Burnt Offerings Read Free

bother it."
    "A lot of people will steal things out of the bag for souvenirs, Larry." Traffic started to creep forward and I had to watch the road instead of his face.
    "Fine, fine, I was wrong. I know I was wrong. I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her off the vampire." His eyes slid downward, not looking at me. This was the part that bothered him, or the part he thought would bother me. "I turned my back on her to check the vampire. To make sure she hadn't hurt him."
    "She did your back," I said. We inched forward. We were now trapped between Dairy Queen and Kentucky Fried Chicken on one side, and an Infiniti car dealership and a gas station on the other. The scenery was not improving.
    "Yeah, yeah. She must have thought I was down for the count because she left me and went back to the vampire. I disarmed her, but she was still trying to get to the vampire when the other attendant came in. It took both of us to pin her. She was crazy, manic."
    "Why didn't you draw your gun, Larry?" His gun was sitting in his vampire kit because a shoulder holster and his back wound did not mix. But he went armed. I'd taken him out to the shooting range, and out on vampire hunts until I trusted him not to shoot his foot off.
    "If I'd drawn my gun, I might have shot her."
    "That's sort of the point, Larry."
    "It's exactly the point," he said. "I didn't want to shoot her."
    "She could have killed you, Larry."
    "I know."
    I gripped the steering wheel tight enough to mottle my skin, white and pink. I let out a long breath and tried not to yell. "You obviously don't know, or you would have been more careful."
    "I'm alive, and she's not dead. The vampire didn't even get a scratch. It worked out all right."
    I pulled out onto Olive and started creeping towards 270. We needed to head north towards St. Charles. Larry had an apartment over there. It was about a twenty-minute drive, give or take. His apartment looked out over a lake where geese nested in the spring and congregated in the winter. Richard Zeeman, junior high science teacher, alpha werewolf, and at that time, my boyfriend, had helped him move in. Richard had really liked the geese nesting just under the balcony. So had I.
    "Larry, you are going to have to get over this squeamishness or you're going to get killed."
    "I'll keep doing what I think is right, Anita. Nothing you can say will change my mind."
    "Dammit, Larry. I don't want to have to bury you."
    "What would you have done? Shot her?"
    "I wouldn't have turned my back on her, Larry. I could have probably disarmed her or kept her busy until the other attendant arrived. I wouldn't have had to shoot her."
    "I let things get out of control," he said.
    "Your priorities were screwed. You should have neutralized the threat before you checked on the victim. Alive, you could help the vamp. Dead, you're just another victim."
    "Well, at least I've got a scar you don't have."
    I shook my head. "You'll have to try harder if you want a scar I don't have."
    "You let a human shove one of your own stakes into your back?"
    "Two humans with multiple bites, what I used to call human servants, before I knew what the term really meant. I had one pinned and was stabbing him. The woman came at my back."
    "So yours wasn't a mistake," he said.
    I shrugged. "I could have shot them when I first saw them, but I didn't kill humans as easily back then. I learned my lesson. Just because it doesn't have fangs doesn't mean it can't kill you."
    "You used to be squeamish about shooting human servants?" Larry asked.
    I turned onto 270. "No one's perfect. Why did the woman have a hard-on to kill the vampire?"
    He grinned. "You're going to love this one. She's a member of Humans First. The vampire was a doctor in the hospital. He'd tucked himself into a linen closet. It was where he always slept the day away if he'd had to stay too late in the hospital to drive home. She just popped him on a gurney and wheeled him down to the morgue."
    "I'm surprised she didn't