Burnt Offerings   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

"Dolph said one vamp was coveredwith blankets, and rushed to the hospital. Is that why you think the others may not be in their coffins?"

He blinked. "There's also a vampire on the stairs leading down. It's. ." His gaze fell, then came up suddenly to grab mine, angry. "I've seen burn victims but nothing quite like this."

"Are you sure it's a vampire?"

"Yes, why?"

"Because vamps exposed to sunlight or fire usually burn completely down to ash and a few bone fragments."

"We doused it with water," Wren said. "Thought it was a person at first."

"What changed your mind?"

It was his turn to look away. "It moved. It was like third-degree burns down to cartilage and muscle, bone, and it held out its hand to us." His face looked pale, haunted. "No person could have done that. We kept coating it with water, thinking maybe we could save it, but it stopped moving."

"So you assumed it was dead?" I asked.

All three of them exchanged glances. Captain Fulton said, "You mean it might not be dead?"

I shrugged. "Never underestimate a vamp's ability to survive, Captain."

"We've got to go back in there and get it to a hospital," Wren said. He turned as if he'd walk back into the house. Fulton caught his arm.

"Can you tell if the vampire is alive or dead?" Fulton asked.

"I think so."

"You think?"

"I've never heard of a vamp surviving fire. So yeah, I think I can tell if it's alive. If I said otherwise, I'd be lying. I try not to do that when it's important."

He nodded twice, briskly, as if he'd made up his mind about me. "The arsonist threw accelerant all over the floor that we're going to be walking on top of, and once we're down in the basement that same floor will be above us."

"So?"

"That floor is not going to hold, Ms. Blake. I'm going to make this a strictly voluntary job for my people."

I looked up into his serious face. "How likely is the floor to fall and how soon?"

"No way of knowing. Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't caved in by now."

"It's a halfway house for the Church of Eternal Life. If it's like the last basement I saw at a Lifer's place, the ceiling is concrete reinforced with steel beams."

"That would explain why it hasn't fallen in," Fulton said.

"So we're safe, right?" I asked.

Fulton looked at me and shook his head. "The heat could have weakened the concrete, or even weakened the tensile strength of the steel beams."

"So it could still fall down," I said.

He nodded. "With us in it."

Great.