Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [639]
“I think not,” I said. “Amelia here is bleeding pretty bad, and I guess I am, too.” The bite didn’t hurt as badly as it was going to. The vamp’s saliva secretes a tiny bit of anesthetic, along with a healing agent. But the healing agent was meant for sealing the pinpricks of fangs, not for actual large tears in human flesh. “We’re going to need a doctor.” I’d met a vamp in Mississippi who could heal large wounds, but it was a rare talent.
“You both human?” he asked. The female cop was crooning in a foreign language to the new vampire. I didn’t know if the former werewolf, Jake Purifoy, could speak the language, but he recognized safety when he saw it. The burns on his face healed as we sat there.
“Yes,” I said.
While we waited for the paramedics to come, Amelia and I leaned against each other wordlessly. Was this the second body I’d found in a closet, or the third? I wondered why I even opened closet doors any more.
“We should have known,” Amelia said wearily. “When he didn’t smell at all, we should have known.”
“Actually, I figured that out. Since it was only thirty seconds before he woke up, it didn’t do a hell of a lot of good,” I said. My voice was just as limp as hers.
Everything got very confusing after that. I kept thinking it would be a good time to faint if I was ever going to, because this was really not a process I wanted to be in on, but I just couldn’t pass out. The paramedics were very nice young men who seemed to think we’d been partying with a vamp and it had gotten out of hand. I guessed neither of them would be calling Amelia or me for a date any time soon.
“You don’t want to be messing with no vampires, cherie,” said the man who was working on me. His name tag read DELAGARDIE. “They supposed to be so attractive to women, but you wouldn’t believe how many poor girls we’ve had to patch up. And that was the lucky ones,” Delagardie said grimly. “What’s your name, young lady?”
“Sookie,” I said. “Sookie Stackhouse.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Sookie. You and your friend seem like nice girls. You need to hang with better people, live people. This city’s overrun with the dead, now. It was better when everyone here was breathing, I tell you the truth. Now let’s get you to the hospital and get you stitched up. I’d shake your hand if you wasn’t all bloody,” he said. He gave me a sudden smile, white-toothed and charming. “I’m giving you good advice for free, pretty lady.”
I smiled, but it was the last time I was going to be doing that for a while. The pain was beginning to make itself felt. Very quickly, I became preoccupied with coping.
Amelia was a real warrior. Her teeth were gritted as she fought to keep herself together, but she managed all the way to the hospital. The emergency room seemed to be packed. By a combination of bleeding, being escorted by cops, and the friendly Delagardie and his partner putting in a word for us, Amelia and I got put in curtained cubicles right away. We weren’t adjacent to each other, but we were in line to see a doctor. I was grateful. I knew that had to be quick, for an urban emergency room.
As I listened to the bustle around me, I tried not to swear at the pain in my arm. In moments when it wasn’t throbbing as much, I wondered what had happened to Jake Purifoy. Had the vampire cops taken him to a vampire cell at the jail, or was everything excused since he was a brand new vamp with no guidance? There’d been a law passed about that, but I couldn’t remember the terms and strictures. It was hard for me to be too concerned. I knew the young man was a victim of his new state; that the vampire who had made him should have been there to guide him through his first wakening and hunger. The vampire to blame was most likely my cousin Hadley, who had hardly expected to be murdered. Only Amelia’s stasis spell on the apartment had kept Jake from rising months ago. It was a strange situation, probably unprecedented even in vampire annals. And a werewolf