Sanchez’s hand in mine gave a little spark, like a small jolt of electricity as we touched. We both fought not to jump, but the others noticed, or maybe they felt it. I was standing in a room full of trained psychics.
“You spiked her, Arrio; bad practitioner, no cookie,” Spider said. The other men gave that masculine chuckle that women, even butch women, can never quite imitate.
“Sorry, Marshal,” Sanchez said.
“No harm, no foul,” I said.
He smiled and nodded, but he was embarrassed. I realized that the handshake had been a test not just for me but for all of us. Just as the men would test their bodies in weight training, the gun range, drills, this was a test, too. Could you hide what you were, hand to hand with another psychic? I’d met a lot who couldn’t have done it.
“You need to work at your contact shielding, Arrio,” Rocco said.
“Sorry, Sarge, I will.”
Rocco nodded and moved to the next man. He was Theodoros, very Greek sounding and looking, but he was Santa, though Santa never looked like that when I was a little girl. His hair was straight and as black as Sanchez’s and my own. He was the proverbial tall, dark, and handsome, if you were into jocks. I wondered how in hell he’d earned the nickname “Santa.” It was Spanish for saint, but somehow I didn’t think that’s what they were going for.
Santa didn’t have any trouble shaking my hand and not letting me feel anything but a firm handshake. It would be a point of pride for him and the last man. Sanchez had blown it; they’d work harder because of it.
The last man was also ethnic, but I wasn’t entirely sure what flavor. His short hair was curly enough to be African American, but the skin tone and facial features were not quite that. He, too, was tall, dark, and handsome, but in a different way. His eyes couldn’t decide if they were dark brown or black. They were somewhere in between my dark brown and Rocco’s almost black. But either color, they were framed by strangely short but very, very thick lashes, so that his eyes looked bigger and more delicate than they were, like something edged in black lace.
“Moonus, Moon,” Rocco said.
We smiled; we shook. Rocco motioned me to follow him to the front of the room. We stood in front of the whiteboard. “I’m Cannibal.” Like Spider, Cannibal made me wonder why that name.
“If we’re doing first names and nicknames, then I’m Anita.”
“We heard you had a nickname,” Cannibal said.
I just looked at him, waited for him to say it.
“The Executioner.”
I nodded. “The vampires call me that, yeah.”
Davey called out, “You look a little short to be the Executioner.”
“Everyone looks short to you, Davis,” I said. “What are you, six-four?”
“Six-five,” he said.
“Jesus, most of the human population must look short to you, unless you’re at work.”
They laughed at him, and with me, which was good. The sergeant quieted the laughter with a gesture and said, “We do use nicknames, Marshal; do you want us to use yours?”
I looked at him. “You mean have you guys call me the Executioner, instead of Anita or Blake?”
He nodded.
“No, hell no. First, it’s too long for a call sign. Second, it’s not a name that I’ve ever heard spoken in a happy way.”
“Are you embarrassed by the name?” he asked.
“No, but it’s like Ivan the Terrible. I doubt seriously that anyone ever called him that to his face.”
“The vampires call you that to your face,” and Cannibal said it like he knew for sure. Maybe he did.
I nodded. “Sometimes they do, but it’s mostly Executioner when they’re talking to me. They just leave off the the.”
“We can call you Executioner,” he said.
I sighed. “I’d rather you didn’t, Sergeant. I’ve had too many bad guys call me that while they tried to kill me. They look at the package and call me Executioner to make fun of me. How small, how delicate, how not deadly looking.”
“And after they make fun of you?” he asked, voice serious, eyes studying my face.
I met his gaze. “Then they die, Sergeant, or I wouldn’t be here.”
“I promise never to call you short again,” Davey said.
That broke the serious mood, and I was happy to laugh with everyone else.
“Anita, then, if you go out with us.”
“Whether you let me go with your team depends on how this little test goes, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Lieutenant Grimes spoke from the door, and everyone swiveled to give him attention. It was automatic for them. “There are a lot of psychics in the world, Marshal Blake, but there aren’t many that are powerful enough to be useful and controlled enough to take into a firefight with you. We need to know how good your control is, and exactly what type of psychic you are. Some types of abilities clash, and if you clash with one of the men in this room, we’ll make certain you aren’t put on the same team.”
“I appreciate all the thought you’ve put into this, Lieutenant, but I also know that Cannibal here is testing your men at the same time he tests me. He wants to know if they can stay in the room while he tastes my power and not be affected. Yeah, you want to know if my powers clash with your men’s, but it’s also another test for your own practitioners.”
“We lost one of them, Marshal. One of our best. We have precious little time to get you up to speed, and for you to get us up to speed. You hunted this vampire before, and we need to know what you know.”
“It’s in the reports,” I said.
He shook his head. “Cannibal’s abilities will tell us whether your reports were accurate.”
“You mean, if I lied.”
He smiled and shook his head. “Left out things, not lied. You’re dating the master of your city, Marshal, living with him; we need to know if that has compromised your loyalties.”
“Thanks for the politeness, Lieutenant; the last Vegas cop who asked me accused me of fucking everything that moved.”
Grimes made a face of distaste. “None of my men would ever have said that to you, but I apologize to you for the abuse of our city’s hospitality.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant, I appreciate that.”
“Wizard was Cannibal’s second-in-command for this squad.”
“Wizard was the man you lost,” I said.
He nodded. “We need to see how you fit in here, and we have maybe an hour to do it, before we have to deliver you back to Shaw.” Not Sheriff Shaw, I noticed; I wondered if he’d figured out who’d insulted me.
Cannibal spoke, turning me back to look at him. “If you were like our own executioner and just used weapons, we’d try to find time to put you on the range, but it’s your psychic abilities that will mess us up the most. We can always take your weapons away, but we can’t take the rest.”
“If I don’t pass your test, what then?”
“I won’t endanger my men,” Grimes said, “if you are the danger, Marshal Blake.”
“If I do pass?” I asked.
“Then we’ll help you serve your warrant,” Grimes said.
“If you don’t pass, there are other vampire hunters in town,” Cannibal said, “ones that aren’t psychic enough to be a problem.”
“They also won’t be psychic enough to be a help, either,” I said.
“We can help ourselves,” Cannibal said.
“Can any of you sense the living dead?” I asked.
“None of us has a talent with vampires in particular, no.”
I stared into Cannibal’s dark eyes as I said, “The dead come in lots of flavors, not just vampires, Cannibal.” I took that small step closer to him, not quite invading his personal space. I spoke low. “Just as vampires come in different flavors, too.”
Cannibal smiled, and again I got that flash of anticipation from him. “Let’s do this, then.”
“Let’s.”
Louder, for the room—
his lieutenant and his men—he said, “Are you ready, Anita?”
“How ready do you want me to be?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you want me to try to keep you out, or do you want me to cooperate with your little mind-reading act?”
“I’d love to try to breach your shields sometime, but we don’t have time, and the last psychic who played that game with me had to be taken out in an ambulance.”
“Are you that good, or that bad?” I asked.
One of the men made a noise, like ooh. We ignored him. “I’m good,” Cannibal said, “unless you fight me; then it’s bad for you.”
“If we had time I’d make you prove that, but we don’t, so I’ll drop my shields enough to let you in, but I won’t drop them completely. Please, don’t try to force them all the way down.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because not only can I sense the dead, but sometimes they can sense me. If you breach all my shields, I’ll shine like a beacon, and all the vampires in the area will know something supernatural is in town. I’d rather not advertise quite that loudly yet.”
“I don’t think you’re lying about that, which means you’re not exaggerating.”
“I try not to exaggerate, Sergeant; the truth is strange enough without that.”
“I’ll be careful of your shields, Anita.”
“Okay, how do we do this?”
“Sitting down,” he said.
“In case one of us falls down,” I said.
“Something like that.”
“You really do believe you’re the strongest psychic in this room, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I shrugged. “Fine, let’s get chairs.”
The men handed us up a chair apiece. We sat down facing each other. I lowered my shields a little, like partially opening a door. Not only could I feel Cannibal’s energy humming along my skin now, but there were buzzes and flashes and heat from some of the other men. I fought not to concentrate on them, just to ignore it the way I did ghosts. Ignore it and it will go away.
“It works better if I can touch you,” he said.
I gave him a look.
He smiled. “So young to be so cynical.”
I held out my hands, still frowning. “Fine.”
He took my hands in his, and only then did he lower his own shields, only then did he reach out to me with that humming energy of his. Only then did I realize that touch makes all vampire powers worse, more, even if the vampire in question wears a uniform and has a heartbeat.
7
HIS POWER FLOWED through the hole in my shields like something warm and alive. Shapeshifter energy was warm, but it held an edge of electricity, like your skin couldn’t decide if it felt good or hurt. Shapeshifters rode that edge of pain and pleasure, but this power was just warm, almost comforting. What the hell?
His hands felt warmer in mine than they had been a moment ago, as if his temperature were rising. Again, I kept trying to equate it to a lycanthrope, because it was so not the cool touch of the grave.
I realized I was staring at our hands. I was treating him like a real vampire. You don’t look one of them in the eye, but that was years ago for me. I hadn’t met a vampire that could roll me with its gaze in a long time. One very alive, psychic vampire wasn’t going to be able to do it, was he? So why didn’t I want to meet his eyes? I realized I was nervous, almost afraid, and I couldn’t have told you why. Short of someone trying to kill me, or my love life, my nerves were rock steady. So why the case of nerves?
I made myself look away from his hands on mine and meet his eyes. They were just the same almost black, the pupils lost to the color, but they weren’t vampire eyes. They hadn’t bled their color into shining fire across the whole of his eyes. They were human eyes, and he was only human. I could do this, damn it.
His voice seemed lower, soothing, the way you see people talk when they’re trying to hypnotize someone. “Are you ready, Anita?”
I frowned at him. “Get on with it, Sergeant; the foreplay’s getting tedious.”
He smiled.
One of the other psychics in the room, I didn’t know their voices well enough to pick who, said, “Let him be gentle, Marshal; you don’t want to see what he can do.”
I met Cannibal’s dark, dark eyes and said the truth: “Yeah, I do want to see what he can do.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, voice still low, soft, like he was trying not to wake someone.
I spoke low, too. “As much as you want to see what I can do.”
“You going to fight back?”
“You hurt me, and I will.”
He gave that smile that was more fierce than happy. “Okay.” He leaned in, drawing down all that extra height from his much longer waist to bring our faces close, and he whispered, “Show me Baldwin, show me the operator you lost. Show me Baldwin, Anita.”
It shouldn’t have been that easy, but it was as if the words were magic. The memories came to the front of my head, and I couldn’t stop them, as if he’d started a movie in my head.
The only light was the sweep of flashlights ahead and behind. Because I didn’t have a light, it ruined my night vision but didn’t really help me. Derry jumped over something, and I glanced down to find that there were bodies in the hallway. The glance down made me stumble over the third body. I only had time to register that one was our guy, and the rest weren’t. There was too much blood, too much damage. I couldn’t tell who one of them was. He was pinned to the wall by a sword. He looked like a shelled turtle, all that careful body armor ripped away, showing the red ruin of his upper body. The big metal shield was crushed just past the body. Was that Baldwin back there? There were legs sticking out of one of the doors. Derry went past it, trusting that the officers ahead of him hadn’t left anything dangerous or alive behind them. It was a level of trust that I had trouble with, but I kept going. I stayed with Derry and Mendez, like I’d been told.
I was left gasping in the chair, staring at Cannibal, his hands tight on mine. My voice was strained as I said, “That wasn’t just a memory. You put me back in that hallway, in that moment.”
“I needed to feel what you felt, Anita. Show me the worst of that night.”
“No,” I said, but again, I was back in the room beyond the hallway. The one vampire that was still alive cringed. She pressed her bloody face against the corner behind the bed, her small hands held out as if to ward it off. At first it looked like she was wearing red gloves, then the light shone on the blood, and you knew it wasn’t opera-length gloves—it was blood all the way to her elbows. Even knowing that, even having Melbourne motionless on the floor in front of her, still Mendez didn’t shoot her. Jung was leaning against the wall, like he’d fall down if he didn’t concentrate. His neck was torn up, but the blood wasn’t gushing out. She’d missed the jugular. Let’s hear it for inexperience.
I said, “Shoot her.”
The vampire made mewling sounds, like a frightened child. Her voice came high and piteous, “Please, please, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me. He made me. He made me.”
“Shoot her, Mendez,” I said into the mic.
“She’s begging for her life,” he said, and his voice didn’t sound good.
I peeled shotgun shells out of the stock holder and fed them into the gun as I walked toward Mendez and the vampire. She was still crying, still begging, “They made us do it, they made us do it.”
Jung was trying to hold pressure on his own neck wound. Melbourne’s body lay on its side, one hand outstretched toward the cringing vampire. Melbourne wasn’t moving, but the vampire still was. That seemed wrong to me. But I knew just how to fix it.
I had the shotgun reloaded, but I let it swing down at my side. At this range the sawed-off was quicker; no wasted ammo.
Mendez had glanced away from the vamp to me, then farther back to his sergeant. “I can’t shoot someone who’s begging for her life.”
“It’s okay, Mendez, I ca
n.”
“No,” he said, and looked at me; his eyes showed too much white. “No.”
“Step back, Mendez,” Hudson said.
“Sir . . .”
“Step back and let Marshal Blake do her job.”
“Sir . . . it’s not right.”
“Are you refusing a direct order, Mendez?”
“No, sir, but—”
“Then step back and let the marshal do her job.”
Mendez still hesitated.
“Now, Mendez!”
He moved back, but I didn’t trust him at my back. He wasn’t bespelled; she hadn’t tricked him with her eyes. It was much simpler than that. Police are trained to save lives, not take them. If she’d attacked him, Mendez would have fired. If she’d attacked someone else, he’d have fired. If she’d looked like a raving monster, he’d have fired. But she didn’t look like a monster as she cringed in the corner, hands as small as my own held up, trying to stop what was coming. Her body pressed into the corner, like a child’s last refuge before the beating begins, when you run out of places to hide and you are literally cornered, and there’s nothing you can do. No word, no action, no thing that will stop it.
“Go stand by your sergeant,” I said.
He stared at me, and his breathing was way too fast.
“Mendez,” Hudson said, “I want you here.”
Mendez obeyed that voice, as he’d been trained to, but he kept glancing back at me and the vampire in the corner.
She glanced past her arm, and because I didn’t have a holy item in sight, she was able to give me her eyes. They were pale in the uncertain light, pale and frightened. “Please,” she said, “please don’t hurt me. He made us do such terrible things. I didn’t want to, but the blood, I had to have it.” She raised her delicate oval face to me. “I had to have it.” The lower half of her face was a crimson mask.
I nodded and braced the shotgun in my arms, using my hip and my arm instead of my shoulder for the brace point. “I know,” I said.
“Don’t,” she said, and held out her hands.
I fired into her face from less than two feet away. Her face vanished in a spray of blood and thicker things. Her body sat up very straight for long enough that I pulled the trigger into the middle of her chest. She was tiny, not much meat on her; I got daylight with just one shot.
[Anita Blake 17] - Skin Trade Page 6
