CLUB DEAD Page 0,61

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