Pam looked mildly astonished. "We kill them all," she said.
Sid's grin faded. I flinched. I wasn't the only one.
Pam seemed to realize she'd said something unpalatable. "What else would we do?" she asked, genuinely amazed.
That was a stumper.
"They'll do their best to kill us," Chow pointed out. "They only made one attempt at negotiation, and it cost Eric his memory and Clancy his life. They delivered Clancy's clothes to Fangtasia this morning." People glanced away from Eric, embarrassed. He looked stricken, and I patted his hand with my free one. His grip on my right hand relaxed a little. My circulation resumed in that hand, and it tingled. That was a relief.
"Someone needs to go with Sookie," Alcide said. He glowered at Pam. "She can't go close to that house by herself."
"I'll go with her," said a familiar voice from the corner of the room, and I leaned forward, searching the faces.
"Bubba!" I said, pleased to see the vampire. Eric stared in wonder at the famous face. The glistening black hair was combed back in a pompadour, and the pouty lower lip was stretched in the trademark smile. His current keeper must have dressed him for the evening, because instead of a jumpsuit decked with rhinestones, or jeans and a T-shirt, Bubba was wearing camo.
"Pleased to see ya, Miss Sookie," Bubba said. "I'm wearing my Army duds."
"I see that. Looking good, Bubba."
"Thank you, ma'am."
Pam considered. "That might be a good idea," she said. "His, ah—the mental broadcast, the signature, you all get what I'm telling you?—is so, ah, atypical that they won't discover a vampire is near." Pam was being very tactful.
Bubba made a terrible vampire. Though stealthy and obedient, he couldn't reason very clearly, and he liked cat blood better than human blood.
"Where's Bill, Miss Sookie?" he asked, as I could have predicted he would. Bubba had always been very fond of Bill.
"He's in Peru, Bubba. That's way down in South America."
"No, I'm not," said a cool voice, and my heart flip-flopped. "I'm back." Out of an open doorway stepped my former flame.
This was just an evening for surprises. I hoped some of them would be pleasant.
Seeing Bill so unexpectedly gave me a heavier jolt than I'd figured. I'd never had an ex-boyfriend before, my life having been pretty devoid of boyfriends altogether, so I didn't have much experience in handling my emotions about being in his presence, especially with Eric gripping my hand like I was Mary Poppins and he was my charge.
Bill looked good in his khakis. He was wearing a Calvin Klein dress shirt I'd picked out for him, a muted plaid in shades of brown and gold. Not that I noticed.
"Good, we need you tonight," Pam said. Ms. Businesslike. "You'll have to tell me how the ruins were, the ones everyone talks about. You know the rest of the people here?"
Bill glanced around. "Colonel Flood," he said, nodding. "Alcide." His nod to Alcide had less cordiality. "I haven't met these new allies," he said, indicating the witches. Bill waited until the introductions were complete to ask, "What is Debbie Pelt doing here?"
I tried not to gape at having my innermost thoughts spoken aloud. My question exactly! And how did Bill know Debbie? I tried to remember if their paths had crossed in Jackson, if they'd actually met face-to-face; and I couldn't recall such a meeting, though of course Bill knew what she'd done.
"She's Alcide's woman," Pam said, in a cautious, puzzled sort of way.
I raised my eyebrows, looking at Alcide, and he turned a dusky red.
"She's here for a visit, and she decided to come along with him," Pam went on. "You object to her presence?"
"She joined in while I was being tortured in the king of Mississippi's compound," Bill said. "She enjoyed my pain."
Alcide stood, looking as shocked as I'd ever seen him. "Debbie, is this true?"
Debbie Pelt tried not to flinch, now that every eye was on her, and every eye was unfriendly. "I just happened to be visiting a Were friend who lived there, one of the guards," she said. Her voice didn't sound calm enough to match the words. "Obviously, there was nothing I could do to free you. I would have been ripped to shreds. I can't believe you remember me being there very clearly. You were certainly out of it." There was a hint of contempt in her words.
"You joined in the torture," Bill said, his voice still impersonal and all the more convincing for it. "You liked the pincers best."
"You didn't tell anyone he was there?" Alcide asked Debbie. His voice was not impersonal at all. It held grief, and anger, and betrayal. "You knew someone from another kingdom was being tortured at Russell's, and you didn't do anything?"
"He's a vamp, for God's sake," Debbie said, sounding no more than irritated. "When I found out later that you'd been taking Sookie around to hunt for him so you could get your dad out of hock with the vamps, I felt terrible. But at the time, it was just vamp business. Why should I interfere?"
"But why would any decent person join in torture?" Alcide's voice was strained.
There was a long silence.
"And of course, she tried to kill Sookie," Bill said. He still managed to sound quite dispassionate.
"I didn't know you were in the trunk of the car when I pushed her in! I didn't know I was closing her in with a hungry vampire!" Debbie protested.
I don't know about anyone else, but I wasn't convinced for a second.
Alcide bent his rough black head to look down into his hands as if they held an oracle. He raised his face to look at Debbie. He was a man unable to dodge the bullet of truth any longer. I felt sorrier for him than I'd felt for anyone in a long, long time.
"I abjure you," Alcide said. Colonel Flood winced, and young Sid, Amanda, and Culpepper looked both astonished and impressed, as if this were a ceremony they'd never thought to witness. "I see you no longer. I hunt with you no longer. I share flesh with you no longer."
This was obviously a ritual of great significance among the two-natured. Debbie stared at Alcide, aghast at his pronouncement. The witches murmured to one another, but otherwise the room remained silent. Even Bubba was wide-eyed, and most things went right over his shiny head.
"No," Debbie said in a strangled voice, waving a hand in front of her, as if she could erase what had passed. "No, Alcide!"
But he stared right through her. He saw her no longer.
Even though I loathed Debbie, her face was painful to see. Like most of the others present, as soon as I could, I looked anywhere else but at the shifter. Facing Hallow's coven seemed like a snap compared to witnessing this episode.
Pam seemed to agree. "All right then," she said briskly. "Bubba will lead the way with Sookie. She will do her best to do whatever it is that she does—and she'll signal us." Pam pondered for a moment. "Sookie, a recap: We need to know the number of people in the house, whether or not they are all witches, and any other tidbit you can glean. Send Bubba back to us with whatever information you find and stand guard in case the situation changes while we move up. Once we're in position, you can retire to the cars, where you'll be safer."
I had no problem with that whatsoever. In a crowd of witches, vampires, and Weres, I was no kind of combatant.
"This sounds okay, if I have to be involved at all," I said. A tug on my hand drew my eyes to Eric's. He looked pleased at the prospect of fighting, but there was still uncertainty in his face and posture. "But what will happen to Eric?"
"What do you mean?"