“You really love him.”
“Damned right I do, and now he’s going to die because of me.”
“It’s his own hellish actions—”
“Blow it out your ass, ghost boy! If it weren’t for my wanting to go on a play date, David would never have come to the damned seminar and Angie would never have gotten near him. That makes it my fault. I suppose you’ll be right there, cheering her on. Maybe she’ll let you watch when she kills me, too.”
“She won’t kill you. As soon as the vampire is dead, she’ll let you go so you can be with your own kind.”
“What makes them my kind? It was a werewolf who nearly killed me, not a vampire. Speaking of werewolf bites, you might want to check out the ones on your neck.”
“It was a vampire—”
“I’ve seen plenty of vampire bites, and they don’t look like that. Take a good look at yourself in the mirror. Maybe your friend Carl tried to make it look like a vampire bite, but I bet even you can tell the difference between wolf teeth and vampire fangs.”
“Carl was my friend.”
“He was Dead Bob’s friend—he didn’t give two cents for Live Bob.” I threw up my hands in disgust. “Believe what you want. It’s not like I’ll be around to care. Angie won’t leave a witness.”
“Witness to what? Killing a vampire is no crime.”
“How about the other murders she’s committed?” I took a deep breath. “I can smell at least three humans who were kept in this cage, plus two of what I think were witches. Werewolves, too. What happened to them? Carl was in here, too, and you know he’s dead.”
“He was in a car accident!”
“Don’t tell me. I bet his body was completely destroyed.”
“So?”
I didn’t have the energy to argue with him, not with the scents of so many deaths seeping into my pores. I just turned my back on him, and when he came into the cage, shut my eyes and put my fingers in my ears. Eventually he got tired of talking to somebody who wasn’t in a receptive frame of mind. I waited until I was sure he was gone to cry.
Another interminable period of time passed while I tried to figure out some way I could get at Angie before she killed me, but when the lab door opened, I had nothing. I didn’t even want to look at her. I only opened my eyes when I smelled David. At first I honestly thought I was dreaming, but no dream I’ve ever had got that scent right.
I leapt up. “Is Angie . . . ? Did you . . . ?”
“She’s dead.”
“What happened?”
He didn’t answer because he was busy ripping the cage open, and after that, we were both busy for several minutes. Just having him still alive—well, as alive as I’d ever known him to be—should have been enough, but my stomach was growling constantly by that point.
“Sorry,” I said.
He just smiled and picked me up to carry me outside. Breathing the untainted nighttime air was intoxicating. In fact, the air was better than untainted. I smelled werewolves. And chicken soup!
Somebody pushed a cardboard container of hot soup into my hand, and I inhaled it. Only when I was wiping my lips with the back of my hand did I realize that it was Shannon who’d handed it to me.
Other werewolves I recognized were going into and out of Angie’s lab, which was apparently under an old barn out in the middle of nowhere. Whatever spell she’d used to hide the place had been broken.
Shannon gave me another container of soup, saying, “Remember, you’re not human. You don’t have to go slow.”
I took her at her word, and slurped down that and the next two portions without hesitating. Only then did I say, “David, I think you can put me down.”
“Must I?” he said, but did so and promptly wrapped his coat around me. I wasn’t cold, but I did appreciate having his aroma to inhale. I wasn’t sure I would ever get the stench of that cage out of my nose.
“What happened?” I asked again. “Captain Bob said you’d gone to meet Angie.”
“I did, but Angie was in no hurry. She said she just wanted to ask more questions before letting me feed from her, but I don’t believe that she ever intended for me to bite her. She thought that if she drained my blood herself and drank it, the effect would be the same.”
“Would that have worked?”
He shrugged. “The wolves found us before she could try. She shot one with a dart gun, possibly what she’d intended to use on me, and they killed her before she could fire again.”
“Then how did you find me?”
“A friend helped.”
To my complete shock, Captain Bob floated into view.
“Since when are you a friend?” I asked.
“Since I helped save your life!”
“You helped Angie drug me in the first place.”
“I helped save your boyfriend, too.”
“You also helped lure him into Angie’s trap—still no points.”
He thought for a minute. “I told the wolves to bring you food.”
“Really?” Maybe we were friends after all.
The rest of the wolves stayed at Angie’s lair to explore it and decide what part of her research was worth saving. In a surprisingly short time, they dismantled the place and destroyed any evidence of supernatural beings. Of course, that meant destroying evidence of the murders, too, but Angie and Carl were both dead, so it seemed like the best choice.
While all that was going on, David drove me back to the Cahill Resort—it was too close to dawn for us to be sure of getting home. Captain Bob came along, cheerfully criticizing David’s driving. At least he had enough manners to leave us alone when we got back to my cabin.
There was only half an hour left of darkness by then—enough for me to either eat again or thank David properly for rescuing me. I think I made the right choice.
With David in the closet for the day, I took an obscenely long shower and then went down to the main building to see if the breakfast buffet was open. It wasn’t, but when the staff saw me, they started bringing me food. I don’t think French toast had ever tasted so good, and luckily for me, it was just the appetizer.
Other werewolves started arriving for breakfast after a while, and a good number stopped to say hello. Some were shy, some expressed concern and sympathy, and one was bold enough to make jokes about what I’d been through. It was all good. They’d rescued David and me. They might not be my pack, but they were my friends.
After people started heading off to seminar sessions, Captain Bob floated in.
“I thought you’d be getting some rest,” he said.
“Too hungry to sleep.”
He looked at the empty plates around me. “So I see.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“Maybe, but at least I never get heartburn. And I only fart when I want to.”
“There’s no fart like an old one,” I replied, and he chuckled. “So what changed your mind about David?”
“You love him. I thought it was Stockholm syndrome or something like that at first, but you weren’t abused or hypnotized. You just love him. I couldn’t take him from you.”
“Thank you.”
He smiled, I smiled back, and it was very sweet.
Of course he had to spoil it by saying, “Why you picked a vampire to love I’ll never know.”
I wasn’t going to try to explain it to him. “One more question. How did you talk the Council into riding to the rescue? They’d known Angie a long time—it couldn’t have been easy to convince them that she was a murderer.”
“It took some doing.”
“Yeah?”
