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back muscles was excruciating. I didn’t want to look at Bill while I moved toward him,because I didn’t want to soften at the sight of his rage. It was an almost palpable thing.
    “What did this to you, Sookie?” he asked softly.
    “Get me in the car. Please, get me out of here,” I said, doing my best to hold myself together. “If I make a lot of noise, she might come back.” I shivered all over at the thought. “Take me to Eric,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “She said this was a message for Eric Northman.”
    Bill squatted beside me. “I have to lift you,” he told me.
    Oh, no. I started to say, “There must be some other way,” but I knew there wasn’t. Bill knew better than to hesitate. Before I could anticipate the pain to its full extent, he scooted an arm under me and applied his other hand to my crotch, and in an instant he had me dangling across his shoulder.
    I screamed out loud. I tried not to sob after that, so Bill could listen for an attack, but I didn’t manage that very well. Bill began to run along the road, back to the car. It was running already, its engine idling smoothly. Bill flung open the back door and tried to feed me gently but quickly onto the backseat of the Cadillac. It was impossible not to cause me more pain by doing this, but he made the attempt.
    “It was her,” I said, when I could say anything coherent. “It was her who made the car stop and made me get out.” I was keeping an open mind about whether she’d caused the fight to begin with.
    “We’ll talk about it in a little while,” he said. He sped toward Shreveport, at the highest speed he could, while I clawed at the upholstery in an attempt to keep control over myself.
    All I remember about that ride was that it was at least two years long.
    Bill got me to the back door of Fangtasia somehow, and kicked it to get attention.
    “What?” Pam sounded hostile. She was a pretty blond vampire I’d met a couple of times before, a sensible sort of individual with considerable business acumen. “Oh, Bill. What’s happened? Oh, yum, she’s bleeding.”
    “Get Eric,” Bill said.
    “He’s been waiting in here,” she began, but Bill strode right by her with me bouncing on his shoulder like a bag of bloody game. I was so out of it by that time that I wouldn’t have cared if he’d carried me onto the dance floor of the bar out front, but instead, Bill blew into Eric’s office laden with me and rage.
    “This is on your account,” Bill snarled, and I moaned as he shook me as though he were drawing Eric’s attention to me. I hardly see how Eric could have been looking anywhere else, since I was a full-grown female and probably the only bleeding woman in his office.
    I would have loved to faint, to pass right out. But I didn’t. I just sagged over Bill’s shoulder and hurt. “Go to hell,” I mumbled.
    “What, my darling?”
    “Go to hell .”
    “We must lay her on her stomach on the couch,” Eric said. “Here, let me . . .” I felt another pair of hands grip my legs, Bill sort of turned underneath me, and together they deposited me carefully on the broad couch that Eric had just bought for his office. It had that new smell, and it was leather. I was glad, staring at it from the distance of half an inch, that he hadn’t gotten cloth upholstery. “Pam, call the doctor.” I heard footsteps leave the room, and Eric crouched down to look into my face. It was quite a crouch, because Eric, tall and broad, looks exactly like what he is, a former Viking.
    “What has happened to you?” he asked.
    I glared at him, so incensed I could hardly speak. “Iam a message to you,” I said, almost in a whisper. “This woman in the woods made Bill’s car stop, and maybe even made us argue, and then she came up to me with this hog.”
    “A pig ?” Eric could not have been more astonished if I’d said she had a canary up her nose.
    “Oink, oink. Razorback. Wild pig. And she said she wanted to send you a