"She's gone to her final death," Eric told me.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" I put my arms around him, and after a second, his shoulders relaxed. I had never seen Eric so defeated. Even the awful night we'd been surrounded by the vampires of Las Vegas and forced to surrender to Victor, the night he'd thought we might all die, he'd had that spark of determination and vigor. But at the moment he was literally overwhelmed with depression and anger and helplessness. Thanks to his damn maker, whose ego had required he bring back a traumatized boy from the dead.
"Where's Alexei now?" I asked, making my voice as brisk as I could manage. "Where's Appius? Is he still alive?" To hell with the two-name requirement. I thought it would be great if Alexei had been helpful enough to kill the old vampire, save me the trouble.
"I don't know." Eric sounded completely defeated.
"Why not?" I was genuinely shocked. "He's your maker, buddy! You'd know if he died. If I've been feeling you three for a week, I know you've been feeling him even stronger." Judith had said she'd felt a tug the day of Lorena's death, though she hadn't understood what it meant. Eric had been alive for so long, maybe it would actually cause him physical harm if Appius died. In a snap, I completely reversed my thinking. Appius should live until Eric recovered from his wounds. "You need to get out of here and go find him!"
"He asked me not to follow when he went after Alexei. He doesn't want us all to die."
"So you're just going to sit home because he said so? When you don't know where they are or what they're doing, or who they're doing it to?" I didn't know what I wanted Eric to actually do. The drug was still coasting through my system, though it was slightly weaker - I was only seeing colors where they shouldn't be every now and then. But I had very little control over my thoughts and my speech. I was simply trying to get Eric to act like Eric. And I wanted him to stop bleeding. And I wanted Jason to come push Eric's bones back in because I could see them sticking out.
"Ocella asked this of me," Eric said, and he glared at me.
"So, he asked? That doesn't sound like a direct order to me. It sounds like a request. Correct me if I'm wrong," I said, as snarkily as I could.
"No," Eric said through clenched teeth. I could feel his anger rising. "It was not a direct order."
"Jason!" I yelled. My brother appeared, looking very grim. "Please push Eric's ribs back in," I said, which is another sentence I never thought I'd hear myself saying. Without a word, but with a hard-set mouth, Jason put his hands on each side of the gaping wound. He looked at Eric's nose, and said, "Ready?" Without waiting for an answer, he pushed in.
Eric made an awful noise, but I noticed the bleeding stopped and the healing began. Jason looked down at his reddened hands and went to find a bathroom.
"Well, then?" I said, handing Eric an open bottle of TrueBlood that had been left on the coffee table. He made a face, but gulped it down. "What are you gonna do?"
"Later on we'll have words about this," he said. He gave me a look.
"Fine with me!" I glared right back and went off on an irrational tangent. "And while you're listing the things you should be doing, where's the cleaning crew?"
"Bobby ..." he began, and then stopped short.
Bobby would have called the cleaning crew for Eric.
"Okay, how's about I do that part," I said, and wondered where to find a phone book.
"He kept a list of important numbers in the right-hand desk drawer in my office," Eric said, very quietly.
I found the name of the vampire cleaning service based midway between Shreveport and Baton Rouge, Fangster Cleanup. Since it was vampire run, they'd be open. A male answered the phone immediately, and I described the problem. "We'll be there in three hours, if the homeowner can guarantee us a safe sleeping place in case the job runs over," he said.
"No problem." There was no telling where the other two resident vampires were or if they'd survive to return before the dawn. If they did, they could all sleep in Eric's big bed or in the other light-tight bedroom, if the coffins were required. I thought there were a couple of the fiberglass pods stashed in the laundry room, too.
Now the carpets and the furniture would be cleaned. We just had to make sure no one else died tonight. After I hung up I felt super efficient but strangely empty, which I attributed to having lost everything that had been in my stomach. Since I was so light, I floated when I walked. Okay, maybe I still had more drug in me than I'd thought.
Then it suddenly hit me - Eric had said that Pam was in the house, too. Where was she? "Jason," I yelled, "please, please - find Pam."
I returned to the foul-smelling living room, marched over to the windows, and opened them. I swung around to face my boyfriend, who before this night had been many things: Arrogant, quick thinking, strong willed, secretive, and tricky were only the short list. But he'd never been indecisive, and he'd never been hopeless.
"What's the plan?" I asked him.
He was looking a little better now that Jason had done his thing. I couldn't see any bones anymore. "There isn't one," Eric said, but at least he looked guilty about it.
"What's the plan?" I asked again.
"I told you. I haven't made a plan. I don't know what to do. Ocella may be dead by now, if Alexei was clever enough to waylay him." Eric's bloody tears ran down his cheeks.
"Bzzzzzt!" I made the noise of a buzzer going off. "You'd know if Appius Livius was dead. He's your maker. What's the plan?"
Eric shot to his feet, with only a slight wince. Good. I'd goaded him upright. "I haven't got one!" he roared. "No matter what I do, someone will die!"
"With no plan, someone's going to die. And you know it. Someone's probably dying right this second! Alexei is crazy! Let's have a plan." I threw my hands up in the air.
"Why do you smell strange?" He'd finally taken in the PEACE T-shirt. "You smell of Were and of drugs. And you've been sick."
"I've already been through hell tonight," I said, maybe overstating a little bit. "And now I get to go through it twice, because someone's got to get your Viking butt on the road."
"What am I supposed to do?" he said, in a strangely reasonable voice.
"So you're okay with Alexei killing Appius? I mean, I sure am, but I would've thought you would've objected. Guess I was wrong."
Jason staggered in. "I found Pam," he said. He sat down very suddenly on an armchair. "She needed blood."