Dead to the World

to look a little better. “Drink,” he said, and I almost put my wrist to his lips, when I reconsidered. I managed to get some TrueBlood out of the refrigerator and heat it up, though the front of the microwave was less than pristine.
    I knelt to give it to him. “Why not you?” he asked painfully.
    “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I know you earned it, sweetie. But I have to have all my energy. I’ve got more work ahead.”
    Eric downed the drink in a few big gulps. I’d unbuttoned his coat and his flannel shirt, and as I looked at his chest to mark the progression of his bleeding, I saw an amazing thing. The bullet that had hit him popped out of the wound. In another three minutes, or perhaps less, the hole had closed. The blood was still drying on his chest hair, and the bullet wound was gone.
    “Another drink?” Eric asked.
    “Sure. How do you feel?” I was numb myself.
    His smile was crooked. “Weak.”
    I got him more blood and he drank this bottle more slowly. Wincing, he pulled himself to a full sitting position. He looked at the mess on the other side of the table.
    Then he looked at me.
    “I know, I know, I did terrible!” I said. “I’m so sorry!” I could feel tears—again—trailing down my cheeks. I could hardly feel more miserable. I’d done a dreadful thing. I’d failed in my job. I had a massive cleanup ahead of me. And I looked awful.
    Eric looked mildly surprised at my outburst. “You might have died of the bullet, and I knew I wouldn’t,” he pointed out. “I kept the bullet from you in the most expedient way, and then you defended me effectively.”
    That was certainly a skewed way to look at it, but oddly enough, I did feel less horrible.
    “I killed another human,” I said. That made two in one night; but in my opinion, the hollow-cheeked witch had killed himself by pushing down on the knife.
    I’d definitely fired the shotgun all by myself.
    I shuddered and turned away from the ragged shell of bone and flesh that had once held Debbie Pelt.
    “You didn’t,” he said sharply. “You killed a shifter who was a treacherous, murderous bitch, a shifter who had tried to kill you twice already.” So it had been Eric’s hand that had squeezed her throat and made her let go of me. “I should have finished the job when I had her earlier,” he said, by way of confirmation. “It would have saved us both some heartache; in my case, literally.”
    I had a feeling this was not what the Reverend Fullenwilder would be saying. I muttered something to that effect.
    “I was never a Christian,” Eric said. Now, that didn’t surprise me. “But I can’t imagine a belief system that would tell you to sit still and get slaughtered.”
    I blinked, wondering if that wasn’t exactly what Christianity taught. But I am no theologian or Bible scholar, and I would have to leave the judgment on my action to God, who was also no theologian.
    Somehow I felt better, and I was in fact grateful to be alive.
    “Thank you, Eric,” I said. I kissed him on the cheek. “Now you go clean up in the bathroom while I start in here.”
    But he was not having any of that. God bless him, he helped me with great zeal. Since he could handle the most disgusting things with no apparent qualms, I was delighted to let him.
    You don’t want to know how awful it was, or all the details. But we got Debbie together and bagged up, and Eric took her way out into the woods and buried her and concealed the grave, he swore, while I cleaned. I had to take down the curtains over the sink and soak them in the washing machine in cold water, and I stuck my coat in with them, though without much hope of its being wearable again. I pulled on rubber gloves and used bleach-soaked wipes to go over and over the chair and table and floor, and I sprayed the front of the cabinets with wood soap and wiped and wiped.
    You just wouldn’t believe where specks of blood had landed.
    I realized that attention to these tiny details was helping me keep my mind off of the main event, and that the longer I avoided looking at it squarely—the longer I let Eric’s practical words sink into my awareness—the better off I’d be. There was nothing I could undo. There was no way I could mend what I had done. I’d had a limited number of choices, and I had to live with the choice I’d made. My Gran had always told me that a woman—any woman worth her salt—could do whatever she had to. If you’d called Gran a liberated woman, she