"I'm just lucky that kudzu broke my fall," he mumbled.

"Sam and Milo are okay?" I asked. I slowly sat up. I was awfully woozy.

"Yeah, but the worst injured have been evacuated to the nearest hospital. We'll be trucking everybody else there in a few minutes. Sam got busted up. At the end, he was killing wights with his teeth since everything else was paralyzed. And Milo? After his little light show against Julie's mom, they're calling him Saint Milo now."

"Told you not to make fun of religious folks," Trip said.

"Julie?"

"Fine, she's wandering around here somewhere."

"Lee?" The last I had seen he had been hit pretty bad.

"He's going to live. But he's probably going to lose his leg. Gretchen did her best, but she wasn't sure." She sounded sad. "He was one of the lucky ones."

"Who else?" I asked. The others grew somber.

"We lost fifteen Hunters. We have another couple that are critical and might not make it. And then we have about twenty wounded. Once the Masters closed the distance, it got ugly. I guess they finally used the wargs to quickly evacuate everybody out of one side of the valley, so they could bomb the hell out of it. Then they concentrated on the last vamp."

"Are they all destroyed?"

"According to Julie, you killed the German, so we got six out of the seven," Trip answered.

"Let me guess." It was too much to hope. "Susan?"

"Yep. My mom got away," Julie said. She appeared in front of me, hands on her hips. Surprisingly, she looked fine, a little pale, but fine nonetheless. Not bad considering that I had watched her throat get cut only a few hours before. She extended her hand to me, I took it, and she did her best to pull me up, but failed miserably. I pulled her down with me. Despite the news of her mother, she laughed when she hit the ground.

"I'm glad to see you're okay," I said.

"Yeah, and you have some explaining to do. How the hell am I even alive? The last thing I remember is the pain, and then I started losing blood, and I was out. I woke up down here."

"Thrall saved your life. The last little bit of evil magic he had on his body, he gave to you. He held it on your neck and then it flew away."

"That would explain this." She brushed her hair aside. The side of her throat was still red and tender, but there was now a thick black line across the side, almost like a tattoo. "I'm not really into the whole body art thing, you know."

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

"Not really."

"Does it feel… evil?"

"Not that I can tell. If I get the sudden urge to drown a bag of kittens, I'll let you know."

"Well, let's not knock it then." I moved in for a kiss.