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The Were kneed me in the belly and I screamed, and the pig-man began to yell for the others to get me off of him, and the front door crashed open as Eric came in, blood covering his chest and right leg. Bill was right behind him.

They lost all control.

I saw firsthand what a vampire could do.

After a second, I realized my help would not be needed, and I decided the Goddess of Really Tough Gals would have to excuse me while I closed my eyes.

In two minutes, all the men in my living room were dead.

“SOOKIE? SOOKIE?” ERIC’S voice was hoarse. “Do we need to take her to the hospital?” he asked Bill.

I felt cool fingers on my wrist, touching my neck. I almost explained that for once I was conscious, but it was just too hard. The floor seemed like a good place to be.

“Her pulse is strong,” Bill reported. “I’m going to turn her over.”

“She’s alive?”

“Yes.”

Eric’s voice, suddenly closer, said, “Is the blood hers?”

“Yes, some of it.”

He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Hers is different.”

“Yes,” Bill said coldly. “But surely you are full by now.”

“It’s been a long time since I had real blood in quantity,” Eric said, just exactly like my brother, Jason, would have remarked it had been a long time since he’d had blackberry cobbler.

Bill slid his hands underneath me. “For me, too. We’ll need to put them all out in the yard,” he said casually, “and clean up Sookie’s house.”

“Of course.”

Bill began rolling me over, and I began crying. I couldn’t help it. As strong as I wanted to be, all I could think of was my body. If you’ve ever been really beaten, you’ll know what I mean. When you’ve been really beaten, you realize that you are just an envelope of skin, an easily penetrated envelope that holds together a lot of fluids and some rigid structures, which in their turn can simply be broken and invaded. I thought I’d been badly hurt in Dallas a few weeks before, but this felt worse. I knew that didn’t mean it was worse; there was a lot of soft tissue damage. In Dallas, my cheekbone had been fractured and my knee twisted. I thought maybe the knee had been compromised all over again, and I thought maybe one of the slaps had rebroken the cheekbone. I opened my eyes, blinked, and opened them again. My vision cleared after a few seconds.

“Can you speak?” Eric said, after a long, long moment.

I tried, but my mouth was so dry, nothing came out.

“She needs a drink.” Bill went to the kitchen, having to take a less than direct route, since there were a lot of obstructions in the way.

Eric’s hands stroked back my hair. He’d been shot, I remembered, and I wanted to ask him how he felt, but I couldn’t. He was sitting on his butt beside me, leaning on the cushions of my couch. There was blood on his face, and he looked pinker than I’d ever seen him, ruddy with health. When Bill returned with my water—he’d even added a straw—I looked at his face. Bill looked almost sunburned.

Bill held me up carefully and put the straw to my lips. I drank, and it was the best thing I’d ever tasted.

“You killed them all,” I said in a creaky voice.

Eric nodded.

I thought of the circle of brutish faces that had surrounded me. I thought of the Were slapping me in the face.

“Good,” I said. Eric looked a little amused, just for a second. Bill didn’t look anything in particular.

“How many?”

Eric looked around vaguely, and Bill pointed a finger silently as he toted them up.

“Seven?” Bill said doubtfully. “Two in the yard and five in the house?”

“I was thinking eight,” Eric murmured.

“Why did they come after you like that?”

“Jerry Falcon.”

“Oh,” said Bill, a different note in his voice. “Oh, yes. I’ve encountered him. In the torture room. He is first on my list.”

“Well, you can cross him off,” Eric said. “Alcide and Sookie disposed of his body in the woods yesterday.”

“Did this Alcide kill him?” Bill looked down at me, reconsidered. “Or Sookie?”

“He says no. They found the corpse in the closet of Alcide’s apartment, and they hatched a plan to hide his remains.” Eric sounded like that had