[Anita Blake 17] - Skin Trade

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Edward saved me. “If I didn’t trust you, Bernardo, I wouldn’t send her in with only you as backup.”

  Bernardo and he exchanged a long look, and then finally the other man nodded. “Fine, but we both know you’d send Olaf if you didn’t think he’d eat her.”

  “I thought we were the only ones who ate people,” Rick said, with his hand on the door.

  I gave the weretiger the look the comment deserved. He smiled at me.

  Crispin had moved up beside me, just waiting for us to finish the weapons. Apparently, he had no qualms about following me anywhere. He’d already done enough to get him in trouble in most of the wereanimal groups that I was familiar with. Insubordination isn’t tolerated among the furry.

  Rick touched Crispin’s arm. “You must either wait here with her other friends, or go ahead alone.”

  “I want to stay with Anita.”

  “You have already refused one direct order from your queen and master. Do not make it two, Crispin.” Rick’s face softened. “Please, stay here, or go ahead.”

  I didn’t argue for Crispin to stay with me because Rick was right. Crispin had already gotten himself in potential trouble. I didn’t want to make it worse.

  He turned to me. “What do you want me to do?”

  I blinked at him. What I really wanted him to do was not to have asked that. I really wanted him to make the decision on his own in case it came back and bit him. But either you’re the dominant or you aren’t. Fuck.

  If he stayed here, he’d be safer. If he went ahead, they might punish him, but I might also be able to get him back at my side and help me control the tigers.

  “If he goes ahead, what happens to him?”

  “He has earned discipline, but since he is your white tiger to call, he falls under vampire rules.”

  “You can’t hurt him because he’s mine.”

  Rick nodded. “As long as you’re in Vegas, yes.”

  We looked at each other. I didn’t know Rick well enough to know that look this well, but I did. The look said, plainly, that if I left Crispin in Vegas, bad things might happen to him. Jean-Claude was not going to like me coming home with extra baggage, but I couldn’t leave him to be hurt, could I?

  “Go ahead, Crispin. We’ll be right behind you.”

  Crispin looked from me to Rick, then finally nodded. He went through the far, whooshy doors, and we were one man down.

  Olaf finally spoke. “Do you wonder why I did not protest Bernardo going with you?”

  I turned and looked back at him. His face was its old mask of anger and arrogance, and things I could not read. “I thought you might argue about Bernardo, yes.”

  “If you are Ted’s woman, then it’s his choice who goes in with you. It’s his job to protect you, not mine.”

  I let the “Ted’s woman” comment go, and concentrated on something I could understand. “I don’t need anyone to protect me, Otto. I do a fine job on my own.”

  “All women need protection, Anita.”

  Bernardo touched my arm. “We don’t have time for you to win this argument.”

  I took a deep breath, let it out, then turned back to the big guy. “You might ask Edward which of the three of us he’d trust most to protect his back.” Then I nodded at Rick. He swung the door open. Bernardo gave me a sideways glance. I stepped forward, and he followed me. Or maybe he just didn’t want to be the first person through the door.

  31

  WE STEPPED FROM the waiting room into a box. Okay, maybe it was a room, but it was smaller than the elevator we’d come up in, and the walls were solid and gray. I knew metal when I saw it, and something about it felt wrong. As the doors were sliding closed, I said, “I think you’ll lose the signal for a few minutes.”

  “Why?”

  “I think it’s a quiet room.” Then the doors closed, and there was static in my ear. I tried anyway. “Edward, Edward, say something if you can hear me.”

  “He can’t,” Bernardo said, and he sounded disgusted. He looked at Rick. “That’s why you didn’t protest the radios; you knew they wouldn’t do us a damn bit of good.”

  Rick shrugged, smiling like he was enjoying our discomfort. “The radios will work once we get into the room beyond. Promise.” He even made the Boy Scout salute.

  “Were you really a Boy Scout?” I asked.

  His eyes widened a little, and then he nodded. “Max wanted us to have the all-American experience, so he started a troop just for us, so we wouldn’t scare the humans.”

  I tried to picture an entire troop of little weretigers, and was both amused and impressed. “Is the troop still active?” I asked.

  “You’re looking at the current scout leader.”

  Bernardo said, “Muscle by night, scout leader by day; who are you, Clark Kent?”

  Rick just grinned, and said, “Now what else is different about this room?”

  “It’s a test, isn’t it?” I said.

  “What kind of test?” Bernardo asked.

  “The walls are reinforced metal of some kind. I’m betting they’ll stand up to wereanimal and vampire strength, so no one can batter their way through.”

  He nodded and looked pleased. “Very good.”

  Bernardo took the next part. “That’s why you wouldn’t let us have the heavy artillery, because that might get through the far door.”

  “Another point for you.”

  “Are we going to be graded on this pop quiz?” I asked.

  He nodded, and the smile faded. “Oh, yes, you’ll get a grade.”

  “But you aren’t the teacher, are you?”

  He was solemn now. “No.”

  “Have we passed?” Bernardo asked.

  “I’d hate for our backup to get too jumpy with the radio silence,” I said.

  “Good point,” Rick said. “What else do you sense in here, Marshal Blake?”

  “It’s a metal box. It’s proof against electronics. It’s strong enough to stop most preternaturals, or at least slow them down.”

  “What else?” he asked.

  I glared at him. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want the energy that made us all wait for you to get off the elevator first.”

  “You want me to use the tigers to sense something.”

  “Yes, please.”

  “That’s why you didn’t want me to have Crispin with me, because as a vampire I could use the abilities of my animal to call, and you wouldn’t be able to tell how much was me and how much was Crispin.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  I sighed. I couldn’t say out loud that I didn’t want to call tiger energy when we were about to step through into a room full of them, but there were other things inside me. I reached down into that dark, quiet place and called wolf.

  She came padding up through that dark, tree-filled place that was what my mind had made of where the beasts waited. It wasn’t really where they waited inside me, but my human mind needed something concrete for them to stand on, and this was it. The she-wolf was white and cream, with black markings. She was huge and beautiful, and seeing her always made me remember where huskies and malamutes and a dozen other breeds had come from. You could see it in her, but once you looked past the beauty of the fur and saw her eyes, the illusion of dog was gone. Those eyes were wild and had nothing in them that would curl up by your fire at night.

  “You smell like wolf,” Rick said, and he grimaced, either trying to get a better scent or not enjoying what he was smelling. On a tiger face, it was tasting the scent; on a human face, it was disgust. He looked human, but I had no way of knowing how much like a tiger he thought in this form.

  I started to walk close to the walls, but I didn’t have to scent them. With the wolf so close to the surface, it had peeled down some of the shields I kept up automatically. Some of my metaphysical shields had become like a bulletproof vest for most cops. You put it on every day before you went out the door. You put it on so automaticall
y that you forgot sometimes that you needed to take it off to do certain things. I could now shield so tight that magic I should have sensed easily didn’t get through. I was shielding too tight if I had stepped into this space and not felt this. Which proved just how nervous I truly was about being surrounded by this many weretigers, with no other physical animal to back me up.

  The magic in the walls crawled over my skin. I broke out in goose bumps from it. “What the fuck is in the walls?” I asked.

  “Can’t you tell?”

  I shook my head and guessed. “Magic to keep magic out.”

  “Very good.”

  “Seriously,” Bernardo said, “if we keep radio silence much longer you’re going to find out how well that door stands up to heavy artillery.”

  “Are you making a threat?” Rick asked, and was very serious again.

  “Not me,” Bernardo said, spreading his hands wide, “but I know my friends outside. They aren’t patient men.”

  Rick looked at me.

  I shrugged, and nodded. “Ted will want to know what’s happening to us.”

  “You, he wants to know what’s happening to you,” Bernardo said.

  “You’re part of his team, too.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not his ‘woman,’ ” and he made little quotation marks around the word with his fingers. Was Bernardo starting to believe the lie that we were feeding Olaf?

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I kept my mouth shut. When in doubt, shut the fuck up.

  Rick was looking from one of us to the other. It was way too thoughtful an expression for muscle. But then, I hadn’t believed that Rick was just muscle. If he had been, I didn’t think his queen would have wanted him on the feeding list.

  “Have we passed your tests?” I asked.

  “One last question,” he said.

  “Shoot.”

  “Why do you smell like wolf?”

  I realized that the she-wolf was still just below the surface. I had called her energy, but had not had to put her back in her box. She seemed content to be ready to manifest more, but not to make a nuisance of herself. I had a spurt of pure happiness. I’d been working really hard with the beasts inside me, to be able to work with them and not fight them.

  The wolf looked at me, as if she were standing in front of me. I had a moment of staring into her dark amber eyes, then I wanted her gone, and she just vanished. I didn’t have to watch her walk down the path inside my head. She just went. For a second, I thought she was truly gone, but a moment’s thought found her pale and distant in that not-so-real forest. She was still there, but I could bring her out and send her back with that little fuss.

  I fought to control my emotions and not be as happy as I felt, or not show it. Bernardo was too observant, and wereanimals were way too observant.

  “You don’t smell like wolf anymore,” Rick said. “How can you smell of tiger one moment and wolf the next?”

  “Your Master of the City knows the answer to that question. If he didn’t share with you, not my problem.”

  He nodded, as if that made perfect sense.

  I didn’t hear Edward bang on the door, I felt the vibration of it. Rick glanced at the doors, then pressed his hand on a panel he’d been standing in front of; it was a fingerprint scanner. The doors leading farther into the penthouse whooshed open.

  32

  EDWARD WAS YELLING in our ears. “Anita, Bernardo! Damn it!”

  “We’re here,” I said.

  “We’re cool,” Bernardo said.

  “What happened?” Edward asked.

  “The first room is a box that’s soundproof and electronics proof. We had to play twenty questions before they let us in.” I was looking around us as I spoke. It was a living room, just a living room. It was white and elegant, with windows that gave an amazing view of the Las Vegas Strip. There were huge white couches with cream and silver cushions. There were even a few touches of shiny gold in small cushions. The coffee table in the middle of the couches was glass and silver. I realized that it looked like a bigger version of Jean-Claude’s living room. It didn’t make me feel at home. It actually kind of creeped me.

  “Talk to me, people,” Edward said in my ear.

  “We’re in the living room,” I said.

  “Nice view of the Strip,” Bernardo said.

  “Thank you,” Rick said. He walked back to a hallway that was on the other side of the room. But before he got there, Ava walked out. They spoke low together, then she came on into the room, and Rick walked back until he vanished through the door at the end of the short hallway. It was like a changing of the guard.

  I called after Rick and to Ava. “Where’s Crispin?”

  “He’s safe,” Ava said, “I promise. We just want to talk to you without him for a few moments.”

  “More tests?” Bernardo said.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Ava,” I said, partially so Edward would know she was here, “when do we get to talk to Chang-Bibiana?”

  “Rick will tell her what you said in the outer room. Then either she will come out to meet you, or we will take you in to meet her.”

  “What decides who goes where?” I asked.

  “Chang-Bibi does.”

  “When does Crispin join us?”

  “When Chang-Bibi wishes him to.”

  “She is the queen,” I said, and fought to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. I probably failed.

  “She is,” Ava replied. “Would you like to sit down?”

  Bernardo and I exchanged glances. He shrugged. “Sure,” I said.

  We took opposite corners of the couch. It put neither of our backs to a door, and it gave us the maximum view of the surroundings. We did it without asking each other. Bernardo looked at me as we settled into the overstuffed couch, and I looked back. He gave a small smile, not his flirting smile, but I think a smile at how we’d divided the room up.

  “Would you like coffee, tea, water perhaps?” she asked.

  “Coffee would be great,” I said.

  “Water for me, if it’s bottled.”

  “Of course.”

  She left us alone in the huge, pale room, with the Vegas sun beating against the nearly solid wall of windows. Even with the air-conditioning blasting, you could feel the heat pressing in against the room, like something almost alive and with malevolent intent.

  “Why bottled water?” I asked.

  “Because if you travel, the new water is the thing most likely to make you sick. Stick to bottled and you can eat almost anything.”

  “Makes sense, I guess.”

  Bernardo began to report the room through the headset. Which direction the windows were, the lay of the land, including doors and all exits.

  Edward spoke in my ear. “You want to add anything, Anita?”

  “Nope. He covered everything I see.”

  “Thank you,” Bernardo said.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  A disgusted sound came through the earbud. “I wish you were in here with us, big guy,” Bernardo said.

  “Yes,” was all that deep voice said, but it was enough to make me shiver, and not in a good, happy way.

  “How do you really feel about Otto?” Bernardo asked.

  I gave him a disgusted look. “Oh, right, like I’m going to discuss my personal feelings about team members over an open radio.”

  He grinned at me. “I had to try.”

  “Why?”

  Whatever his answer was, I never heard it, because Ava came back from the hallway. Rick was with her, and Domino was back. Bernardo and I both stood up.

  Ava spoke in a clear, ringing voice. “Chang-Bibi of the White Tiger Clan!”

  The doors at the end of the short hallway behind the tigers opened. Chang-Bibi strode through the door, with Crispin on her arm. She was taller than me, because her head was a little above his shoulder, and then I had to revise that, because I saw her heels. Four-inch spike heels, and I was back to being unsure of her height.
But other things were very sure.

  White hair fell to her waist in perfect waves. She was wearing makeup that emphasized the pale, perfect blue of her tiger eyes in that human face. Her eyes tilted up at the edges, and there was something in the bone structure. It was as if her face held some genetic link to the long-ago Chinese origins of her ancestors. But, as I’d learned a few months back, the weretigers had been forced to flee China many centuries ago, in the time of the Emperor Qin Shi Huang. He’d seen all the preternatural races as a danger to his authority and had them slaughtered on sight. The weretigers had fled to other countries and been forced to marry outside the purity of their race, so most of them looked like the country they’d fled to.

  There was something very exotic about Bibiana, and though they had similar hair and eyes, Crispin came off looking more ordinary. If you could have changed the eyes to human, he would have looked at home at any bar or club on a Saturday night. Chang-Bibi would have stood out anywhere, as if the aura of her difference was something that couldn’t be hidden.

  She wore a white dress with long silky sleeves, and a V-neck so it showed off the spill of white breasts. The belt at the waist emphasized how tiny her waist, how curvy the body. She came from a time when being too thin was not in, and she looked voluptuous. That was the only word I had for it. She was voluptuous.

  Someone touched my arm, and it was Bernardo. I looked at him, startled. “You okay?” he asked.

  I nodded, but had to take a shaky breath. Fuck, she had bespelled me like some kind of vampire, but it hadn’t been eye contact. It was as if her very being attracted me. Fuck, again.

  I called wolf again, but the white tiger snarled in front of the wolf. I didn’t want the beasts to fight inside me. One, it hurt—a lot. Two, I didn’t want the weretigers to know that I didn’t have perfect control of my beasts.

  I let the wolf slide back inside. I was left with white tiger pacing inside me, and she was going to be no help against the fascination of the white queen.