t hear the whole story until much later that evening. Andy Bellefleur was sitting in my room when I woke up. He was asleep, which I thought was almost funny.

When I giggled out loud, he stirred and looked at me.

“How you feeling?” he asked sternly.

“Okay,” I said. “I must be taking some excellent painkillers.” I was aware that my shoulder really hurt, but I didn’t care very much.

“Dr. Tonnesen took care of you. We got to talk, now that you’re awake.”

While Andy took me through the story of what had happened that evening, all I could think about was how weird it was that he and Alcee had the same initials. I pointed out that fact to Andy, and he gave me a look of sheer incredulity. “Sook, I’m going to come back to talk to you tomorrow,” he said. “You ain’t making any sense.”

“Did you tell Alcee to search his car? There’s something bad in there,” I said solemnly. “Now I’ve told you three times. He should do it. Do you think he’d let a friend of mine check it?”

Andy looked at me, and this time I could tell he was taking me seriously. “Could be,” he said. “Could be I’d let someone do it if I was standing right there. Because Alcee ain’t acting like himself, not at all.”

“Okeydokey,” I said. “I’ll take care of that just as soooooon as I can.”

“Doc’s just keeping you for the night, she says.”

“Good.”

As soon as Andy left, Barry came in. He looked like he’d been rode hard and put up wet. There were actually circles under his eyes. He told me what had happened in my house.

“How’s Bob doing?” I asked him out loud. I couldn’t even think at him, I was so out of it.

“He’s alive,” Barry said. “He’s stable. Of course, that’s where Amelia is.”

“Where’s Mr. C and Diantha?” I asked.

“Don’t you want to know who the dead man was?”

“Oh. Sure. Who?”

“Tyrese Marley,” Barry said.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Of course, I’m really on some drugs. Excellent drugs. Tyrese split some firewood for me the last time he was at the house. But why was Tyrese at my house, and why did he try to shoot me?”

“You should see the inside of your head, Sookie. It’s like a rainbow in there. Tyrese drove Copley Carmichael’s car, but he left it in the cemetery and walked through the woods to your house.”

“So where is Copley? Did they really sell their souls?”

“No one knows where Copley is, but I’ll tell you what Tyrese told us . . .”

Barry told me about Tyrese’s Gypsy, about the HIV, about Copley’s conviction that by using the cluviel dor (Barry had trouble explaining that part since he didn’t know much of anything about the cluviel dor) I had robbed Copley of regaining possession of Amelia and her life.

I listened to all this with very little comprehension. “I don’t get why Tyrese would set off to kill me when he learned that Gypsy was dead. Why wouldn’t he shoot Amelia’s dad? It was his fault.”

“My point exactly!” Barry sounded triumphant. “But Tyrese was like a gun pointed in one direction, and her suicide pulled the trigger.”

I shook my head very, very gently. “How’d he even get to the house? Amelia and Bob put wards on the house,” I pointed out with great clarity.

“The difference between the vampire who got fried and Tyrese . . . Well, there are two big differences,” Barry said. “Tyrese was a live human without a soul. The vampire was a dead person. The wards stopped him, not Tyrese. I don’t know what to make of that, and when Amelia can spare time to think of it, maybe she can tell us. Maybe we can talk about it tomorrow, okay?” he said. “Meanwhile, there are some other people waiting to see you.”

Sam came in silently. His hand found mine.

“You gonna tell me what’s wrong?” I whispered. I was fading into sleep.

“I can’t,” he said. “But I couldn’t stay away when I heard you got shot.”

And then Eric was behind him.

My hand must have jerked, because Sam’s tightened around it. I could tell from his face that he knew Eric was there.

“Heard you were going,” I said, with an effort.

“Yes, very soon. How are you? Do you want me to heal you?” I couldn’t interpret his voice or the fact that he was here. I was too exhausted to try.

“No, Eric,” I said, and I only sounded flat. I just couldn’t find nice words. “Good-bye. We need to let go of each other. I can’t do this anymore.”

Eric glared at Sam. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Sam came because I was shot, Eric. That’s what friends do,” I said. Each word was a labor to enunciate.

Sam didn’t turn to Eric, didn’t look him in the eye. I held on to his hand so I wouldn’t drift away.

Eric spoke once again. “I will not release you.” I frowned. He seemed to be speaking to Sam. Then he walked out of the hospital room.

What the hell? “Release you from what?” I said, trying to will Sam to tell me what was going on.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Don’t worry, Sookie.” And he kept my hand.

I fell asleep. When I woke up hours later, he was gone.