From Dead to Worse

pulled over to the shoulder.
    “With a vanity plate like BLDSKR, what do you expect?” I asked, not so secretly enjoying the moment. I saw the dark shape of the trooper emerging from the car behind us, walking up with something in his hand—clipboard, flashlight?
    I looked harder. I reached out. A snarled mass of aggression and fear met my inner ear.
    “Were! There’s something wrong,” I said, and Eric’s big hand shoved me down into the floorboard, which would have provided a little more concealment if the car had been anything other than a Corvette.
    Then the patrolman came up to the window and tried to shoot me.

Chapter 5
    Eric had turned to fill the window and block the rest of the car from the shooter’s aim, and he got it in the neck. For an awful moment, Eric slumped back in the seat, his face blank and dark blood flowing sluggishly down his white skin. I screamed as if noise would protect me, and the gun pointed at me as the gunman leaned into the car to aim past Eric.
    But he’d been a fool to do that. Eric’s hand clamped on the man’s wrist, and Eric began squeezing. The “patrolman” started doing a little shrieking of his own, flailing uselessly at Eric with his empty hand. The gun fell on top of me. I’m just lucky it didn’t discharge when it fell. I don’t know much about handguns, but this one was big and lethal-looking, and I scrambled to an upright position and aimed it at the shooter.
    He froze in place, half in and half out of the window. Eric had already broken his arm and had kept a tight grip. The fool should have been more afraid of the vampire who had a hold on him than the waitress who hardly knew how to fire the gun, but the gun commanded his attention.
    I was sure I would have heard if the highway patrol had decided to start shooting speeders instead of ticketing them.
    “Who are you?” I said, and no one could blame me if my voice wasn’t too steady. “Who sent you?”
    “They told me to,” the Were gasped. Now that I had time to notice details, I could see he wasn’t wearing a proper highway patrol uniform. It was the right color, and the hat was right, but the pants weren’t uniform pants.
    “They, who?” I asked.
    Eric’s fangs clamped into the Were’s shoulder. Despite his wound, Eric was pulling the faux patrolman into the car inch by inch. It seemed only fair that Eric got some blood since he’d lost so much of his own. The assassin began crying.
    “Don’t let him turn me into one of them,” he appealed to me.
    “You should be so lucky,” I said, not because I actually thought it was so darn great to be a vampire but because I was sure Eric had something much worse in mind.
    I got out of the car because there was no point in trying to get Eric to release the Were. He wouldn’t listen to me with the bloodlust on him so strong. My bond to Eric was the crucial factor in this decision. I was happy that he was enjoying himself, getting the blood he needed. I was furious that someone had tried to hurt him. Since both of these feelings would not normally be colors in my emotional palette, I knew what was to blame.
    Plus, the inside of the Corvette had gotten unpleasantly crowded, what with me, Eric, and most of the Were.
    Miraculously, no cars passed while I trotted along the shoulder to our attacker’s vehicle, which (not so much to my surprise) turned out to be a plain white car with an illegal flashing attachment. I turned out the car’s lights and, by punching or disconnecting every wire and button I could find, managed to kill the flashers, too. Now we were not nearly so conspicuous. Eric had shut down the Corvette’s lights moments into the encounter.
    I looked over the inside of the white car quickly but didn’t see an envelope marked “Revelation of who hired me, in case I get caught.” I needed a clue. There should at least have been a phone number on a scrap of paper, a phone number I could look up in a reverse directory. If I knew how to do such a thing. Rats. I trudged back to Eric’s car, noticing in the lights of a passing semi that there weren’t any legs sticking out of the driver’s window anymore, which rendered the Corvette a lot less conspicuous. But we needed to get out of there.
    I peered into the Corvette and found it empty. The only reminder of what had just happened was a smear of blood on Eric’s seat, and I pulled a tissue out of my purse, spat on it, and rubbed the drying blood off; not a very elegant solution, but