Burnt Offerings (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 7)

40

I expected Larry to be sitting in his car. He wasn't. He was leaning against it. Even from a distance I could tell he was in pain, back stiff, trying not to move any more than necessary. I pulled in beside him. Up close he looked worse. His white dress shirt was smeared with black soot. His summer-weight dress pants were brown, so they'd survived a little better. A black smudge ran across his forehead to his chin. The blackness outlined one of his blue eyes so that it seemed darker, like a sapphire surrounded by onyx. The look in his eyes was dull, as if the pain had drained him.

"Jesus, you look like shit," I said.

He almost smiled. "Thanks, I needed that."

"Take a pill, get in the Jeep."

He started to shake his head, stopped in mid-motion and said, "No, if you can drive, I can go to the next disaster."

"You smell like someone set your clothes on fire."

"You look pristine," he said, and he sounded resentful.

"What's wrong, Larry?"

"Other than my back feels like a red-hot poker is being shoved up it?"

"Besides that," I said.

"I'll tell you in the car." Underneath the sulkiness, he sounded tired.

I didn't argue with him, just started walking for the Jeep. A few steps and I realized he wasn't keeping up. I turned and found him standing very still, eyes closed, hands in fists at his sides.

I walked back to him. "Need a hand?"

He opened his eyes, smiled, "A back, actually. Hands work fine."

I smiled and took his arm gently, half expecting him to tell me not to, but he didn't. He was hurting. He took a stiff step, and I steadied him. We made slow but sure progress to the Jeep. His breath was coming in small, shallow pants by the time I got him around to the passenger side door. I opened the door, wasn't sure how to get him inside. It was going to hurt any way I could do it.

"Just let me hold your arm. I can do it myself," he said.

I offered my arm. He got a death grip on it and sat down. He made a small hissing noise between his teeth. "You said it would hurt worse the second day. Why are you always right?"

"Hard to be perfect," I said, "but it's a burden I've learned to cope with." I gave him my best bland face.

He smiled, then started to laugh, then almost doubled over with pain, which hurt more. He ended up writhing on the seat for a few seconds. When he could sit still again, he grabbed the dashboard until his fingers turned colors. "God, don't make me laugh."

"Sorry," I said. I got the aloe-and-lanolin Baby Wipes from the trunk of my car. They were great for getting blood off. They'd probably work on soot. I handed him the wipes and helped him buckle his seat belt. Yes, his wounds would have hurt less if he hadn't had the belt, but no one rides with me without a seat belt. My mom would be alive today if she'd been wearing a belt.

"Take a pill, Larry. Sleep in the car. I'll take you home after this next scene."

"No," he said, and he sounded so stubborn, so determined, that I knew I couldn't talk him out of it. So why try?

"Have it your way," I said. "But what have you been doing that you look like you've been trying to hide your spots?"

He moved just his eyes to look at me, frowning.

"Rolling in soot," I said. "Don't you ever watch Disney movies or read children's books?"

He gave a small smile. "Not lately. I've had three fire scenes where I just had to confirm the vamps were dead. Two of the scenes I couldn't find anything, just ashes. The third one looked like black sticks. I didn't know what to do, Anita. I tried to check for a pulse. I know that was stupid. The skull just exploded into ashes all over me." He was sitting very stiff, very controlled, yet his body gave the impression of hunching from pain, avoiding the blow of what he'd seen today.

What I was about to say wouldn't help things. "Vamps burn to ashes, Larry. If there were skeletal remains left, it wasn't vampire."

He looked at me then, the sudden movement bringing tears to his eyes. "You mean that was human?"

"Probably--I'm not sure, but probably."

"Thanks to me we'll never know for sure. Without the fangs in the skull you can't tell the difference."

"That's not entirely true. They can do DNA. Though truthfully I'm not sure what the fire does to DNA sampling. If they can gather it, they can at least know if it's human or vamp."

"If it's human, I've destroyed any chance they have of using dental records," he said.

"Larry, if the skull was that fragile, I don't think anything could have saved it. It certainly wouldn't have stood up to dental imprinting."

"Are you sure?" he asked.

I licked my lips and wanted to lie. "Not a hundred percent."

"You'd have known it was human. You wouldn't have touched it, thinking it was alive, would you?"

I let silence fill the car.

"Answer me," he said.

"No, I wouldn't have checked for a pulse. I would have assumed it was human remains."

"Dammit, Anita, I've been doing this for over a year, and I'm still making stupid mistakes."

"Not stupid, just mistakes."

"What's the difference?" he asked.

I was thinking that what he'd done to get his back ripped up was a stupid mistake, but decided not to say it out loud. "You know the difference, Larry. When you get over feeling sorry for yourself, you'll know the difference."

"Don't be condescending, Anita."

The anger in his voice stung more than the words. I didn't need this today. I really didn't. "Larry, I'd love to soothe your ego and make it all better, but I am all out of sugarplums and puppy-dog tails. My day hasn't been exactly a barrel of laughs either."

"What's wrong?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"Come on. I'm sorry. I'll listen."

I wasn't even sure where to start, and I wasn't ready to tell anybody about what had happened in the hospital room, least of all Larry.

"I don't even know where to start, Larry."

"Try," he said.

"Richard is being nasty."

"Boyfriend trouble," he said; he sounded almost amused.

I glanced at him. "Don't be condescending, Larry."

"Sorry."

"It's not just that. Before this emergency came up, they wanted me at the Church of Eternal Life. Malcolm is bedded in the basement. His followers want him to be rescued. The firemen want to know if they can leave him until nightfall when he'll rise on his own."

"So?" Larry asked.

"So, I don't have the faintest idea how to find out if Malcolm is alive or dead."

He stared at me. "You're kidding."

"Wish I was."

"But you're a necromancer," he said.

"I raise zombies and an occasional vamp, but I can't raise a master vamp of Malcolm's power. Besides, what if I could? Would that prove he was alive or prove he was dead? I mean if I could raise him, it might just mean he was ready to be a zombie. Hell, Jean-Claude's awake for the day, maybe Malcolm is, too."

"A vampire zombie?" Larry said.

I shrugged. "I don't know. I'm the only person who can raise vamps like zombies, that I know of. There aren't a lot of books on the subject."

"What about Sabitini?"

"You mean the magician?"

"He raised zombies as part of his act, and he had vampires that did his bidding. I've read eyewitness accounts of it."

"First, he died in 1880. A little before my time. Second, the vampires were just dupes who went along with him. It was a way for vampires who would have normally been killed on sight to walk freely among the people. Sabitini and his pet vampires, they called them."

"No one's ever proved that he was a fraud, Anita."

"Fine, but he's dead and he didn't leave any diaries behind."

"Raise him and ask," Larry said.

I stared at him long enough that I had to hit the brakes fast to keep from ramming a car in front of me. "What did you say?"

"Raise Sabitini and find out if he could raise vampires like you can. He's just a little over a hundred years dead. You've raised zombies a lot older than that."

"You missed the case last year where a vaudun priestess had raised a necromancer. The zombie got completely out of control and started killing people."

"You've told me about it, but the priestess didn't know what he was. If you knew going in, you could take precautions."

"No," I said.

"Why not?" he said.

I opened my mouth, closed it, because I didn't have a good answer. "I don't approve of raising the dead for curiosity's sake. You know how much money I've been offered to raise dead celebrities?"

"I'd still like to know what really happened to Marilyn Monroe," he said.

"When her family comes and asks, maybe I'll do it. But I am not raising the poor woman because a tabloid waved money at our boss."

"Waved a lot of money at our boss," Larry said. "Enough money that he sent Jamison out to try it. He couldn't raise her. Too long dead without a bigger sacrifice."

I shook my head. "Jamison is a weenie."

"Everyone else at Animators Inc. turned it down."

"Including you," I said.

He shrugged. "I might raise her and ask how she died, but not in front of cameras. The poor woman was hounded alive. Dead, she's still being hounded. Doesn't seem fair."

"You're a good guy, Larry."

"Not good enough to know that vampires burn to ash and skeletal remains are human."

"Don't start, Larry. It's just experience. I should have told you before you went out today. Truthfully, you're getting so good at the job, I didn't think to tell you."

"You assumed I knew?" he said.

"Yeah."

"I have noticed the daily lectures have been in short supply lately. I used to take more notes at work with you than I ever did in college."

"Not so many notes lately, huh?" I said.

"No, I hadn't really thought about it, but no." He grinned suddenly and it lit up his eyes, chased away the horrors of the day. For a moment he was the bright-eyed, optimistic kid who had first shown up on my doorstep. "You mean I'm finally learning how to do the job?"

"Yeah," I said, "you are. In fact, if you were quicker on the trigger, I'd say you were good at it. It's just hard to learn everything, Larry. Something comes up and you find out you really don't know what the hell's going on after all."

"You, too?" he said.

"Me, too."

He took a deep breath and let it out. "I've seen you surprised a time or two, Anita. When the monsters get so strange that you don't know what's going either, it usually gets real nasty, real fast."

He was right. I wished he wasn't, because right now I didn't know what the hell was going on. I didn't understand what had happened with Nathaniel. I didn't know how the marks worked with Richard. I didn't know how to find out if Malcolm was still among the undead, or if he'd crossed into that more permanent state of true death. In fact I had so many questions and so few answers that I just wanted to go home. Maybe Larry and I could both take a pain pill and sleep until tomorrow. Surely tomorrow would be a better day. God, I hoped so.