Dead to the World

attack, or maybe she just fooled herself into believing it, but she laid her hand on his shoulder, and he bit her savagely enough to draw blood. She shrieked and scrambled back. For a few seconds, she crouched there, cradling her bleeding hand and crying. Her eyes met mine and almost glowed with hatred. She would never forgive me. She would blame me the rest of her life for Alcide’s discovery of her dark nature. She’d toyed with him for two years, pulling him to her, pushing him back, concealing from him the elements of her nature he would never accept, but wanting him with her nonetheless. Now it was all over.
    And this was my fault?
    But I wasn’t thinking in Debbie terms, I was thinking like a rational human being, and of course Debbie Pelt was not. I wished the hand that had caught her neck during the struggle in the cloud had choked her to death. I watched her back as she pushed open the door and strode into the night, and at that moment I knew Debbie Pelt would be out to get me for the rest of her life. Maybe Alcide’s bite would get infected and she’d get blood poisoning?
    In reflex action, I chastised myself: That was an evil thought; God didn’t want us to wish ill on anyone. I just hoped He was listening in to Debbie, too, the way you hope the highway patrolman who stopped you for a ticket is also going to stop the guy behind you who was trying to pass you on the double yellow line.
    The redheaded Were, Amanda, came over to me. She was bitten here and there, and she had a swollen lump on her forehead, but she was quietly beaming. “While I’m in a good mood, I want to apologize for insulting you,” she said directly. “You came through in this fight. Even if you can tolerate vamps, I won’t hold that against you anymore. Maybe you’ll see the light.” I nodded, and she strolled away to check on her packmates.
    Pam had tied up Hallow, and Pam, Eric, and Gerald had gone to kneel beside someone on the other side of the room. I wondered vaguely what was happening over there, but Alcide was shimmering back into human form, and when he’d oriented himself, he crawled over to me. I was too exhausted to care that he was naked, but I had a floating idea that I should try to remember the sight, since I’d want to recall it at my leisure later.
    He had some grazes and bloody spots, and one deep laceration, but overall he looked pretty good.
    “There’s blood on your face,” he said, with an effort.
    “Not mine.”
    “Thank God,” he said, and he lay on the floor beside me. “How bad are you hurt?”
    “I’m not hurt, not really,” I said. “I mean, I got shoved around a lot, and choked a little maybe, and snapped at, but no one hit me!” By golly, I was going to make my New Year’s resolution come true, after all.
    “I’m sorry we didn’t find Jason here,” he said.
    “Eric asked Pam and Gerald if the vampires were holding him, and they said no,” I remarked. “He’d thought of a real good reason for the vamps to have him. But they didn’t.”
    “Chow is dead.”
    “How?” I asked, sounding as calm as if it hardly mattered. Truthfully, I had never been very partial to the bartender, but I would have shown a decent concern if I hadn’t been so tired.
    “One of Hallow’s group had a wooden knife.”
    “I never saw one before,” I said after a moment, and that was all I could think to say about the death of Chow.
    “Me, neither.”
    After a long moment, I said, “I’m sorry about Debbie.” What I meant was, I was sorry Debbie had hurt him so badly, had proved to be such a dreadful person that he’d had to take a drastic step to get her out of his life.
    “Debbie who?” he asked, and rolled to his feet and padded away across the filthy floor strewn with blood, bodies, and supernatural debris.

Chapter  13
    T HE AFTERMATH OF A BATTLE IS MELANCHOLY AND nasty. I guess you could call what we’d had a battle . . . maybe more like a supernatural skirmish? The wounded have to be tended, the blood has to be cleaned up, the bodies have to be buried. Or, in this case, disposed of—Pam decided to burn the store down, leaving the bodies of Hallow’s coven inside.
    They hadn’t all died. Hallow, of course, was still alive. One other witch survived, though she was badly hurt and very low on blood. Of the Weres, Colonel Flood was gravely wounded; Portugal had been killed by Mark Stonebrook. The others were more or less okay. Only Chow had died, out of the vampire contingent.