Skin Trade

by Hamilton, Laurell K.

  “I met Gregory Minns just minutes ago. You’ve seen all the interaction I’ve ever had with him.”

  “You are lying,” Hooper said.

  “She’s not lying,” Edward said.

  “I don’t need to hear from her boyfriend.”

  “Would it do any good to say that he’s not my boyfriend?” I said.

  “No,” Hooper said, “the minute that weretiger called you sweet nicknames, you lost credibility with me, Blake.”

  “I am sorry that my attempt to calm Gregory spread to you and Officer Sanchez, Marshal Blake,” Victor said as he walked toward us. His power was tight like a drum. I could feel the vibration of it, but that was all. He’d locked it down tight.

  “As long as it wasn’t on purpose, we’re cool.”

  “You’ve felt what my mother can do; trust me, on purpose would be worse.”

  I nodded. I believed him.

  “When did you first meet Marshal Blake, Mr. Belleci?” Hooper asked.

  “This afternoon,” he said.

  “When did Gregory Minns first meet her?”

  Victor frowned at him. “I don’t believe they have met.”

  “He called her his little queen. That’s pretty personal for strangers.”

  Victor smiled, then fought not to. “Little queen is our nickname for Marshal Blake.”

  “You met her this afternoon, and she already has a nickname; right. And Minns, who just met her, knew the nickname enough to use it. Don’t yank my chain. One of you, or all of you, are lying.”

  “I swear to you that we just met Marshal Blake. Her rather unusual psychic abilities hit the radar for the tigers as a little queen. It’s not a personal nickname but more a title.”

  “And she earned this title how?”

  “By the feel of her psychic energy.”

  “Sanchez,” Hooper said.

  “She is a powerful psychic, Sarge.”

  “I know what Cannibal said, but I need to know if her power would do what Victor here says, or whether they’re all lying.”

  “She shields good. I’d have to read her on purpose to answer that question, and that’s against psychic protocol without permission of the other psychic, or except in an emergency situation where lives are in danger.”

  “You sound like you’re quoting regs,” I said.

  He nodded. “I am.”

  “Cannibal is just outside with the doc. He could read you again,” Hooper said.

  I shook my head. “I won’t give permission for him to be in my head again.”

  “Then I want Sanchez to read you. I want to know if you are powerful enough to set off the weretigers like this.”

  “It may not be as powerful for him, since he’s human,” Victor said.

  “He’s my practitioner, and I want him to read her, and you, stay the fuck away from my team.”

  I sighed and turned to Sanchez. “What do you need from me to make this work?”

  “Drop your shields,” Sanchez said.

  I shook my head. “I can’t drop them all.”

  “Ease down, then,” he said.

  “Can Victor be farther away?”

  “Why?” Hooper asked.

  “I seem to have trouble shielding against his clan. I don’t know why, but their power seems to fuck with me.”

  Hooper said, “Georgie, escort Mr. Belleci outside the building.”

  Georgie came and did it, without a question. It was one of the things that most of the cops were better at than those of us in the preternatural marshal program: following orders without debate.

  Victor let himself be led out. Then the others moved back a little, as if we’d asked, though we hadn’t. Sanchez and I stood in the middle of Minns’s living room, with its dark brown carpet and nondescript living room set. People always want the houses of the preternatural to be unusual, but in truth, most of them look like everyone else’s. Going furry once a month doesn’t make you that different.

  Sanchez slipped off more of his headgear, his black hair wet with sweat. “Ready?”

  I took a deep breath and eased down my shields. This far from Jean-Claude and all my people, I wasn’t dropping all of it. No way. It was more like cracking a window on a car to let the breeze inside.

  Sanchez took his glove off one hand and held it near me, as if he could feel heat. “God, your aura crackles with energy. It’s like if you let all your shields down, you’d burn.” Then his eyes rolled back into his head, behind fluttering eyelids. “But it would burn black, as if the night could catch fire and eat the world.”

  He stumbled, and I reached for him automatically. His hand convulsed on mine, and suddenly my shields came down. We were both on our knees, as if we’d been hit. The psychic hammer had hit us both, and there was nothing we could do but ride the power. I hadn’t thought that they might have another practitioner that would scare me. I was so used to being the biggest bugbear in the room psychically that it had never occurred to me that Sanchez might be one, too. Now, it was too late, and the bear was going to eat us both.

  40

  SANCHEZ HAD TRIED to peek behind my partially raised shields, and he was too powerful, or it was like when we shook hands and he alone of all of the practitioners spiked me. I had a pure human mind-fuck me for the second time in one day. It was a record.

  I felt his power, but it was like looking at calm water; you don’t always see the rocks just below that will tear the bottom out of your boat and sink you.

  One minute we were calm; the next he’d ripped my shields open like a wound. His power poured into that wound, but other things had been waiting, and they followed on the tail of his energy like a mugger coming in behind your key.

  I felt vampire first, powerful, but just vampire. It breathed in on Sanchez’s coattails. I didn’t fight it, because I hoped it was Vittorio. I drew the taste of his power into me like wine that you hold in your mouth, warming it until the bouquet of it fills your mouth, your nose, your senses. If this was him, I wanted the scent of him to stay with me, because there was a chance that I might be able to track him through his own power, if he would just give me a little more of it.

  Sanchez said, “What is that?”

  “Bad guy,” I whispered.

  I felt him try to push at the power, too. “Don’t help me,” I said.

  “I’m pretty good.”

  “Don’t . . . ,” but I didn’t have time to finish the sentence because something else found us. Marmee Noir was the Queen of All Vampires. But that didn’t quite prepare you for the wave of living darkness that poured over us both. It drowned out the subtle energy of Vittorio’s daytime power, if it had even been him. She drowned everything else.

  I was left kneeling on cold stone, in a cavern lit by torches. Sanchez knelt with me, his hand still in mine. He looked up. “What is this?” I knew our bodies were still in the house in Vegas, but our minds, not so much.

  Something moved in the shadows between the torches. She was cloaked in blackness, and I couldn’t tell if it was a black cloak or if she had formed herself from the darkness and it only looked like clothes. Her delicate foot stepped into the light, and tiny seed pearls caught the light, with bits of shiny black jet embroidered between them. I’d seen those shoes once before when she almost manifested physically in St. Louis.

  Her body should have been upstairs in a room where she’d been hidden away for over a thousand years, but there she stood. Was it a dream? Was she really awake?

  She answered my thought. “My body sleeps, but I am no longer trapped by flesh.”

  “What is she?” Sanchez asked.

  “Shall we show him, necromancer?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Let us see if his mind survives.”

  “NO!” I screamed it, and tried to bring us back out, but she flung her arms wide, and the cloak was darkness, because it stretched out and out, up and up, until we knelt staring into the perfect blackness of a starless night. The scent of jasmine choked me. I couldn’t
taste anything else.

  Sanchez clung to my hand. “Anita, Anita, are you all right?”

  I couldn’t talk, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. I clung to him because he was all I had to cling to, but she was pouring herself down my throat. Once I’d thought she meant to kill me that way, but now I saw her thoughts too clearly. She didn’t want to kill me, she wanted to possess me. Her body upstairs had lain too long unused, and she could not mend it. She wanted a new one. She wanted me.

  There was a light in the dark, suddenly, like a bright hot star. The light came like the rising of the sun, and she screamed as she fell back. I came to myself in the living room in Sanchez’s and Edward’s arms. The room was full of crosses, glowing bright like stars. Everyone’s cross was glowing as I fought to breathe. Edward turned me over so I could cough out onto the carpet. I spat out something clear and too thick for water. It smelled like flowers.

  Edward held me until I was done and too weak to move.

  “Was that our killer?” Hooper asked at last. “Was that our vampire?”

  “It was a vampire,” Sanchez said, “but I don’t think it’s here in Vegas.”

  I shook my head. My voice came out hoarse. “It’s nothing to do with Vegas.”

  Sanchez said, “The Darkness wants to eat you.”

  “Yeah, she does. I have my shields for a reason, Sanchez. Don’t fuck with them again.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “What the fuck is she?”

  I shook my head. “Nightmares.”

  “Fuck,” he said.

  “Sanchez, talk to me,” Hooper said.

  “Marshal Blake is powerful enough, Sarge. She’s powerful enough, if you see through her shields, she’s powerful enough to make the tigers call her Annie Fucking Oakley, if they have a title for it.”

  “What did you see, Sanchez?” Hooper said.

  He looked at me, and we had a moment of understanding. He said, “Nightmares, Sarge. She fights nightmares, and they fight back.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Sanchez shook his head and clung to his sergeant’s arm as he helped him stand. “It means I want to feel the sun on my face, and I never, ever want to make Blake drop her shields again. I really didn’t mean to do that, by the way, Marshal. I’m sorry.”

  I tried to sit up and found that I could, though Edward’s hand was a good thing to steady against. “I would say it’s okay, but it’s not. You almost got me hurt, Sanchez, bad hurt.”

  “I know”—Sanchez gave a little laugh that sounded wrong—“I saw what wanted to hurt you, Blake. I wish I hadn’t seen it. How the fuck do you sleep at night?”

  Edward helped me stand, and I almost fell. It was Olaf who took my other arm, but I wasn’t steady enough to pull away. In that moment, help was okay. “I sleep fine,” I said.

  “Then you are an iron-willed motherfucking bastard.” He started toward the door, so shaky that Hooper called another officer over to help him to the door.

  When he was outside, Hooper turned to me. “Sanchez is solid. What the fuck did he see to shake him that bad?”

  “You don’t want to know,” I said.

  “Our holy items lit up like the freaking Fourth of July; what kind of vampire can cause that from a distance?”

  “Pray that you never find out, Sergeant.” I took a deep breath and let go of both men. When Edward let go, so did Olaf.

  Hooper looked from me to Edward. “Do you know what it is, Forrester?”

  Edward just said, “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “The ultimate vampire,” he said.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “She’s the queen of them,” I said, “and she’s more powerful than anything I’ve ever felt. She’s still in Europe somewhere. Pray that she never comes to America.”

  “She did all that from Europe?” Hooper sounded skeptical.

  I glared at him. “Yeah, she did. Your man stripped my shields, like taking away your vest just before shooting a gun at your chest. You saw what happened to me.”

  “I didn’t mean for Sanchez to fuck you up today, Blake.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  He frowned at me. “I fucking hate the psychic shit, but I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.” With that, he walked toward the door.

  Edward leaned over me. “Are you all right?”

  I shook my head, then said, “Sure.”

  “Liar,” Bernardo said. But I noticed he’d been standing farther away than either Edward or Olaf. There were a lot of reasons that I didn’t count on him.

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  He grinned. “Hopefully.”

  I rolled my eyes at him, but it helped put things in perspective. The Mother of All Darkness was apparently just waiting outside my shields for a chance to eat me. I was so scared my skin was cold. I’d go out into the desert heat. I’d warm up. It would be all right. I tried to believe that, but I stared down at what I’d spit up on the carpet.

  I asked, “What is that shit?”

  Edward said the one thing I hate to hear him say. “I don’t know.” When Edward doesn’t know the answers, we are so fucked.

  41

  I CALLED JEAN-CLAUDE from the car while Edward drove. I was way past caring what Olaf and Bernardo heard. The Mother of All Darkness was waiting just outside my shields to eat me. I could still feel some of her emotions. The primary one was fear. What the fuck could she be afraid of?

  Jean-Claude answered a little breathlessly. “Ma petite, I felt something reach out to you. Something dark and terrible. If it is Vittorio, you must leave Las Vegas now, right now, before nightfall.”

  “It wasn’t him,” I said.

  “Then who?” he asked.

  I clung to the cell phone and the sound of his voice like a lifeline. I was still so scared I could taste metal on my tongue. “Marmee Noir.”

  “What I felt was different than ever before. It was smaller, more . . .” He seemed to search for the right word. “Human.”

  I nodded, even though he couldn’t see it. “She was small like in the church in St. Louis. She had those damned little slippers with the pearls on them.”

  “Perhaps they are what is on her real body up in the room where she rests.”

  “She wasn’t in the room, Jean-Claude. You need to call Belle Morte, or whomever, and tell them she was walking around in the bottom room of the cavern. The part of the cave where her windows overlook. She was down there.”

  He cursed long and elegantly in French. In English he said, “I will call the others. I will call you back as soon as I can. I would tell you to hide in a church with holy items until this is done.”

  “I’ve got a murderer to catch.”

  “Ma petite, please.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said. “Okay?”

  “That is something. I love you, Anita; do not let her take you from me.”

  “I love you, too, and I won’t. I’m shielding like a son of a bitch. I had to drop the shield for her to get through.”

  “Ma petite, Anita . . . Merde, I will call you back as soon as I have reached someone in Europe.” He hung up with more French, too rapid for me to catch.

  The SUV went around the corner a little rapidly, keeping up with the police car in front of us. They hadn’t turned on sirens or lights, but we were breaking several speeding laws. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones spooked by what had happened back in the house. I wondered what Sanchez had told them. I wondered what the cops who saw it all had told everyone? Had they, like Jean-Claude, blamed it all on Vittorio? Had it spurred them on to get this done before the vampires in Vegas rose for the night?

  “What did Count Dracula say?” Edward asked.

  “Don’t call him that, Edward.”

  “Sorry, what did he say?”

  “He’s going to call some of the vamps in Europe.”

  Olaf spoke from the backseat. “Did you say that the Queen of All Vampires, who we saw in spi
rit in St. Louis, is walking around in the flesh somewhere?”

  “I saw her in a vision. It may just be a vision, but I’ve had visions with her before, and she’s always been in the room where she’s trapped. I’ve never seen her walking outside it.”

  “Fuck,” Edward said.

  I looked at him because he didn’t cuss that often. That was usually my job. “What?” I asked him.

  “I was approached about fulfilling a contract on her.”

  I turned in the seat and stared at him. I studied his profile, but between the sunglasses and his usual blank face, there was nothing to see. My own face had fallen into open-mouthed astonishment. “Are you saying that someone approached you to assassinate the Queen of All Vampires?”

  He gave a nod.

  Olaf and Bernardo both leaned up in their seats—which meant they hadn’t put their seatbelts on, but strangely, for once, I hadn’t thought to tell them to put them on.

  “You got a contract to kill Marmee Noir, and you didn’t mention it to me?”

  “I said I was offered a contract. I didn’t say I took it.”

  That made me turn as far as the seatbelt that I was wearing would let me. “You turned it down? Was it not enough money?”

  “The money was good,” he said, his hands still careful on the wheel, his face still blank and unreadable. You’d never know at a glance that we were talking about anything remotely interesting. It was the rest of us who were showing the interest.

  “Then why didn’t you take the contract?” I asked.

  He gave me the smallest glance as he slid the truck around the corner, almost on two wheels. We all had to grab parts of the car, though Olaf and Bernardo had to grab harder without seatbelts to help them. We barreled after the other police cars. They’d hit lights, but were still siren free.

  “You know why,” he said.

  I started to say, No I don’t, and then I stopped. I got my grip on the dashboard and the seat tighter and thought about it. Finally, I said, “You were afraid that Marmee Noir would kill you. You were afraid that this one would finally be too tough.”

  He said nothing, which was all the yes I would probably get.